The Rivers Run Dry (15 page)

I paused, allowing my mind to retrofit the commas and periods. “Yes, thank you for clarifying, Dean Wells. I'm not at liberty to discuss details. But the FBI greatly appreciates the university's assistance.”

With a fluttering good-bye, she hung up. I typed a memo updating McLeod on the trip to Spokane, the soil samples submitted, and in particular the arsenopyrite from the torn fabric tied to a tree on Cougar Mountain. It was more information than McLeod needed at this point, but I wanted to load him with ammo for when the ASAC called again, at the behest of the senator or the director or the VanAlstynes. I wrote a search war-rant request for the casino, asking permission to send it to the U.S. Attorney's office, then deposited everything in the bin out-side McLeod's office, which was empty, and drove back to the university district, all four windows down in the Barney Mobile. As I crossed over Lake Union, the water looked like a sheet of hammered steel.

Kermit Simms, the former boyfriend of Courtney VanAlstyne, was unlocking the filthy door at Mama Mia's pizza. I pulled into the loading zone, hopping out.

“Hey, you can't come in here,” he said.

“Wanna bet?”

He shifted his body behind the door, using it as a shield. “Get lost.”

“How much poker did you and Courtney play at that casino on I-90?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“I'm guessing you spent some quality time out there because last night I ran into Stacee Warner and she just about jumped out of her stilettos. Any idea why?”

He yanked on the key, still in the lock. He wiggled it back and forth, tugging. He gripped the door between his skinny legs and pulled with both hands. His fingernails were ragged, the cuticles ripped.

I took one step forward and wrapped my hands around his fingers, squeezing them against the metal key. His knees went soft. I squeezed harder.

“That hurts!”

“That's why I'm doing it. It's going to hurt even more if you don't start telling me the truth about Courtney.”

“Okay, okay! Let go!”

I gave another squeeze, reinforcing my promise, then released his hands.

He shook out his fingers. “Why'd you do that?”

“Because the first time I asked, you didn't seem to understand. The second time, you mouthed off. You're a slow learner, Kermit. But now we have an understanding. You tell me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but, and I will leave you alone.”

Down the avenue, some midmorning pedestrians passed in loose clutches, bedraggled students and dusty bohemians. Kermit glanced at them as they passed, feigning a casual expression, before leaping behind the door, pulling it closed. I threw my right foot against the jamb, grabbed the door, yanking it open and shoving Kermit inside.

“Hey, listen,” he said, backing up, “I need this job. Maybe you don't understand.”

“No, you don't understand, Kermit. Your girlfriend's missing. Quit playing games with me.”

“I'm not playing games, man. It's the code violations in this place. These guys think you're some health inspector, trying to get me to narc.”

“Tell them I'm a friend.”

“Right. They've seen
Terminator
. You look like Linda Hamilton hunting down the cyborg. For all I know you've got some sawed-off pump action in the car waiting to take somebody's head off.”

“You're right,” I said. Why ruin a good thing? “Now tell me why Stacee freaked out or you'll see my bad side.”

The light inside the restaurant was dim, a combination of gray clouds outside and the anemic glow from the exit sign above the door. Kermit's eyes looked like caverns.

“Look, I don't talk to Stacee, not since Courtney broke it off with me. But I can guess why she got upset. Management isn't gonna let her explain who you are. They'll just can her, same as me. If her dad wasn't an Indian, she wouldn't be pulling down bucks shuttling drinks to losers.”

“How bad is Courtney's gambling problem?”

“Not that bad.”

“Kermit . . .”

“Okay. It wasn't that bad at first.”

“That's not enough.”

“The Vegas trips got out of hand, so when Stacee got the job, it seemed like a fun place.”

“Still not enough.”

“I told you about Steve Wynn in Vegas, how Daddy took care of things down there. It was a full repeat. Daddy did the same thing at the Indian casino.”

“I take it you've got fake IDs.”

