A Deadly Business (31 page)
Now all Vin’s rules, produced by years of careful study and thought, kept being broken. Not because of anything he did, but because of his new boss. Oleg was unpredictable. Oleg made messes. Oleg was jovial, until very suddenly he wasn’t.
Vin was just Oleg’s errand boy. Sixty-two years old and this was what he had been reduced to. Shakedowns, threats, bribes. Low-level muscle. Sometimes even playing the part of a driver, dressed in a black suit that was too tight across the shoulders. He was also the guy who pulled on vinyl gloves and did cavity searches. And, very rarely, there was the termination that called for his special skills. Planning Scott Quinn’s murder, making sure it looked like an accident, had been the most interesting thing he had done all year.
Now what Oleg was demanding of him was hasty, pulled together far too fast for Vin’s taste. It was too haphazard to even be called a plan. He didn’t like the sound of it at all. It was one thing to be sicced on someone who should have known what they were getting into, but civilians were a different matter. They had their world, and he had his. He didn’t like overlap.
Of course there were people who tried to straddle both sides. Like that Scott Quinn. Letting himself be eased from one thing to the next until one day he woke up and had second thoughts a little too late. Tax evasion was one thing, he had actually told Oleg, but cocaine was another.
In the last few seconds of his life, as Vin took a baseball bat to his head, maybe he had realized they weren’t that far apart.
M
ia parked her car in the U-Dub parking lot, then got out and went over to the passenger side. As she leaned in to gather her papers and books, she was overcome with exhaustion. The last thing she wanted was to teach tonight.
She realized a man was standing behind her. Too close. With a gasp, she straightened up and whirled around. Then she recognized him. It was Alvin Turner. The older man who had stopped and tried to help Scott. Tried to help him even after Scott had bullied him.
Only why was he here? At the University of Washington?
And something about his face had changed. It was harder somehow. Except for his blue eyes. For some reason, they just looked . . . dead.
“Alvin?” she said uncertainly.
“Call me Vin,” he said, and then pressed the gun into her side.
E
li pulled into the law school’s parking lot. A few rows ahead of him, he saw Mia. She was standing next to the passenger side of her car. An old man with white hair and a ruddy face was talking to her. As Eli watched, Mia’s hand flew to her mouth and her eyes went wide.
Was something wrong? Had the man brought her bad news? Eli squinted. Was that guy maybe Mia’s dad?
Still talking, the old man took her left arm just above the elbow and pulled her closer to him. Then the two of them began to hurry through the parking lot and away from Eli. Mia moved oddly. Her body was stiff and her feet scuffed the ground.
Eli slowly got out of his car, his eyes never leaving them, still trying to figure out what was happening. The two got into an old blue Ford. The weird thing was they both got in on the passenger’s side, Mia first and then the older man. Then she scooted over—it must have a bench seat—until she was behind the wheel.
Eli felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. Something was wrong. He didn’t know what, but he had learned to trust that sixth sense. Instead of going into the law school or even calling Mia on her
cell, he got back in his car and followed the Taurus back out of the lot and onto the street.
Mia was driving a little too fast. Soon they were heading west. Eli tried to keep two cars between them, even though he didn’t think either of them knew he was there. The old man wasn’t turning around to look behind him, and Mia seemed to be staring straight ahead. It looked like she was talking.
At a stoplight Eli yanked out his phone and dialed Mia’s number. No answer. He was staring at the back of her head and she didn’t even move. But the times he had been with her, she had kept her phone on vibrate mode. Maybe she hadn’t noticed his call. Maybe she was busy talking to the man about whatever urgent business had caused her to leave campus when her class would be starting in only a few minutes. He hung up without leaving a message.
If Eli called 911, what would he say? That this woman he knew slightly was now driving off with a man he didn’t know at all? Instead, he called 411 and asked for the number for the Seattle Police Department. When he got through, Eli said, “I need to speak to a detective in the homicide department. His name is Charlie . . .” What was Charlie’s last name? He ground his teeth in frustration.
“Carlson,” the woman supplied.
“Yes, yes. Carlson. And it’s urgent.”
