A Matter of Trust

Chapter 22





Darin’s room felt like the kid had just left to grab a snack. His math book was open on his desk and an uncapped pen lay across his notebook. Lined up at the back of the desk were a small, red wind-up robot, a jar filled with agates and other unusual rocks, and a tin can covered with blue felt that held pencils and paintbrushes. Intricate ink drawings of crows were tacked above the desk.

The desk itself was part of some sort of space-saving desk/dresser/storage unit combo made of blond wood, all of it topped with a bed. A shallow ladder led to the twin mattress, which was surrounded by a rail. The desk pulled out of a section of the middle, with a column of built-in drawers next to it.

Charlie didn’t like heights. He told himself that’s why he felt a little dizzy clambering up to Darin’s bed on a ladder that offered only an inch of clearance for his toes. And it was a real trick to figure out how to look under the mattress when he could only reach the bottom end. He ended up perched precariously on Darin’s desk chair. Pulling off the sheets and blankets released the kid’s smell, a musky, slightly sour scent of sweat and feet. He could imagine Darin asleep, curled up in a ball. Hurting and afraid. Charlie knew what that was like.

In the closet the clothes were still pushed over to one side. His parents hadn’t found a note, and so far Charlie hadn’t either. It was possible Darin hadn’t even meant to be successful. It was surprisingly easy to loop something around your neck and kill yourself. You didn’t even need the noose to be tight or to get your feet off the ground. By the time you realized that maybe you didn’t mean to be doing this after all, it could be too late. Death came fast.

It took Charlie a couple of hours to finish searching Darin’s room. When he was done he had little to show for it except for three notes. Two were laced with expletives and threats. The first suggested Darin should do everyone a favor and die, and the second ended with Watch out, gay boy, we’re coming for you. The third was something completely different. It read I’ve been watching you and I like what I see. If you want to see if you’ll like what you see, meet me by the south entrance to the track at 5 pm tomorrow. All three notes had been crumpled and then smoothed out, as if Darin had thrown them away and then changed his mind before hiding them between some neatly folded T-shirts.

What intrigued Charlie was that all three notes appeared to have been written in the same hand.

He came out of the kid’s bedroom and managed to close the door behind him while juggling Darin’s computer, wrapped in a pink antistatic bag, and the three notes, which he had slipped into plastic sleeves.

Nate was sitting in the living room in the dark. The air seemed to be made up only of exhaled tobacco smoke. Laurie was nowhere in evidence.

“I found some notes in his room,” Charlie said. “I’m gonna take them into evidence. As well as his computer.”

He expected Nate to turn on a light, to ask to look at the notes, but instead he just grunted. Charlie heard more than saw him suck some more smoke into his lungs.

Charlie said good-bye and let himself out. Back at the office, he handed the computer off to the techs. When he left for home he took with him the printouts from Colleen’s computer and Stan’s murder book. Technically the murder book was supposed to stay at the office, but what other people didn’t know didn’t hurt them. Technically you weren’t supposed to work sixteen hours straight either.

At home Charlie checked the fridge, as if someone might have filled it while he was out. All he found was a half gallon of skim milk, packets of soy sauce, bottles of mixer—not much you could magically make a meal out of. In the freezer he discovered a microwave pizza, which turned out to taste as good as the circle of cardboard it came on. Chewing mechanically, Charlie flipped through the crime-scene photographs from Stan’s murder. In them, Stan sprawled awkwardly, like someone had just shoved him to the floor. His glasses were askew, one lens resting on his forehead. The left side of his sweater was soaked with blood.

In the autopsy section, Charlie skipped over all the weights and measurements and descriptions of the actual procedure to the summary section and the corresponding photographs. There were no surprises. The bullet had hit Stan’s heart first, and then bounced from rib to spinal column to rib again, chewing up his insides.

Carmen hadn’t had much to go on in finding Stan’s killer, with no evidence, no death threats, and Stan’s personal life devoid of lovers and even close friends. Interestingly, she had also considered if Stan’s activism in Safe Seattle might have made him a target, but hadn’t been able to come up with much more than speculation.

Charlie read an interview with the neighbor who had first reported the shots and made a mental note to reinterview him. Other neighbors had reported that the streetlight had gone out the night before Stan was killed, and when the crime-scene investigators took a closer look, they found it had been shattered by a BB.

All the ballistics information interested him, and Charlie read it several times. The CSIs had theorized that the killer had stood across the street in the pool of shadow where the streetlight used to shine and used a scoped rifle. If that were true, the shot to the heart hadn’t been lucky, but instead that of a skilled marksman.

Finally Charlie turned out the lights. He tried to sleep, but the dead kept parading through his head: Stan, Colleen, and the dozens of people he had only gotten to know after someone turned them into sacks of flesh. Every day he was given another reason not to get too close to people.

He thought of the pain he had seen in Mia’s blue eyes when they spoke to Darin’s parents. He imagined her turning her sorrowful eyes on him if she ever learned his story. But that story belonged to a much younger Charlie. A much weaker Charlie.

