by Sam Wiebe
Farraday spread his hands. “Respectfully, ma’am, this is the house of a fellow who’s capable of just about anything.”
We walked out across the muddy drive. Sonia was waiting by the cars. Arlene Crowhurst unlocked her minivan and quieted the dogs. The upholstery inside was scratched to tatters, but the outside gleamed, a realty company placard fixed to the sliding door. LOWEST COMMISSION IN KING, PIERCE, OR WHATCOM COUNTY.
“He came back from prison so much quieter,” she said. “Not that he was ever talkative. I just remember how glad he was to get home, even if it was run down and smaller than he left it.”
“Home is precious,” Sonia said, trying to sound sympathetic.
Arlene Crowhurst looked at the mud on her shoes. “I feel I should defend him. He’s my brother. But part of me feels I know how this will turn out. Be careful with him.”
“It’s our top concern,” Farraday said.
Once she’d left, I leaned on my car and asked Sonia what she’d found out.
“I talked to the floor manager at the warehouse,” she said. “Crowhurst is due at work in two hours. The manager told me he’s been acting strange lately. The other day he pulled a knife on a co-worker.”
“Jesus Murphy,” Farraday said.
“The co-worker’s undocumented, so no charges, but there’s a meeting planned to discuss Crowhurst’s behavior. It was going to be today, only they had three containers dropped off this afternoon, one of them a fifty-foot Maersk. They all have to be cleared by early tomorrow morning. Crowhurst will be working through the night.”
“Gives us enough time to check out that restaurant address,” I said.
Farraday rubbed the heels of his boots on the grass, scraping off mud. “Long trek back to Tacoma, just to come back here.”
“Without Dana Essex there’s nothing to hold over Crowhurst. And if he’s working there all night, we’ll be back before his shift ends.”
“Someone should watch the warehouse,” Farraday said, “case he shows up early. I can text you if and when he does.”
We agreed to meet at the warehouse later. Drinks would be on me if it all worked out. We said good-bye, then followed his truck back to the highway, before Sonia and I headed south.
Forty-Three
Located in a one-shop strip mall a few blocks east of the Tacoma waterfront, 416 Eldridge turned out to be a Mediterranean restaurant called JJ’s Taverna. Why Dana Essex would head here from the Sun King motel was a mystery. By the time we pulled into the parking lot the place was closed. Or maybe it had been closed for a while.
Along the side of the building ran a wooden staircase, painted the same dark purple as the awning out front. At the top was a small apartment. No one answered our knocking.
Sonia inspected the contents of the mailbox. At least a week’s worth of flyers. A few envelopes addressed to a J. Bezzerides.
I knocked again, peered through the dark window. “Any strong objection to forced entry?” I asked Sonia.
“Maybe let’s try phoning first—there’s a Jon Bezzerides listed in the Washington White Pages.”
She dialed. We waited, then heard from inside the faint chirp of a telephone.
I didn’t have to break down the door; it was unlocked. I stepped inside, turning on the pen light, too late to notice whatever it was under my feet that sent me lurching, colliding hard against the tiled floor.
Sonia asked if I was all right.
My knee and shoulder ached. A cloud of cheap perfume filled the apartment. Drugstore perfume, a synthetic blossom scent. Below that odors of piss, shit, burnt flesh, tobacco.
I sat up and noticed the odd shapes of glass and plastic by my feet. Nail polish, tubes of lipstick, a compact mirror crushed by my knee. All new, still bearing their price stickers. A clamshell purse with its silk innards mangled lay scrunched up under the right corner of the door. Its broken strap had curled around my heel.
Sonia stepped over the cosmetics and helped me to my feet.
We were in the tight hallway of a bachelor’s suite. To the right of the door was a narrow living space with a sofa bed wedged into the corner. An open suitcase lay on top of it.
A throw rug had been folded haphazardly and dragged away from the center of the room. In its place, a mildewed tarp lay over the tile floor. A figure writhed helplessly amid its folds.
