by Nick Pirog
Yikes.
After two or three minutes, Erica had a substantial lead on me. I could see the beam of her flashlight bobbing and weaving thirty feet below me. I grabbed hold of the trunk of a large madrona and lowered myself down a couple feet. The soil was slippery and I nearly lost my footing. When I righted myself, I noticed the beam of Erica’s flashlight was no longer visible. I called her name but only a dull echo responded. I’m not sure if she was physically unable to answer or if her pride was caught in her throat.
I picked my way down to where I’d last seen her and continued to shout her name. After a couple seconds, I heard a faint, “Over here.”
I headed in that direction. After about thirty seconds of “Marco, Polo,” I found her. I shined my flashlight in her face. She squinted her eyes against the light. “You okay, sport?” I tried for my most concerned tone.
She’d slid about twenty feet down and was hanging onto an exposed root jutting from the ground. Half her body dangled off a steep drop-off. I watched as she attempted to pull herself up, but the incline was too steep and she couldn’t get a footing.
I inched closer and shined the flashlight down on the terrain below. If she lost her grip she was going to go for quite the tumble. It would go something like crash, bang, slice, snap, splash, gurgle, eulogy.
She forced a smile. “Never better.”
“Really, because you don’t look like you’re all right.”
She made a noise.
“Did you know you’re dangling off a fifty-foot drop-off?”
“I’m aware of that.” She had an underlying defiance in her voice that I didn’t appreciate.
“Have you ever seen The English Patient?”
“The movie?”
“Yeah, the movie The English Patient. The one where the guy goes to the desert and gets sick.”
“Sure. Yeah. Sounds familiar.”
“Man, does it take him awhile to die. What, like, almost four hours?”
“Uh. Yeah, long, uh, long movie.” She glanced at her fingers, they appeared to be tiring.
“What do you suppose he had?”
“Who?”
“The guy from that movie. What do you suppose he had? You know, to make him so sick?”
She opened and closed her eyes a couple times. I could tell she was really wracking her brain for this. Or maybe she was getting exhausted from hanging off a cliff. Probably a combination of the two. Finally she said, “Um, he had cancer. Yeah. Some sort of cancer.”
“Cancer, huh. You sure? I’m thinking it was some sort of pox. Chicken or small.”
“Could have been.” Her fingers were going frantic, slipping, readjust ting. She looked up. The defiance was gone, swapped for pure and utter panic. She said, “Um, listen, do you suppose you could lend me a hand here?”
I bent down, grabbed her arm, and pulled her up. She was surprisingly light.
Her flashlight had come to rest about six feet from her. I plucked it from the mud and wiped the lens clean with my sleeve. I handed it back to her, gave her a soft pat on the shoulder, and started picking my way down the bluff. Through the trees, of course.
From that point on, Erica followed behind me.
Chapter 5
After a couple minutes of silence, I turned and asked the detective, who was nipping at my heels, “Do you mind my asking how old you are?”
“Yes.”
I waited for her to elaborate. She did not.
I turned and stared at her.
She said, “I’ll be 26 in two weeks.”
“You’re 25?”
She nodded.
“Isn’t that pretty young for a detective?”
She shrugged. “I guess so. The rule of thumb is usually three years working the beat, but when the position opened up I was the obvious choice.”
I knew the rule of thumb. “And when was this?”
“About ten days ago.”
I stopped and turned. “Are you shitting me?”
“Nope.”
I wanted to tell Detective Erica Frost what I used to tell my students on the first day of class. “Don’t do this. Walk out that door right now and find something else. It will ruin you. It will eat you up from the inside. It will rip out your heart and poison your brain. You’ve all seen Ghostbusters? It’s like where they put all those ghosts. You store them in this little part of your brain. A part you can’t see, a part they don’t have a name for, a part that won’t show up on a CAT scan, and you lock them away. Now, it might be thirty years from now, but eventually something is going to flip that switch and let all those ghosts loose. And you can’t put them back. You can’t ever lock them up again. Do yourself a favor, get up, walk out that door, and never look back.” In three semesters only one kid left. He became a real estate agent. Then one of his clients killed him. Life’s funny sometimes.
