by Ford, G. M.
PRAISE FOR G.M. FORD
“G.M. Ford is must reading.”
—Harlan Coben
“Ford is a witty and spunky writer who not only knows his terrain but how to bring it vividly to the printed page.”
—West Coast Review of Books
“G.M. Ford is a born storyteller.”
—J.A. Jance
“He’s well on his way to becoming the Raymond Chandler of Seattle.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“G.M. Ford is, hands down, one of my favorite contemporary crime writers. Hilarious, provocative, and cool as a March night in Seattle, he may be the best-kept secret in mystery novels.”
—Dennis Lehane
“G.M. Ford has a supercharged V-12 under the hood.”
—Lee Child
“G.M. Ford writes the pants off most of his contemporaries.”
—Independent on Sunday
OTHER TITLES BY G.M. FORD
Nameless Night
Threshold
Leo Waterman Series
Who in Hell Is Wanda Fuca?
Cast in Stone
The Bum’s Rush
Slow Burn
Last Ditch
The Deader the Better
Thicker Than Water
Chump Change
Salvation Lake
Frank Corso Series
Fury
Black River
A Blind Eye
Red Tide
No Man’s Land
Blown Away
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2017 by G.M. Ford
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-10: 1477808973
ISBN-13: 9781477808979
Cover design by Cyanotype Book Architects
To A.J. Forever my friend.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I hate surprises. People in party hats jumping out of closets give me the urge to smack ’em in the lip. But tonight was special, and I was making an exception to the rule. It was Valentine’s Day, and I was back in Seattle a day early, so surprising Rebecca with a fistful of flowers and a box of Fran’s Chocolates seemed like a nice, romantic thing to do.
I’d spent the past three days down in Mesa, Arizona, lounging around the hotel pool and selling off a couple of parcels of land I’d inherited as part of my father’s estate. When things finished up a day ahead of schedule, I’d hopped the 1:25 back to Seattle, rounded up the flowers and candy, and was fighting my way through the afternoon rush hour when the steel-wool skies suddenly remembered it was February.
At first, it was a few big, sloppy drops sputtering down from the sky, clanging onto the hood of the car, splashing craters in the parking garage dust as I wheeled up Madison Street. By the time I’d crested the hill, the drops were the size of wharf rats and coming down hard enough to render my wipers spastic.
Took me twenty nervous minutes to cover the three-plus miles to Madison Park. The drumming of the rain was deafening as I pulled into the Lakefront Village parking lot. I turned off the car, cracked the window, and peeped out. It wasn’t good. Along the street, the huge old rhododendron bushes cowered from the onslaught. I winced as I watched ranks of suicide raindrops spend themselves onto the shimmering asphalt.
I looked around. The only other car in the visitor’s lot was a murdered-out Dodge van. Flat black everything, from roof to tires. Up where the residents parked, Rebecca’s Beamer was nosed into her parking spot. I estimated I had about twenty yards to negotiate before I reached the covered walkway that shielded the condo owners and their cars from the nasty Northwest elements.
I gathered the flowers and candy, took a deep breath, and stepped out into the maelstrom. The rain was charging across the pavement in silver sheets; overhead, the wind roared through the treetops like a bullet train. I sucked air and made a dash for it.
I was making good time too, splashing along like Seabiscuit, until I dropped the damn flowers. By the time I’d retrieved the posies and waded under cover, my jacket was soaked through, and a thick rivulet of rain was rolling down my spine like a frozen ball bearing. I shuddered hard, stifled a curse, and then shuddered again.
I shook myself like a dog, made sure I had a firm grip on my romantic tribute, and started off again. Halfway down the covered walkway, I caught the silhouettes of two guys ahead in the gloom, moving my way. Another ten yards and I could make out their brown UPS uniforms, replete with those precious little shorts they wear rain or shine.
I treated them to a wry smile and a manly nod as we passed shoulder to shoulder on the walkway. Something about delivering flowers and candy in a typhoon made me feel vaguely foolish, but I shook it off and kept walking. I mean, what could those two guys say, wearing those friggin’ shorts?
The far shore of Lake Washington was little more than a smear of lights. To my left, the sinuous curves of the 520 Bridge flickered through the veil of falling water. I turned right and walked three condos down. I straightened my shoulders inside my jacket, put on my best “eager young fella” look, and knocked on Rebecca’s door.
Waited. Nothing. Knocked again. Nothing again. I scowled and looked to my left. The drapes were drawn. The lights were on. I knocked again. Not a peep.
I put my ear up to the door. I was listening hard when a faint whiff of something curled into my nostrils. I pulled my head back and knocked again, harder this time.
I stepped down into the shrubbery, put my face to the window, and peered between the drapes. The only things visible were a section of carpet and the back side of the kitchen island. I knocked hard on the glass and waited. Nothing moved.
I stepped back up onto the front porch and pounded on the door. Once again, no response. I pulled out my phone and dialed Rebecca’s number, then leaned against the door and listened. And there it was—that song she used for a ringtone, some Patti Smith thing I hated. She had it set up to ring a couple of thousand times before it went to voicemail. I gritted my teeth and listened until it stopped.
