Fred backed up even farther. “Get that thing away from me,” he said. “It looks vicious.”
At that moment, Trixie appeared from wherever she had been hiding. With her usual unerring sense of mischief, she headed right for Fred’s pant leg which looked like the opening of an interesting tunnel. She insinuated herself under the edge of his hem and tried to wriggle her way upward.
Fred’s face turned red and his eyes bulged with terror. Luckily his pants quickly grew too tight for her to proceed much farther but she didn’t quit trying. She dug in with her tiny claws.
As he was backing up, Fred fell over the palm tree and landed on the floor with a thump. His gun fell out of the holster and skidded across the hardwood floor.
Afraid it would go off, I made a dive for it. Meanwhile Fred managed to yank Trixie out by her tail. It was clear he intended to dash her against the nearby wall. I pointed the gun at him.
“Put her down,” I said.
Fred snarled at me. “Lady, you don’t know what you’re doing. Assault on a police officer is a felony.” Trixie wiggled back and forth trying to sink her teeth into the cop’s wrist.
“I don’t care. You’re threatening the life of my pet. Surely that’s a crime as well. Animal endangerment.” My hand trembled. I had never held a gun before, had no idea what might set it off. What if I accidentally hit the deputy? Or, even worse, Trixie?
Fred held Trixie by her tail in the air. I held the gun trembling. It was an impasse.
“Look, you put Trixie down and I’ll put the gun down,” I said.
“You put the gun down and I’ll put this critter down,” the deputy said.
“Not going to work that way,” I replied. I knew by the murderous glint in his eyes that he intended to hurt the ferret. I kept the gun pointed at his leg.
Fred lifted his arm as if he were going to fling the ferret against the wall.
“You harm her and I’ll harm you,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Just get it away from me,” Fred said, holding out the wriggling ferret. I took a step closer, grabbed Trixie around the belly. At the same time Fred grabbed my wrist and twisted it up behind my back.
Within a minute, I was down on the floor of my dining room, my face pressed against the floor, Fred’s knee on my back and his whole weight leaning on me. Trixie had dashed behind the potted palm.
“Ow!” I squirmed. I felt the cold metal of the gun at my neck. “Stop! You’re hurting me!”
“Don’t resist! Don’t resist!” He was shouting.
I wanted to holler for help but knew few of my neighbors would be home at this hour. And even if they did respond to my cries, what would they see? A policeman trying to subdue a recalcitrant perpetrator. No one would assume he was in the wrong.
I willed myself to calm down, knowing that struggle only made my position more precarious. I could hear Fred’s heavy breathing above me as he fumbled with something on his belt.
“Put your hands behind your back,” he said, and then again louder, “Put your hands behind your back.” I struggled to raise my arms over my head.
“No! Down by your sides!” I felt cold metal touch my wrist, then a snap and both wrists were encircled with metal. The handcuffs cut into my flesh.
Apparently satisfied that I had been subdued, Fred got off me. I tried to twist to look up at him. He looked down at me with a smile on his face. I saw nothing human in his eyes, just rage and malice. I had never been so frightened in my life, not even when I was stuck on a boat with a murderer the previous month while working on a domestic violence case.
“I want your badge number. I want your name.” I said, realizing too late that I had asked for neither when I invited him in.
“We’ll take care of that later,” he snarled. “Now I’ll do what I should have done when I first arrived. Search the premises.”
He looked around the dining room. I scrabbled backwards to try to shield Trixie with my body but the cop just glanced around, then headed into the living room. I heard his heavy foot steps on the stairs, then going from room to room. I could determine from the creak of the floorboards where he was: in my bathroom, in my bedroom, in my closet. I struggled to get to my feet but without the use of my hands, my balance was off.
“Help! Help!” I shouted, hoping someone passing by would hear.
I heard thuds upstairs as drawers were dropped on the floor, the crash of a lamp being broken. Then I heard his footsteps coming back down the stairs. Thud. Thud. Thud. And he was back above me.
