Mona Lisa Eyes (Danny Logan Mystery #4) (26 page)

“Got it.”

The words were no sooner out of
her mouth than Bannister made his move. He turned and
darted into an alleyway.

“There he goes!” I punched the
accelerator and pointed the van down the center of the
street. “You ready?”

“Go!”

I reached the alley and hit
the brakes hard, causing the van to slide to a
stop and everything in the back to fall to the
floor. “Shit!” I muttered, as I jumped out.

I turned
and took off in pursuit toward the alley. A couple
seconds later, Toni burned rubber as she pulled away.

I
figured Bannister probably had a ten-second head start on
me—maybe 100 or 150 feet, something like that. The
distance, combined with the fact that the alley was nearly
pitch-black, made it so that I couldn’t see
him up ahead, but I could hear him—his footsteps
pounding on the rough alley pavement somewhere up ahead, splashing
through puddles as he ran for all he was worth
. I followed.

The alley spanned an entire block—maybe four
hundred yards long. It alternated between pavement and gravel sections
. The buildings were pushed up close on both sides, making
the alley feel like a little canyon in the dark
. Farther ahead, the alley jogged to the left and prevented
me from seeing clear through to the lights of the
street on the other side—the street where Toni would
soon seal off the alley exit. I kept running anyway
. I’m a distance runner, not a sprinter. Still, I
practice sprinting often enough that compared to most people, I
’m fast. I splashed through several large puddles and almost
tripped over a pile of trash, but I caught my
balance, lowered my head, and kept pushing.

After what seemed
like minutes but was actually something like twenty seconds or
so of running all out in the near pitch-black
, I pulled up and listened. I was a little surprised
that I couldn’t see Bannister yet ahead in the
darkness. I must have covered close to two hundred yards
, but there was no sign of him. Could he have
been that much faster than I’d imagined?

I strained
, listening intently. Suddenly,
ther
e! I heard footsteps ahead in
the dark, and I took off in pursuit. I could
just barely make out the dimensions of the buildings silhouetted
in the pale moonlight of the nighttime Seattle sky, so
I was able to at least stay more or less
in the center of the alley and avoid running full
speed into one of the cars parked alongside the alley
or, worse, into a greasy dumpster. Another ten seconds or
so, and the jog in the alley loomed up ahead
of me. I slowed down and listened. Nothing again.

This
was bizarre. I started to get an uneasy feeling, a
sort of sixth-sense kind of deal like I used
to get from time to time when we were on
patrol in Iraq. I mean, here I was running all
out after a guy who might be a murderer in
a blind alley in near total darkness. I had no
idea where the guy was, whether he was armed, or
what his intentions were. I had a weapon, of course,
but I had no backup, excepting Toni somewhere at the
other end of the alley. The thought occurred to me
that this might not be the smartest thing I’d
ever done. I strained to hear something that might give
Bannister away.
There!
This time, I definitely heard footsteps up
ahead, around the corner of the jog.

I listened for
a moment, trying to determine how far away the steps
were, but then I noticed something strange. The footsteps seemed
to be getting louder! They weren’t running away anymore
—they were coming back toward me!

I pulled my sidearm
and ducked behind a dumpster thirty feet from the corner
. Could it be that because I hadn’t caught him
, Bannister had assumed that I hadn’t bothered to follow
and now he was doubling back? Or had he decided
enough is enough, and now’s the time to have
it out? This made it easier—I’d just wait
and nab him as he came past.

I steadied my
breathing and listened. Sure enough, cautious footsteps continued to approach
. I waited quietly. Ten seconds later when I heard footsteps
come around the jog in the alley, I jumped out
, my .45 leveled at a shadowy figure fifteen feet away
.

“Stop!” I yelled.

“Danny! It’s me!” Suddenly, she hit
me with a dazzlingly bright light that caused me to
shield my eyes and look down. When I did, I
noticed the little red laser dot doing its little dance
right over my heart.

