Val suppressed an eye roll at his use of her last name. They’d known each other since they’d both joined the Army right out of high school, even dated for a short time while stationed together at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. Now that he was a man of the law, he addressed her by her last name only, like he starred in a crime procedural TV show. He even looked a bit like a Scandinavian version of Jeremy Renner.
Sten sipped coffee as he eyed Val over the rim of a ceramic mug adorned with Norman Barrister’s smiling face.
“I never pegged you for a Republican,” Val said. “I would’ve thought you’d be more of a Guns and Dope Party kind of guy.”
“Still waters run deep,” he said. He licked coffee off the caterpillar attached to his face that he called a mustache, then propped his feet on his desk. “Let me guess—drunk sorority girl fucked some frat boy and is now pretending like her drink was spiked so her parents won’t think she’s a slut? Or someone sent dick pics to the PTA again?”
Val gritted her teeth. It’d been almost ten years since she’d broken up with Sten, but the asshole still held a grudge. He’d been cooperative enough when she’d first approached him for inside police information at the onset of her PI business. She’d assumed that he’d buried the hatchet in the name of justice, but soon realized his real motivation was the opportunity to play mind games with her. Val considered cutting him from her roster of contacts on many occasions, but just before her last straw, he’d cough up a piece of valuable info and buy himself a reprieve. At least he didn’t demand money or sexual favors; apparently toying with her was payment enough.
“I am always amazed at what a big heart you have,” Val said through a tight smile. “Always looking out for the”—she held up her thumb and forefinger, and narrowed the gap between them to an inch—“little guys.”
Sten clanked his coffee mug down on a ceramic coaster. “What do you want, Shepherd? I’ve got places to be.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to make you late for your men’s rights rally.” She pulled her notebook from her tote and flipped to the clown drawing. “Have you seen this picture before, maybe as gang graffiti?”
Sten leaned across his desk and eyed the illustration. A glimmer of recognition flickered in his gaze. “Why do you ask?”
“A client’s daughter ran off with her gang member boyfriend. The mom says the boyfriend had this picture tattooed on his arm. She wants me to bring her daughter home.”
Sten sat back again, picked up his mug, and took a long slurp. “Remember when you used to blow me in my dorm room before retreat?”
A trickle of bile rose up Val’s throat. Here we go with the mind games. “I’ve repressed most of those memories, but yes.”
“You were really good at sucking dick, did I ever tell you that? I guess practice makes perfect.”
Val drummed her fingers on the side of her chair to occupy her hands. It was all she could do to keep from punching his smug face. She gave him a bored look and waited.
Sten took another long drink of coffee, relishing the moment. Finally, he said, “The Diamond Gang pride themselves on running ‘high-class’ hookers for low-class needs. Entrepreneurial sorts, despite their stupid clown logo. They hang out west of the I-5, around South Washington Street. Charge fifty dollars a pop.” He shoved a thumb in his mouth and jerked it out with a popping sound. “A small fortune for a junkie, but their girls are pros. Practice makes perfect.” His thick mustache curled into a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
A shiver ran up Val’s spine. She knew Sten had an edge when they’d dated—she’d always liked the edgy guys, though she knew she shouldn’t—but only recently had she realized just how much he liked to see her squirm—like a sociopath. With a police badge. She forced out a “thanks” and stood to leave. In the end his words were harmless, and his idiosyncrasies worked to her benefit.
“Hey, Shepherd,” Sten called after her as she walked away, “You find that poor girl and bring her home, to safety.” He smiled again, and Val was struck with the image of a snake’s mouth just before it swallowed its prey.
* * *
Val watched the rain smear the world through her windshield as she sat in her Corolla, idling in front of the Bombay and Price Law Offices sign outside Robby’s work. After a few minutes of staring out the window, she saw him emerge from the glass building and trot through the puddles to her car. He tossed a gym bag with his suit shoved in it into the back, then hopped into the passenger’s seat.