Erica snapped me from my reverie. “And what do you do for a living?”
“I’m retired.”
“Well, what is it you used to do?”
“I used to be a party planner.”
“Really? You don’t strike me as the type.”
“Yep. I specialized in Retirement and Going Away.”
“You’re serious?”
“Yeah. Why? You need something planned? I also do Graduation and Coming Out.”
“Not right now. But if I do you’re the first person I’ll call.”
We made it to the small landing where I’d stopped earlier. We both swept our flashlights over the dark water. The tide had gone out and had taken the white water with it. Erica moved her flashlight to the area just to our right and said, “Is that a wallet?”
She knelt down and pulled my wallet from where I’d hid it just an hour earlier.
“It’s probably the killer’s.” Figured I’d throw that out there.
She ignored me.
She flipped the wallet open and shined her flashlight on the license. She looked from the license to me, then back to the license, then back to me. “Six foot. Brown hair. Blue eyes. 180 lbs.” She flipped the wallet closed and handed it to me. Then she said with a smirk, “Consider yourself a suspect, Mr. Prescott.”
I smiled, took the wallet from her, and put it in my pocket.
The body was where I’d left it. Erica sidled up to what was left of the woman, training her flashlight on the partially devoured flesh. She went down on her haunches, wrinkling her nose in the process. I guess the smell was getting to her. She looked up at me and asked, “What do you suppose happened to her?”
“Probably some killer whales nibbling on her. There’s a bunch of other stuff out there. Sharks, sea dogs, giant salmon. All kinds of weird stuff.” Just ask Captain Nemo.
Erica pulled a latex glove from her pocket and slipped it onto her right hand. She grabbed the woman’s chin and gently lolled it to the side. She looked up at me, then back at the woman. Her mouth was gaping and I prodded, “I’m guessing you know who she is?”
“You don’t?”
“If I knew who she was, I wouldn’t have referred to her as the dead lady with the bullet hole in her forehead.”
“This is Ellen Gray.”
“No way.”
She nodded, and an evil smile lit her face. I knew that smile all too well. Without her saying a word, I knew she’d just caught the case of a lifetime. A career maker.
I asked, “Are you sure this is Ellen Gray?”
“Positive.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“Yep. It’s her.”
“Can I ask you one question?”
“Sure.”
“Who the fuck is Ellen Gray?”
She gave me an inquisitive glare. “You really don’t know?”
I really didn’t and shook my head.
“She’s the governor of Washington.”
We both looked at the body and I said, “You mean was.”
Chapter 6
The wheels were in motion. Thanksgiving was about to end for a whole lo
t of people. The plan was for me to hike back up to the house and wait for the cavalry to arrive. Then play Sherpa. Which of course I wouldn’t do. I’d done my part. I’d found the body. Called the authorities. Passed the buck. My hands were clean. I would have to give a short statement to the crime scene recorder and then I could forget all about my thirty-third Thanksgiving, Erica Frost, and Ellen Gray.
Speaking of Ellen, after Erica had made a couple phone calls, she’d spent the next few minutes filling me in on the ex-governor of Washington.
According to Erica, Ellen Gray had been the governor of Washington the past term and had been up for reelection this fall. Which means she was first elected four years after I’d bid the Evergreen State farewell.
Apparently, on October 15—roughly six weeks before—the governor went for a Sunday afternoon hike in the North Cascades, a weekly routine during which she allowed no one—not her daughters, her husband, any of her closest friends, not even someone from her security detail—to accompany her. She’d been chided for this repeatedly, but she wouldn’t budge. It was her single, solitary, block of time away from the public, from the demands of family, friends, and the entire state of Washington.
Governor Gray had not been seen again.
