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Janet Andrews organized her band of survivors when the panel van showed up. It was old, white, and had Seattle Examiner written on the side of it. Inside was a coating of newsprint dust that always made her smile. Newsprint, printer’s ink — a nostalgia that dated her. Well, so be it.
She put the kids in back, explaining what the van did, and why there were bundles of papers scattered in the back from the previous day’s paper. The driver would clean them out before loading up today’s bundles to take out to the various drops for carriers. Or not. She glanced at the front page of one of the bundles. It was days old.
Paulina got in the back with the kids and their assorted backpacks and suitcases, and Juan sat in the front with the driver.
The driver was a vet with Navy tattoos on his forearms and a toothpick in his mouth. “OK, Hank,” she said. “We’re headed over toward Bellevue, the old Parker mansion? You know it.”
He nodded. Circulation drivers had internal GPS systems, she swore. “We’ll lead,” Janet continued. “The guard at the gate is looking for me. You follow us through; we unload, and you’re good to go.”
“Good,” he said. He glanced at his watch. “Let’s get going then. I’ve got two hours to be at the printing plant.”
Janet nodded, and she got into Shorty’s car. Angie was in the back seat, checking photos on her camera. “You know the way,” she said to Shorty. He’d been there that day.
“I know it,” he said. “Just down the road from my place,” he added a bit wryly.
Janet snorted. Shorty often joked he was the only Bellevue teacher he knew who could afford to live in the district. But even he couldn’t afford Medina, a neighborhood of the very wealthy that cupped Lake Washington off the 520. Minimum house value was $5 million. She shook her head. Medina property owners didn’t want their tax dollars going to fund ‘those kids’. Mac called Bellevue a white-flight town, and he wasn’t wrong, but only in Medina could Bellevue students be considered ‘those kids.’ Houses in Bellevue averaged $1 million themselves.
Take some of that money and plow it into Seattle schools, she thought grimly. Or send it out to the rural schools in central Washington. She shook her head. Not a problem she was going to fix this month.
Or ever, she admitted.
The three of them were quiet as Shorty navigated through the U district to get onto the 520.
“Mac going to be OK going back here, Shorty?” Janet asked finally. She looked out the window.
“If he isn’t, he’ll never let it show,” Shorty said. “But yeah, what happened here, bugs him. Danny’s death. Kellerman.” He stopped and didn’t finish that thought.
“Danny?” Angie said. “Last spring, Mac was hallucinating after Sensei shot him. The guy who got him out said Mac kept calling him Danny. He wanted to know if I knew who that was.”
Shorty glanced at Janet. Janet just shrugged. He sighed. “There were four in Mac’s squad in the Marines. Well, one of his squads — I suppose they change. But these four guys? They were tight. You read the Parker story?”
Angie nodded.
“Well, the Marine that died getting the kidnapping victims free, he died here. His name was Danny.” Shorty hesitated. “It tore Mac up. He felt like he’d failed. That he should have been there earlier in the game. And the man who shot Danny was another Marine who Mac had looked up to once.”
“What happened to him?” Angie asked quietly.
“He died,” Shorty said, with another quick glance at Janet.
Angie didn’t ask any more questions.
“Shorty, how did you and Mac hook up?” Janet asked, changing the subject. “You two seem an unlikely pair. But you ran with him and his cousin in high school?”
Shorty nodded. “Garfield High School,” he said. “I was this scrawny freshman with glasses, right? And brown. I belonged to the computer club and the chess club. Some guys took a dislike to me. One of those hard-core harassment things. I’d go home with bruises most days. I was careful not to leave the school building after dark. All those things. Went on for months.”
“Not Mac,” Janet said.
“No,” Shorty said. “Not Mac. White boys. To be honest, most people thought Mac was Black. Toby, his cousin, was definitely Black. Have you ever gone to Johnny’s?”
That was directed at Angie. She shook her head. “That’s a pool bar, right?” she said. “I doubt a white girl like me should be going in there.”
“Not unless you were with Mac,” he agreed. “Hell, I won’t go in there unless I’m with Mac. But if you were to ask them, they’d tell you Mac was Black, just light-skinned. And when he’s there? He sounds Black, moves like the other guys there. Has the jargon — even smokes the same cigarettes. And it’s not an act. That’s the real Mac Davis. For all practical purposes, Mac is Black. Just not genetically. Maybe.”
