Hard Cold Winter (17 page)

I didn’t know a lot of rich people. But I knew if you had a big hammer, every problem looked like a nail. Let them think I was angling for more money. They had told me all they were going to, and maybe all they could.

Which might just be enough.

A
T THREE A.M. ON
a Friday morning, the downtown streets were as close to deserted as they ever got. With the window open, I could hear the sound of my pickup’s engine echoing off the glass monoliths, like the city was humming along to the tune. I drove the truck for a few blocks before pulling over about halfway between the Aerie Club and the Morgen. White shoes to blue collar, in under a mile.

I wasn’t ready to talk to anyone else yet. Not even Luce. Instead I sat in the truck, and watched the stoplights cycle through their slow patterns. It had been a long day followed by a longer night. My head was reeling with everything that had happened.

I didn’t trust Arthur Ostrander, Esq., farther than I could spit. But he had been right about one thing. I had incentive to find the explosives, and whoever took them. A hell of a lot. Stack up all the motivation and carve it into the rough form of my family home. Then put Luce’s life, and Leo’s and my own, as the mountains behind it.

Maurice Haymes could stick his money up his ass and set fire to it. None of us were safe until I found out who wanted me in tiny pieces. The person who had almost killed Luce. That was all that mattered.

Retrieving the explosives meant a lot to Maurice Haymes, too. Maybe his whole future. Ostrander had just proved to me that they were willing to pay a few thousand percent more than market value to get those cases back. Maybe Kend had figured out his dad’s weak spot and had stolen the Tovex with the idea of ransoming it, to buy his way out of trouble with Broch. But Kend was killed before he could cut a deal with dear old Dad. Whoever had murdered Kend and Trudy had driven the Tovex away in the dually truck.

So who had helped Kend steal it? And who had it now?

Elana was the obvious first choice. She had a criminal record. She’d been at the cabin. She was even strong enough to load fifty-pound cases into the Volvo, if she had to.

But there was another individual I liked a lot better, for that kind of heavy lifting.

Barrett Yorke picked up on the third ring.

“You’re awake,” I said.

“Have you heard? About Trudy?” Her voice was thick.

I guessed what was coming, but had to play dumb. “Did she call you?”

“Trudy’s dead.”

“Dead.”

“A relative had been trying to reach her, and they filed a missing persons report, and they found out it was her at the cabin all along. And nobody knows where Elana is. God.”

The police would already be looking for Elana Coll. Once they compared the timings of Trudy’s online posts against the times of death, that search would become very serious.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Poor Tru.” Barrett began crying, the quiet, smooth sobs of someone who has been crying for hours and is near exhaustion. Awake only because the grief wouldn’t let her rest. “She was a really good person, you know?”

“She seemed like it. I liked her paintings.”

Barrett wept through another two stoplight rounds. “You called me,” she prompted, when the wave had passed.

“I did. I need to talk to your brother.”

“God, get in line. What’s going on?”

I sat up. “Somebody else has been asking about Parson?”

“
Asking
isn’t the right word. That implies some kind of manners.”

“Who?”

“Some jerk who said he was investigating Kend’s death. He called last night and wanted to know if Parson was home, or where he was.”

Investigating Kend, the guy had said. Implying he was a cop, without actually claiming to be. “Was his name Rusk?”

“He wouldn’t say. He sounded all official, but he was a creep. Tell me this and tell me that. I figured he was a reporter. I told him where he could go, all right. He got so mad I thought he might just crawl through the phone.”

“You were right not to talk to him. Where’s Parson?”

“That’s the thing. I don’t know. I called Parson to tell him about the creep, and he just freaked. I explained that I didn’t say anything, and so what? But he hung up. He hasn’t been home all night.”

Dammit. Rusk had Kend’s computer. He was probably working his way through Kend’s close friends, looking for anyone with enough heft to be Kend’s accomplice. Maybe Barrett had diverted him to the next name on the list. Or maybe Rusk’s cop instincts had told him he was on the right trail.

But the HDC security chief’s questions had sent Parson running for cover. Which confirmed what I had only started suspecting about the big kid.

“Barrett,” I said. “Is Parson—I don’t know another way to put this—normal?”

She tsked. “Parson’s fine. Everyone thinks that he’s dumb, because he doesn’t talk much and when he does, it’s not complicated. But really, he’s quite bright. He’s brilliant with electrical things and engines and stuff. He just—he
feels
really hard. Loves me and our parents and his
friends hugely. It nearly destroyed him, when he learned Kend and Elana—Trudy now, I guess—when he learned they were dead. He doesn’t have a lot of defenses, you know?”

“Guileless.”

“Yes. That’s him. Van?”

“Yeah.”

“Is Parson in trouble?” Her voice was small.

“I don’t know, Barrett.”

“I was really ticked at you, you know? Not just because you turned me down. I’m not
that
delicate. But I knew you weren’t telling me everything, at Trudy’s.” She sighed knowingly, and it turned into a yawn. “You probably aren’t telling me everything now. Men with secrets. Why are guys like you the ones I go for? You and Kend.”

