“Jeez-thirty-five yards? I can barely see that far,” Detective Goscislaw “Gus” Szymanski said as I recounted the story. Gus and his boss, Lieutenant Dwayne Brown, were treating Toni and me to an early birthday lunch. I was a week away from turning the big three-oh.
“That’s right,” Dwayne agreed. “Thirty-five yards-that’s why God invented sniper rifles with big scopes.”
“How long did you have?” Gus asked.
“Two seconds,” Toni said.
“Holy crap,” Gus said. “Takes me longer than that to move my coat back just to reach my gun.”
“We didn’t have to draw,” Toni said. “We got to start from low ready.”
“Still,” Dwayne said, shaking his head. “That’s crazy fast for that distance.”
Dwayne heads up the SPD’s Special Investigations Unit, and Gus is his partner and assistant. They work a variety of cases-mostly those that SPD brass deems politically sensitive. Dwayne and Gus make an unlikely pair. Dwayne’s a forty-something, good-looking black man with more than twenty years on the Seattle force. He’s a sharp professional. The fact that he’s naturally smooth in front of a television camera makes him a good representative for the police department in touchy situations. I’ve known him for six years-we used to work together from time to time when I was with the U.S. Army Sixth Military Police Group (CID) stationed at Fort Lewis in Tacoma. Dwayne was a detective at the time, and we found ourselves assigned to the same cases on four or five occasions. Although the years had caused Dwayne to become a little less lean than he used to be, he was still an impressive figure, not to mention a very slick dresser.
Gus-now Gus was a different story. Toni and I had met Gus last summer when we worked on the disappearance case of Gina Fiore. Like me, Gus served in the army as a grunt before going into law enforcement. He was with the First Infantry in Desert Storm in Kuwait and Iraq in the early ’90s. Dwayne and Gus are a picture in contrasts. Dwayne is refined and classy-looking. Gus usually looks a little disheveled-he'll never be accused of being either refined or classy, no matter how hard he tries. And, more than most, he’s completely smitten with Toni.
“And you went first?” Gus said to Toni.
“Yep.”
“And you hit the target?”
“In the chin. Just below actually-in the neck. A seven-point shot.”
Dwayne whistled. “That’s damn good,” he said. “Damn nice shooting with a handgun at long range. You beat the clock?”
“One point eight seven.”
“Son of a bitch,” he said. “That’s awesome. You shoot what-a Glock, right?”
“Glock 23,” she said.
“That’s the.40-cal?”
“Yep.”
Dwayne held up his hand, and Toni happily high-fived him. “Damn good shooting,” he said again. He turned to me. “And you?”
“I went next.”
“No shit. I figured that out all by myself. What happened when you went next?”
I didn’t say anything. Finally, Toni stepped in. “What happened is deadeye here raised his gun and fired in almost the exact same motion. Hit the target right between the friggin’ eyes. One point zero four seconds.”
“From thirty five yards?” Gus said with appreciation. “Head shot-right between the eyes, no less-from thirty-five yards? In one second?”
“One point zero four from beep to boom,” Toni said. She shook her head. “I knew I was screwed when I missed the center mass ten ring. I left him an opening.” She glanced at me. “He doesn’t need much.”
“Well,” I said, “I wouldn’t exactly call your shot a miss. Your guy wasn’t walking away.”
“Yeah, but I liked the way you rubbed it in. You could have played it safe and shot center mass for a relatively easy ten. But noooo. Instead, you pop the target right between the eyes. Show-off.”
“Damn,” Gus said.
“Well,” Dwayne said, setting his Coke down, “I don’t know about you, Gus, but I feel much safer knowing that these two sharpshooters are around. Bad guy’d be a fool to take us on now.”
“Let’s hope it never comes to that,” I said. “I sure don’t want to have to shoot anyone.” I meant it. I had enough of that in Afghanistan and Iraq to last a lifetime.
“True,” Gus said. “Still-better to be able to shoot and not have to than to have to shoot and not be able to. Here’s to sharpshooters!”
None of us were drinking alcohol, but we still touched glasses.
“And you want to know the really amazing thing?” Gus said.
“What’s that?” Dwayne answered.
“This hot-shit shooting is coming from a guy who’s nearly thirty years old!”
Dwayne and Toni laughed. “That’s right!” Dwayne said. “Next thing you know, you’ll be needing glasses-bifocals even. Happy birthday next week.”
“Hear, hear!” Gus added.
We clinked glasses again.
“Thank you, guys,” I said. “I feel older already.”
“Yeah,” Dwayne said. “’Bout time you settled down.”
I smiled.
“Damn straight,” Gus said. “Clock’s tickin’.” He looked at Toni, then back at me. “Speakin’ of which, now that the two of you are together. .”
“Something that makes me very happy, I might add,” Dwayne said.
“Me, too,” Gus added. “Although you know my door’s always open, darlin’,” he said to Toni, “’case this guy here does you wrong.”
“Good,” Toni said. She looked at me and smiled. “I may have to hold you to that.”
“Right,” Gus said. “Anyway, now that the two of you are together, what’s next? Any plans?”
I shrugged. “I’m happy,” I said. I turned to Toni. “Real happy. You happy?”
“Not counting you outshooting me? Again?” she said. “Other than that, yeah, I’m happy.” She leaned over and kissed me. I get a little light-headed whenever she does this. People always look at Toni-men and women. But when she kisses me, or even holds my hand, then they look at me, too. And then they must say, “I don’t get it.” I admit, it’s a pretty heady experience. I kissed her back, and then I turned to Gus.