“No. We, uh, we . . .”

“Stacee made sure you got in?”

“I'm old enough. We're all old enough.”

“Kermit, you're barely old enough to vote.” I didn't really care about the fake IDs, not at this point. But he did and it gave me leverage. “I'll come back to the IDs,” I said. “What I'm wondering is, did Daddy pay your debt too?”

“You're a jerk.”

“It must have been humiliating.”

“I'm over her, I told you. If she wants to play the big leagues, what do I care? Let somebody else clean up after her.”

“Big leagues—you mean Vegas? She went back to Vegas?”

“She doesn't need Vegas. She shot to the top right here.”

“At the casino?”

“Are you paying me for this?”

“How's the hand?”

“You're a mean woman.”

“Kermit, you have no idea.”

He sniffed, making me wait. But he described a secret high-roller poker game that played every other week near Sea-Tac Airport. The minimum wager was $10K and players closed out the night with hundreds of thousands in the pot, or in the hole. Seats were by invitation only.

“Courtney plays in this game?”

Even in the murky light, his wistfulness was evident, washing over his face like a bright unsatisfied hope. “She's the second girl to make the table.”

“Does she win or lose?”

“I don't know,” he said.

“She broke up with you when she got in there?”

He didn't reply.

“Or because you couldn't pay your own debt?”

“Are you done?”

“No,” I said. “If Courtney's the second girl in the game, who's the first?”

“Kit Carson.”

“Kit Carson—that's a woman?”

“Far as we know.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“You've never heard of her?”

I shook my head.

“Then you're the only one,” he said. “She's the Queen of Queen Anne Hill.”

chapter twelve

I
used the white pages hanging under the pay phone in Mama Mia's while Kermit Simms danced in agitation behind me, asking me to leave. Under the name Carson, I found seven Kathleens, eleven Kathys, six Kathies, and sixteen K. Carsons. One K. Carson had the word
unlisted
after it.

“Is that her?” I asked.

“How would I know?” Kermit said.

Back outside, I used my cell phone to call the FBI agent at Sea-Tac Airport, the so-called troglodyte named Marvin Larsen. He sounded happy to hear from me.

“I see those vultures at the
Times
got a hold of your missing,” he said. “Maybe it'll scare up some clues. Why're the parents saying no to the media anyway?”

“We're not sure,” I said. “They seem to think it will make her kidnapper torture her.”

“Kidnapped? Who said anything about kidnapped?”

“Nobody. Listen, Marvin, speaking of help . . .” I described the high-stakes poker game, how the girl played at the table, and how it was a secret gathering. “It's every other week, down near the airport.”

“You want me to check it out?”

I could hear the thrill in his gravelly voice and it triggered mixed emotions. Mostly, the hope that I would never have to find out what it was like to spend every day asking harried travelers if they'd left their luggage unattended at any time.

“Maybe later,” I said. “Right now I need to locate the only other female in the game. Kit Carson, she lives in the Queen Anne area. I found one K. Carson, unlisted, in the phone book. Any chance you can do a quick rundown?”

“Give me ten minutes.” He hung up.

I found a Mexican drivethru just down the street and ordered something with “supreme” and “combo” in the name because it sounded like my cheeseburger gone south of the border, Coke, no crushed ice, and before I'd opened the bag, Marvin Larsen called back.

“Home phone and address,” he said. “You need directions to get there?”

“I really appreciate this, Marvin. Thank you.”

“One call to my buddy in the county tax office. He owes me.”

“I'm guessing you've got contacts all over this city.”

“And you,” he said, “can call me anytime.”

Kit Carson lived in the shadow of the Space Needle, in a neighborhood that spread like a tree skirt over the hilly terrain with a jumble of houses that ranged from French Chateaux to Prairie to Colonial Revivals. But Kit Carson's condo building, just off Denny Avenue, was a five-story brick structure with a lobby that smelled of lemon oil and dust. The front desk guard wore a blue uniform the color of a robin's egg, her black hair buzzed within a quarter-inch of her scalp. Her eyes were crystal gray.