Shorty thought about that. “Be interesting to have him take a DNA test,” he muttered. “Any way, things were escalating at school. I never knew why those guys had it in for me. But one day, they cornered me in the locker room, and I seriously thought I would be leaving it in an ambulance if not a hearse.”
He took the turn off the 520, and slowed down again for the neighborhood streets. “And Mac walked in. Just him. He sized up the situation, and he just punched the lead guy in the gut, took him down, and beat the shit out of him. And then he looked at the other guys. I’ll never forget it. He said, ‘You’re a bunch of dumb fucks. You’ll never be worth more than a minimum wage paycheck down on the docks. You’ll think that getting laid off in the fall is cool because you can go hunting. And some day? You take a look at the name on those paychecks and it will be his name. Because he’s smart. He’s learning computers and shit that matters. You should be kissing his ass, not following a piece of shit like him.’”
Shorty swallowed. “And he kicked their leader again, turns to me and says, ‘Come on, let’s get out of here. It smells bad in here.’ After that? I followed him around like a puppy.”
Janet smiled at the last. “What happened to those guys?”
“Oh, I’m sure Mac had it right about them, they’re working down on the docks, or at some lumberyard,” he said. “Or maybe in jail or dead. But I’m not signing any paychecks. Not my thing. After Mac enlisted, I went to college. I found I liked teaching. And I like students. But I also found I was good at data analysis — data mining. Paid off my student debt. That’s what allows me to teach — and to live in the district I teach in. I joke about that,” he added. “But a lot of what is wrong with our educational system is right there. Teachers aren’t paid a living wage for the district they teach in? Kids look down on them, because they drive the fancier cars, wear the better clothes. And then there’s the other end of the spectrum, where the districts are so damn poor you’ve got teachers buying textbooks for kids out of their own pockets.”
He stopped. “Sorry for the rant,” he said.
“Don’t be,” Janet said. “I was just thinking that if we took the money from here and plowed it into schools on the other side of the mountains, we might make a difference.”
“Right?” Shorty said. “And yet Bill Gates gets kudos for all the educational grants he awards poor school districts. Shouldn’t have to be reliant on that. Tax the rich, God damn it, and fund education at the state level.”
“I’m voting for you, some day,” Angie said.
Shorty snorted at that, but Janet wasn’t so sure Angie was wrong. Maybe she’d never change things — but Shorty might.
Shorty turned into the driveway, and Janet watched the guard approach. He came through the small gate from the gatehouse, and stood on the street, waiting for them. Everything seemed right, Janet thought. The guard walked up to the driver’s side, and Shorty motioned for him to go around. Janet rolled down her window.
“Janet Andrews,” she said crisply. “You should have my name on your list.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. He was young, probably just out of the military, hired by the security firm to stand here and watch an empty house. Well, she hoped they at least paid him well. “Can I see some ID?”
She opened up her purse and pulled out her wallet, then handed him her driver’s license. “Thank you,” he said. He handed her a set of keys.
“There will be another two vehicles coming in behind these two,” she told him. “I’ll walk back up and ID them for you. Just call the house.”
He nodded, then gestured to the tram that ran from the guard station at the top of the hill, to a second guard station at the bottom. “Take that,” he said, with a smile. “It’s easier than the hike up that hill. The company said it didn’t receive specific instruction about what you might need from us,” he said. “Will you be briefing us? I’m the only one on duty at this time, mostly just to keep the gawkers out who think this is Bill Gates’ house.”
Shorty snorted.
“Someone will,” she promised. “Probably someone in the next car.”
“Thank you,” he said, and he straightened. He punched a code into the device he was carrying, and the gate slowly rolled open. Shorty pulled through it and drove on down to the house to park, followed by the circulation van.
“He shouldn’t have left the guard booth,” Shorty muttered. “Mac will have his hide.”
They unloaded kids, luggage, and the Moores, and sent Hank back on his way. Everyone just stood and stared for a bit. The lawn sloped down to the water, and it was meticulously cared for. Some roses were still in bloom. There was a dock on the water and a small boathouse. A slate patio surrounded that side of the house. French doors led from some kind of sunroom to the patio. The house was white, mostly with a skirting of cedar shakes, and dark green trim. Janet wondered if the architect had a Cape Cod fetish.
The house had 30,000 square feet of living and entertaining space. Janet shook her head. She turned to the house. There were stairs that led somewhere, the roof veranda, she thought. Janet opened the kitchen door discreetly tucked underneath them. At least she assumed it was the kitchen door. Deliveries here, guests pulled forward to enter through the double French doors in front?
