The Authorities, page 23
Rutherford and his friend sat silently for a moment. His friend asked, “Can that really happen?”
“Yes,” Rutherford said, with a certainty that convinced the other man that there was a story behind the statement, and that he did not want to hear it.
His friend bought a full-face helmet the very next day.
Rutherford turned away from Sloan, toward Max. When Rutherford had last seen him, Max was squaring off against two larger assailants. Now one of those assailants was unconscious on the sidewalk, partially draped over the other two unconscious men. Max had the other on his knees and was painfully twisting one of his arms with one hand, and one of his ears with the other.
“Why did you do this?” Max asked. “Why bother us?”
“I was paid to,” the man yelped. “It was just a job!”
“Who hired you?”
“He did,” the man cried, piteously. With his free hand he pointed at the leader, the man Rutherford had shot, who was still clutching his right side, bleeding and wallowing on the ground. “Kirk! Kirk hired me. He said he had a job and needed backup.”
“Both accurate statements, I’m sure,” Max said. “How about it, Kirk, who hired you?”
“I got nothing to say to you!” Kirk shouted.
Max paused, listening to the world around them, then smiled and said, “We’ll see about that.”
Seconds later, a loud buzzing filled the air.
TWENTY-ONE
The entire altercation lasted less than two minutes, and that included the prefight threats. The aftermath lasted well into the afternoon.
First, Professor Sherwood had to placate and remove the bees. He had only started the process when the police arrived and ordered him to stand down. He explained that he was removing the bees. They ordered him to resume posthaste.
Once the bees were removed, the police and paramedics moved in to treat the injured (all of whom were on one side of the fight) and take the stories of those who would talk (all of whom were on the other side of the fight).
As this was the first time the team had been on the foul end of an investigation, it was the Seattle PD’s first chance to ask some direct questions and legally demand direct answers. Also, in this case, the police were investigating a disturbance involving the team, not being aided in an investigation by the team, so the officers could not be required to sign the usual nondisclosure agreement.
Representatives of Capp’s legal team were present, having arrived after the police but before the paramedics. The lawyers advised the team as to which questions they shouldn’t answer, but the SPD still got the team members’ full names, which meant the days of Sloan being referred to as the ninja were at an end, as was the illusion that Max was the detective, at least once the background check was complete. It was inevitable that this would happen, but Rutherford was the only one who had experienced the SPD’s misconceptions from both sides, so he was sorry to see them go. Now, instead of this bizarre cadre of mysterious, exotic experts, they would be seen, at best, as eccentric colleagues.
Eventually, the police announced that they were free to go. They piled listlessly into the van and drove straight to the office.
When they arrived, the entire team met around the conference table to discuss the events of the day.
Max told Terri and Albert, “The men who attacked us were taken to the hospital.”
Albert said, “I know,” and held up a tablet displaying a map of Seattle with a blinking red dot over one of the local hospitals. “In fact, if I zoom in, we can see that the guy Rutherford shot is still in surgery.” He enlarged the image. The map of the city was replaced with a floor plan, with the dot pulsing away in one of the rooms.
Albert turned the tablet back to look at it himself. “Either that or they removed the tracking dart already and left it behind in the OR. I should be able to follow it all the way to the police evidence locker.”
“Good to know,” Rutherford said. Today was the first time he had shot his TP-82, the first time he’d shot someone with a tracking dart, and, for that matter, the first time he’d fired any firearm at another human being. It was a lot to process.
Terri said, “All the rest of them are being treated for bone breaks or being observed for concussions. I’m just glad you’re all okay.”
Sloan said, “Yes, although I could stand to swap out this helmet with my spare. One of my HUD screens is broken.”
Albert stood up. “You want to go swap it out now?” Sloan confirmed that she did, and stood up as well.
Before they could leave the table, Rutherford said, “Oh, wait one second.” He reached into a pocket and pulled out his e-cigar.
“I’m afraid this needs to be sanitized again. This time it ended up in the gutter.”
Albert sighed heavily, rolled his eyes, and said, “Really, Rutherford, must you be so hard on the equipment?”
Instead of apologizing, as he had before, Rutherford smiled and said, “That’s what you give it to me for. Besides, if I didn’t put a little wear and tear on the toys, you might run out of things to do,” Rutherford paused, letting tension build for a moment, then said, “in Q branch.”
Albert’s face split into a wide grin. He was delighted that someone finally got the joke. In a voice that was just on the verge of becoming a giggle, he said, “Really, Rutherford, you’re impossible!” He walked to his office workshop with a jaunty spring in his step. Sloan followed silently, but turned to look at Rutherford as she went.
Changing Sloan’s helmet took only slightly longer than it would take for any other person to change helmets, and soon she was back at the conference table. Her spare helmet looked like an earlier iteration. It was larger, with a smaller face shield and obvious holes on the sides for the binaural microphones. Albert stayed in his office, but left the door open so he could hear the conversation while he replaced the newer helmet’s heads-up display and slathered the e-cigar in more hand sanitizer.
