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Sunday, October 26, 2014, Seattle, Washington
Mac had been up most of the night writing this story. He glanced up at the wall clock, and then at Janet. Janet was serene, but her hair was a mess. The clock said 30 minutes to deadline.
He took another gulp of Mountain Dew, his third. Maybe his fourth?
He was waiting for a call back from Trevor Lorde regarding charges.
The story was to be told in parts. Page one summarized the story as best as they knew it. It was where Lorde’s info would go. The inside double truck had three parts. Those were written, and Joe Conte had edited them and then sent them on to Janet. Most of the double-truck was filled with Angie’s photos.
Angie had gone down the hill at the Parker house after he and Rand had left for the hospital, intending to find Janet as she’d said. But she started looking around, and decided she needed her camera bag more than she needed consoling.
Her photos were enough to get a conviction if presented as evidence. Misaki defusing a bomb outside the room where the kids were. Stan Warren reading men their rights. Whalen in cuffs — one of his personal favorites. The mangled gate, the bloody T-shirt, the ambulance. The God damned Humvee. The cops and their guns.
There were still more stories to write. He had some long hours ahead of him this week. But here they were, putting out a bulldog edition of the Sunday paper — something that hadn’t happened in a very long time. The story of what happened would be on the streets downtown this afternoon.
Sunday papers were mostly done on Friday. Sports did their front page late Saturday night. Really, Sunday’s page 1 was all that remained for Sunday morning, and sometimes not much of that. But today? Today they were doing a wrap, a four-page section that ‘wrapped’ around the front section, devoted to the breaking story.
One of Angie’s photos took up most of page one. That and the story they were still waiting for. The inside two pages — the double truck — were more stories and photos, and some of Mike Brewster’s infographics. Some had already run in previous days about the suicide cover up. But you couldn’t assume people kept up with the news. They didn’t. So, a lot of page 4 was the stories that had already run. Joe Conte had re-edited them lightly.
“Come on, man,” Mac muttered. We’ve only got 15 minutes.
He could write the lead with charges pending, and he guessed he was going to have to. He started in on it, then his phone rang.
Lorde.
“Yeah.”
“Rourke, six counts including attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder. Andrew Whalen, two counts, attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder. Hightower, Mason and Donovan, conspiracy to commit murder. More charges pending.”
“Thanks, man,” Mac said. He hesitated. “McBride?”
“Wasn’t there,” Lorde said tiredly. “Not at the Parker house, not at the hospital. If we get him, it will be because someone rolls on him. Might happen.”
It might, Mac thought. It wasn’t likely, and it didn’t sound like Lorde thought so either. Mac plugged in the information to the lead story. Read it one more time, and filed it. “Yours,” he said to Janet.
She glanced at the clock, read the lead carefully, and put it on the page. Hit send.
Mac sat back against his chair hard enough, he almost tipped it. “Time to go home,” he said. “I want some sleep.”
“Think about what you’re doing for tomorrow’s paper,” Janet said. She started to straighten her desk, then just shook her head. “Let’s get out of here. Joe? You’ve got the desk?”
Joe nodded. He’d gotten a full night’s sleep, the lucky fucker, Mac thought. Angie joined them as they walked by the photo department. Mike Brewster was waiting by the back door. He was driving. Another person who had actually gotten some sleep.
“So, no McBride?” Janet asked, her eyes closed and her head resting against the headrest in the front passenger seat.
“I might have some ideas about that,” Mac said coldly.
Monday, Mac decided having a team had real merit. There were plenty of stories to be done. Yesinia took on the arraignments and charges and all of that kind of thing. Joe Conte was working the suicide story. Mac stayed on the attempted murder of Lt. Nick Rodriguez and Detective Joe Dunbar. And he did the police blotter. Conte looked at him puzzled.
“Expected you to dump those on me,” he observed.
Mac just shrugged. He called all of the numbers he had every morning during the week. Not all of the calls got done before deadline, but that was OK. Janet ran with whatever he turned in. He called every station precinct house. Every desk sergeant he knew. Dozens of them. And he asked them what they knew, and then, because they were cops, and he was a reporter, he made time for gossip.
