Thomas Prescott Superpack (38 page)

I wasn’t sure anymore.

I shut the balcony doors and made my way across the long hall.
About halfway there the vacuum cut out and I stopped in my tracks. Seconds later, I heard the clamoring of a vacuum being lifted up the stairs. I waited for Resmelda to appear, see me, most likely have a stroke, fall down the stairs and break her neck, or she would run and call the police and I would end up arrested and have a breaking and entering charge added to my rap sheet. But Resmelda stopped on the second floor, and twenty seconds later the soft whir of the vacuum started back up.

I took a deep breath and made my way into the master bedroom.
The room looked much like you would expect of a married couple’s room. Large bed, unmade, dresser for his clothes, closet for hers. Couple paintings on the wall. Attached bathroom with a large walk-in shower and Jacuzzi tub.

I riffled through a couple drawers; Adam was a whitie-tighties guy, he was reading some Grisham book, and he brushed with Aquafresh.
I got on my hands and knees and looked under the bed.

Nada.

I picked up his book,
The Innocent Man
, off the night stand and read the back copy. Didn’t sound half bad. Something slipped from the pages of the book and fluttered to the bed. It was a photograph, a four by six. A shot of fall foliage, a snowcapped mountain range just off center. It was a nice shot. Good lighting. Probably early morning.

I shrugged.
But this wasn’t the only thing hidden within the book. I noticed a small bulge and flipped it open to four folded sheets of paper. I unfolded the crisp pages. The letterhead atop the first page read, “Seattle First National.”

It was a checking account statement.

I flipped through the statement.
Actually, it was two separate checking account statements. The Seattle First National statement was three pages. Then a single page statement from a bank called Bank of Victoria.

I checked the date.
Both statements were for November. I perused the First National statement first. Three pages worth. According to the statement, Gray’s balance was over $2 million. His liquid assets. He no doubt had millions more tied up in his portfolio, stocks, bonds, whatever was the latest trend. And if he’d gotten suspicious that his wife was divorcing him, he might have been trying to diversify even further. If you get my drift.

I flipped to the back page of his transactions and read the total at the bottom. Gray had spent nearly $217,000 in the month alone.
I flipped through the pages, noting some of the bigger transactions. A couple were in the low four figures. Both looked to be for furniture. He had six transactions in the fifty-dollar range to Shell Corp. So he filled up his tank about every five days. He had four separate mortgage payments to Allied Morg. All totaling nearly $80,000. The biggest charge, more than $52,000, was to SUFH, which as life goes, I knew stood for Seattle United Funeral Home.

I laid the pages on the bed and picked up the Bank of Victoria statement.
Gray had over $13 million in the account. There were four charges for the month of November, including a $22,000 mortgage and a $42,000 mortgage. The first charge was to the same mortgage company as the other four. I wasn’t sure which place this was. The second was to a different mortgage company. This, of course, was his condo in the city. That he didn’t pay for the condo in cash meant that Ellen didn’t know about this particular bank account.

This started me thinking and I checked the name on the account.
And surprise, surprise, there was no name. It was a numbered account. The Swiss and Caymans did it best, but the Canadians were a close third. I checked the mailing address. It was a post office box. I had a feeling not too many people knew about this account. Maybe not even the IRS.

The next two charges were even more intriguing.
One for $17,345.22 to SPU and another for $200,000 charge to GPI Inc.

I was almost positive SPU was Gray’s alma mater, Seattle Pacific University.
The logical assumption was that this was a donation check. But why on the numbered account? And why such an odd amount? But I’d never given a donation before, so I wasn’t sure if they took these out in installments. As for GPI Inc, I wasn’t sure what the “G” stood for, but 90 percent of the time “PI” stood for
private investigator
. But most defense attorneys, especially the big-hitters, have a private investigator on the payroll, so I took this with a grain of salt.

I heard a soft squishing sound and froze.

A moment later a voice from the doorway said, “Hey.”

Chapter 20

I slowly turned my head in the direction of the voice. Resmelda had lied—the girls weren’t at her parents. The small girl had shoulder-length brown hair and was holding what looked like a Barbie doll. I surmised this would be the younger of the two.

Shelly.

She asked, “Whatcha doin?”

“Oh. I’m just looking around.” I folded the picture up in the pages and slipped it in the front pocket of my sweatshirt.

The small girl cocked her head to the side and said, “What are you looking for?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Can I help?”

