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Janet was holding down a big booth in the back of the coffee shop. The staff liked her — she’d been coming here for years. Mac, they tolerated, but only because of Janet. He stopped at the counter and ordered iced tea — his latest concession so that they didn’t have to stock Mountain Dew just for him. Angie got some kind of frou-frou iced coffee drink and made the server laugh.
Joe Conte, Mike Brewster and Yesenia Vilchis were also back in the booth. Joe was talking. He didn’t always make it in to these meetings — His shift didn’t start until 3 p.m., when Mac went off duty.
They scooted together to make room for the two of them. Mac let Angie slide in and took the outer seat. He got a little claustrophobic if he was trapped in the middle.
“Glad you could make it,” Janet said dryly, but she nodded and smiled at Angie.
“Sorry, had an old news source show up with an odd story,” Mac said. “Kate Fairchild, remember her?”
Janet’s eyes narrowed as she nodded. Of course she remembered Kate. Mac doubted she’d ever forgotten anyone involved in a story ever. And there was Tim — Janet’s son. Mac wondered if he was still living at the Fairchild house. He couldn’t be done with college yet.
“Later,” Mac promised. He looked at Mike thoughtfully. He was their data person. Maybe.... No, Shorty would be better for what he needed.
“So Joe’s catching us up on that story about the woman whose husband beat her up — when McBride was sitting on a restraining order,” Janet said.
“He’s sitting on an arrest warrant too,” Mac said.
Joe nodded. “And it turns out the woman has some pull,” he said. “A bit sick that it takes that, but her mother is the district court judge in Bellevue.”
Mac felt a smile slowly spread across his face. “McBride didn’t know the name?”
“Different name,” Joe said. He returned Mac’s smile. Joe Conte might not be the shark journalist Mac was, but he was no slouch. And this case had bugged him. “The victim is married, but even then, I think her mother has remarried or something. So no, the name didn’t mean anything to him.”
“You pulled precinct stats, Mike?” Janet asked. This story had been dragging on for some time. They just couldn’t get a handle on it.
“I keep pulling them,” Mike said morosely. He was using his iced tea glass to make circles in the condensation on the table. “And they keep showing the same thing. Productivity in that precinct is way down. Down overall, down per officer. And it’s continued now for months! What the hell, guys?”
Mike flushed a bit and mumbled an apology to Janet. The rest of them — even Yesenia — just stared at him. Apologizing to Janet for ‘hell?’ Well, Mike was fairly new to the newsroom, Mac conceded. And he could just bet that the ‘investigative reporting’ unit hadn’t sworn in front of their boss.
“McBride wasn’t answering my calls this morning,” Mac said. “And I figured it was more of the same, you know? But then I thought about it a bit, because really, it’s a chance to say we’re doing something, right? And now I’m wondering....” He trailed off.
“What was the story — a blotter item?” Joe asked.
Mac nodded, still puzzled. “You know how the university cops were talking about those car break-ins in the U District? I just called to see what the SPD was doing about it. Why wouldn’t he want to talk about that? He’s talked to me about other things.”
Usually with a good deal of snark and needling, but he did. McBride enjoyed sparring with him, Mac figured. McBride saw it as part of the game. Mac didn’t. He was deadly serious about his pursuit of the man.
“That is odd,” Joe agreed. “Maybe I’ll wander up there this afternoon and talk to the university cops about that some more.”
Joe was a good fit with those guys, Mac thought. Better than he was.
“Give me the case numbers,” Mike said. “I’ll pull some stuff. And what about the DV victim? Do we have a name?”
Joe rattled off the information about the assault victim. “But that’s what I came by to tell you,” Joe said. “She’s got an attorney — a good one. And he’s suing the SPD for negligence on her behalf. She’s in seclusion somewhere, because the SPD has made no effort to find the bastard. And her mother is pissed. I talked to her briefly yesterday. The judge is calling a press conference this afternoon about the SPD’s lack of responsiveness, and she’s got numbers.” Joe grinned at Mike, who perked up. “I think we’ve got our news peg, Mike.”
Mike grinned back. Shark smiles, someone had called them — Angie maybe. Mac thought that was apt enough.
Janet took over the meeting, then, doling out assignments. She didn’t give Mac one. Mac raised an eyebrow. She grinned. “You’re reassigned to the north precinct district office, for the near future,” she said. “In person, every morning. Hanging out. Maybe ask to do a ride along with one of the cops.”