That was the moment when the hairs on the back of my neck began to rise. As King County’s medical examiner, Rebecca was perpetually on call. She went nowhere without her phone. Ever. We made jokes about how she took the damn thing to the john with her and what it was like to have to talk to other people under those unseemly circumstances. My chest began to tighten.
I set the flowers and candy on the porch, stepped back for leverage, and raised my foot. Then put it back down. I stomped around in a frustrated circle. Spent a few minutes lecturing myself. What if she was . . . ? What if . . . ? When I couldn’t come up with another “what if” that made any sense at all, I reared back and gave the door all I had.
The door burst open and banged against the wall, telling me right away that the deadbolt hadn’t been set—a security precaution I’d never known Rebecca to forget. Before I could move forward, a great burst of air came rushing from the interior. Cold air . . . chemical air. Bright, burning ice that bit my nostrils and gashed at my throat in the second before my screaming lungs puked i
t back out. Gas. Holy shit . . . gas.
I dropped to one knee. The air was better down lower but not much. “Rebecca,” I croaked. “Rebecca.”
And then I was moving forward: on my hands and knees for the first ten feet and then all the way down onto my belly, slithering across the carpet like a cockroach, my lungs on fire, my nose and eyes pouring down my face.
On the far side of the living room, I pushed myself to my feet, reached for the light switch, and then stopped my hand in midair as I had a sudden vision of the whole place erupting in a great ball of blue flame. I groaned and flopped back down onto the floor, where I vomited a couple of bags of airline peanuts onto the carpet and began crabbing forward on my elbows, swiveling my head as I moved along, trying to find her with eyes that felt like they were filled with splintered ice.
As I rounded the kitchen island, my hands smacked onto the tile of the kitchen floor. “Rebecca,” I screamed again. Listened. And then, above the sound of my gasping breath, I heard it: a rush like water running in pipes.
I spit a mouthful of bile and looked up, my eyes so wet and glassy I couldn’t focus. So I bent all the way down to the floor and wiped them with my sleeve, looked up, and everything was green. Bright green. And then I remembered the fancy French stove she’d bought a while back. A Lacanche, if I recalled. All green enamel and fancy trim. I started pushing myself toward it, the air getting viler by the foot, my lungs spitting it out as fast as I could force it in, until I made it to the far end of the kitchen and used one of the oven handles to lever myself to my knees.
It felt like somebody’d buried an ax in my forehead as I ran a hand over my face, trying to make out what it said on the stove knobs. I couldn’t see, so I started turning knobs back the other way, and the rushing sound began to dissipate just as I lost my grip on the handle and flopped back to the floor.
I wanted to sleep, to close my eyes and just drift off into nothingness, but an inner voice was screaming at me to get up, to keep moving, to find Rebecca. I put my lips right down onto the tile, took in as much of a breath as my tortured lungs would allow, and forced myself upward again.
I lurched across the kitchen, threw an elbow at the window over the sink, and heard the glass explode. I felt a rush of fresh air wash across the back of my neck as I dry-heaved into the sink, so I straightened up and busted out the other half of the window, then pushed my face into the jagged opening, sucking air and coughing and sucking air and coughing until the jackhammer in my head began to quiet.
With a chest full of fresh air, I shuffled over to the guest bathroom and pushed open the door. She was lying on the floor naked, her eyes rolled back in her head and a syringe dangling from her left arm. I groaned and reached for her, terrified I was going to find her cold to the touch, but she wasn’t. I put the palm of my hand on her chest. Her heart was fluttering like a breathless bird.
I grabbed her under the arms and lifted until I could feel her ragged breath on my neck. I wanted to reach down and scoop up her knees and carry her off, like in the movies, but I didn’t have the strength. So I began to back out of the room, Rebecca mashed against me, weaving over the floor together like a pair of drunken tango dancers as I struggled back through the kitchen and living room and finally down over the rough concrete of the porch and out to the narrow strip of sodden grass that stood between the condos and Lake Washington, where I laid her gently on the ground.
I shouldered myself out of my coat and laid it over her. When I looked up, half a dozen of her neighbors were out on their porches, phones jammed to their ears as a chorus of sirens screeched above the drumming of the rain.
Might’ve been better if I’d passed out. I remember crabbing forward on my hands and knees, trying to shield her face with my body, and the sound of the rain pounding on my back as I swayed in the breeze, retching like I was trying to turn myself inside out. After that, everything seemed to happen at once.
