by Karen Dionne
It took Holder longer than it should have to figure out that Logic was talking about N.A., Narcotics Anonymous. And that the “bitch” he was referring to was his mother Jackie, an overweight woman who was sucking down oxygen for her emphysema in the next room. Jackie knew all about the drug business her son ran out of her living room. Most of the time she didn’t care. But every once in a while she went all normal mother on him and tried to get him to quit.
“I ain’t gonna live like that, you feel me?” Logic said. “I want the good life.” He plucked a plastic bag from the tin stash box on the coffee table to make his point, packed a meth pipe, and held his lighter under the glass. Took a hit, held it in, blew it out, and offered the pipe to Holder.
Holder shook his head and passed the pipe to the tweaker sitting beside him.
“What’s the matter? My ice not good enough for you?” Logic asked.
“I ain’t no bag whore.” Holder patted his stomach. “My body is my temple.” It must have been the fiftieth time they’d had this conversation. It was getting dangerous.
Logic laughed. “Then why you suckin’ on that cigarette?” He grabbed the meth pipe for another hit, then sank back in his nasty brown vinyl La-Z-Boy crusty with food scraps, dribbles of sour beer and other trace that Holder didn’t want to think too hard about. Logic stared dreamily at the ceiling. Sniffed, wiped his nose, giggled.
Holder relaxed as the meth buzz took Logic to his happy place. The real question wasn’t why an apparent health nut like Holder smoked cigarettes; it was how long he would be able to stay under this time without being forced to choose between taking a hit of meth or blowing his cover. It wouldn’t be the end of his career if Logic and Company made him for a cop. Holder would just move on to another sorry trailer park and another batch of crank heads. There wasn’t exactly a shortage of drug rings in the city waiting for him to bust. And it wasn’t like he was undercover with the Mafia. Nobody was going to put a bullet in his head or chop off his fingers if he was found out.
Still, he badly wanted to see Logic and his pals locked up. A lot of the cops at County thought narco was a waste of time. That as soon as you busted one operation, another came along to take its place, so why even bother? But you had to stick your finger in the dike, even if the water was spilling over the top. If you didn’t, then the bad guys had already won. Maybe Holder was too naive and idealistic for undercover work. But at least this way, he got to be the good guy for a while, lock a few of ’em up, keep the others lookin’ over their shoulders, maybe scare some little pissant out of starting down the wrong road. And it wasn’t like he was planning to stay in undercover forever. His lieutenant had hinted that there were big things in Holder’s future if he stuck it out.
“Tiff’s the one who oughta go,” Ridgeback said. Still talking about N.A. “That bitch has some serious addiction. She burned through all her dude’s cheese in what—three weeks? Prob’ly killed ’im, too.”
Tiff—Tiffany—the tiny tattooed blonde who mostly hung out with a dark-haired tweaker called Claire. Tiffany owned the trailer across the street. The trailer where the cops found her boyfriend’s body. The cops were no doubt looking at her as a possible suspect, though if Holder hadn’t been undercover, he could’ve told them they were barking up the wrong tree. Tiffany and her new boyfriend seemed really close. No way would she have killed him. Though she might’ve been able to tell them who did. Anyway, he didn’t need to break cover to offer his help. The cops working the case would be talking to Tiffany soon enough.
“You talkin’ ’bout that bitty thing with the butterfly tattoo on her belly?” Holder laughed. “Man, she didn’t kill nobody. You gotta have balls for that.” He made his point by grabbing his crotch.
Ridgeback burst out laughing. Holder leaned across the coffee table to dap fists with him and grinned. There was a reason his lieutenant had tapped him for undercover straight out of the Academy. Aside from the fact that he and the tweakers happened to stand on opposite sides of the law, Holder really wasn’t all that different from the junkies.
10
Sarah aimed her flashlight at the crumbling sidewalk leading to Tiffany’s trailer and made her way carefully toward the front door. The last thing she needed was to fall or to twist an ankle while she was out here alone in the dark. Rainier Valley wasn’t exactly the kind of place where, if you called out for help, somebody came running. Especially if you happened to be a cop.
