Purple Knot

by Raquel Byrnes

  “No. That would take forever, if we heard anything at all. No, this site also gives us access to millions of people who know about photography and video. Salem had a picture of this seedy looking guy who met with our disposal tech, Shane, but it wasn’t very good. It needs to be cleaned up, but we don’t have access to that type of software or computing power.”

  “But any one of the people on the site might,” Jimmy added.

  I nodded. I signed into the site and searched for Salem’s post. Salem hadn’t been wrong. The bad lighting and too much distance made the man’s face almost impossible to make out. Salem’s comments on his post asked for help cleaning up the image. Jimmy pointed to the reply column under Salem’s query.

  “Looks like you have a few hits.”

  I scanned through the five results and clicked the last one. It was from a site member with a high rating. I pointed it out to Jimmy. “This site assigns points to your account every time you reply to a post. These stars mean he or she is highly rated.”

  The reply was short. I ran your image through some programs here at work. This is the best I can do. Hope this helps. ~ NiteWriter6

  The reply had a link and I clicked it. Salem’s image opened. Nitewriter6 had done a great job cleaning up the image. The man’s face was very clear, as was the logo on his vest. It was a black circle with red eyes staring out.

  “Huh.”

  “What is that a leather vest? Did Shane go back to the eighties to meet this guy? The braided pony tail ties it all together, though, don’t you think?” Jimmy asked.

  “This site is an image database. I can type in search parameters and see what comes up.”

  I typed in a search for patch logos with black background and red eyes. One match came up. “Dark Legion.”

  “Sounds like a vampire coven,” Jimmy murmured.

  “Let’s see what happens when we just do a general news search.”

  I entered the name, Dark Legion, in a news search engine and got several hits, all recent.

  “Looks like Dark Legion is a motorcycle gang.”

  Jimmy pointed to the next link. “Try that one. It’s from here, from Washington.”

  The Seattle Times had run a series of articles about the growing drug traffic problem. The report sighted federal studies that put Seattle as a major beltway for guns and drugs coming from Northern Washington and Canada. Several gangs were blamed, but the only definitive proof came when the leader of a local chapter of the Dark Legion was killed in a raid of his home. Police found twenty pounds of marijuana as well as almost two hundred guns and semi automatic weapons on the property.

  The sinking feeling in my gut got worse. If Shane was meeting with a guy affiliated with this Dark Legion then chances are it wasn’t because the guy was his AA sponsor.

  “Did we just link Parker to a motorcycle gang?” Jimmy sat back in his chair, shocked.

  I stared at the picture of the Dark Legion guy and shuddered. Had he realized that Salem was following him and got spooked? Had this felon come to my room and hurt my friend instead of me? I bit back tears. Now was not the time to get all weepy.

  “OK, help me sort this out,” I said to Jimmy. “Parker is linked to Shane the laboratory tech. They both work at Veno Pharmaceuticals.”

  “Right, Salem followed Shane after his meeting with Parker and saw Shane meet with this guy,” he said and pointed to the computer screen. “A possible motorcycle gang member.”

  “This is all starting to make sense.” My mind buzzed, and my heart raced.

  “Sorry, what?”

  “Parker and Shane aren’t set up to cook the meth, but I’ll bet this Dark Legion guy is. If Parker tried to back out of a deal with this guy because of the audit, I could see it getting really ugly.”

  Jimmy nodded, his eyes darkening. “Yeah, but we need more proof than this. I mean, the most we can accuse Shane of right now is making bad friend choices. And we don’t know who he met with, not really. We don’t even know this gang member’s name.”

  Something ticked in the back of my mind and I dug in my purse for the notebook I used at Maurice’s house. I handed the notes to Jimmy and started typing into the search engine. “The detective at the scene of Summer’s attack made a sketch of a pill they found next to Summer.”

  “No one said anything about drugs found near my sister,” Jimmy accused me. “Why am I just hearing about this?”

  How could I be so stupid? I hadn’t thought about what finding this out might do to Jimmy.

