Murder One (11 page)

Willins knew the question to be rhetorical. Cruz apparently did not.

“We didn’t see nothing. It was black out. No moon or stars. And the storm.”

Willins said, “It was seconds, at most. By the time I even figured out it was a gunshot and not thunder, it was too late.”

Hurley sat back. His barrel chest rose and fell while he rubbed at a goatee as white as his eyebrows. “How am I going to explain this?”

This time Cruz exercised better judgment and did not answer. They’d had high hopes for Vasiliev, and the cost associated with the operation had not been insignificant. Hurley turned to the opposite wall, considering a chart with rectangular boxes stacked like a family tree, some blank, some penciled in with eastern European surnames.

“Maybe they knew,” Cruz offered. “Maybe someone found out.”

Hurley said, “He was alone.”

Willins understood. “If he had suspected anything . . .”

“Maybe he didn’t,” Cruz said. “That’s my point. Maybe he didn’t know.”

“Chelyakov spoke to him?” Hurley asked.

“At the dealership,” Cruz said. “Day before.”

Willins nodded. “He told him they had a problem with that attorney, that she was talking to a civil lawyer . . .” He looked at his notes. “David Sloane. Chelyakov said he didn’t want the woman pushing any more lawsuits. He wanted Vasiliev to handle it. Couple hours later, Vasiliev has his two guys bring in Sloane and he threatens him—tells him to convince the woman to let it go.”

“What was this guy Sloane’s response?”

“Sloane . . . he didn’t sound intimidated, man.” Cruz’s accent became more pronounced. “Not at all. Said he’d kill him if he touched his family.”

“Said he’d kill him?” Hurley asked.

“‘Touch my son and I’ll kill you,’” Willins said.

“Didn’t sound scared, neither,” Cruz added.

T
HE
J
USTICE
C
ENTER
S
EATTLE
, W
ASHINGTON

The room, a windowless, colorless box, radiated white. Overhead fluorescent lights illuminated the nicked and scratched metal table and three chairs. Light blue soundproofing foam covered the upper half of the walls to deter a suspect from shouting to an accomplice in one of the adjoining rooms.

The unit referred to the room as a “hard” interrogation room, though the “soft” interrogation rooms, located on the same narrow hallway, weren’t significantly bigger and didn’t come with any additional amenities. With the doors shut, the rooms brought the claustrophobic feel of a prison cell, which was the point—to let a suspect know they were deep in the soup and the only way to keep from spending a very long time, perhaps the rest of their lives, in a room just as small and just as sparse was to cooperate, maybe even confess.

Rowe didn’t expect that to happen tonight.

“What do you think?” Rowe asked.

Rick Cerrabone and Crosswhite watched Barclay Reid from behind one-way glass. Around them knobs and lights on the video and recording equipment flashed yellow and green. Before transporting Reid to the Justice Center, Rowe had called Cerrabone to give him a heads-up. He’d googled Reid on the Internet and knew of her status in the community—a former president of the Washington Bar Association. They would need to do everything by the book. The brass would be breathing hard down their necks, and since they were located in the same building, they wouldn’t have far to go.

“How did she react when you opened the box?” Cerrabone asked.

Rowe had kept his focus on Reid when Crosswhite opened the gun box, revealing the Styrofoam cutout where the gun should have been. Reid’s eyes had widened, and she brought up a hand to cover her mouth.

“Not much. She looked more confused than concerned. She didn’t panic,” Rowe said.

“Does she look like the panicking type?” Crosswhite asked.

Rowe and Cerrabone considered Reid again. She sat with her legs crossed, cleaning the ink from her fingertips with an alcohol wipe. She looked as if she’d just painted her nails and was waiting for the polish to dry. Rowe had interrogated a lot of witnesses, and few looked as calm as Reid did at that moment—even the few who turned out to be completely innocent.

After opening the box, Rowe had handed Reid a search warrant he’d procured from Judge O’Neil to search her house and to impound her car. Rowe was interested in determining if they might find sand or water in the carpet.

“She didn’t ask for an attorney?” Cerrabone scratched the back of his neck behind the ear. With bloodshot eyes, dark bags, and sagging cheeks, he resembled a basset hound scratching at a flea. “Didn’t want to call anyone?”

