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When Nick’s office doorknob turned under his hand, Mac had second thoughts. It really shouldn’t be unlocked. And the more he thought about it, the more he knew it shouldn’t be. Knew he wasn’t going in there. He pulled Lorde’s card out of his pocket and dialed the number.
“Yes,” Lorde said.
“Mac Davis,” he said. “I stopped by Nick’s office, for a stupid reason, I realize now, but I thought I should let you know? The door is unlocked. I haven’t opened it.”
“Stay there,” Lorde ordered. “I’m headed your way.”
Mac put the phone back in his pocket and looked around, feeling conspicuous. Nick had a small office off a larger room. There were a couple of desks in the center of the room. And another half-dozen offices like Nick’s off it. A bullpen. Did they still call it that? No one was around. That was weird too. Mac had been here a dozen or so times, and it had never been empty like this. Was there a department meeting somewhere? He frowned. The Captain’s office was down the hallway. There were other units like this one along the hallway — including one where Joe Dunbar had a desk, not an office. Mac wasn’t sure why Joe only merited a desk. Someday he was going to have to admit the police beat was his permanent assignment and buckle down and learn it.
He itched to go investigate the rest of the hallway, but he felt obligated to wait for Lorde.
Fortunately, that wasn’t long, or Mac wouldn’t have been able to resist the itch. Lorde looked around the empty room and frowned. He glanced at his watch. “How long have you been here?”
Mac shrugged. “Not long,” he said. “Where is everyone? Some kind of meeting?”
“Good question,” Lorde muttered. He opened the door to Nick’s office. Mac was almost disappointed. It didn’t look any different than it usually did. Lorde however, walked over to the desk and sat down at the computer. He tapped the space bar with a pen from his pocket.
“Someone scrubbed the hard drive,” Lorde said. He used the pen to pull out the desk drawers. “Empty.”
Mac scowled. “Someone should take a look at the hard drive,” he said. “I’ve got a friend who can get stuff up that people have erased. Although these guys seem pretty sophisticated tech-wise.”
Lorde nodded, although Mac didn’t think he was really paying attention to him. He was thinking. Mac waited to see if he was going to share those thoughts with him.
“Anyone go into the Rodriguez house after his home computer?” he asked at last.
Mac shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “We were pretty spooked by the return drive-by. Wanted to get everyone to safety. But I think one of the FBI agents was going to go door-to-door out there this morning. Want me to have him grab it?”
“If it’s there,” Lorde said. “That would be interesting.”
Mac called Rand and explained the request.
“I’m going to keep you on the phone while I go in,” Rand said. “It’s spooky here, no lie.”
Mac could hear him open a door. “Has Stan gotten ahold of you?” Rand asked. “Nick came too for a brief moment. Oh, and a Captain Rourke showed up at the hospital and tried to bluster his way in. Said he was Nick’s boss, and he was out of town all weekend. Convenient.”
Mac glanced at Lorde, but his face didn’t reveal anything.
“Haven’t heard from Stan yet,” Mac said. “I’ll call him. Have you found Nick’s office?”
“No computer,” Rand said. “The desktop is empty. But you know? It occurs to me, that Carolina might have grabbed the laptop and taken it with her. She was doing homework on a laptop when I left the safe house this morning.”
Mac chewed on his lip. “I’ve got to go,” Mac said abruptly. “Talk to you later.”
He ended the call, and turned to Lorde. “The home computer is gone,” Mac said. “I need to check out something about that, and I’ll give you a call. But I’m wondering if that wasn’t why there was a second drive-by — to clear out everyone so they could go into the house after the computer.”
“If we have Nick, the computers aren’t all that important,” Lorde said. Neither of them said the obvious, these people were hellbent on seeing to it that Nick wasn’t around to talk.
“You still aren’t going to tell me what this is about?” Mac asked. Lorde was silent. “And Captain Rourke? Thumbs up or down?”
Lorde walked out of the room and looked around at the empty space. Mac followed, closing Nick’s office door. Lorde paused at the door before he turned down the hall, he gave Mac a thumbs down sign.
Mac stared after him.
Lorde didn’t look back.
Mac left the SPD quickly. His phone rang when he stepped out onto the street. He took a deep breath of fresh air, and glanced at the caller. Stan Warren.
“Where are you?” Stan asked.
“Just left the SPD,” Mac answered and started briskly down the street toward the Examiner. He didn’t like being on the street right now, although it would be pretty cheeky for someone to shoot at him in front of the police station. Then he thought, not if it’s coming from within the house. “We’ve got to talk.”
Stan explained about Anna being called into work. “I was going to go get her,” he said. “But I thought I’d check and see if you were closer to her.”
“I am,” Mac said. “I’ll get her. Then I’m going home. I’ve got some questions to ask there. You?”
“I’m headed there too. And so is Rand. Janet?”
“She’s got to pick up that rental car,” Mac said. “Angie’s out too. We’ve got to talk about this. I don’t like it.”
“Agreed.”
