Murder One

by Robert Dugoni

  “How do you deal with it?” she asked.

  He thought of the advice from the white-haired woman in the cemetery. “The best I can. Moment to moment. Someone once told me that time doesn’t heal all wounds, Barclay, it just deadens the pain.”

  “I’m sorry about lunch.”

  “We’ll reschedule. Never let it be said that David Sloane welched on a bet.”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “No?”

  “Let me make it up to you. I know a great restaurant. Let me take you to dinner.”

  He shook his head. “Barclay, your hand—”

  “It’s fine. My hand is fine. Please.”

  “You’re sure? You feel up to it?”

  “I’m sure. Good food, good wine . . . and no blood.”

  QUEEN ANNE HILL

  SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

  They took a cab downtown and Sloane retrieved his car, offering to drive Barclay home to change.

  He angled the wheel and let the car roll until the tires nudged the curb, parking alongside a seven-foot wooden fence with Oriental trim and lanterns atop the posts. Bamboo stalks extended three feet above the fence line, and above the stalks he could see the upper floors of a modern glass and concrete structure.

  Just north of downtown, Queen Anne was the tallest of the city’s seven “fabled hills.” At one time Seattle’s rich and famous resided there, building ornate Victorian homes, many of which remained untouched by developers. They reminded Sloane of the Victorians he had grown fond of while living in San Francisco.

  At the wooden gate, Reid punched in a series of numbers on a keypad, and the lock buzzed. Sloane reached above her to assist in pushing open the gate, surprised by its significant weight. He let it swing shut, hearing it latch, but focused on the drastic transformation. Stone and moss footpaths lined by bonsai trees and Japanese maples meandered through the garden. Water babbled over rocks and trickled through a bamboo shoot into a koi pond surrounding a large boulder and, atop it, a pagoda. The tail of an orange and white fish flicked and darted, leaving ripples on the water’s surface.

  “It’s beautiful,” he said.

  “I had to fight the city over the height of the fence. They gave in when I reminded them there was no limit on the height of the bamboo trees.”

  “Why Japanese?”

  “After college, I spent a year in the small village of my great-grandmother’s ancestors—Takeshi-muri, Chiisagatagun.”

  “Easy for you to say. So you’re Japanese?”

  “One eighth and proud of it, so don’t make any driving jokes, buster.”

  Sloane raised his hands in mock surrender.

  “I took a lot of pictures. I always wanted to build my own home, but I had to settle for doing a remodel.”

  Sloane noticed rectangular boxes the size of Jake’s iPod mounted below each of the light fixtures and several more along the footpaths. Initially, he thought them to be solar panels, but that would be an ill-suited design for a city where gray skies dominated much of the year. He deduced them to be motion detectors.

  A large Buddha greeted them in the foyer. The interior was also Asian decor: black marble, Oriental screens and fans, bamboo floors, plush furniture, and a white marble fireplace. Lanterns hung from the ceiling by nearly translucent wires, and recessed lights illuminated impressionist paintings on the wall.

  “Be it ever so humble.” Reid shut the door, reapplied the deadbolt, and entered a series of numbers on a panel on the wall. “The alarm,” she explained. “I make it a habit.”

  “You have motion detectors in the yard.”

  “And on the doors and the windows. I’m a single woman on a crusade against drug dealers. I’ve made my share of enemies.”

  She stepped out of her running shoes and left them in an impressive pile near the Buddha, exchanging them for slippers.

  “Did you rob a shoe store?”

  “When you’re running long distances, it makes a huge difference. They wear out quickly.”

  She handed him a pair of slippers.

  “House rule. The chef gets mad if you don’t.” She walked away, finishing the sentence with her back to him.

  Sloane slipped off his shoes, considering her comment. He had thought she stopped to change clothes, but they weren’t going to a restaurant. He tried to cover his anxiety. “What, are you running a hundred miles a day?”

  “Depends on my schedule.”

  He joined her in the kitchen, where she used one hand to pull vegetables out of the refrigerator and put them on the black marble counter. “I was kidding. Tell me you’re not serious.”

