The Authorities, page 8
“That’s where the removable stock goes. It attaches to the base of the pistol grip.”
Glad I asked, Rutherford thought. I’ll be wanting to use that.
Albert unsnapped the flap and pulled the stock from its sheath. The black plastic handle and a matching plastic butt plate were affixed to opposite ends of a shining metal triangle. “It also works as a machete,” Albert said, giddily.
Or not, Rutherford thought.
Rutherford removed his leather jacket. With Albert’s help, he strapped on the holster, put the gun in the holster, and put the jacket on over that. Rutherford retuned to the restroom to look in the mirror. He had to admit that the extra bulk was not as obvious as he’d feared, possibly because of his slight frame. He was painfully aware of the extra weight though, also probably because of his slight frame.
When he emerged, Albert showed him where all of the gun’s switches and levers were. He practiced removing the weapon from its holster as smoothly as possible while Albert made suggestions. Albert was explaining how the deadly looking stock attached to the gun when he got a faraway look in his eyes and stopped talking. He stood motionless for a moment, then said, “Yes, I’m here.”
Rutherford had worked with enough people wearing radio earpieces to know when a person in the room with him was being talked to by a person who wasn’t in the room with him.
“What is it?” Rutherford asked.
Albert held up a finger, asking for a moment, then said, “Okay. Rutherford, grab your phone.”
He remembered leaving his new company-issued smartphone on one of Albert’s workbenches. He darted into Albert’s office and saw that the phone’s screen was pulsating and the phone itself was vibrating audibly. He picked it up and glanced back to Albert, who already had his own phone out. Albert nodded, signaling him to answer the call.
Rutherford swiped the screen, and he saw a large image of Vince Capp sitting in a plush-looking chair, inside an equally plush-looking private jet. Along the bottom of the screen there were little moving images of Terri and Albert, along with the bearded European man, the older black gentleman with the buzzing wand, and the helmet of the woman he thought of as the ninja, but whom he now knew was called Sloan. It seemed everyone on the team was in on the call.
“Hello, everyone,” Capp said. “I’m calling for a couple of reasons. First, I want to welcome the newest member of our team. I know you all met him briefly yesterday, but please say hello to Rutherford.”
Almost all of the heads in the thumbnail images smiled, nodded, and made overtly welcoming noises. Sloan’s helmet remained silent and motionless.
Capp continued. “I see that they have your clothes sorted out. That’s good. Has Albert shown you the gun yet?”
Rutherford said, “Yeah, about that, I think I have to tell you—”
Terri’s face disappeared from her thumbnail, then he heard her office door swing open with a powerful whoosh. He looked up, saw the expression on her face, and thought better about what he’d been intending to say.
“It’s cool,” Rutherford said, uncertainly. “The clothes fit well, and the gun, it’s really something.”
Terri’s smiling face came back into frame.
“About the gun,” Capp said. “One of the marketing stooges came up with a backstory about how you got it. I’ll e-mail you the details, but if anyone asks, the gist is that a wealthy Russian arms merchant’s daughter was kidnapped, and you saved her. The arms dealer was grateful, and gave you the gun as a gift. You named the gun Tatiana.”
“After the daughter,” Rutherford said.
“No,” Capp said, raising his eyebrows, “the arms dealer. Nice, eh? Hey, Albert.”
“Yes, sir?”
“How quickly can you get Tatiana engraved on the gun somewhere?”
“I can have a new forestock made. Should be able to turn that around in a week or so.”
“Top man. On to business. I have good news. There’s been a nice, juicy murder. The data mine pinged me just a minute before I called. Sounds like Dr. Dan Arledge has been killed. You probably don’t know about him, but I do. You might have heard of some of his clients, and you’ve definitely heard of the companies they work for. He’s a psychologist, very well-known in the tech industry. He was the go-to guy for upper-level tech execs who suffered from neuroses, success guilt, or excessive stress, which, between those three things, is most of them.”
Rutherford heard the sound of a keyboard clacking as soon as Capp said the victim’s name. He saw that Terri had her head down. She said, “Okay, I have his information here. He ran a place called The Arledge Behavioral Health Clinic, which figures. Where was he found?”
“His office, twenty minutes ago,” Capp said. The police are there now. Get over there and do your jobs. Oh, and Rutherford?”
“Yes?”
“Do you smoke?”
“No.”
“Wanna? I think it’d help sell the image. We could get you a per diem to pay for cigarettes, or better yet, cigars.”
Rutherford swallowed hard and said the thing he needed to say. “Sir, I just don’t know if I can pull off this bad-boy mystique you’ve set up for me.”
Terri closed her eyes. Albert visibly clenched. Capp smiled. “We didn’t set it up for you, Rutherford. We set it up, then hired you for it. And I believe you’ll find a way to make it work. You’re a smart young man. Smart enough to know that if you don’t, I’ll be forced to fire you, and that’ll be the end of your career in law enforcement. And never say mystique again. It’s out of character.”
“I am who I am, sir.”
“Yeah, well, work on that. Anything else?”
