Isabel's Run (8 page)

He shrugged. “I don’t know any of her friends,” he said. “She got rides to school and back from a girl who lives somewhere around here, but that’s about it—leastwise, as far as I know.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “We’ll check at her school. They might be able to help us locate some of Isabel’s friends.”

I looked down at my notes, then back up at him. “That’s pretty much it for me—I don’t really have anything else—we’re actually just getting started on our investigation. Is there anything else you can think of?” I asked. “Something else you might be able to add?” My point in talking to him hadn’t been so much to get any information out of him—I didn’t expect that would happen. Mostly, I just wanted to deflect his attention from Mary.

He looked at me and then shrugged. “Sorry, Chief,” he said.

I looked at Toni. “Anything else you can think of?” I said.

She shook her head no.

“Well, okay then,” I said, smiling. “I guess that’ll do it for now. Thanks for helping us out. We won’t keep the two of you any longer.” I took a step for the door.

Mary opened it for us. “Sorry I couldn’t be more helpful,” she said.

“No problem,” I said. “You can’t be two places at the same time. Gotta work. I know what that’s like. I turned to Tracey. “Mr. Webber, thanks again for your help. If we find anything, we’ll keep you posted.”

Webber didn’t respond. Apparently, he hadn’t fully appreciated the way Toni fills out a T-shirt when he came inside and checked her out. Now that he’d had a chance to take a second look, he was definitely noticing. In fact, he couldn’t take his eyes off her chest. I stared at him for a second, amused by his complete lack of tact. A few seconds later though, I’d had enough. I felt myself entering familiar territory—what I’ve come to call “the windup.” I snapped my fingers together twice, loudly.

The sound apparently penetrated his feeble brain, and he looked up. I pointed to my eyes with two fingers. “Eyes front and center, big guy,” I said. “Don’t be crude.” He looked at me for a second or two with a look that was half stupid/half predatory until what I said registered. Then the look was replaced by a mean, ugly sneer.

Before anything further could happen, Toni grabbed my arm. “You folks have a nice day, now,” she said, and she fairly shoved me out the door.

* * * *

“I think my skin is going to crawl right off my body,” Toni said. We were driving south on I-5 on our way back to the office.

“He’s an ass-bag,” I said.

“True. I’ve only just met the guy, and already I think he’s guilty.”

I signaled and changed into the fast lane. “Me, too. We’re not without reasons, though. You’ve got Isabel speaking directly to Kelli, saying the guy raped her. And you’ve got Isabel’s mom—the guy’s own wife—saying she can believe it.”

“And oh, by the way, he’s also beat on
her
in the past, too,” Toni added. “What an animal. And I must say, that’s an insult to animals everywhere.”

“Agreed,” I said. “An all-around upstanding kind of guy. And then, the smug prick thinks he’s going to match wits with us while the entire time he mostly just wants to stare at your boobs.” I thought for a second and then added, “Thanks again for pushing me out of there. You were just in time. You saved him.”

“No problem. I meant to tell you—you should be more careful.”

“I should be more careful? What do you mean?”

“Yeah—the little finger-snapping thing? Did you forget you’ve got a gun on your belt? That makes it your job to stay out of fights—not start them.”

I thought about this. “You’re right, except I wasn’t trying to start a fight.”

“
You
may not have seen it that way, but that pea-brain Neanderthal back there might have. You definitely don’t want to get into a fight with a big guy like him when you’re carrying a gun, just because your macho pride gets tweaked or because you think you’re defending my honor. Believe me, I handle lots worse than him nearly every day.”

I thought about this. She was right. Ironically, when you strap on a sidearm, you take on the responsibility of having to work even harder to stay out of confrontations than would be the case if you were unarmed. When you carry a weapon, too many things can go wrong when the situation gets unstable—such as in fight. I knew better. “You’re right. I’ll try hard to dial it back.”

“Besides,” Toni said. “You’d undoubtedly kick his ass. Then you’d probably get arrested for assault. That would suck—getting busted because of a douche bag like Tracey Webber.” Toni and I both practice the Israeli martial art known as Krav Maga. I learned it in Afghanistan. When I got back, I was surprised to find a studio in Bellevue where I could continue my training. I had introduced Toni, and now she’s nearly my equal. In the last four years, neither of us has ever had cause to pull our firearms in the heat of battle. On the other hand, we’ve both used our Krav Maga training numerous times. It works.