The hands were on me, all over me, pulling me up . . . and the shouting and the voices talking to me, talking to one another. “Just relax, mister . . . Roll him over . . . Need a hand here . . . You got him, Frank? . . . One . . . two . . .” From over on my left: “We’re losing her . . . No pulse, Tommy . . . No pulse . . .” And the rain, falling like mortar shells. “She’s got a puncture wound . . . left arm . . . Anybody seen a syringe? . . . No pulse, Tommy . . . Take it easy, mister.” And I can’t sit up . . . the straps . . . there’s a mask on my face. I puke into it. “Clean up his airway.” Hands pulling the mask off my face, wiping my face as the rain beats down, cleaning out my nostrils. “Found this inside.” I throw my eyes to the left. Little plastic syringe. Big yellow glove. Fireman. The EMT kneeling by her head. I watch him bring a finger to his mouth. “Heroin,” he says. I want to tell them, No way. No way. Are you fucking crazy? But my throat won’t spit out the words. “Narcan. Administering Narcan.” And now there’s four of them huddled over her. “We’re gonna get him outta here. No pulse, Bobby.” And suddenly we’re rolling. Bouncing along with the rain slamming into my face. I can’t sit up. “Take it easy, man. They’re doing everything they can.” Trying to roll myself free, thrashing with all I have left as they lift me into the back of an aid car. “Jesus, take it easy, mister.” I can feel spittle running down my chin as I try to tell them, as I try to . . . and then the whoop whoop of the siren, and we’re moving. The driver is talking into the radio, but I can’t make out the words. The sweet air they’re pumping into me cools my lungs. I’m getting light-headed. Don’t want to pass out. I reach for the mask on my face. Somebody grabs my hand. Forces it down to my side. “Breathe. Breathe.” And then somebody’s pushing up my sleeve. “This will help you relax.” And I collapse down inside myself, like one of those detonated buildings on TV: nothing but a rising cloud of dust and a sinking pile of rubble that used to be me.
I could see the purple streaks in her hair. She was standing right there, dressed all in blue, leaning over me saying something, but for the life of me I couldn’t put the words together. She leaned closer. So close I could smell the mints on her breath. I watched as she reached over and picked up a blue plastic cup with a white straw. And then it clicked. It was one of those straws with wrinkles. Hospital straws. That’s when it all came back to me in a rush.
I tried to speak. She brought the straw to my lips. Felt like I was washing a tennis ball down my throat.
“Easy,” she said. “Easy.”
“Rebecca,” I rasped.
“Dr. Duvall?”
I nodded. It felt like my head was going to explode.
“Last I heard she was still in the ICU.”
“Is she . . . ?” Something inside me just couldn’t finish the question.
I watched as she refilled the glass and brought the straw to my lips again.
“I’m afraid that’s all I know,” she said. “We were busy with you.”
I nodded my thanks. “Sit me up,” I said. “Please.”
She motorized me into an upright position.
“Where’s my clothes?” I asked.
“Oh . . . I don’t think . . . you’ve been . . .” Her eyes flicked over to the wardrobe by the bathroom door. “Are you sure?”
I nodded. She reluctantly let the safety rail down. I swung my feet over the edge and set them on the floor.
She looked dubious. “There’s a couple gentlemen outside who’d like to have a word with you,” she said.
I stood up. My legs felt like Jell-O. I wobbled a bit as I began to shuffle forward. She reached out and put a steadying hand on my arm. “I’m okay,” I said. “Give me a few minutes to get dressed, and then send them in.”
They were standing inside the door when I came out of the bathroom. Two of them. Matching gray suits, milling around like they owned the joint. Something about carrying a gun in one pocket and the power of the state in the other changes the way a person relates to the universe. For as long as I could remember, that particular sense of privilege had always pissed me off.
“Mr. Waterman?” the older cop asked. He was about forty. Short and stocky, beginnings of a wattle under his chin.
“Or what’s left of him,” I said as I tucked in my shirt.
The other guy looked to be fresh off the farm. Under thirty, blond, broad across the chest, and well put together. One of those guys who looked like he either had to be a cop or a football coach.
“This is Paul Nelson,” the older guy said with a bob of the head toward his partner. “I’m Frank Krauss.” He walked over and handed me their business cards. Investigators for the DA’s office, both of them. I stuffed the cards in my pants pocket.
“We’d like to—” he started.
I cut him off. “You have any word on how my friend is doing?”
“Last I heard she hadn’t come around yet,” the younger guy said.
“We’ve got a few questions,” Krauss began.
“That makes three of us then,” I rasped as I zipped my pants. My throat felt as if somebody’d reamed it out with a wire brush. I shrugged myself into my damp coat.
“So you didn’t have any idea that she was planning to . . .”
“To what?”
They passed a weary look. The air in the room suddenly thickened.
“To what?” I said again.
“To take her own life,” Krauss said. “She hadn’t said anything to—”
“Are you shitting me? Take her own life? You think she—”
“What with recent events . . . ,” Nelson said.
“What events are those?” I growled.
“The charges . . . her suspension . . .”
I sidled over to the side of the bed and sat on the edge. “What the hell are you talking about? What charges? What suspension?”
They passed another one of those knowing cop looks.
“I’ve been out of town for a few days,” I said.
“Story broke on Monday,” Nelson said. “Dr. Duvall was suspended.”
“For what?”
“Falsifying evidence.”
“Pending a full investigation, of course,” Krauss added.
