by Karen Dionne
She also dug up a few new ones. Tiffany had never been to Lance’s brother’s apartment, though the brother was a frequent guest at her trailer. Lance was a neat freak who couldn’t stand to see anything out of place. Since he’d moved in with her, he’d completely rearranged her trailer and taken over the cooking. Lance had never taken illegal drugs in any form, and was furious when she’d started using meth. Small details, possibly inconsequential, but at the beginning of a case, you had to treat all of your facts with respect. You never knew which ones might end up being critical.
Most importantly, Tiffany was not in the trailer when Lance was killed. Her alibi checked out. The food bank where she and her girlfriend Claire had gone during the hours in which the M.E. estimated Lance had been killed was the kind where people had to sign in with their name and the time and show an I.D. so the volunteers could make sure people didn’t double dip. After that, they’d spent the rest of the afternoon at Child Protective Services with Claire’s social worker, finishing with a visit to a walk-in clinic for a cut Tiffany had got when she tripped stepping off a sidewalk. Probably while high.
And yet as strong as it was, something about Tiffany’s alibi felt too neatly assembled. How many people could document a random afternoon so completely? And her activities for the rest of the evening were unverifiable. That Tiffany’s initial interest in Lance was because of his money was fairly certain. If she also knew about the trust, she could have been maneuvering to put herself in a position to get it. Tiffany was no longer at the top of Sarah’s suspect list, but she hadn’t dropped off.
Sarah bound the transcript pages with a paperclip and slid them inside Lance’s growing file. It was the drug use that got to Sarah. By all accounts, Tiffany had been doing all right for herself until she started using. She owned her trailer. She had a car and a job. Yes, her rich new boyfriend lost all his money and she lost her job afterward as a result. But she could have found another way out of her troubles. Gotten another job. Moved in with friends. Faced her problems head on and taken steps to get past them instead of running away. Instead of adding one more.
Still, all in all, it had been a good day. She understood now how a brilliant astrophysicist with a trending career ended up living in a declining trailer park. All she had to do was find out who killed him, and why.
21
“Hold your hands like this, half pint.” Holder spread his feet and positioned his fists, one ready to strike, the other held back to protect his chest. Beside him in the living room of his sister’s apartment, his nephew Davie did the same.
Davie was short for a six-year-old. It was too soon to know if he was going to get his uncle’s height eventually or not, but he definitely had Holder’s looks: shaggy dark hair, soulful brown eyes that made women want to hug him, baseball cap worn backwards to give him some ’tude. Little man was gonna be a real lady killer when he was grown.
His sister’s boy looked up to Holder, and not just because Holder was twice as tall. He had to, what with no pops around. Holder liked hanging with his nephew. Davie was one of the people who made him feel real. Grounded. Like he was a good person.
“Now jab like that.” Holder demonstrated. “Pow! Pow! Aww right! That’s the way! Just like my man Bruce Lee. Gimme some skin!” They slapped hands and finished with a complicated series of hand maneuvers that made up their own special salute. “Now lemme see a kick.”
Davie crouched and concentrated, picturing his foot connecting with his target like his uncle had taught him, then kicked out with his right leg. Holder grabbed his ankle and dropped his nephew onto the carpet.
He laughed. “Gonna have to work on that move, son.” He rolled Davie onto his back and pinned him to the floor with his knee. Davie wriggled and shrieked.
“Say uncle!”
Davie shrieked louder.
“Say uncle!”
“Uncle! Uncle! Uncle Steve!” Davie hollered, giggling.
“Stephen!” Liz called from the kitchen where she was cleaning up after a dinner of spaghetti and meatballs. No meatballs for Holder; he was doing the vegan thing. It was the same tone of voice she’d used to keep Holder in line when he was growing up. Liz was a tough, blue-collar girl who wouldn’t take you-know-what from her brother—or from anybody else.
Holder rolled off his nephew, then held out his hand and pulled the boy to his feet. He messed up his hair, and picked up the baseball cap from where it had fallen on the floor and plopped it on Davie’s head. His phone buzzed in his pocket. A text from Logic. His moms was off the warpath and it was business as usual. Time to get to work.
