Hard Cold Winter (6 page)

B
ACK IN THE TRUCK,
I tossed the messenger bag on the passenger seat and started the engine. I wanted a look at the guy asking the manager to unlock Kend’s apartment. A family member, maybe, or a cop. It might be useful to know if it was Peninsula deputies working remote, or if they’d passed the case off to SPD. I drove around the block to park where I could see the building entrance. It had started to rain, graduating rapidly from a drizzle to an insistent pelting shower.

The large stack of Kend’s bank and credit statements took some reshuffling to put in order. I read through them as the precipitation streamed down the windows.

They told a story. Kend’s finances were a holy mess. Every month he received one deposit into his bank account in the whopping sum of twenty grand, from something called GLV. The deposits stretched back as far as the statements went. I assumed it was Kend’s trust fund. That was the only bright note for him.

Then the money went right back out again. In cash. During each of the past few months Kend had made withdrawals in large round num
bers, until he’d completely wiped out his monthly allowance. The trust fund money was usually gone within four or five days after it arrived.

The credit statements proved he was living on borrowed time, charging everything from groceries to the cable bill. At least it looked like the condo was paid for.

He hadn’t bought another car, though. No gas receipts, either. The Panamera he’d sold seemed to have been Kend’s only ride. I checked the bank statements again. No deposit of extra cash from a few weeks before, when Kend had signed off on his hundred-K Porsche.

What was burning through Kend’s money like this? Drugs? No sign of that in the apartment, and he’d have overdosed long ago at this rate. Was he dealing? That was possible. If he were buying in quantity and laundering the money somewhere else. But why max out his credit cards?

The door to the building opened. A stout, middle-aged guy in a blue business suit and tie came out, walking so fast he verged on jogging. He held Kend’s Mac laptop under his arm, hunching to shield it from the rain.

He had the look of a cop, from the stone scowl to the bristly mustache. But a cop wouldn’t grab just one piece of evidence and remove it with his bare hands. Ex-cop, I decided.

I got a closer view through the river running down my windshield, as he crossed the street to a gray four-door Taurus two cars in front of me. His face was as chubby as his body, made rounder by a comb-over that swooped light brown hair over his tanned pate. Fat but strong looking, like a junior college lineman gone to seed. He hustled his gut behind the steering wheel and the Taurus zoomed away.

I began putting Kend’s financial statements back into his monogrammed messenger bag. The bag had looked empty, which was why I had grabbed it. There was an interior pocket, half unzipped. Inside the pocket was a large piece of paper, folded in quarters. The paper was thick and a little waxy, like a blueprint. I unfolded it.

It was a schematic. For an alarm system.

With pencil notes around the sides, pointing out how and where to beat it.

Kendrick Haymes, scion of old money, had suddenly become much more interesting.

Of course, just because the schematic had been tucked away in Kend’s monogrammed bag didn’t mean it was his. Elana was more the type to be familiar with burglar alarms. Was it hers? Both of theirs?

The alarm was complex. In a quick scan of the diagram I spotted redundant power sources, and both hardwired and wireless zones. Not the toughest system to beat, but not DIY crap from Radio Shack, either.

Where was it installed? The design was intended for a commercial building, or a series of connected smaller buildings, I guessed. There was no company name or identification number. A blank white strip showed at the bottom, maybe where those details had been masked before printing it on this strange waxen paper.

And had Kend or Elana or both already followed the penciled instructions, and broken into the place? If so, I had to assume there would be a police record of the burglary. But matching that to this diagram would be tough, without access to the same reports.

I knew how I could get those police reports. Or who could get them for me.

While the truck’s vents were laboring to defog the windows, I checked the faces in Kend’s and Elana’s snapshots against what I could find on their social media accounts. I got a handful of matches. Barrett Yorke was the elfin girl with honeyed hair, Trudy Dobbs her taller friend with the beauty mark. Barrett had a brother, Parson, who had been a looming presence in the background at a couple of the parties.