“There,” I said. “See? We’re both happy.”
“I can see that,” he said.
“Plans will take care of themselves,” Toni said. She smiled at Gus. “But I appreciate the offer of a safety net.”
Gus beamed.
“Guess we’re all happy, then,” Dwayne said.
I thought about it and realized I’d never been happier-not even close. Toni and I had “crossed over” from friends to something much more than friends the previous Saint Patrick’s Day when I was laid up in the hospital with a concussion. Up until that point, we’d been classmates, and then friends, and then working associates. And the four years up to that point had definitely been hands-off between us, out of respect for the doctrine of separation of work and romance. That’s the way I was taught in the army.
Of course, all that changed on Saint Paddy’s Day. Something about lying in a hospital bed-coming to grips with your own mortality-makes you understand what’s important and what’s not in your life. Lying there, hooked up to all those machines, a light had suddenly gone on, and I had realized then that Toni was the most important thing in my life. Being mortal, I didn’t necessarily have unlimited time to get my ass in gear and let her know. I realized then that my own “no fraternizing” rule was bullshit, and it was going to cost me the best thing I’d ever known. Thank God I came to my senses and broke free. Life is short, and it’s best not to waste time.
So Toni and I may have been hands-off before then, but we’ve damn sure been hands-on ever since. I glanced at her. She looked back and smiled-a real heart-melting, reserved-only-for-me smile that made my heart flutter. Yeah, I was happy. I was damn happy.
But the question of plans was an interesting one. What was supposed to happen next? No doubt, things were good between us. Yes, I’d taken what for me was a pretty big step by initiating our relationship a few months ago after literally years of status quo-a “one giant leap” kind of thing. And yes, we were both happy. Cool. But did that mean I was supposed to keep the relationship moving forward? Or were we now entering the next round of status quo? And if so, how long should I expect it to last? Years again? Or was I already supposed to be taking another step?
The problem surfaced-if only in my mind-every time she came over. We were “together,” but we didn’t live together, nothing like that. She had her place; I had mine. She stayed over from time to time-that was nice (damn nice, actually), but eventually, she always ended up going home-to her home, that is.
All these questions-questions I never even dreamed I’d be considering until a short while ago-were starting to weigh heavily. Then again, I was approaching thirty. Clearly, I was in uncharted territory.
After lunch, Toni and I went back to the office where I spent the next half hour answering e-mails and returning phone calls. I entered a few invoices into our accounting system-as a business owner, I wear many hats. As I looked over the check register and checked my bank balance, it became pretty clear that Logan PI was going to be needing some work pretty soon-the kind of work that paid. I’ve long since come to understand that the business’s cash position doesn’t grow in a nice steady line. Far from it, actually. It bounces up and down in a wild sawtooth kind of way. Fortunately, most times, it trends up. When we get ahead of the curve, I draw funds out and stash them into my savings reserve. That’s the good news. The bad news is that with four employees on the books plus the office rent, the overhead is relentless-the meter never stops ticking. We need to keep this machine busy, that’s for sure. Looking at the computer screen, I could see that if we didn’t start pulling in some paying jobs pretty soon, I’d have to tap the reserves. I thought back to the couple of times in the past four years that I’d had to do that. Going backward leaves a bad taste. I hate it.
My phone rang, startling me back to the here and now.
“You ready?” Toni asked over the intercom.
“Yeah, I’ll be right out.”
Speaking of non-paying jobs, we’d decided to make a quick run up to Isabel’s house in Lynnwood. Her mom worked swing shift at a nearby hospital, and we hoped to catch her before she left for work. If we could spend a few minutes with her before her husband got home, we hoped she might answer some questions for us. I grabbed my keys and a notebook, and we hit the road. We slogged our way through Lake Union traffic and twenty minutes later, we were on I-5 headed north.
“What do you think we’ll find?” Toni asked as we crossed Portage Bay on Lake Union.
I thought for a second. “From what Kelli told us, my guess is we’ll find a pretty dysfunctional family.”
Toni nodded. “Safe guess. Do you think the woman will talk to us?”
“Hard to say,” I said. “Remember, we’ve only heard one side of the story-and that second hand to boot. What Isabel said to Kelli is a serious charge, to be sure. But just to be safe, I don’t think we should be jumping to any conclusions as to whether or not it’s true-at least not until we talk to some of the other people involved. We don’t have enough information yet.”
Toni nodded again. We drove north for ten minutes or so without talking, listening to more of the new Brandi Carlile album.
We had just passed the Edmonds ferry off-ramp at Highway 104 when Toni turned to me.
“Thank you,” she said.
I glanced at her. “For what?”
“Thanks for taking the time to look into this.”
I smiled. “For you? Anything.”
“That’s nice, but this job doesn’t pay, and I know we need some paying jobs.” I hadn’t gone over our financial picture with Toni, but it didn’t come as any great surprise that she’d been able to figure it out. She’s quick, and she doesn’t miss much.
I shrugged. “We’ll be fine,” I said. “We have some things coming up.”
She was quiet for a few seconds, and then she said, “Well, thanks, in any case. You don’t have to do this.”
