Val avoided making eye contact with the mayoral campaign volunteers lurking next to the Seattle Police Department entrance, but one waylaid her anyway on her way inside.
“Vote for Norman Barrister for mayor of Seattle!” A plump-faced college kid in a red T-shirt jumped in front of Val, waving a flyer and red plastic button in her face. “Change you can believe in!”
Another college kid in a blue T-shirt, wielding a blue button, appeared to Val’s right. “Charles Brest is best! Don’t mess with success!”
Sighing, Val took both their buttons, the penance she had to pay so they’d get out of her way. The college kids glared at each other but thankfully parted to let Val pass without any further harassment. Inside the station, she glanced at the buttons and winced at Norman Barrister’s name emblazoned on the red one. What a sad coincidence that retired Colonel Norman Barrister, Val’s old battalion commander, just happened to be from Seattle, and also had political aspirations. The idiot couldn’t lead his units out of a paper bag, but while they died in one bloody Afghan skirmish after another, he racked up awards and medals that served well the myth of his “strong leadership abilities” that was the cornerstone of his campaign. He’d duped the district into electing him to the state’s House of Representatives, so why not mayor? Hell, why not president? God knew if you had enough money, it wasn’t that hard. Val dumped both buttons in the trash and walked into the heart of the station.
The place hummed with activity, a cacophony of voices talking, phones ringing, keyboards clacking. The police officers set up shop in a large open space, each manning an oak desk covered in paperwork. Val snaked her way through the desks, past Homicide and Special Victims, until she reached Vice. She spotted Detective Sten Ander in the far corner, leaning back in his chair, hands held casually behind his head as he conversed with a strung-out woman in a puffy leopard-print coat and ripped nylons underneath a black miniskirt. Val wasn’t close enough to hear the details of their conversation, but after a minute of talking he waved a hand and two uniformed officers swooped in and cuffed the woman.
“I want my lawyer!” the woman shrieked as they led her past Val and through a door to the cells. Sten smirked at the woman’s back until she disappeared, then cut his gaze to Val. He didn’t bother sitting up as Val took the chair across from him.
“Ah, Shepherd,” Sten said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Val suppressed an eye roll at his use of her last name. They’d known each other since they’d both joined the Army right out of high school, even dated for a short time while stationed together at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. Now that he was a man of the law, he addressed her by her last name only, like he starred in a crime procedural TV show. He even looked a bit like a Scandinavian version of Jeremy Renner.
Sten sipped coffee as he eyed Val over the rim of a ceramic mug adorned with Norman Barrister’s smiling face.
“I never pegged you for a Republican,” Val said. “I would’ve thought you’d be more of a Guns and Dope Party kind of guy.”
“Still waters run deep,” he said. He licked coffee off the caterpillar attached to his face that he called a mustache, then propped his feet on his desk. “Let me guess—drunk sorority girl fucked some frat boy and is now pretending like her drink was spiked so her parents won’t think she’s a slut? Or someone sent dick pics to the PTA again?”
Val gritted her teeth. It’d been almost ten years since she’d broken up with Sten, but the asshole still held a grudge. He’d been cooperative enough when she’d first approached him for inside police information at the onset of her PI business. She’d assumed that he’d buried the hatchet in the name of justice, but soon realized his real motivation was the opportunity to play mind games with her. Val considered cutting him from her roster of contacts on many occasions, but just before her last straw, he’d cough up a piece of valuable info and buy himself a reprieve. At least he didn’t demand money or sexual favors; apparently toying with her was payment enough.
“I am always amazed at what a big heart you have,” Val said through a tight smile. “Always looking out for the”—she held up her thumb and forefinger, and narrowed the gap between them to an inch—“little guys.”
Sten clanked his coffee mug down on a ceramic coaster. “What do you want, Shepherd? I’ve got places to be.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to make you late for your men’s rights rally.” She pulled her notebook from her tote and flipped to the clown drawing. “Have you seen this picture before, maybe as gang graffiti?”
Sten leaned across his desk and eyed the illustration. A glimmer of recognition flickered in his gaze. “Why do you ask?”
“A client’s daughter ran off with her gang member boyfriend. The mom says the boyfriend had this picture tattooed on his arm. She wants me to bring her daughter home.”
Sten sat back again, picked up his mug, and took a long slurp. “Remember when you used to blow me in my dorm room before retreat?”
A trickle of bile rose up Val’s throat. Here we go with the mind games. “I’ve repressed most of those memories, but yes.”
“You were really good at sucking dick, did I ever tell you that? I guess practice makes perfect.”
Val drummed her fingers on the side of her chair to occupy her hands. It was all she could do to keep from punching his smug face. She gave him a bored look and waited.
Sten took another long drink of coffee, relishing the moment. Finally, he said, “The Diamond Gang pride themselves on running ‘high-class’ hookers for low-class needs. Entrepreneurial sorts, despite their stupid clown logo. They hang out west of the I-5, around South Washington Street. Charge fifty dollars a pop.” He shoved a thumb in his mouth and jerked it out with a popping sound. “A small fortune for a junkie, but their girls are pros. Practice makes perfect.” His thick mustache curled into a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
A shiver ran up Val’s spine. She knew Sten had an edge when they’d dated—she’d always liked the edgy guys, though she knew she shouldn’t—but only recently had she realized just how much he liked to see her squirm—like a sociopath. With a police badge. She forced out a “thanks” and stood to leave. In the end his words were harmless, and his idiosyncrasies worked to her benefit.
