Hard Bitten

by M. K. York

  He finally dug out his cell and called Lukas, not letting himself stop to think about it.

  “Hello?” Lukas’s voice was oddly tentative. It didn’t fit him well.

  “Hi. Believe it or not, this is about work.”

  “Oh, I believe it.”

  “Yeah. Well, we got the forensic accounting report back, and they think the company is crooked. The numbers are faked. We just had a meeting with the DA about it.”

  “Yeah?” There was a rustle on the other end of the line. “Is he going to drop the case?”

  “That’s the funny part. He’s not.”

  “What the fuck,” said Lukas slowly. “I felt like—with everything, it seemed like it would be a hard sell for a jury. Is he just that committed?”

  “It’s worse than that. I can’t talk about why, but he has to go ahead with it even if he personally wants to drop it.”

  “So did you talk to Lena? You want the tapes from my surveillance?”

  “I didn’t tell Lena about them yet. She actually has another job for you. Sort of the same job.”

  “Yeah?”

  “The DA is talking about confirming the alibi on the widow.”

  “If you were thinking I wasn’t going to say I told you so...”

  “No, no, you were right. Thing is, if she’s out as a suspect, the next best candidate is the crooked boss.”

  “More work on Williams?”

  “Specifically, trying to find his ex-wife.”

  “I already went through the public filings on the divorce. It looked like it was amicable, as far as I could tell, and there hasn’t been real activity on her name since.”

  “Are there any other approaches?”

  “Well,” said Lukas slowly, “yeah. I haven’t catfished Williams’s friends yet.”

  “Catfished? You going to pretend to be a—” Mark realized where the sentence was going and stopped cold.

  “A hot blonde, yeah.” Lukas laughed. “Look, I’ll give that a try. What’s the timeline like?”

  “ASAP, basically.”

  “I can start fishing tonight, see what I get by tomorrow.”

  “Thanks a million. This is billable, I’ll get the form turned in.”

  “Great, that’s something.” Lukas had a smile in his voice. “How’ve you been?”

  “Oh, fine.”

  “Nick told me he invited you to the party. Don’t—you don’t need to worry about it.”

  “I just—I’d love to come, you know, I’m just—it seems like it would be—hard.”

  There was a pause. Lukas cracked up. “Sorry, sorry,” he wheezed, “but did you listen to yourself, there?”

  “Shut up!”

  “Sure. Sure. Anyway, if you want to come to the party you’re more than welcome, it’ll be fine.”

  “If you’re sure,” Mark said, dubiously.

  “I’m sure, I’m sure. Good Lord! I needed that laugh.”

  “Oh, fuck off.”

  “You first!” Lukas sang out.

  “That doesn’t even make sense.”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow with whatever I find, if that’s anything.”

  “Okay. Good. Great.”

  When they hung up, Mark loosened his tie. That hadn’t gone quite the way he’d been expecting, but it would do.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Lukas didn’t have the highest hopes for catfishing friends of Ron Williams—he’d already friended Ron himself, with a generic profile, and found no one on the relatively short friends list that seemed consistent with Beatrice, the ex-wife who in court documents from the divorce had come across as nearly voiceless.

  So he was surprised when he hit the jackpot, four hours in; one of his first requests accepted his friend request, and in perusing her friends list, he found “Bea Williams,” whose profile pic was a woman of the approximate right age, and whose location was listed as Florida.

  He used a different account to send a friend request to her, and about an hour later she accepted.

  Her full profile made it obvious that this was the target. She had lived in Seattle, was listed as in a relationship with a man who was clearly at least ten years older than she was—and she was keeping her looks, so maybe that was why she hadn’t needed to put her name on any legal documents he’d encountered; if she wasn’t voting, and she was living with him, her footprint would stay small.

  He sent her a private message. Hi, I’m a private investigator, and I’d like to talk with you about your ex-husband Ron. He gave his full name and phone number, and sat back.

  She called him immediately.