Sloan took charge of the conversation and steered it in a useful direction.
“The bad news,” she said, “is that we have two more questions we need to answer. The good news is that the answer to those questions might help us resolve all our other questions. Our two new questions are: Why did those guys attack us, and why did those guys attack us?”
Professor Sherwood said, “I’m sorry, I think those were the same question.”
Sloan shook her head. “The computer didn’t convey my change in inflection. I put more emphasis on the words those guys the first time, and the word us the second time.”
The team took a moment to parse what she meant, then moved on to attempting to answer the questions.
“They couldn’t have come after us because we were getting too close to the truth,” Max said.
“Yeah,” Rutherford agreed. “If we’ve gotten any closer to the killer, it’s just because the circle we’ve been running in has brought us back around near them again.”
Rutherford could tell from the looks on everyone’s faces that they didn’t appreciate the wisdom of his statement, and, indeed, were trying to figure out what it meant.
Rutherford said, “See, say we’ve been walking in a circle, and the killer’s standing near the circle,” his voice grew quieter as he spoke, “we would walk away from them, but then we’d come closer again. I could draw a diagram if you want.”
Sloan said, “I don’t think that will be necessary.”
“No, it won’t,” Terri said. “Because the police have questioned the guys who attacked you, the ones who are in a position to talk, anyway, and I think you’ll find what they said pretty interesting.”
“So what were they?” Sherwood asked. “Mob enforcers or something?”
“Or something,” Terri said. “They’re strip club bouncers.”
Rutherford moaned. “Is this really the career I’m going to have?”
Terri ignored him. “The thug in charge rents himself out on the side to accompany prostitutes as protection.”
Sloan said, “It’s like who watches the watchmen? Who escorts the escorts?”
“The answer is: A bunch of meatheads,” Terri said. “Seems someone contacted one of the young ladies he protects last night through an ad on Craigslist.”
Rutherford and Sloan both said, “Craigslist?” In Sloan’s artificial voice, it sounded like a statement. From Rutherford, it sounded like a question.
“Yeah,” Terri said. “Why? Is that important?”
Sloan turned to Rutherford and asked, “What do you think? Is it?”
Rutherford said, “Probably not, but Olivia Arledge said that she wouldn’t know where to hire a killer, then threw out Craigslist as an option.”
“Interesting,” Terri said, “but the prostitute said that the person who called was a male. They’ve already questioned her. He didn’t want to hire her, but asked her if she used a bodyguard and offered to pay whoever she used very well to do a job for him. Said she’d get a finder’s fee for putting them in touch. Once the first guy was hired, he recruited the rest of them.”
Max hummed disapprovingly. “What kind of person uses the Internet to hire pimps to beat someone up?”
“Not pimps,” Rutherford said, “guys who subcontract to pimps. Subpimps.”
“The kind of person who doesn’t know where else to find violent men for hire,” Sherwood said.
“And,” Terri added, “the kind of person who pays for the subpimps with a personal credit card.”
“It’s probably stolen,” Rutherford said.
“From a member of the victim’s support group?” Terri asked.
TWENTY-TWO
Max, Rutherford, and Sloan walked down the hall toward Oscar Loomis’s apartment. The building appeared to have been built in the forties. Seattle had many buildings from that time period. Developers had bought and renovated a lot of them into condominiums, which offered all of the modern amenities with a dose of retro charm.
Oscar Loomis’s building, on the other hand, had not been renovated. It still had what people who sell antiques like to call “a patina,” but what most people called “decades of wear, tear, and shoddy repairs.” The floors were springy. The air smelled of moisture and mold. The carpet was gray, but didn’t look like it had started out that color. As they climbed up the three floors to their destination, it occurred to Rutherford that by using the handrail they were only increasing the likelihood that they would all go down together when it broke away from the wall.
Sherwood had entered the building with them, but the bees in his wand went crazy at the first apartment door they passed. The problem intensified with each passing door, and the bees quickly became overstimulated. The professor handed his spray bottle to Rutherford and returned to the truck, where he’d listen in to see if he could be of use.
Rutherford surveyed the dank surroundings and asked, “Is this how a successful comedian lives?”
“I guess it depends on how he measures success,” Max said.
“And if he was telling us the truth,” Sloan added. “Which he was not. We know that. For one thing, he said he lived in a condo, and this building’s all rental apartments.”
“He’s better off,” Max said. “The governments only incentivize their citizens to buy homes so that they’ll be easier to control. It gives them the illusion of having more to lose, you see.”
“Don’t you own your house?” Sloan asked.
“Yes. I don’t want them to know that I’m on to them.”
Rutherford snuck a quick peek at his personal cell phone, grimaced, and stuck it back into his pocket.
Max asked, “Is something wrong?”
Rutherford said, “My sister. She’s concerned. She saw the videos and wants to know what’s going on with me.”
“Are you going to tell her?”
“Well, what’s going on is that I’ve been in a fight with strip club bouncers, and I’m currently visiting a flea pit, so probably not.”