He stuffed a sock into my mouth, then went out into the other room. I gasped for breath, as I realized that all my files were spread across my desk: the notes from interviews, the photocopies of newspaper articles, the list of Matt’s platoon members. I wriggled on the floor, trying to get the sock out of my mouth.
Then he was standing above me, clutching a sheaf of papers.
“I could arrest you for assaulting a police officer, harboring a dangerous animal, aiding and abetting a federal fugitive. But I’m going to be generous. I’m going to let you off with a warning. Stay out of this. You’re in way over your head.”
Chapter 17
It took a while because my hands were cuffed behind my back but I finally got to the phone and pressed the buttons to call the police. A couple of beat cops in their pale blue uniforms showed up first. They were mystified by my account of the events, but they were able to release me from the handcuffs. They made a call to the sheriff’s office and tried to get through to someone who could verify that Fred Proctor was working a case which would justify his invasion of my home. Based on what I could hear from my end of the phone call, they were getting the run around. When I went looking for them, I found the ferrets asleep in their hammock after all the excitement. I shut the door to their cage to secure them.
To my surprise, Darrell Darnell also showed up, just as the beat cops were getting ready to leave.
“Miss Stern,” he said, shaking his head. “You seem to be in a lot of trouble.”
“This was not my fault!” I said sharply. “This officer came into my home, threatened to shoot my pets, and stole my case notes.” I told him my side of the story.
Darrell seemed amused by my description of the encounter. “You’re lucky he didn’t arrest you for assault on an officer,” he said. He asked me again for a description of the officer and wrote down the details. “We’ll follow up with the King County Sheriff’s office and let you know what we find out.” He frowned at me. “Meanwhile, whatever you’re doing, I would suggest you stop.”
After he left, I sat down to try to recreate my notes, the ones that had been confiscated. I still had the card for Wendy Brooks. I wrote down the names of the people who had been at the bank on the day of the robbery. I summarized my conversations with Joyce White and Karen Eveschild. That reminded me. I had been putting off contacting my parents but it seemed that they were more wrapped up in this than I originally thought. I placed a call to my dad but it went straight to voice mail, so I just asked him to call me. Then I called my mother. Her assistant, Jill, answered but passed me over to her fairly quickly.
“How did the fundraiser go?” I asked.
“We took in over $100,000 in pledges,” my mother said, “but that’s not why you called. You don’t care about Robb’s campaign.”
That wasn’t entirely true. I did care about Robb’s campaign. I hoped he would lose his bid for mayor of Seattle. As far as I was concerned, he was in bed with the real estate developers and big businessmen who saw the city as their cash cow.
“I called because I have some questions,” I said. I hesitated, uncertain how to broach the subject. Sometimes shock works best. “What can you tell me about the Amazons?”
“How dare you!” said my mother, and she slammed the phone down. So that wasn’t going to work.
I sighed and went back to my notes, when the phone rang again. I grabbed it, thinking it might be my father or my mother, changing her mind. But it was my best
friend, Ginger.
“Rachel! I need you,” she said. And that was all she had to say. Because, after all, she is my best friend.
“Sure,” I said. “What’s up?”
“The court-appointed guardian ad litem is coming tomorrow to see what sort of home environment I’ve provided for Taffy. She’s going to be here at 8:30 AM. Do you think you can help me clean up the loft so it looks presentable?”
I sighed. I was certainly willing to help but it would be hard to make the loft look presentable.
Ginger lived in an old warehouse in the Ballard district of Seattle, just off a slanted street lined with taverns and bars, although it was increasingly becoming gentrified with chichi boutiques and gift shops moving in between the auto body shops and upholstery workshops. Ginger rented one half of the second floor of an old brick building. In the winter it was freezing cold (she heated it with oil heaters) and in the summer it was stifling hot. The walls were bare bricks. She had done her best to create insulation by lining the outside walls with full length red velvet theater curtains, which created a bit of a bordello effect, which was magnified by her collection of black velvet paintings and the big brass bed in the corner, fitted with satin sheets and glutted with embroidered pillows.