Mac laughed. “Give them all heart attacks,” he said. “Anything in particular — besides making McBride sweat?”
“I want to know why none of his men have rolled on him,” Janet said. “See what you can learn.”
Mac nodded slowly. “I can still make the blotter calls,” he said. “Send it in from my laptop from right there.”
“Look at you,” Mike teased. “Sounding like a normal computer user and everything.”
Mac rolled his eyes as the other snickered. Angie grinned at him too.
“Angie, can you go to the press conference with Joe?” Janet asked. “And we might want you to do a photo essay about the north precinct office.”
“Give me a few days to set that up,” Angie said. “But yes, I’ll shoot the press conference.”
“Anything else?” Janet asked.
Mac pulled out his notebook. “I went back and reread all the stories we wrote last fall,” he said. “And I made a list of all the people who were charged with something. Captain Rourke, six counts including attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Andrew Whalen, two counts, attempted murder, and conspiracy to commit murder. Officers Hightower, Mason and Donovan, conspiracy to commit murder. Then there was Win Whalen and his son Scott, and a couple of others who worked for Whalen with all of that computer fraud. Have any of them actually gone to prison?”
Yesenia shook her head. “No, the police trials start next month. I’m not sure where the cases are against Whalen and his employees, but they haven’t gone to trial.”
“Ten months, Yesenia!” Mac said. “Is that normal? Are they in jail even?”
“No they all posted bail eventually,” she said. “Normal? Yes and no. Most cases are settled because of a plea bargain, Mac. The courts can’t possibly handle trials for all of the cases! How many cases did you write about in today’s blotter?”
“Ten, maybe 12,” he said.
“And that’s just the interesting ones, right? And one day,” Yesenia said. “But these are high profile cases. And yes, it’s not uncommon for them to take a year or even two to go to trial — especially a complicated case like this one.”
It was complicated. Captain Rourke had essentially been running a hit squad out of the cop shop. You needed someone taken out? Swatting or no-knock warrants could fix that. And in turn, his men picked up a little extra cash — that was how Rourke had described it to him, at least.
A lot of that extra cash had come from Win Whalen, a venture capitalist who among other things specialized in right-wing causes. He’d developed a fund for police who needed defense money — attorneys, supposedly.
Mac glanced at his notes. “Remember this from the Seattle Police Fund website? ‘Police who do the heavy lifting need to be compensated for it. Fewer thugs means better quality of life — something to be rewarded. A DM to the admin for this page will tell you how.’ What happened to that account? Does Kristy Whalen control it?”
“No,” Mike said. “It wasn’t in Win Whalen’s name. So when the SEC swooped in — feds are faster than the SPD — he lost everything. Or, rather, Kristy stepped in and took over the company, and the family money — since both of her brothers and father were implicated in all of this. Charged with some of it. But the Seattle Defense Fund wasn’t part of that.”
Kristy Whalen, who he had known as Misaki, had actually been in the Parker House working on breaking the story. “You and Kristy friends?”
Mike shrugged. “Sorta.”
“I keep thinking we dropped the ball on this,” Mac said. “I mean we did good work — did better work than Internal Affairs has done. But it’s like we talk about a lot, we get hit with the next story and the next story.”
“OK,” Janet said slowly. “So a lot of deaths got written off as suicides are now suspicious deaths. That had been going on for some time, right? Dunbar stumbled onto one of those, and it made the ‘powers that be’ nervous.”
“And when Lorde in Internal Affairs pulled some numbers, there were a dozen suspicious suicides of Black men in north Seattle — and Mike found more, when he broadened the parameters beyond Black men,” Mac said with a nod to Mike.
“Did the suicides stop?” Mac asked suddenly, thinking of it for the first time.
Mike stared back at him. “You know? I don’t know.”
“We assumed they did, because we caught the bastards, right?” Mac said. “But McBride is still the desk sergeant at the north precinct. What about the others? Are they out on bail? Surely they aren’t working?” He looked at Joe and Yesenia. Really, he should know the answer to that. But they had known they wanted to be news reporters when they went to college — he’d been planning a career as a sportswriter. His knowledge of the legal system came more from ‘insider knowledge’ when he ran the streets.