I immediately lowered my weapon at
the same time she lowered hers. “Toni! Son of a
bitch!” My heart was racing as I looked around. “Turn
that fuckin’ light off before he shoots us,” I said
. She did. I was completely blinded now, my night vision
shot for the next half hour or so. Still, I
looked back down the alley. “Where the hell did he
go?”

She scanned the area with me. “I don’t
know. I don’t think he made it through. I
parked the van to block off the other end of
the alley. He didn’t come out that way unless
he somehow beat me to it.”

I shook my head
. “No way—he couldn’t have. He couldn’t possibly
be that fast.”

She thought for a second as I
scanned the area. “Do you think you could have run
right past him?”

As if to answer, a car engine
started two hundred yards behind me, from the direction where
I’d entered the alley. We spun around and watched
as a car that had been parked alongside a building
suddenly peeled out and took off the other way.

“Is
that a Ford Ranger pickup?” Toni asked.

I was still
seeing stars and I couldn’t make it out, but
somehow I knew. “No doubt.”

“Well, I guess that answers
the question then.” She holstered her weapon.

“Shit!” I yelled
. My voice echoed off the buildings. There was no way
we could get back to wherever it was that Toni
had left the van and still find Bannister. He’d
be long gone by then. “Son of a bitch!” I
said again. “He must have ducked between the cars and
let me run right past him. Damn! I could have
sworn I heard his footsteps.” I holstered my sidearm.

“Well
, you probably heard his for a little bit of the
way, then he stopped and you heard mine.”

“Damn. Ron
’s going to be pissed.”

“Look at the bright side
,” she said cheerfully.

“What?”

“At least we didn’t shoot
each other.”

Later, Toni and I were home in bed
just ready to turn the lights off when the phone
rang. Toni picked it up and looked at the caller
ID. “It’s Ron,” she said.

Earlier, when I’d
called Ron and let him know that Bannister had gotten
away, he’d actually seemed more resigned than upset, as
if he’d somehow expected that there would be problems
. I asked about this and he said, “Relax. It’s
not you guys. It’s the nature of this case
. Nothing’s gone right. Why should tonight be any different
?” I told him he had a bad attitude. He told
me to go fuck myself in a friendly kind of
way.

When we were done lamenting our bad luck, we
went through our options. Ron sent an e mail of
Bannister’s driver’s license picture to the half-dozen
uniformed officers that congregated on the scene. They could be
on the lookout later while on patrol in the off
chance that they bumped into Bannister. We talked for a
while longer, but we’d hung up with no resolution
. I wonder what he wanted now.

“You’ll never guess
who I just heard from,” he said when I answered
. He sounded excited.

“Who?”

“None other than Joshua Bannister himself
.”

I laughed. “Sure. Of course.”

“Seems he got a call
from his big brother. Guess our little talk this morning
worked after all—the bastard does have a conscience. Anyway
, little brother claims he didn’t do it. Sounded all
panicky. Says he wants to come in and talk.”

“Really
? He just wants to turn himself in?”

“Yep. He sounded
scared shitless. Said some crazy bastard’s killing his friends
and now they’re after him—chased him down the
street and into an alley tonight not more than two
hours ago. Bannister says he barely got away with his
life.”

I laughed. “You tell him the crazy bastard was
me?”

Ron laughed. “Hell no. I figured what he doesn
’t know can’t hurt him. Help keep him honest
. He says he wants to come in. If he’s
scared someone’s after him, it might help keep him
from changing his mind.”

“He say anything about Judie Lawton
?”

“No, we didn’t get into it. Just that he
didn’t do it, and he wants to come in
. So I said okay. He’s definitely scared—squirrelly as
hell, and he didn’t even want to stay on
the phone. Probably watched too many movies—thought someone was
tracing the call or something.”

“So when’s he coming
in?”

“Well, that’s the funny thing. He said he
’d be downtown in my office tomorrow night at seven
.”