  “Hello, this is Lukas Nystrom.”

  “Hi, sweetie!” She sounded about half-drunk, a bright voice like a brass instrument. “What on earth do you need to know about Ron? I thought I was done with all that.”

  “Well, ma’am, your ex-husband’s company had a tragic event recently.”

  “What? Oh, do you mean the fire?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Don’t they have that ditz arrested for it? I’m sorry, that was mean of me, but Gina was always kind of top-heavy, if you know what I mean.”

  “Yes, she’s in custody. I’m working for the defense team.”

  “Oh! Oh, well, that’s interesting.”

  “I was hoping to get a little more background information about Mr. Williams, since it was his company where the crime occurred.”

  “Well, ask away, sweetie. I don’t know what all I can tell you, but I’m happy to talk about the bad old days!”

  “Is it all right if I record this?”

  “Go ahead.” He had her repeat that once he started the app.

  He started out small—questions about the company, how much she knew about how it was run. Not much. Ron handled all that himself. Greg was always his right-hand man. She named a couple of other favorite employees. She didn’t think Greg and Gina had been sleeping together while she’d been married to Ron, but who knew, right? It was a real shame for Greg and Melinda—well, just Melinda now.

  Then he started narrowing in, asking more questions about what Ron was like. What being married to him had been like.

  “Sweetie,” said Beatrice, and stopped to take an audible drink of a beverage, with a hollow noise, probably a bottle. “That son of a bitch was why I started taking Valium.”

  “Really,” said Lukas, hackles rising.

  “Damn right. Got scripts from—probably four different doctors. Different era! They didn’t have that, that fucking tracking program, right?”

  “Do you know if you left any of those pills when you left Ron?”

  “I left a pile! He started up—you know what finally got me out of his house? He started telling me how he’d kill me if he was going to.”

  “That wasn’t in the divorce proceedings. You didn’t ask for an order of protection?”

  “What good was that fucking going to do?” She scoffed loudly. “I don’t know who he knew, but he knew somebody. We never had a parking ticket that stuck. His dockhands would be getting in trouble every other week, and it never came to anything. I think he had a cop friend.”

  “I see.”

  “Anyway, what he told me was, he started waving a gun around—it wasn’t loaded, I knew it wasn’t loaded, or I would have screamed bloody murder, trust me—and started telling me all about how he knew that if you mixed my drugs and alcohol you’d die, you’d just stop breathing. And he was shouting about how he’d make me take it. So I got the hell out of that house and went to stay with my friend Margie, and I finalized the divorce and never looked back.”

  Lukas had broken out into a cold sweat. “That must have been very frightening.”

  “It sure was! And there wasn’t even the housekeeper that night, so nobody around.”

  “Do you know if he’s kept the same housekeeper?”

  “Who else would he hire? It has to still be Rosalyn.”

  “Do you think she would lie for him, if he asked her for an alibi?” />
  “Or get kicked back to Mexico?” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “Yeah. She’d say whatever Ron wanted her to say. He picked her for a reason, you know.”

  “Did you ever have concerns about the legality of the business?”

  “What? No.” There was a pause, as she thought, and then she said slowly, “I guess—it was weird, how well we did in the recession. I didn’t think about it much. Ron just told me we’d made good choices in trading partners.”

  By the end of the conversation, he wanted nothing more than to hang up as quickly as humanly possible. It was pushing ten o’clock his time, and it had to be getting on one in the morning her time.

  He extracted her permission to call her again, if they needed to, and once they hung up, he leaned his head forward against the cool glass of the window.

  He called Mark.

  “Hey,” said Mark, who sounded, thank God, not at all asleep. “What is it?”

  “You’re not going to fucking believe this.”

  “I have been hearing that a lot with this case.”

  “Ex-wife says he threatened to kill her. Want to guess how?”

  There was a long silence. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”

  “He was going to mix her massive Valium stash with alcohol and make her drink it. He told her. While threatening her with a gun.”