He liked his women uncomplicated and without baggage. Girls who said, “I like to work hard and play hard,” and didn’t think it was a cliché. Girls who didn’t want a ring or kids or a guarantee that he would always be available. That holidays wouldn’t be interrupted by someone calling in with news of a body dump. Girls who wouldn’t ask any questions if the first thing he did after coming home from a particularly hairy scene was to put his shoes in the trash can before he even walked in the door.

Charlie was still thinking of Mia when he fell asleep. He dreamed she was saying something to him, but he couldn’t make out the words, no matter how closely he watched her lips.



The next morning he met Mia at her office and brought her up-to-date. Charlie started by recapping what he had read in Stan’s murder book, including the idea that the killer had used a rifle.

“But the brass was found in Colleen’s yard, not across the street,” Mia said. “Why didn’t the shooter take the same approach?”

She had put her finger on what had bothered Charlie last night. He offered up the only explanation he had come up with. “Stan had motion-sensor lights the shooter may have been trying to avoid. Colleen didn’t. And maybe there’s not as clean a sight line for Colleen from the street.”

Mia squeezed the bridge of her nose. “I got the IP address for the computer the jerk who called himself True Patriot used, but it came back to a Peet’s Coffee wireless network. Peet’s doesn’t require users to sign on with a name or a credit card or anything. They could even have been sitting in a car in front of the coffee shop and using a laptop.”

“I’ve got some better news. Martin Miller’s agreed to come in. For some reason”—Charlie grinned a little, thinking of the panic in Martin’s voice—“he didn’t want a homicide detective coming to his workplace. How about if I have him come at one?”

“Okay. And let’s end the day by talking to Darin’s friends once they’re out of school. I’ll get in touch with the parents to get their permission.”

A doughy-looking guy appeared in Mia’s doorway, clutching a pile of files. “Hey, Mia, I’ve got those cases you asked for.”

“Jonas, this is Charlie Carlson, a homicide detective. Charlie, this is Jonas Carvel.”

“Hey,” Jonas offered, not meeting Charlie’s eyes. He put the files down on Mia’s visitor’s table. “I did as you requested and looked for defendants they’ve had in common. The number was not that large, even though I programmed it to consider nicknames, such as Bob for Robert, or spelling variations such as last names that end in s-e-n or s-o-n.”

Some people didn’t know how to cut to the chase. “So how many is it?” Charlie asked.

“Three. They both prosecuted the same guy, Eddie Shaughnessy, for assault, but he’s been in prison for the last two years. And there’s another man, Jonny Feather, who was prosecuted by both of them for domestic violence, but the victims were different women.”

“When was Feather’s most recent case?” Charlie asked.

“Eighteen months ago. And he was released from prison five months ago.” Jonas picked up the top file in the pile. “And then there’s Trumaine Lavender. His is the most interesting case. Six years ago, Trumaine was with someone who shot a third guy in the neck. According to Trumaine, he convinced his buddy not to pull the trigger a second time. Not that it did the victim much good. He still died. Trumaine never went to the police, and he helped the shooter dispose of the weapon. But when he was arrested as an accomplice, Trumaine offered to testify for the prosecution, and Stan cut him a deal. Trumaine pleaded no contest to facilitation of murder. Stan recommended a five-year pretrial diversion.”

That meant Trumaine’s charges would have been dismissed if he had stayed out of trouble for five years. But if Stan and Colleen had shared him as a defendant . . .

“So what bad thing did Trumaine do next?” Charlie asked.

“Three years ago a drug deal went wrong, and the drug dealer ended up dead. Trumaine was the shooter. Colleen put him in prison for fifteen years.”

“Three years ago,” Mia echoed, and Charlie guessed they were thinking the same thing. None of these cases felt right. Two of the people involved were still in prison, and none of the cases seemed fresh enough to spark the need for brutal retribution.

Jonas frowned. “If you think of any other parameters you want me to search for, let me know.”

“Thanks, Jonas,” Mia said.

After the kid left, Charlie walked over to the flip chart, now tucked against the wall. “So where do we stand?”

Katrina stuck her head in. “How’s it going?”

Charlie had never worked with her before, but now that he was spending so much time in the prosecutor’s office, she was always finding excuses to engage him. She asked questions about the case, offered him snacks, even picked lint off his jacket. Katrina was another blonde, so not really his type. Although lately he was beginning to think he should be more flexible.

Mia sighed. “Lots of possibilities. No clear answers.”

Katrina walked over to look at the flip chart. “What’s ‘gun rights’ mean? You mean that Safe Seattle Colleen volunteered with?”

“It wasn’t only Colleen,” Mia said. “Stan too.”

“Wow.” Katrina took a step back. “So you think somebody decided to shut them up permanently?” She pressed her lips together. “The sick thing is that whoever shot them didn’t have to worry that Stan or Colleen would return fire.”