Dead Ringer (17 page)

“Let me assure you, we know the correct identity of our donors. Mr. Baer was
not
the man whose head you saw in Hong Kong. Are we clear on this?”

“Hey, humor me. Check it again. Okay?”

Ditto thought the best thing to do was just end the interview and get the prick out of his office before things turned ugly. “No. I checked our records last week when Mr. Gerhard called, and I just rechecked them now. The man you saw is
not
your friend, and that is final. I can see you’re upset and I’m sorry. But this is all I can do for you. Please understand.”

McRae stood perfectly still except for clenching and unclenching both fists. After what seemed an excruciatingly long time, he pointed at Ditto. “You’re lying. I know you’re lying. This isn’t finished.” He turned and stormed.

D
ITTO REMAINED BEHIND HIS
desk watching McRae leave the office. Go after him in an attempt to soothe his frustration? No, the way he looked, he was locked into a mind-set not easily changed by a few kind words. Especially when he believed he was right. Besides, Ditto was having enough trouble controlling his own rage.

Instinct warned that what he needed to do right now was remain calm, assess the situation, and prepare for contingencies. In that order. He knew what he had to do.

He opened the small built-in wet bar refrigerator and removed a chilled bottle of Starbucks Frappuccino. Mocha flavor, his favorite. Shaking it, he returned to the desk and settled in to think. A moment later, he walked out of the office looking for Gerhard.

And found him pushing a broom in the cremation room.

Of the many things he liked about Gerhard’s work was his obsession with keeping the place neat. Which was fine with Ditto. About the time Ditto started using street people for parts, he’d decided not to trust a janitorial service to clean the offices. Too much risk. Instead, he and Gerhard did all the cleaning. And that turned out to be good for the morale of his few employees, like Stella, the receptionist. Wasn’t every job you saw your boss waving a Swiffer over a desk or replacing toilet paper in the latrines.

Ditto glanced around to make sure he and Gerhard were the only ones in the room, then closed the door. “We have a couple problems.” He explained about McRae’s visit.

Gerhard listened intently, nodding occasionally but not interrupting. After Ditto finished, he said, “I warned you that bastard would be trouble. Didn’t I tell you.” It wasn’t a question.

Ditto started to say something, thought better of it. Gerhard had an annoying habit of always reminding him when something turned out the way he’d predicted. “Yeah, yeah, you were right. Time to move on. Thing is, I want to make sure we’re overreacting. Don’t do something foolish. What do we know for sure?”

“He knows his friend’s missing.”

“So?”

“So he goes to the cops, says we know what happened to him.”

Ditto nodded. “So what? We deny it was him. Hell, we have the papers to show he’s wrong.”

Gerhard nodded slowly, apparently mulling something over. “Got a point, I guess, but the thing is, he’s the kind of guy who doesn’t take no for an answer.” He continued to think some more. “Okay, how about this … he figures out a way to prove he’s right?”

“See, this is where I don’t think we agree. I don’t see it.” Except Ditto knew that, in spite of his lack of formal schooling, Gerhard had an uncanny ability to sense a threat when other people were oblivious to it. That’s what kept him out of trouble with his job. Well, except for the Suburban. What a royal fuck up that had been.

Gerhard thought some more. “What if he has connections we don’t know about, with the FBI or something?”

Huh. Now there was something he hadn’t considered. He knew about the Seattle Police, but the Feds? But what were the odds? Fuck the odds. This whole clusterfuck had gone against the odds.

Ditto said, “Good point. So, what do we do about it?” His way of shifting the actual task to Gerhard.

Gerhard nodded at the cremation oven. “Sounds like a good job for Old Smokey.”

Ditto shook his head. “No, we can’t just have him disappear. That’s too close to his buddy, especially if he’s gone to the cops. Let me think about it.”

Gerhard resumed examining his fingers. “Seems to me this is the sort of thing when you need to tap your source and find out what they know. That’s what good intel’s all about. Having the advantage.”

Yeah, but Ditto suspected that if push came to shove, his connection, the cop, would cut him loose to protect himself, claim he knew nothing, and leave Ditto dangling in the goddamn wind. Allegiances went only so far, no matter how much money you ponied up. And it frustrated him to no end that the only hold he had on the guy was money.

Ditto nodded. “I’ll call him, but it’s possible he might not know everything she’s working up.”

“Meaning?”

“Word is, she’s suspicious that more than one hooker disappeared. She’s worried another Gary Ridgway is working the area.”

Several times over beers he and Gerhard had discussed Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer. Ditto believed Ridgway killed whores for some crazy weird sexual gratification thing and then discarded the bodies. Discarded them. That was what really rankled Ditto. Man, talk about a societal parasite. Too bad he and Gerhard never knew Ridgway’s identity before the cops nailed his ass. They would’ve made him pay for such waste. They would’ve taken him off the street and put him to some good use. In Ditto’s opinion, this was Gary Ridgway’s scorecard:

Targeting hookers: plus one point.

His reason for targeting hookers: minus one point.

Discarding the bodies: minus ten points.

Bottom line: guy was a fucking loser.

“So?” Gerhard asked.

“The thing working against her is nobody’s found a body yet.”

