In the end Detective Lander settled for walking away with Dortman’s 9-millimeter Beretta while Darrell Cross took control of everything else.
As far as Dortman’s Lincoln was concerned, however, Lander held the trump card. The LS was specifically listed on his search warrant. It wasn’t mentioned on Cross’s. So after we left the TSA office, Lander, Mel, and I spent the next half hour walking through Sea-Tac’s massive parking structure searching for the vehicle. Because local spring breaks were already in process, the garage was packed to the gills. My idea was to start on the top floors and work our way down. It was a logical-enough choice but a bad one. It turned out Dortman had used valet parking. And why not? It didn’t matter how much it cost. Dortman wasn’t planning on coming back, so he wasn’t ever going to pay the bill, either.
In the long run, that was a benefit. Once we located the vehicle and showed the parking attendant the search warrant, he produced the keys. Lander opened the driver’s door, bent down, and peered at the floor. Then he stepped back. “Take a look,” he said.
Mel took a look herself. “Looks like dried blood to me,” she said.
“That’s what I thought,” Lander replied.
He had summoned a tow truck. He and the attendant were arguing over payment of the parking fee when my phone rang.
“You never called me back,” Ralph Ames said accusingly.
Ralph isn’t someone who gets his nose out of joint easily, but this time he did sound miffed.
“Sorry,” I said. “Mel and I have been caught up in a situation that’s just now settling down.”
“So did you tell her—about the nun thing?”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t have a chance. Why don’t you?”
The look on Mel’s face was thoughtful as she finished the call and handed me back my phone. “Two unidentified nuns,” she said. “That pretty well spells it out. Richard Matthews’s murder and Juan Carlos Escobar’s have to be related.”
“Not two unidentified nuns,” I told her. “Three.”
“Three,” she said. “What are you talking about?”
“LaShawn Tompkins. Shortly before he was gunned down at his mother’s front door an unidentified nun was seen lurking in the neighborhood. She was seen, but no one’s been able to find any trace of her. Initially I thought she was an eyewitness, but maybe now…”
“A nun who goes around shooting people or running them down?” Mel asked. “That’s ridiculous.”
But I’m older than Mel Soames, and maybe I’m more cynical. Not only that, I’ve met enough religious nutcases that the idea of an unhinged nun didn’t sound at all beyond the realm of possibility.
“It makes no sense,” Mel insisted.
“It’s still a possibility,” I told her. “And even if it’s a long shot, with both you and Destry Hennessey involved, we’d better give Ross Connors a heads-up on this, too.”
She nodded. When Ross didn’t answer his cell I called his office, only to be told he was locked up in a series of meetings. When those ended, he was scheduled to speak at a dinner meeting in Tacoma. I had to summon a full dose of blarney before I was able to wheedle the location of said meeting out of his secretary, but with Mel’s Sea-Tac performance as inspiration, I hung in there until I finally had the name of the restaurant—Stanley Seaforts.
It’s actually Stanley & Seaforts, but I didn’t correct her. By then Mel and I were running on empty on both food and sleep. We had planned to go back to Belltown Terrace and call it a day. Instead we left the airport, hit I-5, and headed south smack in the middle of rush-hour traffic.
“Can’t we stop somewhere and get a sandwich?” Mel complained. She was hungry enough to be downright whiny.
“Wait,” I told her. “You’ll thank me later.”
“I doubt that,” Mel said. Sulking, she folded her arms across her chest, settled into the far corner of the passenger seat, and soon nodded off, leaving me alone to do both the driving and the thinking.