A Matter of Trust

Chapter 13





At 8:35 the next morning Mia stood outside Frank’s office waiting for him to finish a phone call. DeShauna walked in the main door and gave Mia a look that was frankly curious. Mia nodded and then turned her back on the reception area.

Staring at the dingy beige carpeting, she made a conscious effort to clear her mind. She would not think about how her co-workers might view Frank’s offer or her decision. Or about Brooke’s nightmare on Sunday. Or about Gabe’s obsession with fitting in.

Mia most especially would not think about what she had learned from Scott’s post office box. She would not think about how the Suburban was actually leased—leased!—for $599 a month. Or how it was already two months in arrears.

Ever since Scott died, Mia had been paying bills as they came in—gas, water, electric, newspaper, cell phone, Internet. She should have wondered where the credit card bills were, both for the single card she carried as well as the cards she had found in his wallet when it was returned to her. Although she had been vaguely aware that Scott carried more credit cards—she remembered signing a few forms he had handed her over the years—it had been a surprise to see how many there were. Even so, the number of bills stuffed in the PO box was a shock. After she had gotten home, Mia had locked her bedroom door, spread the envelopes out on the bedspread, and methodically made her way through an entire box of Better Cheddars while adding everything up.

Even though many of the paper bills were duplicates, the ultimate total on the calculator was staggering: $53,727.

And each time Mia hit the plus sign, it became clearer.

She had to say yes to Frank.

It wasn’t just that she owed Colleen justice. She also couldn’t afford to risk her job. Not now. Not when she had to do everything she could to somehow pay off the bills and hold on to the house.

The house was the key to everything. If she lost it, her family would continue to unravel. If she were reduced to a rental, chances were that the schools in whatever area they could afford would not be nearly as good. Gabe probably wouldn’t be on the new school’s football team. Mia would have to find a new preschool for Brooke. Both kids would have to leave their friends, neighbors, the park just two blocks away . . .

How could Mia have missed the red flags? Three months before Scott died, her credit card had been declined at the grocery store. Brooke was whining for some of the Wheat Thins that had already been bagged when the clerk loudly announced that her card had been rejected. The woman had looked at Mia with narrowed eyes, as if she were a thief. With a great show of reluctance, she had finally accepted a check.

When Mia called Scott from the parking lot, he said, “Oh, didn’t I tell you? I lost my card last week when I was out of town and had to cancel the account. Sorry. I thought I mentioned it.”

“You didn’t.” Mia had stared at a small bird with drab black feathers pecking at something in the parking lot. Behind her, Brooke was stuffing Wheat Thins into her mouth. “I feel like I never see you anymore, Scott. Maybe we can start sitting down at night with a glass of wine and catching up on our days like we used to. Sometimes I feel like I don’t know what’s going on with you.”

“What do you mean, what’s going on?” Scott’s voice had an edge to it.

“Like how your business is going. You never talk to me about that anymore.”

“The last thing I want to do when I’m home is talk about the business. We made a deal, right? You take care of the kids and the house and all of that, and I take care of the financial parts of our lives. Well, I’ve kept my part of the deal. And it’s my long hours that make our lifestyle possible. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

Now Mia knew the truth behind Scott’s words, that he had been scrambling, robbing Peter to pay Paul, and then borrowing from Perry to pay the interest on the loan from Patrick.

Since Scott died, there had been one surprise after another.

None of them good.

Startling her out of her reverie, Frank called out, “Okay, Mia, come in.” Once again she sat facing the framed photos of his kids. After today, would her kids be as close to her as Frank’s were to him?

Frank steepled his fingers. “Have you made a decision?”

“Yes.” Mia took a deep breath. “I’ll take on Colleen’s case.” He started to say something, and she held up one hand. “On one condition.”

“Condition?” He raised an eyebrow, his expression hovering between amusement and annoyance.

“We talked about Darin Dane yesterday. I still want to take his case to the grand jury. See if there’s enough evidence for an indictment.”

“Mia, you’ve got to be practical.” Definitely annoyance. A muscle in his jaw flickered. “If you’re going to investigate Colleen’s death, it will demand your full attention.”

“I’m not saying we file charges against the people who harassed Darin. I’m saying we let the grand jury decide whether there’s a case. That’s all. Gabe’s the same age as Darin.” She pointed at his daughter’s photo. “We’re talking about a boy only a couple of years younger than Caitlin. And now he’s dead.”

“Mia, realistically speaking, that’s a waste of resources. We can’t bring that kid back.”

Was Frank thinking about the department’s record? The best won-lost records did not come from amazing legal work. They were built by cherry-picking only the strongest cases for trial and pleading out the rest. Or, in some cases, never filing charges at all. But the public didn’t understand those nuances.

“And if it’s a dead end, then I promise you I’ll let it go,” Mia said. “But I am not going to look Darin’s father in the face and say, sorry, those kids may have tormented your son until he killed himself, but there’s nothing we can do. Don’t worry, Frank, I plan on devoting all of my time to figuring out who killed Colleen. I’ll just fit this in the cracks.”

Frank sighed and nodded, as part of her had known he would. The new Frank was a much more political animal than the man she had met when she first started working at King County. But underneath his worries about resources and perceptions she sometimes caught flashes of the idealistic thirty-year-old she had worked alongside all those years earlier.