“Carlson,” the guy growled into the phone a few seconds later. Eli felt a nibble of irritation. It sounded like Charlie had watched one too many movies about tough-guy cops.
“Charlie, this is Eli Hall, from the public defender’s office.” Charlie started to say something, maybe to mention something about the shopping cart case, but Eli overrode him. “Mia and I were supposed to be teaching together tonight at U-Dub. But as I was driving in, I saw her getting into a car with this older guy. It wasn’t her car and I’ve never seen the man before. And there was something about his face and her body language. Like he had hold of her arm and they both got into the car on the passenger’s side, and then
she scooted over to drive. Maybe I’m crazy, but I don’t think she’s going willingly. I tried calling her, but she didn’t answer.”
Charlie’s voice sharpened. “What does this guy look like?”
Eli felt both relieved that he believed him and worried that he wasn’t dismissing him out of hand. “Older. He had white hair.”
“Did you notice anything else about him?”
“He had a reddish face. Like maybe he had bad skin a long time ago.”
Charlie swore. And then swore again. “Did you get the license number of the car?”
“Hold on a sec.” Eli pressed down on the accelerator. “I’ll see if I can get close enough to make it.” He cut around a white Jetta in front of him, then winced when it honked.
“Wait a minute,” Charlie said. “You’re following him?”
“Yes.” Eli got into the left lane, hoping the change looked natural. He didn’t want the guy guessing Eli was on his tail.
“Not a good idea. Not a good idea at all.” Charlie was now talking between gasps. It sounded like he was running.
“I’m not leaving her.” Eli felt ridiculous, like he was saying,
You’re
not the boss of me
.
“Think about it. What if you’re right and something is wrong? What if you spook him?”
“Look,” Eli said as he squinted at the back of the car, “do you want his license number or not?”
“Yes. What is it?”
Eli rattled it off.
“Okay,” Charlie said. “Great. Now you need to back off and let the professionals take over.”
“What, are you telling me you can get a squad car here right this second? I don’t think so. And if I let them drive off, then we’ll have no idea where she is.”
“If he realizes you’re tailing him, he might panic. And people who panic tend to do stupid things. So back off!”
Eli started to ease up on the accelerator. But as he did, something inside the other car caught his attention. Did the old man have something in his hand? He squinted, and then his insides turned to ice.
It was definitely a gun. But it wasn’t pointed at Eli.
It was pointed at Mia.
W
here is he?” Mia spit the words at the old man pressing a gun into her side. “Where is my son?” Her hands were slick and hot on the steering wheel. She barely saw the cars around them.
They had Gabe, Vin had told her a few minutes ago. They had Gabe, and the only way they would keep him alive would be if Mia went with him. Right then.
“Have you hurt him?” Her voice cracked. “If you’ve hurt him . . .”
“Don’t worry about that,” he said tonelessly. “Shut up and keep driving.” There was no passion in his voice, as if he wasn’t even invested in their conversation. As if what she had to say didn’t matter. The kindly old man who had apologetically told her about Scott’s last few minutes had disappeared as if he had never been. Which Mia supposed he hadn’t.
Should she even ask about Brooke? Would asking only serve to draw attention to her? Or was Vin keeping silent because something irrevocable had already happened to her daughter? Four-year-olds were not known for obeying orders. A gunshot might be the quickest way to silence a crying child.
No
, Mia told herself, her gorge rising.
No.
The
reason
he’s not
saying anything about Brooke is because they don’t have her.
Maybe had even forgotten or not known about her. It was better to keep quiet.
But she couldn’t keep absolutely silent. The wheels were turning in her brain. “You killed Scott, didn’t you?”
Beside her, Vin shrugged. Still, it felt like an admission. All he said was, “Turn left at the light.”
But before they got there it turned red, giving her a moment to think. Was there anything she could do?
“Don’t make eye contact, don’t call out, don’t do anything to draw attention,” Vin said, pressing the gun more firmly into Mia’s side, just below her ribs. She had seen enough crime-scene photos to know what would happen if he pulled the trigger. If the bullet didn’t kill her outright, the infection from having her intestines ripped apart probably would.
