Murder One

by Robert Dugoni

  “I guess my memory isn’t quite as good.”

  “Your memory is fine. I’m cutting back on my olive intake.”

  “Nice choice,” he said. “I’ve never been here.”

  “You’re not from here, are you? Was it San Francisco?”

  “Very good again.” Sloane had been raised in foster homes in Los Angeles but had practiced law in San Francisco for the better part of thirteen years, until moving to Seattle with Tina and her son, Jake.

  She shrugged. “You made quite a splash in the bar journal after the Kendall Toy victory.”

  Sloane detected no bitterness. He recalled seeing Harvard on her résumé. “And you? Was it Boston?”

  “Just for law school. I was raised in Magnolia and went to U-Dub.”

  “You’re a Husky.”

  She gave a half hearted fist pump. “Go Dawgs.”

  The crack of what sounded like pool balls colliding drew Sloane’s attention to a man and woman standing at a vintage table in the corner of the room.

  “It was very good, by the way,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Your speech tonight; it was very good.”

  He nodded.

  “That was a compliment. Usually, the response is ‘thank you.’”

  He picked up a drink coaster imprinted with a cartoonish polar bear holding a martini glass and flipped the coaster between his fingers like he’d seen magicians do with a playing card, trying to think of the right word. “Since my wife’s death, it isn’t always easy to tell if people are being sincere.”

  She winced, a look he had become all too familiar with. She touched his arm. “I’m sorry. I forgot about your wife. I’m very sorry, David.”

  Sloane had become adept at redirecting conversations when others brought up the topic of Tina’s death, but no words came to mind.

  “Well, it was, sincerely, very good.” She crossed her heart. “Scout’s honor.”

  “You were a Girl Scout?”

  “Is that so difficult to believe?”

  “I see you more as a troop leader.”

  She stood without warning. “Pool table is free.”

  Two men seated closer looked to be making a play for next, but they were no match for Reid. She reached the table, snatched the cues, and gave the two men a coquettish wink that only an attractive woman in a black evening gown could get away with. As the two men retreated, Reid handed Sloane the longer of the two cues.

  “I don’t know when I last played,” Sloane said.

  “It will be fun.” She racked the balls at the far end of the table, deftly removing the wooden triangle. “Do you want to break?”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” Sloane said. “What are we playing?”

  “Eight ball?”

  “Call the pocket?”

  She eyed him. “You have played.”

  “A bit.”

  “Care to make it interesting?”

  “It already is.”

  “I meant, care to make a bet?”

  “Am I in the presence of a pool shark, Ms. Reid?” She smiled. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Loser buys the drinks,” she said.

  “You’re on.”

  She squeezed her fingers inside the triangular frame to tighten the rack and centered the top ball on the blue dot on the table before slowly removing the frame. Sauntering to the opposite end, she hip-checked Sloane. “I like a little room when I break.”

  Sloane had an idea he’d be buying the drinks.

  She drew the cue back three times before it sprang forward and shot the white ball into the racked pack, hitting with a loud smack and sending balls scattering, three finding homes in pockets, two solids and one striped. The two men who failed to get the table gave a vocal approval. “I hope you didn’t bet the house,” one said.

  Reid chose stripes and sank the 10 and 13 before missing, giving her a four-balls-to-one lead. Sloane lined up the 2, called the corner pocket, and sank the shot. Reid nodded her approval. Surveying the table, he called the opposite corner and, using more force, sank the orange 5, narrowing her lead to four to three. He missed a shot he should have made, and they alternated until each had one ball remaining in addition to the 8 ball. Reid missed, but she didn’t leave Sloane much to work with. To sink the 6, he’d have to bounce the cue ball off the side bumper and ricochet it, something he had never been good at. After a moment of contemplation, he shrugged. “What the heck. Six ball, corner pocket.”

  “Not a chance,” Reid said.

  Sloane bent, lined up the shot, then stood to chalk his cue.

  “You’re not nervous, are you, Mr. Sloane?”