There had been a few more cops involved than they’d spotted. Lorde thought there might be still a few out there. Mac hoped he found them — and he’d better do it before Mac did. The number of faked suicides alone made him sick.
One of them that still wasn’t charged with anything was Sgt. Scott McBride. He was denying he knew anything about anything. Mac was waiting to see what Lorde managed.
He’d found the swatting for hire case. And that hadn’t been some church goer with a grudge — or maybe it was. He was a bit disillusioned about churchgoers. Perhaps Naomi and Kate Fairchild and their household had led him to be more charitable toward churchgoers than they warranted. And given the events with the Army of God? He hadn’t had much goodwill to begin with. But the swatting for hire had been a drug dealer taking out an ex-wife who was going to testify against him.
That went down hard. Not just with Mac, but with a lot of cops who might have been secretly sympathetic to Rourke’s rhetoric. Hard to go along with that one.
Whalen’s Foundation was a front. If you had a problem you needed fixed, you dropped them a note. Win Whalen gamed it out with teams — most thought the scenarios really were for games. Those who were amenable, though, could pick up extra money for ‘gaming it IRL’. Like Sharon had. She’d been the dispatcher that night. He shook his head. He hadn’t talked to her about it, but Angie had. Angie had not been amused.
He’d testified in a closed door proceeding at an Internal Affairs committee hearing on Tuesday afternoon. That had been interesting. Lorde cautioned him that he wouldn’t be able to write about the proceedings. Mac rolled his eyes — how were they going to stop him from writing the same things he told them? Lorde just sighed.
Captain Rourke and the three officers — Hightower, Mason and Donovan — had been charged and were locked up as flight risks. Same with Andrew Whalen. Win Whalen and his son Scott, and two others — including that bitch Sharon that he’d gone to rescue — were charged with attempted murder with a bomb. He thought they were lucky to be alive. Misaki had turned them over to Stan’s custody before she went to defuse the bomb and tell Paulina and Janet. Had she done things in a different order, Paulina would have gutted them.
And Janet would have held them while she did it.
And on Friday, he made a printout of a file sent to him anonymously and drove out to the North Precinct where Sgt. Scott McBride ruled. He walked into the building, nodded at the desk clerk, and headed back to McBride’s office.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve coming here,” McBride blustered, getting to his feet.
Mac studied him for a moment. He was 48 years old, stood probably 6-foot-2. A bit beefy — he’d played college football, and like a lot of players, hadn’t been able to keep the muscle. His gray hair was cut short. He looked like a man other men would follow. Hell, he was — you didn’t get to be president of the police union with its 4,000 members if you didn’t have a commanding presence.
“I wanted to see what a man like you looks like,” Mac said. “A man who leaves his men to take the fall. Hightower, Mason and Donovan did your dirty work for decade or more. And yet, when they go into the Parker house, you’re not with them.”
“I had nothing to do with what they’ve been doing,” McBride said. He didn’t even blink.
“You think pleading ignorant will work?” Mac asked with interest. “They’ve been faking suicides for years, and you didn’t know? Makes you look pretty stupid, because those men aren’t real bright.”
McBride said nothing.
Mac continued. “When Andrew Whalen runs into trouble at the hospital, he calls you, and you refuse to come. Even Rourke answered his call. Rourke was there the night they shot Rodriguez. But you? No.”
“I wasn’t there, because I had nothing to do with any of it,” he repeated.
“No one believes that,” Mac said. “I’ve spent all week making my blotter calls, asking people if they believe that. No one does. There are two camps, really. One thinks you bailed on them because you’re a coward. The other camp thinks you set them up all along. But they all agree, that the union isn’t worth much if it’s headed by a man who would set up his men and then leave them to take the fall. I mean, what if they have to call for backup? What if no one comes?”
McBride just stared at him. “You finished?” he said finally.
“Almost,” Mac said. He handed McBride the printout of the file he’d received this morning. “It’s a petition for a vote of no confidence,” Mac said. “I hear it will certify. I don’t know if Trevor Lorde and the powers that be will be able to bring charges against you and make them stick. Gossip seems to think it will only happen if someone rolls over on you. And given how powerful the union is, and that you’re its president, no one seems to think anyone will risk it.”