“Tomorrow night at seven? That’s pretty strange. What’s
wrong with right now? The guy got an appointment in
the morning he can’t break?”

“I don’t know
. Like I said, he’s scared shitless. He said he
was safe and holed up now, and he didn’t
want to move tonight and that he also didn’t
want to move in the daylight tomorrow—he wanted to
wait until it was dark tomorrow night. I told him
we’d come get him, but he declined. Man’s
jumpy.”

Toni was listening in. Hearing this, she immediately shook
her head and made her “bullshit” face. She squints her
eyes and raises one side of her mouth when her
bullshit detector goes off.

“And you believed him?”

“It’s
not like I have much of a choice, right? Guy
says he’s going to turn himself in tomorrow, what
am I gonna do? Tell him ‘hell no! It’s
now or never!’? Limited-time offer? We ain’t actually
in the driver’s seat here, you know? Maybe he
figures he’ll end up getting sent up for a
while and he wants to get this thing straightened out
—car, money, that kind of stuff. That’d take a
few hours, right?”

Toni shook her head no.

I nodded
yes. “Yeah, I suppose.”

“Anyway, as long as he comes
in, right?”

“True enough.”

“So we’ll see you guys
then?”

“If you want us there, we wouldn’t miss
it.” We said good-bye, and I hung up and
turned to Toni. “Well?”

“Call me a skeptic.”

“You’re
always skeptical.”

She turned to me just before she flipped
the light off. “I’m a realist.”

C
hapter 15

“
WELL, IF YOU ASK ME, THE
man sounds guilty as
sin,” Cecilia said. “He should be strung up from the
highest tree around.” We were having breakfast with her and
Oliver in the sunroom of their home overlooking Lake Washington
to the east. The clouds had gone from partly cloudy
last night to solid overcast this morning. By this afternoon,
the weather report said it would be raining.

Cecilia had
insisted on weekly face-to-face meetings (which became somewhat
redundant because she called every day anyway), but she was
the client, so we went. The meeting days varied based
on Cecilia’s schedule, and this week it had fallen
on a weekend. Saturday mornings would not normally be my
first choice—I’d rather be out training for the
race, but business takes precedence, and Cecilia wanted to make
it a breakfast meeting today. Since the early morning training
run was already blown, we’d scheduled a team meeting
at the office right after this one. Which means my
training run would have to wait until this afternoon. In
the rain, no doubt. Oh well, there’re worse ways
to spend a Saturday afternoon. At least we were getting
paid.

I was working on a melon slice. “Could be
that he’s guilty. We’ll know more when he
turns himself in tonight. I’m sure the police will
question him extensively.”

“If he turns himself in,” Toni added.

I glanced at her. “She’s a nonbeliever.”

Oliver rubbed
his chin. “I never paid him much attention, I suppose.
No reason to. I never suspected that he, or the
girl, was up to anything nefarious.”

Toni smiled. “People involved
with drugs—especially people selling drugs—they’re usually pretty
circumspect.”

Oliver nodded. “I suppose so. I guess I was
easily fooled.”

Cecilia looked at Oliver with a mildly disgusted
look, as if it were completely expected that he was
capable of being fooled. Then she turned to me. “Well,
we won’t be so easily fooled now, will we?”
Suddenly, she froze, fork suspended in midair. She turned to
me. “Let me ask you, when they bring this man
in, will you be present during his questioning?”

I nodded. “
Maybe. They asked us to be there tonight. I imagine
they’ll probably let us watch the questioning.”

“Watch? Watching
simply won’t do. The only reason the incompetent fools
are even talking to this man after three bloody months
is because you uncovered him. I’m going to call
Ron Bergstrom and insist that you be allowed to take
part in the questioning. I want you to ask him
point-blank why he killed Sophie!” She shook her head. “
Bloody idiots. Not a single lead in ninety days, and
the two of you are on the job, what, a
week? And already, you have a suspect? And I’m
to be expected to simply allow you to be kept
on the sidelines, at their convenience, and watch?” She slapped
her fork on the table. “Bloody nonsense!”

