Mona Lisa Eyes (Danny Logan Mystery #4) (30 page)

“Or we can take the weekend
off,” I said. “You’ve all been working your butts
off. You’ve earned it—the choice is yours.” I
looked around the room, waiting for the guys to respond.

I didn’t have to wait long. “Boss, I’m
with Toni. It’d be a shame to bail out
now,” Kenny said. “I don’t mind volunteering my time
if we have to.”

“That’s right,” Doc said. “I’
m in.”

I smiled and turned to Richard. “Your thoughts?”

He smiled. “Danny, for me, it’s easy. I don’
t get paid anyway. The concept of ‘free time’ for
me means: Do I have anything else I’d rather
be doing? As it so happens, the answer is no,
and my schedule is free. There’s nothing I’d
rather do right now than see this case to a
conclusion and see the killer—the real killer—brought to
justice. Count me in.”

I nodded. “Alright, then. I appreciate
all of you being willing to step in. It means
a lot. The problem, though, and I’m sure you
all recognize this, is that I don’t know what
we can hope to accomplish in the three days left
before we move on to Vaman’s paying job. We
have hunches, right? Not much more. Unless we get really
lucky—and that’s something we have not been up
to this point—it’s going to take more than
three days to wrap this thing up. And as to
beyond that? You guys know how hard it would be
to solve this case working part-time on it. A
couple hours here, a couple hours there? That’ll be
a real bitch. Realistically, I don’t think it could
work.”

The room was full of long faces; they each
knew I was right. A full-on surveillance job like
Nandi Vaman’s would suck the most productive hours right
out of the day. It was hard enough solving Sophie’
s case full-time. Trying to work it after we
were done with Vaman for the day? Good luck.

I
leaned back in my chair and took a deep breath,
then turned and looked at the case board. I spent
a couple minutes pretending to look at the timeline, the
photos, our notes, all a cover as I tried to
figure our next move. Or, should I say,
my
next
move. The guys might be willing to volunteer a couple
days of free time. But I couldn’t ask them
for more. The next step was mine alone.

I looked
at Sophie’s picture. She stared right back at me,
just like she always did when I came into the
room. I bit my lower lip and considered my options.

When all was said and done, though, there really wasn’
t much to consider. The company couldn’t afford to
go uncovered for very long—that’s a sad fact.
My reserves were low. Then again, the reserves weren’t
completely empty, and I, as much as the rest of
the crew, loathed the idea of allowing someone to get
away with Sophie’s murder.

I spun my chair back
around. “Okay. What the hell,” I said. “Part-timing this
thing won’t work. I’ll talk to Nandi Vaman
and try to push him back a week. Two if
I have to. We’ll go uncovered on Sophie Thoms
next week.” I shook my head. “I’ll just pull
it out of reserves.”

I looked at Toni. She was
flat beaming: full-strength smile, reserved only for yours truly.
She mouthed the words “Thank you.” This was good. She
was right, of course. Money was important, but it wasn’
t the most important thing around here.

I smiled back
at her and nodded. “We keep working, but this time
for ourselves.”

“And Sophie,” Toni added.

I looked over at
the picture of Sophie on the whiteboard for a moment.
I nodded. “And Sophie.”

P
ART 3

C
hapter 19

WE WERE
GATHERED IN THE CONFERENCE
room the following Monday morning, and
I was laying out my strategy. “You know, up until
now, we’ve either approached this case by following the
task force’s lead, or else we’ve used pretty
much traditional methods—round up the usual suspects, conduct interviews
, that sort of stuff.” I shook my head. “And it
hasn’t worked. Didn’t work for SPD for three
months before we came on, and it hasn’t worked
for us. I don’t like to think we’ve
been wasting our time, but the fact is, if you
don’t buy into the story that Bannister killed Sophie
and Judie Lawton, then it’s pretty obvious both methods
have failed. We’re nowhere.

“Toni and I had lunch
with Dwayne Brown last Friday, and he said something that
really got me thinking over the weekend. He was talking
about connections. He said ‘sometimes you’ve got to look
in unexpected places to find the connection between two things
.’”

“Connections between people or events?” Richard asked.

I shrugged. “Both
, I suppose. Either one.”

Richard thought for a second, then
he said, “In other words, if we can’t solve
Sophie’s murder by going straight at it, and if
we can’t solve Judie Lawton’s murder by going
straight at
it
. . .”

