Indigo Slam

I looked Scully squarely in the eyes and spread my hands. 'I don't know where Clark is, or his kids, or anything about him.'

Jasper stared at me, and you could see he didn't believe me. Neither did Scully. 'Look, Cole, it's not our job to protect him anymore, but we feel what you might call a sense of obligation, you see?'

I smiled my best relaxed grin, and said, 'Man, this has to be one of the world's biggest screw-ups.' I told him the exact same story I'd told Andrei Markov. 'I came here looking for a drug connection named Clark Hewitt. I was just following a name, and the name's the same, but my guy doesn't have anything to do with Russians or counterfeiting or any of this other stuff.' I let the grin widen, like I was enjoying the enormous coincidence of it all. 'All of this is news to me.'

Scully nodded, but you could tell he didn't believe me. 'Who are you working for?'

'You know I'm not going to tell you. The card says confidential.'

'This is important, Cole. Clark is in grave danger. So are those kids.'

I shrugged. They had been in grave danger three years ago, too.

Scully said, 'I think you know something. I'm thinking maybe Clark left some footsteps in LA, and if I'm thinking it, Markov will be thinking it, too.'

I shrugged again. 'I'd help you if I could.'

Special Agent Reed Jasper nodded and stood. You could tell he didn't believe me, but there wasn't anything he could do about it. 'Sure.'

'Can I go?'

Scully opened the door. 'Get the hell out of here.'

It was twenty-two minutes after eleven that night when I walked out of the federal courthouse into a hard steady rain. The rain, like the air, was warm, but now felt oppressive rather than cleansing. Maybe that was me.

The world had changed. It often does, I've found, yet the changes are still surprising and, more often than not, frightening. You have to adjust.

I had come to Seattle to find a man named Clark Haines, and in a way I had, though that no longer seemed to matter. What mattered was those kids, alone in a house with a Russian mobster wanting them dead.

CHAPTER 11

My left cheek was tight and discolored the next morning where Alexei Dobcek hit me. I had been up most of the night, trying to keep ice on my cheek, but the ice had been too little, too late, and I felt grumpy and discouraged, though not very much of it had to do with the ice. I packed my things, brought the rental car back to Sea-Tac, and boarded the plane. Grumpy.

A sandy-haired flight attendant in her early thirties clucked sympathetically and said, 'Rough week?'

I grumped.

She put her fists on her hips. 'Pouting won't help.'

These flight attendants are something.

I settled in beside an overweight man with very short hair and glasses so thick that his eyes looked the size of BBs. He smiled, but I didn't smile back. Tough.

I crossed my arms, frowned real hard, and thought about Teri and Winona and Charles as we lifted up through the northwest cloud layer into a brilliant clear sunshine that stretched from southern Washington to the tip of the Baha Peninsula and the Sea of Cortez. Maybe it would help if I stuck out my lower lip. I had flown to Seattle to find an ordinary missing father, and instead had found that Clark Haines was really Clark Hewitt, and that Clark Hewitt, along with being a drug addict, was a criminal, a former participant in the federal witness protection program, and was actively being sought by both the Russian mob and various federal law enforcement agencies. These are not good things to discover, and were even less good when one considered that, if the mobsters were after Clark, they would also be after his children. For all I knew, Clark Hewitt was dead and would never return, or, if he wasn't dead, perhaps had no interest in returning. I thought that maybe I could get his kids into foster care without revealing their true identities, but this somehow seemed to leave them more vulnerable and exposed. The obvious solution was to take them to the police, identify them by their original names, and allow Jasper and Scully to see to their well-being. Charles and Winona and Teri would still end up in foster care, only an awful lot of people would know who and where they were, and the more people who knew, the greater the possibility that word would get back to the Markovs. This was yet another problem, and all these problems were making me grumpier still. Maybe I should try to get into a problem-free occupation of some kind. Hunting lions, maybe. Or raising the Titanic.

The flight attendant stood over me. 'Are we feeling any better yet?'

I stared at her, and then I sighed. 'Is it that obvious?'

'Mm-hm. Could I bring you a nice cup of tea?'

'A cup of tea would be fine.'

She brought the tea, a couple of Tylenol, and a reassuring smile. Two hours and fifty minutes later we let down through a cloudless cathedral of sky and faint orange haze into the wonderland that is Southern California. I still wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but I felt better about not knowing. The attendant smiled a good-bye at the door. 'You look much better.'

'I've achieved a measure of peace with my uncertainty.'

'Sometimes that's the best we can do.' I guess you develop a certain wisdom when you spend your life at thirty-five thousand feet.

I kissed her hand, then picked up my car from long-term parking, and made the drive up through the city to Teresa Hewitt's house.

It was after three when I arrived, and that meant Charles and Winona would be home. I would've preferred to speak with Teri alone, but there you go. Tell me, Winona, can you spell 'foster care?'

I parked at the opposite curb, crossed to their front door, and rang the bell. I couldn't see Joe Pike or his Jeep, but I waved to him anyway. He would be someplace near, and he would be watching. Unobtrusive.

The Saturn was in the drive, and I figured that Charles would throw open the door and we'd go through the same opera again, but this time it wasn't Charles. This time it was a half-bald guy two inches shorter than me with faded hair and skinny arms and glasses. I said, 'You're a hard guy to find, Mr. Hewitt.'

Clark Hewitt made a soft smile that seemed confused. 'I'm sorry, but my name is Haines. I don't use the other name anymore.' He said it as if there were no value to its secrecy, or, if there had been, he'd forgotten. He was heavier now than in the picture with Rachel and the Brownells, and somehow less distinct. He was wearing a loose cotton shirt and ValuMart chinos and brush-burned Hush Puppies that were screaming for a retread. Winona ran up, grabbed him around the legs with an oomph!, and looked at me. 'Hi, Elvis. Our daddy's home!'

'Hi, Winona. So I see.' Can you spell 'reunion?'

She dangled one of those ugly little trolls that kids have. It had purple hair and a horrible leer. 'You see what my daddy brought me?'

I nodded.

'It's a key chain.'

Clark Hewitt beamed at her and patted her head. 'Because she always has the key to my heart.'

Winona giggled, and I wanted to shoot him. Clark looked back at me, and said, 'You must be the detective! Please come in.' The detective.

The house smelled of fresh coffee and baked cookies, and, as we entered, Teresa came out of the kitchen carrying a plate heaped with the cookies. Charles peeked out of the hall that led back to the bedrooms, scowling and hunched, with his hands jammed into his pockets. He didn't look happy, and he didn't come out. Lurking. Teri said, 'I left a message on your machine. Daddy came home this morning.'

'I just got back. I haven't checked my messages.'

Clark Hewitt made himself comfortable in his easy chair. I didn't sit. 'Were you on a trip?'

' Seattle. I guess we just missed each other.'