No doubt they had heard of their friends’ deaths. Kend’s had been reported, with very careful wording, on last night’s news. The reporter had named father Maurice as one of the dozen wealthiest people in Seattle, according to
Forbes
. And a quick check on my phone showed me the socialverse was on fire with rumors. One gossip claimed Kend and Elana had been only two of dozens secretly killed in the forest that night.

I sent a group text message to Barrett, Trudy, and Parson.

My name is Van Shaw. I was a friend of Elana
’s. I was the one who found them at the cabin.

And then a following message:

Someone else was there, too.

If that didn’t pique their interest, I’d have to get drastic. Maybe I’d start my own horrible rumor circulating. I had a doozy about a bear.

T
HE MORNING TRAFFIC JAM
was making like an inchworm by the time I reached Belltown. I could have low-crawled the last four blocks in full battle rattle—body armor, weapons, and all—and still beat the pace I set in the Dodge.

I stashed the truck in its usual spot at a garage three blocks from the bar. The morning’s rain hadn’t let up. I pulled my jacket tighter and strode down Western Ave, through people hurrying to work and Pike Place visitors seeking the shelter of the vendor stalls.

Only the panhandlers stood in place, one staking a claim on every corner. I gave my last single to a woman with ratty scarves wrapped around her head, framing a face with more deep wrinkles than teeth. She held a cardboard sign saying
4KIDS
. I didn’t know if that meant she had four kids or intended to use the money for her kids, or if the sign was bullshit and my charity would just fund the woman’s next bottle. A dollar wouldn’t go far in any case. A drop of malt liquor on a bonfire.

The door to the Morgen was halfway down an alley off Lenora. It was bright green. Nothing on or around the door told you the bar’s
name. When the bar opened at noon, Luce or one of her people would put out a sandwich board that directed customers to the right place.

I knocked on the door. No answer. Luce was probably hustling around somewhere in the back, in that efficient frenzy she always had while working. I tugged on the brass handle, and was surprised when it opened.

Most of the Morgen was a single room, long and wide, with thick ceiling beams and banged-up wooden tables and chairs. The overhead lights were turned off, making the interior murky. The walls were painted black, and so were the planks of the pine floor. Dust motes floated in the soft light coming through the high windows.

A man was seated at the table farthest from the door, half in shadow. I could make out a wispy black beard, but the rest of his face was hidden by a fraying cotton hood. He wore a dark blue wool coat over the hoodie. On the table in front of him was a plate of what looked like half-eaten chicken wings from the bar’s kitchen. Luce wasn’t in the room.

“Hey,” I said.

The man didn’t answer. His hands were out of sight under the table. His face could have been Asian, but it was hard to tell from just his chin and mouth. On the floor next to his bench was a large backpack. It was stuffed near to bursting and stained and faded from hard use.

A couple of street people made a habit of coming by the Morgen before opening, looking for food or spare change or whatever Luce could offer. If they weren’t drunk or high, Luce usually found something to wrap up for them.

I’d never known her to invite one of them into the bar. Where was she?

“Anybody home?” I called. No answer from the back rooms.

I walked toward the bar counter, a lengthy stretch of pale birch. On the wall behind the bar hung a tapestry. A medieval image of a nude woman riding a horse into the sea, which gave the Morgen its name. I watched the man in the hood as I walked, and he watched me in continued silence.

“You got a name?” I said.

He nodded. Hands still under the table.

“That’s a start,” I said, moving behind the bar. Luce kept a collapsible police baton taped under the lip of the counter. Albie had kept a Louisville Slugger in the same spot for decades. The steel baton was both a nod to his legacy, and an improvement. The eight-inch handle would telescope out to triple its length with a flick of the wrist, a lot quicker and just as effective as a baseball bat. I reached underneath for it.

The baton was gone. The loose ends of masking tape where it had been stuck to my fingertips.

The beard moved in a smile. His left hand came out and picked up a chicken wing, and dipped it in the plastic cup of blue cheese dressing.

“Lemme finish these,” he said around a mouthful, “’fore you shoot me.”