I smiled. “I want to. It’s important to you. And if it’s important to you, it’s important to me. Besides, I’d probably be all over this anyway-runaway abused teenager and all. That’s not really something you can say no to. Let’s just do a little checking around and see if there’s anything there.”
We got off the freeway at the Alderwood Mall Parkway exit in Lynnwood. I hung a quick left on 196th and three minutes later, we pulled up in front of Isabel’s house on 192nd Street. The neighborhood was a subdivision of single-family homes that looked to have the inexpensive, low-detail style that was prevalent in the early ’70s. Still, the landscape was mature and, for the most part, the homes were well kept. Isabel’s home at 4268 was one of a handful of exceptions-it was definitely in need of repair. The brown paint on the two-story home was faded to a grayish tan. The white trim was peeling. The door, also white, was worn and scuffed. The front lawn had more holes and weeds than lawn.
A light blue, ten-year-old Nissan sat next to an old pickup truck in the driveway. The primer-covered truck clearly hadn’t moved in quite some time-if the dirt and cracked windshield weren’t enough of a giveaway, the fact that both tires on the right side were flat was. The truck had a definite list and appeared to be banking like a motorcycle into a gentle right sweeper.
“Home, sweet home,” Toni said.
“It’s a shithole,” I agreed. “But I’ve seen worse.”
Toni nodded. “I believe it.”
We got out of the Jeep and walked to the front door. I rang the bell.
A few seconds later, an attractive woman opened the door. She was a couple of inches shorter than Toni, and she had dark, wavy hair. She was dressed in business clothes-royal blue blazer, a green skirt with a white top. She looked to be perhaps forty years old.
“Good afternoon, ma’am,” I said. “Are you Marisol Webber?” Kenny had looked up the property owner records before we left so that we had full names.
As soon as I spoke, the woman’s eyebrows arched, and she sucked in her breath.
She nodded. “Are you police?” she asked. “Are you here about Isabel? Did something happen to her?”
“No, ma’am,” I said, shaking my head. “We’re not the police.” I handed her my business card, and Toni did the same. “We’re private investigators,” I said. “But you’re right-we are here about Isabel. We wondered if we might be able to ask you a few questions about your daughter.”
“You’re not police?” she asked again. She studied our cards carefully. I shook my head. “No, ma’am.”
“We’re here because a friend of Isabel’s contacted us,” Toni said. “She said Isabel is missing, and she’s concerned about her. We were asked to look into things.”
“Who?” Marisol asked. “Who hired you?”
We didn’t want to reveal Kelli’s name to Isabel’s mother, and especially not to her stepfather. “I’m afraid we’re not able to say,” I said. “Our client asked to remain anonymous. At least for the time being. They want to protect their privacy, but they are very concerned about Isabel. I’m sure you understand.”
She looked at me, confused.
“Would you mind if we came in and asked you a few questions?” Toni said.
Marisol hesitated. She glanced up and down the street quickly. “Okay,” she said. “But just for a few minutes. I have to go to work.”
“Thank you,” Toni said.
Marisol led us inside to the living room. The home was clean and neat. Toni and I sat on an overstuffed, floral-print sofa. Marisol sat in a chair across from us.
“Marisol-,” I started to say.
“Please, call me Mary,” she said. “I’m not used to Marisol anymore.”
I smiled. “Okay, sorry, Mary.” I opened my notebook. “Can you start by confirming for us that Isabel is missing?”
She stared at me for a moment. “She’s not home, if that’s what you mean.”
I cocked my head. Word games? C’mon. “Alright. Let me ask it another way,” I said. “Do you know where Isabel is?”
She looked out the living room window for a second and gathered her thoughts before turning back to me. “She left,” she said. “Isabel ran away from home-maybe a month ago now.”
I nodded. “Thank you. That’s our understanding as well, but I needed to confirm it with you.”
“During that time, have you heard from her?” Toni asked.
“She called once and left a message on my voicemail,” Mary said. “She said she was okay and that she’d call back later.”
“When was that?” I asked.
“A couple of weeks ago.”
“And has she called back since then?”
Mary shook her head. “No. Not yet.”
“Does she have a cell phone?” I asked. I knew she did, but I wanted to hear what her mother had to say.
“Yes.”
“Have you tried calling her?”
“Yes, of course. It just goes to voicemail. Isabel doesn’t call me back.”
“Have you filed a missing person report with the police?” Toni asked.
Mary stared at her for a moment. “No,” she said.
“Why not?” Toni asked.
“I can’t control her,” Mary said. “She’s sixteen. She’s making her own decisions now.”
I arched an eyebrow and then shook my head. “I’m not sure the law’s going to look at it the same way you do,” I said. “Matter of fact, I’m pretty sure that the law would say you’re supposed to file a missing person report if your minor child disappears.”
She said nothing, and the quiet began to grow in intensity.
This interview was off to a bad start. Toni sensed this as well, so she stepped in.
“Mary,” she said, “we’re not here to cause you any trouble, believe me. All we want to do is to help Isabel. Let me ask you this. Why would Isabel leave? Did something happen?”
“Yeah,” Mary said. “I guess she just grew up. She decided she doesn’t want to be here anymore. So she left.”
“Nothing happened around here to make her want to leave?” Toni asked.
Before Mary could answer, Toni continued. “Usually, kids don’t just up and leave for no reason. Usually, something happens that makes them feel like they need to leave. It doesn’t always make sense to us as adults, but it does to them. Did something happen that made Isabel feel like she needed to leave?”