“But we know there’s at least
some kind of connection because of the rope,” Doc added
.

I nodded. “Then we look for some common element between
the two—some connection—and use that to work a
new angle.”

“Interesting approach,” Richard said. “Might work if we
can find the link.”

“Isn’t that what Josh Bannister
is?” Kenny said. “A connection between the two.”

I nodded
. “Yeah, it looks that way. But that’s a connection
we haven’t been able to figure out yet. So
I’ve been thinking: we need another connection—something we
haven’t focused on yet. I think we need to
spend this last week looking outside the box. Could be
we’ve allowed ourselves to get a little tunnel-visioned
with this Josh Bannister approach.”

“You got something in mind
?” Doc asked, ready for an assignment.

“Glad you asked,” I
said. “We need to find a new connection. Doc, I
want you to follow the money. SPD sent you all
their financial background reports, right?”

He nodded. “Yeah. SPD says
they’re clean. I looked at ’em, but I’m
no expert.”

“I know. But David and George are. I
want you to set up a meeting with them. If
greed is our bad guy’s motivation, then let’s
check our list of players and see if any of
’em are living beyond their means. Let’s get a
legal eye and a CPA eye on them.” David O
’Farrell is the high-powered lawyer we keep on retainer
. He’s one of the top criminal defense lawyers in
the city, and he’s earned the privilege of being
highly selective in the cases he takes on. Fortunately, I
did a favor for David once, and ever since he
’s allowed me to pay him an exorbitant retainer in
exchange for his immediate attention when required. The few times
I’ve needed his help to get out of a
jam, he’s dropped everything and blasted in liked a
tornado. He’s a strong presence in our corner.

George
Conners is our CPA. George used to do forensic accounting
for the FBI, and he’s a whiz at looking
at a financial statement and being able to read between
the lines.

“And Doc,” I added. “Tell those guys not
to even think about stopping at the stuff SPD provides
. They’re both pros. Tell ’em to dig as deep
as they can.” He nodded. I turned to Kenny. “Next
step, designed especially for our newest special agent. We have
all the phone records, right?”

“Yep. Cell phone and home
phone. SPD was through ’em and I went over ’em
last week. Nothing popped out.”

“Okay, I’m afraid this
will be work more like what you’re used to
doing. I want us to broaden the time frame of
the search of the phone records and go through ’em
again. Let’s go back three weeks before Sophie was
killed. I want to check every single number—cell phone
and home phone—for the entire time. Let’s ID
every damn one of them. Maybe a pattern will pop
out, maybe some new contact that we’re not aware
of.”

He nodded. “Broaden the dates. Got it.”

Finally, I
turned to Toni.

“And for me?” she said, smiling.

“For
you, I saved the best for last,” I said. I
hadn’t talked to her about it before; in fact
, the idea just hit me before the meeting. “I want
you to get ahold of the police reports for all
the Puget Sound jurisdictions for the entire time period from
three weeks before through three weeks after Sophie was killed
. Let’s look at every major reported crime and see
if we can find a link. We know this crime
took place in at least two parts—Sophie and Judie
.”

“Three if you count Bannister,” Doc said.

“That’s right
, maybe three. But think about it. If we make the
assumption that Bannister was a victim and not the killer
, that means there’s someone out there who’s already
killed three people. At least. And if he killed three
, who’s to say there weren’t more that we
haven’t linked yet? Or there’s maybe some other
kind of crimes connected that we don’t even know
about. If there are, and if we can find that
connection, maybe we can use that angle to work backward
to solve Sophie.”

“Seeing’s how we’ve been having
so much luck working forward,” Toni said.

“Exactly.”

The meeting
broke up at a little before nine, and I returned
to my office to answer e-mails and transfer funds
from my savings account into our operating account to cover
mid-month bills. I hoped to get my daily administrative
chores done so that I could focus hard on the
case. I’d just closed the checkbook when Kenny’s
voice came over our intercom. “Danny, Eric Gaston is on
Line 1.”

“Thanks, man.” I wondered why Eric Gaston would
be calling me first thing on a Monday morning. Curious
, I punched the flashing button. “Good morning, Eric.”

“Hey, Danny
,” he said, cheerily. “Good morning to you. Hope I’m
not interrupting something terribly important.”

“Nah, I’m good.”