The bearded European gentleman spoke up. “I must ask a question. Forgive me, but you are an executive in the technology sector, and you are familiar with the victim. Have you ever been his patient?” He spoke with the careful diction and precise word choices of a man who would claim to not speak English well when in fact he just didn’t know the language well enough to feel comfortable abusing it.
Capp said, “Thanks for asking, Max. No, I’ve never seen Dr. Arledge or any mental health professional. If I have any mental problem at all, it’s that I’m too sane. If I saw a psychologist, I’d probably end up helping them.”
SEVEN
The team arranged to converge on the crime scene, and within minutes Rutherford, Terri, and Albert were in the car, pulling out of the parking garage.
Rutherford was driving, because that was going to be a major portion of his job. Terri was sitting in the front passenger seat, chiding him, which was going to be a major portion of her job. Albert sat in the back seat, researching the victim and acting as if Terri and Rutherford weren’t there.
Terri concluded a long, impromptu speech, summing it up by saying, “Don’t you ever pull a stunt like that again.”
Rutherford, for his part, had listened closely and understood every word she’d said, but still couldn’t quite comprehend the situation. “What stunt?” he asked. “All I did was voice a concern to my boss.”
“No, you voiced a concern to my boss, Mr. Vincent Capp, who hired me to be your boss. I try to please him by doing my job, which is making sure that you do your job. By doing your job, you will please me, which will please Mr. Capp, and that’s how we all end up happy. By going directly to him with a problem, you told him both that you couldn’t do your job and that I wasn’t doing mine. That’s how we all end up unhappy.”
Rutherford considered this for a moment. When he finally replied, it was in a quieter tone. “Terri, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to go over your head.”
“You complained to the person who pays my salary. I don’t see how you could have thought you were doing anything else. But I understand. It’s your first day. It’s been eight kinds of crazy. Just know that it can never happen again.”
“Are you saying that I should never voice any concerns to Mr. Capp?”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying. For you to complain to him would be counterproductive, because all he’ll do is tell me to fix it. You’re a cop. Think of it this way. I’m your captain. He’s the chief of police. He tells me if he has a problem with you. You tell me if you have a problem with him.”
“And then what do you do?”
“Usually, try to hide that information from both of you.”
Eventually, mercifully, they made their way across Lake Washington to Bellevue, a bedroom community that had profited greatly from the dot-com boom, and as a result had a downtown core of tall buildings larger than that of many freestanding cities.
The trip across the lake had taken, as usual, much longer than was reasonable. By the time they arrived, just shy of eleven fifteen, the police had a surprising amount of the street cordoned off. Parking was already hard to come by in this area, and the police disruption didn’t help matters. Rutherford ended up parking two blocks away from where the police tape began.
They continued on foot, Albert lugging his oversized portable computer, Rutherford listing noticeably to the left, pulled down by the weight of his barely concealed handheld howitzer.
There was another black sedan, identical to the one Rutherford had been driving, parked much closer to the crime scene than he’d managed. The doors of the car opened and the other three members of the team emerged. Sloan wore a similar black pants suit and the same black helmet, and used the same cane she’d had the day before. Her presence had a noticeable effect on the surroundings. Conversations quieted. People passing, on foot or in cars, slowed down. It seemed to Rutherford that the only people who weren’t made uncomfortable by her were herself and the people with her.
I guess I am one of the people with her, Rutherford thought. Eventually she won’t make me uncomfortable either. I can’t imagine it happening, but it can’t happen soon enough.
Terri said a quick hello when they reached the others, announced that she was going to go make contact with whoever was in charge, told everyone to wait where they were, and asked Albert to handle the formal introductions. She did all of this without once breaking her stride. She reached the caution tape, spoke very briefly to the officer maintaining the barrier, and walked through.
Beyond the tape, two doors down, Rutherford saw a brick building that was obviously the crime scene, marked as such by the steady stream of cops coming in and out. Most of the parking spaces in front of the building and its two neighbors held dirty, beat-down pickups, all of which were cordoned off with caution tape. A few of the trucks were also being searched.
Albert clapped Rutherford on the back. “Everyone, I’d like you to meet Rutherford. I know we all saw him yesterday, but I was the only one who really got to talk to him. Anyway, he’s the newest member of the team, and I should warn you, he’s at a bit of a disadvantage. His earpiece is still printing back at the office, so he can’t hear anything said on the party line. So, Rutherford, this is Max.”
Albert gestured toward the older, bearded man, who shook Rutherford’s hand. Max’s clothes were mostly brown, but they were a kaleidoscope of textures, including tweed, flannel, suede, and corduroy.
Max said, “Welcome to our merry band, young man.” His accent was still unidentifiable to Rutherford. “I must say,” Max continued, “you impressed us all a great deal yesterday. That was good work with the sex toy.”
“Uh, thanks,” Rutherford said.
Albert said, “And this is Sloan.”
Sloan silently nodded her helmet.
Rutherford said, “It’s good to meet you.”
Sloan stood motionless for a moment, then nodded again. After another long, silent moment passed, Sloan’s helmet tilted slightly, as if she was puzzled. Everyone except Rutherford and Sloan let out a restrained laugh.
The tall, older African American man in the blue windbreaker stepped forward and shook Rutherford’s hand.