I pulled the collar of my shirt over my nose and mouth to mute the stench, walked cautiously into the apartment.
It was a man, stripped naked and sobbing. He faced away from us, his legs and right arm bound together by zip ties, a wadded rag duct-taped into his mouth. Spiral-shaped burns covered his torso and thighs.
An extension cord snaked out from the wall, ending in a hot plate that sat near the man’s head. Its coils glowed bright orange, seared in places with a coarse black crust.
I unplugged the plate and toed it aside, held my breath and squatted next to the man. Up close I could see his face and left hand had been worked on with a knife. Segments of him lay on the bloody tarp.
“Fucking hell,” Sonia said.
The man’s eyes focused. They lingered on me, moving to Sonia, finally settling on the stump of his left wrist.
“Mr. Bezzerides.” I knelt down and spoke softly, trying to still him long enough for me to saw through the straps with my car keys. Once free, his hand groped at my arm. The tips had been cut off his forefinger and thumb. His movements were feeble, breaths shallow.
Sonia scanned the rest of the room, the bathroom and closet across from the door. “No one else here,” she said. I heard her cough and spit, heard water running, the flush of a toilet.
Bezzerides seemed eager to speak. I leaned closer, peeled off the tape that held the gag. His fragmented hand pawed clumsily at mine. Beneath the blood I could feel the soaked fabric of a crude attempt at a bandage.
He opened his mouth and retched. Coughs erupted from his chest, blood burbling out, soaking his chin. I felt something solid and moist hit my cheek and tumble down my shirt. I picked it off the fabric, dropping it when I realized it was a two-inch piece of tongue.
The retching slowed and his eyes drifted from me, off toward the ceiling.
“We need to call someone,” I said.
Sonia held the phone to her ear. “Already doing it.”
As she informed Emergency, I rifled through the contents of the suitcase on the bed. A woman’s clothing, ranging from overalls to negligees. A Greyhound stub from Seattle. A packet of twenty one-hundred-dollar bills, banking papers, a cell phone. And Dana Essex’s passport. Nothing packed neatly, which suggested someone else had already gone through it.
“They’re en route,” Sonia said. “Find anything?”
“Her money and papers are still in the case,” I said. “Might mean she couldn’t come back here—which means maybe she got out.”
“Hopefully,” Sonia said.
I knelt on the tarp, feeling the blood slosh and soak my knee. I felt under the jaw of the tortured man. Light cuts dotted the folds of his neck, as if a knife had been held there. Bezzerides’s pulse was weak but steady.
Maybe she’d rented the room from him. Thought she was safe. She’d come back from the motel, maybe, to collect her things. Seen Crowhurst or his car and told Sanjay to keep driving, to take her away. Meanwhile Crowhurst had done this, for who knows what reason. Maybe just to pass the time.
“What did he think Bezzerides could tell him?” Sonia said, echoing my thoughts. “What was worth all—all this?”
“It’s beyond me.”
“Bezzerides could’ve been in it with her. Maybe Crowhurst knew that.”
“And maybe he’s already picked her up.”
“So we pick him up,” Sonia said. No hesitation or doubt in her voice. She pointed at the slightly breathing form. “After this, Farraday has reason to hold him.”
“We should let him know. Tell him he needs to call in backup.”
She phoned Farraday but there was no answer. She texted. I minis
tered to Bezzerides as best I could. The first strains of an ambulance could be heard above the noise from the highway.
“Farraday needs to be warned,” I said. “If Crowhurst would do this to a bystander—”
“What about Bezzerides?”
“Ambulance is on its way. There’s nothing we could tell the EMTs that would help.”
I wiped the blood from around my eyes, looked at her. Her gaze was on the tortured man.
“You could wait here with him,” I said. “Might be best.”
“And you’d go alone? Fuck that.”
We left the door open, the light on. In the car I opened the gun case and fed cartridges into the cylinders. We drove past the ambulance as we made our way toward the warehouse.
