Mona Lisa Eyes (Danny Logan Mystery #4) (23 page)

“What
. . . what . . . what’s the meaning of this?” Nicki sputtered, her
eyes wide, struggling to keep an adequate grip on the
sheet to ensure that her ample assets remained hidden from
view. Lucas, still sprawled on the floor, was slowly unfolding
himself and moaning as he rubbed his head.

“We heard
the screams,” Officer Bennett said, “and we . . . well, we . . . are
you alright, ma’am?”

“What?” Nicki said sharply, recovering quickly
now and firing daggers from her eyes. She focused on
Bennett. “Of course I’m alright, you . . . you . . . you bloody
idiot! What the hell are you doing here?”

“We heard
a scream. We thought you might be in danger,” I
said. “So we took action.”

“Danger?” Nicki asked, looking at
me, then at Lucas. “What? Were you standing outside my
bedroom door?”

I shook my head. “Yes . . . I mean no
. . . we just got here.”

Suddenly, Toni started laughing. Everyone turned
to her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, as she holstered
her weapon. “Trust me, Nicki, tomorrow you’re going to
think this was funny.” She laughed again. “And it is
. Really funny. But right now, we need you two to
get dressed and meet us in the living room.” She
turned to us. “Show’s over, guys. That’s it
. Everybody out. Let’s give these two some privacy.” She
shooed us out and closed the door behind us once
we’d cleared the room.

We walked back toward the
living room, and when we reached the foyer, we thanked
Keith and Officer Bennett for their help. Bennett chuckled quietly
.

“No one’s ever going to believe this shit,” he
said, shaking his head. “Not in a thousand years. Are
you guys always this entertaining? I mean, every time we
meet, it’s like the highlight of my day.”

Toni
laughed. “Trust me, the fun never stops.”

Five minutes later
, the bedroom door opened, and Lucas and Nicki walked out
.

“I can explain,” Lucas started to say.

I held up
my hand. “Not necessary. I get it.” I paused. “You
were just chaperoning a good friend.”

Lucas’s expression turned
into a glare. I guess he didn’t have a
sense of humor.

“Lucas,” Toni said, “we need to talk
to Nicki. Alone. It would be best now if you
gathered up your belongings and went home.”

He nodded and
did just that, without saying a word to us, without
even saying good-bye to Nicki. For her part, she
gave him a pretty good dose of stink-eye as
he left. When he was gone, she shifted targets to
me.

“I trust there is a good explanation for your
outrageous behavior,” she said, clipping each word off to emphasize
them in a really cool, pissed-off British fashion.

I
nodded. “There is. We were worried about you.”

“Worried? About
me? Why? Why on earth would you be worried about
me?” She looked at me, then at Toni, then back
at me. “And what made you feel compelled to break
into my house and crash into my bedroom? At that
precise moment?”

“Let’s sit down,” I said.

“I don
’t want to—”

“Nicki!” I said sharply. “Sit down.” This
former army grunt can give orders too. She stared at
me for a moment, fuming, but then she sat down
on the sofa. We sat across from her. “Nicki, this
afternoon, we found Judie Lawton. She’s been murdered.”

Her
mouth dropped open. After a few seconds, she said, “Judie
?” Her eyes started to fill with tears. “Judie’s dead
?”

I nodded. “I’m afraid so. She was strangled.”

“Oh
, my God.” She covered her mouth with her hand.

We
let her cry for a minute, and then I said
, “Unfortunately, there’s more.”

She looked at me, confusion all
over her face.

“It’s starting to look like whoever
killed Judie may have killed Sophie as well.”

“Sophie?” she
cried. “How can that be?”

“We think whoever did it
used the same kind of rope for both murders. That
’s either a very unusual coincidence, or else it’s
a pretty strong hint that the same person killed both
girls.”

She paused for a moment. “My God. Do you
know who did it?”

I shook my head. “No. But
we’re looking to talk to Josh Bannister. It might
just be a coincidence, but Josh decided to go on
vacation this past Tuesday—the same day the police think
Judie was killed. Now he’s nowhere to be found
.”

“Josh?”

“We don’t know what his disappearance means yet
. Could be he’s just scared. If someone else killed
Judie and Sophie, Josh might be thinking he’s next
. He might hiding from whoever did it.”