We survived the
meeting with Cecilia and by 9:30 a.m., we were
in our conference room with Doc and Richard waiting for
Kenny to show up so that we could start the
briefing.

“Anybody heard from Kenny?” I asked.

Richard shook his
head. “Not me.”

Doc finished his yawn. “Me neither. I
saw him last night at the gym. He was coming
in when I was leaving. But that was it.”

I
nodded. It wasn’t like Kenny to be late. In
fact, he was usually a half hour early for our
meetings. “Well, if he doesn’t show up in a
minute or two, I’ll call his cell. Meanwhile, what’
d you guys find out about this Margolian guy?”

Doc
shrugged. “It was just like we thought. Dude says he
went out with Sophie one time last year—went to
some kind of charity dinner. Sent her a Christmas card
last year but hasn’t talked to her since.”

“That’
s it?” Toni asked.

Doc nodded. “Yeah. Whole thing took
like fifteen minutes. Took twice that long to get there.”

“
Well,” I said, staring at the picture on the whiteboard, “
guess we can move him off the list.”

I leaned
back and a few seconds later, I heard the front
door open. A minute later, Kenny walked into the conference
room.

“Whoa, dude!” I said, jumping up. Kenny had a
big white bandage across his nose. The skin around both
his eyes was a nasty mix of black, purple, blue,
and red, like a psychedelic Lone Ranger. Except with a
broken nose. “What the hell happened to you?”

Toni jumped
up and walked over to him, a look of concern
on her face. Richard stood. Doc merely tilted his head
a little to the side and leaned forward. He saw
me looking at him. He gave a quick shrug of
his shoulders. He was as clueless as me.

Kenny walked
over to his customary seat and set his laptop case
down. “I got punched.”

“Where?” I said.

“Where?” He looked
at me. “Right here in the face, man. Right on
my nose.”

“He meant where did it happen?” Toni said
as she turned Kenny around and studied his face.

“It
happened at the gym last night. Krav Maga practice.”

Toni’
s eyes were wide with surprise. I glanced over at
Doc. He was trying to hide the beginnings of a
smile.

“Practice?” I asked. “Who did it?”

“And how?” Richard
asked.

He hesitated for a few seconds, then he sputtered, “
Theresa Devlin.”

At this, Doc immediately got up and walked
out of the room. As he passed me, I noticed
he was working hard to keep from laughing.

“What happened?”
I said. “What’d you do?”

“I didn’t do
anything! We were doing blocking, you know, the drill where
someone stands in front of you and tries to punch
you in the face? So she threw a right cross
at my face. I had my hands up like I
was supposed to, and I blocked the punch with my
left hand like this—” He held his hands up by
his face, then moved his left hand to the right,
as if blocking a punch to the face. “But instead
of moving my head to the left like I was
supposed to, I moved to the right, and I ended
up blocking her punch right into my nose. Which wouldn’
t have mattered if she was running at 10 percent
like she was supposed to be. But no, she was
at full speed! She whacked me good! There was blood
all over. And just for the record,” he yelled to
the door where Doc had just left, “she’s got
three inches and fifty pounds on me!”

Doc stepped back
in the doorway. He’d apparently got himself under control
and walked back in. “Why’d you lean the wrong
way, dude?”

Kenny shrugged. “I don’t know. I was
just confused, I guess.”

“Did it hurt?” Doc asked, smiling.

“
Hell yeah, it hurt, you big imbecile! She practically broke
my nose!” he protested. “It wasn’t supposed to be
full contact.”

“She was a white belt?” I asked.

He
nodded.

“And you’re a white belt?”

He nodded again.

“
You know it’s possible she doesn’t have a
real good handle on the difference between 10 percent and
full contact yet.”