Mary looked at Toni. “What do you mean? Something like what?”
“Anything,” Toni said. “Anything at all that might have caused Isabel to feel like she needed to leave home.”
Mary hesitated and then shook her head. She didn’t say anything.
“Did the two of you get along?”
Mary closed her eyes tightly. Was she trying to hide something? She nodded. “Yeah, we got along fine. We’ve been through a lot together.”
“So you’d say the relationship between the two of you was good?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Did the two of you talk about things?” Toni asked. “I mean, if Isabel had a problem, would she come to you with it?”
Mary thought about this for a moment. “Well, first off-I work swing shift. I’m only home for two nights a week, so we never had the chance to talk too much. But other than that, yeah-I think we were okay.”
“So you don’t think she had any problems with you, right?”
Mary looked away for a moment, and then she shook her head and said, “I don’t think so. She had no reason to have any problems with me.”
“How about your husband? Did Isabel get along well with him?”
Mary didn’t answer, but I could see tears start to form in her eyes. Toni noticed, too, so she slowed down and changed directions.
“How long have you been married?” Toni asked.
“Almost five years,” Mary said.
“And during this time, have you always worked late?”
“Yeah, at Lynnwood Memorial in the admitting office.”
“Okay,” she said. “And your husband-does he work swing shift also?”
Mary shook her head. “No, he works days. He goes in at seven and gets off at four. He’s a mechanic at Auto Express.”
“So basically, he’s alone with Isabel almost every night,” Toni said.
Mary realized what Toni was getting at. She slowly started to nod her head.
“Did Isabel ever talk to you about any problems she might have had with your husband?” Toni said.
Mary shook her head. “No. She never said anything.”
Toni stared hard at her. “Would she have? Would she have said something?”
Mary thought for a few moments and then shrugged. “I don’t know. I hope so.”
“Well, let me ask a different question. What do you think? I mean, do you think it’s possible that something happened between Isabel and your husband? And if it did, could that something have caused Isabel to run away?”
Mary’s eyes filled with tears again, and she clenched her hands together tightly. She turned to look at me and then turned back to Toni. “I don’t think so,” she said.
“If you don’t think so,” Toni said, “why are you getting so emotional?”
“I don’t like what you’re implying.”
It was quiet for a few seconds. “It’s ugly,” I said. “And we’re sorry.”
“Look,” Toni said. “Mary-I don’t know what kind of relationship you have with your husband. But I’m asking you, for just a moment, to put it aside. Think only about Isabel for just a moment. She’s out there somewhere. She’s alone, and she needs your help like never before. She’s your daughter. Speaking completely honestly, do you think it’s possible that something happened between Isabel and your husband? Something that caused Isabel to leave?”
Mary looked up at the ceiling and thought for a second. “It’s possible, I suppose. Maybe.”
Toni nodded. “Okay, Mary. This won’t be easy for you to hear, but you’re Isabel’s mother, so you have the right to hear it. I want you to know that our client told us that Isabel specifically said that your husband raped her the night before her sixteenth birthday.”
Mary bit her lower lip and continued to look up at the ceiling. The tears now flowed down her face.
Toni continued. “We were told that Isabel said he raped her, and that that’s why she ran away.”
Mary dropped her head and stared at the floor. She shook her head silently.
“In your opinion,” Toni said, “could that have happened?”
Mary hesitated, then, after a few seconds, she slowly nodded her head. “I didn’t know,” she said quietly.
“You didn’t know, but did you suspect something like this was happening?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t even suspect,” she said. “I wasn’t suspicious. I never put things together. . But it fits.” She paused to take a deep, hitching breath. “She changed,” she continued. “Izzy changed.”
“How so?”
“She was more withdrawn-more inside herself. When she was a little girl, she was always happy and outgoing. She had lots of friends. She loves to sing-she used to sing all the time. The past few years, she’s more quiet. She stays up in her room. I thought it was because she was getting older-growing up.”
“And now?”
“Now I don’t know,” she said quietly. “It’s happening too fast. I don’t know what to think.”
It was quiet for a few seconds, and then Toni said, “Mary, if this happened-and it sounds like it might have-or at least it could have. Anyway, if it happened, this is a very serious crime.”
“I didn’t know,” Mary said again.
“I understand,” Toni said. “And like we said earlier, we’re not here to see you get in trouble.”
“That’s right,” I said. “If Isabel didn’t confide in you, and if you didn’t have clear evidence as to what happened, I don’t think you have any legal worries. But that’s not really the issue with us anyway. The police and the district attorney worry about that kind of stuff. We’ve been asked to look into Isabel’s disappearance. I’m sure our client is more interested in finding Isabel than in the legal aspects of this case.”
Mary nodded.
I continued. “But that said, there’s a few things that need to happen now-a few things you should do to protect yourself.”
She looked at me.
“First off, you need to file a missing person report right away. Do you understand?”
“Okay.”
“You’ll do that with the Lynnwood Police Department,” Toni said.
Mary nodded.
“Even if your husband doesn’t want to. Do it on your own. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“It’s important, because we’ll be talking to the police tomorrow or the next day as part of our investigation. You don’t want them to hear from us that Isabel is missing. They should hear this from you. Today. Got it?”
“Yes.”
Let me ask you something,” I said. “Is your husband-Tracey’s his name, right?”
She nodded.
“Is he physically abusive towards you? Has he ever hit you?”
