This perception concerned the Commission, which concerned the chief, who pressured the deputy, who told the assistant chief, who summoned the captain, who instructed the lieutenants to issue an edict to the sergeants to pass to detectives.
“I’ve been ordered to tell you the obvious,” Sergeant Stan Boulder, biting back on his anger, advised his team at the start of a recent shift. “We need a win and we need it fast.” As his people grumbled, Boulder crumpled his memo, then pulled Grace into his office for a private moment.
“We’re getting pissed on from every direction over this clearance crap.”
“You paint a pretty picture.”
“People are getting distracted, second-guessing, they need to stay focused, Grace.”
“Yeah, we get that.”
“You’re one of my brightest, it’s why we brought you on. We need to pull one out of the fire.”
“Which one? I’ll just run out and solve it, now.”
“You know what I mean.”
She did.
Grace always came at things with a fresh angle, a talent that had evolved during her teens, when her quick thinking had helped save lives during a shooting at her high school. In the aftermath, Grace knew she was going to become a cop.
She had graduated from college in the top 5 percent and considered applying to the FBI before deciding on the Seattle PD. As a patrol officer, she was decorated for tackling and disarming a fleeing robbery suspect. She soon made detective and worked in several units where she’d earned the praise of her commanders before becoming one of the youngest investigators to join Seattle’s homicide squad.
She gave everything to the job, putting in sixty hours a week, allowing nothing else in her life. She was a loner. Had been ever since the school shooting. That’s just the way it was. But over the last few years, as she grappled with death twenty-four hours a day, she didn’t think she could stand being alone much longer.
Yet her attempts to do something about it hadn’t really gone anywhere.
She went out with Jason Wade, the guy from the Mirror, a few times. There was chemistry, something electric between them, but work always seemed to get in the way. Or maybe they let it get in the way. Anyway, she broke it off before it got serious but he seemed hurt. She saw it in his face. Had she made a mistake?
She didn’t know.
Then there was her disaster with Drew Wagner, the FBI agent. Upon transferring from Boston he pursued her with animal ferocity. God, he was so smooth, so good-looking. She never saw it coming. First, he says he’s single because there’s no ring, but she points to his tan line, so, all right, all right, he admits, he’s divorced. She buys it, as he tells her about the heartache, and he does it so well. Later, she overhears him on a phone call to his wife and it’s, all right, actually he’s separated. The heartache stuff again and maybe Grace wants to believe him but she does a little checking and finally gets the truth. Turns out her all-star is only biding his time until his wife sells the house in Charlestown and moves to Seattle with their kids.
Some detective she was.
How could she have been so stupid? she asked her reflection in the diner’s window, letting the question go into the night and back to Jason. Was she wrong not to work on something with him? There was just something about him that she liked. A brooding, brilliant honesty.
Stop it, Grace! Stop this “poor me” garbage!
Passing headlights stabbed at her for being selfish, hurling case images at her. Of Sharla May Forrest, a runaway not-yet-out-of-little-girlhood who was addicted to crack but kept a stuffed teddy bear on her bed and signed birthday cards to friends with happy faces. Of Sharla May’s naked corpse in the urine, vomit, and dog shit alley, with a metal hanger garrotted around her neck, twisted at the back with a lead pipe so tight it nearly decapitated her.
And of Isabella Martell lying about Roberto while Jesus watched.
And of Special Lying Bastard Agent Drew Wagner at the mall with his wife and kids. And of Grace Garner alone with her unsolved murders, trying to get a handle on it all as someone was speaking her name.
“Grace. Grace,” Perelli nudged her, holding out his cell phone, “It’s Stan, he says your phone’s dead.”
“Garner.”
“It’s Boulder. We got a fresh one and you’re the primary.”
“Cripes, Stan, we got our hands full with the Forrest case. Can’t Marty and Stallworth take it?”
“It’s yours. Take down the address, it’s near Yesler Terrace.”
Grace pursed her lips as she jotted down the information.
“Who’s the vic?”
“Anne Braxton. This will get profile. Big time.”
“Why?”
“She’s a nun, murdered in her residence.”
Chapter Four
J ason Wade grabbed a portable scanner and took the stairs to the parking lot, hating his situation.
He couldn’t miss a story and he couldn’t turn his back on his father. His old man was fresh at war with a ghost that had been stalking him for years, but he’d refused to talk about it.
Ever.
Even as it destroyed the things he loved, he would not open up to anyone. Even when it threatened to drag Jason down with him. Like tonight, man, he had to be careful. Whenever his father was seized by his demon, he reached out to Jason to rescue him.
Jason was all he had.
The cry of a gull and lonely horn of a distant boat echoed from the bay as he approached his 1969 Ford Falcon. He’d finally gotten around to getting it painted metallic red and it reflected the city lights as he wheeled through the streets. A few blocks east, the Space Needle ascended into the night, while south, the city’s tallest buildings, Union Square, Washington Mutual, and the Columbia Center dominated the skyline. Pike Place Market was near and a little farther, Pioneer Square.
Welcome to Seattle, baby.
Jet City. The Emerald City. Gatesville. Amazonia. Java Town.
The place where Jimi Hendrix learned to play guitar.
Rolling south near the stadiums he cast a glance in the direction of First Hill and Yesler Terrace and considered a detour. To where, though? He had no specific address to check out. He wasn’t even certain anything was happening out there.
Cover yourself, man.
He called the East Precinct again. Voice mail again. He left a message. Then he alerted the editorial assistant at the paper to call him if he heard anything. He set his phone on vibrate, then slid Layla into his CD player. He was a disciple of classic rock and loved how Clapton’s genius blended with the scanner’s dispatches in an eerie mix against the night. He gathered speed as the song played and returned to his old man’s situation.
Henry Wade was a private investigator, an exbrewery worker, and an ex-Seattle cop. And for as long as Jason could remember, his father would not, or could not, ever bring himself to talk about the incident that had forced him off the Seattle PD and into a job at the brewery, where each day the thermos in his lunch bucket had been spiked with bourbon.
Whatever it was that he was trying to drown had ultimately cost him his marriage. Jason’s mother had worked beside his father on the bottling line but eventually she walked out on both of them. She just couldn’t take it any longer, she said in her note. The night before she left, she’d hugged Jason and her eyes looked as if she were dreading something on the horizon. In the days after, Jason rode his bicycle all over the neighborhood searching for her until his old man told him she was gone.
“But don’t you worry, Jay, she’ll come back, you’ll see.”
The scanner crackled with a warehouse alarm.
Nothing to it. He adjusted the channels, then looked toward the bay as he guided his Falcon south until the brewery loomed. Man, he hated that place with its dark cluster of brick buildings, its stacks capped with red strobe lights spearing the night, the stench of hops permeating his car, reminding him of the worst days of his life.