Island of Thieves

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  Shaw rewound to see the camera’s feed from the last two minutes. The image of the cops reversed, walking backward to the elevator. Rollie from the Empyrea’s front desk joined them. Shaw let the video play at normal speed. They’d brought Rollie for his card to allow them access to the floor and maybe to keep him from calling Shaw and warning him. The image of Rollie pointed a finger down the hallway in the direction of 3105 and vanished back into the elevator as rapidly as a prairie dog into its burrow.

  Shaw looked at the balcony. He could escape. The residents just below him were summering in Europe. Shaw had learned that from Rollie, who tended to talk too much. It would be simple enough to tie a climbing rope to the balcony rail and scramble down one story. A very quick exit, and he’d try not to think about the equally rapid thirty-story fall if he screwed up the safety line.

  No. If the cops were here to bring him in for questioning on Nelson Bao and maybe toss his place, better to let them and get it done.

  He glanced at the feed from the camera once more. Two men in civilian clothes exited the elevator and joined the uniformed cops.

  Shaw knew one of them. He wondered if it was too late to consider the mountaineering option again.

  Before leaving his laptop, he activated a different application. The app would wipe the computer clean of all data, all images, all apps not hard-coded into the original device. The next-best thing to tossing it off the balcony.

  When the insistent knock came, he was already at the door.

  “Kanellis,” he said, opening the door.

  The detective grunted. “No surprise at all. Maybe you knew we’d be coming. Got a guilty conscience?”

  “It was the smell of body spray wafting up the elevator shaft ahead of you.” He held out a hand. Kanellis tapped his palm with a folded sheet of paper. Shaw took it.

  “Step aside,” Kanellis said. Shaw did. The detectives walked into the apartment. The uniforms stayed outside the door, bottling the exit route.

  Kanellis dressed like a young liberal-arts professor—textured brown wool sport coat, slim-fit plaid shirt, knit tie. His badge hung on a woven leather lanyard around his neck. His black five-day stubble had been painstakingly shaped under his cheekbones and in the sparse patches on both sides below his bottom lip.

  “Place has the wow factor,” Kanellis said, looking around the living room with its odd assortment of furniture. “What is it you do for money again?”

  Shaw sat in the leather wingback chair. Short of the new bed, the wingback was the only piece that looked elegant enough to belong with the high-rise apartment. Shaw had bought the chair on an expensive whim because it resembled his grandfather’s favorite chair when Shaw had been a kid.

  “This is Cole,” Kanellis said as if Shaw had answered his question. His partner nodded to Shaw. Cole’s suit was gray, off the rack, and fit him like a tarp draped over a wooden post fence.

  Cole and one of the uniforms got to work searching the place. Shaw wasn’t concerned that they would find any contraband. He didn’t keep burglary gear or weapons in the apartment.

  What did worry him was that Kanellis was SPD. Nelson Bao’s death was San Juan County jurisdiction, or State if it had escalated somehow because Bao was a foreign visitor. Why were the Seattle cops involved?

  He unfolded the warrant. After the boilerplate paragraph describing the various whereases and wherefores about probable cause, the page got to the painful particulars:

  There is in the City of Seattle, KING County, Washington, a suspected place and premises described and located as follows:

  A firearm of .22 or similar caliber and/or ammunition, clips, or related accessories. Materials which may apply to the construction of a firearm suppressor, including but not limited to solvent traps, aluminum or steel cones or cups, drills, machining jigs, steel wool, oil, grease, or gel.

  The suspected place is in control of each of the following person or persons:

  Donovan SHAW—White Male

  At said places you shall search for and, if same be found, seize and bring before me the property described in the affidavit, as follows:

  Documentation of personal communications. This documentation may be both written and digitally stored. Therefore, this evidence could be located on any and all computers or devices that can store digital information, which includes hard drives, external hard drives, zip drives, CDs, DVDs, thumb drives, iPods, memory cards, and cellular telephones.

  The warrant concluded with another standard paragraph about executing without delay and was signed by a district-court judge.