“Or it’s
possible that Josh killed them,” Toni said. “Judie’s apartment
was completely sacked. Somebody went through it looking for something
. But they didn’t find it. Later, when the police
did a more thorough search of the apartment, they found
a large quantity of cocaine hidden way up under the
bathroom vanity.”

Nicki looked from Toni to me.

She shook
her head again. “I don’t know what to say
. I have no idea how this could be tied to
Sophie. But Josh? I can’t imagine Josh doing this
. He could never hurt anyone.”

“We have some theories, but
that’s all they are right now,” I said. “We
’re going to be working hard on them over the
next week or so. But the real reason we came
here tonight is to tell you that there was once
a gang of four: you and Sophie and Judie and
Josh Bannister. Now, half of your group is dead.”

“Maybe
three with Josh missing,” Toni said.

I nodded. “Right. That
means there’s only one other person of the original
group left.”

She looked at me. In the last few
minutes, her emotions had shown up on her face starting
with surprise, then indignation, then shock at hearing of Judie
Lawton’s murder. Now, though, she started to look scared
. “Me. I’m the only one left.”

I nodded. “Exactly
.” I leaned forward. “Nicki, you need to be completely honest
now and tell me. Is there any reason that you
’re aware of why this might be happening? Were there
any problems with someone that might have blown up and
caused this? Anything at all?”

She shook her head immediately
. “There’s nothing. I don’t know anything.”

I looked
at her. I’ll admit that I had no confidence
in my ability to read her, but I have to
say, if she was lying, she was damn good at
it. “Fair enough,” I said. “We think it would be
wise if you were to go on a little vacation
for a while. Someplace far away. Like your father’s
place in London.”

“What? London? At my parent’s home
?” A disgusted look crossed her face. “I’ve got news
for you—that’s no vacation.”

“Maybe true,” Toni said
. “But it’s safe. Whoever killed Sophie and Judie is
still out there.” She shrugged. “But you could be right
—it might not be necessary to go to London. He
might not be after you.”

Nicki stared at Toni for
a few moments. Finally, she took a deep breath and
shook her head in resignation. “Okay. When? Flights aren’t
that easy to come by. I might not be able
to get out for several days.”

I smiled. “Good news
. We called your aunt on the way over. She’s
a powerful woman. She pulled some strings. You have a
first-class ticket on British Airways tonight at 11:54 p
.m.,” I said. “Like us, they are very concerned about
your safety.”

“Tonight?” She was flabbergasted. “Close to midnight? That
’s only a few hours from now!”

“Exactly. You’ll
need to hurry. Go to London until this blows over
,” Toni said. “Clear your head. Relax.”

Nicki nodded and took
a deep breath. “What a fucking day,” she said. She
leaned back and stared straight ahead for a few moments
, then she smiled and gestured toward the wineglasses. “No drugs
tonight. Just a glass of wine.” She looked at me
. “I just called him because after the interview, I needed
some company. And look what happens.”

I smiled. “Don’t
sweat it. Just go, get away from all of this
. Call us when you get settled so that we’ll
know how to get in touch with you in case
we have to.”

Three hours later, accompanied by two uniformed
SPD officers who helped clear us through Sea-Tac TSA
, we escorted Nicki aboard British Airways Flight 1255 for the
late-night flight to London. We stayed in the gate
area until the 747 taxied to the runway and took
off into the night sky.

C
hapter 13

A STEADY RAIN
WAS FALLING THE
next morning. Ron and Yoshi were picking
me up at nine, so I finished my training run
and made it into the office by eight fifteen. I
wanted to spend a few minutes reviewing the background information
on Gabriel Bannister that Kenny pulled up yesterday. He’d
been able to assemble a pretty full package: criminal records
, employment, credit, residences—the whole picture. I hoped that a
careful review of the background information might just reveal something
in Gabriel’s past that would help us strategize—a
door that might be partly opened to make it easier
to talk with him.

I’d just leaned back in
my chair and gotten comfortable when Kenny walked in.

I
lifted the package he’d prepared. “Good morning. And thanks
for putting this stuff together.”

“No problem, boss. Now that
we’re officially part of the task force, I didn
’t even have to hack in. All I had to
do was call and ask, and an hour later they
emailed me the package. Just like magic. It was
sweet.”

“That’s a switch.”