He wouldn’t have thought he’d ever be back inside a police station again — not without an arrest warrant and handcuffs.
“Administrative leave,” Yesenia said. “Paid.”
“Mac, where are you going with all of this?” Janet asked. It was said gently, not impatiently, but rather a question to help him focus.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I just got that itchy feeling, you know? The one that says we missed something.”
“Remember that board you put together of the components to this?” Mike said. “I still have it. Maybe we should revisit that. What was there? Dirty cops. Tech. White supremacists. Christian nationalists?”
Mac nodded. “And a lot of cross-overs. But let’s say we follow the money? Rourke was making a lot of money with his cop-for-hire favors. And Whalen was getting donations to the Seattle Defense Fund. Do we know where that money went? Dirty cops and the tech heads got busted. Some of them. But what about the church connection? Did we drop the ball there?”
“Let’s all think about that,” Janet said. “Go back through your notes and do what Mac did, reread those stories. We think we haven’t forgotten anything — our lives were on the line! But we have. There’s been a lot of crap come down since then.”
Truth, Mac thought. But there were just nods of agreement.
“Speaking of evangelicals Christians, what did Kate Fairchild want, Mac?” Janet asked.
Mac hesitated. He had planned to tell Janet, but tell everyone? He looked around the table, and mentally shrugged. Why not? He hesitated. How to begin?
“Kate Fairchild was a part of the story when I got kidnapped,” Janet said, helping him out. “Army of God held her hostage at one point, if I remember correctly. A former source, of sorts.”
Mac nodded. That would do. “So she came to me — I haven’t heard from her in about a year,” he said. “She’s working on her PhD at U-Dub, and she needed my help. I don’t think it’s a story, really, but it is curious.” They all smiled at that — they were just as curious about things as he was, or they wouldn’t be sitting at this table. He told them the story and passed around the photo.
“Wild,” Mike said. Which about summed it up.
But Yesenia was looking thoughtful. “What?” Mac asked.
“Well, it’s complicated,” she said. She covered courts and understood law issues better than anyone Mac knew, including some attorneys. “You remember the whole birther thing with President Obama, right?”
Mac nodded. Of course he did. He had never understood it — President Obama’s mother was an American citizen, therefore Obama was. End of subject. Rourke had been a birther, now that he thought about it — had ranted about how he was doing necessary work because Obama and people who looked like Obama were going to take over this country. Bunch of racist shitheads. “His mother was a citizen, so he was. And he was born on American soil,” he said.
“Right,” Yesenia said. “But it gets more complicated when the father is the U.S. citizen, and the child wasn’t born on American soil. Harder to prove he’s the father — it’s pretty obvious who the mother is. Usually.”
Mac blinked at that. Wasn’t it always obvious? He might have to ask her about that sometime.
“There’s a lot of situations with fathers, actually,” Yesenia said. “Soldiers might father a child and may not even know of the child, right? Or they do, and just abandon the mom and child.”
“Fuckers,” Mac muttered. He didn’t bother to apologize. Wasn’t the first time he’d let language slip like that.
Yesenia smiled at him, maybe for the first time ever. She was always reserved; with him, it had felt like wariness. He never pressed her about it. A lot of people were wary around him. “Exactly,” she said. “So there is a process for it. And it’s not easy. But it has to be done before the child is 18. You say she is 18 already?”
Mac considered that. “Well, Kate assumed that, because she’s a freshman,” he said slowly. “But that’s not necessarily the case, is it? She could be 17.”
“In which case it makes a lot more sense that she wants to establish residency here as a student,” Yesenia said. “Because that’s the other requirement — she has to be legally in the States to do it. Or at a military base, if they’re involved. But that doesn’t sound like it.”
“I don’t think so,” Mac said, although he put an asterisk by that. What exactly had Kate’s father been doing in Southeast Asia? Missionary, Kate said. But.... “Legal residence, does a dorm room count?”
“I don’t know,” Yesenia said, almost apologizing. “But it might not.”
“Which might explain why she’s living off campus somewhere,” Mac muttered, thinking about it.
“Might,” she agreed. “You need a good immigration attorney for all of this, Mac. I can get you some names.”
He smiled at her. “Thank you.”
Mac looked at Janet. “Still not a story, though,” he said apologetically. “But I feel like I owe it to her to follow up.”