  A .22 and a suppressor. That meant a professional, or somebody working hard to look like one. Easy to obtain. With the right hardware attached and subsonic rounds, the weapon would be about as loud as a twig breaking.

  “Who got shot?” said Shaw.

  Kanellis waved a hand while he was going through the kitchen cupboards, like, We’ll get to that.

  “Heard your exgirlfriend got married,” the detective said. “That must sting.”

  Kanellis had met Luce a couple of times. His eyes had rarely roamed north of her chin on both occasions.

  “I heard you made a play for her after we split,” Shaw said, loud enough for the others to hear. “And that she told you to go piss up a rope.”

  “Stand up,” Kanellis said. Shaw did. Kanellis reached down to take the leather cushion from the chair and handed it to one of the officers. “Open that.”

  The policeman unfolded a knife and split the seam along one side, corner to corner, to pull out the layers of foam padding. Shaw watched, without expression. He didn’t want to give Kanellis any satisfaction.

  “You going to tell me what’s going on?” Shaw said.

  “Tell me how you spent this afternoon.”

  “What happened this afternoon?”

  “C’mon. Where were you?”

  “Here.”

  “You know a Linda Edgemont?”

  Shaw hesitated. “Yeah.”

  “How?”

  “She hired me on behalf of her employer for a security job.” He pointed to the coffee table. “Contract’s right there.”

  Kanellis walked over and picked up the manila envelope. “Security. You. That’s brushing elbows with funny.” He slid the papers out and reviewed them. “How’d the job go?”

  Shaw waited.

  “She’s dead. Edgemont.” Kanellis said it offhandedly, though his eyes were on Shaw. “Homicide.”

  “This afternoon?”

  “Anybody here with you then?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad. I’ll take that.” He motioned to the phone on the kitchen counter. Shaw stayed where he was. Kanellis walked over and picked it up. “Anybody you want to call, you can do it after we book you. I remember that lawyer of yours. That slick mother will get all the details when the time is right.”

  Ganz.

  “Let me have the phone a minute,” he said to Kanellis.

  “Not a chance.”

  “You can listen in. Hell, you can video me. Linda Edgemont was a friend of Ganz’s. He shouldn’t hear about her death from the news. Or from you.”

  Kanellis’s mouth twisted. “Don’t mess with me, Shaw.”

  “Not about this.”

  The detective glowered for another moment.

  “Stay inside. In case you get a notion to step off the balcony and cheat the hangman.”

  He handed Shaw the phone. Shaw looked up Ganz’s home number and let it ring as Kanellis watched. From the bedroom he heard the thumps and bangs of Cole and the uniformed officer, turning his place upside down and giving it one hell of a shake.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Kanellis and Cole handcuffed Shaw and put him in the back of the police cruiser. The uniformed officers drove him one mile south to SPD headquarters while the detectives finished searching his apartment. The cop driving used a remote control strapped to the visor to open the heavy steel door to the HQ garage. It rattled upward, they slid into its maw,
and the building swallowed them.

  Shaw didn’t resent the handcuffs. Regulation. Kanellis had at least waited until they were at the car before putting them on, rather than parading Shaw like a perp past Rollie and anyone who happened to be on the street.

  The uniforms removed the cuffs and left him in an interview room, alone with his thoughts.

  Ganz had been shaken by Linda Edgemont’s death. He’d been silent for half a minute after Shaw had broken the news on the phone. Thirty seconds of quiet on an open line felt long enough under normal circumstances. With someone as energetic as Ganz, it was like a chasm.

  “How?” Ganz had finally said.

  “Homicide is all they’ll tell me.”

  “You’re with the cops now?”

  Shaw knew that Ganz was already filling in the blanks. Linda was dead. Cops are talking to Shaw. Ergo: suspect.

  “I’m going to need you,” Shaw had said.

  “No.” The answer came immediately.

  “They’re going to hold me downtown.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I haven’t seen Linda since Briar Bay Island.” Kanellis’s ears had pricked up at that.