“Did you find Chuckles the Creepy Clown?” he asked, brushing water off his jeans.
“You know it,” Val said. “I narrowed it down to South Washington Street, near the waterfront, then drove around the seediest areas until I found the graffiti with the right background that matched what I saw in the vision.” She pulled away from the curb and began driving to Chet’s future location.
“You’re too good for me,” Robby said.
Val knew the opposite was true. She needed him a lot more than he needed her. Robby’s lawyer gig paid most of the bills, not to mention the stabilizing influence he had on her visions. They weren’t as bad when she was with him, though she didn’t know why. She’d have given up on love a long time ago if it hadn’t been for Robby.
He looked at his watch. “How much time do we have to catch Chet?”
“The sun was setting in my vision, so we have about an hour, I think.”
Val drove along the back streets through Seattle’s underbelly to avoid highway traffic. She knew the streets well, explored every inch of them while growing up, looking for adventure, until her dad dragged her and her sister to the suburbs. They should’ve stayed in the city. Val loved her life with Robby in their two-story house with its white picket fence and stand-alone mailbox, but reminders of her sister’s fate often bubbled at the edges of her suburban bliss, and she’d get the urge to burn it all down.
Her grip tightened on the steering wheel. She should let the past go, but then Valentine Investigations wouldn’t exist, and she’d be another mindless peon floating through life, ignoring the rot that threatened to consume the world just outside of view from polite society. She’d rather have her sister’s life back, but since that wasn’t possible, punishing assholes who’d slipped through cracks in the justice system would have to do.
She parked the car along the curb of South Washington Street, on the opposite side of the road from the naked clown puking up the word she now recognized as “Diamonds.” She killed the engine, and they watched the street where Chet was destined to appear at any moment as raindrops plinked against the roof.
“Talk to Max Carressa today?” she asked Robby.
“Yeah, we actually went to his house on Mercer Island,” he said. “We walked him through the case as it stands now. It’s all circumstantial. The police don’t have enough to charge him with anything yet, but who knows when that’ll change. He showed us where his dad fell over the balcony of the deck that extends off the study. It’s got a gorgeous view of Lake Washington, and a sheer drop down a cliff. I almost got vertigo looking down, it was wild.”
“Did you ask Max about Chet?”
“Not yet. I want to hear what Chet has to say before bringing it up. We’ve gotten fake information before. Guess that comes with working a local celebrity case.” He grinned, then nudged Val. “My dad asked me about our wedding date again.”
Val rolled her eyes. “God, what’s his rush? It’ll happen when it happens.”
“He says if Mom was still alive, she’d want grandkids by now.”
“I thought those little white fluffy dogs were supposed to be grandchildren substitutes.”
“Why don’t we just pick a date?”
“Because…” Val sighed. “I don’t want to rush things—there’s Chet!”
Thank God for Chet, loping down the street in his slicker and swinging his bike helmet at his side. She hated this conversation. Every time she imagined herself walking down the aisle, it’d be followed by an image of herself
running away from the altar, out of the church and over the horizon. She needed Robby and loved him, but…she didn’t know. Val guessed there was some sort of deep psychological reason for her reluctance that involved her superego and freak-of-nature status and past traumas and all that, but she preferred not to think too hard about it and hoped it would go away on its own.
They tracked Chet as he walked, oblivious to their presence. He stopped in front of the alley between two buildings, next to the clown graffiti. He leaned down to fish a rock out of his shoe. Traffic parted. They lost sight of any other pedestrians.
“Now!” Val said to Robby.
With his eyes locked on Chet, Robby jumped out of the car and began to jog across the street. Val heard the sedan’s wheels screech before she saw it out of the corner of her eye, a blur of movement that seized her heart and crushed it before the rest of her brain could even register what she was seeing.
She had no time to react before the sedan slammed into Robby. He catapulted through the air like a ragdoll until he hit the pavement with a wet thud. Without slowing down, the car hung a hard right at the next intersection and disappeared. A piercing noise caught her attention; she realized it was her screams.
