"So far, I guess I am. I still want to know more, but I feel a little better having some idea that we're not entirely powerless in this world and maybe not in the next.”
I stood up. "Thank you, Mr. Hopke. You've answered all my questions.”
"Already?" he asked, standing himself. "That hardly took any time at all." He gave me a hopeful smile. "Are you sure you wouldn't like to stay for a beer?”
I shook my head, smiling back. "I can't. Thank you for the offer, though.”
He walked with me to the edge of the boat and handed me over the side. As I started to turn, something shiny whizzed past my head and plopped into the water. Its passage made my head throb again.
"Oh, damn," Hopke groaned. "Those were my keys. Well, I guess I'll be fishing for them.”
I stared down into the murky green water of the marina. "How deep is it? Can you get them back?”
"Probably. The canal's shallow right here, 'cause this bit used to be the bay." He looked back into the water and picked up another can of beer from a cooler on the aft deck. "Well, better get started with the fishing. And you know how beer and fishing go together.”
I wished him good luck with the key-fishing and left him trolling a heavy magnet for the steel key ring and sipping beer. I kind of liked Wayne Hopke and I thought it was too bad that he probably wouldn't learn much about life after death from this experience. He'd have to pick it up when he got there, and I hoped that wouldn't be soon.
CHAPTER 18
Most people lie. They lie in little ways all the time—to themselves, to others, to the government, to their bosses and spouses and kids. Tuckman's project members had lied to me—it pretty well went with the territory and with their peculiar glib willingness to answer the questions of a stranger. What mattered was not the existence or the blackness of those lies, but the relevance. So I spent the remainder of Monday and all of Tuesday checking and double-checking biographies and backgrounds, looking for lies that mattered, for the cracks in the stories that might point to someone who could have moved the power line, boosted the poltergeists input, or skewed it in a murderous direction. Tuckman was wrong about a mechanical saboteur and I wasn't convinced he'd been straight with me about why he wanted me on the case. The pieces didn't make a picture; they just made another puzzle and I had a bad feeling about it. Besides, running backgrounds would keep me out of the way of Solis, who would be starting to interview the same people I'd just finished with as well as Tuckman himself.
Tuesday morning I hiked up the hill to the county records office and requested files. I made phone calls. I stared at microfiche cards and paid for photocopies. I listened to people grouse and gave them money, and I looked through every scrap of paper Tuckman had supplied and everything I'd picked up since I'd started. The pile of oddities was smaller than I'd expected, though it was interesting.
Quite a few of the group turned out to have skeletons in their closets. Patricia had been under a doctors care for depression and other psychological problems off and on since the birth of her last child—what kind of problems weren't given. She'd also filed for divorce once, but withdrawn the paperwork a few days later with no explanation.
Ken and Ian both had short arrest records with the SPD. Ian's SPD record was juvenile and therefore sealed now—except for a sexual harassment complaint lodged with PNU by one of the women in the dorms. That was being handled internally, and no one at the school would discuss it. The charge didn't surprise me, now that I had Ana's perspective on him. There was a rather odd note from the Humane Society in his file—a letter about a cruelty to animals complaint which seemed to have no follow-up. His project profile showed that his family had moved around a lot when he was a child—that might explain the lack of follow-up on the cruelty note—and I'd had no luck finding anyone who'd known him before college. His parents had moved to Idaho. When I tracked them down on the phone, they seemed vague and uncomfortable, rambling about their dog and the squirrel population and how they'd had to have the poor dog put to sleep when it ate a poisoned squirrel and how horribly the creatures had suffered. Their only comment on Ian was that they didn't get along with their son and they didn't seem to miss him. They would not discuss his juvenile record or the harassment charge with me. His mother seemed a little hysterical about it all and slammed the phone down at that point.
Ken's record was a little worse: minor possession, minor violence, lots of stupidity, an assault charge that had been dismissed, and note of a sealed psychiatric evaluation that didn't seem to be related to anything—I was guessing some more serious charge had been expunged from his sheet. I couldn't find a record of whatever it had been, even in our notoriously nosy newspapers, though it had been embarrassing enough to someone to rate a cleanup. His family also had no comment, though they waved it away, saying it was in the past and best forgotten.
Dale and Cara Stahlqvist both got rave reviews as backstabbing hard-asses, though most of their associates found Dale the sneakier of the two and referred to Cara as «honest» in her ambitions and intentions—they preferred to know who had the knives and where they meant to stick them. But Cara had not been honest in her application to the Rainier Club. She'd made her claim of relation to Bertha Landes—one of their earliest female members—but the membership secretary had discovered a flaw in her story. Cara's application to the venerable business club had been refused. As amusing as I found it, the fact led me nowhere relevant. Neither Stahlqvist seemed to have any history of paranormal contact or abnormal behavior, however.
Wayne Hopke yielded no surprises. An occasional overindulgence in drink since his retirement seemed to be the worst of his sins. Nothing strange or uncanny had ever been noted on his records.
Ana Choi was also not shaping up as paranormal femme fatale material. She was finishing her degree in graphics and working both freelance and part-time in the field as well as helping her parents. She didn't have time or energy for skullduggery—I doubted she slept more than five hours a night and generally not that much. What free time she had was spent with friends from work or school and a procession of manipulative boyfriends. She'd given the previous one the boot in Harborview ER after he'd broken her wrist—she sure couldn't pick 'em.
Which left Terry Dornier and Denise Francisco, both of whom seemed to have no Grey connection to the poltergeist at all.
The glaring blank in Ken's record reminded me of his weird isolation in the Grey. I didn't know if it was relevant, but I wanted that hole filled in, especially if it would shed any light on why he had those shifting Grey walls around him. That phenomenon might make him less likely to have access to power in the Grey, but I couldn't be sure and it was the only real lead I seemed to have.
Sitting at my desk, playing with a pencil and pushing paper around on the blotter, I decided I'd have to bite the bullet. I called Sous.
He sounded wary and tired. I was still feeling a bit worn-down myself, but I knew he wouldn't appreciate sympathy or offer any. I came straight to my request.
"There are a couple of sealed police files related to two of the project members. I'd like to see them.”
"No.”
"I haven't told you whose files.”
"I know whose.”
"Can you at least give me an idea what the files were about?”
"No.”
"Not even broadly? Markine's is a juvenile record, so I suppose that's standard procedure. What about the George file? What was that about?”
He paused before answering, sounding irritated. "It was an unfortunate circumstance that is none of your business. Foolishness and bad attitudes made everyone wish it had never happened. Mr. George overpaid for his part in it. It should be allowed to die quietly.”