Wrongful Death (3 page)

There were times when Sloane wondered whether the psychiatrist had been correct.

The freeway ended at First Avenue South, a thoroughfare of strip malls. Sloane considered pulling into the local Blockbuster and picking up a movie, then thought again of the file sitting on the passenger seat. Though dog-tired, he wanted to get through it before the weekend; he wanted to leave for vacation with a clear conscience and focus only on Tina and Jake. That meant reading it tonight.

He drove across the intersection through the town of Burien and descended Maplewild Road. The steep, winding access road led to Three Tree Point, a tiny beach community on the edge of the Puget Sound said to have been named for the three cedar trees at the tip of a spit of land that jutted into the slate-gray waters. Bald eagles nested in the limbs of one of the trees, and king salmon swam along the shores.

At the bottom of the hill, Sloane turned past the darkened windows of what had been a community store and parked perpendicular to a ten-foot-high laurel hedge separating his property from a public easement that led to the rock and shell beach at the edge of the Sound.

He stepped from his Jeep and pushed through a wooden gate he’d installed in the hedge to allow access to his back porch. The front door was around the other side, hard to access and rarely used by anyone. The three-story colonial with white clapboard siding had been built on a small bluff. Crabgrass sloped twenty yards to a cement break, buttressed by driftwood logs that had washed ashore, which separated the property from the beach. Sloane had rented a house for a year before his Realtor found the property. He wanted to live near the water, as he had in California, and he relished the chance to restore the 1930s home to its original grandeur. But as was normally the case, his legal practice had allowed him limited time to make the desired improvements.

He climbed the back stairs and removed his shoes, a house rule since he’d refinished the hardwood floors. Then he stepped inside the nook off the kitchen and hung his keys on a hook protruding from a life-size cardboard cutout of Larry Bird, the legendary Boston Celtics basketball player. The cutout had made the trip north from Pacifica when he moved. Tina had only mildly protested, knowing what the cutout meant to Sloane. It had once belonged to Joe Branick, the White House confidant of former president
Robert Peak. Branick’s sister, Aileen Blair, had sent it to Sloane as a gift. Blair had been a lot like Beverly Ford when Sloane first met her at Joe Branick’s home in Virginia, resolved and determined. Sloane needed to know why Branick had sent him a package of documents just before he died, and Blair wanted to know who killed her brother and why. They struck a deal.

Aileen Blair had read the documents inside the package and looked up at Sloane in astonishment.

“But if the woman listed on these forms didn’t give her child up for adoption, then these papers make no sense,” she had said.

Sloane had come to the same conclusion. “No, they don’t. Someone forged them to make it look like Edith and Ernest Sloane adopted that child and named him David.”

“Who would have done that?”

“The only logical assumption is that it was your brother.”

“Joe? Why would Joe have forged them?”

“I think it was to hide my identity.”

“Why would you assume that?”

“Because Edith and Ernest Sloane did adopt a young boy, Aileen, but David Allen Sloane, seven years old, died in that car accident with them.”

Bud jumped onto the counter and meowed. It wasn’t love. He wanted to be fed. Sloane cradled the cat in his arm and walked into the kitchen, smelling garlic. He stopped at the stove to lift the lid on a pot. Tina’s marinara sauce bubbled softly inside. He lowered the lid and walked from the kitchen into the family room, sprinkling fish food in the tank, which had also survived the move north.

“Anyone home?”

“In here.”

Tina sat in one of the two white wicker chairs on the enclosed porch. She lowered a paperback, set it on the navy-blue wool blan
ket covering her legs, and pushed her shoulder-length auburn hair behind her ear. “Isn’t it beautiful?” she asked, looking out the plate-glass windows. Wisps of maroon from the setting sun streaked the gray sky above the jagged, snowcapped Olympic Mountains.

Sloane ignored the view, thinking her just as stunning, and wondering how he had not seen it for so many years. Married less than one year, they had known each other for more than ten. Tina had been his legal assistant at Foster & Bane, in San Francisco, where interoffice relationships were taboo. He had not even known that she was attending school at night to earn a degree in architecture until the day she told him she was quitting and moving to Seattle.