She shook her head. This wasn’t her milieu, although she was sure the publisher had been entertained here. It had been a problem during the Parker investigation. He hadn’t wanted to believe it of Howard Parker. And Parker was a manipulative bastard. Knew just the right things to say, just the right pressure to bring. Carrots and sticks. Until Parker tackled Mac, a former Marine turned cop reporter who had only one thing that mattered to him — his friends. And that was a damn short list.
Longer list now, she thought with a smile, looking at all of these people. She wondered what Mac thought of that. Wondered if he had even realized it yet.
She organized people efficiently once they were inside. “Food?” Paulina asked, a bit shaky, as she looked around. “I assume they ordered it to be delivered?”
I think so,” Janet replied. “You seemed to know your way around a kitchen earlier. Do you want to take it on? Explore this one? See what’s needed? We’ll set up a schedule for kitchen duty, but trust me, you do not want me in charge of cooking. Unless it’s a tuna-fish sandwich.”
That wasn’t quite true, but it had been 20 years since she’d cooked, Jehovah Valley style. Probably why she didn’t cook much now. Paulina, however, brightened, and she nodded. “The children should sleep.”
“I’ll get Juan and Carolina to find them rooms and get them all settled,” Janet promised. “And we’ll get rooms assigned too.”
Paulina nodded and turned to the kitchen. Janet glanced at Shorty. “We need to talk,” she murmured, “but let me get people situated first. People will crash soon, and it would be good to have beds under them when they do.”
Shorty nodded. He glanced at Angie. “Come on, we need to explore this monster,” he said. “And I particularly want to see the office and what kinds of computing power they have.”
Self-sufficient people, thank God. Janet turned to Juan who was heading up the stairs. “Second floor for us?” he asked.
She nodded. “Take as many rooms as you want,” she said. “You’re safe here. That nice young guard will see to it,” she added with a smile. She was under no illusions that guard would even pause from the men who came for them last night. Juan’s returning smile was twisted. Obviously, he didn’t think so either.
But then, that’s what they had Mac for. Even more than the FBI agents, she trusted Mac to secure this place and keep them all safe.
So, first floor were the public rooms. Kitchen, dining rooms, living rooms of various sizes and formality. Janet shook her head as she wandered through them, exploring, and looking for Shorty. Second floor were the family rooms, she guessed, a variety of bedrooms, sitting rooms and bathrooms. The master suite was there, and so was Parker’s private study. And the third floor? The rooms for the private help, she thought or maybe visitors? Smaller rooms, still with private baths, but fewer sitting rooms.
And an elevator.
She shook her head. It would be like living in a hotel. A posh hotel, but still, not a family home. She didn’t think Parker had spent all that much time here, really. It was a showcase for entertaining when he needed to be in the state of Washington, rather than in D.C.
She found Shorty in Parker’s study. Angie wasn’t with him.
“She went to take photos,” Shorty said. He was logged into the computer, but he shook his head. “This is pretty much crap.”
“Shorty?” Janet started, and then wasn’t sure how to ask what she wanted to know.
He glanced at her, and sighed. “You need me,” he said simply. “Unless you’ve got someone with similar skills, you need me to run forensics of exactly what happened, how they did it, and hopefully who did it.”
“Yes,” she said gratefully. “We do.”
He nodded. “It’s an interesting challenge,” he said thoughtfully. “But I’m going to need better equipment to work with than this.”
“Here? Or at your apartment?” she asked.
“Can’t be done from home,” he said. “I don’t have the firewalls I need. And I’d be physically vulnerable. I’ll have to be here. The computers are crap here, but the firewalls are topnotch. Someone knew security.”
“Which makes sense, if you want to be the Secretary of Homeland Security,” Janet mused. “How much access do you think he had? And how much of it can you use?”
Shorty grinned at her. “We’ll find out,” he said laughing. “I think I should bring my computers here. Mac can go with me. I don’t think I was spotted, but you never know. I can stay here, go to work from here. It’s closer really. But there may be a few other things I need. And I may need to bring in a couple of people, who are also savvy.”
“We’ve got one at the paper, Mike Brewster, who might help,” Janet said slowly.