She had said it so quietly, I wasn’t sure I’d heard her right. “Kend? Did you and he—?”

“Hmm? No, no. I just liked him a lot, is all. Nothing ever happened. Maybe if he and Elana . . .” She yawned again.

I was beginning to understand why all of the couple’s love notes had been stuffed into a drawer in Kend’s apartment. And maybe why the photo of Barrett and Trudy had been banished with them.

“If you hear from Parson, call me. I’ll help.”

“Sure.” She sounded like she was falling asleep even as she hung up.

Parson Yorke had more devotion than a pack of Saint Bernards. Especially to his best buddy, Kendrick. Parson might have committed grand larceny with Kend. He was fervent in his belief that Kend hadn’t killed Elana.

So do you think the rumors are true?
Barrett had asked me on the rooftop bar. Parson had immediately answered for me.
No
. A flat statement. No, Kend hadn’t killed her. No, he wasn’t a murderer. Parson might have meant both of those.

Or maybe the huge lump had unconsciously been saying,
No, Elana isn’t dead.
Had he known?

I’d spooked Elana. She’d lost what little food and shelter she’d ac
quired by pretending to be Trudy. She might cut her losses and put a few thousand miles between herself and Seattle before ditching the Ford sedan.

But I didn’t think so. She had stayed hidden in Seattle, after the horrors at the cabin. If she was still as stubborn as the Elana I’d once known, she’d stay in Seattle now. She would need money, and a place to stay, and she’d be desperate enough to ask someone for help. I could guess that good old Parson would be more than willing.

Unless Parson was the one that Elana had been running from all along.

Just a big naïve kid. Brilliant with electronic things. Like security systems. And maybe like bombs.

S
OMEONE BANGED ON LUCE’S
door at nine in the morning. We had both been dead asleep, but the Smith & Wesson was in my hand before I knew it. I motioned Luce to get behind the bed.

Another three bangs. I was pretty sure I’d heard that knock before, but there was no point in taking chances.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Guerin.”

I put the gun in Luce’s dresser, climbed into my jeans, and went to open the door.

Guerin stood in the hall with Kanellis, his partner. Kanellis was about my age, with longish brown hair and a whippet-like build. He had changed his look since the last time I’d seen him. A corduroy jacket and gray knit tie, over a hunting plaid shirt and tight trousers. Professorial.

“Morning,” I said.

“I heard about your house. You two all right?” Guerin said.

“Yes, thank you,” said Luce formally. She had slipped on a robe. Kanellis gave her a once-over that wasn’t lost on any of us.

“You don’t look otherwise occupied,” Guerin said. “Let’s take a ride.”

I nodded and closed the door while I dressed.

“Are they looking into the bombing?” Luce said.

“They’re looking into Broch. If we’re lucky, it’s the same thing.”

She kissed me. I lingered, feeling the heat of her body through our clothes as strongly if we were naked again.

When I had returned from my meeting with Ostrander and Rusk the night before, Luce had been awake, waiting up with Marcie. As soon as we were alone, Luce had pulled me to her. The terror and pain of the night evaporated, and she clung to me with all of her strength and cried out for me to hold her back just as fiercely. At the end she gasped and bit into my shoulder, hard enough that later, when we were parted and damp with each other, we didn’t know whether the blood spots left on the pillow were from love or from our earlier wounds.

I threw on my jacket, kissed her once more, and asked her to call Leo to tell him I’d come by Swedish as soon as the cops were done with me. Hoping to myself that it didn’t turn out to be a long wait.

I followed the detectives to their car, a silver Lexus sedan. Guerin drove. Kanellis took the back, granting me the passenger’s seat. Standard procedure, if a pair of cops had to escort a suspect without using the mobile jail cell that is the rear seat of a police cruiser. I was getting more uneasy by the minute.

“Your personal car?” I asked Guerin. He nodded. “Nice,” I said.

“Better be. I commute from Everett.”

“Where’s our commute today?”

He made a gesture that I interpreted as
Wait and see.
He drove to the freeway entrance on Montlake and up to I-5 and north. We caught up to the clouds, and an occasional raindrop tapped on the windshield. Tap. Tap. Too heavy to ignore. Too light for even the slowest intermittent setting on the car’s windshield wipers. Seattle water torture. Guerin satisfied himself with turning on the wipers for one beat every half mile.

He took the 85th Street exit. I could feel Kanellis’s eyes on me from the backseat. When Guerin turned onto Highway 99, I suspected where
they might be taking me. On this stretch you couldn’t throw a pine-shaped air freshener without hitting a car for sale.

Guerin pulled into the lot of a business called Apex Auto. It was a very short climb to whatever summit the name aspired to. I counted eight cars on the lot with stickers in the windows. None of them were less than fifteen years old. Or washed. There were no colorful triangular flags or giant inflated gorillas around the lot as decoration. Just a cinder-block structure holding an office and two repair bays. The big metal bays were closed. The door to the office was open.

There were three official cars in the lot as well. Two pristine blue-and-white cruisers and an unmarked dark gray panel van. A man in a black and yellow CSI jacket was loading tackle boxes into the back of the van.

