I sat in the orange plastic chair, let my head fall back against the cold wall, and tried to breathe, despite the copious tears streaming. Salem was in surgery.
Jimmy sat beside me and sipped silently out of a foam cup the size of a thimble. Hospital coffee, as horrid as it tasted, was metered out in miniscule amounts on the surgery floor as if they had cause to be stingy.
Jimmy’s shoulders looked bunched up in his white t-shirt. Unable to wash Salem’s blood from his shirt sleeves, he’d simply pulled the shirt off and thrown it away. He’d given a statement to the police about how he found Salem, called for an ambulance, and tried to stop him from bleeding to death.
I swallowed against the lump in my throat and sighed heavily.
“He’ll pull through, Rain.” Jimmy reached over, wove his fingers through mine, and kissed my knuckles. He tried on a tired smile.
“Yeah.” I nodded and went back to staring at the ceiling.
“Look at me, Rain.”
I shook my head, knowing what was coming, and believing it wasn’t true.
“This is not your fault, ma chér,” he whispered.
“Jimmy, I asked him to come to Seattle. I left him to trail a killer on his own. On his own, Jimmy. What was I thinking?” My voice cracked and I couldn’t finish.
“You had him tail someone from a mile back and take pictures with a telephoto lens. He wasn’t in danger.”
“I should have anticipated…” I stood up.
“Anticipated what, Rain? He was supposed to stay in his car.”
“But when he called me at Maurice’s house he sounded hyped-up. Salem was caught up in the chase. He said Shane met with a man after his meeting with Parker. Jimmy, the way Salem described this guy, I should have called him off.”
“You were at Maurice’s?”
I’d forgotten that Jimmy didn’t know that.
“Yeah, I called him and he invited me over.”
“Why, Rain?” Jimmy stood up and leaned over me, his face tense.
“What does it matter, now?” I rubbed my face with both hands.
“What does it matter?” Jimmy pulled my hands away and the expression on his face sent my heart thumping. He looked mad.
“No…I didn’t mean…”
“Rain, you told me that you and Salem were going to trail Shane while I was at the benefit dinner. What do you think went through my head when I got to your room and found Salem on the floor bleeding out? What do you think went through my mind, Rain? I didn’t know where you were. I thought I’d lost you again!” He stepped back, angry.
“I called Maurice earlier in the day and asked him to get me the murder book on Summer’s investigation. I had to go.” My voice came out in a whisper. I reached for Jimmy but he pulled away. I let my hand drop down to my side and sighed.
Jimmy stopped pacing and stared at me silently. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. His face was blank, like he was trying to remember where he’d put his car keys. When he spoke his voice was too even, too calm. “You had to have set that up way before I left you.”
“Jimmy, I wasn’t sure how you’d react. Maurice made it clear that you were not to see the murder book. I didn’t know how to tell you, so I didn’t.”
“Well, that’s just great, Rain. Is this how you’re going to keep handling things? Because if you are, then we’ve got a serious problem.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Why won’t you let me help you, Rain? Don’t you think I want to catch whoever did this to Summer?” Jimmy threw his arms up. He looked exhausted and exasperated.
“Of course I do. I just didn’t want you to worry.”
“Stop doing that! Stop trying to keep me from worrying—you’re making things worse. I can handle worry. Not knowing what’s going on is what is killing me.” Jimmy took a quick step and grabbed my shoulders with both hands. I thought he was going to shake me silly, but he didn’t.
“I’m…I’m sorry, Jimmy.” I looked into his eyes, dark with fatigue, and nodded.
He moved to say something more, but the surgeon pushed through the swinging doors at the end of the hall. He tore off his head covering. I couldn’t decipher his expression and wondered if surgeons practice showing no emotion if front of a mirror. He nodded to Jimmy and then spoke to me. “Mr. Pratt is out of surgery now, and we’ve moved him to a section of the I.C.U.”
His mention of that hideous place made my stomach flutter, and I reached for Jimmy’s hand.
“Is he…” I tried.
“He came in with two gunshot wounds, both on his left side. One went into his left flank, and we were able to patch that one up pretty cleanly. The other bullet was harder.” He drew a line from his left ribs to the middle of his chest as he spoke. “The bullet entered through his side, broke a rib, and cracked apart on impact. It’s this shrapnel that gave us a problem. Its razor sharp and shredded its way across his chest cavity. He’s had some damage to his heart, but it looks good.”
“It looks good?” I stammered. The vice around my chest untwisted a bit.