  “You wish.”

  He set the chalk down. Then, with a deft touch, he tapped the cue ball against the side bumper. It kicked off and hit the 6. The ball rolled the length of the table, looking as if it would run out of steam at the pocket edge, then trickled in.

  The two men cheered. Sloane smiled at Reid. Only the 8 remained—an easy shot into the side pocket. He strolled to where Reid stood. “Excuse me,” he said. “I like a little room when I win.”

  Reid sneered playfully and stepped to the side.

  Sloane lined up the shot—a tap would be all it would take. He bent and pulled back the cue. “Eight ball . . .”

  “Lunch.”

  He stood. “Are you trying to distract me?”

  She held the cue with both hands, head tilted, her hair brushing softly against her shoulder. Sloane felt his Adam’s apple bob.

  “Lunch. Loser also buys the winner lunch at the restaurant of her choosing.”

  The two men gave an “Oooh.”

  “Don’t you mean of ‘his choosing’?”

  “Does that mean you accept?”

  “Why would I pass up a free lunch?”

  Sloane rechalked the cue, bent to line up the shot, but could not resist considering her again, something that her grin told him she had expected. He forced himself to concentrate, easing back the stick and letting it slide through his fingers. He tapped the cue ball into the 8 and the 8 into the pocket.

  The two men gave another cheer.

  Sloane lay the cue on the felt. “I guess I’ll have to think of a place for lunch.”

  Reid smiled. “I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you.”

  “You’re not reneging, are you?”

  “I would never renege. I won.”

  Sloane laughed. “How do you figure?”

  “You didn’t call the shot.”

  The two men, momentarily stunned, turned to each other and yelped, “Whoa.”

  “Yes, I—” Sloane started.

  Reid shook her head. “No. You didn’t. I think you were . . . distracted?”

  “You tricked me.”

  “To the contrary, I played by the rules—your rule. ‘Call the pocket.’” She set the cue down. “Looks like our drinks have arrived.”

  At their table she picked up her drink and quaffed the glass, waiting for him to reciprocate. “I think I’m going to really like the taste of mine,” she said. “I hope yours isn’t too bitter.”

  FOUR

  MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2011

  PIKE PLACE MARKET

  SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

  To the victor went the spoils, and Sloane presumed from the direction they walked that also meant a bite out of his wallet. But Reid continued to surprise. She turned down the Post Street alley and stopped outside Kells Irish Pub, another of Seattle’s better-known landmarks and, in summer, a tourist haven.

  Kells and the other establishments in the alley had set up outdoor tables, some draped with white tablecloths, and nearly every chair was filled. It painted a quaint scene Sloane recalled from his visit to Europe, a scene he had too infrequently enjoyed in Seattle—a hazard of a profession in which time was money.

  “You know, I make a decent living,” Sloane said as they settled at an outdoor table.

  Reid folded her hands and leaned forward. “I consider
this my continuing obligation as a Seattle native to further educate the uninformed.”

  The temperature hovered in the mideighties and continued to be unseasonably humid. The air had the thick, tangy smell of the Puget Sound, blocks away. The weathermen had predicted late-evening and early-morning thundershowers, but Sloane did not see a cloud in the sky, only a thin layer of lingering marine haze.

  “I love the summers here,” she said.

  “If only they lasted longer,” Sloane said.

  “We might not appreciate them as much.”

  “Glass-is-half-full-type thing?”

  “Something like that.” Reid wore blue jeans, tennis shoes, and a cream-colored blouse, but she looked as attractive—maybe even more so than—as she had Saturday night. Sloane had avoided the office and spent much of the holiday weekend in the garden—a chore Tina had enjoyed and long overdue—and thinking of Barclay Reid. The image of her beside the pool table in her black dress had lingered.

  The waiter brought menus, but Reid declined. “I’ll have the Dublin coddle and a pint of Guinness.”

  “You come here often?” Sloane asked.

  She smiled from behind her sunglasses.