“Excellent
. Excellent. Say, I just heard from my port trimmer. He
fell off his four-wheeler over the weekend and dislocated
his shoulder. He won’t be able to make our
race this Saturday. I remember you’d said you might
be interested in going sailing, so I thought this might
be a good opportunity. I know I’d mentioned coming
out to a practice, but this would be jumping right
into a race—the real deal. You can help us
out and sort of get your feet wet at the
same time, if you don’t mind the pun.”

“Get
my feet wet?” I was dubious—I remembered the picture
on his conference wall. He filled me in on the
details, including the fact that I’d be one of
eight people onboard. He even pointed me to some things
I could download in advance to help prepare. “This is
a big race for you guys?”

“Yeah, kind of. It
’s the kickoff of the Snowbird Series. Five races throughout
the winter.”

“Sounds like pretty serious stuff. Remember, I don
’t know the first thing about sailing.”

“Not a problem
—you don’t need to know anything. You’ll be
in the cockpit with me, and I’ll tell you
everything you need to know. You’ll be fine.”

“You
’re the skipper?” I asked.

“Yeah. We call it the
helmsman.”

I wanted the opportunity to talk to Gaston anyway
, so I agreed to go. I’d get up early
and knock out my training run in the dark.

Assignments
in hand, everyone spent the remainder of the day and
half of the next with their heads down, hard at
work. Just before noon, Toni walked into my office. “You
might find this interesting,” she said.

“What’d you find
?”

She sat down and opened her notebook. “Rather than look
at
all
the major crimes, I decided to break them
into categories starting with homicides. I looked at all the
murders in the whole area from June first through the
end of July—sixty days. First off, the year started
with a lot of murders. By the end of July
, there was already one more murder this year than all
of last year. And six of ’em happened in the
June–July window. Of course, there’ve been only three
murders since then, and we’re right back on average
pace now. But those two months this summer were busy
.”

“Any of those six look interesting?”

“At first blush, no
.” She set a printout on my desk. “I had Yoshi
send this over. These are the six people—all guys
—who got murdered in the June–July time frame. Like
I said, none of them have an obvious connection. These
four guys here,” she pointed to mug shots of four
tough-looking young men, “they’re all suspected gang murderers
. Apparently, there was some sort of spat between a couple
of rival groups, and they took it out on each
other in a particularly brutal manner.”

“Hard to see much
of a connection with any of these guys to Sophie
,” I said.

“Exactly. Especially since they’ve already caught the
killers on this one and this one, and this guy
here—” she pointed to the third young man, “—was killed
by this guy here,” she pointed to the fourth young
man.

I nodded. “Alright. What about this guy?” I asked
, pointing to the fifth photo.

“Number five here was killed
outside a bar. Got in a fight and had a
bottle broken over his head.”

“Ouch,” I said, cringing a
little. The thought of getting hit in the head gave
me memories of waking up in a hospital. At least
I woke up, which made me luckier than this guy
, I guess. “That leaves him, then.” I pointed to number
six, a balding, middle-aged man.

“Yes. And at first
, I didn’t see anything with this guy, either. This
one’s not solved yet. A businessman, killed in an
apparent robbery in Kirkland, of all places.” Kirkland is a
trendy suburb just north of Bellevue on the Eastside, not
exactly what you’d call a hotbed of crime. Toni
handed me the police report.

“Leonard McKenzie,” I read. “Walks
out of his office at 8:30 in the evening at
the Carillon Point office park and is mugged. Fights back
and gets shot. Kirkland PD recover his wallet, minus cash
and credit cards, in a nearby dumpster.” I read it
again, looking for the connection and not finding it, then
I looked up and shrugged. I was missing something. “Okay
, I give up. You’re saying this connects to Sophie
? How?”

She smiled. “I felt a little uncomfortable about ruling
him out just based on the report, so I decided
to see if there was any press coverage. Check this
out.” She handed me a photocopy of a newspaper obituary
on the very same Leonard McKenzie.

Leonard McKenzie

Leonard McKenzie
passed away on July 6. He was born on Aug
. 29, 1962, and was 49 years of age. Leonard was
a resident of Medina, Washington. Family and friends are respectfully
invited to attend the Mass of Christian Burial on Tuesday
, July 11, 2013, at 12:00 noon at the Sacred Heart
Roman Catholic Church in Clyde Hill, Washington. Leonard is survived
by his wife, Gloria, and daughters Emily and Amanda. In
lieu of flowers, the McKenzie family requests donations be made
to the Beatrice Thoms Memorial Foundation.