“You think?” he cried.

I nodded. “Yeah.
Mistakes happen. What’d your instructor say?”

“Humph. He said, ‘
block to the right, head to the left.’”

I smiled. “
There you have it. They bandage you up at the
studio?”

He nodded. “Yeah, but I had to drive myself
to the emergency room.”

“You should’ve called, dude. We’
d have come and got you.”

“Yeah, I wish I
would’ve. Then maybe I wouldn’t have run into
that parked car.”

“You what?”

Doc got up again and
hurried back out of the room, his hand covering his
mouth.

“I was so pissed, I wasn’t paying attention.
I ran into my neighbor’s Prius.”

“Jesus, dude. How
much damage?”

“Only a thousand dollars on the Lexus. But
her Prius is all mangled.” He shook his head. “Not
a very good twenty-four hours.”

I shook my head,
and then I thought of something. Maybe there was a
silver lining. “So, not counting the fender bender, what’d
Meghan have to say about this? Not much doubt about
you being a badass field agent now, right? I mean,
just look at you.”

Kenny looked up and slowly smiled. “
I played it cool—didn’t give her details—just
said it was something at work. It worked out pretty
good, actually.”

I gave a quick glance at Toni. She
mouthed, “Who’s Meghan?”

As I expected, it started raining
just after noon, and it was coming down pretty good
when I started my training run at 2:00 p.m.
Thirteen miles and an hour and a half later, I
got home, tired and soaking wet. I piss and moan
about it, but it isn’t as bad as it
sounds—I’m used to working hard on training runs,
and as to getting soaked to the bone while doing
it: hey, I live in Seattle, right? Still, it felt
good just standing under the hot shower, feeling the heat
soak back into my body. We were due downtown at
six, but I had plenty of time.

I had cranked
up “Black Horse & The Cherry Tree” by K. T. Tunstall—
a catchy little number that always makes me feel happy.
Just as I started singing something about asking the horse
to marry me, the shower curtain suddenly slid back. Surprise,
surprise—there was Toni. I hadn’t heard her come
in over the music, and I was startled. I reached
over to the vanity and turned the music down.

“You
about clean?” she asked. “You’ve been in here half
an hour.”

“I been soakin’, tryin’ to get warm.” I
angled myself to keep the water from spraying out into
the bathroom. “And who’s counting, anyway?”

She smiled. “I
wouldn’t say I was counting. More like . . . waiting.”

“For
the shower?”

“No.” She looked at me, and as I
watched, the edge of her lip curled upward and transformed
the smile from a friendly “howdy” kind of thing into
a sexy kind of thing that definitely caught my attention.
Have I mentioned that, hands down, I’m the luckiest
guy in the world?

“I’m done.” I reached behind
me and turned off the water.

“Good. We don’t
have to be downtown for a couple hours yet. That’
s just about the right amount of time.” She reached
down and unbuttoned her jeans. With a quick flip, she
slid her T shirt over her head. “Follow me.”

I
parked in the SPD garage at 6:40 p.m., compliments
of a parking pass Dwayne Brown gave us last year
while we worked on a case together. Dwayne either forgot
to ask for it back when the case ended, in
which case,
shhhh!
, or he took pity on us and
let us keep it so that we wouldn’t have
to park in a distant garage and walk three or
four blocks in the rain every time we visited, in
which case, “Thanks, Dwayne.”

Five minutes later, we walked out
of the elevator on the sixth floor and into the
lobby where we were issued visitors’ passes and led back
to the conference room that was serving as task force
headquarters. The inside of the space was divided into small
cubicles along the wall, each holding two small desks. A
large whiteboard dominated one end of the room. The board
held a timeline filled in with the details of Sophie
’s death. Pictures of Sophie, Nicki, Oliver, Cecilia, and all
Sophie’s friends and coworkers were pinned to the board
. It was very similar to the one in our conference
room, only bigger.