  “It doesn’t matter.” Ganz’s voice tapped eggshell cracks between the words. “Any defense worth shit means digging into every part of the vict—” His voice broke, which he covered with a cough. “You don’t know. The things I have to learn about people. No.”

  “Ephraim—”

  “I’ll find you someone. Someone good. Just . . . leave me out.”

  Kanellis held out his hand. Shaw put the phone in it.

  “Uh-oh,” Kanellis had said. “I smell a bridge burning.”

  Shaw had caught the same scent. Now, sitting in the interview room, he might be looking at a long stretch of time ahead to mull over where he’d gone wrong.

  Someone had killed Linda Edgemont. Or had her killed. To what purpose? The lawyer had been a minor player in the pending deal. Her death wouldn’t seem to delay or accelerate anything, from what Shaw could see. Even Bao, the apparently replaceable chemist, had been more crucial.

  His situation was going to get worse. Whatever suspicions the Seattle cops held for him in Edgemont’s death, those would be redoubled once they learned about his proximity to Nelson Bao’s murder. And when San Juan County heard about his arrest for Edgemont, Shaw might replace Kilbane as their lead suspect. Screwed coming and going.

  He had to get out in front of the problem. Which meant doing something that bucked up against every instinct he had and every lesson his grandfather had taught him.

  Shaw stood up and pounded on the door. They let him wait two minutes before a uniformed officer showed.

  “I want to talk to Lieutenant John Guerin,” Shaw said.

  “Sit down,” the cop said. “Somebody will be with you soon.”

  “Guerin. Or nobody. Make sure Kanellis hears that.”

  The cop glowered but closed the door again. Shaw sat back down.

  Talking to the cops. Jesus.

  His grandfather Dono had been cremated. Shaw himself had taken the ashes out on the Sound with Hollis and scattered the gray remains across a mile of water, on a day when only the two of them were drunk enough and stubborn enough to put up with the rolling swells and a rain that fell like needles on their faces.

  Dono had never been buried. Yet somehow, Shaw knew, the old man was rolling over in his grave right now.

  “A laboratory?” Guerin said.

  “Beakers and vials and the whole damn thing.”

  “Hidden in the art gallery.” Guerin sat across from Shaw in the interview room’s other chair. Kanellis had brought a third from down the hall. It was Kanellis’s case. Shaw talking to Guerin wouldn’t change that. “And how’d you manage to see the lab if their security is so state-of-the-art?”

  “Somebody left a door propped open. Maybe to let the sea air in.”

  “Right.” Guerin folded his hands. “Tell me what you saw.”

  Shaw described everything he recalled about the lab, including the names of the chemicals. He didn’t mention his primer in chemistry from Professor Mills, pretending to have dredged up his sudden expertise in GPC testing via the Internet. Neither of the policemen took notes. Writing notes drew focus off the subject, and if the subject was talking, nothing should change. The video camera on the wall would capture Shaw’s every expression and syllable.

  “Good memory,” Kanellis said, not bothering to disguise his doubt.

  Guerin adjusted his glasses. He’d bought new frames since Shaw had last seen him, in roughly the same dark honey color as the chemical he’d seen in Bao’s apartment. “So what do you think Sebastien Rohner is doing with this lab? Drugs? Making bombs?”

  “No. The chemicals in the lab are used in analyzing polymers.”

  “So they’re nothing illegal.”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Then what’s the point?” said Kanellis. “If Rohner wants to play Dr. Frankenstein on his private island, what does that have to do with the dead guy from China?”

  “Maybe nothing,” Shaw said. “But when I left the island, I thought Rohner was pissed at me.”

  Kanellis snorted. “That tracks.”

  “Then suddenly he offers me a job that pays enough to knock me sideways and wants to hustle me onto the next plane out of the country. He says it’s to make amends, but the job also requires me to sign a secrecy agreement. One of the Bridgetrust people told me in confidence that Chen’s team was bringing a new chemical sample to the island for testing. Some moneymaking innovation. If that chemical went missing after Bao’s death and Rohner and the rest think I took it . . .”