Within hours of her disappearance, the largest search and rescue operation in Washington history was under way. Thirty helicopters, a thousand uniformed men, one hundred public officials, and an outreach of citizens so overwhelming they had to start turning people away. Twelve hours into the search, the governor’s backpack was found, nestled in a bush at the edge of a glacial ravine six miles deep into the mountains. It contained a Ziploc bag of trailmix, a North Cascades map, a disposable camera, some Benadryl, and a bottled water. No other traces of Ellen would be found.
The search went on for days, then weeks.
She’d vanished.
For the first couple weeks, Erica said, you couldn’t escape the story. It ran on every channel, every minute of every day. The public demanded answers. Was it an accident? People went missing and died in the treacherous North Cascades all the time. Had she slipped and fallen into one of the many raging rivers? Did she fall into one of the many glacial ravines as her backpack would indicate? Had she been attacked by a bear or a mountain lion?
These were the most logical of answers, but the many conspiracy theorists felt Governor Gray had been kidnapped. Or murdered.
As always, the husband had been the primary suspect. But Adam Gray wasn’t your ordinary husband; he was a lawyer, a lawyer who according to Miss Frost had just this September been named as one of Forbes 100 Most Powerful People.
Adam was used to the spotlight and flourished in it. He had a solid alibi, but the overall consensus from folks was that he was still somehow involved in his wife’s disappearance. But over time, as no evidence surfaced, people began to accept that their beloved governor had died in a tragic accident.
Finally, on the second Tuesday of November, a funeral for Ellen Ann Gray was held. A small private ceremony for friends and family was held, as well as a public funeral at Qwest Stadium. Every seat of the 72,000-capacity stadium was occupied with another 40,000 watching on the telescreen at nearby Safeco Field. A reported three million people tuned in at home. Schools were canceled. Businesses closed for the day. A city mourned.
Forty-three days later, Ellen Gray’s body was found.
. . .
A Seattle Sheriff’s Department patrol car was parked in my drive when I reached the house. Its red and blue lights danced in the moonlight and its windshield wipers sloshed to and fro in a losing battle with the returning rain.
I rapped on the driver’s side window and two cops stepped out. Both wore blue windbreakers and mustaches. Their names were Bill and Ted. Seriously. I was tempted to ask them where their phone booth was but decided against it.
Ted was the crime scene recorder and he made me sign my name, give a saliva swab, recite my ATM code, and do a ten-second headstand. I’m lying about the last few, of course, but I was officially logged in, subject to deposition, and basically at the county’s disposal.
At least Cole Trickle was.
They asked what the fastest way down to the crime scene was and I told them the gondola. Ted laughed. Bill didn’t.
I directed them to where the hill began and said, “It’s steep. Don’t trip. Have an excellent adventure.”
They started down and I headed for the door. In about an hour this place was going to be a three-ring circus. The patrol car blinking in my drive would be joined by about five of his brethren and God knows what else. Not to mention, if the Ellen Gray story leaked—and it would, and quickly—the news vans might get here before the police cruisers.
After drying off, I went to the kitchen, grabbed another slice of pizza, and retired to the living room, flopping into the black recliner. Twenty minutes passed when I heard the first thwack of an approaching helicopter. I could see its light move over my house and disappear into Prescott Cove. The bigwigs had arrived.
I went to the front door and peered through the peephole. I counted five police cars, three unmarked Chevys, and a large van with Seattle County Forensics inscribed on the side. No sign of any media moguls. Yet.
I made my way out to the balcony and surveyed the scene below. A series of lights had been erected and I could make out six or seven people milling about on the small landing five hundred feet below. The rain had softened a bit, coming down at a steep angle through the bright light. It looked like they were shooting a scene in a movie. If I squinted, I could just barely make out Ellen Gray playing the role of Half Eaten Dead Governor. She committed to the scene like few could. I smelled an Oscar nomination.