“A, you don’t work 24/7, so go for it,” Janet said. “And B, you say that about the start of almost every big story you take on. So let’s see where it goes.”
There was laughter from that, and Mac snorted. She was right, he did say that. And Janet said that every time too — let’s see where it goes.
“You going to talk to Shorty?” Mike asked. “More his thing than mine. But what’s the father’s name? I might run it through a few programs.”
“This evening,” Mac agreed. He glanced at the time on his phone and tapped out a message to Kate. “Samuel Fairchild. Born 2/24/1960 in Snohomish.” Mike jotted it down.
Mac looked at Janet. “Thought I might go up on campus and ask some questions. Is that OK?”
Janet just nodded, tapping her finger on the photo, absently. She looked up. “Can I keep a copy?”
Mac nodded, and didn’t ask questions, although he was curious. Something caught her attention — he wondered what.
They broke up at that point, and Mac went up the ramp to the parking garage to get his car. UW was obvious, he thought. And then, he thought he might give Joe Dunbar a call.
Parking was always such a problem on campus, Mac wondered why he bothered. Could have taken the bus up — it would have been faster. And really, he thought college students at the U had a death wish the way they scattered across streets, walked against the lights, and generally risked their lives because they were chattering with friends. No situational awareness, he thought disgustedly.
No one had ever accused Mac of lacking situational awareness. He snorted. He should have told Conte he’d talk to the university cops since he was going to be here. He considered it, then shook off the idea. UW security looked more like grown-up college students than the more military-style cops at SPD. Mac thought he made them a bit uncomfortable. He thought they should at least stand up straight. They were easy with Joe — him not so much. He usually dealt with them over the phone.
Really, he dealt with most of his sources over the phone. It felt good to get out of the office and walk across campus. He wanted to talk to the teacher Kate had mentioned, and then to people in the international programs. But mostly he wanted to check with his aunt, an art professor here, who would have access to student data — if he could get her to look it up. Lindy always got uptight about it — privacy rules, she said. But this was different. A 17-year-old girl was missing.
It was going to be a hot day. People thought Seattle was rainy all year around, but that wasn’t true. He’d seen it get over 100, but not often. With the humidity that was a bitch. But he’d been in worse climates. And at least here, no one was shooting at him.
Usually.
But it was 10 a.m., the sun was shining, and there were pretty girls all over the place to look at. Made him almost cheerful.
He found the teacher first. Rosa Martinez was about his own age — 30, plus or minus — with a harried expression on her face. He soon learned why; her teaching schedule was intense. The immersive English class she was teaching met six hours a day, four days a week. She had non-native English speakers from all over the world in her class.
“That’s what I studied — English for second-language learners,” she explained. “And yes, it’s possible to teach someone English without knowing the language they speak. The immersion classes are easier in some ways — no one speaks anything but English. I’ve studied abroad — Japanese — the exact same way. You fumble through it, but it’s really the way we learn a language as a child. Lots of pointing, fragmented sentences, work arounds, but gradually you start getting the hang of it. It helps to have small groups of students working together, too. People get to know each other.”
Mac thought about his recent trip to Mexico — that was immersion, wasn’t it? And he had learned more Spanish than he’d ever mastered before. For some reason, learning more than the basics of a language just tripped him up. “So Maiah? I’m an old friend of Kate Fairchild,” he explained. “And she was really worried. Seattle’s no place for a frightened 17-year-old.” He watched her carefully when he used that age to see if she’d confirm it. He thought that might be important to unraveling this story.
“Is she that young?” Rosa Martinez muttered. She turned to her computer and typed something in. “Shit, she is. Well, that’s going to be a problem.”
Bingo. “Any particular reason? I mean more of a problem than a missing student already is?” Mac asked.
She flushed. “That sounded insensitive,” she apologized. “But it is one thing for a college student to disappear from classes for a few days, and another thing for a minor to do so.”
“Ouch,” Mac sympathized. “Is she living in the residence halls?”
She tapped the keys again. “No, and that’s odd. Usually you have to be living in the dorms or with a relative as a freshman, especially a minor! I wonder....” She stared at the screen.
“I owe Kate, and she’s really upset by the visit — she worried about the girl. Apparently the girl may be a relative, one she didn’t know she had,” Mac said. “I said I’d see what I could figure out — I’m a reporter, so tracking down people is kind of what I do.” He smiled at her, turning on the charm. She smiled back, a bit timidly. He let the smile soften a bit. “With Kate being pregnant, it’s not like she can run around town looking for her.”
