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(Seattle, Washington, Saturday, September 20, 2013)
The Bohemian was packed; music and people spilled out onto the sidewalk into the mild Seattle night. It was late, midnight, and the crowd was happy with itself: the young, the pretty, the employed.
Mac Davis watched the people around him, his eyes slightly narrowed with amusement. He was part of the crowd, moving to the music, to the warmth of people around him, enjoying the pleasures of the evening. But he was also outside the crowd, watching. He couldn’t help it; this observer was a part of him, as much as his gray eyes and dark hair. The observer felt detached, put off by the youth of the crowd and their innocence. Mac Davis was not quite 30, no older, no younger than most. It’s not the years, it’s the miles, he thought ruefully now, as he watched the people he was with. He willed himself back into the moment, into the enjoyment.
The bouncer approached, weaving among the tables; Mac’s eyes narrowed, watching him. Bouncers targeted him, it seemed. He wasn’t sure why. Yes, he had tattoos, but there were others here with tattoos. OK, most of the tattoos were more... suburban... than the one's he'd earned running with his cousin in the San Diego gangs. But he also had a Marine tattoo—that should count for something. Earrings were almost universal. He was clean, well-dressed. He'd been told that there was a “quiet menace” about him that made smart men shy away. Whatever. Mac sized up the bouncer and decided he could take him, no sweat. Then he forced himself to relax. Getting busted for a bar fight wouldn't play well. Not when he was the cop reporter for the Daily Examiner. His boss frowned on that.
The bouncer leaned down to shout in his ear. “Ty wants to know if you’ll spell him for a bit.”
Mac relaxed, let go of his wariness. He nodded, made his excuses, and headed to the DJ’s box, still holding an untouched beer in his hand.
Ty looked up and saw him approach. “Man, I need a break,” he said. “Thirty minutes? Time for a piss, a drink, maybe a smoke?”
Mac smiled with pleasure. “Any time,” he said, seating himself at the console. He stroked the mixer.
Ty stretched. “Yeah, well, I don’t want the competition, you know?” He laughed and sauntered off toward the “Employees Only” door, stopping to chat, for a few low fives. He hugged one young woman, who leaned into him suggestively.
Mac grunted, turned to the mixer. DJs no longer just played the music, they could mix their own, combining beats and rhythms and sounds to make something new out of the old. Mac loved it. As the song ended, he started his own mix—a beat first, then a repeat, some rhythm, some soul sounds. The music built, Mac could feel the crowd reacting, moving onto the dance floor. He added in a different rhythm, keeping the bass beat. He laughed with pleasure as he cut in a sequence from a favorite rap artist, seducing this Top 40 dance crowd into responding to his music and his choice of artists.
He played with the music and the crowd for nearly eight minutes before resolving the sounds into a long slow ending that left just the beat for a measure. Then silence. The crowd applauded. Mac stood, bowed, and then he put on an old song of Ayesha while he caught his breath and came down from the high of music and the crowd’s response.
“You’ve gotten even better,” a low husky voice said from the steps to the DJ’s box.
Mac looked over, startled. His wary look changed to warmth; a sexy half smile lit up his face. The woman standing there responded instinctively.
“You’re looking good, babe,” Mac said. “When did you get into town?”
Kelly Womack leaned against the side of the booth, staying out of view of the dancing crowd. “Flew in yesterday for a week’s vacation. See the folks. You know,” she said with a shrug.
Kelly Womack was tall, lean, wearing a black Lycra dress that started low on top and ended short. She looked good, Mac thought again. Tanned legs. Long, tanned legs. “Chicago law must agree with you. Made partner yet?”
She laughed. “Soon, I hope.”
The song ended. Mac started another song, then turned back to the woman standing just out of touch.
“I see you made the front page. I always thought you would,” she said teasing.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You know, Mackensie Davis, 29, today was convicted of....”
Mac laughed. “Yeah,” he admitted. “Either that, or Mac Davis, found dead with six bullet holes....”
Kelly’s dimples showed as she smiled at him. “You did good, my friend, you really did good. I bragged to everyone that I knew you when.”
