by G. M. Ford
“What if somebody see me,” he demanded, “lookin’ like a goddamn FBI agent?” Put on the pissy face right away. “Those down-at-the-heel little bums you hang out wid.” She bust up laughing. “Tommy Hutton’s mama din bring so many ‘uncles’ home, him and his sisters woulda starved years ago. None of them you hang out wid got any room to talk. Them people oughta be happy jus havin ‘somethin’ new for a change.” She laughed again.
Bitch really think she funny this morning. True about Tommy’s mama, though. Woman ought to have her one of those little red dispenser things like in the bakery. Numba nineteen. Nineteen. He put a hand over his mouth so she couldn’t see his lips. They hadn’t talked about the money yet, neither. Know she gonna want him to put it in the bank…for college or some such shit. He smiled behind his hand. Check gonna be made out to him, though, so there’s hope.
Her fingers worked at his throat.
“Daddy, we have got to fix that tie.”
Bill Post squinted into the bathroom mirror. “What’s the matter with it?”
“It only comes halfway down your shirt, for Pete’s sake. It’s supposed to reach the top of your belt buckle. You look like Oliver Hardy.”
“Is that the fat one or the skinny one?”
“The fat one.”
Rachael ducked between his pants legs and came up under the pedestal sink. With the three of them jammed into the tiny bathroom, all Bill Post could do was turn in a circle. Nancy slid the tie out from under his collar. Tied it around her own neck and then slipped it over his head. She turned up his stiff collar. “You look like a conductor,” she said.
“Railroad?”
“Orchestra.”
She rearranged the collar. Slipped the knot into place at Bill Post’s throat. “There,” she said, patting his jacket into place. “Now you look like a hero.”
It was going well. The police auditorium in the Alaska Building was only about a quarter full, which was fine with Dorothy. She figured the recent hurricane of excitement had kept the crowd down. No parents of survivors, either. Thank goodness.
She’d done the introductions without flubbing anything. Seifort was working his way up to handing the Boyd kid the loot. Dorothy Sheridan pulled a single blue notecard from her pocket. Bill Post. Post no Bills came to mind, and she smiled.
“What we need, ladies and gentlemen,” Hizhonor was saying, “is more young men like Robert Boyd. Young men with a sense of purpose and a sense of community.” The kid sat there scowling into his lap. “It is with great pride that I introduce the recipient of this year’s Whistle-blower Award—Mr. Robert Boyd.”
The mayor offered the plaque. The kid reached over and grabbed the check instead. He carefully stashed the check in the inside pocket of his sport coat and then accepted the plaque from Stanley. Big photo-op handshake. The kid exits stage left. His mother’s been saving a seat for him at the end of the third row. She throws an arm around his shoulder, drawing him close. He looks embarrassed. Just like Brandy.
“And now, ladies and gentlemen, to present our next award, Seattle Police Department spokesperson Dorothy Sheridan.”
Seems the big old doofus tackled some guy with a gun. Same guy shot that liver-lips Himes asshole. She sayin’ he might have saved the lives of a whole room fulla people, but he can’t figure out why they make a fuss about anybody for saving that piece-of-shit Himes. Oughta give the fucker wid the gun the medal. Oughta give me the money.
She ain’t said nothin’ about the money, but that sure as hell ain’t gonna last. She kept tryin’ to talk in his ear but he’s making like he’s digging every word they say onstage and can’t listen to her right now.
The red-headed lady was saying, “On behalf of the Seattle Police Department and the people of King County, I would like to present the Good Citizen Award to Mr. Bill Post.”
Doofus bust a move up to the front, grab his loot, thank about three hundred fucking people and then, finally, they’re applauding again.
We should go now, he’s thinkin’. No reason to sit through this cop shit. He looks up at her. She’s reading his mind. Pissy look. Shit.
