Fury (13 page)

“So?”

“So…that’s all the guy said to me. That Densmore was the three. I did all my other talking to a Sergeant McCarty.”

“So?”

“So…ten minutes later, as Donald is giving me the bum’s rush out the door, McCarty is reading the younger guy the riot act and pointing at me. Like the younger guy really screwed up or something.”

She looked over at Corso. “Weird,” she said.

“And then there’s the chief talking about how he doesn’t want the Himes thing to compromise the ongoing investigation.”

“What ongoing investigation?”

“That’s a damn good question.”

“Weird,” she said again.

“What’s really weird is how everybody is so uptight. Dr. Abbott in there damn near gets the vapors at the mention of Densmore’s name. We’ve got the mayor making threatening phone calls to Mrs. V. An SPD sergeant seriously thinking about punching my lights out. Canceled news conferences. I mean, what’s the big deal? Witness recants. Stop the execution. Get the lawyers together. Figure it out. Everybody comes out looking fair, and humane, and worth whatever ridiculous dole the county is paying them. Seems like a great big ‘duuuh’ to me.”

Half a block away, the white garage door began to roll upward.

“Here we go,” Corso said.

The van bounced up the ramp and out onto Alder. Rolled up to the stop sign. Turned right. Dougherty dropped the Chevy into gear. “How far back should I—”

“Just don’t run into the back of them and we’ll be all right. Stay close. They’ll be focused on what they’re about to find, not on the rearview mirror.”

Corso saw the lightbulb come on behind her eyes.

“This is going to be a body, isn’t it?” she said.

“And they said you were just another pretty face.”

Thursday, September 20
12:42
P.M.
Day 4 of 6

South Doris Street. A little in-grown toenail of a lane, buried deep within the ten square miles of industrial squalor running south from the Kingdome. Beside the banks of the septic sump that was once the Duwamish River. The entrance to South Doris was blocked by orange police barriers. A baby-faced SPD officer pulled them aside for the medical examiner’s van and now stood miserably in the rain, walking in small circles, stamping his feet, wishing he’d gotten his teaching certificate.

“Let’s drive by nice and slow,” Corso said.

Dougherty moved the car forward over the railroad tracks. As they came abreast of the cop, Corso rolled down his window. The young cop scowled and swung his arm in the international “move along” movement. Half a block down South Doris a King County officer got into his cruiser and backed it out of the mouth of an alley. The medical examiner’s van eased into the space and disappeared from view. The cop slid the patrol car back across the alley opening and got out.

“Go straight,” Corso said. “Let’s go around the block.”

They drove to the end of the block and turned right. Auto parts, forklift repairs. A scrap-metal yard along the whole left-hand side of the street. Down to the next block. The Aviator Hotel on the corner. Three stories of crumbling brick. Red neon sign, blinking. Rooms. A filthy South American blanket tacked over a cracked upstairs window. Long-forgotten flower boxes on a rusting fire escape. Rooms.

Another collection of cops was homesteading the north end of South Doris Street. Must have been the artsy-fartsy cop set. They’d added some bright yellow cop tape to their drab orange barricades. “What now?” Dougherty asked.

Corso pointed to the muddy shoulder of the road. A hundred feet in front of the car. “Park,” he said. “Bring a camera you can climb with.”

She pulled in behind a blue Ford pickup truck with the tailgate missing. Several greasy tires and rims were strewn about the bed. She pulled the Nikon from the camera bag. They got out. She locked the car and threw the keys over the roof at Corso, who snagged them one-handed and put them in his jacket. “Come on,” he said. “Hold my hand, we’ll look like a couple out for a walk.”

Beneath a row of stunted, moss-encrusted oak trees, they strolled back to the corner, crossed South Homer Street in full view of a dozen recumbent cops, and then disappeared into the deep shade enveloping the east side of the Aviator Hotel. Rooms. Corso pointed to the bottom rung of the fire-escape ladder, about ten feet in the air. He laced his fingers together at knee level. “I’ll boost you up.”

Dougherty looked dubious. “You sure? You ask me, these cops really don’t seem like they want any company.”

Corso smiled like a wolf. “What about the public’s right to know and all of that?”

She stepped into his hand and reached upward until she had both hands on the bottom rung of the ladder, her boots four feet above the ground.

“Hang on now,” he said and let her go. For a moment, she hung, suspended by her arms. Then, with a high-pitched squeal and a hail of dislodged rust, the ladder began to inch toward the ground. When it got low enough, Corso grabbed hold and put his weight onto it, until the metal ladder clicked into the down position and Dougherty stepped to the ground. She brushed herself off and ran her hands through her hair several times. “Yuk,” she said as flakes of rust fell to the ground.