He laughed again. He’d broken the news story of a lifetime 10 months before: a rogue CIA agent who wanted to be National Security Adviser badly enough to kill for it. He was still trying to adjust to the notoriety.
“You seeing anyone? Serious-like?” she asked.
He shook his head. His last girlfriend was dating a football coach in Louisiana—long-distance sucked. “You?”
She laughed. “Not this side of the Rockies.” She cocked her head, teasing, in the way he remembered from high school. “Will you come dance with me?” she asked. “When Ty comes back?”
Mac nodded. “Let me mix one more, before he gets here. And then I’m yours.”
She arched her eyebrows in amused questioning. “Mix one for me, then,” she requested.
Mac obliged.
His telephone was ringing.
Mac Davis rolled over, glanced at the clock... 9 a.m. He reached for the phone. “Hello?” he said hoarsely. He hadn’t gotten home until 4 a.m. Kelly had asked him for a ride to her hotel—big girls did not stay with mom and dad in the ’burbs—and invited him in. He’d said yes.
“Mac? It’s Janet.”
Mac sat up in bed. He wasn’t scheduled to work this morning. He had some perks now at the newspaper, and Sundays off was one of them. He kind of missed covering cops on the weekends, but he wasn’t going to tell anyone that. Friday and Saturday nights were busy for the cops; almost always some good stories came out.
“What’s up?”
“Sorry to bother you on a day off,” the city editor apologized. “But...” she trailed off into silence.
Mac frowned. Janet Andrews wasn’t supposed to be working this shift either. “Do you need me to come in?”
“No, no, it’s not about work. Well, kind of. Not really...” she trailed off again. “Never mind. I’m sorry I woke you.”
“Janet!” he said sharply to prevent her from hanging up. This didn’t sound like his take-charge boss at all. “What the fuck is going on?”
She laughed. Mac thought he heard tears in her voice. “I... Someone vandalized my house last night. Can you come here?”
“Vandalized how?” Mac threw back the covers and got out of bed, still holding the phone.
“Just come.”
“I’m on my way,” he assured her, hanging up the phone. He saw that he had messages, listened, heard the one from the night before. Watched?
He walked into the bathroom, started a shower. Shaved. If he didn’t, he’d have a beard by Monday. He looked at his face thoughtfully. His dark brown hair was cut short, emphasizing the sharp planes of his face and his gray eyes. Maybe it was time for a beard again.
He turned away, dismissing the beard. Clothes: baggy jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt, New Balance shoes. He wore what he liked style be damned. Let others look to him for styles. He was tall, six-foot-two, broad shoulders. He stayed fit, worked out daily. You didn’t have to worry about the clothes if you took care of the body. He was approaching 30 and weighed 15 pounds less than when he left the Marines. It was fat he monitored—he hoped to cut 2 more percentage points off by the time he was 30. Which wasn’t far away.
Twenty minutes after the phone call he was padding down the stairs. His aunt Lindy was in the kitchen as he walked through. “Didn’t expect to see you up this early,” she said mildly.
“Janet called. Got to go,” he called over his shoulder. The back door slammed behind him.
He shared the house with his aunt for good reason: neither of them could afford to live on Seattle’s Queen Anne Hill alone. Lindy bought the house years ago when the homes were much cheaper and the area less trendy. Mac and Toby, Lindy’s son, lived with her while in high school. The house was one of those classic Seattle homes, an Arts and Crafts bungalow, set into the hillside, with a front porch facing the street above a small garage. Lindy parked in the garage, while Mac parked out back off the alley.
August had been dry in Seattle. The grass was a bit worse for wear, Mac thought absently as he got into his 4-Runner. Neither Lindy nor he were gardeners. Lindy was occupied with her art and her teaching at the University; Mac’s job kept him busy, and he wasn’t into green stuff anyway. It reminded him of too many places he’d fought in during his Marine days where brush was just another place for ambush. He liked city streets and bright lights.
He had to admit as he dropped down the west side of Queen Anne Hill to pick up 15th Ave, that all the green made Seattle a pretty city. If he could just get over the feeling that enemies lurked behind those huge Rhododendrons by the garage.