“Agreed.”

“Better we get the cops to arrest him for rape.”

“Agreed again.”

We drove in silence for ten minutes, which gave me time to think about this case. The more I thought about it, the more upset I became.

I’m only twenty-nine—at least I’m still twenty-nine for another week. Still, despite my tender years, I’ve faced down some really bad guys in my time. I spent three years in the U.S. Army as an infantryman—a grunt. I loved it. Of course, I hadn’t bargained on the U.S. going to war after I joined, and I sure as hell hadn’t bargained on me going into combat in Afghanistan in 2002 and then again in Iraq in 2003. But what the hell—I went where they sent me, I did my job, and I made the best of it. While I was deployed, I ran into some truly memorable, badass people. Local guys with no technical sophistication at all, but who made up for it with a pure, white-hot hatred of me and my guys and everything we stood for. They’d do anything—and I mean anything—to kill us. They almost got me twice—resulting in me getting two Purple Hearts inside of four months in Iraq. And even though I believed in our cause, and I sure as hell didn’t agree with the religious and political nut-jobs who tried so hard to kill me for three years, at least I came to understand said nut-jobs.

Then, after my unit returned stateside at the start of 2004, I switched careers and went into the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division. I was introduced to a whole different type of badass. I spent the next four years chasing down and convicting U.S. Army personnel accused of all manner of felony charges—a real microcosm of life on the “outside.” Mostly, these people were either hooked on drugs or they were looking for an easy way to get rich—sometimes both. With only a few exceptions, most of these people weren’t out to hurt anyone, but they were damn sure dangerous when you tried to put them in jail.

But with all these bad guys to choose from—overseas and domestic—the ones I grew to hate most were the soulless pricks who seemed to get off by preying on people less powerful than they were—what I call the law of the jungle predators. These guys have no grand political or religious objective. This makes them worse than terrorists in my book. Most of them don’t care about money. This makes them worse than your typical criminal. Here’s an interesting example that’ll make my point. Pretend, for a moment, that Ted Bundy isn’t being slowly roasted in the pits of hell. Pretend, God forbid, that he’s still here with us and that he’s at a game show. Ted gets to choose between two doors. And he gets to know what’s behind each before he does. Behind door number one is a big bag of money. Behind door number two, a helpless twenty-two-year-old co-ed. Which door do you think Ted chooses? I rest my case. These sick bastards have an insatiable need to satisfy their own lusts. Nothing else matters. They don’t care about their victims—don’t even think about them, actually. The fact that the victims are people with hopes, dreams, and aspirations doesn’t even enter their sick, twisted little minds.

Another thing I’ve found is that there are different degrees of predator depravity out there. Some like to torture and kill their victims—the Bundys, the Ridgeways, the Ramirezes, and the like. Some don’t kill—they just rape their victims and throw them away, leaving them for dead. Another variation is the guys who beat their wives or girlfriends—just because they can. Others get off on stealing the pure innocence of a defenseless child. All of these so-called people are really not people at all in my book. They’re monsters, and they’re a despicable waste of air and space. I hate ’em all.

And this guy Tracey Webber appeared to fit into at least two of these categories at the same time.

* * * *

The closer we got to downtown Seattle, the tougher the traffic became. Finally, we slowed to stop-and-go. At five thirty, we exited I-5 at Mercer Street. “If you don’t have to go to the office,” Toni said, “Let’s just go to your place. I’ll cook.”

My place. There it was again. The idea of Toni fixing dinner didn’t sound bad at all. Dinner would be nice. After dinner would probably be nicer—maybe much nicer. And then, she’d pack up and go home. To her place. And that would be painful. But still, what can I say? When it comes to Toni, I’m a junkie—I can’t get enough. Even if it might be bad for me later.

“I already talked to the guys in the office,” I said. “Doc said they’d lock up, so we’re good to go. Do we have everything you need?” Doc Kiahtel is an associate of ours.