“I’ve met him,” Shorty said. “Good guy, and for an extra pair of hands, he’d be good. But I need expertise. And quite frankly, the FBI will make them nervous. Taking on dirty cops might appeal to them though. Still, they’ll want to be paid.”
“That’s an issue,” she admitted. “I’ve got to talk to Stan Warren.”
“Janet, this wasn’t a thrown-together operation,” Shorty cautioned. “And it’s unlikely to get resolved quickly. I’m guessing it could be weeks, maybe longer. And it won’t be cheap either.”
She nodded. “Convalescence alone will take months,” she agreed. She could live here instead of the apartment she was renting while her house was being rebuilt — and wasn’t that a slow process? Give her notice to the landlord, put the rent toward the budget. Both the Moores and the Rodriguezes would have insurance claims to file for the two houses. Not to mention claims for a bunch of cars, including hers. She grimaced.
“We’re going to need a house manager,” Shorty said as if he could follow her train of thought.
“Yes,” she agreed. “Tonight. After naps, and everyone who can be here is here. We’ll talk. But safety was first.”
The phone on the desk buzzed, and Janet picked it up. “Hello,” she said cautiously.
“Your other parties are here, ma’am,” the guard said.
“I’ll be right up,” she promised, and went to take care of vouching for the new arrivals. Then she was going to find a bed and take a nap herself.
Mac looked at the fresh-faced recruit at the gate sourly. Well that will have to be fixed. The tram moved up toward them, and he waited. Janet got out and went to talk to the guard. He nodded, and rolled back the gate, and Mac pulled through, followed by Anna and Joe. Janet hopped into the car with him.
“Some guard,” he said. Damn he was tired.
“He said his primary function is to turn tourists away who think it’s Bill Gate’s house,” she said.
“He might be able to handle that,” Mac said, stressing might.
“I figure securing the place is your job,” she said with a shrug. “You’ve already probed its weaknesses once.”
He half-shrugged his acknowledgement. “Janet, what is your overall goal here?” he asked. “You a journalist on this or a vigilante?”
She smiled appreciatively. That was the question she’d asked him on the Parker story. And last spring.
“Both?” she said. “I’m a journalist. It’s really all I know how to be. But I’m a damned good one. And Mac? Something is wrong in the Seattle PD. We’ve seen bits of it for some time. I don’t know what Nick Rodriguez was doing. But I trust him to be doing it for the right reasons. My guess? He was doing something with Internal Affairs. Someone didn’t like it. And here we are.”
“Have some stuff to tell you,” Mac said. That made sense, he thought. “Going up against some powerful folks, Janet.”
“More powerful than the next Secretary of Homeland Security?” she asked him.
“Locally? Yes.” Mac had time to think about it on the drive over. “There is no one more powerful, more organized than the Seattle Police Department Police Union. And that’s who we’re talking about. Not the brass. The rank and file and the union.”
She looked at him. “I look forward to hearing your reasoning,” she said, “but I’m too tired to make heads or tails of what you just said. Shorty is going to bring his computers here to set up — says the computers here are junk but the firewalls are excellent. I nodded as if I knew what he was talking about. You need to go as his guard. But you haven’t had any sleep either. So, I say we all settle in, sleep for six hours, and then regroup.”
Mac parked his car on the lake side of the cars already there. He nodded. “You’re the boss,” he said as he got out. “That’s Anna behind me with Joe. Where do you want him? Is there a ground-floor bedroom?"
There was, they discovered. A small one. “You’re giving me the maid’s quarters?” Joe said incredulously.
“Or you can use a wheelchair and the elevator,” Mac said. “You do you. I’m going to do a walk-through of the building, and then I’m getting some sleep.”
“Fine,” Joe said, laughing. “Poshest room I’ve ever stayed in, and it’s for the maid!”
Mac smiled, and he started up the outside stairs to the roof. He needed to lay some ghosts to rest up there. Then he could work his way down. He wouldn’t rest easy until he’d opened every door, and peered into every room. Angie caught up with him, at the second flight of stairs, and slid her arm around his waist. He draped his arm around her shoulders.
“Where are you headed?” she asked.
“Roof,” he said. “Come see.”
The roof was flat, and had a balustrade railing around the edge of it. The view was amazing in all directions, but especially over the lake. Mac barely glanced at that. He wasn’t up here to admire the view.
He glanced at the roof. They’d managed to get the blood stains out.
“Mac?” Angie said. “What happened?”