She had divided up the big space into smaller rooms. Taffy’s space has a bed on a platform and is usually awash with toys. Another space, defined by shelving units from Ikea, serves as a walk-in closet for Ginger’s collection of vintage clothes and fancy shoes. A tiny kitchen is tucked up against one wall, but it’s minimal: just a refrigerator, a counter, a hot plate and a microwave. Ginger and Taffy usually eat out. The bathroom is a bit more functional since there had been a bathroom in the building, but there’s no shower. Ginger had restored an old clawfoot bathtub. The water drained through a series of pipes out a window and into her rooftop garden. She had created an oasis on the roof of the building next door: a wrought iron patio table and two wrought iron chairs, pots of plants and herbs and flowers. None of it was probably legal.
When I got to her loft, an hour later, Ginger was in tears.
“Where’s Taffy?” I said.
“She’s at Wayne’s,” Ginger said. Wayne was the sculptor who lived on the third floor. He’s also an alcoholic.
“Is that safe?” I asked.
Ginger sighed. “He was sober when I left her. He had just woken up. Anyway, I can’t clean when she’s here. She can make a mess faster than I can clean it up.”
The place was in more disarray than usual. There were clothes and stuffed animals all over. A carpet was rolled up in one corner. A plastic tub of soapy water sat in the middle of the floor. Although it was almost ten PM, the heat of the day still lingered inside the brick walls.
Ginger had tied a red bandanna over her auburn curls and was wearing bright yellow rubber gloves. She wore a pair of black pedal pushers and a ruffled mid-riff baring top. Even while cleaning, she looked fashionable.
“It’s hopeless, isn’t it?” she asked, pushing a stray curl off her forehead with the back of her arm.
I looked around. There were heavy mirrors in gilt frames leaning against the walls. Ginger’s bicycle was parked in the middle of the living room. It did look hopeless to me. But that wasn’t what Ginger needed to hear.
“Let’s just focus on one thing at a time,” I said. “I’ll start in Taffy’s room.” I sent Ginger to work on her studio, which is full of hazards.
By contrast, Taffy’s room was easy. I just had to locate all her toys which were scattered throughout the loft and put them on the empty shelves next to her bed. I took a great deal of pride in organizing them by type and size and color, knowing this scheme would only last a few minutes. I threw all of the 56 stuffed animals (I counted them) into the hammock which was slung across one corner.
Next I tackled the closet, another safe space. Taffy’s clothes were down on the lower racks where she could reach them but it looked like she never hung anything up, just threw things into a big pile in one corner. I sorted them into dirty and clean, filled up the laundry basket and set it aside.
I heard a big sigh and turned around to find Ginger behind me. She looked weary. “I should go get Taffy,” she said. “How are we ever going to finish?”
“I’ll give Taffy her bath and read to her,” I said. “You keep on working. What’s the most urgent?”
We decided that Ginger needed to focus on moving all the potentially dangerous items, like the heavy mirrors, into the studio. We would set up a baby gate (which I found in the back of the closet) across the door of the studio and Ginger would try to convince the social worker that Taffy was never allowed in there.
I headed up the rickety steps to Wayne’s loft. He builds huge sculptures out of things he finds in dumpsters. His space is littered with piles of discarded gears and rusty chains and warped sheets of metal. Large figures that look half robot, half mythic loomed over me. Spotlights shining down on them cast weird shadows. I picked my way along the narrow pathway towards the tiny kitchen, which is screened off from the main room by a wall made of old fruit boxes set on end.
Taffy was finger painting on newspapers laid out on the picnic table that served as Wayne’s dining room. Her fingers were bright orange and blue and her cheek was smeared with green. Wayne was stirring some eggs in a pan on the stove. An old-fashioned percolator burbled on the counter and I could smell the coffee cooking.
“Want some scrambled eggs?” Wayne asked, looking up and waving the wooden spatula at me.
I shook my head. “I just came to get Taffy. It’s bed time.”
