Wrongful Death (28 page)

The bus stopped beneath a porte cochere where women in black evening gowns greeted each guest and directed them into an enormous hall. Massive wood beams crisscrossed the ceiling, from which hung three enormous chandeliers. Pendergrass estimated
the room could accommodate two full-sized basketball courts. He soon felt adrift amidst a sea of black-and white-clad guests, and trays of champagne, wine, and hors d’oeuvres. Not seeing Rachel Keane, he wandered toward French doors leading to a stone patio over which a large white tent had been erected. The one thing Houghton Park couldn’t dictate was the weather, and it didn’t look about to cooperate. Dark clouds had amassed to the south, and the winds indicated they were blowing north. Pendergrass stood as if considering the storm, trying not to feel self-conscious.

“Tom, I’m so glad you made it.”

Rachel Keane approached in a stunning, form-fitting white evening gown. “And I’m even more glad that you wore your uniform.”

Pendergrass reached out to take Keane’s hand, but she stepped past his arm, pressing her cheek to his, kissing it lightly. “A man in uniform can be such a turn-on,” she whispered.

THREE TREE POINT, WASHINGTON

SLOANE ARRIVED HOME
later than he had intended. After his performance in Kessler’s office, he had returned to his firm in Seattle, wanting to stick to routine. He called Tina and Jake from a pay phone in the lobby of the building. Both were fine. They had spent the day in Ellensburg after picking up supplies. Jake found a tack shop and became enamored of a black cowboy hat. Tina bought it for him. She said when they returned to the ranch, Jake put the hat on and the caretaker gave him a lesson on an Appaloosa.

“I hope he doesn’t take to horseback riding the way he did fishing,” Sloane had said. “We’d have a heck of a time with the neighbors if we kept a horse in the backyard.”

He could tell from the moments of silence in their conversations that Tina was worried about him, but both of them knew he had to finish what he had started and that she was in his corner. There would be no going back.

With the heavy cloud layer continuing to roll in from the south, it was dark as he parked in the easement next to Jenkins’s mud-caked Buick. They had agreed it unwise for him to park in the detached garage because when the doors closed, he would be momentarily lost from Jenkins’s view.

Exiting the Jeep, Sloane fought his instincts to look about and pushed through the gate to the back porch. Jake’s fishing pole leaned against the barbecue on the lawn. A light wind brought the briny smell of the Sound. The tide was in.

As he stepped inside, Bud jumped onto the counter, but Sloane didn’t want to linger in the kitchen with all the windows. He walked into the front room. The shades remained down. Bud followed him upstairs, meowing and winding between his legs, making a pest of himself. Sloane changed into jeans, a black T-shirt, and dark, rubber-soled shoes. Returning downstairs, he turned on the lamp near the couch, and sat across the room in a leather chair with the Glock in his lap and his cell phone pre-dialed to Jenkins’s number.

Then he waited.

FROM THE UNDERBRUSH
on the hillside Jenkins scanned the area surrounding Sloane’s home as Sloane pulled into the spot beside the Buick. Jenkins didn’t like Sloane being in the open, though it was unlikely Argus would try to kill him with a sniper shot. Their first priority would be to recover the fictitious tape recording of Michael Cassidy’s confession. It had been a smart play by Sloane. It would buy him time. If Argus stuck to their prior
MO, they would make Sloane’s death look explainable—a suicide like Ferguson, an accident like Cassidy, or a random killing, as with Dwayne Thomas.

Jenkins also didn’t like being this far from the house, but no other alternative afforded him a view of the property and surrounding area. To the east and north the house faced the street and the public easement. The beach and the Sound were to the west. To the south, across an expanse of lawn, Sloane’s neighbor illuminated a flag atop a pole with a bright spotlight. That left the hillside behind Sloane’s property. Jenkins parked the Explorer on the street above Maplewild and accessed the hillside by cutting through yards.

Sloane disappeared from view as he passed through the gate and reappeared atop the back stairs. He lingered a moment, then pushed inside. Shortly thereafter a muted light reflected through a shaded window, the sign they had agreed upon that everything inside the house was all right. Jenkins knew exactly where Sloane would be sitting.