“You work on those Bruce Lee moves, now, you hear?” He zipped his hoodie and started for the door.
“Where you goin’?”
“I got to go to work, little man.” Holder tugged affectionately on his nephew’s cap.
Davie reached up to straighten it. “But we was gonna play Mario.”
“We’ll do that next time, ’kay?”
“You promised.”
“Davie, stop arguing,” Liz said from the kitchen.
“Lis’sen to your moms,” Holder said. “Your moms is the best. She’s there for you, 24/7, 365. You feel me? ’Sides,” he opened the door and tossed off a grin. “Some of us gots to make a livin’, son. Them Nintendos ain’t cheap.”
* * *
Holder parked two trailers down from Logic’s mom’s and pulled out his cigarettes. He turned off the headlights and left the engine idling as he lit up. It was cold outside and getting colder. The music coming from the trailer told him the party inside was going strong. There was nothing stopping him from getting out and going in, but for some reason, he didn’t feel like it. Not yet.
He took a drag, let it out. It was too dark to see Campbell’s place, but he could smell it. He’d spent some time at the hospital again that afternoon. Holder wasn’t sure why he felt compelled to keep going back. The charge nurse probably thought Holder had come to see her, but he didn’t need to go to a hospital to score. And it wasn’t like Campbell was going to wake up so Holder could lean on him to snitch. He supposed he went because it felt like the right thing to do. Like a vigil. If their places had been reversed, he would’ve wanted somebody to set up camp for him on the other side of the door.
The thing was, you never knew when your circumstances were going to change. One day, you’re a bad ass makin’ meth and terrorizing the trailer park, and the next, you’re a crispy critter. People said it all the time: ‘If I’d only known, I’d’ve done X, Y, or Z differently.” Well, fact was you couldn’t know. All you could do was live in the moment, and you’d better appreciate that moment while you had it no matter how bad you thought it was, because the next one might be a whole lot worse.
Until yesterday, Neil Campbell had been one scary piece of work. The only time Holder had seen him show a shred of humanity was with his kid. But the real reason Campbell scared people wasn’t his temper. It was because he was so smart. As in master criminal, get-away-with-murder, nemesis smart. Like the villains you saw in movies and books. Campbell’s brainpower might’ve been part of the reason why Holder had chosen him to make his case. Maybe a big part. Maybe Holder wanted to test himself. See if he could match wits. Like Moriarty and Sherlock. Whatever. It didn’t matter now.
He smoked the cigarette down to the filter and stubbed it out. Grabbed the six-pack he’d brought. He locked his car because of the sleeping bag and the other homeless dude props he kept in the back. Holder spent most nights in the back seat, moving his car to different places so he’d look like a guy without a permanent address, even though his six-foot two-inch frame guaranteed he’d wake up in the morning with at least one leg still sound asleep. Keepin’ it real. It was easier to act a part if you lived it.
He knocked on Logic’s door and waited until Ridgeback opened it on a chain. Logic had a bouncer thing going on. Not that his parties pulled in crowds behind a velvet rope, but he didn’t let just anybody in. Ridgeback had the look and the build o
f a bodyguard, and the attitude to go with it. Useful for when little guys like Logic needed to feel big.
“Who is it?” he heard Logic say from inside.
“It’s Steve,” Ridgeback called back over his shoulder. Like most undercovers, Holder used a variation of his first name. Less likely to forget or get tripped up that way.
“Let ’im in.”
As if there was ever any doubt. ’Specially because Holder was the guy who always brought the beer.
He sauntered into the living room and put the six-pack on the coffee table, knocked fists with Logic reining over the party from his La-Z-Boy boy throne, glanced around. It looked like girls’ night at Rainier Valley. Besides Logic and Ridgeback, there was Claire and Tiffany, and two other women he guessed were in their late teens or early twenties. The meth made them look older. Worn out and used up before they were hardly old enough to vote.
