“Do you trust your father?”
“How can you ask such a thing.” Her voice turns hot. “Of course, I do.”
“Well, maybe you shouldn’t.”
“I?
??m starting to wonder if I should trust you.”
I let that hang in the stuffy air of the cab as we glide down the street into the train station parking lot. No police cars, no conspicuously unmarked vehicles, no officers with shotguns and dogs looking for the man who ran down the railroad tunnel. The lot is half-full and I slide into the empty spot next to Rachel’s Honda.
“You need to leave,” I say. “Where can you go?”
“What are you talking about? What have you gotten into?”
“They’ll kill you.” I say it simply and she shudders. “Where can you go?”
She purses her lips and stares at me. “We have a condo in Vancouver. Is that good enough?”
“That’s a start. Go tonight.”
“But…”
“Rachel, you’ve got to go.”
“Then come with me.”
“I can’t. I have to get the story.”
“The story!” She pounds her fists on the dashboard. “Are you insane? If they’ll try to kill me, they will kill you! You’re not even employed anymore—you told me yourself. I asked you if you’d be willing to just have a happy life, and you told me yes…” She starts to cry, but the anger retakes her. “This is just another way for you to keep me at a distance.”
“This is not about you and me.”
She shakes her head slowly. “Damn you to hell.”
“Go! Tonight!” I shout it and she screams a worse obscenity back at me, storms from the SUV, unlocks her car, and gets inside. In seconds, the tail lights glow red and she burns out of the parking lot.
I drive the SUV up Madison, past First Hill into the Central District. All of Seattle’s glamour falls away in the Seedy. I park it on a desolate side street, use my tie to wipe down the places I touched, and leave it with the keys in the driver’s door. With any luck, it will be stolen by the morning. Four blocks take me to a bus stop and the chill sea air slowly chips away the calm, edgeless rage that overtook me in the tunnel. In ten minutes, I catch the nearly empty bus back to Pioneer Square. Pam is dead, and now the people who killed her, and probably Troy Hardesty and Ryan Meyers, are dead. I acted with murderous clarity. If vengeance is sweet, why do I taste only bile in my mouth?
Chapter Forty-three
I get off the bus at Pioneer Square. A girl is standing at the curb and reluctantly lets me get past her. Otherwise, the park, so leafy just two months ago, is bare and nearly deserted. The spire of the Smith Tower stands out stark white with its blue light at the top. Across the street, the bare bulbs of the Merchants Café sign beams out as if it’s 1910. A small group of autumn tourists passes speaking Russian.
Closer to me, a homeless man hunches on one wooden bench, his net worth in several large garbage bags. I buy a Free Press from the news rack, go to an empty bench, and let myself down slowly. My knee hurts from where Bill drop-kicked me. Someday maybe I’ll have time to wonder why he had such a personal, visceral hatred of me, while his colleagues were just professional killers. Maybe a newspaper misspelled his name when he was in high-school band. My face throbs. Mostly I feel this huge emptiness in my middle and pressure against my eyes. Like I need a good cry but the tears won’t come. The newspaper feels strange to the touch. Someday historians might look back and say it was a perfect “delivery device” for information. Now it’s just headed to the dustbin of history. They’re starting to run historic photos—not a good sign for the paper’s future. I guess that a buyer hasn’t been found.
“You looking for a date, mister?”
It’s the girl from the bus stop. She’s medium-sized, with shoulder-length brown hair, wearing only a bright blue blouse and jeans against the cold. Her eyes are shiny and wide—she’s doped out of her mind. I tell her I don’t need a date.
All the time I was so alone in my twenties—when I went literally years at a time without a date, just a date, just taking a woman for a drink or dinner and talking—all that time, I never went to a prostitute. Maybe it’s a generational thing. I know my father went to them. Maybe it’s a class thing. In the Army, the enlisted guys spent plenty of money at the massage parlors off base. Maybe it’s a kink thing. Whatever, I never did. I figured if I had to pay for it, I might as well be dead. When I was on the I-Team in Texas, we used prostitutes as sources for the stories about unsolved murders and drug cartels. Sometimes they were reliable, often not. They were usually women supporting a drug habit. Often they were also supporting one or more children.
“I fuck for money,” she says. “I’ll suck your cock for ten dollars.”
Deflation hits the hookers—that would be a column, if I still had a column. She stands in front of me, swaying from side to side. I set the newspaper down.
“No, thanks. You’re too pretty anyway,” I say gallantly. “You’re probably a cop.”
“I’m no cop.” She smiles and lifts the flimsy shirt. She’s not wearing a wire or a bra. I look at her face. She’s definitely underage. But there’s something else. Something about the smile. And something about the voice. She has a small, pale mole on the left edge of her chin. I feel the sudden rush of revelation.