Bill Post hung the silver medal around Rachael’s neck. She pulled it back off and dropped it on the floor with a clang. He grunted as he bent to retrieve it. He dropped it in the breast pocket of his sport coat. She’d been sitting quietly for a long time now and was getting itchy. He pulled her into his lap, where she squirmed like a fish. Just about done. Both cops had gotten their awards. Chief Kesey was going on. “Without the efforts of dedicated professional law-enforcement officers such as these, we would no longer have a society in which we could reasonably have any hope of realizing our dreams or the dreams of our children.” Rachael slid onto the floor and began playing with her shoes. The applause rose and then faded as the police spokeslady, whose name Bill Post couldn’t, for the life of him, recall at the moment, came forward and called for questions. What was the current status of Slobodan Nisovic? Mr. Nisovic was still in Harborview Medical Center. In serious but stable condition. Charges? Charges would be decided by the district attorney’s office. What about Himes? Was either Donald or Wald being reassigned? Another half a dozen questions and then a lull. Post picked Rachael up and bounced her on his knee. Nancy grabbed her purse from the floor.
“If there are no further questions,” the woman said, “I’d like to thank you all—”
A pink-cheeked guy rose from the audience. “Blaine Newton from the Seattle Sun,” he said. “I have a question for Chief Kesey.”
A Pound of Cure
God only knows what he was thinking. There must have been eighty people in the room. Forty of them cops. Maybe the collective pressure just got to be too much for him and he slipped a cog or something. Or maybe, as rumor around the department had it, he’d had a sudden vision of what his life in prison was going to look like. Either way, anything would have been better than what he did.
Chief Kesey stepped up to the microphone. Blaine Newton turned a page on his clipboard, cleared his throat, and said, “Chief Kesey, I was wondering if you were aware of the fact that at the time of her death, victim number eight, Kelly Doyle, was conducting an affair with Lieutenant Charles Donald?”
Kesey went white. “Excuse me, what did you—”
“I asked you if you were aware of the fact that Lieutenant Donald and Trashman victim number eight, Kelly Doyle, were conducting an affair at the time of her death, in nineteen ninety-eight.”
The Sheridan woman stepped forward. “Surely, Mr.…”
“Newton.”
“Surely, Mr. Newton, there must be some more appropriate venue for these sorts of unfounded allegations, than a moment such as—”
Newton had begun to sweat profusely. His voice rose an octave. He was reading now. “You might be interested to know that the Seattle Sun has obtained depositions from nine past and present employees of the Emerald Inn on Stone Way attesting to the fact that in early nineteen ninety-eight Detective Donald and Kelly Doyle met for afternoon liaisons on an average of three to four times a week. Sometimes more.”
“You’re a damn liar,” Kesey shouted.
Every camera in the room was grinding. Newton wiped his brow with his forarm. Kesey turned away from the audience. Said something. Neither the microphones nor the cameras picked up what he said. Those on the stage at the time later agreed that he’d been talking to Donald. “Tell him he’s a goddamn liar,” he’d said.
Newton was talking again. “Copies of the Seattle Police Department’s evidence room log books reveal that—”
At that point, Donald lost his marbles. Grabbed the Sheridan woman by the back of her hair, pulled her to his chest, and put a gun in her ear. “Keep away from me,” he said as he backed down the stairs, dragging Sheridan along with him. Her eyes were squeezed shut. Her lips moved as if in prayer. “Keep away from me,” he said again, grinding the pistol into the woman’s head.
“Let her go,” someone screamed.
“Now,” another v
oice shouted.
Most of the civilians were either huddled on the floor or sprinting for the doors at the back of the room. The rest of the crowd had guns out. The screaming to let her go came now from a dozen throats as Donald began to back down the aisle.
That’s when the Post guy got to his feet and started for Donald. Musta thought his shiny new silver medal made him bulletproof or something. “Now listen here…,” he said, reaching a big red hand out for Donald.
Donald shot him once in the heart. The old guy clutched his chest in disbelief, staggered backward into the row of folding chairs, and went down in a clatter. A woman dropped to her knees beside the old man. A little girl in a pink dress and white tights began to cry. A chorus of shouts. To put down the gun…to let her go now…roared, octaves below the girl’s high-pitched wail.
