Past Crimes (14 page)

E
PHRAIM GANZ AND I
sat on one side of a long conference table in the King County Sheriff’s Office in Covington. The other side of the table was full. Detectives Guerin and Kanellis occupied the seats nearest the door. In the middle chairs were the detectives from the sheriff’s department. A wiry woman with black hair and hard features, named Marques, and her partner, an equally thin man with a sandy brown comb-over, named Thomasen.

In the last seat was an older guy with a bald head and chalk-stripe suit who had introduced himself to Ephraim as Lieutenant Burrowes of MCU. The county’s major-crimes unit.

He was the wildcard in the room. Cristiana Liotti’s murder had been brutal, but not something that I thought would rate direct involvement from MCU, much less its brass.

Burrowes had the rank, but Marques had the lead. She was the one who’d given Guerin and Kanellis permission to sit in. She had also led the first round of questioning, asking me about everything from the time I’d landed in Seattle to the moment that the first trooper arrived at Cristiana Liotti’s apartment. Then, without any signal between them, Thomasen had started over, asking about the same events from different angles. Instead of
what
happened, it would be
how did I feel when
this
happened. Sometimes he got the events wrong just a little bit, to see if my story changed to match.

Dono had done this with me when I was a boy. He made a game of it. Tell me about math class today, he’d say. Make up a lie. Let’s see if I can figure out what it is.

“You found Ms. Liotti’s business card in your grandfather’s desk?” Thomasen said to me.

“
On
his desk,” I said.

“He must have a lot of business cards. Being a successful contractor and bar owner and all that. Why did this one stand out?”

I shrugged. “It wasn’t filed away. Her address on the back was way down in Covington, and Dono usually worked in Seattle. And her personal number was there, too. I thought she was a girlfriend.”

“But you didn’t call her, you said.” Thomasen tilted his head, like he was trying to comprehend such odd behavior. “Not even to check if she was home.”

“Dono’s been shot. If she was his girlfriend, she should hear bad news in person.”

“So early in the morning?” Thomasen said.

“Gentlemen,” said Ephraim, “and lady. Mr. Shaw has explained all these points already. He has only a few days of his leave left. Of course he was eager to get an early start on the day, like all veterans of our armed forces.”

Kanellis snorted. During the past two hours of Marques and Thomasen questioning me, his attention had wandered a little. Guerin’s hadn’t. He didn’t seem bored hearing me tell the details about Dono’s shooting all over again. He didn’t seem anything. He just sat there, listening.

“So unless you have any new questions,” Ephraim said, “I think everyone will agree that my client has fully cooperated.”

Marques took Cristiana Liotti’s business card from Thomasen and looked at it for a moment. She set it down on the table, at a precise right angle to the notepad. Her hawklike face was reflective. It was tough to guess her age. Somewhere from late thirties to early fifties. Native American blood, maybe.

“Mr. Shaw, you said that you hadn’t heard of Ms. Liotti prior to today,” she said. “What about her company? Talos Industrial Equipment. Had you heard of that?”

I could feel the attention from the other cops in the room sharpen, like dogs catching a scent.

Even Ephraim was startled. “She worked for Talos Industrial?” he said, looking at me. “You didn’t tell me that.”

“I didn’t know it was important,” I said. “What is it?”

Marques stared at me for another beat. “It’s a tool-manufacturing firm. A conglomerate, really. Their Northwest plant is in Ravensdale.”

I knew where that was, roughly. A small town somewhere east of where we were now.

“Okay,” I said. “So why does everyone look like they’re waiting for me to faint?”

“I want to point something out right now,” Ephraim said to the room. “Mr. Shaw has not been in the United States for many months, much less the Seattle area. Nor has he had any contact with his grandfather other than a short letter, which the police have already seen.” He gestured toward Guerin and Kanellis at the far end of the table. “If you’re implying that Mr. Shaw—”

Lieutenant Burrowes cut him off. It was the first time he’d spoken during the interview. “No one’s making accusations. Mr. Shaw’s movements have already been confirmed.” He looked down the table at Guerin and Kanellis. “Correct?”