  “His job offer to you might be a tax-deductible way to mask buying stolen goods,” finished Guerin. “Why wouldn’t he just ask you flat out if you have the stuff and how much you want to return it?”

  “I don’t know,” admitted Shaw. “Maybe because if I’m not the guy who stole the chemical, Rohner doesn’t want me getting curious about it. Or maybe he can’t let on that it’s missing until he’s sure I have it.”

  “And Linda Edgemont?” said Guerin.

  “I’ve been thinking about her since Kanellis redecorated my place. Edgemont found me through Ganz. She brought me into Rohner’s orbit.”

  The lieutenant tapped the table with a fingertip. “And if you turned out to be disloyal and stole the chemical sample, that reflects badly on her. Is that it?”

  “More than that. Maybe I knew to steal the sample because Edgemont told me how valuable it was.”

  “That’s a lot of leaps to get to that conclusion. Rohner’s worth more than the building we’re sitting in. That kind of guy doesn’t have his employees whacked. He fires them, gives them a lousy reference. Maybe files a lawsuit if he’s really miffed.” Guerin folded his hands. “What’s the point of his killing her now? Rohner already offered to pay you. Did you turn him down?”

  “I haven’t given him an answer. But the deadline’s already passed. I was supposed to give Linda Edgemont an answer last night.”

  “There’s some irony for you,” said Kanellis. “Can’t take the job ’cause you’re on the hook for killing your recruiter.”

  “Ever been to her place?” Guerin said.

  “No.”

  “Never went by her house once? Found her door left open for the sea air, like with the lab? Because that would be a more believable story.”

  “We know you were there,” Kanellis said. “Just tell us.”

  “That’s all I got. Anything else can wait for the lawyer.”

  Kanellis exchanged a glance with Guerin. Guerin shrugged minutely, as if to say, Go ahead.

  “You were seen, smart guy,” Kanellis said.

  Shaw stared.

  “Yup. Your messed-up face is hard to miss. An eyewitness description from a neighbor and a call to Rohner’s guy Olen Anders was all it took to find out you were involved and place you at the scene.” Kanellis crossed his arms, mimicking Shaw. �
��Better come clean now, if you want our help.”

  The kind of help they would offer would only dig his hole deeper. Shaw closed his mouth and kept it shut until they went away, Guerin shaking his head, like he’d known that talking to Shaw could only be a dead end.

  A positive ID. At a crime scene he couldn’t possibly have been near. That lawyer buddy of Ganz’s had better hurry, before another corpse materialized with Shaw’s fingerprints all over it.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Kanellis had Shaw booked while Cole arranged to move him to the county jail on the next block. Shaw asked to make his phone call—wanting to let Wren know where he was—but Kanellis claimed the call he’d made to Ganz at the apartment counted. He’d have to wait until the lawyer showed.

  There was no skybridge over the city streets connecting SPD headquarters to the jail, as there was between the jail and the courthouse. Transferring Shaw one block involved his being cuffed again, taken to what he guessed was Cole’s personal vehicle—a Pontiac with its leather seats cracked and shedding sprinkles of foam—and driven from the HQ garage through four fast turns, right-right-right-left, directly into the sally port of the jail.

  The detectives handed Shaw off to a pair of corrections officers who searched him again before taking him up the elevator to the third level. Through the barred gates of the secure access corridor was a two-story cellblock with bright white walls and amber doors. The walkway on the second floor had been enclosed with metal mesh to keep prisoners from jumping or throwing things over the rail. Shaw had the impulse to run his finger along the mesh, letting it flap like a playing card in the spokes of a bicycle wheel. He knew that the urge was purely defiant. To do something, however paltry, other than what they told him to do.

  It was long after lights-out. The cell had bunks for two detainees, but Shaw was alone. From far down the hall, he could hear other inmates hollering in conversation between their own cells, talking shit about an MMA fighter Shaw had never heard of. He guessed this was the block used for prisoners awaiting further interrogation or arraignment.