  “What the ever-loving fuck.”

  “So, anyway, I’m guessing we know who killed Greg.”

  Mark was on the verge of stuttering. “I mean, it’s not—there’s no guarantee—he is so fucking guilty, though.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I can’t believe you got this. Lena’s going to want to give you a gold medal.”

  “There’s more. Housekeeper is scared shitless of him, apparently. Ex-wife says his alibi isn’t worth a plug nickel.”

  “Well, of fucking course it isn’t. Look, I’m going to have to tell Lena about this first thing in the morning. Can you come in? We should have a meeting.”

  “Sure. I’ll bring the recording.”

  “Recording?”

  “You think I know shorthand? Don’t worry, I got her permission.”

  “She’s going to have to come up to Seattle to testify.” Mark sounded thoughtful. “Nobody does depositions in criminal trials.”

  “So she’ll be cross-examined?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think she’ll be okay with that. Sounded like things ended pretty badly with Ron.”

  “Do you think she’s credible?”

  Lukas hummed softly in thought. “She sounds like she loves her martinis, but yeah. I don’t get the feeling she knew any of the actual details of the crime.”

  “I mean, this is going to be a long way from conclusive, for the jury, but I think it goes toward some reasonable fucking doubt.”

  “Is there, I don’t know, some kind of thing because they were married?”

  “Spousal privilege? No. Doesn’t apply to threats.”

  “Okay.” Lukas took a deep breath. “Okay.”

  “I don’t know Lena’s schedule tomorrow. Are you busy? When can you come in?”

  “No, I’m—I can make time for it.”

  “Oh my God, your birthday party is tomorrow night.”

  “Yeah. It’s fine.”

  “I might—honestly, I might have to work.”

  “It’s fine either way. This is kind of a big deal.”

  “Understatement.”

  Lukas laughed. “Right.”

  “I’ll call you when I get in. We’ll have to talk to Lena right away. If she’s in court we’ll push it back but seriously, as soon as possible.”

  “Let me know. You know what, I’ll come down and hang out in the morning, okay? I don’t have a job until later.”

  “You have a job? On your birthday?”

  “It’s a meeting with a prospective client. It’s fine. I can reschedule if I end up needing to.”

  “Okay, okay. Yeah. I try to get in around eight. If you get there and we can’t see Lena for a while, you can hang out in the office.”

  “Great, I’ll get to watch the world-famous lawyers at work.”

  “Hah! Very funny, very funny.” Mark hesitated and then added, “No more surveillance, all right? We know he’s armed and it sounds like he’s off his rocker.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. I am not planning on going back out there.” For multiple reasons.

  “Good. I don’t think we’ll need it. But bring your footage to the meeting tomorrow.”

  “Will do.”

  *

  “Lena!” Mark was waiting outside her office when she got there. She stared at him, uncomprehending.

  “What is it?” Her brow wrinkled in concern.

  “Lukas got the ex-wife on the phone. You are not going to believe the shit she said.”

  “Okay. Look, let me get my coffee.”

  “No time. Lukas is coming up. We have some stuff we need to review. It’s critical, and then we need to get her on the witness list.” He got out of her way as she motioned at him.

  Lena unlocked her office door and set her briefcase down before starting to pull off her overcoat with a long sigh. “Mark. I am getting a feeling about this. Tell me this isn’t going to be a clusterfuck.”

  “I mean, it is, but not necessarily a bad one for us?”

  “Okay. Shit.” She sat down at her desk and stretched her arms out in front of her. “Tell me about this.”

  “I really think, when Lukas gets here—okay!” Because as he spoke, Lukas had put his head around the doorframe. He waved Lukas in, and Lukas ambled over, tablet in hand.

  “What have you got for us, Rockford?” she asked dryly.

  Lukas didn’t even blink, just held out the tablet and tapped play.