He nodded. “Yeah, it is
. Say, while I’ve got you, I have a request
.”

I looked at him for a second. He had a
serious expression on his face, so I went ahead and
set the file down and sat up straight. “Another request
? What is it?”

“Doc said you guys go to Krav
Maga training every week.”

I nodded. “Yeah, in Bellevue. More
or less every week. We try to, anyway.” Krav Maga
is an Israeli army–developed martial art that Doc and
I learned in the military. I introduced Toni to it
four years ago when we started the agency. Now, Toni
, Doc, and I were serious about staying tuned up in
hand-to-hand combat.

“I’d like to start going
. I want to learn.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he said enthusiastically. “It
’s in keeping with my ‘Special Agent’ title, you know
?”

I smiled. “Dude, you never had any interest before. You
sure you haven’t been watching too much
Person of
Interest
?”

“I’m serious,” he said. “Think about it—it
would add value to the firm.”

I don’t know
if I agreed with that or not, but I really
didn’t have a problem with Kenny training in martial
arts. Except for the money. It’s not that expensive
—only $100 a month or so. But at that particular
moment, every penny counted.

This was balanced, more or less
, by the fact that it couldn’t hurt Kenny personally
to learn a little self-defense—even aside from showing
off for his girlfriend. I already had him training with
us on firearms for the rare instances where we needed
him to back us up, but that’s mostly because
I don’t want anybody handling firearms who’s not
been trained—especially somebody I might be counting on to
back me up. The good news is that we’d
only had to resort to gunplay once in four years
. Physical altercations, on the other hand—little tussles that didn
’t require lethal force—they happened from time to time
. Not that I really expected Special Agent Kenny Hale to
be involved in a fight on behalf of the company
, but I suppose it was possible.

I made my decision
. “Okay,” I said. “Get yourself signed up. Ask Doc—he
’ll give you the particulars.”

He smiled. “Thanks, boss.”

“Keep
me posted on your progress,” I called out to him
as he turned and walked away. I smiled. Maybe I
could claim a group rate and get a discount.

I
leaned back again, opened the Gabriel Bannister file, and started
reading. Twenty minutes later, I completed my review, and I
have to admit that I’d failed to discover any
kind of hidden key in the data that may have
been helpful in getting Gabriel Bannister to work with us
. I guess I just assumed, him being in prison and
all, that he’d not be all that interested in
talking to the police, just as a matter of form
. It was up to us to convince him that it
was actually in his little brother’s best interest to
come forward.

In the end, essentially all I learned was
that the Bannister brothers were born and raised by a
single mother in southern California before the family moved to
Seattle in the early ’80s, just in time for Gabriel
to complete high school. Since the move north, things had
gone steadily downhill for the family, and both Gabriel and
Josh had cycled in and out of the King County
criminal justice system for a series of minor, nonviolent offenses
. They stepped up to the big leagues in 2006 when
the two men were busted for selling six ounces of
cocaine to an undercover narcotics detective. Although they hadn’t
been the primary focus of the investigation, the fact that
they refused to roll over on their supplier didn’t
help their cause, and they each ended up getting convicted
of “Selling a Controlled Substance for a Profit”—a Class
C felony in the state of Washington. Josh Bannister received
a five-year sentence, of which he served four years
before being paroled. Gabriel, due to the fact that his
record already featured a prior drug conviction, got seven years
. He was due to be released next year.

All that
notwithstanding though, the thing that stood out the most as
I reviewed the history in light of our current case
was the fact that neither brother had ever been arrested
, never mind convicted, of any sort of violent crime. Both
Gabriel and Joshua seemed to be completely nonviolent—not the
type to brutally strangle two young women.

Monroe is a
small town located about thirty miles northeast of Seattle at
the busy junction of State Route 522 and Highway 2
. From Interstate 405 just north of Bothell, it’s a
short thirteen-mile hop up SR 522. Ron had arranged
a 10:00 a.m. interview time with the prison, and
we arrived about fifteen minutes early.