“He’s not out of the woods, but he seems to have tolerated the surgery well. We’re going to keep a close watch on him for the next few hours.”
“Can we see him?” Jimmy asked.
The doctor shook his head. “Right now, he’s still out. We’re keeping him in the Ready Room for the next two hours.”
“What’s the Ready Room?”
“It’s a transition room between surgery and recovery. If we need to go back in, that’s the best place for Mr. Pratt to be.”
“So, when can we see him?” I blinked back tears.
“It’ll be a few hours, yet. We’re going to keep him sedated for a while.” The surgeon left Jimmy and me standing in the hallway.
“Do you think we can go back to the hotel?” I looked at Jimmy.
“Half that floor is a crime scene. We’re better off going to Hill House.”
I bit my lip, thinking. If Mona was at Hill House I’d rather sleep in the plastic chairs. I eyed them, and then Jimmy wrapped his arm around my shoulders and led me toward the elevators. “It won’t be that bad, Rain.”
Thirty minutes later we drove up through the black iron gates and pulled in front of the house. The floor to ceiling windows glowed warm yellow light out into the night, and I flashed on the last time I had been here with Summer.
It was Christmas time a few weeks before I left Jimmy. She’d arranged a dinner with some of our friends. My mended bones ached from the cold wind, and I hugged myself and rubbed my arm, remembering.
Jimmy’s family home was as beautiful as ever. It didn’t have the thousands of twinkling lights or the oversized glass snowflakes dangling from the huge trees from that Christmas, but it was gorgeous none-the-less.
I didn’t want to be here again. I followed Jimmy up to the double doors and through the foyer. Music wafted down the spiral staircase to my right, and I tried to make out the tune. It sounded old, maybe big band or jazz.
“So, what do we do now?”
“We see what’s in the refrigerator,” Jimmy said quietly. He smiled and bobbed his eyebrows up and down quickly. He was after pie.
I sat at the marble counter and watched him root around in the stainless steel fridge. He pulled out a plate of grapes and cheese wrapped in plastic.
“No pie?” I teased.
“I guess they didn’t expect me.”
“I wish I had the laptop that Salem left in my hotel room. There might be something on there.”
“What, like an email from Parker warning he’s going to attack him?” Jimmy teased. “Besides, he was at the benefit dinner, Rain.”
“What?”
“I mailed Summer an invitation months ago. Parker showed up during my speech. I saw him sit down.”
“So your benefit is Parker’s alibi?” I frowned.
Jimmy shrugged unhappily.
“What in the world is going on here?” I ranted. “Either Parker and this lab tech are secretly diabolical geniuses, or we’re missing something.” I rubbed my eyes and sighed, frustrated. “Parker isn’t acting on his own. We know that at least one other person, this Shane guy from his department, is in on this deal.”
“The two of them conspired to steal this pseudo-ephedrine, but do you think this tech guy can make meth on his own?”
“Depends on his education and location, I suppose. Let’s say he has the chemical knowledge to make meth. I’m sure he could supplement his knowledge from the Internet. He would need a relatively isolated place to cook this stuff up. I remember reading somewhere that cooking meth is really smelly. The neighbors would know something was up.”
“So Shane would need a house on some property, or a cabin to cook this stuff up.”
I nodded and checked my notes. “When Salem and I figured out that Shane Morrison was involved I opened a skip trace file on him,” I said and leafed through the papers. “He lives in an apartment in Columbia. It’s not nice, at all. I didn’t find any other properties under his name, or his mother’s name.”
“So, it would have to be a place that Parker owns?” Jimmy frowned.
“I don’t think they’re making the drugs themselves. I think they’re supplying someone with ingredients.”
“Where are you getting this?”
“Salem called me when I was at Maurice’s and told me that Shane was meeting with someone else that night. He followed him.”
“And you think this guy, the mystery guy Shane met; you think he’s the one cooking the drugs?”
I was reaching. Parker kept surprising me. He had solid alibis for both times one of my friends was attacked. The more I tried to nail him to the wall with this, the more I seemed to exonerate him.
My cell phone made the dying sound and I fished it out of my purse. When I looked at the screen I saw that I had missed a message from Salem. My chest ached and I tilted the phone so Jimmy could see.
“What does it say?”
I pressed the teeny envelope on my keypad and the phone dialed my voicemail account. The computer voice said I had one message.