“I can’t talk about it,” he managed to say. He didn’t look at her. He expected a tantrum, or for her to walk away, maybe for good. Women, he’d found, didn’t like secrets.
“OK,” Angie said. She walked to the edge and looked toward the water.
He glanced at her. She smiled back at him. “I know about having something you can’t talk about,” she said. “And you didn’t push me. When you’re ready? You can tell me. Or not.”
She had her own history, he knew. And he knew only the bare bones of it, because that was all she would tell him. Maybe all she could tell him.
And that loosened something inside him, and he found he could tell her after all.
“What do you know about Howard Parker and what went down?”
“What was printed in the paper,” she answered. She shrugged. “Maybe a bit more. This is where Parker held the hostages, wasn’t it? He wanted you all to turn yourselves over to him?”
“Parker had too many ideas about what should happen, and when one of his men didn’t produce, he’d start another man after us with another idea,” Mac said, sourly. “One of the men was a guy named Kellerman. He was a mentor to me in the Marines. My ideal of what a Marine should be. But he owed Parker, and he was loyal. More loyal to the man with power, than to his own men, in the end.”
He told her the story. When Parker’s men kidnapped Troy Maxim and then Danny Brown’s kid sister, they’d kept them here. And a squad of Marines, maybe ex-Marines, Mac wasn’t sure actually, kept guard from up here. They could watch anyone who came down the drive, see the entire perimeter, and yes, even watch the lake for someone coming in that way. It made the house impenetrable. So, Mac, Shorty and Danny had staged a press conference at the gate to distract the guards here. Then they’d slipped in through a hole in the southern fence. They got the kidnapped victims out, and were making their own escape when Kellerman saw Danny running for the fence. And he shot him in the back.
“I was enraged. Danny was this southern good ol’ boy. He was way past redneck territory all the way out to southern cracker. But he genuinely liked everyone. Not a mean bone in that boy’s body,” he said and smiled briefly. “He taught me that phrase.”
“And to drink Mountain Dew; I remember you telling us that up in the Cascades,” Angie said.
He smiled at that. “But he wasn’t all that smart, and he knew it. But he tried. When Troy needed backup, Danny gave it his all. I will always feel guilty, because I should have been Troy’s backup, not him. So, Danny’s dying in the center of the lawn out there. And I’m raging. I came up here, grabbed one of their H&K MP5s, and shot Kellerman. Point-blank. Took the wind out of everyone else’s sails. Rodriguez and Warren showed up about that time to clean up the mess. But Parker wasn’t here, he’d slipped through our fingers.”
“And you went after him,” Angie said. “That’s in the story. But this place is what bothers you?”
“I killed Kellerman because he killed one of his own men in a rage,” Mac said. “Oh, Danny and I had both been out for six years? Something like that. But still. But then I did the same thing, right? I killed Kellerman for the very same reasons — I was furious and felt betrayed. And really? I killed the wrong man. It was Parker who deserved to die. And he served less than a year in prison and is a recluse in Duvall.”
Angie was silent for a moment. “Kellerman chose to follow a man who was having people killed for his own road to power,” she said slowly. “He chose to do that, Mac. No one made him. He chose to be here. Chose to hold people hostage. Chose to shoot a man in the back. And you may have been angry, and you may have shot him because you felt betrayed. The man you admired — and let’s face it, you don’t look up to many — turned out to be one of the bad guys. He sold out the country. And you? You didn’t shoot him in the back. You marched up here, and in the midst of all these guards, you took him out.”
She walked back to him. “Could you have done it differently? Yeah, you could have,” she said. “Maybe you should have. But do I think less of you for what you did? No. The world is a better place because he’s not in it. And if that sounds cold? So be it.”
He studied her for a moment, and then he blew out the breath he didn’t even know he’d been holding. “Let’s check out the rest of the house,” he said.
He glanced around once more. “It is a good place for a lookout to be stationed,” he said slowly.
Mac walked through the house. While he might not have opened every door, he got most of them. He explored every floor, every exit. Angie tagged along with him. It didn’t bug him, and he was surprised by that.
Finally, he stopped at a bedroom that appeared unclaimed by any of the other residents of the house. “I’m beat,” he said. “I’m going to sleep for a while. You want to join me, or are you going to explore some more?”
Angie laughed. “I think we’ve seen all the rooms I need to see,” she said. “I’ve stayed in hotels with fewer rooms than this place. I think a nap is a fine idea.”