Michael Dibdin - Dark Specter

The original idea had been to pass on the information about the Wallis house. Paul was the perfect networker for a deal like this, with a ton of contacts all over the country. If anyone could find a short-term tenant with a kid Thomas’s age, it was him. The problem was that Paul had this thing for her, and if she phoned him he would think she was coming on to him and she’d have to deal with the consequences of that.

In fact it was more than just a thing: he’d practically proposed to her. A lawyer’s proposal, phrased in such a way that if she turned him down, as she had, he could make it look like he’d never made a firm offer in the first place. Nevertheless, they both knew what had happened. She’d expected him to drop her after that. God knows he wasn’t short of other possibilities.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like Paul, in a way. But there were problems. For one thing, she didn’t want to end up as some hotshot lawyer’s trophy wife. For another, she didn’t feel physically attracted to him, or not enough to make the difference. And then there was his work. They had met in court, a case in which she had appeared as a prosecution witness of a man charged with the murder of his business partner plus his wife, child and mother-in-law who were all in the house when it burned down.

As Merlowitz had privately admitted to her after the acquittal, there was no question that his client was “guilty as fuck.” But he got him off by stacking the jury, working the ethnic angle-the accused was Korean-and plugging away at inconsistencies in the prosecution case and irregularities in the police investigation. None of these had the slightest bearing on the basic facts of the case, but they were enough to persuade at least one member of the carefully chosen jury that the accused’s guilt had not been proven beyond all reasonable doubt.

Kristine had never tried to tackle Merlowitz about the morality of what he was doing. She knew exactly what line he would take: every citizen has the right to the best defense money could buy, better let ten guilty men go free than convict one innocent one, etc., etc. She acknowledged the force of these arguments, just as she acknowledged the need for a nuclear defense capability, but that didn’t mean that she wanted to marry a B-52 pilot. Nor could she imagine letting into her life a man who earned obscene amounts of money dreaming up ways to free someone he himself admitted was guilty of a callous, premeditated murder.

Nevertheless, expediency won out in the end. Kristine had her principles, but she knew there was also a gray area where she could be bought. Whether or not she managed to come up with a vacation playmate for Thomas, she would certainly get a fabulous lunch. And if Paul Merlowitz didn’t come up to her exacting standards, there wasn’t anyone else around at the moment who did. She lifted the receiver and dialed.

After all her agonizing, Merlowitz wasn’t taking calls. Instead, she got to speak with a secretary who ran through a whole repertoire of moves from the elaborate tai chi of commercial intercourse, concluding with the statement that Mr. Merlowitz was “in conference.” Kristine left a message, and immediately regretted it. Now she would be waiting, if only subconsciously, for the phone to ring. Merlowitz had her on a string. She should have hung up and called again at her leisure, instead of handing him that power.

Only ten minutes had gone by, but she called the Seattle Police back anyway. Not only was Don Krylo there, he had the information she’d requested.

“I was kind of doubtful for a while,” he told her. “We’re going on-line here and everything’s ass over tit, whole boxloads of stuff I could put my hand on a week ago’ve just like, you know, disappeared. Watch it be one of those, I told myself, either that or someone’s circular filed the damn thing. Anyway, looks like you lucked out. The previous CRS on this guy originated in-you got a pen? — Evanston, Illinois. Detective Eileen McCann’s the name right here on the docket.”

“Right. And thanks for coming up with this so quickly. I sure appreciate it.”

“Hey, that’s what we’re here for! Your tax dollars at work.”

“Have a great one, Don.”

“You too.”

Kristine Kjarstad lay back in her chair and closed her eyes. Her breath came irregularly, in spasms. It was almost like being in labor again. She called the switchboard and got the numbers of the Atlanta and Evanston City Police, and then a kind of paralysis descended on her. Every time she dialed, she found herself setting the receiver down the moment the ringing tone began. This was the moment of truth. The whole edifice she had constructed in her mind was either about to be revealed as a delusion, or not. It was hard to say which prospect she found more disturbing.

Finally she just steeled herself and dialed the Evanston number. She discovered that Eileen McCann did in fact exist-for some reason even this had seemed doubtful-but that she was “away from her desk.”

“My name is Kristine Kjarstad. I’m with King County Police, in Washington State. It’s about a suspect named Dale Watson. Could you please have her call me?”

Once again, Kristine found herself in the classic female position of waiting helplessly for the phone to ring. She was just about to call Atlanta when it did.

“Kristine? Paul Merlowitz.”

“Oh! Oh, hi. Hi, Paul.”

“You called.”

“Right. I did, yeah.”

“So how you been?”

“Good. You?”

“Good.”

“Good. The thing is, you caught me at kind of a bad moment, I’m expecting a call, but I was wondering, maybe could we get together sometime? The thing is … It’s kind of difficult to explain on the … There’s this house …”

“Thursday any good for you?”

“Thursday? That’s …”

“Or I could do Tuesday next week. We’re talking lunch, right?”

“That sounds …”

“The Painted Table, Thursday, noon, OK?”

“OK.”

“Great to hear you, Kristine.”

The line went dead. But the moment she put the phone down, it started to ring again.

“Hello?”

“Am I speaking with Officer Carstad?”

It was a woman with shoulder pads built into her voice and a crisp, pedantic delivery.

“That’s right.”

“This is Detective Eileen McCann, Evanston City Police. I understand you have information concerning our inquiry with regard to an individual named Dale Watson.”

“I may have.”

There was a pointed silence at the other end.

“And when will you be sure?”

Kristine Kjarstad took a deep breath. This was clearly going to be one of those calls.

“I’d like to know a little more about the present status of the case,” she replied.

The Evanston detective sniffed audibly.

“The basic information is on the inquiry we sent. It is not the policy of this department to give out progress reports regarding ongoing investigations over the telephone.”

“Wait a minute!” Kristine snapped. “I don’t work for some tabloid TV show. Can’t you cut me a little slack here?”

“I repeat, it is not department policy to-”

Kristine cracked.

“OK, if you won’t talk, listen! The reason I’m calling is because I’ve received notice that a Dale Watson is currently being sought by another law enforcement agency in connection with a case which has certain resemblances to one on our files. Let me just run the outline past you. If it means nothing, go ahead and hang up. All right?”

“I’m listening.”

“Our case involves an apparently motiveless quadruple homicide. The attack took place in broad daylight at the family home. The victims were restrained with handcuffs, gagged with lengths of duct tape and shot at point-blank range in the back of the head. The weapon was a.22 handgun, probably a revolver, loaded with Stinger cartridges.”