Family Values

by Ford, G. M.

  “Exactly. They tell him to find the files. It doesn’t happen. They come to his house and threaten him. Maybe he tries to explain. So Sidney decides the best way to put this whole thing to rest is to kill you and make it look like suicide—that way you’ll take the blame, and Ibrahim can be reinstated and finish what he started. Which almost surely would have worked. But then when you didn’t die, I think maybe Ibrahim got a case of conscience and couldn’t bring himself to go through with it. Who knows? What we know for sure is that he doesn’t finish the job and return the files, so they kill him.”

  “What makes you think they threatened him?”

  “Nikka told me that some men had come to see her papa. Said Ibrahim told her not to say anything to them about the storage unit.”

  “So . . . they were pressing Ibrahim to make the files reappear . . . and when he can’t or won’t, they run him down.”

  I nodded. “It all goes back to all four of you getting suspended. Then their failure to kill you. If you’d died that first night, the whole stupid-ass scheme would have worked to perfection. Putting the files back would have been easy. All eyes would have been focused on your untimely disgrace and demise. Nobody else would have been suspended. Ibrahim could have just gone back to work, put everything back in its place, and waited for the DA’s investigators to find them; or he could have miraculously found them himself. Whatever Ibrahim had in mind for getting the files back went to the grave with him, so all we can do is guess.”

  “So what now? You going to storm The Highlands and drag Sidney out of his castle by the heels?”

  “Nope,” I said. “You know that line ‘just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you’? Sidney’s paranoid as hell. And rightly so. He should be. His position is dicey. He’s walking a tightrope, and he knows it. He can feel the whole house of cards beginning to sway in the breeze, and it makes him nervous as can be.”

  “This sounds more and more like a mystery story.”

  “Yeah,” I admitted, “it does. It’s the old story of someone’s past coming back to haunt them. Our boy Sidney gets caught screwing the pooch in his banishment posting, but by the time the shit starts to shake down, he’s married to one of the wealthiest women in the country, who probably wouldn’t believe why the diplomatic service fired him even if they’d admitted it. Things are looking good for Sidney. And then what happens? His two kids from previous marriages suddenly show up on his doorstep, one of who’s a junkie he’s been molesting since childhood. He volunteers to buy them a house in Europe—anything they want—just as long as they stay missing from his life. But Patricia Harrington isn’t having it. She insists they take them in, and all of a sudden, everything he’s put together is big-time at risk.” I paused for effect. “And he overreacts,” I said. “He’s so accustomed to getting what he wants, he believes he can fix anything. Why not? He’s got a whole collection of escaped war criminals to do his bidding. He knows who they really are and probably where to find most of them. He wants something done, they don’t have much choice except to do it for him. Things start to go to hell. Ibrahim either can’t or won’t make the files reappear. They kill him, and when I start snooping around, sticking my nose in things, Sidney really starts to sweat, so he decides Gabe and I’ve gotta go too. What the hell, it’s worked before, no reason it shouldn’t work again, right? He’s got his own little army.”

  “You better have eight-by-ten glossies of him holding a bloody ax in one hand and a bowling bag with a severed head in the other.”

  She was right. This wasn’t one of those places where I could go off half-cocked. Which was a pity, because I’d pretty much mastered that move. No . . . unfounded accusations weren’t gonna cut it here. Way too much sympathy for the Harringtons in this neck of the woods. No matter what, I had no intention of being the one who visited yet another tragedy on their regal heads. No way.

  “When you look back on the whole thing,” I said, “what Sidney should have done when Willard Frost came to him the first time was . . . nothing. He should have thrown Frost out on his ass and sat tight. I mean, the guys in that juvie cell that night weren’t in the same area code as credible witnesses. Murderers, a lifetime petty criminal, a moron, and a passed-out drunk, who later also turned out to be a murderer too. I mean, who was going to believe anything any of them said? First-year law students could have proved all of them unreliable witnesses with any five seconds they had to spare.”