Mary’s face contorted and she started crying again. She nodded.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I understand,” I said. “Then we’ll need to be very careful. Will he become violent if he knows you talked to us?”
She shook her head. “Probably not just for talking,” she said. “He doesn’t do it very often.” She paused and then added, “I sure can’t tell him what we talked about, though.”
“No, you don’t want to do that. If he or anyone else asks, you tell ‘em we stopped by to ask some questions about Isabel, but you didn’t tell us anything other than she’s gone and you don’t know anything else. Okay?”
She nodded. It was silent for a moment, and then she said, “He’s not a bad person, you know.”
I looked at her, shocked at what I’d heard. “Who’s that?” I asked. “You mean the guy that beats you up and raped your fifteen-year-old daughter? That guy? Come on, Mary. You’re going to sit here and say he’s not a bad person?”
Toni put her hand on my arm to get me to back off a little.
Mary looked at me.
I made sure I was well under control before I continued. “Don’t kid yourself,” I said. “Bad people don’t come with a sign stapled to their chest. You admit the guy’s violent around you. That’s bad enough. But if he molested or raped your own daughter? If he did that-and she says he did-then Mary, I think he’s a monster.” I paused and then said, “Think about it. I look in your eyes, and I can see that you’re scared of the guy. Terrified, really. Am I right?”
She looked at me without speaking. Her eyes said I was right.
“Well, scared as you are-remember-you’re an adult. You’re a grown woman. Imagine how it must feel to a little girl-a fifteen-year-old girl-knowing she has nowhere to go, no one to turn to.”
Mary stared at me. Her face was red and puffy from crying.
“I’m willing to apply the innocent-until-proven-guilty rule to the guy. I don’t know him. And I don’t know Isabel well enough to know if she’s telling the truth or not. But you do, don’t you? You know.”
She continued to look at me.
“You do for sure,” I continued. “And I can see in your eyes that you believe her. You believe your daughter.”
It was quiet for a few seconds, and then she asked, “If he did something-something to Isabel-what will happen to him?”
“Listen,” I said. “If it can be proven that your husband raped your fifteen year old daughter-that’s called second-degree rape in Washington state. It’s a class A felony. He could go to prison for ten years or more, and he’ll have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.” I paused and then added, “And if you ask me, that’s damn lenient. There’s nothing he can do to pay back what he took from your daughter.”
She sniffed and thought about this for a second. Then she said, “What if it can’t be proven?”
I thought about this for a second. “Then I guess life goes on,” I said. “Even if it can’t be proven, you’ll still know the truth. You’ll have to decide what you want to do-whether or not you want to live with the guy. But it will be your choice.”
She nodded. I felt sorry for her. She went to work every day. She was doing her best to provide for her family. Unwittingly, she’d allowed a monster into her home. She’d have to come to grips with that and, I hoped, do the right thing. But it would be hard to come to grips with and even harder to confront.
“Would you mind showing us Isabel’s room?” Toni asked.
Mary nodded. “Okay.” She gestured toward the stairs. “It’s upstairs.”
We followed her upstairs and down the hall. Isabel’s room was on the front side of the house.
“She kept it a little cluttered,” Mary said as she led us through the doorway. We looked around and surveyed the room.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Toni said. “It looks just like a teenage girl’s bedroom’s supposed to look.”
A large Justin Bieber poster was on one wall; a Selena Gomez poster on another. Isabel’s dresser held several bottles of inexpensive perfume. A bulletin board was mounted on the wall next to the dresser mirror.
Toni and I noticed a strip of four pictures on the bulletin board-the kind of photos you get from a booth at a mall. Kelli Blair and another dark-haired girl were posing in them-clowning around. Other than the posters, these were the only photos in the room.
“Is this Isabel?” I asked, pointing to the pictures.
Mary nodded. “Yes. Isabel’s the one on the left. That was earlier this year I think.”
Isabel was a pretty girl. In the photo, she and Kelli were cracking up-looked like they’d been having a great time.
“Who’s this other girl?” I asked. Seemed like a natural question, and I wanted to keep Kelli’s relationship with us hidden.
“That’s Isabel’s friend Kelli,” Mary said. “She lives nearby.”
“Do you know her last name?” I asked.
She thought for a second and then said, “Sorry. I don’t”
“Well, maybe we can get it at school. Would you mind if we borrowed this picture and made some copies?”
“No, I don’t mind.”
I unpinned the photo strip and stuck it in my notebook. The pictures served two purposes. First, we needed a good picture of Isabel to show around if we were going to be looking for her. Second, I’d just as soon leave no reminders of Kelli in Isabel’s room-reminders for her stepfather to glom onto.
We had what we needed, so we headed back downstairs.
At that moment, a shiny white Ford F150 pulled up in front of the house.
“Company,” Toni said.
“Oh my God,” Mary said. “It’s Tracey. He’s home from work.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s not a problem. Somebody was bound to come looking for Isabel, right? That’s us. We’ll stand here like we were just getting ready to leave. You’ve got our cards. Stash them in your purse there, and call us anytime you want. After today, we won’t be back in contact with you unless we absolutely have to. If we do need to get ahold of you, we’ll call you while you’re at work. If you can’t talk, we’ll leave a number and you can call us on a break or something.”
She nodded. “Find her,” she said. “Please.”
I nodded. “We will.”
I watched through the living room window as Isabel’s stepfather got out of his truck and started walking toward the house.