“Hello, Mr. Rutherford. I’m Professor Duane Sherwood. It’s good to have you aboard. It’ll be nice to not be the new guy anymore.”
“How long have you been with the group?” Rutherford asked.
“Just a couple weeks.”
Albert cut in, “Professor Sherwood is with us temporarily. He’s here to do research.”
“Really?” Rutherford asked. “What are you studying?”
“The use of live bees in law enforcement applications.”
Rutherford started to ask him to repeat himself, but Professor Sherwood held up a hand and got a faraway look in his eye. Albert and Max had that same look. Sloan remained impassive.
Albert said, “All right. Rutherford, we’ve got the go-ahead from Terri to come in.”
Rutherford said, “That didn’t take long.”
Max smiled at him. “It never does.”
They entered the building that housed the Arledge Behavioral Health Clinic and found it to be a construction site. The floor was bare concrete with a gap below the moldings that betrayed the former presence of thick carpeting. The air reeked of paint, paint thinner, adhesives, and solvents.
Judging by the bricks, and the shape of the structure they were piled into, Rutherford figured he was standing in the archetypical Seattle building. It had probably been built in the fifties or sixties during the Boeing boom, as something lowbrow like a neighborhood drugstore to cater to factory workers who couldn’t afford to live closer to work. Then, in the nineties, when a new downtown had sprouted up around it, the building would have been purchased, gutted, and renovated to serve the highbrow needs of Microsofties and Amazonians. Now it was being renovated again to reflect the modern ideal of what an upscale twenty-first-century business should look like, which meant it would likely be furnished and decorated with a nod toward the fifties and sixties.
Of course, the midcentury modern facelift was only half finished. This point was driven home by the unfinished floor, the smatterings of raw wood and drywall, and the partially completed broken tile mosaic mural that was being assembled on the wall behind the reception desk.
A gaggle of construction workers lounged around the waiting room, most of them sitting on the floor, patiently waiting while the police searched their work site and trucks. If the police had any questions for the workers, they’d been asked before the Authorities arrived. The workers seemed bored but happy, likely because they were still on the clock despite being legally prevented from exerting themselves in any way. A single police officer was completing a lap of the room, collecting Terri’s nondisclosure agreements, many of which had been signed only semi-legibly with squared-off carpenter pencils.
Everyone who was paying attention to their surroundings grew quiet the moment Sloan entered the room. One member of the construction crew was slumped, eyes downcast, on the verge of a nap. It was clear that all he saw of Sloan was the lower reaches of a slim feminine form and a cane. He started to compliment her on the quality of her said feminine form but stopped mid-syllable when he saw her helmet gazing down at him.
It struck Rutherford that when people couldn’t see your face, they tended to assume you weren’t smiling.
Toward the back of the lobby, Terri was using her smile to blind and disorient the senior officer on the case. She saw that the team had arrived, and excused herself, then came over to brief the group.
“Okay. Like Mr. Capp said, the victim is Dr. Daniel Arledge. He was a psychologist, and a successful one at that. He shared his practice with another psychologist, his junior partner, Dr. Tyler Shaw. Shaw’s in his office being interviewed by a detective right now. The receptionist found the victim in his office.” Terri motioned to a harried-looking young woman in professional attire, sitting quietly behind the reception desk, all of her attention focused on the steaming cup in front of her.
Terri continued. “The victim’s car was here when she arrived, which is normal. He hadn’t come out of his office all morning, which is less normal, but not unheard of. She finally had to knock to discuss a scheduling issue a few minutes before ten. When he didn’t answer, she peeked in.”
Max asked, “Is there any apparent cause of death?”
“It looks like blunt force trauma and a massive skull fracture, but that’s not official until the autopsy, of course. I haven’t seen the body myself, and I don’t plan to look. Rough time of death is last night around nine. They say there were repeated blows to the back of the head. No sign of a murder weapon.”
“Which would explain why they’re searching these men’s trucks,” Max said.
The team seemed to consider this in silence for a moment, then Max and Albert both stifled a laugh, though Rutherford had no clue what was funny.
“All right,” Terri said. “You know the drill. Sloan, Max, question the witnesses and have a look around. Albert, let’s get a scan of the crime scene, the partner’s office, and the lobby too while we’re here. Oh, and try to get the storeroom. The builders have been locking their heavier tools and materials there overnight. The cops have already gone through it, but you never know what we’ll need. Professor Sherwood, go ahead and let your bees have a sniff around. If we’re lucky, they’ll find something.”
Professor Sherwood raised his buzzing metal wand. “Will do.”
Rutherford looked at the device, which still seemed like nothing more than a handheld metal detector. “Do you really have a live bee in that thing?” Rutherford asked.
Sherwood’s eyes lit up. “No, young man, I have thirty live bees in this thing. Each one trained to smell a specific compound. They have amazing little noses. Not noses, really. They have olfactory antennae, but the point is that their sense of smell is much more sensitive than a dog’s. The bottom surface is perforated with holes. A small fan draws the air into the device. Each bee is fastened to a little mount, and if they smell what they’re trained to smell, they trigger—”