  “Jimmy,” I said quietly. “Maurice said that Parker’s family told the detectives Summer was on drugs, and that she’d agreed to go into treatment. They said that was where Parker was on the night of her murder. Maurice said they made their request for discretion out to be some sort of protection for Summer’s reputation.”

  “That’s ridiculous! Summer would never do drugs. She wouldn’t even take aspirin!” Jimmy stood up abruptly.

  “There’s no way to prove that, Jimmy. Parker’s family stopped the coroner from doing a toxicology report, and had her buried right away.”

  “Then we do an exhumation. We get a court order and prove she wasn’t doing drugs.” He waved his arms as he spoke and with his messy hair, resembled a maniacal orchestra conductor.

  “Or…we nail Parker to the wall and prove he’s a liar.” I found the copy I’d pulled from the murder book and handed it to Jimmy.

  “Do you know what kind of knot this is?” He looked at it with a frown. After a few seconds he looked back at me with surprise. “This is a bowline, Rain. It’s a knot only a sailor would know.”

  “A bowline?”

  “Sometimes it’s called the ‘king of knots’, but yeah, the bowline is multi-purpose knot that you use to secure a line to a bollard…that’s a post on a pier, or to another boat. I learned to make this when I was little.” Jimmy ran his finger along the lines of the sketch.

  “What, were you sailing at birth?” When I thought about it, he probably was. The Corbeaus loved them some boats.

  “You probably know the memory aid for tying this knot; rabbit comes out of the hole, runs around the tree, and goes back down the hole?”

  “Yeah, well I’ve never heard of it.” I raised my eyebrow, unconvinced.

  “Exactly,” Jimmy said. “Because you’re not a sailor, but Parker is. He even competes in regattas.”

  “So this type of knot, a biker dude wouldn’t know it right? I mean it’s not a square knot, or a noose, or something.”

  “Right, why stamp your product with a symbol you don’t understand, unless you’re in business with someone who does know what it means?”

  “But why would it be purple? That’s not really manly.” I stared at the sketch.

  “Because in the sailing world there’s a type of anchor rope that is the strongest for its weight. It’s deep purple in color. I’ve seen it on Parker’s boat. He was bragging about it because it floats, and he thought that was cool. He said only a handful of people have it, because it’s not available in the states yet.”

  I hadn’t realized that rope doesn’t normally float, but kept it to myself. “This is too good,” I said. “Parker is so arrogant. He probably thought it made a great inside joke.”

  “Yeah, who’d put it together?”

  I nodded. I was finally catching up to Parker. “I bet the narcotics guys at the police department have a way to check who is affiliated with that tablet symbol. Maurice said they’ve seen that type of branding before with something called China Red. I’d wager a year’s salary that Dark Legion is linked to this Purple Knot drug somehow.”

  “This is all great circumstantial evidence, but I wouldn’t go to trial with it, Rain.” Jimmy stood up and paced the study. Something was bothering him. “We need to definitively tie Parker to the gang somehow. Right now, he’s just phone harassing a technician in his department. It’s Shane who met with this biker guy, not Parker.”

  “Wait,” I said, and snapped my fingers. “Remember the
supply lists Parker was looking at? There must be evidence that the pseudo-ephedrine went missing from his department. Shane was supposed to dispose of it and didn’t, so Parker should have noticed that no disposal tickets came back for the product.”

  “Now that the company faces an audit, that fact will come to light. Maybe Parker backed out of the deal and set off the biker people,” Jimmy finished.

  “If I was Parker, I’d be going crazy trying to cover my tracks.”

  Jimmy rubbed his hands through his hair, frustrated. “Rain, if the police aren’t considering Parker for Summer’s murder, then he isn’t being watched. Without a tail, Parker is free to destroy evidence. He could be doing it as we speak! All he’d have to do is shred the supply documents. Things get accidentally destroyed all the time, especially when you have that many temporary employees.”