Tracey Webber was tall-maybe a couple of inches taller than me, and I’m six one. He was a big guy, and he had a bit of a belly-but there was a lot of muscle there, too. My guess is he weighed two-thirty or so. He wore black work boots, dark blue mechanics pants and a matching shirt with his name stitched on the left breast in silver cursive. The shirt was un-tucked, and both shirt and pants had grease stains-some looked recent; some looked like they’d been there awhile. He was dirty and sweaty and he looked like he’d had a long day. He stopped as he came through the door and checked us out. He had the confident big-guy swagger of a man who’d been through many scraps and knew he could take care of himself. He also had a mean face.
“Hi, honey,” Mary said as she walked over to greet him. She stopped short of hugging him when she saw up close how grimy he was.
Webber said nothing and looked past Mary toward us. “Honey, these people are private investigators,” Mary said, anticipating his questions before he had a chance to voice them. “They’ve stopped by to ask some questions about Isabel.”
He seemed to consider this for a second, before he said, “Why?”
The fact that his sixteen-year-old stepdaughter had been missing a month wasn’t a big deal for him, I guess. Either that, or he already knew why and was just playing dumb.
“Mr. Webber,” I said, “I’m Danny Logan. This is my associate Toni Blair.” He looked us over. I should say, he glanced at me briefly but took his time checking Toni out. This was something I’d gotten used to, but I didn’t like the look in his eyes. Still, I’m a professional-I bottled it up. “We’ve been retained to look into Isabel’s disappearance,” I said. True-not counting the retainer part.
When I mentioned Isabel’s name, he turned back and looked at me, a little more carefully now. His cold, penetrating blue eyes sized me up. So far, my thirty-second snap judgment was that Tracey Webber was a purely physical guy-someone not too burdened by cerebral concerns. I’m usually pretty accurate with these assessments.
“What’s to look into?” he said, breaking eye contact with me and moving to the bar that separated the kitchen from the living room. “She ran away. Been gone a month now, and it don’t look like she’s coming back.” He set his keys on the counter and looked back at us. “Want a beer?”
“No, thanks,” I said. He walked around the bar into the kitchen, where he got a bottle of Rainier Beer from the refrigerator. He twisted the top off and left it on the counter. He took a long pull from the bottle before turning around.
“Who’d you say you’re working for?” he asked, as he walked back into the living room.
“We didn’t say,” I said. “Our client wishes to remain confidential.”
“Hmm,” he snorted. “That’s pretty chickenshit. What’re they hiding from?”
I smiled. “A pretty fair number of our clients wish to keep their identities hidden. You shouldn’t read anything into that,” I said. I wanted to try to take control of the conversation. “We were just about to leave, but since you’re home, would you mind if we ask you a few questions? We talked to your wife for a few minutes, but she wasn’t able to shed much light on the situation, since evidently she works swing shift and isn’t home much.”
He looked at Mary, then back at me. “Let’s do it,” he said, confidently. He took a long drink from his beer-probably draining half the bottle. “Think I’ll have a seat. Been standin’ all day long.”
“By all means,” I said. He plopped himself onto a bar stool and took another shot from his beer bottle, draining it all the way. Then he smacked it down on the bar. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked up at me. I halfway expected him to belch, but he didn’t.
“Fire away, Chief,” he said.
“Okay. As I said, we’re trying to figure out where Isabel went. If we can find her, we’re hoping we can talk her into coming back home.”
“Hmmm,” he snorted. “Good luck with that.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Seems to me she’s been acting like she couldn’t wait to get away from here for the past two years or so.”
“What makes you think that? Has she run away before?”
He shook his head. “Nah. She never ran before. She just comes home from school and then scoots on up to her room and closes the door. She acts like she don’t want nothing to do with this family.”
Can’t imagine why not. “Understood,” I said. “Teenagers can be a handful.”
“Damn straight,” he agreed.
“Tell me,” I said in as non-threatening a tone as I could muster. “What was your relationship like with Isabel?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you and Mary have been married what-five years now? Almost five years? That means you’ve been around Isabel for almost a third of her young life. You’ve gotten to know her. You’ve had the chance to interact with her. Did the two of you get along?”
He seemed confused at first, but then he shrugged his shoulders and said, “Yeah. We got along fine. I’d get home-she was already home or sometimes she’d get home later. Like I said, she’d walk right straight through and march on up to her room. She didn’t have much to do with me.”
“Did she have any disciplinary problems?” I asked. “Did she ever get in trouble? Did you ever have to punish her?”
He shook his head. “Nah, she was a pretty good kid when it came to stayin’ out of trouble. She didn’t cause no problems-she was just real quiet and kept to herself. Spent all her time up in her bedroom.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let me ask you-it’s a little after four now, and you just got home a little while ago. Is this about the same time you get home every day?”
“Yeah. More or less.”
“So seeing as how Mary works swing shift, that makes you the parent who probably spent the most time with Isabel. Did she ever confide in you? Tell you about any problems she might have been having in school? Something that might have made her want to run away?”
He pretended to think about this for a few seconds. I say “pretended” because he made a good show of staring off into space for about ten seconds, seemingly lost in thought. I figured this was a good eight seconds past his maximum attention span. Finally, he shook his head and said, “Nah-she never said anything. Like I said, she kept to herself.”
