He waited out a ringing phone for a few seconds, then said, “Cin? Yeah, it’s me. I don’t know. It’s bad. Extremely, horribly bad. How are you?”
I watched the shifting mob in the parking lot and the caravan of school buses attempting to deliver young children safely to the health care facility. And I listened to my partner and my very dear friend Cindy sharing what they knew and consoling each other.
I checked my phone to see if Joe had called.
He had not.
CHAPTER 26
IT WAS RAINING softly when the taxi pulled up to the very romantic Hotel Andra in the center of the Belltown neighborhood in Seattle.
The doorman brought an umbrella out to the taxi and opened the door for the elegant woman in black who extended her stiletto-heeled shoes and stepped gracefully out onto the street. She slung the strap of her bag over her shoulder and pulled her soft knitted cap down to her eyebrows. She was on the phone as she entered the Scandinavian-style lobby.
She put away her phone when she reached the front desk, which was really a piece of art. It was a beautiful walnut-and-maple construction with glass below the granite counter and above the floor, giving it the appearance of floating.
The attractive woman loved this place.
She exchanged words with the concierge, showed him her government-issue photo ID as required, and he handed her a white #2 envelope. She thanked him, then crossed the colorful hand-knotted rugs, passed the blazing fireplace flanked with bookshelves, and stopped at the elevator.
When the lift arrived at the ground floor, a young couple got out holding hands, going out to dinner, no doubt. The guy was laughing at his own joke, the girl saying, “Funny. Yah. Good one, Brad.”
The woman smiled at young love, then got into the elevator alone. She was twenty minutes late, but if a thing was worth doing—and it was—it was worth waiting for. She checked out her reflection in the mirror on the back wall and adjusted her cap, playing with the ends of her newly brown-and-gold-streaked hair. Her brown contact lenses completed the look.
She liked it. She hoped he would.
The elevator bumped upward for several floors, then opened into a thickly carpeted hallway with watery light. There were only twelve rooms per floor, and she walked all the way to the end.
She scratched at the door with her nails, as if she were a cat; then she tore open the envelope she’d been given by the concierge and removed the key card.
She swiped the door lock with the card; the light turned green and the handle turned easily in her hand. She lingered in the open doorway for a moment, just watching him amid this lovely setting of woodsy colors and satisfying architectural lines. Then she closed the door.
He knew she was there, but he didn’t look up. He was sitting on a sofa in front of a coffee table, naked with a towel across his lap, and he was cleaning his gun.
Ali entered the room unbuttoning her swingy leather coat, dropping it on the half-moon-shaped ottoman at the foot of the bed. Then she took off everything else.
When she was wearing nothing but her heels, the man put the gun down. He stood up and took her into his arms.
He pulled her to him, swayed with her, kissed her neck, then took her by her shoulders and shook her.
“Why do you make me wait?” he said. “Why do you want me to worry?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll never do it again.”
PART TWO
CHAPTER 27
THAT EVENING, I parked the squad car next to my Explorer on Harriet Street under the overpass and headed out of the shadows. Claire had called, saying she had to see me right away. I was hungry, depressed, and worried sick on about six levels, but when Claire said she had to see me, I had to go.
I didn’t get far.
A BMW came squealing out of the dusk and braked in front of me. I had a thought that that BMW had been on my tail since I’d left the Mills-Peninsula Medical Center, but I couldn’t be sure. A man got out of the black car and walked directly toward me. He was Asian, thirties, had a wide face with a thin scar on his chin. He was wearing a black shirt and jeans.
“You police,” he said to me. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes. How can I help you?”
“My son inside there.”
Relatives of WW 888 passengers had heard that the deceased would be brought here, but that was only partly right.
The ME’s office was the first port of call. But after it had filled to capacity, bodies were distributed to hospital morgues all over the city. When the hospitals ran out of room, the deceased had been stored in refrigerated vans parked inside a hangar at SFO.
There was no way the man standing this close to me with bunched fists could know the location of his son’s body.
I said, “I’m very sorry, sir. But the ME’s office is off-limits now. Please call this number,” I added, taking a card out of my jacket pocket and handing it to him. “Someone will let you know where to find your son and when you may claim his body.”