  “Yeah, but he’ll have to go deeper than that. Veno Pharmaceuticals probably keeps copies of all the paperwork in some sort of archive.” I flipped through my notebook. “Companies either use an internal archive on their own server, or they contract out. I know the archives aren’t on site, Salem checked that out the day he got the human resources information.”

  Jimmy grabbed a phone book from the shelf and flipped to the Archival Services listings. “OK, well, is there any way of knowing which company they archive their information with?” Jimmy asked.

  “No, I mean, we can call around, but that would take too long. I doubt they’ll give information on clients. Anyway, we have to catch Parker doing something suspicious with the company files. To do that, I have to set up surveillance on him and right now, I have no idea where he is.”

  “Do you think he’ll do something soon?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I mean, if I had a motorcycle gang breathing down my neck and a company audit coming down the pike that might implicate me in drug dealing, I’d fry those files as fast as I could.”

  “So there’s no point in going to his office, the paper files are probably already long gone.” Jimmy tapped his knuckles on the desk, thinking.

  I nodded. “Parker’s next logical step would be to take out the electronic files. After those are gone, it may look suspicious to the auditors, but if he’s able to do it without detection, there’d be no way to definitively prove he deleted them. I mean, it’s his department, but no file is better than a damning one.”

  “He wouldn’t even have to limit the damage to his department’s files. Given enough time and the right software, Parker could make the information loss look like a global system problem. If it were me, I’d upload a virus to erase my specific files as well as some from a few other departments. The more information is lost, the less it would look like something specific was the target. No one would know it was Parker.” Jimmy added.

  “Do you really think Parker has the technical chops to pull off that kind of cover up? How would you get a hold of a computer virus anyway? Its not like there’s a Hackers-R-Us down the road.” I wouldn’t be able to pull that one off myself, and I know my way around a computer. Parker always struck me as a jock skating in a cake job.

  “That company is full of science geeks. There’s got to be someone who works at Veno who could write that kind of code.” Jimmy shook his head.

  “How would I do it if I didn’t have access to super hackers and…intelligence?” I didn’t think Parker would go the stealthy electronic route. He was too much of a ham-fisted moron for that. I paced the floor thinking. How would I cover my tracks if I was in a panic and completely devoid of creativity? I was stumped. Anything I came up with took planning and time. Parker didn’t have the luxury of either. I stopped pacing and looked at Jimmy. “Regardless of what Parker plans to do, he’ll do it tonight for sure. We’ve got to get the picture of this Dark Legion guy to the detective on Summer’s case.”

  “You think it was this Dark Legion guy that attacked Summer?” Jimmy’s eyebrows shot up.

  I hesitated for a second, then nodded.

  “How do you figure?”

  “This tablet wasn’t drugs Summer was taking. This tablet was a calling card, a message to Parker by the Black Legion that he’d better deliver.” I held up the sketch of the drug tablet.

  “Parker’s illegal dealings with these bikers got Summer killed?” Jimmy’s shoulders slumped.

  “I think so.”

  “And the attack on you…or Salem, rather…who do you think that was?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “It could be Shane, or it could be this motorcycle guy. I’m sure the police will check the hotel’s surveillance cameras, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

  “So what now?”

  I looked at the pill sketch and then my notes. The coroner had noted multiple blows to Summer’s body. That kind of rage seemed out of place, but who knew what kind of psychopath showed up to threaten Summer. Maybe it was an accident she died. My stomach turned, and I fought back the urge to cry. I was glad Jimmy hadn’t seen the photos of his sister’s home after the attack. “My guess is that no matter who he’s working with, Parker will watch out for number one.”

  “You think he’ll go after the computer files tonight?” Jimmy asked.

  I nodded.

  “Can you track him safely?” Concern crossed Jimmy’s face, and he leaned in toward me.

  “I can track him.” I smiled, happy to finally have Jimmy on board.