Tina turned back from the view and caught him staring. “What?” she asked, with a hint of a smile, her eyes widening.

Sloane kissed her, and let the kiss linger. When their lips parted, Tina smiled up at him. “What was that for?”

“Just to let you know how much I love you.”

“Well, let me know some more,” she said.

He kissed her again, put Bud on the floor, and picked up what he thought to be iced tea, but tasted something stronger. “Getting an early start on our vacation or hard day at the office?”

“Both.”

He handed back her drink and sat in the other chair. “Still no word on that building retrofit in Des Moines?”

“They told me they liked our design, but they say the decision will be a while longer.”

“You know how cities work. It takes forever to get them to approve anything.”

“I know, but it would be nice to know before we leave.”

“So you’ll have a nice surprise when we get back,” he said.

She shook her head as if to shake away the thought. “Saturday we’ll be sipping margaritas on the beach in Cabo.” They’d timed the trip with Jake’s spring break from school.

“Amen to that.”

“Will the defense fight the verdict?”

“They always do.” He looked out the windows.

“You okay?”

“Hmm? Fine.”

“You don’t look like a guy who just won another big case.”

He turned to her. “You remember Adelina Ramirez?”

“Sure.”

Since leaving San Francisco, Sloane had devoted much of his current practice to helping Hispanic immigrants. Having not known who his biological parents were for many years, he had come to realize his own Hispanic heritage late in life. His dark hair and complexion came from his mother’s Mexican descent, but he was also tall, six foot two, with light eyes, genes that likely came from northern Spanish blood.

“A friend of hers came to see me after court today. Adelina told her I’m the best wrongful-death attorney in the state.”

“Smart lady.”

“She said I never lose.”

“You don’t. What happened?”

“You remember the report in the
New York Times
article attributing the deaths of some soldiers to inadequate body armor?”

“He was one of those?”

“The report was about marines; her husband was in the National Guard. He got shot in the side. I don’t know much about military law, but I remember after I’d been shot a JAG officer came to my room. The specifics are a bit fuzzy, but I recall something about a soldier not being able to sue the military, the possibility of injuries and fatalities being inherent in the job and benefits being the only remedy.”

“Did you explain that to her?”

“I told her I didn’t think she’d have much chance of success.”

“But…” Tina said, drawing out the word.

He shook his head. “I don’t know, maybe I just like a challenge.”

Tina smiled. “Or maybe you think you can help everyone.”

There was more truth in the comment than he wanted to admit. “She has four children.”

“Tragic,” Tina said. “So what’s bothering you?”

He turned to face her. “I don’t know. I also thought about Joe Branick today.”

“We’ve had this discussion. He wasn’t killed because of anything you did.”

“It was a selfless act, sending me that information.”

Tina put her paperback next to her drink, pulled back the blanket, and went to him. She leaned forward and looked him in the eye. Then she kissed him.

“And what was that for?” he asked.

“Just promise me you’ll start giving yourself credit for all the people you do help.” She struck a pose and changed the subject. “I bought a new bathing suit for Cabo. Interested in seeing it on?”

“On? Not really.”

She grinned. “Saturday we’ll be soaking up sun, and you’ll have a week to unwind. Think about that.”

“You’ll be soaking up sun. I’ll be puking off the side of a boat and getting sunburned while Jake fishes. Speaking of which, where is he?”

She rolled her eyes. “He won’t give up until he catches a king. I figured I’d let you reel him in tonight.”

“Thanks.”

She laughed and walked toward the kitchen. “It’ll be good practice for when you have to drag him off that boat.”

SLOANE ZIPPED CLOSED
his leather jacket and stepped over the tree trunks and debris the Sound had washed ashore. Jake stood twenty yards down the beach, a lone figure outlined in a ghostly silver glow. The wind off the Sound prevented Sloane from calling out to him, and the boy was too fixated on his line in the water for Sloane to draw his attention.