From there on, it was like a collage. Each of the three television cameras in the room was focused on something different. The local ABC affiliate stayed with Donald as he continued to edge toward the side door of the auditorium, with the Sheridan woman locked behind his forearm. He reached back and grabbed the door handle.
Some instinct in the Sheridan woman told her she’d be better off in a room full of cops. For the first time since the ordeal began, she opened her eyes. What she saw was the black nostrils of a dozen gun barrels pointed her way. Her reaction to the sight saved her life. She fainted dead away. Dropped to the floor so quickly that Donald was left staring down in disbelief at her motionless body.
Except for Donald, everybody in the room who was holding a gun used it. Sounded like some sort of salute. Donald was dead before he hit the floor. Calls for aide wagons and backup were being shouted in from all over the room. Cops were herding civilians and news crews out the back of the room. The woman and the girl pitched a fit, wouldn’t leave the old man. The cops let ’em stay.
Outside in the hall, CBS filled its feel-good quota with pictures of Robert Boyd—recipient of the mayor’s Whistle-blower’s Award—with his arms around his sobbing mother, patting her back and reminding her that they were both all right.
NBC was still inside the auditorium when the first gurney arrived and was waved toward Bill Post. NBC swung his camera in time to see a pair of EMTs push their way through a circle of cops to reach Dorothy Sheridan’s side. They quickly checked for wounds. Found none. Pulse. Strong. One lifted up Sheridan’s head. The other ran something under her nose. She frowned and shook her head. Ran a hand over her face and then suddenly sat up. She looked over her shoulder. A circle of feet obscured Donald’s mangled body. She hiccuped once and covered her mouth.
When she turned back, Chief Kesey had taken one of her hands. The camera mike wasn’t close enough to pick up what she said, but even amateur lip readers could plainly make out the words. “I quit.”
When he swung back to Bill Post, they were performing CPR. Fifteen and a breath. Fifteen and a breath. Serious head shaking. Fifteen and a breath. Fifteen and a breath. Suddenly the chest compression guy stopped. Put his hand flat on the chest. Then replaced his hand with his ear. “He’s breathing again,” he announced.
His partner clapped an oxygen mask on Bill Post’s face and then began carefully separating the folds of the old man’s clothes. Gently probing for the wound. Sport coat unbuttoned and parted. Same for the shirt. Undershirt ignominiously pulled up along his torso and bunched beneath his southernmost chin. The EMT frowned. He looked up at his buddy and said, “Nothing. Not a mark on him.”
The other guy checked his pulse and then listened to his heart. “He’s doing fine.”
Together they carefully rolled him over. Same deal. They pulled his undershirt back down and rolled him onto his back. Felt around in the shirt. Then in the sport coat. The chest compresser’s hand came out of the coat with the silver Good Citizen Award in it. The once-symmetrical silver disk had been warped into the shape of a wavy potato chip.
“Bullet hit this,” he announced. “Saved his life.”
By the time they had Bill Post strapped to a gurney and rolling toward the doors, his eyes were open and the room was empty. Most of the throng had followed Donald’s body out the door. The stragglers left with Post. An officer poked his head in.
“We need to seal the room,” he said.
NBC nodded, gathered his stuff. As he stepped into the hall, the Boyd kid came sauntering over. “Left my jacket in there,” he said.
“Sorry…you’ll have to…” the cop began.
“Robert here won the mayor’s Whistle-blower Award today,” NBC said.
“Did you, now?” the cop said.
“Sure did,” the kid replied.
The cop smiled down at Robert. Pulled the door open. “Hurry up, now. Go get it.” The kid ducked inside.
“It true what they say? We had cops killing cops in there?”
NBC nodded. “You wanna see it?” he asked.
The cop looked around the chaotic hallway. “Sure,” he said.
NBC turned the camera on. Rewound to when Kesey stepped up to answer the question, then turned the screen to face the cop. His face sagged as he watched the three minutes of tape.
“Jesus,” he said.