A putrid, burned-plastic smell hung heavy in the damp night air. No telling how long the trailer next door was going to remain as it was, half destroyed and abandoned. The latest instance of blight in a neighborhood that already had more than its share. Earlier that afternoon, the cops had nailed a piece of plywood over the blow-out front door. The plywood was already gone.
Sarah pitied the people who had to live here. If Rainier Valley was like most trailer parks, the average age of its residents was close to fifty. Most of them would have moved in decades ago as college kids or young marrieds, thinking that a temporary stay in a trailer park was a smart way to get started and save money. Not realizing that once they bought in they’d be stuck forever, since a house trailer’s value only went down. Sarah used to think the people who lived in trailer parks did so by choice, because they didn’t aspire to anything better and lacked ambition. After she understood their situation better, she realized that most of them were hardworking, decent people who would have moved to a safer, cleaner place in a heartbeat if they could. But it cost thousands of dollars to relocate a trailer—assuming you could find a place to move it to—money the people at Rainier Valley didn’t have or they wouldn’t be living here in the first place. Chicken and egg. Catch 22.
No lights in Tiffany’s trailer. Sarah climbed the sagging steps and knocked on the front door. The porch reeked of cat urine and mold. She waited. Knocked and waited again. Tiffany’s continuing absence was beginning to worry her. It had been five hours since Lance’s body was discovered, longer than that since she’d posted anything on Facebook. More than enough time for something bad to have happened to her. Not every cop read the BOLO alerts or paid much attention to them when they did, especially when the missing person was an adult. It wasn’t that they didn’t care, they just had a lot to do.
On the other hand, it was a big city. There were plenty of places for Tiffany to hide if she didn’t want to be found.
Sarah knocked a third time for good measure, then turned and studied the trash-filled front yard. She herself had lived in a trailer park almost as bad as this one once. The social workers at Child Protective Services were normally careful about the foster parents they approved and the conditions in the homes they monitored. But every once in a while, somebody slipped through the cracks. People who had no business taking care of one kid ended up with several, not because they loved children, but because they loved the big bucks the state was willing to pay for taking care of them. There was good money in foster care if you played it right. Which meant that sometimes, kids like Sarah ended up in dumps like this. The really bad ones, you read about on the news. Foster kids placed with child molesters, or sold as sex slaves to a porn ring. Left outside coatless in the winter. Caged. Impregnated. Neglected. Beaten. Starved. For every case that made the news, there were dozens—hundreds—of kids who were barely hanging in there, doing whatever they had to do in order to survive a way of life that most people wouldn’t wish on a dog. Sarah’s way of coping had been to run. The longest she’d ever stayed in one place was two years. A lifetime when you caught a bad one.
She started down the sidewalk. Laughter drifted from the trailer across the street. Sarah had talked to the woman who lived there when she was canvassing the neighborhood that afternoon. Overweight, unkempt, on the high end of forty, barefoot and wearing a stained nightgown that looked like she lived in it 24/7. Bloodshot eyes and a breathing tube shoved roughly in her nose. The woman claimed she didn’t know anything about her neighbors, but Sarah had seen the meth paraphernalia behind her am
ong the dirty dishes on the coffee table. Oh yeah. Meth user on one side of the street, meth cooker on the other, but the neighbors didn’t know each other. Right. And two plus two didn’t equal four.
A stray cat skulked across her path as she made her way to the car. Thin. Black. Little more than a shadow. Another burst of raucous laughter came from the meth party across the street. In another trailer, a man and a woman were shouting. Somewhere down the street, a baby was crying.
Sarah steered her Focus around a plastic Big Wheel tricycle marooned in a pothole bigger than a child’s swimming pool and headed for home. Just another day in the life of Rainier Valley.
DAY TWO
JANUARY 25, 7:30 A.M.