Gerhard grinned. “And they never will.”

Fucking Gerhard, always completing thoughts. “That’s not the point. If McRae suddenly disappears, well …” Let Gerhard finish that one too.

Gerhard sucked a tooth a moment. “I’ll think on it too. Between the two of us, there’s got to be a way to eliminate McRae.”

Excellent. Ditto relaxed a bit. Gerhard was good. Until the bad luck with the Suburban, he’d never made a mistake. He’d come up with a good way to take care of the problem without pointing a finger at DFH Inc.

“There’s one more thing.” Ditto told him about the order for five fresh heads.

Gerhard curled his fingers, inspecting his perfectly manicured nails again. “Shouldn’t be too difficult. I’ll start working on it tonight.”

Ditto figured on building up an inventory of fresh heads by flash freezing each one immediately. Like any other tissue, it wouldn’t keep indefinitely but would last long enough to be in excellent condition when thawed before the meeting in thirty days. Flash freezing was a trick he’d learned from Alaskan fishermen.

“Know I don’t need to say this, but until this blows over, we need to be extremely careful. No working girls. Understand?”

Gerhard had a special vengeance for hookers ever since ending up with a very bad case of an STD at sixteen. Ditto didn’t quite recall the details other than the infection required extensive treatment. Dumb shit didn’t use a rubber, and the stupid hooker didn’t have sense enough to demand one. She was probably too strung out to care. That’s what you get when you go around dipping your wick in a cesspool.

“No problem.”

Already Ditto felt better. He had faith Gerhard would get the heads
and
take care of McRae. Everything might just work out.

L
UCAS APPROACHED THE NORTHEAST
corner of Eighth and Virginia and stopped, realizing he hadn’t organized his story well enough. He thought through it once more, refining a few parts for clarity. Satisfied, he started up the shallow concrete steps to the West Precinct, a low steel and concrete building of a utilitarian design that made it difficult to estimate how many floors were aboveground. Maybe three. It was a model of urban defensive construction at its best, probably able to withstand pretty much anything short of a direct nuclear blast. And maybe even that. He opened one of the heavy glass doors into a sparsely furnished granite lobby, crossed about ten feet of polished floor to a stainless steel counter and greenish-tinged bulletproof glass. There was no one else in the lobby.

The glass partition slid open, and a uniformed cop behind the counter asked, “May I help you?”

“How do I go about filing a missing persons …” Complaint? Report? What?

“Adult or child?”

“Uh, adult.”

“Just a moment.” The cop shut the window before walking away.

A moment later the cop returned and opened the window, handing Lucas a sheet of paper with printing on both sides.
“Fill this out. Give it back to me when you’re done.” Then he said almost as an afterthought, “Anything suspicious about the disappearance?”

Yeah, just about everything, including his head showing up in Hong Kong
. “That’s the thing. I’m not sure.”

The cop seemed more interested. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Realizing how bizarre the story might sound, he stuck to his plan of starting with an explanation of possibly seeing Andy’s head at a medical meeting, how it was supplied by DFH Inc., how Andy was now missing, and how Bobby Ditto refused to reveal the true identity of the person who the head belonged to.

When he finished, the cop gave him a dead-eyed look. “Stay here. I’ll be back.”

W
ENDY WAS REMOVING HER
purse from the bottom desk drawer, getting ready to leave the office, when an officer appeared at her cubicle saying, “Sergeant, you still interested in seeing all missing persons reports, or just females?”

“Why? Got something?”

“Yeah, but it’s not female.”

She set the black leather bag on her desk. “I’m listening.”

As the officer told the story, she realized he was officially punting the case. If she blew it off and the missing Joe Public turned out murdered or living in Mexico with a cool twenty-five million of embezzled funds, fingers would
point at her instead of him. In the next breath, the officer mentioned DFH Inc., and her interest went off the charts. Or was this some ploy dreamed up by Ditto to force her to do something stupid? This seemed almost too coincidental to be coincidence.

Standing behind the protective glass a few seconds, Wendy studied the man filling out the report in the lobby. He looked like your average clean-cut, middle-class citizen. At least that would be her professional assessment. Her personal assessment was:
Lord have mercy. He’s hot.

L
UCAS LOOKED IN THE
direction of the voice and saw a woman holding open a door-sized section of wall. Until now he hadn’t recognized it as a door, which was obviously the intent of the architect.

She motioned him over and held out her hand. “Sergeant Wendy Elliott.”

She was stunning and sexy but every bit the professional. Lucas caught himself staring. She wore black slacks and a black blouse, blonde hair banded into a ponytail. On second appraisal, she might be a bit too tall. Her face that perhaps was too hard. Still, he was totally taken by her.

“Lucas McRae.”

She said, “Follow me, please.”

As she walked away, his gaze dropped to her ass. Had to admit, nice.

Elliott proceeded along a hall through another door, stopped at a cubicle, swiped a metal chair from her neighbor for him, and took the swivel chair behind the desk. Legs crossed, she leaned back and folded her arms. “Tell me about your missing friend.”

No wedding ring, he noticed.

He walked her through the story point by point. By the time he finished, she was frowning, forcing him to stop in mid-sentence. “Something wrong?” he asked.