I knew that voice. And saw his combat boots, scuffed from their original tan to a patchy gray.

“Pak?” I asked.

“Hey, Sergeant.”

Leonard Pak had been a specialist in the Seventy-Fifth Ranger Regiment, serving in Afghanistan. On his second deployment, he’d been assigned to the platoon I had led. Leo got into the rhythm of working with his new fire team faster than most. He was smart and quickly proved his rep as a hell of a shot with a sniper rifle. As happy as I was whenever any of my guys went home safe, I’d been sorry to lose Leo from the unit.

“Goddamn,” I said, and walked down the bar. He wiped his hand on his pants before shaking mine.

“Sorry to yank your chain,” he said, “but the look on your face when you walked in and saw me . . .”

Leo tugged the hood all the way off. His ink-black hair had grown long enough to touch his shoulders. He had the same broad, square face as I remembered, with a few extra creases framing his eyes. Handsome enough that at least two girls on post at Benning had labored through killer crushes on him. The way his facial bones pressed at his skin, I didn’t think Leo had been eating a lot of home-cooked meals.

I sat down on the bench across from him. Up close, spots on his wool coat shone bright with wear. “Luce let you in?”

“The hot blonde? I told her how I knew you. She made me prove it. I dug my Ranger tabs out of my pack.” He grinned. “And I told her about when our team extracted that HVT in Kabul, and you had to cold-cock one of his wives when she jumped you.”

Jesus. “I apologized to her.”

“That’s what I told the blonde girl. The woman was unconscious, but you said ‘Sorry’ to her just the same while we hauled ass out of there.” He shrugged. “Saved us from having to shoot the crazy bitch.”

Of all the stories, Leo had picked that one.

“Nice beard, Pak.”

“Huh. Still better than you can do.”

He wasn’t wrong. Ever since the left side of my face was stitched back together, any attempt I made to grow facial hair looked ridiculous.

“How’d you find me here?” I said.

“You told me and Johnny Hargreaves one night about a bar near Pike Place that your dad owned. I thought, what the hell, I’d knock on a few doors, see if you were around.”

“Granddad,” I corrected automatically. “You could have just asked the battalion office to pass along a message. They’ve got my e-mail.”

The lines around Leo’s eyes crunched together. “I’m done with all that, Sarge,” he said. Before I could ask what he meant, he pushed away his empty plate. “Man, those were good. Are you working here now?”

I shook my head. “It’s not in the family anymore. I just help out sometimes.”

“Uh-huh.” He nodded pointedly toward the back. “You and her?”

“Yeah.” I said. “Me and her.”

“Good deal. You haven’t been out very long, right? Your hair still looks reg.”

“Middle of January. How long for you now?”

“Over a year.” He said it like the amount of time surprised him.

“Did you go back home?” I remembered Leo was from Utah. His
mother had emigrated from South Korea, and his dad was serving a full thirty-five in the Army, which was why Leo had signed up.

“I was there for a while, after I got out.” Leo nudged the loaded backpack with his foot. “Then I went for a hike.”

“From Salt Lake to Seattle?”

“Not directly. Medford, first.”

“They have these things called buses now,” I said.

“I took ’em. When I had to.” The half-hidden smile appeared again.

“You didn’t come to Seattle just to find me,” I said.

“Nah. Figured I’d look you up while I was north, something to do before the next leg. It’s nice, you know? Peaceful out there.” His eyes went to the closed front door of the bar, then over to the doorway leading to the storage rooms. Then back again.

“I can open that, if you want,” I said.

“How’s that?”

I spread my hands. “You picked a table where you can see the whole place. Watch the points of entry. Which you haven’t stopped doing since I came in. You squared away, Leo?”

He met my gaze. The muscles under his eyebrows tightened.

“Good days and bad,” he said finally.

“I hear you on that.”

There was a thump from the back rooms. Leo twitched. I knew it as the sound of the small loading hatch off the alley closing.

“Need any help?” I called to Luce. She yelled back that she had it handled. Leo’s right hand was out of sight again.

I looked at him. “You packing?”