Rosa Martinez laughed. “Yeah, I can just see her doing it too. She was pretty forceful about her concerns when she came here. But I didn’t realize the girl was a minor. I mean I was concerned that she was missing class. But students do, you know?”
Mac grinned. “No comment,” he teased, making her laugh again.
“I should alert International Services I guess,” she said. She grimaced.
“Not happy about that option?” he asked.
“Well, there was some foul up with Maiah’s paperwork,” Rosa said slowly. “I’m sure it will get sorted out eventually. But bringing her to the attention of the authorities right now might not be in her best interest right now.”
“Since I owe Kate a favor, I’ll go by and check on her,” Mac offered. “I thought she’d be in the residence halls, but off-campus? That’s worrisome, don’t you think?”
Rosa Martinez studied him, a bit amused. “You want her address,” she said.
Mac grinned. “I do.”
Rosa scribbled something on paper. “A — you didn’t get it from me. B — you have to keep me in the loop. I want to know what’s going on. She’s a nice kid.”
“Deal,” Mac said, and he pocketed the sheet of paper without looking at it. “If you hear from her, or she shows back up in class, will you call me? I am worried. I cover the police beat. I’m all too aware of what can happen to a young girl who has run away.”
Rosa’s face looked sad for a moment. “Yeah,” she said softly. “Me too.”
He waited, but she didn’t say anything more. He just nodded, then, and left her there, staring at the window.
He pulled the paper out of his pocket and looked at the address. He checked the map on his phone and decided to walk.
And he couldn’t find it. Swearing under his breath, he checked the address, checked the location, checked his map. But the location was a restaurant. A Thai restaurant?
A little early for lunch, but he was curious. He tapped another text to Kate: Where exactly had her parents been missionaries?
Kate: Where are you?
Mac gave her the address.
Kate: Where my parents were is a complicated answer. Let’s talk. Can you join me on campus?
Mac glanced one more time at the shuttered restaurant. Pad Thai could wait, he decided. But he was definitely coming back for lunch.
Kate took him to a cafe in the library, and they both got iced tea. “So what do you know about missionaries and how it all works?” she asked him.
Mac grinned at her. “At least you remember that I likely know nothing,” he said. “To be honest, I never gave missionaries much thought. But now? How do they get paid? They must get money from somewhere? How does someone decide to become a missionary? I really don’t know anything about it.” And what he did know was more about the problems missionaries had caused among the people they went to ‘convert.’ But he’d leave that for a conversation with Janet.
Kate chuckled. “Thought so. So, my parents met in college — here, as a matter of fact. And they felt called to the mission field. So they applied to the Nazarene Mission Board and were accepted.”
“Nazarene? You don’t attend a Nazarene church now, though,” Mac interrupted to ask.
She shook her head. “No, Mom was Mennonite, but Dad was Nazarene. We attend a non-denominational evangelical church now. I’ll get back to that.”
Mac nodded. “Go on.”
“So they were willing to go anywhere — preferably international,” Kate continued. “And after graduation, they did a year of theological studies, and then they were assigned to work along the Thailand-Myanmar border. Have you been there?”
“No,” Mac said. “I served in Afghanistan, and I’ve been to the Philippines’ base a couple of times. But not Thailand. Maybe someday. I hear it’s beautiful.”
Kate smiled wistfully. “It is — I lived there from age 4 to 7. My memories seem filled with color and delight. Of course it’s not all like that, and the border area is one of the hardest areas. Nearly a half-million Karen people have been forced out of Myanmar into Thailand and into refugee camps, Mac. The conditions are horrible. The Karen are a sizeable ethnic group that resided in Burma for more than 2,000 years and fled due to religious and ethnic persecution. My parents went there to help people learn English — and to lead them to the Lord, of course — so that they might immigrate to the United States, or other English-speaking countries. And a lot of Karen people have — there’s quite an immigrant community here as a matter of fact. Mom still teaches English there occasionally, and helps refugees navigate the bureaucracy.”
“Karen people? Aren’t they citizens of Burma — Myanmar?” Mac asked. Not that it made much difference. Most countries were hell on ethnic minorities.