11
Jack picked at the buckle on the backpack clutched in his lap and slumped lower in the passenger seat. His long, dark hair hid all of his face except for the pout on his lips. Sarah gripped the steering wheel tighter and turned her attention back to the road.
“Asking again isn’t going to change anything,” she said with a level of calm she didn’t feel. Seven-thirty was far too early in the morning to butt heads. “The answer is still ‘no.’”
“But why can’t I stay with Regi? Regi’s going to take the boat out today. She said I could come.”
Regi had grown from being Sarah’s social worker into a good friend—Sarah’s only friend, when you came down to it—but putting the idea in Jack’s head that he could skip school to go out with her on her boat was completely out of line. It wasn’t like Regi to undermine Sarah’s authority so openly. Sarah supposed it was payback for asking Regi to keep Jack overnight again. A not-so-subtle message that Sarah was working too hard. Again.
“You have school today, Jack. You know that.”
“You never let me do anything.” He sighed deeply and stared out the window.
Sarah bit back a sigh of her own. Never mind that she’d let Jack go along when Regi took the boat down the California coastline during Christmas vacation just a few weeks ago; the real problem was that all of the significant adults in Jack’s life were women. He desperately needed a male role model. Someone he could look up to and confide in. A friend. By rights, it should have been Rick, but for some reason, she had avoided the inevitable introductions. Probably because both of the men in her life wanted to be the only man in her life.
They rode the rest of the way to Jack’s middle school in silence. Sarah pulled into the drop-off queue with five minutes to spare and reached over to ruffle her son’s hair.
Jack pushed her hand away. “God, Mom. Cut it out. People might see.” He clambered out of the car without looking at her and made sure to slam the door.
She lowered the passenger window. “Have a good day!” Jack turned and glared.
Sarah watched her son trudge into the building. She thought about what Goddard said yesterday. That everything would change. But the spat didn’t mean anything. Jack had never been a morning person. Regi had probably let him stay up too late playing computer games. Sarah pushed the thoughts aside and turned the car toward Rainier Valley.
The park looked worse than ever in the morning light. Trash bags torn apart by dogs, spilling dirty diapers across the sidewalks. Wires dangling from rusty electrical boxes. Missing roofs. Broken windows. She recalled an incident report, the recording of which had been passed round the station:
“I’m sitting here watching TV,” the complainant had said, “just minding my own business, and somebody knocks on my door. It’s the guy down the street. He says he wants to sell me his TV. I told him I had a TV. He goes away, then comes back ten minutes later. Wants to sell me his Blu-ray player. I tell him I got a DVD player and that’s just as good. Ten minutes later he comes back again and says, ‘Look I gotta get me some dope, gotta get some crank—I’ll sell you my girl for $40.’”
One of dozens. She pulled over and parked in front of Tiffany Crane’s trailer. Walked up the broken sidewalk and knocked on the door. She didn’t really expect an answer, and she didn’t get one. But she had to try. She cupped her hands against the window and peered into the living room. Everything looked the same as it had when she first saw the crime scene: dingy lace curtains, dark gray carpet she suspected had originally been blue, cheap pine end tables, orange plaid sofa. If Tiffany had spent the night in the trailer—if she was inside right now and refusing to come to the door—there was no way for Sarah to tell.
She turned around and studied the empty street, looking at each trailer in turn as if by staring hard enough, she could see inside to discern their secrets. Sarah had always been a deeply intuitive person—a skill she’d honed over the long years spent in foster care. If someone was about to crack you across the cheek or the behind, it helped if you were able to sense it. She’d broken a case more than once by listening to her instincts.
The thing was, somebody had killed Lance. Someone he trusted, since there were no signs of forced entry or a struggle. In theory, almost anyone who knew Lance could be responsible for his death. But considering that most violent crimes in the home were committed by a family member, right now, Sarah’s instinct was to concentrate on the missing girlfriend. With two arrests and a husband serving hard time, it wasn’t difficult to imagine Tiffany ending up on the wrong side of the law. The idea of her deliberately shooting her boyfriend in the forehead at close range was a stretch, but these things happened every day. They might have argued, or the shooting could have been an accident. Right now it was too early to rule anything out. Still, there was the matter of Guy Marsee, dead the same day. It seemed too much of a coincidence for the deaths not to be related, but why would Tiffany gun down her boyfriend’s brother?