McBride smirked a bit.
Mac smiled. And the rage that had been burning inside must have showed, because McBride wiped it off his face. “But if the union takes away your position? Well you won’t be so powerful, will you? And a man like you? I bet you’ve made a lot of enemies over the years. And they’ll just be waiting for the chance to even the score.”
McBride paled a bit, and Mac nodded his head once. “So, the vote of no confidence is next week. Good luck with that.”
McBride didn’t back down, and Mac almost admired that. “This isn’t over, between you and I,” McBride said at last.
Mac smiled. “Good,” he said. “Because I’m not done. There’s a man who probably won’t walk again because of you. A finer man than either you or I will ever be. A lot of damage to people’s homes, cars, work places. A lot of people are traumatized. Kids who have nightmares and don’t feel safe in their own beds. And I bet you can’t even tell me why. You did it because you could. And you will pay, one way or another. If I were you? I’d go to Lorde and confess. You’ll live longer if you do.”
Mac gave him a moment to respond, and when he didn’t, he turned around and walked out.
Angie was waiting for him in the car. “Well?” she demanded.
Mac shrugged. “Do we have time to run up to Marysville?”
Angie glanced at her watch. “Sure.”
Craig Anderson wasn’t at his gun shop. There was a For Sale sign in the window. An envelope with Mac’s name on it was taped to the door.
“Thanks for not turning me in,” the note said. “I’ve pissed off too many people, though, and some of them are licensed to carry weapons and shoot bad guys. I’ll disappear, start over. Maybe do a better job of it this time. You take care of that girl of yours. — Craig.”
Mac carefully folded the letter back into the envelop and put it away in his backpack. He thought he might have Dunbar run the prints on it. If there were any. Craig Anderson was a careful man. And then he took Angie out for seafood down on the docks in the Everett harbor. He asked her if she’d move in with him, and what about the bungalow on Queen Anne? She’d gotten misty-eyed and agreed.
“We’ve got to get back,” Angie said, looking at her watch for what had to be the umpteenth time. Mac looked at her with suspicion. “I promised everyone we’d be at the Bohemian.”
“For Halloween?” Mac yelped. And his birthday, although he hadn’t told her that. But he had plans for tonight, starting with this dinner, and ending at the Queen Anne house that didn’t involve ‘everyone’ at the Bohemian.
She just grinned at him, and so Mac Davis was at the Bohemian on Halloween. He drew the line at the mask — Angie had a black mask for him that would make him look like the Lone Ranger, she said — but he was here.
He was spelling the DJ, because damn it, he was 30 years old today. He grinned. It didn’t bother him as much as he thought it would.
Felt good to be alive, actually.
Angie had a table staked out with a bunch of coworkers from the paper including Mike Brewster, Joe Conte and Yesinia Vilchis — his team. He rolled his eyes. But there was a large crowd — more Angie’s friends than his, but that was OK. They were laughing. A lot of margaritas had been consumed already — and the night was young. He was mixing some beats, and watching the table, seeing what it took to get them up and dancing. Angie glanced over at him and grinned.
The phone in his pocket vibrated. He groaned. He put on a song by Pharrell Williams and looked at the caller ID. Shorty.
He turned away from the microphone. “Yo.”
“Where the hell are you?” Shorty demanded.
“Bohemian,” Mac said, startled.
Shorty hung up. Mac looked at his phone skeptically, wondering what the hell that was about?
He might never stop flinching at the feel of his phone vibrating — it had just been two weeks after all. And this last week had been no joke. The aftermath was almost as bad as the original events. Well for him. Nick Rodriguez probably wouldn’t see it that way.
Most of them were still living at the Parker house. Shorty had gone home and back to teaching, but he showed up most evenings to help piece the stories together. Misaki cleaned off her disguise and was still living there too. Same with Ruri. Both still dressed in black, so he guessed that wasn’t part of the disguise. They were also older than he realized. Older than he was.
Speaking of disguises and costumes, there were a lot of costumes around. It made him tense, to be honest, although he was trying to accept it as light-hearted fun. It didn’t work. He looked around the bar at the people dancing. Was that really someone in a bear costume?