  “I do triathlons. The workout varies with the day of the week.” She handed him two bottles of Perrier.

  He opened one and handed it back to her. “How do you find the time?”

  “After Carly died, time seemed to be all that I had.”

  Sloane knew the feeling.

  She walked past him to a black wrought-iron staircase, climbing the concrete steps. “Make yourself comfortable. I’m going to change.”

  Sloane sipped his water at a sliding-glass door leading to a small concrete patio that afforded a view of the Seattle skyline, the Space Needle nearly dead center.

  “Much better.” Reid descended the staircase in a pair of black leggings and an extra-large gray sweatshirt with harvard in crimson across the front.

  “The view is incredible,” he said.

  She struck a pose. “Thank you, but what do you think of the skyline?”

  He laughed. “The skyline isn’t bad, either.”

  “Sounds like another of your ‘You look nice’ compliments. Hungry?” In the kitchen, Reid pulled two glasses from a cabinet and poured red wine. “The view is what sold me. I thought I’d prefer something with more land, but this just felt like it could be home.”

  Sloane had purchased the house at Three Tree Point for the same reason: it had felt like a place he and Tina and Jake could call home. Though he had gone back after Tina’s murder, he remained uncertain he would stay. Jake’s visits from the Bay Area had become more infrequent what with school and sports commitments; friends and girls were also beginning to take precedence. Though Jake had spent the entire month of August with him, Sloane knew the boy had been bored at times and would have preferred to be in the Bay Area with his friends. They spoke regularly on the phone, and Sloane had learned the art of texting. He had been contemplating a condominium downtown, closer to work, but had resisted for fear work would again consume his life.

  She handed him his glass, then retrieved hers from the counter. “Okay, let’s try this again.” She held the glass by the stem. “To old adversaries.”

  “And new friends,” he added.

  She clinked his glass, took a sip, and pivoted back to the stove, pulling out pots and pans.

  “What’s on the menu?” he asked.

  “Putanesca.”

  “Let me guess, you’re a gourmet chef, too.”

  “Actually, I can’t boil water. But I can follow directions as well as anyone. I found a recipe in a magazine and wanted to give it a try. Now I have the chance.”

  “Why do I suddenly feel like one of those lab rats?”

  She swatted him with a towel.

  “What can I do to help?”

  “You know your way around a kitchen?”

  “I’m a quick study, and since the chef needs a hand . . .”

  She pretended to beat on the pans like drums. “Ba-dum-dum.”

  For the next half hour, they worked in close quarters, sipping red wine, reading the recipe, and debating—as only two lawyers could—what the directions actually meant. Reid instructed Sloane on the proper way to chop tomatoes, olives and garlic cloves, then the parsley and basil. She added oil to anchovies and capers in a cast-iron skillet and allowed it to simmer before adding the vegetables. The room filled with a sweet fragrance and the smell reminded Sloane that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

  The meal did not disappoi
nt. “My compliments to the chef,” he said.

  Reid stood. “Okay, grab the wine and follow me.”

  He hadn’t drunk much in the past thirteen months, not wanting to start down the path of drinking alone at home. He could feel the wine. He grabbed the bottle and his glass and followed her into the living room but she started up the stairs. Sloane had not been with a woman since Tina and had mentally prepared himself only for lunch.

  At the top of the second flight of stairs, they came to a locked metal door. Reid keyed a code on a pad mounted on the wall, pushed down on the handle, and put a shoulder to the door, pushing it open and stepping out onto a roof. Sloane caught the door, which, like the gate, was spring-loaded to close automatically and of significant weight.

  A wood plank walkway led to a deck with patio furniture and planter boxes filled with bamboo, tall grass, and miniature maples. The planters provided some privacy from the windows of the homes across the street, the lighting subtle. Music filtered from hidden speakers. He was surprised that it was country.

  Sloane set the bottle on a table and joined Reid at a black metal-tube railing atop the parapet walls. She gestured to an even more impressive and unobstructed view of downtown, the lights shining in the fading summer sky. “Now, this is a view.”