  Purple Knot

  34

  Over the course of my many visits with Summer I had become acquainted with her Brazilian housekeeper. Partly because Summer was never ready on time, and partly because Teresa was a really nice person. We chatted in the kitchen and she fed me Bolo de São Pedro, St. Paul’s cake, while I waited for Summer. I knew Parker wasn’t home, but maybe Teresa was there.

  Jimmy drove us there, and we parked in the back driveway, the one used for deliveries. Butterflies swirled through my insides, but when I saw Teresa’s form through the kitchen window I went to the door. I knocked on the glass. She smiled when she saw me and opened up. When she saw Jimmy, she faltered and looked behind her.

  “You should not be here,” she breathed.

  “I know, Teresa, and I don’t want to cause trouble for you, but Jimmy and I really need your help.”

  She eyed us with indecision.

  “We can catch him, if you help,” he whispered. “Parker needs to pay for all he’s done.” Then Jimmy reached out, took her hand, and smiled warmly.

  Teresa’s eyes filled and she looked at Jimmy with such sadness. All the times she heard Parker and Summer fighting, all the times she didn’t call the police, must’ve been flashing in her head. Guilt, if anything, would compel her to help us. She nodded curtly and then pointed outside. “Mr. Evans is not here, but…” She didn’t want to betray Parker in his own house.

  We followed her to the greenhouse. Summer loved to garden. She’d grown all of her own herbs and teas. Walking inside and smelling the lavender brought back biting memories, and I blinked back salty tears. I had a mission. I had to stay focused.

  “The police, they said they have finished with the room, but I cannot go in there.”

  Jimmy ground his jaw and I could see his body tense.

  “It must be hard to be here,” I said. “Will you stay?”

  “Mr. Evans is not a suspect,” she said. It was more of a question than a statement. Her eyes searched mine and then Jimmy’s.

  “Not yet,” I said evenly. “But, almost.”

  “Mr. Evans has not been home since…since Mrs. Evans was attacked, but…”

  “You know where he is staying?” I put my hand on her arm.

  “He called and told me to send some of his suits to a cleaner in the city.”

  “He’s staying in Seattle city center?” Jimmy frowned.

  “Well, the cleaner is on Chad street. I think there are hotels there, no?”

  “Yes there are.” I nodded.

  “Does this help you?”

  “Yes it does. Thank you Teresa, you r
eally have helped us.”

  As I turned to leave, she reached into her pocket and handed me the cleaner’s claim ticket.

  “Mr. Evans is a very bad man,” Teresa whispered through tears. “I wish…I wish that I could have…”

  “Me too, Teresa, me too.” I took the ticket.

  Jimmy climbed behind the wheel and started the car without a word. We drove in silence for a few minutes before I couldn’t stand the look on his face anymore.

  “You look like you got punched in the stomach.”

  “Being in that house…”

  I nodded. Violence leaves a coldness that is unmistakable. Maurice thought it was rubbish, but I believed it because I’d felt it before. “I know.”

  “So where too?” Jimmy sighed and pulled us out onto the main road.

  I looked up the claim ticket’s address on my phone and used the online mapping website to find the cleaners. “Looks like Expressway Cleaners is at 2705 Chad street.”

  Fifteen minutes later, we parked across the street from the cleaners. It was a small storefront business, a mom and pop operation with a neon green hangar buzzing in the front window.

  “What?”

  “This is weird.” Jimmy leaned to take a look and then sighed.

  “What do you mean?” I rolled down my window and leaned out to look down the street.

  “If Parker is staying at a hotel, wouldn’t he use the in-house dry cleaners?”

  “Not if he was trying to lay low.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s probably paranoid about anyone finding out where he’s at. If someone staked out his house and followed Teresa to the cleaners, they’d just find this place. A concierge would arrange for Parker’s suits to be picked up here and transported to the hotel. How could you follow someone if you don’t know what they look like?”

  “Isn’t that what our problem is now?”

  “Yeah, but I’ve got skills.”

  I dialed the cleaner’s number and put my finger to my lips, a signal for Jimmy to be quiet. I peered through the window of the shop and saw a young man, maybe in his teens answer the phone.