CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

THE SEATTLE CENTRAL LIBRARY was a busy place in late afternoon. I stood at the railing watching the crowd below streaming in and out of the doors off Fifth Avenue.

Above me a massive tidal wave of glass loomed. It started at the floor of the lobby and launched upward in a dizzying slope four stories high. The weight of it was oppressive, translucent or not. If it had all been made of concrete, people might have turned and fled back to the street, overwhelmed by claustrophobia.

I looked at my watch—16:45. I’d been waiting and checking out the crowd for two hours, fading back every time a patrol cop walked through the lobby.

Davey walked through the security scanners twenty minutes later, carrying a blue nylon duffel bag. Like most of the tourists, he did a double take at the menacing wall of glass. He wore a couple of layered T-shirts over the same tattered black jeans I’d seen the other night, and no coat.

He looked around and found the escalators I’d told him about—glowing lemon yellow neon—and then saw me standing above at the railing. At least he didn’t wave.

I scanned the crowd again. High-school and college students with laptops, mostly, and a few older folks reading magazines. Almost everyone, young or old, had on earbuds or headphones. It was a good place for a private conversation.

“You look like shit,” Davey said once he’d joined me at the top.

“Did you get into the house?”

He nodded, so jazzed he was almost bouncing. “I can’t believe that spare key is still there. It was so rusty I was afraid it was going to break off in the lock. Didn’t Dono ever notice the loose brick in the backyard?”

“Focus, Davey. Were the cops watching the place?”

“Oh, yeah. That’s why it took me so long. I had to go in through the back door.” He frowned. “But I got bad news, too. The truck is gone.”

“Gone how?”

“I looked where you told me. An empty space. I even checked the other levels in the garage, to make sure. It’s gone, man.”

The cops had been all over Pioneer Square. Guerin could have had them looking for Dono’s truck as well as for me.

If they had the truck, then they had Formes’s laptop and thumb drives already. I’d lost my wheels—and the Browning—but the silver lining was that SPD might already be trying to break Formes’s encryption. Guerin might be listening to the recording of Dono’s shooting within hours.

Davey handed me the blue duffel bag. I led him away from the balcony and the lounging patrons to a tunnel connecting the third floor with stairs leading up and down. The tunnel and stairs were painted a vibrant scarlet, walls and floor and ceiling. It was like being inside an artery.

I unzipped the duffel and looked in. Dono’s cell phones from his hidden compartment were on top of a pile of the old man’s clothes, along with his large ring of keys. The box of shells for the .32 was wedged against the side, along with my passport and papers.

“I always loved that little squirrel hole of your granddad’s,” Davey said. “So cool.”