  “The publicity was what he was afraid of,” Rebecca said. “Nothing Patricia Harrington likes less than her name in the paper. Except the society column, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  Again . . . she had a point. Sidney couldn’t afford the faintest whiff of scandal. Patricia Harrington’s refusal to believe unfounded rumors about her hubby was one thing. Finding the family smut plastered all over the front page again would be something else entirely. That was exactly the kind of thing that would get Sidney Crossfield thrown out on his ass. And with the kind of clout she had, community property or no community property, there was an excellent chance Patricia Harrington would end up pocketing Sidney’s secret money, rather than the other way around.

  “He just might get away with it,” Rebecca mused. “He can just sit up there in The Highlands and simply wait this thing out, hiding behind his wife and her billions. It’s like he’s on another planet, as far as the law is concerned. What he knows for sure is that absolutely nobody, and I mean nobody, in any position of authority is going to be knocking on his door anytime in the foreseeable future.”

  “Then we’ll have to get him to come out and play, won’t we?”

  Her expression suggested she had serious doubts. “Like how?”

  “Let’s give him the chance to do something stupid.”

  “How are we going to do that?”

  “I don’t know quite yet,” I said. “But I’ll figure something out. Like you said, I’ve had quite a bit of practice in that area.”

  Gabe leaned forward in the chair. “You know I’m on board here, Leo—you dent my skull and I’m a prime-time player—but there’s a serious fly in this ointment of yours,” Gabe said. “The kid. Charlie. If any of this shit you been running by me is true, then the only living link to what happened that night is Charlie. Somebody threatened me, like we been doing to Crossfield, I’d off that fucking kid in a heartbeat.” Gabe shrugged. “If you’re right, he already offed his own daughter. One more dead kid shouldn’t be any problem for an asshole like that.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m thinking that as far as Sidney’s concerned, Charlie’s pretty much always had a ‘use by’ date on him. I’d bet money that, once things cool down sufficiently, when everybody’s forgotten about Tracy, Charlie is going to have some sort of fatal accident or is going to escape from his keepers and never be seen again, and the whole thing will be written off as yet another unfortunate chapter in the Harrington family tragedy.”

  “And we gotta make sure that shit don’t happen,” Gabe growled. “We’re the ones been making our friend Crossfield nervous. Anything happens to that kid, at this point, I’ll feel like it’s our fault.”

  Gabe left to pick up Joey. I was still procrastinating, trying to work out what to do next, when the phone rang.

  “Leo,” I said.

  “I’m hearing they picked up a pair of assholes and got ’em dead to rights for the Willard Frost murder.” It was Eagen. No Robby the Robot this time, just Tim Eagen. “Got ’em on CCTV from a kite store up on Second Ave, which also got the license plate of the rental car they were driving. Traced ’em to a hotel down by Sea-Tac. Willard Frost’s CC camera and recorder were still in the trunk. They flew into town from Milwaukee day before yesterday. One of them left fingerprints all over the sap he used to puree Willard Frost’s frontal lobe. And get this—the other one of ’em’s got a case of road rash you wouldn’t believe.”

  “The flying dump truck driver,” I muttered.

  “Problem is,
they lawyered up and ain’t saying a thing. Not who they are, not nothin’, and neither of their prints are in the system either.”

  “Try Interpol,” I said.

  “In process.”

  I almost laughed out loud. “This is why Crossfield is so damn sure of himself. These guys don’t have any choice but to do what he wants. And he doesn’t have to worry about them rolling on him either, if something goes wrong, because no matter what, they’re not gonna admit to a damn thing,” I said. “Whatever happens to them here in the United States doesn’t begin to approach what would happen if they got sent home to face war criminal charges. I’m bettin’ they’ll take their chances with the American justice system.”

  “Sure as hell’s what I’d do,” Eagen said, and broke the connection.

  Before I could pocket the phone, it rang again.

  “Mr. Waterman?”

  “Speaking.”

  “This is LaTeisha.”

  I drew a blank. Pins dropped.

  “Tiger Mountain Lodge. Remember? You gave me your card.”

  “Sure I remember.”