“I'm here to see Kit Carson,” I said.

“You got an appointment?” Her voice sounded like sand sluicing through an oak barrel.

When I flashed my Bureau credentials, she picked up the phone on the desk and punched in two numbers. She told who-ever was on the other end that the FBI was in the lobby. “FBI” came with a sneer. Then she lowered the phone several inches. “What's this about, Ms. Carson wants to know.”

“I need to ask her some questions.”

“She ain't saying,” the guard said into the phone. “Thinks she's cute or something.”

Ten minutes later, after I'd had examined the sepia photos on the walls that showed half-naked women from the early 1900s wearing whale-bone bustiers and expressions of longing, the elevator began descending. It was a whirring, clanking antiquity, and its progress was recorded by a tarnished brass arrow above the polished brass doors. Inside, a tall female held the door open, her hair bleached to a shade so pale the strands had the transparent quality of dead quills.

“There isn't gonna be another car,” she said. “You getting in or not?”

She punched a black enamel button marked “Penthouse,” and we clattered to the top floor. The elevator opened in a living room. No hallway, no entrance. Just a wide expanse of wood and windows that framed ferryboats crossing Puget Sound like toy ships in an enormous pond.

“Take a seat. Ms. Carson'll be with you momentarily.”

The last word was pronounced carefully, as though adverbs rarely tread on her tongue, and she waited for me to sit. Three red leather chairs faced a white suede couch under the windows, a zebra rug thrown between them. I took one of the chairs. Outside, clouds marbled the sky and the wind brushed the water with an invisible hand.

Kit Carson walked into the room wearing silk pajamas, the material alternating between blue and green, glimmering against her slender body. Her handshake was powerful but her dark brown hair was cut into a delicate shag, like the one Jane Fonda kissed good-bye thirty years ago. She held a cigarillo and smiled, her teeth gleaming like polished alabaster. She sat on the white couch.

“I presume you checked out my background, so you know I give generously to police funds. What can I do for you, Miss Harmon?”

“Special Agent Harmon.”

“Yes, of course. Agent Harmon.”

“Ma'am, can you tell me the last time you saw Courtney VanAlstyne?”

Her brown eyes gazed up at the coffered ceiling. It was painted pink, with hidden lights illuminating the corners. “Ma'am.” She turned the word over. “Well, I've been called worse.”

“Have you seen Courtney VanAlstyne in the last week?”

“No. And I read the story in today's paper, about her going missing. I called her parents, offering my sympathies. Naturally, they hung up.”

“Naturally?”

“Don't pretend to be obtuse. It doesn't become you.”

“Why do you say ‘naturally'?”

“Be that way.” She puffed the cigarillo twice. “I don't qualify as even a distant satellite in the VanAlstyne universe.”

“Miss VanAlstyne plays in a high-stakes game down at Sea-Tac. But you were there first.”

“Who told you?”

“Does her father know about the game?”

“It isn't
that
big a secret, if you want to know the truth. We've been paying off the local cops for years, and, really, what's the harm? Police officers don't make enough to feed their house plants. And it's not like we're pushing crack on babies.”

“About her father . . . ?”

“Yes, Daddy knew everything.”

When I asked about the other players, Kit Carson spoke as though they were nothing more than some loosely affiliated church congregation—paroled embezzlers, money launderers, drug mules, rich kids with gambling addictions—and as I listened to her throaty voice, I admired her nerve. A federal agent showed up at her home, asking questions about an illegal game that could've brought double-digit years behind bars, and she pretended to tip her hand by mentioning all the other players. But that was her bluff, because if we already knew about the table and Courtney VanAlstyne's involvement, any information Kit Carson offered now would play to her advantage later, when she would need to beat the other guys to the plea agreement.