He headed over the Ballard Bridge to Magnolia Heights. Janet Andrews was a gardener, he remembered. At the newsroom barbecue on the Fourth of July, her back yard had been full of flowers, lots of roses, things that smelled good. The lawn had a few holes in it where the dog dug, and the arbors leaned a bit, but everywhere there was color and the fragrant perfume of flowers in bloom.
Curiosity was enough to get Mac out to see what was going on at Janet’s. More than that, he owed her. Janet Andrews had stood beside him, kept him from being fired, even posted bail for him during the mess last winter. Most of all she’d believed in him. He couldn’t begin to describe what that meant during the bleakest days. He owed her. It was that simple. She was one of the few people he cared about. Even if she was almost 40 and lived in Magnolia.
He pulled up in front of the small brick house and stared. Vandalism was right, he thought, getting out and locking the car. Someone had sprayed “baby killer” in huge letters across the entire brick front of the house, easily visible from the street.
Mac walked up to the front porch where a baby doll dangled from a rope around its neck. He grimaced. The anti-abortion element at its finest. A note written in big block letters was attached to it. Below the doll was more stuff, he couldn’t decipher what it was supposed to be, but the ketchup was supposed to represent blood. He frowned, squatted down close. Sniffed. The metallic, sick smell told him it was really blood. Animal, probably. He hoped.
He looked at the note. “He who lives by the sword will die by the sword,” it said at the top. It then went on to describe Janet as the whore of Babylon—someday he’d have to look that reference up, the anti-abortionists used it a lot.
He reattached the note to the doll. The police would need to see it as it was.
Janet hadn’t come to the door yet. Mac wandered around the side of the house, down the driveway to the door next to the garage, his hands shoved in his pockets. Janet sat on the cement steps. Her hair was tousled and down on her shoulders; it was usually tousled—messy actually—but he didn’t think he’d ever seen it down before. She wore a big baggy purple sweatshirt with UW on it, and slim faded jeans. No shoes. She could have passed for a college student, if it wasn’t for the hollows under her eyes, and the lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth. Today her face showed her age.
“You OK?” he asked uncertainly.
“Yeah, I’m OK,” she said. “Didn’t even know it happened until I took the dog for a walk.”
“Have you called the cops yet?” he asked.
“No. I don’t want the cops.”
Mac guided her into the house. The sunroom faced the garden. The roses were still in bloom, he noted absently. “You got coffee on?” he asked, moving her into the kitchen. He found a cup, poured some into it, mixed in some cream, handed it to her. She held it with both hands.
“You have to call the cops,” he said. He didn’t like the look in her eyes. She was scared, he thought. He would have expected outrage, not fear. Not from Janet. “I’ll call Rodriguez. He’ll come personally.”
She shook her head, but there wasn’t any force to it. Mac found the phone, dialed the business number for downtown. Rodriguez wasn’t on duty, he was told. He pulled out his wallet, found the slip of paper that had important numbers on it. He punched in Detective Nick Rodriguez’s home number.
“I am not on duty today,” Rodriguez said sourly when he heard who it was. “Call the office. I’m not your personal cop.”
“It’s Janet Andrews,” Mac said, ignoring the pro-forma grumpiness. “Some pro-lifers sprayed graffiti across the front of her house.”
“Not my division, Mac,” Rodriguez protested. “I don’t do property crimes.”
“It’s Janet, Nick,” he repeated. “She doesn’t want an official response. Just come take a look, OK?”
Rodriguez sighed. “Give me the address; I’ll swing by. Got to get the kids to soccer, anyway.”
Mac looked in at Janet. She was sitting at the table in the sunroom looking out over the garden. Her coffee cup sat on the table in front of her, untouched. The big hairy mutt Janet called Pulitzer—because he never came when she called him, she’d explained one time—had his head in her lap. Janet stroked him gently.
Mac retreated. Take another look at the mess out front, he thought. Give her some space.
He was still trying to puzzle out the display below the baby doll when Rodriguez drove up. The detective was a big man, carrying more pounds than he should, and in his 40s. His hair was still mostly dark with a few gray streaks. He was wearing jeans and a gray sweatshirt with the sleeves ripped off.