Mac went into the Examiner through a different door than he’d left. The first week he’d worked here he’d crawled all over the building. He’d explored all of the departments and what they did. He knew all the nooks and crannies, and where the exits were. He parked in the parking structure at the door to the newsroom floor. But he wanted to know his building. And the parking structure. And the ground floor shops. And the blocks around the building.
Now, he took the back stairs to the newsroom. Janet was still there. “You working through lunch?” he asked.
She nodded. “Rental company is bringing a car at 2 p.m. and I’m going home. If I can get everything done.”
“I’ve got lots to tell you,” he said, keeping it vague. “But I’ve got to run an errand for Stan. Be cautious? And call me if you’re the least bit weirded out.”
She nodded again and turned back to her computer. Mac pulled his backpack from the desk drawer he’d stashed it in, and headed toward the parking garage. He stuck his head into the photo area, but Angie wasn’t there. He took a deep breath and headed to the parking garage where his vehicle was parked. When had he accumulated all these people he cared about, he wondered. At a time like this, he realized why he hadn’t let himself care about people before.
He knew roughly where Anna’s lab was, south of I-90 on Airport Way that ran parallel to I-5. He decided he’d rather take I-5 at this time of day, and he got on the freeway and headed south. Took the Holgate exit, and swore at the one-way streets and right turns only until he finally got parked in front of the lab. He opened up his phone and called her new number.
“Hello,” she said, both brisk and cautious. He approved.
“Anna, it’s Mac,” he said. “I’m out front. Is there anything suspicious you’ve noticed? Do you want me to come inside for you? Or can you come out? You recognize my 4-Runner, right? I’m directly in front of the door. And I’ll have the truck door open for you.”
“On my way,” she said. Mac leaned over and popped open the passenger door, gave it shove. He saw Anna open the front door of the building, and look around before stepping out. Cautious woman. She walked steadily down the sidewalk and got in the truck.
“We may be paranoid,” she said, her voice a bit shaky. “But I asked around. No one admitted to knowing who called me in.”
“What number did they use?” Mac asked, as he signaled and pulled away from the curb.
She paused. “The new one,” she said slowly. “But that’s the one that would have shown up with the director when I called in to take personal leave. He expressed his condolences and wished Nick a speedy recovery. Would he have jotted down the number?”
Mac frowned. “Call him and ask, would you?” he said.
Anna pulled out her phone and called her boss. Mac tried to focus on driving and not her side of the conversation. Traffic is picking up, he thought. Not even 3 p.m. yet. He was going to take I-90 then 405 to Bellevue then. Sometimes he felt like he should have signed on for a traffic gig.
Anna was silent when she ended the call. “Anna? Talk to me,” he said.
“My boss didn’t even know I’d come in,” she said quietly. “He doesn’t know who called me back. He said he would investigate, and that I should call him before 5 p.m. today and he’d tell me what he’d learned.”
Mac pulled over. “You know how to pull a sim card?” he said. She nodded. “Do it. There’s a pistol in my backpack. Use the handle to smash it on the dashboard — carefully,” he added hastily. “No dents in the vehicle!”
She laughed at that and did as she was told. “Good,” he said. “Let’s go talk to Shorty. We’ve got a leak.”
Mac told her that Nick had roused for a bit. “And his brain was working just fine,” he assured her. He saw her relief.
“I’ve been so worried,” she whispered. “He’d rather be dead than mentally impaired, and he wouldn’t thank me for saving his life only to live as a vegetable.”
“Well, that’s not the case,” Mac assured her. There were many hurdles ahead, they both knew that. But he could rouse, and think and talk? That was big news.
“Anna? Does he talk to you about work?” Mac asked.
“Not really,” she said. “Oh, he tells me funny stories about the people, that kind of thing. And occasionally if something is really on his mind he and I will have a long talk about it. But that’s rare. He says police work will consume every part of your life if you let it, and he doesn’t want that. He wants to be more than a cop. A husband. A father. A soccer coach.” And she grinned at the last.
“So does he like the people he works with?”
“He likes Joe Dunbar,” she said slowly. “But that’s the only cop he’s ever brought home.”
Mac was watching his back trail. He didn’t see anything. He pulled through a drive through and got some iced tea. Anna shook her head, puzzled at what he was doing. He went around the block and watched. Still didn’t see anything. They were going to follow her home, he thought. Why her? Because she works at a law enforcement lab, and they have connections there?
“Mac?” she said, a bit anxiously.
“Sorry,” he said. “Checking to see if I have anyone on my tail before I head out to the house.”
She nodded and sat back in the seat.
“So tell me about his co-workers,” Mac said as he pulled back onto the 405, and then took the Bellevue Mall exit instead of the better one just ahead. “Does he like his boss? Captain Rourke?”
“He’s gotten more and more suspicious of everyone since the Army of God blew up Planned Parenthood clinics,” she said. “Short tempered. He was trying to leave work at work, but it wasn’t working anymore. And then the whole white supremacist thing last spring? He was getting more and more paranoid, and he knew it. But he said he couldn’t tell the difference between legit wariness and conspiracy-theory-level paranoia.”