“I understand. Do you know if she had any friends? If she did, maybe we can talk to them and help look for her that way?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know any of her friends,” he said. “She got rides to school and back from a girl who lives somewhere around here, but that’s about it-leastwise, as far as I know.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “We’ll check at her school. They might be able to help us locate some of Isabel’s friends.”
I looked down at my notes, then back up at him. “That’s pretty much it for me-I don’t really have anything else-we’re actually just getting started on our investigation. Is there anything else you can think of?” I asked. “Something else you might be able to add?” My point in talking to him hadn’t been so much to get any information out of him-I didn’t expect that would happen. Mostly, I just wanted to deflect his attention from Mary.
He looked at me and then shrugged. “Sorry, Chief,” he said.
I looked at Toni. “Anything else you can think of?” I said.
She shook her head no.
“Well, okay then,” I said, smiling. “I guess that’ll do it for now. Thanks for helping us out. We won’t keep the two of you any longer.” I took a step for the door.
Mary opened it for us. “Sorry I couldn’t be more helpful,” she said.
“No problem,” I said. “You can’t be two places at the same time. Gotta work. I know what that’s like. I turned to Tracey. “Mr. Webber, thanks again for your help. If we find anything, we’ll keep you posted.”
Webber didn’t respond. Apparently, he hadn’t fully appreciated the way Toni fills out a T-shirt when he came inside and checked her out. Now that he’d had a chance to take a second look, he was definitely noticing. In fact, he couldn’t take his eyes off her chest. I stared at him for a second, amused by his complete lack of tact. A few seconds later though, I’d had enough. I felt myself entering familiar territory-what I’ve come to call “the windup.” I snapped my fingers together twice, loudly.
The sound apparently penetrated his feeble brain, and he looked up. I pointed to my eyes with two fingers. “Eyes front and center, big guy,” I said. “Don’t be crude.” He looked at me for a second or two with a look that was half stupid/half predatory until what I said registered. Then the look was replaced by a mean, ugly sneer.
Before anything further could happen, Toni grabbed my arm. “You folks have a nice day, now,” she said, and she fairly shoved me out the door.
“I think my skin is going to crawl right off my body,” Toni said. We were driving south on I-5 on our way back to the office.
“He’s an ass-bag,” I said.
“True. I’ve only just met the guy, and already I think he’s guilty.”
I signaled and changed into the fast lane. “Me, too. We’re not without reasons, though. You’ve got Isabel speaking directly to Kelli, saying the guy raped her. And you’ve got Isabel’s mom-the guy’s own wife-saying she can believe it.”
“And oh, by the way, he’s also beat on her in the past, too,” Toni added. “What an animal. And I must say, that’s an insult to animals everywhere.”
“Agreed,” I said. “An all-around upstanding kind of guy. And then, the smug prick thinks he’s going to match wits with us while the entire time he mostly just wants to stare at your boobs.” I thought for a second and then added, “Thanks again for pushing me out of there. You were just in time. You saved him.”
“No problem. I meant to tell you-you should be more careful.”
“I should be more careful? What do you mean?”
“Yeah-the little finger-snapping thing? Did you forget you’ve got a gun on your belt? That makes it your job to stay out of fights-not start them.”
I thought about this. “You’re right, except I wasn’t trying to start a fight.”
“You may not have seen it that way, but that pea-brain Neanderthal back there might have. You definitely don’t want to get into a fight with a big guy like him when you’re carrying a gun, just because your macho pride gets tweaked or because you think you’re defending my honor. Believe me, I handle lots worse than him nearly every day.”
I thought about this. She was right. Ironically, when you strap on a sidearm, you take on the responsibility of having to work even harder to stay out of confrontations than would be the case if you were unarmed. When you carry a weapon, too many things can go wrong when the situation gets unstable-such as in fight. I knew better. “You’re right. I’ll try hard to dial it back.”
“Besides,” Toni said. “You’d undoubtedly kick his ass. Then you’d probably get arrested for assault. That would suck-getting busted because of a douche bag like Tracey Webber.” Toni and I both practice the Israeli martial art known as Krav Maga. I learned it in Afghanistan. When I got back, I was surprised to find a studio in Bellevue where I could continue my training. I had introduced Toni, and now she’s nearly my equal. In the last four years, neither of us has ever had cause to pull our firearms in the heat of battle. On the other hand, we’ve both used our Krav Maga training numerous times. It works.
“Agreed.”
“Better we get the cops to arrest him for rape.”
“Agreed again.”
We drove in silence for ten minutes, which gave me time to think about this case. The more I thought about it, the more upset I became.
I’m only twenty-nine-at least I’m still twenty-nine for another week. Still, despite my tender years, I’ve faced down some really bad guys in my time. I spent three years in the U.S. Army as an infantryman-a grunt. I loved it. Of course, I hadn’t bargained on the U.S. going to war after I joined, and I sure as hell hadn’t bargained on me going into combat in Afghanistan in 2002 and then again in Iraq in 2003. But what the hell-I went where they sent me, I did my job, and I made the best of it. While I was deployed, I ran into some truly memorable, badass people. Local guys with no technical sophistication at all, but who made up for it with a pure, white-hot hatred of me and my guys and everything we stood for. They’d do anything-and I mean anything-to kill us. They almost got me twice-resulting in me getting two Purple Hearts inside of four months in Iraq. And even though I believed in our cause, and I sure as hell didn’t agree with the religious and political nut-jobs who tried so hard to kill me for three years, at least I came to understand said nut-jobs.
