A Matter of Trust

Chapter 4





Dispatch informed Charlie Carlson that all available officers in the area had already been deployed—to Colleen Miller’s house.

That meant that whatever was happening at Mia Quinn’s house, Charlie would be the first officer on the scene.

Charlie and Mia, which might be a mistake. A kid screaming could mean a lot of things. Some of them very bad. Some of them things no parent should ever witness. He requested another unit to be scrambled from Colleen’s, but knew he would still beat them there. Mia had already told him the fastest route to take. Made even faster by how Charlie was driving.

Going sixty in a residential area was a dumb idea, despite the fact that he had turned on the siren, the alternately flashing lights in the grill, and the red-and-blue light bar in the rear window. He was traveling too fast for any pedestrian—and most drivers—to react. Charlie goosed it up to sixty-five, his eyes scanning back and forth. One evening jogger dressed all in black except for white earbuds, and that would be all she wrote.

Meanwhile, Mia was speed-dialing a number on her cell phone. She pressed it to her head, the index finger of her free hand closing the other ear. Her lips were a tight line. After a long moment she shook her head and tapped a button to turn off the phone.

“Why didn’t you take Colleen’s phone with you?” she demanded. “I need to know what’s wrong.” She groaned. “If something’s happened to my kids . . .”

“I couldn’t, Mia.” He had to raise his voice to be heard over the siren. He and Mia had tangled when she first started working at King County, but that was a long time ago and it didn’t matter now. Not when two kids were in danger. “It was a landline.”

Colleen Miller had been sprawled on her side on top of a dozen record albums, her head turned to face the ceiling, a slick of blood painting her upper lip and chin. The bullet had caught her just below the hollow of her throat. More blood pooled like thick syrup under her head and upper torso, on top of the LPs. The phone rested on the floor near her bottom shoulder, just a few inches from her mouth. If Colleen had been breathing after Mia heard the shot, it didn’t look like it could have gone on for very long.

Charlie had taken two quick photos of the phone—noting that there was no blood on the black-and-silver face—so he could put it back exactly where it had been after he told Mia’s kid it was okay to hang up. That the boy could stop listening for the dead woman to name her killer.

With gloved hands, Charlie had gingerly picked up the phone. But when he put it to his ear, all he heard was a little kid screaming.

Now Mia asked, “Was Brooke saying anything?”

“Not that I could tell,” Charlie said, hedging a little. It had just been wordless screams, seemingly without even a pause for breath. “I’m pretty sure I could hear your boy calling her name in the background.” Again, he left out the panic in the older kid’s voice.

“Did Brooke sound like she was hurt?” Mia’s voice had gotten smaller, until it was barely audible over the thrum of the tires and the wail of the siren.

Parents seemed to know unerringly whether a child’s cry was faked, whether it sprang from boredom or genuine pain. Charlie might not be a parent, but he knew what had been under the sounds he had heard.

Sheer terror.

“I don’t know.” Not knowing whether it was right or wrong to say even part of what he was thinking, Charlie just went ahead. “She was pretty loud. If your daughter’s hurt, it didn’t affect her lungs any.” He thought of how the blood must have bubbled in Colleen’s airway and then out through her mouth.

“Brooke walked in her sleep last week.” Again Mia tapped on her phone and then held it to her ear, but Charlie could tell by her posture that she no longer expected anyone to answer. A few seconds later she put it back in her lap. “Maybe she fell out of bed and hurt herself. Our schedule has really changed since I went back to work. Her bedtime is all messed up.”

Charlie just hoped that the reason for the screams would turn out to be trivial. Something that would seem like an overreaction tomorrow.

But then he thought of the horror and panic and fear he had heard in the little girl’s voice. Crime was down all over the city, but just last month he had worked the case of a Yugoslavian immigrant who had gone crazy and stabbed to death three of his neighbors. Including a seven-year-old girl the guy had chased out into the front yard.

He pushed the accelerator up to nearly seventy. “You don’t carry, do you?”

“No.” Mia shook her head.

“Is there a gun at your house?” Maybe that had been what had happened. Mom was gone, so the kids decided to take out the gun and play cowboys or gangbangers? Or, even more likely, the older boy was jumpy because his mom had gone tearing off in the middle of the night, heard a noise, and accidentally shot his sister?

“No,” Mia said again.

Nodding, Charlie blew air through pursed lips. Guns and kids didn’t mix, not in his opinion. But when he thought of that little girl screaming, he found himself wishing that the other kid, the boy named Gabriel, had something to protect them both with. Something a little bit more powerful than a can of bug spray or a tennis racquet.

Mia’s hands were braced on the dash. She leaned forward, her eyes fastened on the road, as if the extra few inches somehow helped her get to her kids faster.

“Put on your seat belt.” Charlie was doing seventy in a twenty-five zone. His seat belt had gone on at the same time he turned the key in the ignition. He had once seen a rookie cop after a collision at 105 miles an hour. The kid had metal for hips and wasn’t on the force anymore.

Mia didn’t move. He grunted impatiently.

“Mia, come on, put on your seat belt. We need to get you there in one piece.”