Forty-Four
G&G Logistics: a gray box lit with floodlights, giant containers on iron stilts lined up to the seven bay doors. A yellow cross-bar gate blocked the entrance to the property. The front door of the building was propped open, light from inside spilling onto a pile of garbage bags heaped at the bottom of the short staircase.
Farraday’s truck was parked on the far end of the industrial cul-de-sac. We slid in behind him, killing our headlights. The truck was locked, empty.
We ducked under the cross-bar and entered the property. The Colt was heavy and I didn’t trust myself to draw it from my waistband. I carried it at my side, the barrel pointed down.
We knocked, then stepped inside. The reception corridor was brightly lit but the desk was empty. Time cards were neatly stowed in their pouches on the wall, CROWHURST, L among them. We walked to the door that led out onto the warehouse floor.
The floor itself was dark. Lanes built out of industrial shelving held skids of shrink-wrapped goods, boxes, building materials. The offices to the right were a maze of drywall and plywood. A steep staircase and gantry led to a second floor.
We went through the ground floor rooms, using the penlight to locate light switches. Break room with table and soda machine. Front office, a controlled mess of paperwork covering each workspace.
No Farraday. No Essex. No Crowhurst.
“Maybe he’s in custody already,” I said.
“And Farraday had to leave his truck?”
“It’s possible.” The possibles and maybes and unknowns were piling up.
We checked the loading bays. The doors were all secured save one. A stack of dirty pallets and an ancient forklift flanked the mouth of the container. The penlight showed a wall of boxes a few feet inside. Crowhurst’s work had been left unfinished.
“What do you want to do?” Sonia asked.
“Check upstairs, take a quick look around the warehouse floor. Then get out of here.” It felt good to say it. “Leave it with the police and go home.”
“I’ll phone them,” she said.
We walked back toward the stairs. Sonia had her phone out. I shone the penlight toward the warehouse shelves but it did nothing to illuminate the dark towers.
I called out, “Anyone here,” and heard my echo return to me through the vast space.
“Signal’s weak,” Sonia said. “I’ll try phoning from reception.”
I watched her move toward the entrance, holding her phone up to catch a signal. I thought of calling her back. Irrational—we were alone, I had the gun.
Coming up the stairs I could see the second floor was one single room perimetered by a catwalk, an executive office with a long window that overlooked the warehouse floor. A bank of switches near the entrance probably controlled the warehouse lights. An intercom below them. The door was shut.
I opened the door and, startled, pointed the Colt at the bloody face of Dana Essex.
A deep gouge in her forehead spilled a curtain of red over her cheek. Her eyes were opened wide. I saw them look beyond the gun barrel and recognize me. She collapsed forward onto my shoulder.
“Thank God,” she said.
“What are you doing here?”
“It’s Lee,” she said, straightening up, pointing into the office. “He’s here, he dragged me here, something about his money. Dave—Dave—you’ve got to get us out of here.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “It’ll be all right.”
I looked into the office and could see only shadows. My feet crossed the threshold and I saw an inert form splayed out by the desk, Farraday, his face perforated and throat torn open. And I felt a hand cross behind me to rest on my left shoulder, an almost avuncular gesture, and something cold punched into my ribcage.
I turned and struggled, lost my grip on the gun. I tottered off balance and fell backward onto the metal grate of the catwalk.
The pain in my side was watery and dull and I knew I was leaking blood.
“I told you to stay away if you wanted to be safe,” a voice said chidingly. “At the very least, Dave, you can’t accuse me of lying to you.”
Forty-Five
“I was aiming for your kidney,” Essex said. “Lee told me if you nick that, it leaks bile into the wound. From what I hear it’s unpleasant, but it won’t kill you immediately.”
She wiped the blood from her brow, inspecting it with gleeful disinterest. Her fingers smeared it on the front of her dark overalls. She looked down at my hands, which gingerly touched the wood-handled blade she’d left sticking out of me.
“Don’t try to remove that,” she said.
Her foot nudged something to the edge of the catwalk and punted it off into the darkness where it clattered and echoed.