Then, after my unit returned stateside at the start of 2004, I switched careers and went into the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division. I was introduced to a whole different type of badass. I spent the next four years chasing down and convicting U.S. Army personnel accused of all manner of felony charges-a real microcosm of life on the “outside.” Mostly, these people were either hooked on drugs or they were looking for an easy way to get rich-sometimes both. With only a few exceptions, most of these people weren’t out to hurt anyone, but they were damn sure dangerous when you tried to put them in jail.
But with all these bad guys to choose from-overseas and domestic-the ones I grew to hate most were the soulless pricks who seemed to get off by preying on people less powerful than they were-what I call the law of the jungle predators. These guys have no grand political or religious objective. This makes them worse than terrorists in my book. Most of them don’t care about money. This makes them worse than your typical criminal. Here’s an interesting example that’ll make my point. Pretend, for a moment, that Ted Bundy isn’t being slowly roasted in the pits of hell. Pretend, God forbid, that he’s still here with us and that he’s at a game show. Ted gets to choose between two doors. And he gets to know what’s behind each before he does. Behind door number one is a big bag of money. Behind door number two, a helpless twenty-two-year-old co-ed. Which door do you think Ted chooses? I rest my case. These sick bastards have an insatiable need to satisfy their own lusts. Nothing else matters. They don’t care about their victims-don’t even think about them, actually. The fact that the victims are people with hopes, dreams, and aspirations doesn’t even enter their sick, twisted little minds.
Another thing I’ve found is that there are different degrees of predator depravity out there. Some like to torture and kill their victims-the Bundys, the Ridgeways, the Ramirezes, and the like. Some don’t kill-they just rape their victims and throw them away, leaving them for dead. Another variation is the guys who beat their wives or girlfriends-just because they can. Others get off on stealing the pure innocence of a defenseless child. All of these so-called people are really not people at all in my book. They’re monsters, and they’re a despicable waste of air and space. I hate ’em all.
And this guy Tracey Webber appeared to fit into at least two of these categories at the same time.
The closer we got to downtown Seattle, the tougher the traffic became. Finally, we slowed to stop-and-go. At five thirty, we exited I-5 at Mercer Street. “If you don’t have to go to the office,” Toni said, “Let’s just go to your place. I’ll cook.”
My place. There it was again. The idea of Toni fixing dinner didn’t sound bad at all. Dinner would be nice. After dinner would probably be nicer-maybe much nicer. And then, she’d pack up and go home. To her place. And that would be painful. But still, what can I say? When it comes to Toni, I’m a junkie-I can’t get enough. Even if it might be bad for me later.
“I already talked to the guys in the office,” I said. “Doc said they’d lock up, so we’re good to go. Do we have everything you need?” Doc Kiahtel is an associate of ours.
“We’re good,” she said. “I went shopping yesterday.”
“Excellent.” I studied the traffic. “Looks like we’re going to be a while. What do you say we give Dwayne a call and ask him for some advice? Maybe he can turn us on to the person we need to be talking to.”
“Good idea,” she said.
I had Dwayne on speed dial. I punched in the number and a second later, he answered.
“Special Investigations, Lieutenant Brown.”
“Dwayne-it’s Danny and Toni.”
“Hey, guys!” he said. “What’s up? Sounds like you’re in the car.”
“We are. We’re three-quarters of a mile from home. Shouldn’t take more than another half hour or so.”
Dwayne laughed. “You should just pull over and walk.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Hey, thanks again for lunch today. That was nice.”
“It was our pleasure. Besides-it’s your birthday. Or it will be soon. And besides that-we owe you. We keep making you buy lunch at the sushi joint, and you just keep doing it. We were starting to feel a little guilty.”
“What? You’ve just been using me as a meal ticket?”
“Hell yeah,” he laughed. “We’re cops. We’ll take all the free lunches we can get.”
“Well, it’s nice to know that at some point your conscience kicked in.”
Dwayne laughed again. “At some point. But then again, maybe it’s just because it was your birthday-who knows?”
We both laughed.
“That why you called?” he asked.
“Nah,” I said. “We need your advice.”
“Shoot.”
“After we left lunch today, we met with Toni’s little sister, Kelli.”
“I didn’t even know you had a little sister, Toni.”
“I do. She’s eighteen-graduates high school next week.”
I said, “Anyway, we met with her this afternoon. She told us that a friend of hers called her and said she’d run away from home because her stepfather had raped her. We went and talked to the mom and the stepfather this afternoon. We got the mom before the stepdad came home. She admits that it’s possible, and she also said that stepdad has beaten her-the mom-in the past. We’re wondering who we should be talking to at SPD.”
“Simple,” Dwayne said. “If you’re talking about the missing child, you need to talk to Nancy Stewart. Nancy’s the lieutenant in charge of our Vice and High Risk Victims Unit. She may want to bring in someone else, depending on the exact nature of the case, but I’d start with her. She’s an expert at that sort of thing. And she’s a real nice lady, too. Need me to set something up for you guys?”
“Yeah, we’d really appreciate it.”
“Let me call you right back.”
Ten minutes and two hundred yards later, he called back.
“You’re set,” he said. “She has a meeting first thing in the morning, but she can see you at eleven. That work?”
“That’s perfect. Thanks, Dwayne.” It was really nice to have friends in high places.