“We’re good,” she said. “I went shopping yesterday.”

“Excellent.” I studied the traffic. “Looks like we’re going to be a while. What do you say we give Dwayne a call and ask him for some advice? Maybe he can turn us on to the person we need to be talking to.”

“Good idea,” she said.

I had Dwayne on speed dial. I punched in the number and a second later, he answered.

“Special Investigations, Lieutenant Brown.”

“Dwayne—it’s Danny and Toni.”

“Hey, guys!” he said. “What’s up? Sounds like you’re in the car.”

“We are. We’re three-quarters of a mile from home. Shouldn’t take more than another half hour or so.”

Dwayne laughed. “You should just pull over and walk.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Hey, thanks again for lunch today. That was nice.”

“It was our pleasure. Besides—it’s your birthday. Or it will be soon. And besides that—we owe you. We keep making you buy lunch at the sushi joint, and you just keep doing it. We were starting to feel a little guilty.”

“What? You’ve just been using me as a meal ticket?”

“Hell yeah,” he laughed. “We’re cops. We’ll take all the free lunches we can get.”

“Well, it’s nice to know that at some point your conscience kicked in.”

Dwayne laughed again. “At some point. But then again, maybe it’s just because it was your birthday—who knows?”

We both laughed.

“That why you called?” he asked.

“Nah,” I said. “We need your advice.”

“Shoot.”

“After we left lunch today, we met with Toni’s little sister, Kelli.”

“I didn’t even know you had a little sister, Toni.”

“I do. She’s eighteen—graduates high school next week.”

I said, “Anyway, we met with her this afternoon. She told us that a friend of hers called her and said she’d run away from home because her stepfather had raped her. We went and talked to the mom and the stepfather this afternoon. We got the mom before the stepdad came home. She admits that it’s possible, and she also said that stepdad has beaten her—the mom—in the past. We’re wondering who we should be talking to at SPD.”

“Simple,” Dwayne said. “If you’re talking about the missing child, you need to talk to Nancy Stewart. Nancy’s the lieutenant in charge of our Vice and High Risk Victims Unit. She may want to bring in someone else, depending on the exact nature of the case, but I’d start with her. She’s an expert at that sort of thing. And she’s a real nice lady, too. Need me to set something up for you guys?”

“Yeah, we’d really appreciate it.”

“Let me call you right back.”

Ten minutes and two hundred yards later, he called back.

“You’re set,” he said. “She has a meeting first thing in the morning, but she can see you at eleven. That work?”

“That’s perfect. Thanks, Dwayne.” It was really nice to have friends in high places.

I’M A PRETTY serious distance runner—have been ever since high school. My specialty now is half marathons. Seems that whatever your sport—baseball, football, running, you name it—at a certain level of performance, your body composition becomes a serious limiting factor. One of the keys to performing well is making sure your sport matches your body type. For me, it seems like the 13.1-mile half-marathon distance is ideal—it fits the best. It wasn’t always this way. In high school, I ran shorter, speedier distances, like the mile. Now, twelve years later, I like the longer races. They’re long enough that I can eventually run away from the pure speed guys (the 10k guys). And they’re short enough that I can still out-muscle the pure distance guys (like the marathoners). It’s the perfect distance for me. I like to compete in one race a month or thereabouts.

My personal best time of 1:12 means I’m usually fast enough to be near the front of the pack—top ten or so—but usually not fast enough to win. It’s right there—but it’s just out of reach. Sometimes—generally right after I finish just out of the top five—my friends will be impressed on the one hand and offer advice on the other—advice like maybe if I’d trained just a little longer (like those other guys), I could have made the podium. I don’t think so. If I actually believed that more training would enable me to finish higher, I might try to carve out some more time. The reality is, at some point, it’s back to those natural, God-given physical limits. When that happens, all the extra training in the world won’t let you run like Usain Bolt or swim like Michael Phelps. You either got it, or you don’t. I’m okay with this. I accept it. Fact is, most people never explore the edge of their own limitations. Even though I don’t win very often (three times in the last five years), I run because I like to find that edge. I keep at it.