Val burst out of the car and ran to where Robby lay still on the ground. She knelt next to his broken body, unable to breathe, afraid to touch him.
“Holy shit,” she heard Chet say, followed by his receding footfalls as he fled.
“Robby, oh God, Robby,” she said, her voice shrill and panicked, willing for him to live with every part of her being.
His eyelids fluttered and he looked at her, then he looked through her at nothing. Rain wet his unblinking eyes.
A wail ripped from Val’s chest as she sobbed over his body, only vaguely aware of the newly arrived traffic around her that stopped to gawk and offer useless assistance.
Chapter Three
Val gripped the sides of the police station chair until her knuckles turned white, but her body wouldn’t stop shaking. She swept a continuous flow of tears from her eyes as a detective handed her a Styrofoam cup of water.
“We can’t find another witness to the hit-and-run,” the detective, Johnson, said. He sat down across from Val. “But we’ll keep canvasing the neighborhood and see if any security cameras in the area picked something up.”
“Chet saw it happen,” Val said, her voice hoarse. With a trembling hand, she set the cup down on Johnson’s desk, water untouched. “Chet can confirm that Robby was murdered. Find Chet.”
“A first name and a vague physical description aren’t enough to go on.”
“Then get the phone records from his office! Chet called Robby’s work phone two days ago to say he had information about the Carressa case. Robby works”—she swallowed hard—“worked at Bombay and Price. His father is one of the partners. Trace the call back to Chet’s phone. Do I really have to tell you how to do your fucking job?” God, did Robby’s father know yet? She couldn’t imagine calling him with the news. She couldn’t…
Sten ambled over from where he’d been watching off to the side. He leaned against the wall next to Johnson and looked down at Val. “Slow your roll, Shepherd. South Washington Street is crawling with junkies and gang bangers. People get shot and run over and stabbed there all the time. Robby Price was probably mowed down by some crack whore high off her ass. He wouldn’t be the first. In fact, he wouldn’t even be the first this month.”
Val slammed her fist down on Johnson’s desk, causing water to slop out of the foam cup. “Robby was murdered. There’s no way it’s a coincidence that Robby was run down right as he was about to talk to someone with important information about the death of Max Carressa’s father. Someone didn’t want that meeting to happen. Someone—”
Someone who knew exactly when and where Robby and Chet would meet that evening, something only Robby and Val knew. She’d told Sten about the clown—maybe he’d somehow pieced together what was happening and lain in wait for the right moment to run Robby down? But why? To Val’s knowledge, Sten wasn’t involved in the investigation into Lester Carressa’s death. And Val had seen multiple images of the creepy clown spray painted on buildings around the Seattle waterfront. There was no way he could’ve known which specific image she was looking for.
And why hadn’t she seen Robby die? She might have been able to stop it if she’d known. Val put a hand over her mouth to stifle the sob that jumped up her throat.
“I’m very sorry for your loss,” Johnson said. “We’ll do everything we can to find who did this.”
“You think Robby’s death was a tragic accident, so excuse me if I think you’re full of shit.”
“We’re all sorry your boyfriend died,” Sten said, “but there’s no reason to be rude.”
Val fixed him with a glare that could have melted glass.
“Want me to give you a ride home?” he asked.
The thought of Sten knowing where Val lived turned her stomach. “Screw you,” she said and shot up from her chair, knocking it over. She didn’t know if Sten was involved in Robby’s death, but she definitely didn’t trust him.
“Call me if you want to talk about your feelings,” Sten said to her as she stormed out of the police station.
She thought she heard him snicker.
* * *
Val drove home in a daze, exhausted from the effort to keep her brain functioning enough to make the trip. Hands still shaking, she fumbled with the lock on the front door until it clicked open, then she stumbled over the threshold and up the stairs to their bedroom—just Val’s bedroom now. She collapsed onto the bed and sobbed into Robby’s pillow, still ripe with his smell.