“What a shiny gun,” she said. “Did you come here to rescue me, Dave? To take me back with you?”
I looked up at her and didn’t answer.
“I suppose I should be flattered,” she said. “And you brought your policewoman friend, too.”
“No,” I managed. “Alone.”
“That’s a lie.”
She crouched over me, looking at the wound with curiosity, with scientific detachment. We were strangers. Her gaze absorbed details, made note of results, compared this experiment with data collected from others.
“You look so betrayed,” she said. “You might not believe this, Dave, but I was coming back with you. I did as you said, rented that hotel room. I was waiting for your timely rescue.”
Static shot across my vision. It was difficult to hear her over the onrush of pain. I ground my teeth and kept hold of the handle, wondering how much it would hurt to pull it out, whether I could sink it into her.
Dana Essex said, “I sat on that bed for an hour and seventeen minutes. I counted, I watched the clock. And at an hour eighteen I decided something. Lee didn’t get to take my money, to frighten me into submission. He didn’t get to win. Right then I had a cab take me back to my friend’s apartment.”
“I know,” I muttered.
“How could you—” She reasoned it out. “Very clever. I was so eager to get started, I almost didn’t catch the mistake. The driver dropped me at the train station instead—a poor recovery. I’ll do better next time.”
Her hands felt through my pockets. I felt the strength fading from my left hand but my right closed solidly around the handle.
“Lee was still sleeping when I got back. Still drunk. Since your friend visited him he’d become even more paranoid. I really mean it, Dave, I was very close to leaving with you. Last night when he came back, I knew he was contemplating killing me. I thought sleeping with him would buy me time.
“And that’s what I thought of in that hotel room,” she continued. “How yet again I’d given someone else, some man, what he wanted. All the fear I’ve felt because of men like Lee. Like you. But I saw, if I accepted that fear, I could put it to use. My mother used to say a girl with my gifts could do anything she put her mind to. Do you think that’s true?”
“Murder,” I managed. “Capable of that.”
She looked toward the door of the office. I made ready to pull the blade but her head turned back.
“I didn’t have options with Mr. Farraday,” she said. “I merely stabbed him as ma
ny times as I could. It’s odd, for a burly man his voice was remarkably dainty. He screamed like an actress in one of those horror films.”
“And Bezzerides?” I asked. I lowered my voice so she’d bend closer. “You torture him, or did Lee?”
“I suppose I forgot about him,” she said.
“You burned him.”
“I—” Essex looked puzzled. She drew away from me, out of range, thinking it over. I heard her laugh.
“Of course,” she said. “You were in my apartment. Did you take my things? No, it doesn’t matter, I won’t go back for them.”
I heard the door echo from below. Essex lowered her voice.
“I didn’t burn Mr. Bezzerides,” she said. “That was Lee you found. I burned Lee. I burned him and made him tell me where my money was. And he did. You know he owns this building? This is his office. His safe is in there.”
Essex felt my breast pocket, her hands moving down to my hips.
“I wish you’d come alone,” she said. “Was your plan to flaunt her in front of me as you took me away?”
She found my cell phone in my hip pocket. As she pulled it out I reached up with my feeble left and seized her neck and with my right pulled out the blade, aiming for her throat.
Only the blade didn’t pull out. I felt it catch on my flesh and tear open my side. Blood soaked my hand and I screamed.
She pushed me down good-naturedly and stood up holding my cell. “Did I not tell you not to pull it out? You don’t listen. You’re the worst kind of person, Dave, because you think you listen. You think you know. When really, what the fuck could you know?”
The pain was too much to respond beyond a whimper.
“Lee called that a skinning knife, with a gut hook on the end.” She formed her free hand into a claw, demonstrating the shape and movement. “What he did was sharpen the curved edge, so it tears both ways, going in and out. He told me about his knives in great detail. Incidentally, I’d clamp that other hand over your side—unless you feel like bleeding to death.”
I did as she said, balling up the torn fabric around the handle to staunch it. When I looked back up at her she was reading through my text messages.