I ignored her question. I placed the book back on the dresser, walked toward her, and got down on my haunches. Shelly had her mother’s big brown eyes, but that was all. She had her father’s nose and lips. She was at that age where everything still looked perfect. A doll herself. As for the doll she was holding, it was one of those 80’s Barbies—Punk Barbie or something—hair back in a ponytail, the token headband, tights, jean jacket—collar up—and neon armbands. Reminded me of a girl I dated in high school.

I asked, “What’s her name?”

She looked at the doll and said, “Deidra.”

“That’s a pretty name.
What’s your name?”

“Shelly.”

“That’s even prettier. I’m Thomas.”

She repeated, “Thomas.”

“How old are you, Shelly?”

She clamped the doll to her chest with her elbow so her hands were free and made a five with her left hand. Then she asked, “How old are you?”

I made my fingers into an eight.
Shelly opened her mouth wide and exclaimed, “That’s
old
.”

You’re telling me.
“Do you go to school?”

“I’m in kindergarten.”

“Yeah.”

She nodded.
She peeked around my shoulder and said, “This is mommy and daddy’s room.”

“Is it?”

“Mommy’s in heaven.”

I didn’t know how to respond to this so I kept quiet.

Shelly asked, “Are you looking for the bad man?”

I hope this wasn’t her nickname for daddy. “Who is the bad man?”

“He yelled at mommy.”

“The bad man yelled at mommy?” I skipped the day they taught how to question a five-year-old, but I remembered something about repeating their statements. 

She nodded.
Three times. Slowly, the way kids do.

I asked, “Where did the bad man yell at mommy?”

“By the fish.”

By the fish?
That could mean just about anywhere in Seattle. “What fish are you talking about?”

“They throw them.”
She threw her doll in the air about six inches, then caught it, cradling it back to her chest.

They throw the fish????

Then it hit me.
In the heart of Seattle is a glorified flea market—
glorified
because unlike a real flea market things are not cheap and rarely negotiable—about a mile long. Basically, Pike Place Market is a throng of shops selling anything and everything. Flowers, fruit, jewelry, shirts, belts, honey, carvings, paintings, salt and pepper shakers, knitted caps, I Love Seattle gear, and everything in between. The most renowned of all the shops is the Pikes Place Fish Company. Whenever there’s an order they throw the fish about forty feet, then chop its head off to the delight of the onlookers.

I asked, “Do you mean Pike Market?”

She nodded.

“What did the bad man say?”

She shook her head.

“You don’t remember?”

She shook her head again.

“But the man was yelling at her?”

She nodded.

“What did he look like?”

She shrugged.

“Was he older than me?”

She shrugged again. Great time to get shy, kid. She cocked her head to the side and I knew she’d remembered something. She said, “He had a red face.”

I wasn’t exactly sure what this meant.
Did the guy have his face painted? I’d been to Pike a handful of times, and they always had a booth were the kids could paint their faces.

I asked, “He had red paint on his face?”

She shook her head. No paint.

“Was he an Indian?”
Sorry, but all political correctness gets thrown out when you’re dealing with a five-year-old. Plus, there were at least a dozen Native American shops at Pike.

Shelly thought this was funny and said, “Like Squanto?”

She’d probably just finished learning about the first Thanksgiving in kindergarten. “Yeah, like Squanto.”

She shook her head, a smile clinging to the edges of her small mouth.

Shucks.
That would have narrowed down the suspect pool.
Um, excuse me, I’m looking for Chief Red Face.

I asked, “Do you remember anything else?”

She thought for a moment, then said, “He had a big sign.”

I thought about this.
This could mean one of two things. Either he had a booth at Pike or he was picketing. But more importantly, this meant that he might make a habit of hanging out down there.

“Did you know what the sign said?”

 “I can’t read yet.” She added, “But I know the alphabet.”

“Do you?”

She proved that she did indeed know the alphabet.

I’d already pushed my luck on time and said my good-byes to Shelly.
She insisted I say bye to Diedra, and I was happy to oblige. I was on my way down the hall when I heard footsteps pitter-pattering behind me. I turned.

Shelly was standing behind me.
She said, “He had a doggy.”

The vacuum cut out.
I stood still. A door opened and Resmelda yelled, “Shelly, honey, who are you talking to?”

I put my finger up to my mouth and pointed to her doll.
She smiled and said, “Diedra.”

Resmelda laughed and said, “Okay, sweetie.”

The door closed and the vacuum started back up. I took a deep breath. I whispered, “Who had a doggy?”

“The bad man.”

“What did the doggy look like?”

She said he was big and white and that he was a “scary doggy.”