  “I hate to be ignorant, but what’s a coddle?”

  “Stew,” the waiter replied.

  “You’ll like it,” Reid said.

  Sloane handed back the menu. “Make it two . . . and a Guinness.”

  After the waiter departed, Reid said, “This was a hangout in college. I tried to buy a stake in it a few years back.”

  “What, running a law firm and hustling guys at pool isn’t enough to fill your time?”

  “I’m a bit of a compulsive overachiever.”

  Sloane unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled the sleeves up his forearms. “Is there anything you don’t do well?”

  “Parenting, apparently.” Reid turned her head and looked off, then back. “Sorry.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  She removed the sunglasses. “You don’t know, do you?” She seemed amazed by an unexpressed thought. “This has been so public, I guess I just assume everyone knows.” Sloane waited. “I lost my daughter to a drug overdose about seven months ago.”

  The words brought the familiar hurt, a hollow, empty feeling that reminded him he was far from over the death of his wife. “I’m sorry. I took some time off; I’ve been out of the country.”

  She looked on the verge of tears. “She was a good kid. It wasn’t her fault.”

  He wondered if the overdose had been accidental or if Reid was simply protecting her daughter, a parental instinct.

  She cleared her throat and sipped water. “Carly was a rock climber . . . hiker . . . She loved anything outdoors, really. She and a friend were climbing, and one of her clips failed. She fell thirty feet before her safety rope caught. It jarred her back, like a whiplash. She had chronic pain and became addicted to Oxycontin.”

  Sloane sensed the direction of the story.

  “I didn’t know,” Reid said, her voice softening. “One of the hazards of running a large law firm. You think you can just throw money at problems and everything will be all right. I sent Carly to a facility in Yakima and thought that would be the end of it. What I came to learn, too late, is that certain people are predisposed to addiction. It’s part of their genetic makeup; they can’t help it. Carly would text me from college asking for money and say it was for a class or books. I didn’t think much of it. I always trusted her. But that’s just an excuse I use to get through the day. The truth is, I always had so much going on I didn’t have time . . .” She sighed again. “I accepted all the superficial evidence that she was back on track: honor roll, straight A’s, active in after-school activities.”

  The waiter set two pints of Guinness on the table. Reid raised her glass and took a deep breath, regrouping. “Here’s to old adversaries and new friends.”

  He touched her glass. She sipped the beer and used the napkin to wipe foam from her upper lip. Then, like a swimmer who had waded into cold water, she must have decided that having entered this far, she might as well get it over with and submerge herself.

  “She was using the money to buy. When Oxycontin wasn’t available, she did something called ‘cheese.’” Reid explained that “cheese” was formed by combining heroin with crushed tablets of over-the-counter cold medications containing acetaminophen and is snorted. “The heroin content is usually between two and eight percent. Carly got a batch that was more than twenty.” A tear rolled down her cheek. She used the napkin to wipe it away. “She stopped breathing . . . the paramedics couldn’t revive her.”

  As tragic as it had been to watch Tina die, Sloane couldn’t imagine the agony of a mother losing a child. It was against the natural order of things for a child to die before a parent, and he had read somewhere that a parent never gets over the loss. He wondered how Reid found the strength to go on, and if she had been alone Saturday night because, like Sloane, she found it easier to be by herself than to pretend she enjoyed the company of others.

  “The street dealer was a low-life, a punk. He’s sitting in the King County jail. The person I really wanted was a man named Filyp Vasiliev.”

  Sloane recalled the name from an article on the front page of the metro section of the Seattle Times. “The guy who walked out of federal court last week. The car dealer in Renton?”

  Reid’s voice hardened. “He’s not a car dealer. He’s a drug dealer. He uses his car dealerships to import the drugs and launder the proceeds.”

  “What happened? How did he beat the charge?”

  “You don’t want to talk about this now.”

  Sloane sensed Reid did. “Only if you do.”