Holder was surprised to see Tiffany but was careful not to let on. She looked rough. Eyes red from crying, hair straggly like she hadn’t run a comb through it for days. He hoped the cops hadn’t been too hard on her. Must not’ve had enough to hold her, since they’d let her go.
“’Sup?” He squeezed between Claire and Tiffany and sat down on the sofa. Laid his arms across the back pretending like he was relaxed. Inside, he was tense. Something about the group was off. Something in the air. He could feel it. Like they’d been talking about him right before he came in. And the talk wasn’t good.
“You tell me,” Logic said.
“How’m I s’posed to know what you lame-asses are up to? I just got here.”
“Yeah, but where you been?”
“At the hospital, fool. Checkin’ on our human firecracker. Which none of you losers apparently thought to do.”
And where he would have run into that cop again, he could have added, if he hadn’t quickly ducked out of sight behind a corner. He thought about the message the dude left that afternoon on his cop phone back at his apartment. He didn’t say how he got Holder’s number, just that he could use Holder’s help with the trailer park murder, which had Holder worried. Gil was Holder’s contact. He shouldn’t be giving Holder’s number out.
“And before that?” Logic asked. He nodded to Ridgeback.
Ridgeback took a step toward Holder. Loomed over him and made sure that Holder could see his hands balled into fists. Bared his teeth like a pit bull gone too long without a fight.
Holder snorted. “Why don’t you stop playing Twenty Questions and tell me what you think you know?”
“This morning. When we was hanging under the bridge. The cops grabbed Tiffany. How’d they know where she was at?”
“How would I know? I was s’prised as you when they showed up. Had some weed on me, too.”
Logic aimed his finger. “I think you called ’em. I think you’re a snitch. Maybe you a cop. Ain’t no coincidence, you take off an’ the cops pull up.”
“Fool. I was takin’ a piss. When the po-lice came, I split.” Holder turned toward Tiffany, put on his most innocent grin. “You don’ think I’d call the cops on you, do you, darlin’?”
“I don’t know. Logic says you did.”
Ridgeback stepped closer. Holder took his arms down from around the girls. Leaned forward and tugged a beer can from the plastic ring using his good left hand, made like he didn’t know Ridgeback was itching to beat him into the floor. Sat back ready to smash the can into Ridgeback’s face the moment the gorilla made his move.
“Hey, baby. You got one of those for me?” Claire scootched into his lap and laid her head on his shoulder. She snaked her arm around his neck and stretched her face toward him and gave him a long kiss.
Holder got what she was doing. He smiled down at her like they’d always been a couple. Gave her the beer and leaned past her with his arm around her waist to get another for himself.
“Let me, baby,” Claire said as he fumbled to open the can with his left hand. She cracked the tab, then held the can to his lips. He took a long swallow.
“Hey, Ridgeback,” she purred sweetly as she snuggled deeper into Holder’s chest. “Be a doll and go get us some chips.”
Ridgeback blinked. Confused. Beaten. Still believing in the righteousness of the beating he’d been about to administer. Knowing the moment was gone.
He dropped his hands and stomped over to the breakfast counter and grabbed a bag of chips and threw them at her. “I still think he’s a cop,” he muttered.
“Oh, honey.” Claire laughed. “You see cops everywhere. My grandpa was a cop, and my brother is a cop. If my boyfriend was a cop, don’t you think I’d know it?”
She lifted her face to Holder and smiled expectantly. Her teeth were white and straight. She hadn’t been using long.
Holder leaned in for the kiss. He didn’t know why Claire was lying for him, but he had a good idea of what she wanted in return. If that was all it took to keep his cover, he didn’t have a problem playing along.
DAY THREE
JANUARY 26, 6:45 A.M.
22
Linden was already in her office when Goddard arrived at the station at six forty-five the next morning. He wasn’t surprised she beat him in. Goddard had been with the department for less than a year, but he was well aware of Linden’s reputation. Once the other detectives heard that he and Linden were working together on related cases, they made sure he knew that Linden could get “intense.” Goddard took that as a euphemism for “obsessed.” He didn’t necessarily see that as a bad quality. Whatever got the job done.