She looked up at the rusted metal skeleton, switch-backing its way up the side of the building. “You think this thing is safe?”

“Hell no,” Corso said. “Probably hasn’t been inspected since the Eisenhower administration. You can stay down here if you want.”

“Like hell,” she said. “
Après vous
.”

Corso stepped onto the ladder and started up. His weight made the fire escape quiver. On the first-floor landing, he stepped across an overturned flower box, whose spewed soil still supported a vagrant red geranium.

He moved up to the second floor and the blanket over the window, where he noticed that the entire contraption had come loose from the wall, that the bolts which supposedly tied the fire escape to the bricks had pulled loose, leaving the whole thing more or less leaning against the building. He looked down. Dougherty was on her way up. The air smelled of decay. Corso took a deep breath and continued climbing. Moving slowly now, as if he were walking on broken glass.

A pair of putrid cat boxes covered nearly the entire third-floor landing. The rain had filled them to the brim. Clumps of coated cat shit floated in thick, gray water. The sodden air was ripe and rank. Corso used the back of his hand to gingerly push them aside. Shuddered. He climbed the final three rungs holding his breath, stepped over the cornice and onto the roof. Dougherty’s head was at cat-box level.

“Careful,” he whispered.

“Ohhh,” she groaned.

Corso hissed at her and held a finger to his lips. She skirted the cat boxes like they were a land mine. Corso offered his hand. She shook him off and stepped up onto the roof. “That’s disgusting,” she whispered.

The roof was L-shaped, the two segments separated by a three-foot wall. Mopped-on tar, cracked and grainy. A couple of dozen vents, some just pipes, some with little peaked metal roofs. The tops of the walls were covered by sheet metal, designed to keep the rain from eating away at the bricks. Corso pointed to the far side of the building. “We’re going to have to go on hands and knees,” he said. She nodded. Pulled the camera from around her neck and shortened the strap. “Ready,” she said.

By the time he reached the far side of the building, Corso felt as if somebody were pounding nails into his kneecaps. He sat with his back against the bricks, rubbing his knees with both hands. Dougherty crawled to his side. They took a minute to regroup. She picked gravel from her palms. Let the camera strap out again. Corso kept massaging his knees.

Corso poked his head up slowly, as if expecting sniper fire. Found himself looking into an enclosed courtyard. Ran half the length of the block, in between South Doris and Homer, accessible only by the alley on South Doris. Nobody in sight. Corso grimaced as he rose to his knees. He quickly ducked his head. Caught Dougherty’s eye. Pointed straight down. Mouthed the words, “Right under us.” Dougherty nodded. She pulled the camera from around her neck and laid it on the roof. Together they leaned over and peered straight down three stories.

A woman. Dead. Naked. Blood all over her face. Spread-eagled on her back in a Dumpster. Her lifeless breasts flattened and falling toward her sides. Her black pubic patch thick with mist. Her left leg seemed to rest at an impossible angle. Dr. Abbott and a little Japanese guy in a red windbreaker poking around her. Densmore and another cop had their notebooks out. Talking to an elderly African-American guy wearing work gloves and short rubber boots. Probably the guy who found the body.

Dougherty pulled the lens cap from the camera and set it on the metal roof flashing. She leaned over the top, twisted the lens. Corso watched as she ran the telephoto slowly over the corpse, clicking off pictures as she moved, until she sat back down with her back to the wall. She used her sleeve to wipe moisture from the lens. “She’s got purple marks around her wrists, ankles, and throat,” she whispered. “And something really weird stuck to her ear.”

“What color?”

“White…plastic, I think.”

Corso felt a shiver run down his spine. “May I?” he asked.

She pulled the strap from her neck, looped it over Corso’s head, and then handed the camera to him. He aimed the camera at the far side of the roof and fiddled with the focus, then got to his knees, leaned over the side of the building, and trained the lens on the Dumpster below. Focused again. Corso gulped air and returned to a sitting position. “Did you see it?” she asked.

He nodded. “Oh yeah,” he whispered. “I saw it all right.”

“What is it?”

“An ear tag,” he said. “Ovine. Sheep.”

“What’s that mean?”

He told her about the holdback of the ear-tag evidence.

“It means they’ve got more Trashman murders,” Corso said. “That’s why everybody’s panties are in such a wad. They’ve got a guy on death row, about to meet his maker, and all of a sudden, they’ve got new murders with the same MO.”

“So…then…this can’t be the first new one.”