“Hey Reyna,” Salem’s cheerful voice intoned. “I uploaded all the pictures to your laptop. I guess you’re still out with that mentor detective guy so I’m going to leave it in your room and head out for some dinner. Oh, I looked at the pictures I took and they’re awful. I didn’t use the right settings and the images are too dark. I’m sorry. I did upload a close-up of the guy Shane was meeting with to an aggregate website. It’s no face recognition database, but something might pop. OK, well, I’m going to go and eat and then maybe go visit that high rise bathroom. Call me back.”
I listened to the message a second time. Jimmy watched me but didn’t say anything until I was done. He rubbed my shoulder softly. “Are you OK?”
I nodded and tried not to cry. Hearing Salem’s voice after seeing his blood on Jimmy’s hands was surreal. “Salem said he uploaded the image of a guy Shane met with onto an aggregate site.”
“In English, please?” Jimmy raised an eyebrow.
“Do you have a computer I can use?” It would just be easier to show him.
“Yeah, in the study. You got something?”
I followed Jimmy to the study. He turned on the computer, and I waited through the start up by biting my thumbnail.
“Are you going to tell me what this is about or are you going to just keep nibbling until you get to your elbow?”
“You know how on those police shows they run a picture of some bad guy through a face recognition database and then a name pops up?”
“Yeah.” Jimmy pulled up a chair and leaned in.
“Well, we can’t do that.” I logged onto my email account for work and opened Salem’s email. He’d sent me the login name and password for his account.
“OK, so what did Salem mean by aggregate website? What is that?”
“Well, aggregate sites collect, usually via software, all sorts of feeds on the Internet. For instance, a news aggregator will collect headlines and breaking news from around the world and compile them on one page for easy viewing. There are all types of aggregators for whatever you’re looking for. Salem used a site called Current Clips. It is primarily a video and photograph aggregator. People post things like footage of vandalism or theft, usually on security video, post a few details, and anyone who knows anything can comment.”
“So we’re looking for comments from people who know this guy Shane met with?”
“No. That would take forever, if we heard anything at all. No, this site also gives us access to millions of people who know about photography and video. Salem had a picture of this seedy looking guy who met with our disposal tech, Shane, but it wasn’t very good. It needs to be cleaned up, but we don’t have access to that type of software or computing power.”
“But any one of the people on the site might,” Jimmy added.
I nodded. I signed into the site and searched for Salem’s post. Salem hadn’t been wrong. The bad lighting and too much distance made the man’s face almost impossible to make out. Salem’s comments on his post asked for help cleaning up the image. Jimmy pointed to the reply column under Salem’s query.
“Looks like you have a few hits.”
I scanned through the five results and clicked the last one. It was from a site member with a high rating. I pointed it out to Jimmy. “This site assigns points to your account every time you reply to a post. These stars mean he or she is highly rated.”
The reply was short. I ran your image through some programs here at work. This is the best I can do. Hope this helps. ~ NiteWriter6
The reply had a link and I clicked it. Salem’s image opened. Nitewriter6 had done a great job cleaning up the image. The man’s face was very clear, as was the logo on his vest. It was a black circle with red eyes staring out.
“Huh.”
“What is that a leather vest? Did Shane go back to the eighties to meet this guy? The braided pony tail ties it all together, though, don’t you think?” Jimmy asked.
“This site is an image database. I can type in search parameters and see what comes up.”
I typed in a search for patch logos with black background and red eyes. One match came up. “Dark Legion.”
“Sounds like a vampire coven,” Jimmy murmured.
“Let’s see what happens when we just do a general news search.”
I entered the name, Dark Legion, in a news search engine and got several hits, all recent.
“Looks like Dark Legion is a motorcycle gang.”
Jimmy pointed to the next link. “Try that one. It’s from here, from Washington.”
The Seattle Times had run a series of articles about the growing drug traffic problem. The report sighted federal studies that put Seattle as a major beltway for guns and drugs coming from Northern Washington and Canada. Several gangs were blamed, but the only definitive proof came when the leader of a local chapter of the Dark Legion was killed in a raid of his home. Police found twenty pounds of marijuana as well as almost two hundred guns and semi automatic weapons on the property.
The sinking feeling in my gut got worse. If Shane was meeting with a guy affiliated with this Dark Legion then chances are it wasn’t because the guy was his AA sponsor.
“Did we just link Parker to a motorcycle gang?” Jimmy sat back in his chair, shocked.
I stared at the picture of the Dark Legion guy and shuddered. Had he realized that Salem was following him and got spooked? Had this felon come to my room and hurt my friend instead of me? I bit back tears. Now was not the time to get all weepy.