“Been a civil war there for probably a century,” Kate replied. “Mom could probably give you more history if you’re interested. But it’s a huge refugee crisis.”
“And your parents were missionaries there,” Mac said. “Teaching classes? Holding church services? That kind of thing?”
“Ministering to the people,” Kate said softly. “It’s truly the work the Lord calls us to do. But then, I came along. So they came home for a sabbatical, because the health care there is bad, and I was born. Dad got a job as a youth pastor, but he really wanted to go back.”
“You said he had a real passion for the work,” Mac said slowly. “Did I get the phrase right?”
She nodded. “So when I was 3, they did go back. But when I reached school age, Mom wanted me back here. Missionary kids have a real hard time adjusting to American life if they don’t come back for school. They never fit in, and Mom didn’t want that for me.”
“And your father?” Mac asked.
She shrugged a bit. “He wanted to stay. He thought he was needed there. So for a few years, Mom joined him during the summers with me. And then, she stopped going, and Dad would just come home for Christmas. Then he got caught in the cross-fire of a raid of some kind — the Burmese militia and the Karen militia are often fighting along the border in Myanmar there.”
She paused for a moment. “I remember. Some men came to the door, and they told Mom what had happened. They had paperwork for her — a death certificate, a life-insurance payout, those kinds of things. I didn’t know that then, I was 12. I learned more later. And Mom got a job on campus, and used the insurance money to buy the house, and we made a good life.”
“I know your Mom never remarried,” Mac said slowly. “Did she ever consider it? Date someone?”
Kate shook her head. “Not that I know of,” she said. “Some people are like that. They fall in love once, and that’s it. And if one of them dies, they never even look again.”
Maybe, Mac thought. But he could think of other reasons not to remarry besides that one — which sounded like some romantic fantasy, not reality, to him. But what did he know? Kate and Naomi lived in a world that was more foreign to him than the refugee camps she was describing. He’d seen refugee camps. And he was with Naomi — no child should be raised in one if they had a choice. What had her father been thinking?
Her father sounded like he was just as selfish as his mother than been, Mac thought, but he wasn’t going to say that to Kate. Kate obviously looked up to her father — at least the memory of him. He wondered if Naomi would have a different take?
“I’ve been thinking about when she came to see me,” Kate said suddenly. “I think she thought Dad and Mom had divorced or something. She didn’t get upset until after I blurted out about him being dead. And then she all but fled. So I don’t think she knew.”
That made sense — kind of, anyway.
“So does she speak English then?” Mac said. “Why is she in the immersion English class?”
“She does,” Kate said. “It’s accented and stiff — like she hasn’t had a chance to practice it much. Which is probably why she’s in the class.”
So her father — Samuel Fairchild — had taught her to speak English, but probably Karen or Thai or something else was spoken in the home. Most certainly in the camp.
“Do you know the name of the refugee camp?” he asked.
“Mae La,” Kate said softly. “It’s the largest one — 50,000 people.”
Whoa, Mac thought, disturbed by the size. He had some research to do.
Mac looked at his phone: 11:30 a.m. He could go back and get some lunch. “Want to join me for lunch? I’m going to go check out the restaurant at the address Maiah gave the university.”
Kate grimaced. “I can’t,” she said. “I’ve got office hours at noon. You’ll tell me what you find out? Do you think they know where she is?”
Mac nodded, but he thought she was probably living there, probably, in a back room, perhaps. He just didn’t know why.
“What do I do with her when I find her?” Mac asked as they walked back out into the bright sunlight.
Kate paused. “I don’t know,” she said. She sighed. “I’m going to have to tell Mom about this, aren’t I?”
“Yes,” Mac said. “She deserves to know.” Mac thought she probably knew more than she’d ever let on. But maybe not. “Let me see if I can find Maiah, and if I can, I’ll call you and your mother. And the four of us can meet at the Fairchild House and talk.”
Kate looked grateful. “It would help to have someone with me when I tell her,” she admitted. Mac didn’t bring up Kate’s husband.
Mac called Angie. “Want some Thai food for lunch?” he asked.
“Why do I think this has strings attached?” she asked suspiciously.
Mac laughed. “It does,” he said, and told her about his morning.
“I can do that,” Angie agreed. “The press conference is at 2 p.m. at the north precinct.”