“She
had
an attorney with her,” Crosswhite said. “A good one. David Sloane.”

When Crosswhite mentioned the name, Cerrabone stopped scratching. “Why do I know that name?”

“He’s the attorney whose wife was murdered last year,” Cross-white said.

“His wife was murdered?” Rowe asked.

She shook her head. “Do you listen to anything I say? I already told you that.”

Rowe made a note in the spiral notebook. “I’ll check with Bernie,” he said, referring to Bernie Hamilton, the detective assigned to the cold-cases unit.

“I already have,” Crosswhite said.

Cerrabone said, “Sloane also handled that matter involving Argus a few years back—the one on the National Guardsman. And didn’t he have that magnet case against Kendall Toys last year?” Cerrabone didn’t wait for an answer. He nodded, answering his own question. “He did. In fact, if my memory serves me . . .” He stopped and looked at Reid. “She was the attorney for Kendall.”

“Strange bedfellows,” Rowe said.

Cerrabone looked at him. “Figure of speech?”

Rowe shrugged. “Their hair was wet and the bed looked like someone just gave it a good workout.”

“Why would he let her come down here without him?” Cerrabone asked, though they all knew that technically, there wasn’t much Sloane could have done. Rowe had another search warrant in his pocket for Reid to provide her fingerprints and the DNA swab had she refused to voluntarily provide them, and Sloane had no right to be in the interrogation room unless she requested he act as her attorney.

“He advised against it,” Rowe said. “He told her not to say anything.”

“What did she say?” Cerrabone asked, nervousness sneaking into his voice. “Did you write it down?”

Crosswhite flipped the pages of her notebook. “She said she wanted to quote, ‘cooperate,’ end quote, and quote, ‘get to the bottom of the matter,’ end quote. She told him she would call him later. Then she asked if she could change her clothes.”

“Ask her again,” Cerrabone said. “Get it on tape.”

“Look where she sat,” Crosswhite said. Reid had taken a seat on the side of the table with two chairs rather than the side with just the one chair. “Why would she sit there?”

Rowe shook his head. He’d never had anyone do that either. Seemed everyone understood the etiquette of an interrogation was to take the hot seat.

Rowe looked to Crosswhite. “How do you want to play it?”

Normally, they interviewed witnesses together, though one or the other might leave to run up information on something the suspect said. Sometimes they agreed upon a ruse—the “good cop, bad cop” routine or the “we know more than you do” ruse. But Rowe was not inclined to try to outsmart the name partner of a Seattle law firm.

Crosswhite said, “Why don’t you handle it.”

“I was going to suggest
you
handle it. You know, woman-to-woman–type thing.”

Crosswhite spoke to the glass. “I don’t think so. Women like her sometimes feel the need to prove themselves to another professional woman, show them how competent they are, how smart. I think you’d do better without me. If I think of something, I’ll come in.”

Cerrabone agreed with the strategy and told Rowe to play it straight up. “She has a lot of contacts,” he said, “including the governor.”

T
HREE
T
REE
P
OINT
B
URIEN
, W
ASHINGTON

Sloane turned off the engine and sat back, staring at the overgrown laurel hedge. He wondered if, subconsciously, he’d deliberately let the hedge grow, like the bamboo inside Barclay’s fence, his own way of further isolating himself from the world.

Every instinct told him Barclay should have declined to talk voluntarily to the police without a lawyer present, but she had refused his advice.

He stepped from the car but did not push through the gate, instead walking down the easement to the bulkhead. With the tide in, only a sliver of rocks remained between the water’s edge and the cement wall on which he stood. He considered an evening sky painted hues of colors man seemed incapable of duplicating. A breeze from the southwest caused rippled waves and rocked the boats tied to the buoys. The heat and humidity that had brought the thunderstorms seemed to have finally passed.

If I had known he was going to walk, I would have just put a bullet in him and been done with it
.

Sloane had dismissed her words as rhetoric, the type of thing someone says when angry but would never actually do.

If I had known he was going to walk, I would have just put a bullet in him and been done with it
.

Most people never had the chance to do it, to kill someone.