I asked her a couple more questions, but she went back to the shrugs. I said, “Can you keep a secret?”

She nodded.

“Don’t tell anybody about me, okay? Our little secret.”

She nodded.
I made her cross her heart. She did. She made me say good-bye to Diedra again, then I quickly descended the stairs. I could see the cord from the vacuum slithering under one of the girl’s bedroom doors. I vaulted down the steps and silently slid out the front door. I ran down the cobbled path and exited through a side gate, then hightailed it to my car. For all I knew, Shelly had already spilled the beans and the police were on their way.

I made it to my car, pulled a U-turn, and drove to the security booth.
I was rehearsing the lines I was going to feed to the security guard, but to my delight, the gate swung open automatically. Once I’d made it down a couple blocks, I allowed myself a few calming breaths. On my third exhale, a black Jaguar, with a darkly tinted windows, screeched through a stop sign and zoomed past me. I watched in my rearview mirror as the black blur turned left onto Gray’s block. The car’s license plate read, “NTGLTY.”

Adam Gray had made bail.
And a killer was on the loose.

Chapter 21

“G47.”

I looked down at my card.

G50.
G48. G46. G59. G53.

No G47.

I glanced to my left and watched Harold.
He was hovering an inch over his card, slowly moving his head down the column. I couldn’t help but notice he was hovering over column B. At this point it might be better just to be completely blind.

Anyhow, I noticed he had G47 on his board.
I took my stamper and stamped it for him, covering the number in an inky green.

He looked at me and said, “I thought she said B411.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him this wasn’t possible.

We’d been playing Bingo for over an hour and no one had won. I think it was a combination of the twenty people playing being either deaf or blind, the lady yelling out the Bingo numbers having been a recent recipient of a tracheotomy and using one of those electronic vibration thingies—making her sound like Robocop—and two-thirds of the participants being either asleep or dead.

I’d first gotten Bingo an hour ago.
My entire sheet had been blacked out for the last thirty minutes. I should also add that I was starving. And cranky.

I leaned into Harold and whispered into his Cinnabon-sized ear, “When is the game over?”

“What game?”

Right.

I asked, “You hungry?”

He nodded.

Thank God.

We made our way to the cafeteria and ate and talked about the same things we had eaten and talked about on my last visit.
Near the end of our meal, like before, the waitress dropped off two slices of white bread wrapped in cellophane, and like before, twenty minutes later we were sitting on the bench, tossing small pieces of bread into the still lake. The bread would land softly on the glass water, tiny rivulets spreading outward from it, small foothills on a desolate blue.

The ducks never came.
Gone south for the winter. I looked at the old form taking the deep inhales on the oxygen tank beside me. I think a part of him knew he would never see the ducks again.

He took a deep breath, the oxygen tank letting out a light puff, and said, “War is terrible.”

Harold’s first weeks at Fort Bragg were miserable. He’d had little interaction with other men his age, and he found himself uncomfortable in his new surroundings. He didn’t mind the commanders, the yelling, or any of the physical hardships. In fact, he quickly rose to the top of his class. He learned early on he was a great deal stronger than his peers. And faster. And smarter. The very reasons many of his fellow infantry mates despised him.

Six weeks in and one of the larger kids, a bully type everyone called “Harker,” knocked Harold’s tray over in the mess hall.
The meek Harold quickly grabbed a broom and cleaned up the spill, apologizing for whatever he’d done.

He was jeered for his cowardly act.
They called him everything from “yellow farmer boy” to “the cowardly lion.”

Harold began to doubt his resolve.
If he couldn’t stick up to a kid his own age, how could he be expected to kill another soldier in battle?

A week later, a similar confrontation occurred.
He was returning his tray when he felt two hands on his back. The violent shove sent him reeling, sending the contents of his tray onto a group of five soldiers eating nearby. The five jumped to their feet, and Harold was soon outnumbered six to one. He brushed himself off, trying to stop the tears in their tracks.

He failed.

Tears began to drip from his cheeks.

The hulking Harker stepped forward and slapped him across the face.
For that split second, Harold was back on the Kings’ doorstep. He could see the precious Elizabeth watching him. In fact, it was as if she was watching him that very second.

Harker and two other boys spent the next five weeks in the infirmary.

I shook my head, “You kicked the shit out of all of them?”

“Just three of them. After I kicked in Harker’s knee, I smashed two guys’ heads together. The other three ran away before I could get to them.”

I looked at Harold/Rambo and let out a laugh.
“I bet no one ever messed with you again.”