The Monroe Correctional Complex
is a large facility made up of five separate units
in which inmates are segregated based on whether they pose
minimum, medium, or maximum risk to the public; whether they
suffer mental health problems; or whether they’ve been incarcerated
for sexual offenses. We checked in with the guard at
the visitors’ entrance and were given driving directions. Gabriel Bannister
was being held in the oldest building, originally built in
1910, called the Washington State Reformatory. WSR houses medium-security
inmates. We drove around to the east side of the
complex and parked in the visitor area in front of
the institutional looking four-story building. Inside, we registered with
a guard at the desk, checked our weapons into an
area for law-enforcement officers, and were led to a
secure meeting room where we were locked in from behind
. Ten minutes later, a guard led Gabriel Bannister in through
a door on the opposite side of the room.

I
’d seen Bannister’s pictures, but in person he looked
quite a bit older than his real age of forty
-three—prison life must have been wearing hard on him
. He was clean shaven with short reddish-blond hair already
going gray. I’d say he was five nine or
so, a little on the plump side. He wore an
orange jumpsuit. When he walked in, he paused and studied
each of us in turn, a look of amusement in
his blue eyes.

“You guys have been here before,” the
guard said to Ron and Yoshi. “You know our rules
. The room is constantly video monitored. It’s not audio
monitored though, unless you signal us. If you need something
, just wave. We’ll kick on the intercom. The red
light on the wall will go on when the intercom
is active. When you’re all through, wave. We’ll
come and get him, then we’ll unlock you. Until
then, you’re locked in.”

“Got it,” Ron said. “Thanks
.” The guard left through the same door he had entered
from. Bannister looked around.

Ron motioned to Bannister. “Have a
seat.”

Bannister smiled. “Don’t mind if I do.” He
pulled out a chair and sat down. We introduced ourselves
and handed him our business cards.

He read each of
them, then looked up. “Two homicide cops and a private
investigator.”

“That’s right,” Ron said. “Hope we haven’t
interrupted your day.”

Bannister smiled. “Interrupted? Hell no. I got
a free pass out of the laundry. I should be
thanking you.”

“You still get paid?” I asked.

He nodded
. “Sure do. Fifty-five of the taxpayers’ cents every hour
.” He leaned back in his chair. “Gettin’ wealthy by the
minute, here. Feel free to take all the time you
want.” He looked at each of us and smiled. After
a second, he said, “But I’m guessing you didn
’t drive all the way up here to beautiful Monroe
to talk to me about the prison industry, right?” He
sat up straight and before we could answer, he continued
, “So if it’s not my job in the laundry
, what is it that you want to talk about?”

“We
’re here to talk about your brother,” Ron said.

Bannister
gave him a hard look. “Joshua? Why? Is he okay
?” Caught off guard, he seemed genuinely concerned, as if he
knew nothing and had not been in contact.

Ron shook
his head. “We don’t know. He seems to have
disappeared.”

“He what?”

“He seems to have disappeared,” Ron repeated
. “Maybe I’d better start at the beginning.” He spent
the next ten minutes giving an abridged synopsis of the
Sophie Thoms case—at least the part cleared for public
release, leading right up to the events at Judie Lawton
’s apartment yesterday. “So, like I said, we found Judie
Lawton. She’d been strangled. Her apartment was completely torn
apart, presumably by her killer. Obviously, whoever did it was
looking for something. But he didn’t find it.”

“How
do you know that?” Bannister asked.

Ron smiled. “Because we
found it later when we found the body. Our CSI
team did a search—more thorough than the one the
killer did—and we found a half pound of very
pure cocaine strapped way up under Judie Lawton’s vanity
.”

Bannister thought about this for a minute, then he nodded
. A half smile appeared on his face. “Cocaine, huh? I
get it. You guys aren’t here because Josh is
missing and you’re worried about him, are you? You
guys, being the bright cops that you are, got yourself
assigned to a case, and you put two and two
together and the answer popped out: seven! You think Josh
is involved.”

“We have our reasons.” Ron held up a
hand with one finger: “He’s got a history in
the drug trade.” Second finger: “He was Judie Lawton’s
boyfriend.” Third finger: “His prints are all over her apartment
, and—most importantly?” Ron paused, then flipped up a fourth
finger: “Tuesday afternoon—just after the time we think Judie
Lawton was murdered—your brother announced suddenly that he needed
to go on a two-week vacation, effective immediately. No
one’s seen him or heard from him since. He
wasn’t at his apartment when we checked yesterday. Pretty
interesting set of coincidences, wouldn’t you say?”

Bannister shrugged
. Ron changed the subject. “You talk to your brother often
?”