Sloane had, and he knew how close he had come to squeezing the trigger. Ultimately, he had refrained from shooting Anthony Stenopolos, but he could not deny that he had felt the primal urge for revenge, and it had been as strong as any he’d ever had, though not as strong as his instinct to protect Jake. And that was what had ultimately stopped him. It had not been his conscience or some burst of morality, good triumphing over evil. No, the reason he had not pulled the trigger had been something much more practical than divine. About to shoot, he had thought of Jake and the promise he had made to Tina that he would always care for their son.

Barclay had no such concern.

She had no such obligation.

Vasiliev had taken that from her.

What did it do to a mother to lose a child?

If I had known he was going to walk, I would have just put a bullet in him and been done with it
.

Tina had been his wife, perhaps his soul mate, the person with whom he had chosen to spend the rest of his life. But she was not of him. She did not have his blood, his genes, his chromosomes. He had not carried her inside his body for nine months, given her life, nurtured her, watched her grow, guided her. That was a bond no man could ever truly understand. That was a bond only mothers knew. Sloane had come to realize something of it with Jake, whom he truly believed he loved as much as any father could, and still he knew it was a fraction of the love Tina had for her child.

What does it do to have that bond severed, to have your child killed?

If I had known he was going to walk, I would have just put a bullet in him and been done with it
.

What does it do to a person?

Sloane turned from the view and walked back up the easement, pushing through the wooden gate to the back porch. He pulled open the screen door, about to unlock the Dutch door, when he noticed light on the staircase leading to the second floor. He left two lights on timers—one in his study and one in the kitchen. The light in the study could be seen from the front and the south sides of the house. The light in the kitchen, the room where he normally entered, could be seen from the west and north sides. There was no timer for an upstairs light, and he wouldn’t have left a light on.

He unlocked the door, pressed a hand on the glass to keep it from rattling, and nudged the wood from the frame, stepping in. At first he heard nothing but the creaks and moans of an empty house with which he had become all too familiar. Then the floorboards overhead creaked, the seventy-year-old wood unforgiving, someone walking upstairs. His bedroom.

He stepped from the kitchen into the living room, maneuvering around the sofa and coffee table to his study, hearing the person or persons moving through the rooms overhead. In his study, he slid open the desk drawer and removed the .38.

As he started from the office, he heard the person at the top of the stairs. He put his left foot forward, legs shoulder width, body turned at a 30-degree angle, bent his knees and leaned slightly forward, left elbow bent.

The person descended, revealing more with each step: black boots, jeans, the bottom of a black leather coat—the kind Vasiliev’s two escorts had worn. Sloane slid his finger from the barrel to the trigger. When he saw the head, he shouted.

“Freeze!”

T
HE
J
USTICE
C
ENTER
S
EATTLE
, W
ASHINGTON

Before entering the room, Rowe paused in the hall to gather his thoughts. His ego hated to admit it, but his sphincter had tightened when he picked up the news article on his desk that mentioned Barclay Reid, and confirmed it to be the same name the caller, Dr. Felix Oberman, had provided. Oberman identified himself as Reid’s ex-husband. He said that two weeks earlier, Reid had told him she’d tired of the legal process and wished she had just put a bullet in the back of Vasiliev’s head. When Rowe met Oberman, the doctor confirmed his ex-wife owned a gun and he believed it to be a .38 revolver.

Rowe ran Reid’s name through the system and determined she did indeed own a .38 Smith & Wesson J-Frame. Designed to be lightweight—just eleven and a half ounces—the black and gray gun had a shortened barrel that made it a popular choice of civilians who carried concealed weapons or kept guns in bedside stands. The bullet that had killed Vasiliev, a ball round—so named because the tip was rounded and resembled the lead balls fired from muskets during the Civil War—also matched a box of ammunition they found in Reid’s closet. Like the .38, the ball round was popular. Cheap, it was often used as practice rounds. Only a ballistics analysis would confirm the bullet had been fired by a particular gun, and without the gun, that could not happen.

Rowe blew out a breath, shook his arms, and stepped around the corner, entering as Reid placed the alcohol wipe, blackened with ink, on the table.