During certain months king salmon, and the smaller silvers, swam along Three Tree’s shore, bringing out a parade of boats and anglers who fished from shore each dawn and sunset. Jake had caught the fishing bug after watching a neighbor boat a 34-pound king. Outfitted at the local Fred Meyer, he rushed to the water’s edge each day before and after school, sometimes at the expense of his homework. Sloane was learning that being a parent was a lot like being a lawyer. Finding out what the child really wanted was the first step to negotiating a compromise. They agreed that Jake could fish, but only after completing his homework, and only if he maintained his grades. His study habits had actually improved.

As Sloane neared, Jake caught sight of him. “David. Hi.”

“How’re they biting, Hemingway?”

Jake shook his head. “Not too good tonight.”

Now 11, the boy had lost much of his baby fat and was tall and lean like his mother. His sandy-blond hair and lean facial features bore a strong resemblance to his biological father, a man who continued to have little involvement in his son’s life since the divorce when Jake was four. Frank Carter wasn’t a bad guy. Sloane had met him a handful of times. He seemed decent, just too young to be a father. He didn’t want the responsibility of a child. It was easier just to show up for the special events, like birthdays and holidays. Sloane hoped someday Jake might take to calling him “Dad,” but he wasn’t pushing it.

Despite the chill wind, Jake wore baggy shorts, a hooded sweatshirt, a worn San Francisco 49ers baseball cap, and the clown
ish rubber boots Tina mandated after he ruined multiple pairs of shoes in the salt water.

“Well, it’s likely getting to be too late now. Your mother wants you to do some reading before bed.”

Jake snapped back the catch on the reel, prepared to cast. The green buzz-bomb lure twisted at the end of the line. “One more cast?”

Sloane looked at the light shining in the kitchen window and turned his back slightly. “I don’t think I saw you take your line out of the water.”

Jake drew back the pole and snapped it forward.

SLOANE LIFTED HIS
head from the papers spread across his desk and looked out the windows of his home office. The lights in the houses on Vashon Island, four miles across the Sound, sparkled back at him, and the faint sound of cellos and violins resonated from the portable CD player, a Christmas gift from Jake and Tina.

Beverly Ford had done considerable research. At the start of the war, the military had issued body armor only to what it thought would be dismounted soldiers fighting on the front line. Command had to ditch that plan when it became clear there was no front line. That meant it suddenly needed 80,000 more vests, a need that could not be met overnight. Eight months after the start of the war, nearly one-quarter of the troops still did not have the new ceramic armor and were being forced to take their chances with inferior vests, or to rotate what new armor they did have. At a congressional inquiry, General John Abizaid, then the commander of the forces in Iraq, admitted he did not have a good explanation for the shortage of vests, given that the invasion had been contemplated for more than a year.

The improved vests, called Interceptors, included remov
able ceramic plates fifteen times stronger than steel and capable of stopping bullets fired by the Kalashnikov rifles favored by the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sloane picked up the SF-95 form Beverly Ford had sent to the regional claims office. Stapled to it was a standard letter advising that her claim had been received and would be considered in due course. Not content to wait for the military’s response, Ford made a Freedom of Information Act request seeking documents related to the investigation of her husband’s death. Subsequent replies had more or less denied her request, citing national defense concerns. But Beverly Ford had been persistent, and, perhaps in an effort to appease her, the claims office eventually provided her the witness statements.

Sloane picked up the first of the four, a statement by a Sergeant Phillip Ferguson, and read.

HIGHWAY
10
OUTSIDE FALLUJAH, IRAQ

JAMES FORD LEANED
forward, eyes straining to see through the dirt-and-grime-smeared windshield. The seven-ton trucks in front of him continued to kick up dust as the convoy rumbled along single-file, each vehicle maintaining a fifty-meter buffer with the vehicle in front. Proper spacing was a necessity in Iraq, where every paper bag, dead dog, and pile of garbage could be an insurgent’s improvised explosive device, or IED. In Iraq the question wasn’t if your convoy was going to get hit, but when.