“OK, help me sort this out,” I said to Jimmy. “Parker is linked to Shane the laboratory tech. They both work at Veno Pharmaceuticals.”
“Right, Salem followed Shane after his meeting with Parker and saw Shane meet with this guy,” he said and pointed to the computer screen. “A possible motorcycle gang member.”
“This is all starting to make sense.” My mind buzzed, and my heart raced.
“Sorry, what?”
“Parker and Shane aren’t set up to cook the meth, but I’ll bet this Dark Legion guy is. If Parker tried to back out of a deal with this guy because of the audit, I could see it getting really ugly.”
Jimmy nodded, his eyes darkening. “Yeah, but we need more proof than this. I mean, the most we can accuse Shane of right now is making bad friend choices. And we don’t know who he met with, not really. We don’t even know this gang member’s name.”
Something ticked in the back of my mind and I dug in my purse for the notebook I used at Maurice’s house. I handed the notes to Jimmy and started typing into the search engine. “The detective at the scene of Summer’s attack made a sketch of a pill they found next to Summer.”
“No one said anything about drugs found near my sister,” Jimmy accused me. “Why am I just hearing about this?”
How could I be so stupid? I hadn’t thought about what finding this out might do to Jimmy.
“Jimmy,” I said quietly. “Maurice said that Parker’s family told the detectives Summer was on drugs, and that she’d agreed to go into treatment. They said that was where Parker was on the night of her murder. Maurice said they made their request for discretion out to be some sort of protection for Summer’s reputation.”
“That’s ridiculous! Summer would never do drugs. She wouldn’t even take aspirin!” Jimmy stood up abruptly.
“There’s no way to prove that, Jimmy. Parker’s family stopped the coroner from doing a toxicology report, and had her buried right away.”
“Then we do an exhumation. We get a court order and prove she wasn’t doing drugs.” He waved his arms as he spoke and with his messy hair, resembled a maniacal orchestra conductor.
“Or…we nail Parker to the wall and prove he’s a liar.” I found the copy I’d pulled from the murder book and handed it to Jimmy.
“Do you know what kind of knot this is?” He looked at it with a frown. After a few seconds he looked back at me with surprise. “This is a bowline, Rain. It’s a knot only a sailor would know.”
“A bowline?”
“Sometimes it’s called the ‘king of knots’, but yeah, the bowline is multi-purpose knot that you use to secure a line to a bollard…that’s a post on a pier, or to another boat. I learned to make this when I was little.” Jimmy ran his finger along the lines of the sketch.
“What, were you sailing at birth?” When I thought about it, he probably was. The Corbeaus loved them some boats.
“You probably know the memory aid for tying this knot; rabbit comes out of the hole, runs around the tree, and goes back down the hole?”
“Yeah, well I’ve never heard of it.” I raised my eyebrow, unconvinced.
“Exactly,” Jimmy said. “Because you’re not a sailor, but Parker is. He even competes in regattas.”
“So this type of knot, a biker dude wouldn’t know it right? I mean it’s not a square knot, or a noose, or something.”
“Right, why stamp your product with a symbol you don’t understand, unless you’re in business with someone who does know what it means?”
“But why would it be purple? That’s not really manly.” I stared at the sketch.
“Because in the sailing world there’s a type of anchor rope that is the strongest for its weight. It’s deep purple in color. I’ve seen it on Parker’s boat. He was bragging about it because it floats, and he thought that was cool. He said only a handful of people have it, because it’s not available in the states yet.”
I hadn’t realized that rope doesn’t normally float, but kept it to myself. “This is too good,” I said. “Parker is so arrogant. He probably thought it made a great inside joke.”
“Yeah, who’d put it together?”
I nodded. I was finally catching up to Parker. “I bet the narcotics guys at the police department have a way to check who is affiliated with that tablet symbol. Maurice said they’ve seen that type of branding before with something called China Red. I’d wager a year’s salary that Dark Legion is linked to this Purple Knot drug somehow.”
“This is all great circumstantial evidence, but I wouldn’t go to trial with it, Rain.” Jimmy stood up and paced the study. Something was bothering him. “We need to definitively tie Parker to the gang somehow. Right now, he’s just phone harassing a technician in his department. It’s Shane who met with this biker guy, not Parker.”
“Wait,” I said, and snapped my fingers. “Remember the supply lists Parker was looking at? There must be evidence that the pseudo-ephedrine went missing from his department. Shane was supposed to dispose of it and didn’t, so Parker should have noticed that no disposal tickets came back for the product.”