The door opened and Robert Boyd appeared, wearing a brown-plaid wool jacket. As the door eased closed, NBC noticed a sudden flash of gold, like a fish rising in a stream. He watched Robert Boyd kindly take his distraught mother by the arm and help her down the hall to the corner, where he looked back with a barracuda smile before steering his mom toward the front doors.
NBC pulled open the auditorium door and peered inside. Right between the state seal and the city seal. Big, thick, gold letters. The tail of the Y looped around to make a circle.
About the Author
G. M. FORD is the author of three previous widely praised Frank Corso novels—A Blind Eye, Black River, and Fury—as well as six highly acclaimed mysteries featuring Seattle private investigator Leo Waterman. A former creative writing teacher in western Washington, Ford lives in Seattle and is currently working on his next Frank Corso novel.
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Praise
What fires the blood, twists the mind, and
drives a person to kill?
FURY
“THE RAYMOND CHANDLER OF SEATTLE.”
San Antonio Express-News
“FORD HAS COME UP WITH ANOTHER WINNER…
Suspenseful, realistic, and fast-moving, the first Frank Corso novel is certain not to be the last.”
Dallas Morning News
“CORSO IS DEFINITELY FORD’S HOTTEST CHARACTER TO DATE…
[FURY] reminds me, pleasantly, of the early Michael Connolly novels, and that’s rare praise…This story has a lot of good twists in a terrific plot with great characters.”
Toronto Globe and Mail
“G.M. FORD TWISTS THIS STORY UNTIL IT SQUEALS…
And he continues to create some of the most colorful major and minor characters in mystery fiction. Filled with dry wit and black humor, FURY is a very entertaining read.”
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“A BREAKNECK-PACED, SMOOTHLY WRITTEN, AND DISTINCTLY UNCOMIC THRILLER.”
Seattle Times
“FURY IS A WINNER—
great ticking-bomb suspense, a wonderful sense of place, fine writing, and flesh-and-bones characters, especially Ford’s new kick-ass hero, Frank Corso.
G.M. Ford is must reading.”
Harlan Coben
“SHARP AND TOUGH…
Frank Corso makes a winning debut…There’s a love story here, too, tender and solid, that sneaks up on the reader and on the couple in question. Only a master could serve up such a fine story and then some…This one could push Ford onto mystery bestseller charts.”
Publishers Weekly (*Starred Review*)
“FRANK CORSO IS IRRESISTIBLE.
Part Sam Spade, part Hunter S. Thompson…Ingeniously written, FURY hol
ds up a funhouse mirror on our criminal justice system and the reflected image is as scary as it is hilarious. When you get this much substance, depth, and rollicking entertainment between the cover of one book, you know you’re in the hands of a superior storyteller.”
Martha C. Lawrence
“FORD WRITES WITH A TOUGHNESS LEAVENED BY GRACE AND WIT.”
Margaret Maron
“FURY DESERVES TO BE A PUBLISHING RAGE…
G.M. Ford [is] the best writer of Seattle-oriented crime fiction these days.”
Seattle Magazine
“EXHILARATING…
G.M. Ford is, hands down, one of my favorite contemporary crime writers. Hilarious, provocative, and as cool as a March night in Seattle, he may be the best-kept secret in mystery novels.”
Dennis Lehane
“A STRONG START
to what promises to be another absorbing series from one of the mystery genre’s most skilled writers.”
Booklist
“VIVID CHARACTERS…WELL-PACED…
A challenging puzzle…FURY twists and turns…The killings are suitably bizarre, with fine red herrings among the clues…Fans of hard-edged mysteries should like it.”
Portland Oregonian
“VERY, VERY GOOD…
Like any self-respecting mystery worth its trench coat, FURY features foggy landscapes, plenty of suspense, crusaders with shades-of-gray souls, and wise-cracking commentary…FURY is first-rate.”
Washington Post Book World
Also by G. M. Ford
FURY
BLACK RIVER
A BLIND EYE
The Leo Waterman Series
WHO IN HELL IS WANDA FUCA?
CAST IN STONE