  “It’s certainly better than nice,” he said. “And so are you. Thank you for dinner.”

  She gave a slight curtsy. “You’re welcome.”

  Reid rested her forearms on the railing, her drink in hand. “Sometimes I come up here to escape from all the turmoil, you know?”

  “I used to love to go home and listen to the sound of the waves,” he said.

  “You live on the water?”

  “Three Tree Point. It’s a tiny beach community near Burien—our own little oasis. Since my wife’s death . . .” He caught himself.

  She put a hand on his forearm. “It’s okay, David. I know you loved her. Since her death what?”

  “I don’t much like being home anymore. I find myself making excuses to work late, take on added responsibility.”

  She looked back toward the skyline. “Oh, how I can relate. Life sure has a way of changing in an instant, doesn’t it? I used to wonder what I would do when I saw him face-to-face.” He knew she meant Vasiliev. “I contemplated what I would say to him as they led him out of the courtroom in handcuffs to spend the rest of his life in prison.” She shook her head, her eyes regaining focus. “If I had known he was going to walk, I would have just put a bullet in him and been done with it.”

  The comment surprised him. “No. You wouldn’t have.”

  She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “I’m not so certain.”

  “I am.”

  Sloane had never told anyone about the night he held a searing fire poker to Anthony Stenopolis’s face and threatened to blind the man who had murdered his wife. He hadn’t done it, though, realizing that revenge was a poor substitute for justice.

  “It’s what separates us from people like Vasiliev—and the man who killed my wife.” She turned from the view. “I had the chance. And believe me, I thought there was nothing more in the world I wanted to do.”

  “The paper said they never caught him.”

  “They didn’t.”

  “Did you—”

  “Kill him? No. I didn’t kill him.”

  “What stopped you?”

  He debated how much more he wanted to reveal, having also learned there was a fine line between being sympathetic and being pathetic. He wasn’t about to start spilling his guts about growing up in foster homes because his mother had been raped and murdered as he cowered beneath his bed.

  “I just knew if I pulled that trigger, I’d be stepping through a very dark doorway that I’d already escaped once. And I didn’t want to go back.”

  She squeezed his arm. “I’ve never brought anyone up here before. There was never anyone I wanted to share it with.” She pushed onto her toes and gently kissed his lips. Sloane felt a dozen different emotions. Together, they paralyzed him. She pulled back. “I’m sorry . . . I shouldn’t have . . .”

  “No.” He touched her shoulder. “It’s just that I haven’t . . . not since my wife died.”

  “I understand.”

  “I don’t think you do.” He put his glass down. “There hasn’t been anyone, Barclay. So I might be a bit rusty when it comes to compliments and things, but you have to understand, you didn’t just take me by surprise the other night; you took me someplace I haven’t been in a long time. And it all feels a bit foreign.”

  “There’s no rush, David.”

  He pulled her close, wanting to feel the warmth of another human being.

  This time, when she inched onto her toes, he bent and met her halfway.

  FIVE

  TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2011

  QUEEN ANNE HILL

  SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

  He stared at the blank ceiling over Barclay Reid’s bed, but in his mind he saw the face of Albert Einstein—the black-and-white print hung on his office wall, the genius with a twinkle in his coal-black eyes, a mischievous, elflike grin, and his trademark silver hair as wild as the bristles of an exploded broom.

  A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.

  John Kannin, Sloane’s law partner, had hung the print where Sloane would always see it. No one would ever accuse Kannin of being subtle.

  After Tina’s death, Sloane became absorbed by so much sorrow and guilt it had left him physically ill. He had little appetite, frequently forgot his train of thought, and lacked energy to the point that getting out of bed became a struggle. His world lost color, everything a dull, ugly gray. Though work had once been his refuge from the loneliness of his life, even there he could not function. Finally, Kannin gathered Charles Jenkins and his wife, Alex, and Sloane’s secretary, Carolyn, and together they orchestrated an intervention in Sloane’s office. It was nothing dramatic, just a heart-to-heart suggestion that Sloane take some time off. He had resisted, not because he thought their assessment wrong, but with Jake living with his biological father in California, work was all Sloane had.