  She drew a line in the condensation on the outside of her glass. “A King County sheriff—a canine unit—made a routine traffic stop, and the dog alerted for the presence of drugs. Turns out the driver had an outstanding warrant for assault. The sheriff arrested him and impounded the car, which had been purchased that day at auction and registered to Vasiliev’s used-car dealership. They found ten kilos of heroin in the spare tire. The DEA had been after Vasiliev for a while. They used the drugs to set up an operation that culminated in a raid of Vasiliev’s dealership. Judge Kozlowski ruled that the search violated Vasiliev’s Fourth Amendment rights. He threw out much of the evidence, too much to go forward.”

  “Any chance of an appeal?”

  She shrugged. “The U.S. attorney says she’s considering it, but you know how difficult the standards are to get a decision overturned.”

  Sloane had no doubt Reid had discussed the issue directly with Margaret Rothstein, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington, and wondered if it was the matter Governor Hugh Chang had been referring to.

  “For weeks after Carly died I couldn’t function. Then I decided I wasn’t going to let her die in vain, you know? I found out that other states have what are called drug dealer liability acts. It allows for the use of civil laws and civil penalties against drug dealers. Similar laws have been used to bankrupt hate organizations—neo-Nazi groups and skinheads. The rationale is, if you can’t put them in jail, you take all their property and get them out of the community. I’ve been lobbying the Washington legislature to enact a similar statute.”

  “That would be a wonderful tribute to your daughter.”

  “It doesn’t come close. She was so full of life; she could have done anything.” The muscles of her jaw undulated. “And a piece of shit like Vasiliev is living in a mansion in Laurelhurst, free to do it to someone else’s child.”

  The glass shattered.

  Beer splashed across the table.

  Sloane slid back, knocking over his chair. He used his napkin to dam the flow of beer and took another napkin from a nearby patron to wipe at his shirt and the crotch of his pants. When he looked up, Reid, too, was wiping at her blouse.

  That was when he saw the blood.

  SWEDISH HOSPITAL

  EMERGENCY ROOM

&nb
sp; Looking more embarrassed than hurt, Reid avoided eye contact and touched the rust-colored bloodstains on her blouse, though it was well past saving. The hospital had the lemony odor of antiseptic, like a freshly cleaned floor.

  “Am I a fun lunch date or what?”

  The manager at Kells had wanted to call an ambulance, but Reid resisted. After Sloane applied pressure to stop the bleeding, he used butterfly bandages the manager provided to close the three-inch cut on the heel of her left hand, below the thumb. He wrapped it in gauze and accompanied Reid on the ten-minute taxi ride to Swedish Hospital, though she told him it wasn’t necessary.

  “I’ve never left a lunch date behind,” he said.

  In a strange way, the piece of glass, it seemed, had sliced through not only her skin but also the facade of control and composure she had undoubtedly developed from years of having to project herself as the competent, successful businesswoman and lawyer. Sitting on the bed, her shirt and pants splattered with blood, she looked vulnerable, more the person Sloane thought she must be when she did not have to impress or entertain, when she let down her guard.

  “You’re going to have to stop apologizing,” he said. “You’re the one who’s hurt, after all.”

  “With no one to blame but myself.”

  “I don’t know about that. We are lawyers, after all. I’m sure we could find someone to blame if we put our minds to it. Defective glass, perhaps.”

  “Can I sue myself for stupidity?”

  A hand specialist had stitched the wound after determining the cut had not severed any tendons or nerves. They awaited the paperwork to discharge.

  “How does it feel?” Sloane asked.

  She held up the wrap. “Given the size of the bandage, I wish I had a better story to tell at the office.” She smiled as if catching herself slipping back into Barclay Reid, attorney-at-law. “It’s fine,” she said. “Stings a little bit.” A tear escaped the corner of her eye and she wiped it away. “It hurts sometimes . . . you know?”

  “I know.” And he did.

  She cleared her throat. “You’re the first person who has said that to me that I didn’t feel like punching in the mouth.”

  “Well, that’s a start.”