“Thanks,” Mac said when the man reached the porch.
Nick Rodriguez grunted. He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked over the scene. Shook his head. “A mess,” he observed. “Be a bitch to get that off the brick. You got someone to call?”
Mac shook his head. “Maybe Janet does.”
Rodriguez nodded. “Call O’Reilly’s if she doesn’t. He does a lot of work on crime scenes.”
Rodriguez looked at the baby doll, read the note. He studied the mess below as Mac had. “That mean anything to you?” he asked.
Mac shook his head. “I think it’s real blood though,” he said. “Animal, I hope.”
The detective grunted. “Probably.”
“It’s blood flowing down the hills of Judah,” Janet’s voice said behind them. They jumped.
“What?” she asked with a bit of her normal sardonic humor. “You thought you men could just stay out here and keep the little woman out of it?”
Rodriguez snorted. “So, it means something to you?” he asked. “Something personal?”
Janet Andrews ran her hand through her hair, ruffling it up more. She had put some shoes on, Mac noted.
“Religious,” she said with a shrug that seemed a bit forced. Mac noticed she avoided meeting the eyes of either of them.
“You think it has something to do with that story you all ran?” Rodriguez asked.
Stood to reason this was fallout. Just writing the story had been intense, Mac had heard. Janet’s name ran along with the other half-dozen reporters who worked on it. It would probably win awards. Maybe a Pulitzer would finally come to her, Mac thought.
Janet nodded with a half-shrug. “I’ve been getting hate mail, mostly e-mail,” she said. “Some phone calls. Same themes.”
“What kind of phone calls?” Rodriguez asked with a frown. “At home or at work?”
“Home. Some hang-ups. Some...,” she hesitated, finally finished with “preaching, I guess you could call it.”
Rodriguez looked at the scene again, went to his car, popped the trunk. He came back with an evidence bag, a camera, and gloves.
“I touched the note,” Mac said. “But you’ve got my prints on file. Just don’t come after me for it, OK?”
Rodriguez looked sourly at Mac but didn’t say anything. He took pictures of everything—a nice digital camera, Mac noted. Then collected the doll and the scene—blood on the hills of Judah? —and put them in the bag.
“I don’t know, Janet,” he said when he was done. “It goes a bit beyond just protesting a story, seems to me. And it sounds like it’s escalating. You be careful, you hear?”
Janet nodded.
Mac walked the detective to his car. “She’s not telling us everything,” Rodriguez observed. He didn’t seem upset; people rarely told him everything he needed to know.
“I noticed.” Mac didn’t mention the phone message from the night before. Watched?
Rodriguez looked at him. “You take care of her. She’s a good lady.”
Mac grinned lopsidedly. “She’d bite your head off if she heard you call her a lady,” he said. Then he looked at Rodriguez squarely. “I’ll take care of her. I owe her.”
Rodriguez nodded. “Yes, you do.”
Janet was looking at the brick of her house. “That isn’t going to come off easy,” she said with a sigh. Mac told her what Rodriguez had said. She nodded.
“You aren’t telling me everything,” Mac said as he followed her back into the house. “What’s this business about being watched?”
Janet reached down, clenched her fingers in Pulitzer’s fur. The dog leaned against her leg. Janet was a tall woman, but the mutt came to mid-thigh. She didn’t have to reach very far.
“I can’t,” she said at last, not looking at him. “I know I need to; there’s something I need you to do for me. But I can’t. I just can’t talk about it.”
Mac steered her back to the table where she seemed to find comfort earlier. He refilled her coffee. “What do you want me to do, boss?” he said, sitting down at the table.
She smiled at the term. “I need you to find out where these three men are and what they’re doing,” she said, pulling a piece of paper out of her pocket and handing it to him.
He looked at it curiously. Eli Andrews, the Rev. Isaac Brandt, and Timothy Brandt.
“So, you do think it might be personal. Who are they?”
She hesitated, clutched her coffee cup. “My husband, my father, and... my son,” she said, her voice faltering on the third.
Mac’s eyes widened. Son! Father was no surprise, and he’d assumed a marriage in her past, but a son.... “You don’t know where any of them are?”