“I still think it’s a waste of time, but as long as you give Colleen’s death your full attention . . .”

“Of course I will, Frank. But there’s one more thing we still need to discuss. What if I’m called to testify about what I heard on the phone? Do we need a second on this case?” Mia meant a second prosecutor.

Frank winced. “We’re stretched thin as it is. Also, when it comes to trial we don’t want to look like we’re bigfooting the defendant by having you, Charlie, and your second at the table, not when the defense only has the defendant and his attorney.” He sat back, laced his fingers over his belly, and thought about it. “Actually, I don’t think we need to worry about it. We’re not going to put you on the stand, and why would the defense? The prejudice outweighs the probative value. The death is self-evident, and your testimony might be considered gratuitous.”

Frank was right. Taking the jurors through those last horrible moments would be bound to influence them—which meant no judge would allow it. And even if the judge would, the defense was certainly not going to want to dwell on the gritty details.

“I guess I’m in all the way then, Frank.”

“I always knew you would be.”

There was no point in being annoyed, not when he was right. “How long did you work with Colleen?” she asked.

“Over twenty years. That’s why it’s just so hard to believe that she’s gone. I mean, you actually heard it happen, so I guess you must believe it. I just keep thinking about how it used to be. Remember? You and Colleen and I, we’re part of the old guard. We remember the go-go years, when Seattle had all that Microsoft and Boeing cash. When even the government could spend money and nobody complained too much.” He made a sound that was a cross between a grunt and a laugh. “Sometimes I miss those days. Things were simpler then. Now there are so many decisions, and whatever I do, somebody’s going to be unhappy.”

“You mean because you gave me Colleen’s case?” Mia thought of the way people had looked at her yesterday after she emerged from Frank’s office. Looked at her and looked away.

“There’s that. There’s also being in the public eye. I mean, look at this.” He tapped on his keyboard and then half turned his computer screen so that she could see it. It was a Facebook page, and the profile photo looked like a screen capture of Frank from a video. She guessed he might have been talking. His mouth was open and his eyes half-closed. He looked more than a little crazy.

He stabbed at the page’s title with his finger. Mia started to read it out loud. “Frank D’Amato is a—” She stopped. “Huh, I thought that word was an obscenity.”

“Things have changed,” Frank said bitterly. “I’ve heard people use that word on TV. Not even cable. Network.”

She looked at the comments. Posters called Frank a fat cat and an imbecile and a blowhard. So much naked hate, but much of it hid behind names that were obviously fake, like Scarlett O’Hara.

“Who even knows who these people are, Frank? It could even be the same person posting under different user names.”

He nodded, but his expression was still miserable. Suddenly she was reminded of Gabe, of how he would obsess over a pimple—that same sense that the whole world was watching and judging. Only in Frank’s case there was far more truth to it.

“You can’t change their minds. You just need to stay away from looking at this kind of thing. All it will do is stress you out.” She sounded more like his mother than his employee, but Frank nodded.

“Speaking of computers, I’m going to need Jonas to help me go through the database,” Mia said. “I want to see if Colleen and Stan had any cases in common.”

Frank waved his hand. “Of course. Tell him it’s top priority.”

When Mia left Frank’s office, Tracy, Jesse, and Katrina were talking next to Colleen’s closed door with its yellow crime-scene tape. They fell silent as soon as they saw her. Tracy threw Jesse a meaningful look, and Jesse raised his eyebrow. They left, but Mia guessed what they had been saying. That it wasn’t that long ago that she had walked away from this place. And now that she was back, far from having to repay her dues, a high-profile case was being handed to her on a silver platter.

Katrina grabbed her arm and pulled Mia into her own office. “Frank gave it to you, didn’t he? Colleen’s case.”

Mia hesitated, trying to think of an answer that wasn’t a lie.

“He did!” Katrina cuffed Mia’s arm. “I asked about it, but I figured you were the one who would get it. Everyone knows how close you and Colleen are. Were. If anyone can figure out why they were killed, it’s you.”

Feeling grateful that Katrina didn’t seem jealous, Mia said, “There are a lot of downsides. It’s going to mean a ton of extra hours. And Charlie Carlson’s the homicide detective on the case.”

“Charlie?” Katrina raised an eyebrow. “I’ve always thought he was kind of cute.”

“Cute?” Mia snorted. “I can think of a lot of words for Charlie, but cute isn’t one of them. Let’s just say we have some history.”

Katrina leaned closer. “Tell me about it.”

“Not that kind of history. About ten years ago, before he was in homicide, a robbery case we were working together got tossed because he took something from the scene.”

Katrina looked scandalized. “He stole something?”

“But nobody knows what. He admitted to taking it, but that was all he would say. Just that it wasn’t material to the case. So of course the case got tossed out. And the guy was back out on the street and robbing again as soon as he got released.”

Both their heads turned at the sound of a rap on Mia’s half-open door. She started when she saw that it was Charlie, while Katrina managed to look composed.

How much had he heard? How guilty did she look?

“Hey, Mia, can I talk to you when you have a minute?” Charlie’s expression betrayed nothing.