She considered the unlikely couple. Judging by the photograph Lance carried in his wallet, everything had been coming up wedding bells until Lance lost his job last September. Probably lost his house or condo or wherever he was staying not long after, and that’s why he moved in with his girlfriend. Maybe after a few weeks of hanging around the trailer park with no work and nothing to do, he got depressed and started using. Maybe Tiffany got tired of supporting them both while her hard-earned waitressing money went up in smoke, they argued, things went south. Or possibly Lance started using first, and that’s why he lost his job. Sarah would know more after she talked to Lance’s coworkers. And got the autopsy report. And found his girlfriend.
She flipped her jacket hood over her head as the morning mist turned to rain. Her phone rang. She hurried back to the car and slid into the driver’s seat, flipping the phone open as she did so. “Linden.”
“Where are you?” It was Lieutenant Oakes.
“I’m just finishing up at the trailer park. Anything on the girlfriend or the BOLO?”
“Not yet.”
“Then I’m heading over to the Black Bear Casino. See if I can get a lead on her. After that, I’m going to Stratoco to talk to Lance Marsee’s coworkers.”
“Go to Stratoco first. Talk to human resources. There’s a guy named Hatchett called, says he’s got something on your Marsee.”
“Got it.”
Sarah shut her phone. She brought up the address on the car’s GPS and put the Focus into gear. The corporate headquarters of the biggest name in the private aerospace industry was an hour’s drive away on the south side of the city. A location that made sense, when you thought about it. A company that built space rockets needed a lot of room. But it was a long way to go to talk to people Lance hadn’t worked with in months, which was why Sarah had wanted to track down Tiffany first.
But a lead was a lead, and if her lieutenant wanted her to talk to someone at Stratoco who claimed to have a hot tip, she wouldn’t mind going for a drive in the country.
12
Sarah drove with her window open whenever the rain let up enough to allow it, alternately savoring the cool ocean breeze and the damp, pine-scented air. One of the things she liked best about living in Seattle was that you were never far from water or a forest. The original Douglas fir and ponderosa pine
from the old logging days were long gone, but the secondary forests that had replaced them were still impressive. A lot of people thought Washington State was too wet and dreary for them to ever want to live here. But what did they expect from a temperate rain forest? Sarah couldn’t imagine living anyplace that didn’t include an abundance of trees. Just one of the many reasons she would never take Jack to see his father in Chicago. Probably the least important one, considering that Greg had left them both when Jack was three and she hadn’t seen or heard from him since, but still. That Greg had chosen to live in Chicago was definitely a factor.
People who knew that Sarah was raising her son by herself liked to tell her that one day, Jack would want to get to know his father. And when he did, it would be her responsibility to make it happen. Implying, or sometimes saying outright that if she wanted to be a good mother to her son, she’d have to let them meet. Even Regi dropped a hint from time to time as if it were an eventuality that Sarah would one day have to face. Regi may have been the closest Sarah had to a mother during her teenage years, but that didn’t give her the right to get involved. Sarah was Jack’s mother. She knew what was best for her son. If Jack wanted to get in touch with his father (or in the unlikely event that his father wanted to reach out to him), Sarah would throw herself in front of a bus before she let it happen. She smiled wryly at the thought. And people thought a mother bear was protective.
The GPS announced she was nearing her destination at last, directing her onto a winding, wooded two-lane that emerged from the trees a half-mile later into an expanse of manicured lawn worthy of a duke’s estate. The crown jewel in the middle: a striking, six-story, modern-architecture building with a curved, mirrored blue glass façade and “STRATOCO” strung across the top in extravagant, 20-foot-high letters. As if anyone who managed to find this place wouldn’t know what it was.