Max said, “Wise.”
Rutherford looked back to the end of the hall and saw the two uniformed police officers awaiting their signal. The cops had every intention of bringing Oscar Loomis, stand-up comedian, patient of the late Dr. Arledge, and Craigslist shopper, in for questioning. Normally they wouldn’t have allowed any interference, but Vince Capp had pulled very hard on some rather large strings to get permission for his team to talk to Loomis first. The hope was to get him to confess, not only to having them attacked, but also, perhaps, to the murder of Dr. Arledge.
Capp wanted a confession and an arrest; he wanted both to directly involve his team; and he would have preferred for it to come after a very visible chase, preferably out the window and down the fire escape.
As they approached what they knew to be Loomis’s door, they heard the sound of a man yelling. As they drew closer, it became clear that it was Loomis yelling, and that nobody seemed to be yelling back. By the time they reached his door, they could make out most of the words, and Rutherford had to admit, Loomis had a certain creative flair for cursing, which probably served him well in his chosen profession.
Max knocked. The stream of profanities didn’t stop. They just changed in tone, from anger at the target of his cursing to confusion over who was interrupting him. The invectives grew louder as Loomis approached the door, and much louder as he flung the door open. He shouted, “God dammit, what do you want, can’t you hear . . .” He trailed off to silence at the sight of Max, Sloan, and Rutherford standing in his hall. He was wearing a pair of loose-fitting basketball shorts, socks without shoes, and a black T-shirt with a single-color silkscreen on the front reading, “B.J. Bust-A-Guts: heavy food and light entertainment.” There was also a logo that appeared to be a gaping, laughing mouth with a microphone hanging where its uvula should be. His phone was pressed to his ear. It looked like that was where his wrath had been aimed.
He stared at the three of them for a moment. Through the tiny speaker on Loomis’s phone, a hopeful-sounding voice squawked, “Sir? Sir? Have you hung up?”
Loomis muttered into the phone, “No, I’m here. One moment.” He pressed the palm of his free hand over the phone’s microphone and said, “What do you want?”
“To come in and talk.”
Loomis looked irritated, not frightened. He said, “Yeah, I guess, whatever. I’ll be a minute.” He waved them in, stepped away from the door, and resumed shouting into his phone. “Okay, I’m back. Like I told you, I didn’t do it, and you can’t charge me for it!”
Rutherford looked around the room and reveled at how perfectly the decor suited Oscar Loomis. Not aesthetically. From that point of view it was atrocious, but looking at this room and the things in it told them everything they needed to know about its inhabitant.
The walls were bare. The kitchen was dirty, not from use, but from lack of use. The stovetop was dusty. The sink was full of dishes that had not been washed yet, or perhaps ever. The refrigerator seemed to serve not as a storage place for food, but for the take-out menus that covered it like band flyers coating the light poles in the University District.
In the living space, a pretty nice TV and a state-of-the-art gaming console sat on pressboard shelves so cheap that the manufacturer hadn’t even bothered with a proper veneer, instead painting wood grain on in faint brown stripes. The couch and coffee table looked like he’d found them on a street corner. The same beat-to-hell MacBook from the pizza parlor sat on the coffee table, surrounded by soiled paper plates and empty pop cans.
Max and Sloan were also studying the room while they waited. In his earpiece, Rutherford heard Sloan say, “That window leads to the fire escape on the front of the building, just as we’d hoped.”
Rutherford wanted to tell her that he knew, he’d noticed, and he hadn’t hoped nearly as much as everyone else, but he couldn’t. Unlike Sloan, he didn’t have the ability to speak to only those he wanted to hear him.
Loomis put his hand back over the phone and said, “Have a seat.”
They chose not to.
“Look,” he said into the phone, “I have company, so we’ve gotta wrap this up. I need this credit card to work. I need it to pay for stuff. It’s the card I use for my bills. I know exactly how much room there is on it, and there’s no way I’d charge five grand to it, especially not at a restaurant. How would you even run up that kind of bill for a meal?”
As a cop, Rutherford knew that an oversized restaurant charge might be camouflage for a payment to a prostitute.
The person on the other end of the phone must have suggested the same thing, because Loomis said, “Do I sound like the kind of person who needs to pay for that? Well, okay, smart guy, you’re looking at my account. Do I look like someone who can afford to pay for that? That’s right. Especially not five grand’s worth of it. What would five grand even buy?”
Rutherford knew the answer to that one as well. Five violent lummoxes at a grand a head, or—more likely—two grand for the leader, a grand for the prostitute for putting them in contact and processing the payment, and five hundred apiece for the other four guys. Any way it split up, it wasn’t as much money as Rutherford might have hoped. It was bad enough to have his safety threatened, but he resented having it threatened on a budget.
The worker on the other end of the line must have expressed something resembling sympathy because Loomis stood still and listened for several seconds. Rutherford could hear the person’s voice, but couldn’t make out what was being said. He thought about the microphones in Sloan’s helmet. How sensitive were they? Could she hear both sides of the conversation?
