Fate's living room ran the width of the building. The wall facing the river was nothing but windows. Nic checked out the view. She could see a half dozen of Portland's bridges, as well as the dark, gray waters of the Willamette itself.
The team took a quick tour. It was beautiful, if not to Nic's taste. It looked like an old, rich white guy's place, all leather and gleaming dark wood and Oriental carpets. As a concession to the modern age, the living room also held an expensive-looking sound system and a huge flat-screen TV. The kitchen had a sharper edge to it. Everything was shiny stainless steel, down to the countertops, and so clean you could have performed surgery in it, using one of the ranks of Wiisthof knives.
Rod opened the refrigerator, and Nic peered over his shoulder. The door held capers, gherkins, cocktail onions, and Thai chili sauce. On the shelves were three lemons, bottles of seltzer and tonic, five take-out cartons, and a pint of half-and-half that was bulging suspiciously.
The side-by-side freezer was equally empty, containing only a bottle of Grey Goose vodka, a stack of frozen entrees from Whole Foods, and a half-dozen bags of Jamaican Blue coffee beans.
"I'm surprised he doesn't have those coffee beans that are excreted by meerkats or whatever," Heath said. "Supposed to be the best in the world. They say it lends them a unique flavor." He smacked his lips.
Nic kept her face impassive.
Leif gave them their assignments, and they spread out. He took the bedroom, often ground zero for any investigation, the inner sanctum, where the best secrets were concealed. Nic got Fate's office, Heath the dining and living rooms, Karl the library, and Rod the bathroom.
Just as they had in Fate's office, Nic boxed the computer up for the electronic forensics lab. On the desk were two microphones and a couple of sets of headphones that she had to disconnect from the computer.
Next she took a quick run through Fate's three-drawer oak filing cabinet, but there was nothing that stood out. Tax returns, clippings about himself, product manuals, bank statements. No cards, no photos. No love letters or hate mail either, but these days, both of those would probably be on the computer. Anything that seemed like it might need closer scrutiny went into lidded cardboard file boxes for closer review.
Nic thought of something and looked around the walls. They were decorated with a couple of large art photographs, one a close-up of peeling bark and another of a sunset turning the ocean pink. But what had caught her eye was something that wasn't there. Here there was no brag wall. No trophies. No visible signs--other than every possession being top-of-the-line--of Fate's success.
In the desk, Nic hit pay dirt. She walked into the bedroom to show it to Leif, who was checking underneath a drawer to make sure nothing had been taped there.
As she waited for him to straighten up, she noticed the strong V of his back. Even through his jacket, she could see the shape of his shoulders. To distract herself, she looked closer at the book that lay facedown on the bedside table. It was about the Civil War. When Jim Fate had set that book aside, he hadn't known that he would never pick it up again. One day she might be just going about her business, leaving things unfinished, but planning to pick them up again--and then she would suddenly be gone. And in Nic's view, dead was dead. Fate wasn't a soul who might be going to heaven or hell. He wasn't a ghost, and he hadn't been reborn as a dragonfly or a dog. He was just gone.
It was a hard reality to look in the eye, and Nic was glad when Leif got to his feet and said, "What have you got?"
"Look at this." Nic held out the envelope she had found in Fate's desk drawer. The contents and the envelope had been printed on a computer. She was nostalgic for the time when each typewriter left its own unique marks on a piece of paper, but those days had already been dying out even before she joined the Bureau.
Leif slid out the piece of paper inside and read it aloud.
"'I know where you live. I know what you look like. You're going to pay for what you've done.-- Leif looked more closely at the envelope.
"And whoever sent this showed him that they meant it. Because this was mailed to his home address." He slipped it into an evidence bag, and Nic went back to finish the office.
When they had finished their search, Leif gathered the ERT for a quick rundown of what they had found. It wasn't much. Leif had discovered a woman's earring underneath the bed. Hammered silver, it looked handmade, not mass-produced. It was shaped like a Chinese character.
Rod gave voice to a thought that was just coming clear in Nic's mind. "Could it be Japanese?"
Leif said, "You thinking of Victoria Hanawa? I'll ask Jun if he knows what language it is."
Heath laughed. "Maybe it will turn out like all those people who think they're getting tattooed with the character for wisdom in Chinese, and it turns out to be the character for idiot."