A Deadly Business (3 page)
Making it a second-degree homicide. Part of Mia wanted to throw the book at these two kids who had acted with reckless indifference. At the same time she knew how easily kids were influenced, how little they thought things through.
At the beginning of the school year, her son had fallen in with a new group of friends. Gabe had taken part in a flash mob that robbed a convenience store. He hadn’t taken anything—claimed he hadn’t even known what was going to happen—but still, Mia was uncomfortably aware of how a single poor decision could have horrifying consequences.
Gabe, the two boys, Manny, even Tamsin’s son, Luke—they had all been babies once. How did a baby grow up to be a kid who would set into action a plan that could kill a stranger? For that matter, how did a baby grow up to be Bernard Young? Was there anything you could do to stop it from happening? Juvenile courts were aimed at rehabilitation, but was the direction of these two kids’ lives already set? Should they be written off, the energy refocused on protecting those around them?
“I want you to work with Charlie Carlson,” Frank continued. “You two make a good team.”
Charlie. She wasn’t sure how she felt about working with him again. “But, Frank, I don’t—”
“Mia,” he snapped. “This is my top priority. I need the best people on it. That means you and Charlie. And I need your decision as soon as possible, before the election. I do not need to hear any more from my opponent about this office being soft on crime. Whatever you decide, we need to be able to defend it.”
Unlike Frank, his opponent, Dominic Raines, did not look like a district attorney. He was not much taller than Mia and had the pallor of a man who spent all his time indoors. But he had also run a shrewd campaign, using cherry-picked examples to accuse Frank of coddling criminals. According to Raines, far too many were being granted sweetheart plea bargains.
The general public, brought up on prime time courtroom dramas, did not realize that ninety-five percent of felony convictions were the result of plea bargains. Only a handful went to trial. The justice system simply couldn’t handle the caseload otherwise.
Raines had been focusing on the cases that sounded the worst, without mentioning any nitty-gritty realities. In some cases there had been a lack of evidence, and a plea bargain had been preferable to a defendant likely getting off scot-free. But on the face of it, probation for a third-degree rape case or nine months in prison for arson did not sound like enough.
“I want you to consider everything carefully, Mia,” Frank said. His brilliant blue eyes bored into her. “I’m sure you’ll make the right decision.”
Her phone buzzed again, and she finally peeked at the screen. The caller ID read Seattle Security. Seattle Security had put the new alarm system in her home when she went back to work. Just one of a million decisions she had made on the fly. But why would they be calling her now?
A fresh burst of adrenaline pumped through her veins. “Excuse me, Frank. I have to take this.” She pressed the button to accept the call. “This is Mia Quinn.”
A bored man’s voice said, “This is Seattle Security calling for Mia Quinn.”
Hadn’t he heard her? “This is Mia,” she repeated, not bothering to hide her impatience.
“We’re just calling to notify you that there’s been an alert at your home, and no one is answering the phone there.”
“Of course not. Nobody’s home.” Although maybe they were by now. She thought of her phone buzzing when she was in the courtroom. It could have been Gabe.
“We’ve also notified the police department.”
She stiffened. “Don’t you have someone who goes out to the house and checks?” Why hadn’t she read the contract? And she was an attorney.
“No, ma’am. We monitor, we check with the homeowner, and we notify the police department.”
Mia had a realistic view of how long it might take the police to respond. More than ninety-five percent of automated alarms were false, so responding to them was a cop’s lowest priority.
And maybe that made sense. But not when her kids were due home—Mia checked her watch—
now
. Maybe were already home.
She looked up at Frank. “I have to go. Now.”
C
oach Harper clapped his hands. “Okay, to finish off this afternoon we’re doing some fifty-yard sprints.”
Everyone groaned, including Gabe. All he wanted to do was chug a Gatorade and hit the shower. Coach had drilled them hard all afternoon. And now, with the end of practice so tantalizingly in sight, he wanted them to do timed wind sprints.
Gabe gritted his teeth and gutted out the first one. On the faces of the other guys, he saw frustration, pain, and sheer determination.
After the third sprint Marc, one of the linemen, was struggling to come back. Someone yelled from the sidelines for him to hurry up. Gabe was catching his breath, his hands on his knees, so he didn’t see who it was. But it didn’t seem fair. Marc wasn’t a slacker. Before he could think about it too much, Gabe ran back onto the field and started running next to Marc, clapping his hands and cheering him on.
They started their next sprint, and again Gabe was one of the first to finish. And Marc was struggling again, his face red and his chest heaving. But this time five of the team came back to help him
finish. The last ten yards, Gabe and Eldon half carried, half dragged Marc to make sure he crossed the line.
When they were all done, Coach had them gather around. He favored them with one of his rare smiles. “I like what I saw out there today. Not only did you strengthen your endurance and your will, you also started thinking about how to be a team. Being a team is all about working together, not tearing each other down. When you get a touchdown, it’s not just about the running back who has the ball or the quarterback who throws it or the receiver. It’s all of you together working as a unit.”
As they headed back to the locker room, Coach clapped Gabe on the shoulder. “Good job, Quinn,” he said quietly. “What you did today—that’s part of being a leader.”
By the time Gabe left practice, the weather had changed. The wind was lashing the trees. The rain came in gusts that threatened to tear off his baseball cap. As he walked to his sister’s preschool, his legs felt like lead. It had taken everything he had to go back on that field when he himself was finished. Still, it had felt good pushing his body further than he thought it could go. And even better to hear Coach praise him.
Coach Harper did not give compliments lightly. Gabe had worked hard all fall, and it was beginning to pay off. He was getting put in more often, and he was now able to go all out without getting completely winded.