  “They’re leaving.”

  Took me a second to process. “Charles Harrington?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Mr. Stocker, the GM, told me to call the cleaning company for Monday. Said they’re going to vacate the building this weekend.”

  My stomach took a dive toward my ankles.

  “When was this?” I asked.

  “Right after lunch today. I had to wait until I got home to call you. We’re not allowed to make personal calls.”

  “Well . . . ,” I stammered. “Thanks.”

  “Is Mr. Harrington okay?”

  “Yeah,” I lied. “I’m sure he’s fine.”

  It had been twenty-seven minutes since the gate guard had patched me through to the Harrington house and Thompson had connected me to Jessica. I was sitting in the driver’s seat of the rental car. Gabe was seated directly behind me. The guard had never taken his eyes off us the whole time we’d been sitting there.

  I was starting to get pessimistic. Thinking maybe what I’d told her hadn’t been enough to bring her around. Wishing I could have told her what her uncle Harry told me, but he’d made it clear that was confidential.

  I watched as Jessica Harrington walked up the private road and past the guard gate.

  The glow from the guard shack lit her way over to the passenger door. She climbed in. I introduced her to Gabe. They shook hands over the seat as I backed the car into a little alcove among the trees, away from the prying eyes of the guard.

  “You called Dr. Thorpe,” she said. “I told you about him in confidence.”

  I ignored her complaint. “He was dubious as hell but said he’d take Charlie back as long as the legal ducks were all in a row.”

  She closed her eyes and leaned back in the seat.

  “I don’t understand what you think I can do,” she said.

  “You said you had your mother’s power of attorney.”

  She slowly leaned forward, looked over at me.

  “But Charlie’s Sidney’s child . . .”

  “Your mother adopted him. That means she’s got the same legal rights regarding Charlie as Sidney does, and since you have her power of attorney, that makes you one of his legal guardians too.”

  “And you expect me to go against my mother’s wishes?”

  “From what I saw, it’s not against her wishes. She’s the one who first mentioned Dr. Thorpe’s name to me. Seemed to me she was in favor of the idea.”

  She rolled her eyes. “They’ve been arguing about it ever since your last visit.”

  “Look at it as an intervention.”

  “And you need me to keep it legal.”

  “Thorpe checked with his legal department. He won’t do it without a signature from either you or your mother . . .”

  “Kidnapping’s twenty-five to life,” Gabe said from the back seat. “I feel bad about what’s happened with Charlie, but not that bad.”

  She thought it over. “Those two . . . nurses of his, or whatever you call them,” she said finally. “They’re not going to step aside and let you take Charlie.”

  “We’ll take care of the hired help.”

  She looked from Gabe to me and then back out the side window, as if trying to decide whether we were up to the task. “Shouldn’t you have an ambulance on hand for Charlie?”

  “He’s not ambulatory?” I said. “When I saw him, he was up and around.”

  “My mother is very old-fashioned. The man of the family and all that. The idea of her defying Sidney . . .”

  “Charlie’s the only loose end,” Gabe added. “He’s the only thing between Sidney and getting away clean. If you ask me, Charlie’s not long for this world.”

  The car got quiet.

  “Thorpe says they’ll be waiting for us,” I said, “prepared to do a complete psychiatric evaluation.”

  A long minute passed. She slowly shook her head.

  “No. No. No. I can’t do this,” Jessica Harrington announced. “This is just not possible. Mother would never forgive me.” She reached for the door handle.

  I was still working on how to keep her in the car when a pair of halogen headlights lit up the access road heading out of The Highlands. The guard barely got the gate open in time. The car rocketed through the opening, passing no more than six feet from my front bumper as it raced by.

  “Fancy ride,” Gabe offered.

  “Aston Martin,” Jessica said, through clenched teeth. “That’s Sidney’s car.”

  “Sits on the road like a tiger,” Gabe said.

  “When he brought it home, I looked it up on the Internet. A bit over a million and a half.”

  Gabe whistled.

  “You better get out,” I said to her. “Things are about to get ugly.”

