“I’m sorry,” she said. “But he was my boy and . . .”
“You don’t need to apologize, Mrs. Miller. I know exactly what you mean. And I would have been just as frustrated and disillusioned. But I’m not going to let this one go. I’ll stay involved until the people responsible are behind bars. Some of them are dead, but the person most responsible will have a first hearing very soon and he’ll be arraigned on multiple charges.”
Shaniqua stepped down to Tracy and motioned back to the front door. “Please,” she said. “My mother just made coffee and I’m baking scones. We have homemade jam.”
Tracy nodded. “I’d like that,” she said.
EPILOGUE
Leah Battles reinserted her identification back beneath her riding clothes and coasted to the bottom of the hill, to the DSO building. It had been two weeks since the events at Rebecca Stanley’s apartment, and things were still weird, but slowly getting back to normal. She’d met with Dan O’Leary about a job, and he’d called her two days later and offered her a position as an associate in his law firm. She told him she’d think about it and get back to him, but she’d already made up her mind to stay in Seattle after her commission expired. She’d even put in a request to senior trial counsel to finish her commission at Kitsap, and there was at least a decent chance her request would be granted.
She locked her bike in one of the racks out front and unsnapped her helmet as she went inside.
“What’s up, ma’am?” Darcy asked from behind the reception desk, smiling.
Battles returned the smile. “Sun and sky, Darcy. I’ll let you know when they’re not.”
She went into her office and closed the door, proceeding to the closet behind her desk where she set her helmet and exchanged her clothes for her blueberries. After lacing and tying her boots, she turned on her computer and opened her file drawer, fingering through her dozen active files. She looked up at a knock on her door.
Brian Cho opened it and stepped in. “Am I interrupting anything?”
Battles shook her head. Cho shut the door behind him. He looked at the newest painting on her wall, a view of downtown Seattle and the Puget Sound from Battles’s apartment window. “This is new,” he said.
“I painted it when I had all that free time,” Battles said.
Cho turned to her. “Yeah, about that.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I would have accused you too, if the situation had been reversed.”
Cho smiled. “Thanks,” he said. “I think.”
“And I will beat you,” she said. “It’s just a matter of time.”
“Well, I guess that’s why they actually run the races,” Cho said, smiling. He opened the door but didn’t immediately exit. “But if anyone is going to beat me? I’d be okay if it was you,” he said.
Del parked the Impala in the street and shut off the engine. He made no move to get out of the car. It wasn’t because of the weather. March had finally passed, and he was glad to see it go. He loved the four seasons in Seattle. He didn’t even mind the rain, usually—but he’d had enough of it. April, at least, looked like it was going to be a whole lot drier and a whole lot better month all the way around. The persistent veil of darkness that seemed to descend in the winter had lifted, if only temporarily, and the days were getting longer and seemingly filled with more sunshine. He needed some brightness. His sister needed some brightness.
“She’s a little high-strung,” he said to Celia McDaniel, seated in the passenger seat of his Impala.
He felt nervous. Del never felt nervous, not even at work, not when he’d been out on patrol, and not in all his years as a detective. He loved every aspect of his job—not that he liked seeing dead bodies; everyone could do without that. He just never got nervous, figured what was, was, and what was to be, would be.
Celia smiled. “Stop worrying about it, Del. She has a right to be high-strung.”
In the interim two weeks, with Del back on the more hospitable day shift, he and Celia had seen each other almost every night. Celia had monitored the legal case against Nicholas Evans and was putting together the complaint against Detective John Owens. It would include a number of charges, including the murders of Rebecca Stanley, Eric Tseng, and Laszlo Trejo, and drug trafficking that had led to the deaths of more than ten Seattle residents. For now, that number did not look like it would increase. They’d spread the word about a potentially dangerous heroin, which seemed like an oxymoron, but they’d had no deaths in the past two weeks. Funk had called and said the lab’s analyses confirmed that the heroin found on Allie’s dresser and in Jack Welch’s garage apartment had been cut with fentanyl.
Despite Celia’s reassurances, Del had half a mind to put the car in drive and go get a nice dinner at a restaurant where he wasn’t nervous about who might say what to whom. “You’re sure you don’t mind?”
“Do I mind meeting your family? Why would I mind?”
“The boys can get . . . a little curious. You know?”
“About the fact that I’m black?”
His nerves became more pronounced. “Well, there could be that,” he conceded.
“Did you happen to mention that I was black?”
“I did,” he said. “Not that it really matters. I just thought it might make it a little easier on everyone.”
Celia laughed. “You’re like a seventeen-year-old girl on a prom date. Color is a fact of life, Del. The people who say they don’t see color, or race, are the people who do. We see good-looking people and funny people, obnoxious people. Why shouldn’t we see something so obvious as color?”
“I’m not sure anyone is going to see black or white with what you’re wearing tonight.” Celia wore a maroon skirt with pleats that reached to just above her knee, and a matching jacket and white shirt.
“Too much?” she said.
“Too beautiful,” he said.
She leaned across the car and kissed him. “Relax. As for your nephews and what they might say, I grew up with three brothers, and I raised my own boy. I don’t think they’ll intimidate me too much.”
“Right,” Del said, exhaling but not relaxed.
Celia started to push open the passenger door. Del reached across the seat and touched her shoulder. “You know there’s going to be a natural bond.”
“Is your sister black?”
“You know what I mean,” Del said. “I just don’t want you to feel obligated.”
Celia smiled. “The only way to get through this, Del, is with a strong family, a strong faith, and strong friends.” Her eyebrows arched. “I can’t help with the first two, but I can help with the third. It’s not an obligation; it’s what I know my son would want me to do.”
Del leaned across the car and kissed her. “Now, did I mention my nephews?”