Anyway, a person had to be at least slightly unhinged to do what they did. It wasn’t as though police work gave you any choice about which days you were going to work, or what hours you came in. Besides, when it came to putting your work ahead of your family and neglecting your personal life, he was the poster boy. Case in point: Yesterday, his wife had spent the better part of the afternoon at the hospital thinking she was about to have their baby. Yet here he was at work bright and early the next morning. Granted, he’d waited to leave the house until she was awake so he could check on her one last time, and he’d made her promise to call him if she felt so much as a twinge. Still. Pot, meet kettle. Given that he and Linden were working together as temporary partners until the Marsee murders were solved, it was just as well they were both black.
“I talked to the Marsees’ lawyer,” she said when he appeared at her door bearing a bag of Krispy Kremes and two Styrofoam cups. She eyed the bag pointedly. He shrugged it off. So what if his breakfast went straight to type? A lot of people liked donuts.
“Hatchett was telling the truth,” she said, “at least about the trust fund. The fund checks out. The four hundred thousand is still there.”
“I followed up yesterday on the tweaker I saw at the hospital outside Campbell’s room.” Goddard put the donuts on her desk and sat down in the extra chair. “Turns out, he’s an undercover. I left a message on his voicemail asking him to call. If he’s working the trailer park, he might know something about your vic. No telling when he’ll get back to me, though. Those guys don’t exactly keep regular hours.”
“I wonder if he’s the same guy who called in the tip on Tiffany. Oakes said the person knew about the BOLO.”
“Probably. I’ll ask him if you want. How’d it go with Tiffany yesterday?”
“About what you’d expect. She managed to I.D. the bodies for me, but the interview was a bust.”
Goddard nodded sympathetically, then pushed one of the coffees toward her and pulled a handful of sugar and creamer packets from his pocket. “I didn’t know how you take it, so I brought both.”
“Black.”
Same as him. He scooped up the condiment packets and dropped them in the trash.
“Guy didn’t leave a will so he didn’t name any beneficiaries,” Sarah said, carrying on as if the conversation hadn’t been interrupted. Focused. Goddard liked that in a cop. A partner who was easily distracted could get you killed. “The public administrator who gets
assigned to the case will use some of the funds in the trust and from the sale of Guy’s possessions to look for collateral heirs,” she continued. “But if no one turns up, the money goes to the state.”
“That takes care of one theory.” Goddard hadn’t really bought into the idea that an unknown beneficiary had knocked off both brothers, but they had to check it out before they could cross it off. “Anything else?” Judging by the crowded whiteboard and the papers scattered over her desk, Linden had been at it since at least four or five. Or maybe she’d worked through the night. It happened.
She walked over to the whiteboard. On it were two lists, one for each victim.
“Guy was older than Lance by four years,” she said, pointing to each item as she summarized her findings. “Both brothers were geniuses, and both had photographic memories. It looks like Lance was the smarter of the two, however, because he graduated with a Ph.D. from MIT just one year after Guy, despite the age gap. Must have skipped a few grades. Guy took a job at GenMod Labs. A year after that, Lance went to work for Stratoco here in Seattle—maybe he wanted to be close to his brother. Both brothers never married, and they never had children. There are a lot of similarities during the early years since our victims grew up in the same household. But I tried to focus on what they’ve been doing during the last ten.”
“Did your guy show signs of Asperger’s?” Goddard asked. “The waitress I talked to at Guy’s favorite coffee shop seemed to think he did.”
“As far as I know, Lance’s only issue was gambling.”
Goddard reached into the Krispy Kreme bag for a second donut. There were two left. He held out the bag to Linden. She shook her head. Apparently she didn’t sleep or eat when she was working a case. That was okay. They’d get more done that way.
“I did get one interesting piece of information from the interview with Tiffany,” she said. “Apparently, Lance and Guy were working together on a project that they were keeping secret from her. Those were her exact words. A ‘secret project.’ She swore she didn’t know what it was about, because whenever she came into the room when they were talking about it, they shut up.”