Why hadn’t she seen him die in her vision? She’d seen hundreds of people die, some people she knew and some she didn’t. None of it she’d wanted to see, but she’d seen it nonetheless. The vast majority of it she couldn’t change, but sometimes, very rarely, she could—she still felt a rush of anxiety every time Stacey mentioned getting on a boat for any reason. But like her poor sister’s death, Val hadn’t seen this coming. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to see it. Maybe she hadn’t seen him die because subconsciously she couldn’t stand to know. Just like she’d done to her sister, she’d let him die because deep down she was a coward.
Val curled into a ball on her bed. She stayed there until the sky went dark and then light again, and didn’t move even as her phone began to ring off the hook. At some point she heard a knock at the door, then a click as it opened, followed by Stacey’s trembling voice.
“Val? Are you here?”
Val didn’t answer. The stairs creaked as Stacey ascended them and appeared in the doorway to Val’s bedroom.
“Oh my God, Val, I am so sorry.”
Stacey lay next to Val and hugged her. Val cried into her friend’s chest until it seemed all the liquid in her body had escaped through her tears. The sky grew dark again, and finally Val couldn’t ignore the call of nature. With the effort of a person half dead, she dragged herself out of bed and into the bathroom. Stacey helped her undress and she took a long, hot shower, letting the water scald her skin as if it had the power to wash her guilt away. Afterward, she pulled on a pair of pajamas and fell into bed again. She heard Stacey talking on the phone to Val’s father, then Robby’s sister, then Stacey’s girlfriend, until the house was once again cloaked in night.
Through a haze, Val awoke with the rising sun in her eyes. The gnaw of hunger pulled her out of bed, and she descended the staircase feeling like a popped balloon floating down through the clouds to the ground. Stacey sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, playing with her cell phone. Her head snapped up when she heard movement at the kitchen’s entrance.
“Val,” Stacey said, and rose to hug her. “Are you hungry?”
“I don’t know.” Val’s throat felt like she’d spent the night swallowing sand. “I think so.”
“Sit down, I’ll make you some toast.”
Val slouched into a chair and watched her fr
iend shove a couple pieces of bread into the toaster oven. Stacey’s phone vibrated against the tabletop and she scowled at it.
“Goddamn Natasha’s going nuts,” Stacey said. “She doesn’t understand this whole ‘friend in need’ thing. Thinks I’m cheating on her and keeps calling. If she weren’t smoking hot, I’d have dumped her crazy ass by now.”
Val’s face twitched into a slight smile. “I am technically your ex.”
“She doesn’t need to know that. She’s jealous enough as it is.”
“And I thought your girlfriend’s name was Kat.”
“That’s the other one.”
“How am I supposed to keep track when their names change every couple months?”
“I use mnemonic devices. ‘At the coffee shop for a chat is where I met Kat.’”
The toaster dinged, and Stacey buttered the warm bread, put it on a plate, and placed it in front of Val.
“How are you?” Stacey asked in a hushed voice. She took a seat next to Val.
“Still alive.” Biting into a corner of the bread, she savored the melted butter that slid down her throat.
“What do you think happened?”
Val shook her head. “I don’t know. In my vision, Robby crossed the street safely and talked to Chet. My visions don’t always happen exactly like I see them, but I can’t believe that of all the death I foretell, I didn’t see his. Just like my sister.” Her eyes blurred with tears.
“This isn’t your fault,” Stacey said, taking Val’s hand.
“He wouldn’t have been on South Washington Street if I didn’t tell him to be there.”
“You can’t save everyone. Sometimes the universe just decides it’s your time.”
For a moment Val saw Stacey’s face suspended in water, lifeless eyes wide open and mouth locked in a silent scream.
“No,” Val said, wiping the image from her thoughts. “It wasn’t random. Robby was murdered. I don’t know how someone could have known exactly when and where he’d be in order to run him down, or why they’d want him dead, but I’m going to find out.”
Vengeance Page 2
