Dead Ringer (10 page)

“What’s that?”

“Like I said when we started, Ditto’s a vindictive guy. I don’t want him coming after me.”

“Okay, but it’s just us here. What are you saying?”

“Think about it,” Boynton said. “You need a fresh body. Where you going to go?”

She waited for him to make another comment, but he just shook his head.

She asked, “Anything else to add?”

“You free for dinner?”

U
SING A CAMPUS MAP
from the main hospital information desk, Wendy threaded her way back to the parking lot thinking about Boynton’s unexpected dinner invitation. She’d been caught off guard and hoped she hadn’t been too rude when she turned him down. The parking lot was on the south side of Husky Stadium with full sunlight frying her motor pool Caprice. She opened the front door and stood there waiting for some heat to waft out before climbing in. No matter how hot Seattle became, it paled to the car-searing summers she’d endured growing up east of the mountains in Moses Lake, Washington.

People always said, “Yeah, sure, but that’s
dry
heat.” As if that made a difference. Dry, wet, whatever, to her it was frigging miserable.

Her dad had been an air traffic controller for the air force, stationed at Larson Air Force Base outside Moses Lake. The base became decommissioned just about the same time his tour of duty ended. With 4,700 acres and a 13,500 foot runway, it became the Grant County International Airport and an alternate landing site for the NASA space shuttle. Her parents stayed in town working as civilian airport employees for the FAA while raising Wendy and her older sister, Megan. And they loved it.

Well, they could have it. The heat, the annual Eagles barbecue, the VFW hall, and the Grange. All of it.

She hated the endless summer evenings sitting on the porch swing with nothing to do but listen to Mariners games on a staticky AM radio station and dream of escaping the flat, boring town. Megan never left. She boomeranged back from Washington State University freshman year, married the hayseed who’d knocked her up. Megan and her husband were raising three boys. Which, from Wendy’s point of view, held as much appeal as rinsing out your mouth with Clorox.

For reasons Wendy could never grasp, she’d always wanted to be a cop. Right out of high school she enlisted in the army after receiving assurances from the recruiting officer that if she did well on the tests, she’d be assigned to their Criminal Investigation Division. After four years of active duty and some junior college courses, she figured she could pass the physical fitness and civil service exams for the Seattle Police Department. And she did.

A week after graduation from the academy, she was called into the chief of police’s office.

She stands at the desk, the fresh rookie assigned to patrol. The Chief says, “Close the door, please.”

She does and returns to the desk. The Chief remains seated, a manila folder open on his desk. “I’ve been reading your record, Elliott … may I call you Wendy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good performance in the Academy. Good enough for Internal Affairs.”

“Sir?”

“I’m looking for a fresh face to be assigned to basically work undercover for Internal Affairs.”

“Just what does that mean?” she asks in spite of having a pretty good idea.

“Means you’d be assigned to a unit we have reason to investigate. Say, Vice. While there, you’ll do the work you’re assigned, but in addition, you’ll be conducting an investigation for us by looking into questions we have about other members of your team.”

“In other words, you want me to spy on other cops?”

“That’s one way to view it. The way we prefer to think of it is the cops we put on your radar may turn out to be the ones who shouldn’t be on the force. Even the police need policing, sorry to say. What do you think, Wendy?”

She likes the fact that the Chief knows her name, but she also knows that IA investigators are often veterans only a couple years away from retirement. They can put in their final time and then leave the force without worrying about not being liked by the rank and file. Also, she wants to eventually make the Homicide squad.

When she hesitates, he adds, “Says here,” with a nod at the folder, “you want to work up to Homicide. That true?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, then … give us four to six years of good undercover work and I’ll see to it you end up where you want. We have a deal?”

“You have an assignment in mind, obviously. What is it?”

He sits back, closing the file. “You’re young, statuesque, and blonde. You have a face that can be hard. And I don’t mean that as an insult. At the moment, we need someone to be assigned to
the Vice squad. But you didn’t answer my initial question. You want in?”

She doesn’t like the idea of ratting out fellow officers, but the Chief has a point. Someone has to police the police. “Yeah, I’m good for it.”

The Chief smiles, holds out his hand. “Welcome aboard, Officer Elliott.”

They shake hands.

The Chief says, “Officer Travis Hunt is your husband, right?”

She and Travis were married halfway through their time in the Academy. “Yes.”

“Good. That’s perfect cover if he’s your primary contact. As of now, you’re off patrol and reporting to him. Officially, however, you’re now assigned to the Vice unit. After we’re done here, you can walk over to meet your superior officer. You okay with that?”

“No problem.”

That was the same time her marriage started sliding sideways.

She and Travis had assumed that because they were both cops they’d understand their hectic schedules and the emotions the job sucked from them. But it didn’t work like that. Under the daily stress, they quickly lost patience for each other’s quirks and began arguing. In the end they blamed their failed marriage on job-related stress instead of other possibilities, like their inability to compromise in order to get along. Wendy called him an anal neat freak. He viewed her as a slob and would go ballistic if toothpaste wasn’t squeezed from the end of the tube or if a fresh roll of toilet paper wasn’t in the john before the old one ran out.