  “Someplace warm,” Kannin had suggested. “Heat is good for the soul.”

  Sloane spent a week considering his options. He dismissed Hawaii, which he associated with honeymoons. Europe, with so much history, would only make him feel even less significant. Africa, vast and open, would exacerbate his loneliness. Undecided, he sat one evening surfing channels, not really watching, but stopped when he came upon a movie starring Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins. Robbins, it seemed, was a man falsely convicted of murdering his wife and sent to prison. The topic wasn’t exactly what Sloane needed. About to change the channel, the movie went to commercial and he learned he was watching The Shawshank Redemption. A lifelong Stephen King fan, Sloane decided to watch.

  In the climax, Robbins tunneled his way through his cell wall, a decades-long endeavor, moving one pocketful of rock at a time. When he had finally punched through, he pulled himself to freedom through a sewer pipe, sliding out into a rain-swollen drainage ditch to exact justice on those who had wronged him. Then he fled to a quiet fishing village in Mexico called Zihuatanejo.

  And Sloane found his answer.

  Zihuatanejo was not the quiet 1940s fishing village Robbins described in the movie, but Sloane still found it therapeutic. He rented a house on a quiet street at the foot of the Sierra Madres and spent three months without any schedule, doing whatever he wanted: reading, lying in the sun, swimming in the Pacific Ocean, and exploring other villages on a bike. The days of the week blended. He often didn’t know if it was Monday or Friday and didn’t care. After several months he awoke to a recollection of another scene from the movie. Just before his escape, Robbins had turned to Morgan Freeman in the prison courtyard and proclaimed it time to either “get busy living or get busy dying.”

  Sloane returned to Seattle apprehensive but ready to at least try to get busy living.

  Over
the next several months, his progress felt at times like digging one pocketful of dirt from an endless tunnel. Now he thought he had maybe broken through the wall. He was living outside himself again—thinking not of his grief and misery but of Barclay Reid.

  Sloane opened the note Reid left on her pillow.

  I’m on the roof. Join me for breakfast. P.S. Put some clothes on. It’s cold!

  His shirt and pants hung in the closet and he found his slippers on the closet floor beside a silver box with a combination lock on top.

  At the top of the staircase, he encountered the heavy door. About to knock, he noticed a second sticky note on the alarm touch pad.

  Password: LEENIE

  Sloane keyed the corresponding number for each letter, heard a small click, and pushed down on the handle. Reid reclined in a silk bathrobe on one of the lounge chairs, her legs bent beneath her, bandaged hand holding the handle of a ceramic mug, The Wall Street Journal in her lap.

  “Look what the cat dragged in,” she said. “Or out. I knew you plaintiff’s attorneys kept bankers’ hours.”

  Steam emanated from the spout of a ceramic teapot, and beside it, a bowl of mixed fruit, two smaller bowls, and spoons. “You’re ambitious this morning,” he said.

  Reid poured Sloane a cup. “I worked up an appetite.” She grinned. “Tea?”

  Sloane took the cup and sat on the end of her recliner, the note still stuck to his fingers. “Leenie?”

  “Carly’s nickname,” she said. “Another one of my secrets. Now you have to eat the note.”

  “And the gun?” he asked. “Sorry. I saw the box on the closet floor.”

  She shrugged. “Like I said, I’m a single woman on a crusade.”

  “How bad has it been?”

  “The night we went for a drink?”

  “Saturday?”

  “We were followed. We were also followed yesterday. If you look over the railing, you might see a silver Mercedes with blackened windows.”

  Sloane went to the railing but did not see a car fitting the description. “How long has this been going on?”

  She shrugged.

  “You’ve told the police.”

  “I have, and they sent a patrol car to my house, and an officer stayed with me for a few days and it stopped. But the police don’t have the resources to follow around a private citizen twenty-four/seven. They suggested I hire my own security, but that posed the same problems, not to mention the expense. So I put in the alarm.”