She shook her head.
“You think one of them might have something to do with the vandalism?”
She fished out another piece of paper and handed it to him. “This was out front, too,” she said.
The note said, “What did you do to your baby, baby killer?”
Mac looked at it, looked at Janet carefully. She appeared determined, which was better than bewildered from earlier. But still ... fragile.
“They think you had an abortion?”
Janet closed her eyes. “They know stuff that no one should know, but they’ve got parts wrong. No abortion. I had the baby. My parents raised him.”
Mac’s jaw clenched. He made sure no feelings showed in his voice. “How old were you?”
“Eighteen.”
When he started to ask another question, she shook her head. He saw tears forming in her eyes and stopped. Shit.
Janet closed her eyes, sighed, opened them again as if she was determined to face whatever she had to face.
“I was raped,” she said. Stopped.
Mac looked away and changed the subject. “And your father? Where do I start with him?”
“A place called Jehovah’s Valley between La Grande and Baker—Baker City they call it now.”
“Where?”
“Eastern Oregon,” she added. “He runs a Christian community there. Last I heard he was still there.”
“A church?”
Janet lips twisted. “Kind of. A community, some 4,000 acres, a dozen families—must be more now.”
Mac tapped the third name. “And your son?” He couldn’t look at her.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “Maybe at the University.”
Mac looked up. “He could be in town, and you don’t know?”
Janet shook her head.
Mac looked at her. “I don’t get what you’re telling me,” he said. “Just tell me the story, Janet.”
Janet smiled at the words she used to get reporters past writer’s block. She took a deep breath, then shook her head. “Can’t. Things I’ve never talked about. After 20 years... I can’t,” she said, tears formed in the corners of her eyes. But she didn’t let them fall.
“Find them for me, will you?” she said, her voice firm in spite of the tears. “I haven’t spoken to my family since I was 18. Tell me they haven’t decided to get in touch with me now. Like this.”
Janet got up from the table and walked quickly out of the room, her head bowed. Mac waited a bit to see if she would come back. Pulitzer put his head in Mac’s lap and looked up at him. Mac scratched behind his ears.
Mac looked up O’Reilly’s in the phone book and called. The dispatcher promised to have someone come out that afternoon, even if it was a Sunday. When Janet still hadn’t returned, he put her coffee mug in the sink and let himself out the back door.
Mac drove to the YMCA where he worked out most days. He changed, worked out with the weights for an hour, pushing himself a bit, lifting more weight. He usually went for reps and form, but today he wanted to feel the weight, to force it up at his will.
He ran laps. Five miles. A normal workout. Tuesdays and Thursdays, he played basketball with a bunch of guys, regulars at the gym like he was. The other days he focused on the weights.
Today it wasn’t enough.
“Jerry, can I work with the bag today?” he asked the attendant.
The attendant unlocked the room. The gym was a bit cautious about allowing novices to use the punching bags. “Fast bag, or heavy?”
“Both,” Mac said. He punched the small, fast bag, grinned as it bounced back at him. He started to find a rhythm, bounced up on the balls of his feet, his feet remembering the dance, the steps. It had been a while since he’d punched a bag. Longer since he’d actually boxed.
The attendant watched for a moment. “Call me if you want a partner for the heavy,” he said.
“Half hour,” Mac said.
He felt better when he left the gym. Janet’s history bothered him in ways he couldn’t quite articulate. It’s not about you, he told himself. He swung by the office. No one was surprised to see him when he came into the newsroom. Days off were somewhat vague; Mac wasn’t the only reporter who sometimes had a hard time staying away from the office.
Mac sat at his desk; Seth Conte, the other cop reporter, was out on a story somewhere. He wondered what it was. Dismissing that thought, he ran Janet’s three names through the various data bases the newspaper used. As an after-thought, he ran hers, too. He printed the results out, making sure to be at the printer to pull them before anyone else could see them. It was uncomfortable to run a background check on his boss. He didn’t want to have to explain it to someone. He cleared the computer’s cache and history. He’d read the material at home. Make some plans. Maybe some calls. Shorty would be good. He could make a computer cough up more information than anyone else Mac knew.