He smiled, a little sheepishly. “Security blanket,” he said, pulling up his hand to show me a foot-long iron rod, like a bigger, heavier Kubotan self-defense stick. “Can’t carry a gun or a knife. Not when cops take any excuse to pat you down.”

Luce entered the room. I stood up, and Leo followed along. He was only about five-eight, boots and all, but his thick wool jacket added to his naturally muscled build.

“Hi,” said Luce. She wore her work togs of black jeans and white button-down oxford. It was a man’s shirt, but no one would ever guess that when she was wearing it. “I’m sorry that took so long. I figured you two would be on your second round by now, nine in the morning or not.”

“Crap,” I said, turning to Leo. “A whole damn bar and I didn’t offer you a beer.”

“Forget it,” said Leo. He quickly picked up his backpack and slid the iron rod into a sleeve in its base. A good place for it. It would look like a reinforcing brace on the pack if he were searched, and still be within quick reach.

“Thanks again for the wings,” Leo said, wrestling his pack on.

Luce nodded. “You get enough? I’m running late, but Van can throw something on the grill for you both.”

“I’m cool,” said Leo, looking at the closed green door.

I wanted to talk to Leo in private. Despite what he’d claimed, I had the feeling that I was the reason he’d come to Seattle. But he was acting squirrelly enough that I thought he might bolt for the exit before he could spit out the reason.

“Hang out a minute,” I said to him.

I steered Luce toward the back. We went to her cozy, surprisingly feminine office. Running the bar allowed her very little time to sit and enjoy it, but she had still papered the walls with a lilac pattern and decorated with photographs of friends and happenings at the Morgen. Now they reminded me of the pictures Kend and Elana had left behind, and I pushed that dark idea away.

Luce had framed a snapshot of me on the shelf above her computer. I’d dredged it up and mailed it to her from overseas when she’d asked. I didn’t have a lot of pictures of myself. This one had been taken at Camp Eggers in Kabul, not too long before the raid that Leo had told her about. I was dressed in ACUs and plates but no helmet, sitting on the hood of a Humvee and grinning stupidly at the camera, with the scarred side of my face angled away.

“Leo said you checked his story,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Still.”

“I was careful, Mr. Ounce of Prevention.” She took the collapsible police baton out of her back pocket.

First Leo, now Luce. Everyone was walking around armed like ninjas today.

“Good,” I said, and stepped forward to kiss her.

When we parted Luce’s face was flushed. I spoke before I changed my mind.

“Leo’s going to go out and find a place to crash. On the street,” I said.

She nodded. “I thought our plans today might change. Are you going to put him up at the house?”

“If he wants. I have to ask.”

“Yeah. Okay.” She sighed, exaggeratedly. “Guess I’ll show you what I bought at Bellefleur another time.”

“Jesus.”

Luce laughed, but had one eyebrow raised. “He is a friend, right? I mean, you trust him? He’s kind of edgy.”

I trusted every Ranger I’d served with. It was part of what made us the best at what we did.

“He’s a good guy,” I said. “And maybe he needs somebody who can hear what he’s saying. Thanks for giving him a meal.”

“Another night, then.”

I made myself let go of her. “You have no idea.”

Her smile, full of promise, stayed with me all the way back to the main hall.

I had spent more minutes with Luce than I’d planned. Leo might have taken off, his restlessness forcing him out of the confines of the bar. But he was still there, studying the stained glass of the windows intently.

“Hang with me,” I said to him. “I have a friend to see. Then we’ll set
you up at the house. You can crash there.” I had meant to say it casually, but it came out with the undertone of platoon sergeant. I wasn’t sure if Leo heard it, too.

“You don’t mind?” he said.

“Mind, hell. It’ll do me good to talk to somebody who doesn’t think a magazine is what you read at the hair salon.”

He grunted a short laugh. “All right, hell with it. Let’s go.”

On the way out I lifted a case of Saw’s Porter from the storage room, and left a note for Luce saying:
I owe you for the beer and a lot more. Looking forward to paying the tab.