“Exactly,” Corso said. “They’ve been keeping the new killings from the public. And then Leanne Samples shows up with a new story, which, as if it’s not bad enough news in its own right, also threatens the official cover-up of the new murders.”

Corso rubbed his hands together. “Take pictures,” he whispered. “Everything.” She rose to her knees and began snapping pictures. Corso pulled out his notebook and began to scribble. 11:20, Densmore calls Abbott. He checked his watch and made more notes. Dougherty plopped back down onto the roof.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Corso said.

She reached for the lens cap on the roof edge but missed, sending the black plastic disk spinning out into space. Corso got to his knees. Watched as the disk floated on the breeze and finally landed on the stiff, directly in front of Dr. Fran Abbott. She looked straight up and made eye contact with Corso. In slow motion, her mouth formed a circle.

She pointed upward with a gloved hand. “Ooooooo,” she wailed.

Corso sat back down on the roof. Looked over at Dougherty. A series of shouts and the slapping sound of running feet split the air.

“Oops,” she whispered.

Corso gave it a minute, then got to his feet and ambled over to the fire escape. Half a dozen uniformed cops were clustered at the bottom.

“You get your ass down here, right now,” one of them hollered. A chorus of threats and remonstrations followed.

Corso stepped back from the edge. “We might as well make it easy on them,” he said to Dougherty. She shook her head. “I need two minutes,” she said. “You don’t look back this way, and you don’t let them up here for at least two minutes.”

Corso opened his mouth, but she shouted him down. “Just do it,” she yelled.

The fire escape began to vibrate. Corso walked over and looked down. Two-tone brown uniform. A King County mountie with a red face had dragged his beer gut as far as the first landing. He shook his fist at Corso.

“Don’t make me come up there,” he shouted.

Corso took hold of the uppermost section of fire escape and pushed. The whole thing moved three feet from the supporting wall and waved unsteadily in the breeze before banging back into the bricks. The cop’s face went from beet red to stark white. He began to crawl down backward, showing Corso his palms whenever possible.

“This is awful dangerous, fellas,” Corso shouted. “You need to be real careful here. Somebody could get seriously hurt.”

He started to turn back toward Dougherty. “Not yet!” she whispered.

Densmore wore the same blue suit he’d worn the other day. He had his gun in one hand and the lens cap in the other.

His eyes dilated at the sight of Corso. “You!” he said.

Corso waved toodles with his fingers. “Hi, Andy,” he said.

“You son of a bitch. Your ass is mine,” he snarled. “I want that camera, and I want you down here right now,” he yelled. “Let’s go, asshole.”

Corso smiled. “That the only suit you own?” he asked.

Behind him, he could hear the clicking of the camera and the sounds of Dougherty moving across the roof. Below, Densmore stuck the automatic back in his belt holster, grabbed the lowest rung of the ladder, and started up.

“Watch out for the flower,” Corso shouted when Densmore reached the first landing. In a show of disdain, Densmore used his foot to sweep the geranium over the edge, scattering the uniforms below. Dougherty appeared at Corso’s side.

Densmore had a rhythm going. He jogged up the ladder, crossed the second landing, and started up the final pitch. It was when he reached for the third landing with his left hand that things went terribly awry.

Instead of the metal support, his grasping fingers caught the edge of the nearest cat box, catapulting it completely up and over, sending the collected waste directly down into his upturned face. Instantly, the air was alive with the smell. Dougherty covered her nose and mouth with her hands. Corso winced and stepped back a pace.

Blind now, soaked and choking, Densmore groped upward for purchase, only to have his clawing hands dislodge the remaining cat box, pulling it over the edge, again raining tea and cat crumpets down upon his head. The smell was, by now, nearly unbearable. Densmore began to gag. He slid down the ladder to the second landing. Fell to his knees and dry-heaved a half dozen times before retreating downward. Looking for help that wasn’t on the way. Down below, the posse had fanned out. Apparently, as far as local law enforcement was concerned, while bullets were to be considered an everyday occupational hazard, cat shit was way beyond the call of duty.

Corso pulled his cell phone from an inside jacket pocket. Pushed buttons until he found her private number. Auto-dialed. She answered on the third ring. “Yes?”

“It’s Corso,” he said. “Miss Dougherty and I are about to be arrested.”

“Pray tell, what for?”

He gave her the
Reader’s Digest
version. A hundred words or less. Heard Mrs. V.’s breathing stop when he told her about the new killing.

“We’ll be waiting for you,” she said and hung up.

Corso pocketed the phone and turned to Dougherty. “You ever been to jail?”

“No,” she said.

Corso had a sudden image of Leanne Samples.

“Mama says there’s a first time for everything,” he said.