Sweat rolled down his forehead into his eyes. The humidity, unusual for the Northwest, had built all day, and the dark cloud layer gave the impression of a paper bag filled with water, capable of bursting at any moment. The lighting on the street was poor. A lamp on a utility pole cast the easement in an orange glow. Otherwise the street lamps were few and far between. Apparently the homeowners on Three Tree Point valued their privacy.

As the evening wore on, the wind began to gust out of the south, stiffening the flag on the neighbor’s pole. Moments later the cloud layer flashed a brilliant purple and white, followed by a rumble of thunder that shook the ground.

And the paper bag burst.

Jenkins reached into his backpack and pulled out one of the camouflage ponchos he and Sloane had bought for their trek to
Cassidy’s trailer as great globules of water fell from the sky. They had put the ponchos away damp, and the plastic had stuck together as if melted. Jenkins fought to unravel it without ripping holes. When he had finally succeeded, he slipped it over his head and pulled it around his torso. Then he picked up the binoculars to scan the area, though he did not need them to see that a van had parked in the easement, directly beside Sloane’s Jeep.

PENDERGRASS FELT HIMSELF
blush, but before he could respond—not that any words came immediately to mind—Keane pulled away.

“Rachel.”

Keane turned to the sound of her name being called. Pendergrass recognized Houghton Park Jr. from images in the media.

“Houghton, how are you?” Keane kissed Park on the cheek, then turned to introduce Pendergrass. “This is Captain Thomas Pendergrass.”

Park’s gray hair was slicked back off his forehead with a liberal dose of gel. “The young man you were telling me about?” He extended a hand. “Houghton Park. So very glad you came.”

“Captain Pendergrass served in Iraq and is the newest member of my civil litigation team.”

“A soldier and an attorney,” Park said. “Is that like an officer and a gentleman?”

Pendergrass smiled. “I’m still a JAG lawyer at present,” he said, though he had not missed the fact that Keane had apparently spoken to Park about him.

Keane slipped her arm through the captain’s. “But he’s going to consider a fulltime position in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, aren’t you, Tom?”

Pendergrass smiled. “I certainly hope it will be an option.” He
suddenly remembered that he wanted to let Keane know about his conversation with the Tort Claims staff, and their inability to find James Ford’s file, but decided the issue could wait until they were alone.

“Good for you,” Park said, smiling. “Never come cheap or easy, my father used to say.”

They all smiled politely.

“Thank you for having me,” Pendergrass said.

“It’s my pleasure. We are all indebted to you for your service. The president will be arriving shortly. Have you ever met a president, Captain?”

“I’ve never had that pleasure,” Pendergrass said.

“I think you’ll find it a memory that will last a lifetime.” Park turned to Keane. “There are some people I’d like you to meet.” He looked to Pendergrass. “Could I steal the U.S. attorney from you for a few moments?”

“Certainly,” Pendergrass said.

As Keane walked off, the wrap across her shoulders slid, revealing a toned and muscled back. Pendergrass’s eyes did not stop there. They continued lower, to her toned and firm butt.

Keane suddenly looked back over her shoulder, catching him. She winked.

A burst of light illuminated the clouds, thunder just seconds behind it. Pendergrass felt the first drops of rain and, along with the other guests, moved quickly for cover inside what he was already calling the “the Great Hall.” Despite the weather, for whatever the reason, tonight it certainly appeared that fortune had smiled on him. A few days ago he had been pushing papers around a desk at Fort Lewis. Now it appeared he was moving toward his long-term goal. He’d heard others talk about their lives changing in an instant. Solders knew it well. Maybe this was his instant.

Feeling emboldened, he made eye contact with a woman carrying a tray of hors d’oeuvres, took two, and plucked a glass of wine
from another passing tray. He then stepped toward a conversation, introduced himself, and soon found that he mingled easily among the rich and famous, his uniform an obvious icebreaker. Before he knew it, he was knee-deep in half a dozen conversations.

“Did you serve in the war?”

“How long were you in Iraq?”

“Will you have to go back?”

“Is it as bad as the media is portraying?”