“No.
No, they didn’t.”

Harold’s unit was Company E, 16
th
Infantry, 1
st
Infantry Division. Harold had quickly moved up the ranks to lieutenant.

On June 6, 1944, Harold and his fellow troops stormed Omaha Beach, facing the recently formed German 352
nd
Infantry Division.

He had become close friends with many of his soldiers, but he was closest with one
named Thad, whom, incidentally, Harold had put in the infirmary just a little over a year earlier. The two had watched as half their regiment was either killed or badly wounded in three separate battles preceding D-Day. But nothing could have prepared them for the onslaught they would see this day. Fifty thousand Americans stormed Omaha beach on D-Day. Five thousand of them would never return. Thad would be one of these five thousand.

While sitting in hiding, not more than seven feet from his best friend and commander, Thad had taken a piece of shrapnel in his side.
His good friend had held his entrails in his hands as he took his final breaths.

I let out a long breath and said, “Fuck.”

Harold nodded. “Yeah. Fuck.”

Harold didn’t eat for a week.
Then two. He relinquished his position as lieutenant. He became even more reserved. He wondered how he could possibly get through another year and a half of watching people die. Watching his friends die.

Harold was moved into Poland to do patrol, one of the safer positions at the time.
Neither he nor the U.S. Army believed Harold Humphries was still capable of pulling a trigger. Harold vowed he would never take another life. Unless it was his own.

It was a Tuesday in August of his third year.
He had less than nine months left in his enlistment. The soldier in charge of mail delivery came into his barracks and began dropping letters and packages on people’s beds. In his two and a half years, Harold had received three letters from his parents and three letters from each sister. Normally, Harold received the letters eight or ten weeks after they’d been postmarked. So, when the soldier stopped in front of Harold’s bed and dropped off a thick stack of letters, Harold was more than taken aback.

He unbound the letters and stared at the top one.
It had, “Harold Humphries, U.S. Army,” scrawled in tight cursive.

He opened the letter and read it.
It was from the young girl.

Elizabeth.

My cheeks hurt from smiling.

I said, “She wrote you a letter?”

“She wrote me 129 letters.”

“129?”

“One a week for two and a half years.”

“What did she say?”

He patted my leg and said, “Everything. She said
everything
.”

Harold read the letters every day for a month.
All 129 letters. Every day for a month. Then he finally wrote her back. Poured his heart out. Told her a day hadn’t gone by that he hadn’t thought about her. That he wanted to come back to marry her. That he loved her.

The delivery soldier walked by his bed for eight weeks.
Eight weeks without stopping. Then the ninth week, he stopped. Harold’s heart leapt. He picked up the letter but he couldn’t bear to read it. What if she didn’t feel the same way?

He kept the letter for a week before reading it.
Then he did, with tears running down his cheeks. She felt the same way. She desperately wanted to marry him. She couldn’t think of anything that would make her happier.

Harold kept the letter in his pocket while he did his patrols.
Slept with it under his pillow. He read it every day. Sometimes twice. It became his mantra. His reason for living. He could utter every word under his breath like a favorite poem.

Harold paused for a brief moment.
Then he slowly began hiking up his right pant leg, exposing a grotesquely white leg. Blue, black, purple, and red veins spider-webbed across the pasty flesh. A black sock was pulled taut halfway up his calf. There was a small bulge at top.

Harold reached his arm down, slid his fingers into his sock, and pulled out a folded piece of paper.
The paper appeared soft and supple. Reopened and refolded so many times, the fibers had broken down. It had streaks of brown running across it.

Harold unfolded the letter and I watched as his large eyes pulled in every word.
About halfway through he took two quick inhales through his nose, something I’d yet to see him do.

I felt like I was watching, seeing something, I knew I shouldn’t be.
Like when you accidentally flip to something in the 660s on television.

Harold finished the letter, the folds practically doing themselves, and stuffed it back in his sock.
He gave it two quick pats then released the bunched fabric of his pant leg. He gazed across the still lake, hands clasped together on his lap. I watched as he slowly moved his hand from his lap and laid it silently on the bench just to my left.

I stared at the long fingers.
Bony and brittle. I imagined those fingers working the fields for hours and hours, those fingers wrapped around the butt of a gun, those fingers slinking around a pen and moving briskly across the page. Truly, those fingers had been through war.

I reached out my left hand and slid it beneath the cold fingers.
They slowly awakened, intertwining between mine. We held hands like that for awhile. Waiting for the ducks to return.