Guerin nodded. “At least so far as the army is willing to confirm Special Operations assignments. But we’ve been assured that for the entire month of February, Sergeant Shaw was deployed in the Kandahar province of Afghanistan.”

“Very well,” Ephraim said. “Please proceed.”

“Not until someone catches me up to the rest of the room,” I said.

Marques looked at Burrowes. He raised a hand, acquiescing. “Fine. Nothing you couldn’t learn from the news anyway.”

“Cristiana Liotti was a senior administrative assistant for Talos Industrial.” She tapped the business card. “On the morning of February
nineteeth, Talos—or more accurately a chartered armored car that Talos had hired—was the target of an armed robbery by three men. The robbers succeeded, although two of them were later found dead.”

I had a sudden hollow feeling in my center.

“What was taken?” I said.

Marques wouldn’t be rushed. “Talos is an industry leader in high-grade tools and factory machinery. Everything from drill bits to huge saws used to cut steel plating. In order to cut things of that hardness—”

“Diamonds,” I said.

She nodded. I heard Burrowes exhale heavily.

“Diamonds,” Marques said. “Not gem quality, but still diamonds. Mined in China and flown in to Sea-Tac, which is where the armored car picked them up. They were nearly to the Talos plant in Ravensdale when the robbers intercepted the car.”

I raised my eyebrows, asking without saying it.

“Eighty kilograms,” Marques said. “Maybe six million dollars, market value.”

Six
million.
Holy hell.

Christ knew that Dono had done things just as crazy in his younger days. But the careful, analytical bastard who’d raised me would have pissed on the very idea.

And yet. It made a dark, slithering kind of sense. His letter to me. Changing his will. The bugs, trying to find out something that Dono knew. And Dono himself left for dead.

What did you do, old man?

I looked at Marques. All the cops around the table had been waiting, like cops do, to see where the silence might lead.

“You think Cristiana Liotti was the inside source on the robbery,” I said. “That she knew when the diamonds were being delivered.”

“Or she managed to learn it,” said Thomasen. “Officially, only three executives at the company had the details on the shipment. But …” He shrugged.

“Somebody wrote it down,” I said, “or left their computer screen unlocked.”

“Let’s say that’s right,” said Marques. “How would she know the kind of men who would rob the armored car?”

“Because you’re asking,” I said, “I’m guessing there’s nothing in her history that might indicate criminal friends.”

“Or family,” Marques said. Making sure I got the point.

“Do
you
think she was the person on the inside?” Thomasen said.

I did. Not only because she’d been tortured and killed. Those tiny bits of blue shrink-wrap, left from the stacks of cash I believed she’d hidden in her bathroom, were enough to convince me. But I didn’t want to tell the cops I’d searched the place, although I was sure at least Guerin suspected.

“Who were the two dead men?” I asked Marques.

“This is not a swap meet,” Burrowes said. He looked at Ephraim. “You know we can hold your client.”

Ephraim started to answer, and I stopped him with a raised hand, because Marques was shaking her head at Burrowes. “It’s nothing he can’t learn from the Internet, Dan,” she said.

Burrowes’s mouth made a thin line. With his shaved head, he looked like a peeved snake. “Your choice,” he said, and got up and walked out of the room.

Marques reached down and withdrew a thick file from her messenger bag. She took out two sheets and slid them toward me.

“Sal Orren,” she said, “and Burt McGann.”

The photos were mug shots, blown up to take the full page. Sal Orren was maybe thirty, with oily skin and hair and a mournful expression. Burt McGann was older, buzz-cut, with hostile, hoggish eyes. I was sure that the mug shot hadn’t been his first.

“How did they die?” I said.

“They shot each other,” Marques said, “at the site of what we think was a vehicle exchange after the robbery.”

I looked up from the photos. “Each other?”

“Did you think your grandfather might have killed them?” said Thomasen.

I hadn’t ruled it out. That was how unsure I was of Dono and his
whole life right now. Maybe he was the third man, the only survivor of the robbery. Maybe he’d even killed his partners after the job. Or maybe he was tied into the crime some other way.

He might even be innocent, although I put that at the bottom of a long list of possible truths.

“You told me the third robber got away,” I said. “Back in February. There are no leads in the two months since? Nobody’s tried to sell the diamonds?”