  Beatrice Williams’s voice filled the room, tinny, distant. By the time she got to “—and he was shouting about how he’d make me take it—” Lena was smacking Mark’s arm repeatedly. Mark was flailing his hands back at her, I know, I know, with gestures.

  When it finally shut off, she bellowed, “That stupid fucking son of a bitch! Damn right she’s going on the witness list. Lukas, what’s her number? We need to get in touch with her immediately. We’re already pushing it on the timing.”

  “There’s more.” Mark rolled his eyes skyward. “You may be a little bit pissed about this.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake. What is it?”

  Lukas coughed delicately. “Well. I may have surveilled the warehouse and Mr. Williams, respectively, a couple of times.”

  “What? I told Mark we didn’t have the budget for that!”

  “I didn’t submit for reimbursement. I knew it was on my own time.”

  “Okay. So, first off, did you do anything, anything, illegal, while you were doing this surveillance?”

  “No. And the tape will back that up.”

  “Great. You’re not a complete imbecile. Next question, what did you find?”

  Lukas explained about the suspicious activity at the warehouse. Lena leaned back, staring at him with something that looked vaguely like genuine pleasure.

  “Well,” she said, “at the very least I think we have enough to make John’s life hell for going ahead with this trial.”

  “We need to tell him.”

  “Yeah, yeah, let me get the ball rolling on getting the ex-wife up here for her testimony. Lukas. You did good.” She leaned forward far enough to give him a tooth-rattling slap on the shoulder. “Well done.”

  “Uh. Thank you.” He shot Mark a desperate look. Mark just grinned back at him.

  Once she’d kicked them both out of her office to get started, Lukas hovered awkwardly in the hall for a minute before he said, “I’d better get—”

  Mark had just started to say, “I’ve got—”

  They looked at each other and cracked up, laughing ruefully.

  “I’ll see you tonight.” Mark grinned lopsidedly at Lukas. “Doesn’t sound like Lena’s going to need me.”

>   “All right, great.”

  “Should I bring anything?”

  “God, no. I think Alex bought enough liquor to keep us all plastered for a week.”

  “Duly noted.”

  *

  Trying to juggle his caseload for the rest of the day with Lena’s interspersed phone calls was exhausting. By the time he left for the night, Mark felt like it had been a hundred years since that morning. The bright, excited feeling of having somehow solved things for his client—God, how easy it was to forget about her, Gina sitting in her cell waiting for trial, knowing she was innocent and knowing her life would be in shambles by the time she got out—had worn off. He was just tired.

  But it was a Friday night, and it was time to go to Lukas’s birthday party. He was torn with an agony of indecision about whether to bring something anyway, and the uncomfortable awareness that what he wanted and what would be appropriate were miles apart.

  He hadn’t been to Alex’s before, just Nick’s. Alex lived so far east in Ballard that it was practically Wallingford, the area full of older apartment buildings, smaller, cramped homes, where it started to bleed over into housing for university students.

  It was a house, though. A run-down little old bungalow, with cars parking up the lawn. Mark had gotten an Uber again, figuring on doing his fair share of drinking. Not too much, though. Not enough to make him say the things he wanted to say, or do any of the things he wanted to do.

  Because his brain hadn’t given him rest; between the case, which was starting to give him nightmares about standing in court, sweaty-palmed and tongue-tied, and the stuttering replay of the stakeout—good Lord, Lukas must be terrible at dates. (Mark’s brain unhelpfully noted that, with his life generally ensconced firmly in the closet, Lukas probably didn’t go on much in the way of dates.) Salmon runs were hardly romantic conversation. And then there was making out in a car. A small car.

  But Lukas—Lukas was something else altogether. Mark couldn’t escape the vivid feeling of being hyperaware of him, whenever they were in the same space. He’d built a foundation for his career on being able to effectively compartmentalize, to shove everything else into a corner of his brain when he needed to be fully mentally present for a case. Lukas was like water seeping into those foundations, there before Mark really knew what he was thinking or what to expect.