Mac frowned. “The judge is holding the press conference there?” he asked. “That’s asking for trouble, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know Mac, I’m just the photographer,” she said with some exasperation. “Let me head your way, and you can call Joe and ask him.”
Mac went back to the library and stood in the shade outside to call Joe Conte. “Hey, Angie says the press conference is at the north precinct? Isn’t that a bit risky?”
“It worries me,” Joe said. “I don’t think McBride is going to take this well. But yes, Judge Marianne Moore is holding a press conference outside the north precinct building to announce a lawsuit against the police, and against the police chief, and several in the chain of command including Sgt. Scott McBride. She says he’s personally at fault because he deliberately delayed the restraining order, deliberately delayed the response to her daughter’s 911 call, and is still delaying the investigation.”
Mac frowned. “Do you mind if I drift north and join you? I’m at U-Dub at the moment.”
“Please,” Joe said, and he sounded grateful. “I’m going to stop in at the U security office on my way up there. But it makes me nervous, no lie.” Joe hesitated, and Mac was about to hang up. “Mac? Judge Moore is Black.”
Ah fuck, Mac thought. “So she’s alleging McBride did this out of racism?”
“Yeah, and she’s probably right,” Joe said. “Isn’t she?”
Mac snorted. That was how this whole thing had started for Mac, really. A bunch of racist cops. Andy Malloy had been pissed that Mac didn’t go to jail all those years ago, as a teenager, busted for stealing a car with his cousin. He thought Mac was Black — Mac’s cousin was clearly Black — and then decided he was Mexican. Which Mac thought, he kind of was, but not in the eyes of the law. In the eyes of the law, he was white, because his mother was white. Not that it should have mattered — but there was no denying that if he’d looked as Black as his cousin, Mac would have gone to prison with him.
And Malloy had held that grudge against him for a decade — even after the SPD managed to fire him, and make it stick. You had to do some serious shit for that to happen. In Malloy’s case, he’d killed a Black kid — 12 years old. Mac shook his head. Malloy was a fucked up mess. And he was dead.
But Mac figured his partner, Scott McBride, was probably just as racist as Malloy had been.
“Yeah, she’s probably right,” Mac said. “I’ll see you at 2 p.m.”
He considered the timing here as he walked down toward the restaurant again. If he found Maiah what was he going to do with her? Take her to a press conference she wouldn’t understand that might turn nasty? He was worried it might get violent, actually. He grimaced.
Angie was waiting out front for him. “Where’s your car?” she asked, reaching up and kissing him on the cheek.
“In the parking garage,” Mac answered. He gave her a one-armed hug. He was getting better at public affection, he congratulated himself. “Park once, then walk. Parking is a bitch around here.”
She grinned at him, and they walked inside. Mac looked around hoping to see a woman who resembled the photograph waiting tables. No such luck. Maybe in the kitchen? He sighed.
They ordered food and ate quickly. Mac took out the picture of just Maiah’s face and went to pay. “We’re friends of Kate Fairchild,” he said, handing over cash for the bill. “We’re looking for her sister — have you seen her today?”
The man at the register shook his head before he even looked at the picture. “Don’t know her,” he said.
“Might look first,” Mac suggested dryly. The man glanced at him and handed him his change.
“Go now, please,” he said.
Mac handed the change back to him. “Will you tell Maiah that Kate wants to see her again? She was surprised, but she can help.”
The man hesitated, looking at Mac and then at Angie and back to Mac. “I do not know this Maiah or this Kate,” he said. Mac tried not to roll his eyes — the man was a bad liar. “I am legal, I swear,” he added rapidly. “I want no trouble.”
“Easy,” Mac said softly. “I am not going to make trouble for you. Why would I? You are providing a place for a young woman all on her own. I admire you for it! I want to help. So does Kate. Maiah missed class, and her teacher is worried too. Will you let me help?”
The man shook his head, and repeated, “Go now,” he said, and he turned to take money from the next person.
“Well, he knows her,” Angie said dryly. “But he’s not going to admit it to some white guy who looks like immigration.”
“First time for everything,” Mac muttered. “Usually people think they should call immigration on me.” Or some kind of cops anyway.
Angie giggled. “Come on,” she said, linking her arm with his. “Let’s do this press conference and then you can come back and skulk around all you want.”
Mac snorted, but he went with Angie. No point in taking two cars. His SUV would still be nicely parked when he got back.