As ordered, Mia kept her face pointing straight ahead, but still she concentrated on what she could see in her peripheral vision. The person closest to her, a girl in the passenger seat of an SUV, was texting on her phone. Even if Mia rolled down the window or ran out of the car, what could that girl do? What could anyone do? If Mia tried anything, she would be dead within seconds.
The light turned green and she took the turn. “So I guess you were a little more than just a passerby who happened upon my husband’s accident,” she said.
“Look, Mia.” The sound of her name in his mouth made her shiver. “When you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. Your husband decided he was too good for certain things. Like he could pick and choose. Fraud and tax evasion were okay, but selling coke wasn’t? We didn’t need him getting a conscience. Don’t worry, I made sure it was fast. Fast and smart. And I covered my tracks. No one had to know. But then you had to come along and start asking questions.”
So the Jade Kitchen was selling more than Chinese cuisine. Mia
wondered how Kenny Zhong did it. Four restaurants meant a lot of people coming and going. Maybe he hid drugs in takeout boxes?
But Kenny hadn’t done his own dirty work. The man sitting beside her, sitting close enough that she could hear his slow exhalations, had swung a bat at Scott’s head so hard that it had shattered his skull. And Alvin Turner—or Vin—still seemed to think of himself as the good guy. The chances of appealing to his sense of human decency were slim.
“I have a diamond ring worth thirty thousand dollars,” she said. “You can have it if you let me and my son go.” It was in her purse, the purse still strapped across her shoulder, but Vin didn’t need to know that.
“Good to know.” His voice was laconic.
“Please, if not me, then my son. Let Gabe go, and I’ll tell you where the ring is.”
He sighed. “There’s no point in talking. This whole thing has gotten way past the point of talk.”
He was never going to let her go, that was clear. She had seen his face. Knew his name, at least if the name he had told them was true. People who were dead couldn’t talk.
The same was probably true for Gabe. Was she really helping her son by following Vin’s orders?
Could she crash the car into something and get out and run? Mia looked up the road. There. Where the road turned. It wasn’t a line of trees like Scott had crashed into, but there was a telephone pole. She wasn’t wearing a seat belt, just as Scott hadn’t. How badly would she be hurt? She remembered Scott’s torn aorta. At least the pole was closer to Turner’s side. Maybe the two of them would die together.
The pressure of the gun was gone from her side, but before she could react, the barrel was pressed just under the hinge of her jaw.
“Stop thinking about how you’re going to get out of this,” Vin said. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
“Don’t make this harder!” she repeated, anger singing through
her veins. “For who? For me or for you? Because I’m getting a feeling this is going to be pretty dadgum hard for me.”
To her surprise, Vin made a muffled snort.
Had that been a laugh? But then the nose of the gun pressed into the spot under her jaw even harder than ever.
Following the directions he barked at her, she turned into the parking lot for Puget Marina. As she parked she looked around for someone who might help her. But there were only a handful of cars and no people to be seen at all. On an August afternoon there wouldn’t be a free parking space. But it was a different story on a blustery late afternoon in November.
There was no point in relying on someone else to save her. If Mia was going to live, she had to figure it out by herself.
D
riving this fast was probably not a good idea. Especially when he was trying to track a moving dot on an app on the tiny screen of his phone. The phone was propped behind his steering wheel against the control panel, just below the dial that showed his speed. Charlie was trying to pay attention to the first and ignore the second.
He radioed dispatch, raising his voice to be heard above his siren. “I need you to run a name for crim hist.”
“Go ahead.”
“A guy named Alvin Turner. I’d say he’s over sixty and local.” His chest felt tight.
Maybe he was wrong. Maybe Mia wasn’t really in trouble. Eli’s description of a man with white hair and a ruddy face—that could be anybody. It didn’t have to be the guy who had witnessed Scott’s accident. Or who had claimed that he had. And just because Eli thought he had seen him pointing a gun at Mia, that didn’t mean that was what was really happening. Maybe it had been . . . something else. Charlie cast around for what that something else could be. A cell phone. Even a pack of cigarettes. There could be an innocent explanation. Couldn’t there?