Marques frowned. “If your grandfather left you something, where would it be?”

“At his house.”

“You know what I mean,” she said. “Somewhere nobody else would know, or look.”

“He didn’t expect to be shot,” I said. “He didn’t plan to leave me anything.”

“Why do you think he had Cristiana Liotti’s card?” said Thomasen.

I knew we’d come back to the card. By selling the cops a story about finding Cristiana Liotti’s business card at Dono’s house, I’d unwittingly tied my grandfather to the robbery.

“I still think Cristiana could have been a girlfriend,” I said. “Were the diamonds laser-etched? Or don’t they bother if they’re going be ground down to powder?”

“Forget the damn diamonds,” Marques said. “Tell us what you know about your grandfather.”

“We’ve been through that. I haven’t seen him in ten years.”

“Then tell me about before. When you were growing up. He didn’t make all his money fixing cabinets and pouring drinks, right?”

“You know his record.”

“I see what’s on paper. But I don’t think Dono Shaw had been straight for the last twenty years and then one day he decided to pick up an assault rifle and take down an armored truck.”

Sharing time was over. The cops wouldn’t give up any more facts about the robbery. And I wasn’t going to tell them about my life with Dono. Even if it might help them.

On top of the yawning cavern in my gut, there was a kind of elation. Finally I saw a reason for all the madness that had been swirling around my grandfather, and around me.

“What you really need to know,” I said to Marques, “is if I had any contact with my grandfather, other than the letter I showed SPD. And do I know if he was involved in the robbery. And if so, do I know where the diamonds are.”

Ephraim cut in. “If both Seattle and the Sheriff’s Office—”

“The answer to all three is no,” I said. I stood up. Ephraim quickly did the same. Thomasen got up, too, and blocked the door.

“We’re not finished,” Marques said.

“I’m saving you time,” I said, walking around the table. “I’m a dead end.”

Thomasen stayed put. “Right now you’re staring at accessory after the fact, minimum.”

“So arrest me. If I’m no longer a menace to society, maybe one of you will accidentally stumble across the guy who shot my grandfather.”

Marques held up a hand. “Wait while we type your statement—”

Ephraim was ready with one of his cards. “My office can handle that. No need to take up any more of your time. If you’ll e-mail me the statement, we’ll get Mr. Shaw’s signature back to you right away.”

Thomasen looked at Marques. She kept staring at me.

“Let him go,” she said.

Thomasen moved, and I opened the door. I caught sight of Guerin. He looked resigned, like the interview had gone as badly as he’d expected.

“You should have walked out an hour ago,” Ephraim said as we made our way through the small station. It was brightly lit, with high, red-brown cubicle walls dividing up the floor space.

Lieutenant Burrowes was standing in the reception area, talking on the desk phone. As we passed, he grabbed me by the arm.

“It’s for you,” he said, thrusting the receiver my way. His face was smug.

“Yes?” I said into the phone.

“Sergeant Shaw? This is Captain Bob Unser, at Benning HQ.”

“Sir.” I knew Unser by name—and reputation. He was the right hand of our battalion’s XO. He determined which Rangers went where and which didn’t move at all.

It was a lot of weight, and Unser liked to swing it around.

“Lieutenant Burrowes has been filling me in on your activities during your leave,” Unser said. “Give me your own report. Now.”

Ephraim was looking at me quizzically. I waved him off. He shrugged and went outside.

I told Captain Unser the basic facts. He listened without comment. When I’d finished, there was a lengthy pause, and I could hear him writing something down on the opposite end.

“Do I have to tell you how this looks to me, Sergeant Shaw? One of our own, involved with two homicides?”

“No, sir.”

“It doesn’t matter what the circumstances are. It’s bad. Bad for you. Bad for the regiment.”

“Sir.”

“You will call my office every day by 1400 Eastern and give me a full update on every event during the past twenty-four hours. If I’m not here, you will report to the officer in charge.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If I don’t like what I’m hearing, Sergeant, you will be assigned to Fort Lewis until the Seattle police and the sheriff and whoever else you’ve managed to piss off are finished with you, and then you’ll be on the first flight back here. Get it straight.”

“Sir,” I said, but Unser had already hung up.