“Now that the company faces an audit, that fact will come to light. Maybe Parker backed out of the deal and set off the biker people,” Jimmy finished.
“If I was Parker, I’d be going crazy trying to cover my tracks.”
Jimmy rubbed his hands through his hair, frustrated. “Rain, if the police aren’t considering Parker for Summer’s murder, then he isn’t being watched. Without a tail, Parker is free to destroy evidence. He could be doing it as we speak! All he’d have to do is shred the supply documents. Things get accidentally destroyed all the time, especially when you have that many temporary employees.”
“Yeah, but he’ll have to go deeper than that. Veno Pharmaceuticals probably keeps copies of all the paperwork in some sort of archive.” I flipped through my notebook. “Companies either use an internal archive on their own server, or they contract out. I know the archives aren’t on site, Salem checked that out the day he got the human resources information.”
Jimmy grabbed a phone book from the shelf and flipped to the Archival Services listings. “OK, well, is there any way of knowing which company they archive their information with?” Jimmy asked.
“No, I mean, we can call around, but that would take too long. I doubt they’ll give information on clients. Anyway, we have to catch Parker doing something suspicious with the company files. To do that, I have to set up surveillance on him and right now, I have no idea where he is.”
“Do you think he’ll do something soon?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, if I had a motorcycle gang breathing down my neck and a company audit coming down the pike that might implicate me in drug dealing, I’d fry those files as fast as I could.”
“So there’s no point in going to his office, the paper files are probably already long gone.” Jimmy tapped his knuckles on the desk, thinking.
I nodded. “Parker’s next logical step would be to take out the electronic files. After those are gone, it may look suspicious to the auditors, but if he’s able to do it without detection, there’d be no way to definitively prove he deleted them. I mean, it’s his department, but no file is better than a damning one.”
“He wouldn’t even have to limit the damage to his department’s files. Given enough time and the right software, Parker could make the information loss look like a global system problem. If it were me, I’d upload a virus to erase my specific files as well as some from a few other departments. The more information is lost, the less it would look like something specific was the target. No one would know it was Parker.” Jimmy added.
“Do you really think Parker has the technical chops to pull off that kind of cover up? How would you get a hold of a computer virus anyway? Its not like there’s a Hackers-R-Us down the road.” I wouldn’t be able to pull that one off myself, and I know my way around a computer. Parker always struck me as a jock skating in a cake job.
“That company is full of science geeks. There’s got to be someone who works at Veno who could write that kind of code.” Jimmy shook his head.
“How would I do it if I didn’t have access to super hackers and…intelligence?” I didn’t think Parker would go the stealthy electronic route. He was too much of a ham-fisted moron for that. I paced the floor thinking. How would I cover my tracks if I was in a panic and completely devoid of creativity? I was stumped. Anything I came up with took planning and time. Parker didn’t have the luxury of either. I stopped pacing and looked at Jimmy. “Regardless of what Parker plans to do, he’ll do it tonight for sure. We’ve got to get the picture of this Dark Legion guy to the detective on Summer’s case.”
“You think it was this Dark Legion guy that attacked Summer?” Jimmy’s eyebrows shot up.
I hesitated for a second, then nodded.
“How do you figure?”
“This tablet wasn’t drugs Summer was taking. This tablet was a calling card, a message to Parker by the Black Legion that he’d better deliver.” I held up the sketch of the drug tablet.
“Parker’s illegal dealings with these bikers got Summer killed?” Jimmy’s shoulders slumped.
“I think so.”
“And the attack on you…or Salem, rather…who do you think that was?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “It could be Shane, or it could be this motorcycle guy. I’m sure the police will check the hotel’s surveillance cameras, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.”
“So what now?”
I looked at the pill sketch and then my notes. The coroner had noted multiple blows to Summer’s body. That kind of rage seemed out of place, but who knew what kind of psychopath showed up to threaten Summer. Maybe it was an accident she died. My stomach turned, and I fought back the urge to cry. I was glad Jimmy hadn’t seen the photos of his sister’s home after the attack. “My guess is that no matter who he’s working with, Parker will watch out for number one.”
“You think he’ll go after the computer files tonight?” Jimmy asked.
I nodded.
“Can you track him safely?” Concern crossed Jimmy’s face, and he leaned in toward me.
“I can track him.” I smiled, happy to finally have Jimmy on board.