A man in a suit leaned over the body. It was immediately evident he was the leading man, the actor who commanded $15 million a picture. It was obvious he was calling the shots. Crime Scene Photographer squatted and took snapshots. Hot Detective in Red Sweater conversed with Cop 1 (Bill) and Cop 2 (Ted.) Plus, a bunch of stagehands in the shadows.
Crime scenes are far less exciting than people think. Within fifteen minutes the body had been bagged and most of the people had departed. They left the lights on for the science geeks—who would comb over the area with tweezers and ultraviolet lights and Bunsen burners—but by 9:00 P.M. all the major players were playing to the cameras in the street.
On this note, I made my way upstairs into Lacy’s old bedroom and to her window. It had a good angle to the street and I counted five news vans. Lots of prime numbers. Plus CNN. I soaked up the scene for a couple minutes, then heard a knock at the door. I descended the stairs and pulled the door open. There were three of them.
My good friend Erica Frost and two gentlemen. The man on Erica’s left had unruly black hair plastered to his forehead, which complemented an untidy beard the same color. He had designer glasses pushed down on his nose and wore a white lab coat over a stained white undershirt. His glasses were foggy from the rain and the man pulled them off, lifted his undershirt, and began massaging the lenses. In lifting his shirt, he exposed a thick belly of coarse black hair. He was covered in hair. Hands, forearms, tufts peeking from his shirt. It was like the Cro-Magnon man meets Peter Jackson.
The man to Erica’s right was the man I’d seen leaning over Ellen Gray’s corpse. The leading man. He was a good-enough looking fellow with receding blonde curls and a heavy ten o’clock shadow. He had two inches on me, twenty pounds, and ten years. Tiny crow’s-feet had begun to adhere at the edges of his eyes, but overall he’d aged well since I’d last seen him. His nose had been broken once. I’d know—I broke it.
Erica smiled and said, “Thomas, I’d like to introduce Dr. Hans Rebstien, Seattle’s Chief Medical Examiner, as well as Detective Sergeant Ethan Kates.”
Hans put his glasses back on then broke into a wide smile. He extended his hand and said, “Thomaz. Thomaz. Zo good to zee you again.” Hans was from Germany and still carried a thick accent. Apparently they don’t make S’s in Germany.
> Erica looked on, perplexed. Surely, she was wondering why Thomas the Party Planner knew Hans the Medical Examiner. Her confusion would increase.
I acknowledged Ethan with a nod. If you looked up self-righteous prick on Wikipedia, a picture of Ethan Kates would come up.
I said, “So you’re a sergeant now.”
Ethan was always chewing gum. In the two years I worked with him, I’d never seen him when he wasn’t chewing his cud. Tonight was no different. He took three chomps on the right side of his mouth, then switched sides. Three more chomps.
Erica put her hands up and said, “Wait. How do you know these guys?”
“I’ll let you in on a secret. I wasn’t a party planner. “
She furrowed her brow. “You were a cop?”
“Detective. Homicide. Same as you.”
Ethan took another chomp and said, “Let’s cut the bullshit, Prescott. What the fuck are you doing here?”
I raised my eyebrows. “Um, I live here. Usually when someone answers the door and stands in the doorway, it’s because they live there.”
This guy was a detective?
He nodded to himself and started chomping again, then he looked at Erica. “This is the guy who found the body.” It was less of a question and more of an accusation.
She nodded.
Ethan’s cell phone rang and he flipped it open. He took a couple steps backward and put the phone to his ear.
Erica took a step forward and said, “How long were you with the SPD?”
“I don’t know. I did a year on the beat, then I was a detective for a couple years.”
“What precinct?”
“South.”
“What happened?”
Ethan was back and answered for me, “He was let go.”
Erica stared at me. “You were fired?”
I nodded.
“Why?”
“I stole some office supplies.” I’d really needed a hole-punch. Life or death.
Ethan smiled. “Actually, he beat a suspect to within an inch of his life. The city was sued for millions.”