He signed Brooke out and they began the trek home. His stomach growled. He was hungry enough that he could almost forget the ache in his legs, forget the weather. Would his mom be home in time to make dinner, or was he going to be on his own again, reduced to making a blue box of mac and cheese? He sent her a text but got no answer.
Brooke was dawdling, even though a second earlier she had been complaining that she had to go to the bathroom. “Come on.” He tugged at her hand, but she pulled away and sloshed through a puddle that came midway up her yellow rain boots.
As they started down their street, he heard a high-pitched whine. It sounded like some kind of alarm.
The closer they got to the house, the louder it got. It was definitely their security alarm. Gabe’s heart started beating faster. They stood at the edge of the yard.
“Come on, Gabe!” Now it was Brooke tugging at his hand. “I have to go potty!”
“We can’t go in, Brooke. That’s the alarm.”
“Is there a burglar?”
He didn’t answer. The house was dark. All the doors and windows appeared to be closed and undamaged. Nothing seemed to have been disturbed.
What had his mom said to do if the alarm went off? Gabe tried to remember. All he could remember was that if you set it off accidentally, you were supposed to punch in the code—the dates of his and Brooke’s birthdays—and hit the “clear” button. They had only gotten the alarm a few months ago, when his mom went back to work and there was no one home during the day.
Taking out his phone again, he called his mom. It felt weird to be holding the phone up to his ear. Mostly he and his friends just texted. The only people he regularly talked to on the phone were his grandparents.
His mom’s phone rang three times and went to voice mail.
“Mom, um, hi, it’s me. The alarm’s going off and I don’t know what to do. Um, call me back.”
He looked at the neighbors’ houses. Those were dark too.
“Gabe—I really have to go!” Brooke was squirming. “Now!” The wind gusted so hard that it caught the hood of her yellow raincoat and blew it back. So hard that the windows in their old house rattled.
It seemed really lame to call 911. He imagined the cops showing up, sirens screaming, and then rolling their eyes when it turned out to be nothing.
Then he thought of Charlie Carlson, the detective who sometimes worked with his mom. Maybe Charlie could tell him what to do.
Gabe had to look up Charlie’s name in his contacts. Again he got voice mail.
“Hey, um, Mr. Carlson”—he’d told Gabe to call him Charlie, but for some reason that didn’t seem right tonight—“I’m at my house and I can’t get hold of my mom. The house alarm’s going off and I’m not sure what to do. I think it’s been going off for a while. So if you get this message in the next twenty minutes or so, could you call me back?”
Brooke yanked on his hand even harder. “Come on, Gabe! I really have to pee!”
What if he had just set the alarm wrong? Or what if it was just the wind rattling the door? He started towing Brooke along, and she stopped complaining for a second. But when she realized they weren’t going in, but rather walking around the perimeter of the yard, she started fussing again.
“Just hold on a sec,” he told her. “I need to make sure it’s safe.” He looked at every window, even the ones on the second floor. None of them were broken. The front and side doors were closed tight.
After they had made a complete circle, they were outside the side door at the end of the driveway. Still holding Brooke’s hand, Gabe went up on the porch. He tried the handle, ready to run, but the door was locked. He shook the handle and felt how the door moved in its frame. Stupid wind! That must have been what set off the alarm. Still, he crouched down until his face was on the same level as Brooke’s.
“Brooke, I have to make sure it’s safe before you can go inside. I want you to stay right here and not move. Can you do that?” He hated to leave her alone, but he didn’t know what else to do.
She nodded. “But hurry, okay? I can’t hold it for very long.”
“I will. But if you see anyone you don’t know, do not talk to them and do not let them get close to you. Run away and hide if you have to. Do you understand?”
She swiveled her head from side to side, her eyes wide. At least she was momentarily distracted from her obsession with the potty. “Is there a bad person?”
“Probably not. It’s just to be safe.”
Gabe wished it wasn’t all on him. Then he remembered how he had helped Marc. Remembered how Coach had complimented him.
He put his key in the lock. The door swung open into blackness. Just inside the door, the lights on the control panel were blinking rapidly, some red and some green. He had never really paid attention to them before and didn’t know what they meant. He took one step inside and punched in the code.
The silence seemed almost as loud as the alarm.
He took a deep, ragged breath. Should he turn on the light? But if he turned on the light and someone had broken in, they would not only know he was here, but they would be able to move around easily. With the lights off, he had an advantage. After all, this was his house.
Gabe stepped into the darkness.
C
harlie sat in his Crown Vic listening to his voice mail before he went back to the office. He had to listen to the third message twice before he was finally able to pick out the hesitant words from some kind of annoying background whine.
“I’m at my house and I can’t get hold of my mom. The house alarm’s going off and I’m not sure what to do. I think it’s been going off for a while. So if you get this message in the next twenty minutes or so, could you call me back?”
It was Gabe Quinn. Mia’s kid. Fourteen years old. Charlie had been married three times, but he didn’t have any kids. Which was probably a good thing. He didn’t even have a cat.
Sometimes, though, he saw a little of himself in Gabe. He’d seen the kid put on an I-don’t-care face when he clearly did. Seen him be brave when it might have been better to be cautious. But at fourteen boys were all hormones, impulses, and bravado.
And since his dad had died, Gabe had been forced to grow up. To square his skinny shoulders and be the man of the house.
The kid answered on the first ring. “Hello?” His voice was barely audible, but only because he was speaking softly. The sound
of the alarm was gone. Charlie relaxed and pulled the keys from the ignition.
“It’s Charlie Carlson. It sounds like you got the alarm taken care of. So is everything okay?”