He shook his head. Pharrell was done with his song, and he went back to mixing his own beats.
Tim Brandt had gone back to the Fairchild boarding house. Mac found time to talk to him. A crisis of faith and a loss of his virginity — Mac tried not to laugh. But he’d listened to him, and that seemed to be enough. Those seemed like such simple things compared to the life or death matters they’d been dealing with. But then Mac had never had much faith, and could barely remember how old he’d been when he lost his virginity — 13? Long time ago.
But that was how it was, Mac thought. Personal things got mingled in among the headline events. Joe Dunbar was buying a house — in between testifying for Lorde — in the same neighborhood that the cops tried to set him up in. Rand and Janet were going to build the house in Ballard together and move in — although neither of them had time to breathe these days, between the federal investigation into the police corruption charges and the stories the Examiner was running.
And Angie was giving her roommates notice — they were here somewhere. They would move her into the house over the next couple of weekends. He grinned. It felt good. Really good.
Misaki was coming to grips with her real identity as Kristy Whalen — and wasn’t that a trip? She stood to take over the whole business since it looked like everyone else was going to jail. She and Janet had more than one talk — Mac would see them out walking together. Well, Janet was a good mentor.
He would know.
But he was surprised when Misaki — Kristy — looking quite businesslike, showed up at the Examiner one day. She’d smiled at him, but then she disappeared into the publisher’s office. He still hadn’t ferreted out the details of that meeting. But at a guess, the Examiner wasn’t in danger of losing whatever funding the Whalen Venture Capital LLC had invested in them years ago. But he was just guessing. Janet hadn’t answered his questions, and Misaki had looked too vulnerable for him to corner and grill her just to satisfy his curiosity.
He and Mike Brewster had several conversations about data from police and courts. Janet was leaning toward trying out a team structure with just courts and cops. If it worked she might expand it to education and city government. So far, teams seemed to mean a lot more meetings. But since he liked the people on the courts and cops team — safety, Janet called it — it wasn’t too much of a hardship. Just more people at the coffee shop after deadline.
Nick was slowly improving. They thought he would be able to come home next week. Anna said they were staying out at the Parker house for his convalescence. Well why not? The Moores were still there too. They would have to completely rebuild their homes anyway. And it would help to have Juan Moore by Nick’s side especially during the first few weeks. He doubted either family were going back to the Sand Point cul-de-sac. Fucking neighbors.
He kept writing stories all week long as more pieces of the puzzle came to light. He protested that he hadn’t blown up anything this time, but Angie showed him the photos of the Parker house, and he’d winced. He hoped the Parker family had good insurance. Howard Parker had been a first-class asshole, but the rest of the family had been civic minded enough to let them use the place. It didn’t look quite as bad the Sand Point cul-de-sac houses, but it was close.
Not to mention the damage to the gate.
Mac had used a lot of the recording from Rourke’s conversation with Nick over the last week. But he’d also just listened to it, and thought about it a lot. It worried him. It said a lot about what was coming, he thought. He thought about the church he’d gone to in Mount Vernon. And now Valley View Community Church. He wished he knew more about religion and politics. Maybe he’d give FBI agent Rebecca Nesbitt a call. She was the expert on that. Play her the tape. Get her take.
The door to the bar opened, and Shorty walked in. Mac grinned, and looked around for the DJ. Time to turn it back over to him. Following behind Shorty was Kevin and Brian Winters. Mac swallowed hard. He hadn’t seen Brian since they’d carted him off in an ambulance. He wasn’t sure he should be seeing him now. Brian looked a bit strained to be here. That had been a bad wound.
And behind them were Misaki and Ruri. And a few others from Mac’s past. Was that Jules? It was. Friends that went way back. Mac stopped in front of the DJ booth.
“Surprise,” Angie said, wrapping her arms around him.
“Happy birthday!” someone shouted. And then the bar cheered.
Mac wasn’t sure what to do. This was so not his scene. But well, one thing usually worked — he kissed the girl.
He’d lived to be 30. He wasn’t in jail. And in his only shootout with cops, he’d been the good guy and they’d been the crooks. His old friends would never believe it.