“Hey, Shepherd,” Sten called after her as she walked away, “You find that poor girl and bring her home, to safety.” He smiled again, and Val was struck with the image of a snake’s mouth just before it swallowed its prey.
* * *
Val watched the rain smear the world through her windshield as she sat in her Corolla, idling in front of the Bombay and Price Law Offices sign outside Robby’s work. After a few minutes of staring out the window, she saw him emerge from the glass building and trot through the puddles to her car. He tossed a gym bag with his suit shoved in it into the back, then hopped into the passenger’s seat.
“Did you find Chuckles the Creepy Clown?” he asked, brushing water off his jeans.
“You know it,” Val said. “I narrowed it down to South Washington Street, near the waterfront, then drove around the seediest areas until I found the graffiti with the right background that matched what I saw in the vision.” She pulled away from the curb and began driving to Chet’s future location.
“You’re too good for me,” Robby said.
Val knew the opposite was true. She needed him a lot more than he needed her. Robby’s lawyer gig paid most of the bills, not to mention the stabilizing influence he had on her visions. They weren’t as bad when she was with him, though she didn’t know why. She’d have given up on love a long time ago if it hadn’t been for Robby.
He looked at his watch. “How much time do we have to catch Chet?”
“The sun was setting in my vision, so we have about an hour, I think.”
Val drove along the back streets through Seattle’s underbelly to avoid highway traffic. She knew the streets well, explored every inch of them while growing up, looking for adventure, until her dad dragged her and her sister to the suburbs. They should’ve stayed in the city. Val loved her life with Robby in their two-story house with its white picket fence and stand-alone mailbox, but reminders of her sister’s fate often bubbled at the edges of her suburban bliss, and she’d get the urge to burn it all down.
Her grip tightened on the steering wheel. She should let the past go, but then Valentine Investigations wouldn’t exist, and she’d be another mindless peon floating through life, ignoring the rot that threatened to consume the world just outside of view from polite society. She’d rather have her sister’s life back, but since that wasn’t possible, punishing assholes who’d slipped through cracks in the justice system would have to do.
She parked the car along the curb of South Washington Street, on the opposite side of the road from the naked clown puking up the word she now recognized as “Diamonds.” She killed the engine, and they watched the street where Chet was destined to appear at any moment as raindrops plinked against the roof.
“Talk to Max Carressa today?” she asked Robby.
“Yeah, we actually went to his house on Mercer Island,” he said. “We walked him through the case as it stands now. It’s all circumstantial. The police don’t have enough to charge him with anything yet, but who knows when that’ll change. He showed us where his dad fell over the balcony of the deck that extends off the study. It’s got a gorgeous view of Lake Washington, and a sheer drop down a cliff. I almost got vertigo looking down, it was wild.”
“Did you ask Max about Chet?”
“Not yet. I want to hear what Chet has to say before bringing it up. We’ve gotten fake information before. Guess that comes with working a local celebrity case.” He grinned, then nudged Val. “My dad asked me about our wedding date again.”
Val rolled her eyes. “God, what’s his rush? It’ll happen when it happens.”
“He says if Mom was still alive, she’d want grandkids by now.”
“I thought those little white fluffy dogs were supposed to be grandchildren substitutes.”
“Why don’t we just pick a date?”
“Because…” Val sighed. “I don’t want to rush things—there’s Chet!”
Thank God for Chet, loping down the street in his slicker and swinging his bike helmet at his side. She hated this conversation. Every time she imagined herself walking down the aisle, it’d be followed by an image of herself running away from the altar, out of the church and over the horizon. She needed Robby and loved him, but…she didn’t know. Val guessed there was some sort of deep psychological reason for her reluctance that involved her superego and freak-of-nature status and past traumas and all that, but she preferred not to think too hard about it and hoped it would go away on its own.
They tracked Chet as he walked, oblivious to their presence. He stopped in front of the alley between two buildings, next to the clown graffiti. He leaned down to fish a rock out of his shoe. Traffic parted. They lost sight of any other pedestrians.
“Now!” Val said to Robby.
With his eyes locked on Chet, Robby jumped out of the car and began to jog across the street. Val heard the sedan’s wheels screech before she saw it out of the corner of her eye, a blur of movement that seized her heart and crushed it before the rest of her brain could even register what she was seeing.
She had no time to react before the sedan slammed into Robby. He catapulted through the air like a ragdoll until he hit the pavement with a wet thud. Without slowing down, the car hung a hard right at the next intersection and disappeared. A piercing noise caught her attention; she realized it was her screams.
Val burst out of the car and ran to where Robby lay still on the ground. She knelt next to his broken body, unable to breathe, afraid to touch him.
“Holy shit,” she heard Chet say, followed by his receding footfalls as he fled.
“Robby, oh God, Robby,” she said, her voice shrill and panicked, willing for him to live with every part of her being.
His eyelids fluttered and he looked at her, then he looked through her at nothing. Rain wet his unblinking eyes.
A wail ripped from Val’s chest as she sobbed over his body, only vaguely aware of the newly arrived traffic around her that stopped to gawk and offer useless assistance.