“This Broch’s place?” I asked Guerin.

“Have you been here before?”

“No.”

Guerin called to the man in the CSI jacket. “You set?”

The man nodded. “Harold’s finishing now. You can go.”

Kanellis popped a nugget of gum out of its foil packet and put it in his mouth. Very casual. “Let’s take a look inside.”

The two of them bookended me as we walked past the uniform minding the door. I knew what I was likely to see. Guerin and Kanellis knew that I knew it. But they wanted to watch my face when it happened.

We walked past the tiny reception area into the back. It was an ugly room. There was one large desk in the approximate center, with two chairs in front of it and four dented metal filing cabinets up against the wall. The drop ceiling was made of spongy white tiles, and the lumpy gray carpet was stained brown in places from years of coffee drips and spills.

Seated behind the desk was the body of a man. He was upright and only his balding head tilted forward, like he was glancing down for something he’d dropped something on his lap. He had been middle-aged and burly, dressed in a tie and white shirt with the sleeves rolled
up partway to show thick forearm muscles. An unhealthy percentage of the shirt was no longer white. Blood had stained it rust, from what looked like two high-caliber gunshot wounds in the center of his chest.

“You know him?” said Guerin.

“No. I assume he’s Broch,” I said.

“Torrance Xavier Broch,” said Kanellis, like he was making an introduction.

“And this,” said Guerin. I followed him through the open side door into the repair bays. The overhead lights were on full, and the contrast with the clammy office was startling. Guerin led me over to one of the oil pits and looked down.

Another corpse was lying seven feet down in the pit. The bodybuilder who had braced me at the Market. He was face down but his head was turned in profile, and I could see one very blackened eye and a yellowish bruise on the side of his head where I had clubbed him with my fists during our fight. He wore a skintight black tank top. His oversized biceps looked deflated. There was a small puddle of dried blood under his head.

“Best guess, until we have an official cause of death, is that the fellow in the pit was killed with that,” Guerin said, pointing to a heavy socket wrench on the floor of the bay. One of the CSI team was picking fibers or other bits from the floor around it with tweezers. A large plastic bag was open next to him, ready for the wrench itself.

“The side door to the shop was forced,” Kannelis said. “Maybe the killer broke in early and waited for Broch. Or he busted the lock, and Mister Muscle came out to see what the noise was, and got himself clocked from behind. Then our guy went into the office and shot Broch at his desk.”

“Broch had a gun in his desk drawer, which he didn’t touch,” said Guerin. “So the first killing might have been quiet enough not to alert him.”

“You think it’s a professional hit?” I asked.

“I’m not thinking anything out loud just yet,” he said. From outside came the sound of a large vehicle pulling to a stop in front of the bay doors. “That’ll be the M.E. Let’s get out of the way.”

“They haven’t been dead long,” said Guerin once we were back outside. “Sometime late last night or very early this morning. Nobody nearby heard any shots, so far as we know. A parts delivery guy found the bodies at six
A.M.
Where were you since about ten last night?”

“Besides ducking an explosion?”

“Besides that.”

“I dropped Luce off at her apartment, with her friend Marcie. I visited my friend Leo Pak at Swedish. He saved us from the bomb. Then I went back.”

“Luce is the blonde?” said Kanellis. He put a little spin of appreciation on the words that made me want to feed him his gray knit tie. He noticed, and smirked.

Guerin spoke sharply enough to yank our reins back. “You went straight to the hospital? Straight back?”

“I stopped downtown. Got my head clear.”

“Downtown,” Kanellis said, like I said I’d visited Neptune.

“Lemme toss a bomb in your direction. You can see how chipper you feel after.”

“And you never saw Broch before just now,” said Guerin.

“No. And if the killer broke in here to get to him, then he knew Broch by sight.”

“Maybe,” said Kanellis. “Of course, the business
is
registered to Broch. And he
is
the guy sitting at the big-ass desk inside. Not a tough mental jump.”

“The guy lying in the pit had a tough week,” Guerin said. “Somebody tuned him up pretty good a day or two ago, judging by his face. You know anything about that?”

“I told you what I knew about Broch. And what I could guess.”

“While carefully avoiding any statements about your own actions during the past few days.”

“You’re not giving me a ton of credit. I wouldn’t tell you about Kend Haymes and Broch one day and then rush right out to put bullets in Broch the next.”

“Maybe you didn’t have a choice,” Kanellis said. “Maybe Broch was
coming for you. A little preemptive strike. Who could blame you, a scumbag like that?”

I looked at Guerin. “Please tell me you’re coaching him on interrogation soon.”

“Hey,” said Kanellis.

“I’ll talk to Miss Boylan,” said Guerin, “and your friend Leo.”

“Are we done?”

“For now. But stay where I can find you, live and in person. I’m going to have more questions for you once we figure out who else had it in for Broch.”

Great. If Guerin’s call to Luce to confirm my alibi wasn’t enough, now we wouldn’t be going on that vacation I’d promised. I might talk her into going ahead without me. But I could predict how that far that conversation would get. Luce could be harder to budge than an Abrams tank once she set her mind to something.