Slowly, like someone in a dream, she sat back and pulled the belt across her body, her eyes never leaving the road.

“Tell me about your kids.” It might be useful information, but mostly it would keep Mia focused. Keep her mind off what horror might be going on at her house. Charlie saw gleaming knives, a tumble down an entire flight of stairs, a fast-moving fire, a meth-addled burglar. The trouble with their line of work was that your memory—not your imagination—could supply you with a million terrible vignettes.

Mia took a deep breath. “My son, Gabriel, he’s fourteen. He’s a freshman this year. And Brooke is four.”

A long gap between kids. With anyone else, Charlie might have figured that the two kids were the product of different marriages, each husband wanting kids of his own. But Charlie had known Mia back in her first turn through the King County Prosecutor’s Office, back before she decided to stay home and play house full-time. Her decision had always surprised him.

Then again, while Charlie had been married three times, he didn’t have any kids, so he didn’t know what it was like trying to be both a mom and a prosecutor.

“And what’s Gabriel like?”

“He’s a really good kid.” Mia took a shaky breath. “I mean, he’s been having a hard time with what happened, but what kid wouldn’t? Normally I never would have asked him to listen to Colleen, but I didn’t have much choice.”

Single mothers. The world was full of them. Charlie had no idea how they did it all, how they wiped noses and packed lunches and reviewed homework and joined the PTA or whatever else it was they did.

Charlie didn’t even have a cat.

“And your daughter? What’s she like?” He hoped this wouldn’t remind Mia about the screaming, but then again, it was clear that the screaming was all she could think about.

A smile touched her lips. “Brooke is four, but she thinks she’s older. She’s really proud of herself that she can put dishes in the dishwasher and help make her bed.”

As she spoke, Mia’s gaze never wavered from the dark road ahead of them. She was blond, blue-eyed, about five foot seven, slender. Not his type. He liked them short and dark and curvy. Plus she was far too rigid. She had never understood that sometimes you had to look at the big picture.

Charlie tore his eyes away. He had to be like Mia and keep his eyes on the road. So many bicyclists these days didn’t have lights, let alone helmets. An ER nurse he dated said her hospital had a name for people like that.

Donors.

Mia continued, “All this change has been hard on Brooke too. Now she’s in preschool full-time and then Gabe has to pick her up after school or football practice. Both of my kids are being forced to grow up too fast.”

“What were they doing when you left?” Charlie asked.

“Brooke was sleeping. And Gabriel should have been doing homework. But when I went in to tell him about Colleen, he was playing his guitar to music on his computer.” Mia fell quiet and hit Redial. After a few seconds she touched the button to end the call. Her next words burst out of her. “I never should have left them alone.” Her eyes widened. “Charlie—what if it was all a ruse to get me to leave?”

“What do you mean?”

“How was Colleen killed?” Mia turned away from the road and stared at him wide-eyed.

“Shot in the chest.”

“Where was she in her house?”

“In her basement.” Charlie wondered where she was going with this.

“That’s just like Stan.” When she saw his blank look, she said, “You know. Stan Slavich. He used to work in my office. Until he was murdered.”

Charlie hadn’t thought about Stan in several years. He was pretty sure a homicide detective named Carmen Zapata had handled that case. Carmen was dead now. Breast cancer. Charlie said, “We never solved that one, did we?”

“No. And think about it, Charlie.” Mia’s back went rigid as she ticked off the coincidences. “Stan was a King County prosecutor. Just like Colleen. He was shot through the basement window of his home. Just like Colleen. And he was all alone when he was shot. Just like Colleen. What if someone is targeting prosecutors? What if they came for me next—and went after my kids when they figured out I wasn’t home?”

“They would have to move awful fast.” There were a lot of things Charlie thought were possible, but this wasn’t one of them. “I don’t think whatever’s happening at your house is connected to Colleen, Mia. Maybe there is some kind of a connection between Stan and Colleen, but I doubt it goes any further than that.”

The parallels between the two killings were too hard to ignore, though. Charlie didn’t believe in coincidences. He didn’t believe in much he couldn’t see, hear, touch, taste, smell. “When did Stan die, anyway? Six years ago?”

“Four and a half. I know exactly because I was on bed rest with Brooke. They wouldn’t even let me go to the funeral. Scott was really disturbed when Stan was killed. And then Brooke was born four weeks early. So Scott talked me into not going back.” She gave a shaky laugh. “You probably heard how well that worked out.” She turned back to look at the street. “It’s right at the second light, and then it’s just around the corner.” Mia undid her seat belt.

Charlie cut the siren. If there was a bad guy in the house, he didn’t want him to feel his back was against the wall. “Let me go in alone first and see what’s wrong.” And if it was really bad, maybe he could keep Mia away from it. There were certain sights no one should ever see.

Charlie had seen most of them.

“No way, Charlie.” She was in full mama bear mode now, ready to rise up on her hind legs and swipe her claws at whatever got between her and her cubs. “Don’t argue with me. Those are my babies in there.”

She was out of the car before it had even come to a stop. Charlie barely threw it into park and ran after her, cursing himself. Whatever was happening in the house was bad enough.

He didn’t need Mia to become a third victim.