  She took a deep breath, folded her arms across her chest. “No,” she said. “In for a penny, in for a pound. Let’s go.”

  I started the car, dropped it into gear, and eased out of the leafy bower. By the time I got to the light at Greenwood, Sidney was two cars in front of me. I followed him up 145th, over Aurora, and through the woods to the I-5 freeway entrance.

  In the movies, once we got to the freeway, the Aston Martin would put the pedal to the metal and leave the Tahoe in the dust. In reality, Seattle traffic was way too thick for any of that Hollywood crap. Even the HOV lane was bumper-to-bumper with Friday-night revelers. We were both tooling along at a fast and furious fifty-five.

  I moved over into the center lane and followed at a respectful distance. Nobody said a word until Sidney took the on-ramp for the I-90 bridge.

  “I’ll be damned,” Jessica said. “He’s going to Issaquah.” She clamped her arms over her chest. “I was telling myself you were wrong. That maybe he was going someplace else. That Sidney couldn’t possibly be as much of a shit as you claimed he was . . . but . . .” She stopped herself. “That son of a bitch,” she mumbled.

  Traffic began to thin out after we rolled past Factoria. Sidney kept his rocket ship at a stolid sixty until we hit the Snoqualmie Falls exit, at which point he put his foot into it and shot away from us.

  I fed the Tahoe some gas, got her up to a cheek-flapping eighty-five or so, but couldn’t begin to keep pace with Sidney’s million and a half bucks. So I stifled a curse, took it back down to the speed limit, and watched his taillights fade to pinpoints.

  Six minutes later, we were at the exit. Another four and we pulled into the Tiger Mountain Lodge parking lot. I wheeled left and turned off the headlights. No sense giving them any advance warning. Jessica was the first to notice.

  “Where’s Sidney?” she asked.

  No Aston Martin. No Sidney. Thinking he may have stealth-parked elsewhere in the parking lot, I crimped the wheel and took a full lap of the parking facilities. Half a dozen beater cars in the staff section, but otherwise nothing but unoccupied asphalt.

  “We better get on with what we came here to do,” G
abe said.

  I swung the car left and then right, looping around curbs and islands, until we’d covered every nook and cranny in the lot and were back at the rear of Charlie’s house.

  I don’t think Jessica Harrington fully appreciated the gravity of what was about to come down until I reached under my seat, pulled up the Smith & Wesson, and began to check it one last time. Her eyelids quivered at the sight of the gun. She looked over the seat as if hoping for a soothing word from Gabe, only to find Gabe checking the slide on that big, shiny automatic of theirs.

  I looked up from my gun to find her staring at me in disbelief.

  “You’re not going to shoot anybody, are you?” she asked.

  “Sure hope not.”

  “Don’t plan on gettin’ shot, though, neither,” Gabe said from the back seat.

  Gabe and I popped open our doors and stepped out into the night. The air was colder up here, and it had begun to spit rain. Beneath a thick ribbon of clouds, Tiger Mountain loomed above the lodge like an ogre.

  Jessica Harrington hadn’t budged. She was staring out through the windshield with a thousand-yard stare. A muscle in her cheek twitched rhythmically. I leaned back into the car. “Might be best if you stayed in the car,” I said, holding out the keys to her. “Things get dicey, I don’t want to have to keep track of what’s going on with you.”

  She looked over at me as if she’d awakened on an alien planet and was trying to figure out where in the galaxy she was. She shook her head, like she was having an argument with herself. “Oh God,” she huffed finally, as she grabbed the door handle and stepped out of the car.

  I slid the Smith & Wesson into my belt at the small of my back, reached under the seat again, and found a crowbar I’d stashed earlier in the day.

  “New crowbar?” Gabe inquired.

  “Yeah,” I said. “True Value Hardware. Cops got the other one.”

  “Shall we?”

  “Indeed,” I said.

  We covered the forty yards to the back door on tiptoes. The rain had picked up, coming down now in a steady rush as we approached the back of the building, the hiss of falling water covering the sound of our advance as we slogged along.