Others simply thanked him for his service. Pendergrass did not downplay the attention by explaining that during his tour he had never left the Green Zone and spent most of his time sorting through legal claims by angry Iraqi civilians seeking compensation for damage inflicted to their homes or other property by American forces. He tried to sound humble, opining that the real heroes were those soldiers who had given their lives. It made him think of James Ford. He had meant it when he told David Sloane that he wished he could compensate every family who lost a relative in Iraq, that he was, at heart, still a soldier. He wished Beverly Ford had taken the money.

In need of a bathroom, he excused himself from a conversation. Not seeing any signs—this was after all, despite its immensity, still a man’s home and not a public facility—he wandered to the edge of the room and started down a hall, turned another corner, and found himself lost. Approaching the end of another corridor, he heard voices and slowed, embarrassed that he may have strayed into an area not intended for guests. He came to a room with a large stone fireplace, high ceiling, and fresco paintings, but the décor was not what caught his immediate attention. What caught his immediate attention was the sight of the shawl draped across the toned bare shoulders. Rachel Keane stepped through a doorway into an adjacent room, Houghton Park’s hand pressed gently against the small of her back.

Pendergrass was about to turn away when a third person, already inside the room, moved to close the door behind Park. Catching a glimpse of the man’s profile just before the door shut, Pendergrass went numb.

THE WIND-DRIVEN RAIN
splattered on the roof and skylights, the water pinging through the overwhelmed gutters and downspouts. A spark of light pulsed blue against the window blinds and momentarily lit the living room. Seconds later, thunder rattled the windows.

Then something banged.

Sloane stood from his chair holding the Glock in one hand, his phone in the other. Another bang.

This time the noise had a familiarity to it, and Sloane placed it—the screen door off the kitchen slamming against the house. When unlatched, the wind caught the door and flung it against the siding. The first time Sloane had heard the noise, it had startled him and Tina from a dead sleep.

He walked to the kitchen and watched through the glass of the kitchen door as the wind caught the screen again and whipped it backward against the siding. The rational side of his brain told him to let it be, but he also didn’t want the noise to distract him from other possible sounds. He had forgotten to disable the bulb over the back door illuminating the porch and didn’t relish the thought of standing in the spotlight even for a moment, Jenkins’s theory that Argus wouldn’t snipe him notwithstanding.

He crept below the marble counter, put the gun on the floor, and pulled the door open a crack. The wind howled. He slid forward but couldn’t reach the screen door handle and his fingers could not grip an edge to pull the door closed. Not wanting to linger on the porch, he stepped out, grabbed the handle of the
screen, pulled it closed and latched the eyehook. Then he closed the kitchen door. Though it took only seconds, his heart hammered in his chest and his hair dripped as if he’d been sprayed with a burst from a garden hose.

He walked back through the living room, shaking the water from his hair, when he noticed the shadow on the cloth blind, what he initially thought to be a bush beneath the windowsill rustling in the wind. Then the shadow moved across the blind right to left, the top of someone’s head ducking just beneath the sill.

Sloane watched as the shadow progressed from one window to the next, perhaps trying to see inside by looking beneath the blinds.

The crocodiles had come.

The hunt was on.

He pressed the send button as the shadow turned the southwest corner of the house. A moment later it reappeared on the blind of his den window. Sloane lost the shadow a second time as the person turned the southeast corner to the front of the house. Jenkins’s phone rang a second time.

Jenkins did not answer.

“Come on. Come on,” Sloane said.

The shadow crept past the window to the right of the front door but did not appear in the window on the other side. Again Jenkins’s phone rang.

Again he did not answer.

Sloane dropped to one knee and pressed an ear to the door but heard only the whistle of the wind and the beating of the rain. When Jenkins did not answer after the third ring, Sloane hung up.

He forced himself to remain calm, to think clearly. The police were not an option. Sloane had one shot at this, and for it to work, Argus had to think they had the upper hand at all times. He suspected they would send more than one man. The first time had
only been meant to warn; this time their intent would be to kill. Were they planning to come through the back, hoping to flush him out the front door? That was information Jenkins was to provide. Not any longer, though why, Sloane did not know.