I snorted and started to reply, but found myself lurching forward and gasping as a spurt of fight-or-flight adrenaline shot through me. My chest felt hollow and battered as my heart rate accelerated like a sprinter from a standing start. This wasn’t my emotion. . . .
Solis reached for me in concern and I shook him off, forcing myself up to my feet, trembling as I fought off the sensation with long breaths. “I’m fine,” I gasped at him. “I’m fine.” I fumbled in my pocket and clutched my cell phone.
I brought out the suddenly slippery thing, turning it on as I did, and started poking in a message as fast as my shaking fingers could manage. Damn Quinton’s security paranoia that favored dumb pagers over smartphones. I tapped one last key and sent the “Call me now” code and wished we had established one for “What the hell was that?”
“Are you certain?” Solis asked, and for a moment I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I nodded, confirming that I was all right.
“Yeah.” I offered no explanation and he continued to watch me, niggling threads of curious yellow and anxious green leaking into the Grey around him. “Let’s just . . . get back to the case in hand,” I suggested, putting my phone on the desk as I sat back down. My heart rate was sliding back to normal already, but I’d be happier once I heard from Quinton.
Solis scowled at me for a moment and I almost laughed. It was like old times. He shook it off and took the autopsy report from under my hand. “I will read this, since it is a past case and department property. You review the log pages.” He moved his chair aside so I could park mine in front of the monitor and flip through the digital images from the log book. I appreciated the distraction.
The log entries were mostly dull and out of order. Some of the pages hadn’t been salvageable and others were still unavailable, but I read through a few, including a couple with some diary-style notes courtesy of Gary Fielding, including one that referred to a “strange feeling” he had whenever he was near Shelly Knight. I wondered if that was an actual sensation or an emotion. I clicked onto the next page and found an entry that read in part, “Carson totally flipping out about his wife—”
“Odd,” I muttered.
“What?” Solis asked, looking up from his reading of the Odile Carson death report.
“There’s an entry here that mentions Odile . . .” I replied.
“Is the date June nineteenth?”
I peered hard at the image and increased the size on the screen, but it didn’t help. “It’s hard to be sure, but, no, it looks like the eighteenth.”
“That is the day before Mrs. Carson’s body was discovered.” He scowled.
“When did she die?”
“The night of the eighteenth. What more does the passage say?”
“It’s very smeared, but what I think it says is that Les got into an argument with . . . someone . . . after dinner and then . . . he wanted a record that he had been on board continuously since they left port. Fielding’s note says, ‘This is to affirm . . .’ There’s a further note about fishing—making a change of plan to go fishing at . . . Port Townsend. Then it appears that Les Carson received a call via the radio about Odile’s death . . . but when isn’t recorded here that I can see, and the next page seems not to have been salvaged.”
Solis paged through the report and found a call log. “June nineteenth at eleven forty-four a.m. A call was made to Seawitch via the radio telephone service for the purpose of notifying next of kin.”
I closed my eyes, slightly nauseated by the idea. “The log says they were going to stop at Roche Harbor that day . . . but there’s no record in the insurance report that they did. It looks like Les Carson knew his wife was dead before she died. . . . And Seawitch went missing later that day without making port or being reported in trouble by any other boat or either coast guard. What the hell happened? Did Les Carson kill his wife and use the trip as an alibi?”
Solis shook his head. “The timing is impossible, and Mrs. Carson killed herself.”
“Really?”
“The medical examiner is very clear. Mrs. Carson left a note and the disposition of the body was consistent with suicide by electrocution in water.” I thought I saw him shudder before he added, “She was thorough in guaranteeing her death.”
“Could it have been murder for hire?” I suggested.
Solis shook his head, rolling his eyes. “It is my experience that the clever professional assassin exists principally in the minds of thriller authors and Hollywood scriptwriters. Those who kill strangers for money rather than the satisfaction of their own psychotic impulses are most frequently violent thugs with criminal records and the minds of twisted children.”
I almost smiled at his vehemence. “So . . . not a fan of Barry Eisler’s novels, I’m guessing.”
He gave an amused snort that didn’t quite bloom into a laugh. Then he shook off the moment and looked back down at the report. “It appears that the coroner certified the death as ‘misadventure,’ in spite of the autopsy and scene investigation.”
“Maybe the family brought pressure to keep the suicide ruling out of the public record,” I suggested.
He nodded. “Possible. No city is perfectly without corruption.”
“Seattle’s built on it.” I would have said more, but my phone rang, jiggling across the surface of the folding table where I’d left it to fall onto the floor near my original position. I dove for it as the office door opened and a small brown face peeped through the gap.
“Blaine,” I barked as I answered the phone, falling onto my shoulder on the floor and trying to keep an eye on the newcomer at the same time.
“Papa?” the face asked.
“Sí, Mario?”
The little boy started in Spanish, then switched to English after Solis frowned at him. “Mama says dinner’s ready and Grandmama came out of her room again. But she’s OK now.”
Solis nodded. “We will be downstairs in a moment. Tell your mama we’ll wash up first. Just like you.”
“Sí, Papa.”
Mario withdrew his head and closed the door gently. I couldn’t hear him leave over the sound in my ear from the phone.
“Harper!” Quinton yelled over the sound of traffic, “I’m sorry. I’m at a pay phone in downtown. It’s really loud here.”
“I can tell. What happened earlier?”
“When earlier?”
I checked my watch. “About forty minutes ago. I felt something.”
Quinton didn’t reply for a moment and only the sound of cars on the street filled my ear. Finally he spoke. “I saw someone from the past. He shouldn’t be here and he wants me to do something I can’t agree to.”
“I understand. Are you OK?”
“I am now. I . . . I’ll tell you the rest later. Here and now is not good.”
“I’m with Solis at his place—we’re going over files. Do you need me to meet you somewhere soon?”
“No. Whenever you’re done, page me. I’ll come home then. I want to stay out here until the last minute. Just in case.”
“If it’s that past, then they already know who I am and where I live, if they want to find you.”
“Yeah, but . . . humor me.” Then he cut the connection.
Goody. More fun and games dodging Quinton’s scary ex-boss.
Solis lifted an inquisitive eyebrow as I put my phone back into my pocket.
“Boyfriend trouble,” I said.