“No, it’s not, Auntie Rachel,” Taffy said, shaking her blond curls. “Mommy lets me go to bed whenever I want.”
“She sent me over here,” I said, trying to sound stern. “I’m going to give you a bath and read to you. Come on!”
“How’s the clean-up going?” Wayne asked.
“Lots to do still,” I said.
“I’ll come and help as soon as I eat breakfast,” he said.
I thanked him. Not sure that he would be much use. Wayne is almost sixty years old, with scraggly grey hair and a big bushy beard. But he’s strong—he has to be to deal with the materials he uses in his sculptures.
“You know that would be great,” I said. He could move all of the patio furniture off the roof and store it in his studio. I figured we’d have to block the access to the roof.
With all three of us working, we managed to get a lot done. I got Taffy ready for bed and tucked into her newly cleaned room, persuading her to take only four of her stuffed animals into bed with her, leaving the others in their hammock. Once she was asleep, I went on Taffy patrol, getting down at her height and looking for danger spots, like the fan on the floor or the loose screen on the window. I also made a run to the store for some supplies we needed to block some of the electrical outlets, fasten the cabinets and lock the door to the studio.
Wayne was true to his word. He carried all the furniture and garden pots up the stairs and into his studio. He might have been taking little nips from his favorite spirit, bourbon, while he was upstairs but it didn’t impair his ability to work. He bounded up the stairs with the heavy pots like a mountain goat.
Ginger worked hard too: cleaning the kitchen, scrubbing the floor, washing the windows, but there was really nothing that could be done to make the space look like a normal home. And she knew it too. She thanked Wayne with a big hug and then collapsed onto her black velvet Victorian sofa, ripping off her bandanna and looking around the room.
“What do you think?” she asked.
I looked around too. “It’s not your average American home,” I said. That was an understatement. A chandelier made of tin cans hung over the red linoleum table that served as the kitchen table. The floor was concrete: Ginger had painted Indian carpet designs on top of it. There was no kitchen sink, just an old enameled pan full of soapy water. The walls were covered with art pieces that Ginger had taken as payment for clothes back in the days when s
he was a shop owner.
“Well, I would love to live here, but I’m not sure how DSHS will feel about it,” I said. “But the good news is that I have a friend at DSHS now.” Maybe it was a little over-reaching to call Karen Eveschild a friend.
“Really?” Ginger got excited. She bounced up. “Want a cup of tea?”
I shook my head. It was almost two AM. I needed to get home and get in bed. Ginger put the kettle on. She claims she can drink tea at all hours of the night.
“Karen specializes in foster care so I don’t know how much she knows about custody cases, but she’ll know someone who does. She’s worked there for years.”
“How do you know her?”
“She’s a source for the investigation I’m doing,” I said.
“The one for the lawyer?”
“Yes, I’m doing research for him. On a woman who disappeared after the Mutual Bank robbery. Do you remember hearing about that?
“Vaguely. A bunch of radicals kidnapped an heiress. She got killed in the shootout at the bank.”
“Right, well I’m trying to find out what happened to this woman who was one of the robbers. She was on the FBI Most Wanted list for years but no one has seen her since that day.”
“So what does that have to do with the DSHS worker?”
“Ellie left behind her five-year old daughter. She didn’t pick her up from day care the day of the robbery. Apparently my mother took her in for a while. Then Karen tried to adopt her. I guess everyone thought Ellie would come back to get her daughter, but she never did.”
“She must be dead, then,” said Ginger firmly. “No mother would abandon her five year old.”
Chapter 18
I was finally able to reach Wendy Brooks in the morning. She answered the phone in a chirpy voice. “Brooks Books. How can we help you?”
“Good morning, Miss Brooks,” I said, putting on my most official voice. “This is Deborah Weaver, calling from Washington State Employment Security. We’re investigating a claim from a woman who indicated that she was working at Café Flora in 1979 at the time she suffered from a work-related trauma. The restaurant told me to contact you as you have all the payroll records.”
Hard Rain Page 10