“He talk to anyone?”
“Someone named Lorde,” Anna said. “But Nick said Captain Rourke hadn’t done anything about the surveillance teams that abandoned their posts. And he thought perhaps Rourke might have even ordered them away. Someone did, to at least one team, you know. But he didn’t know who had been in the vans, so he couldn’t find them to ask. It’s eaten at him, Mac. Hard to not trust the people you work with day in and day out.”
“Especially in a field like his,” Mac agreed. “Other names?” There was a car he’d seen before. He frowned and turned into the parking structure of the mall. Went through it, out the other side, and back around to the road that led through Clyde Hill.
“He trusted Joe, but he didn’t want to burden him. Said Joe was under the same pressures as he was. A couple of other names. I’d recognize them if you said them.”
“Would you be able to give me a thumbs up/thumbs down on the names if I find them for you?” he asked. He slowed to a crawl through the neighborhood and out to the road that lead into Medina.
“Maybe,” she said. “But it would just be an impression, nothing concrete.”
He nodded. After the last few days, he’d trust her impressions over other people’s concrete evidence. “What kind of computer does Nick have at home? Did he do business work on it?”
“A laptop,” Anna said. “But I think Carolina grabbed it when she packed bags. At least it looked like the one she was working on this morning.”
He glanced at his watch. Shorty would be home soon. He hoped soon enough.
Shorty hoped he would get to the house at all.
He wasn’t sure what triggered his caution. He left the school building at 3:30 p.m. instead of 4 p.m. because he didn’t want to be predictable. But the problem with that was he was alone as he walked toward the faculty parking lot. Students were gone, but most teachers were still inside the school. No clusters of teachers gossiping. No one with bags of books and papers making them look like a pack llama. Not even an administrator wearing a suit worth more than a teacher made in a month.
Another thing wrong with the education system, Shorty groused to himself, thinking back to the conversation with Janet Andrews. Administrators were as useless as teats on a boar, and yet they made two or three times what a teacher made.
He wondered where he’d picked up the phrase ‘teats on a boar.’ He didn’t think he’d ever seen a boar — that was a male pig, right? He shook his head as if it to dislodge that distracting train of thought. Focus. You want to explain to Mac how you got shot because you were thinking about pigs?
He picked up his pace. Beeped open his car door, and only then realized there was a piece of paper under his windshield wiper. He started to reach for it, then shook his head. It would wait until he got home.
He started the car gingerly, and actually felt relief when it didn’t blow up. Too many movies, he chastised himself.
Or too much Mac.
He headed out of the parking lot, watching to see if someone was watching. He was pretty sure someone had been. He chewed on his cheek, and then instead of heading to Medina, he drove toward his apartment. Watching. Always watching.
He pulled into his apartment complex, and parked in his spot. And like Mac had made him do last time, he just sat and watched the area. Amazing how much your subconscious has stored about an environment that you see so often you’re no longer conscious of it. There was Mrs. Peabody’s white Subaru, parked a bit crooked as usual so that it was difficult to park next to her. And George White was already home; his jacked-up truck was parked in its slot. Shorty wondered if he was in between jobs. And then he spotted the stranger. One of these things is not like the others, he thought. And really? A white American-made unmarked sedan screamed cop. Didn’t cops watch movies? The car was empty though.
So where was the cop? He glanced at his apartment, and frowned. Waiting inside? Or was the cop lurking somewhere watching him? Watching to see what Shorty would do?
Shorty did what he always did: he called Mac.
“Yo,” Mac said. Shorty smiled. He hadn’t heard that greeting from Mac in a while. Beat the phase when he would just say ‘speak.’
“Felt like someone was watching me when I left school, so I came to the apartment rather than go to the house,” Shorty said rapidly. “And there’s an unmarked car sitting here, empty.”
“Where are you?” Mac asked.
“In my car, watching for something suspicious,” Shorty said with an eyeroll.
“Drive to the grocery store,” Mac directed. “Then think of another errand. Then at 5 p.m. rush hour, head here.”
Shorty felt a sense of relief. “Got it,” he said. “Anything we need at the grocery store?”
“I’ll have Paulina send you a list.” And he hung up.
Shorty thought he’d teach Mac phone manners another time. He started his car, backed out and headed to QFC on Clyde Hill. Not his usual store, but it got him closer to the house. And that was good. He wanted to be behind the safety of those gates and fences. Wanted it fiercely.
He took a deep breath and glanced at his phone. Sure enough there was a shopping list. He shoved the car into park. He glanced at the piece of paper on his windshield. A scrap of paper? Weird, it looked a like receipt. Scrawled on it, was a message: they’re watching you.
He wondered what would have happened if he’d reached for it at school? It gave him the shakes to think about.
He took a deep breath, and went in to buy groceries. Because wasn’t that what every paranoid man did when he thought he was being followed?
Apparently, Mac did, Shorty thought with a shrug.