Little things accumulated, becoming fodder for more resentment and bigger arguments. Rather than scream at her during blowups, Travis simply shut down and wouldn’t talk. This cold shoulder would go for days until they eventually drifted back together, neither one assuming responsibility for the disagreement. It seemed to be during those times of zero communication she needed him the most, so his neglect of her hurt worse. It didn’t come as a surprise when, after one of those blowups, Travis suggested they separate. She agreed. And that was that. But they still liked working together and were good at it.

The three-year anniversary of their divorce passed just last month, she realized.

The car felt comfortable enough to get into, so she climbed in, fired the ignition, and backed out of the parking space. Another car was already waiting to take the spot.

Wendy turned up the volume of the FM station in an effort to drown out the constant din of radio traffic from the police radio. She it tuned the local country-western station. Just another vestige of life in Moses Lake. As a teenager she hated country music, seeing it as
so
not cool. But during the divorce, when some lyrics assured her things could be worse, she grudgingly had to admit to a certain closet enjoyment in the pissing and moaning about other people’s tough times. A kind of roots thing, she guessed. Yet she made a point of not letting her friends know she listened to shit kicker music. It didn’t fit the image she wanted to portray in her life on this side of the mountains.

Waiting for the traffic light to let her escape the sweltering parking lot, she thought about Bobby Ditto again. Seemed like
the more she learned about him, the more she was convinced he was involved with Lupita’s disappearance. She had no tangible evidence yet, only her gut feeling of being on the right track. Boynton just verified it.

Now she had to prove it.

L
UCAS WAS UP BEFORE
the wakeup call. He showered, checked out, and headed to the airport early, hoping he might be able to catch an earlier flight. There wasn’t one.

He used the lounge computer to check his email, but there were no new messages. Then he went to the
Seattle Times
web page and typed Andy’s name in the search line. He hesitated, unsure if he wanted to see the answer, but pressed enter. A few seconds later “No Match” popped up, leaving him with a sense of relief.

After checking his luggage through customs, Gerhard headed to the departure gate but saw McRae in the departure area. He stopped. Last thing he wanted to do was get into another pissing match with the bastard. If McRae saw him, that would surely happen. And if that happened, Leo might slip and say something he’d regret. The one thing he’d learned in this life—thanks to his time in the army—was to walk away from confrontation because if he didn’t, it usually ended badly.

He also intuitively knew McRae was smarter than he was. Maybe not in street smarts, but in other ways. And he didn’t want McRae asking him tricky questions.

Gerhard stepped into a bookstore and browsed the magazines, picking out a
Popular Mechanics
for the flight home. He was certain McRae would be flying first or business class, meaning he’d go through the front gate. He’d wait until McRae boarded before taking the rear gate to the coach section.

Once the heads were back safely where they could be disposed of, there was nothing that son of a bitch McRae could do about it.

A
FTER CHECKING THE SUITCASES
to make sure the suitcase containing the heads hadn’t been tampered with and the seals remained intact, Leo Gerhard hefted both locked aluminum cases onto a luggage cart. Fucking customs. Those agents weren’t supposed to open them, but ever since ICE became part of Homeland Security, you really couldn’t trust those yo-yos anymore. They did all sorts of crazy shit in the name of national defense.

This being a routine trip, he should be able to just zip through as long as the paperwork appeared in order. Except this time he felt a little twitchy. For a couple reasons. Partly on account of the Chinks being the ones to sign off on him in Hong Kong. Never trusted those slants. They’d fuck you over for a quarter and never think twice about it. More than that was a nagging suspicion that somehow McRae had enough juice with the authorities, maybe on account of being some big shot doctor, to cause him grief. If McRae pissed and moaned loud enough, might be that immigration would give him a closer look. Then again, he was carrying good paper. Fuck McRae.

He knew he was being paranoid, but still …

Especially with Bobby ranting about that female cop. He could kick himself for leaving the Suburban in that alley. Fucking No Parking signs all over the place. But parking in that area
sucked, and besides, it was going to take him only a few minutes. What were the odds? Should’ve known. Bad luck being pretty much his life story.

He filed into the customs line and watched more travelers fill in behind him. Glanced around for McRae but didn’t see him. He probably didn’t bring more than one carry-on bag, so the bastard wouldn’t have to wait for luggage like he did. McRae. Fucker worried him. Had that nervous squirrely look about him. The moment he got back he’d have a talk with Bobby. No way was Gerhard going to let him underestimate McRae. He had a feeling about McRae, and it wasn’t good.
A troublemaker is what he is
. And he needed to make sure Bobby understood that. Bobby was smart, probably the smartest guy he knew. Except for chess. When it came to chess, they were equals. And he bet that if they ever kept track, he won more games than Bobby. But when it came to gut feelings about people, Leo figured he was the better of the two.

Leo approached the booth and handed the immigration officer his paperwork. He checked to make sure it was all there: the departures from Sea-Tac and Hong Kong. The special papers.

The guy flipped through them with a bored expression, stamped Leo’s passport, and handed it back. “Nothing to declare?”

Leo shook his head.

The agent looked at the papers again. “Bring the suitcase into the other room, and let’s have a look.”

Leo hesitated, wondering if it was possible for McRae to have already stirred up the cops, but knew he couldn’t very well refuse to be inspected. “Certainly, Officer.”

Leo followed the officer into a small side room used for this type of inspection and wondered, why this time? Most of the time they didn’t inspect. He set the Halliburton on a small table, and the officer inspected the security tape covering the latches by the Hong Kong authorities. The tape stuck like hell, making it impossible to remove or open the case without cutting through it.