Authors: Cathy Perkins,Taylor Lee,J Thorn,Nolan Radke,Richter Watkins,Thomas Morrissey,David F. Weisman
He had passed a Car Toys store just a few blocks back, so he pulled
into a parking lot and turned around. Inside he bought a cell phone using his
credit card, and instantly dialed 411. He asked for the number to The King
County Court House, and was patched through.
“I’m trying to reach Detective Cooper in Homicide,” he said to
the person who answered.
“One moment please.”
He was transferred and the phone rang again.
“Detective’s desk. Robbery.”
“I’m looking for Detective Cooper in Homicide.”
“This is Robbery.”
“I know that. Look, could you transfer me through?”
There was a pause. “Hang on, I’m trying to find his line.” A
longer pause followed. “I can’t find it. Would you like his direct number?”
He flipped open the notebook. “Go ahead.”
“Oh, wait.” The speaker put the phone down. “Jim, you got a call
on this line.”
He heard Cooper pick up the phone.
“Detective Cooper.”
“Chase Bowden.”
“What do you want?”
“I like that, straight to the point and helpful.”
“Are you calling to confess?”
“No. I thought you might run a couple of plates for me.”
“Right.”
He expected that. “All right. You run my two plates and I’ll
give you your anonymous caller.”
There was a moment of silence. “Was it you?”
“No. I didn’t make the call.”
“I’m transferring you to my desk.”
The phone rang twice before Cooper picked it up.
“Give me those two plates.”
Bowden opened his notebook and read the plates. He could hear
the keys of a computer being struck and then there was an electronic beep.
“Okay. Your first plate returns to a 1999, Jeep Grand Cherokee
registered to Ian and Becky Fonck out of Spokane. The other plate is a rental.”
“What company?”
“Enterprise. It’s on a Honda Civic.”
He smacked his hand against the steering wheel. The blue Civic
was the one he wanted. He had hoped for a name.
“You okay?” Cooper asked.
“Yeah. Can you get me a number for Ian Fonck?”
“From reverse directory? I don’t think that was part of the agreement.”
“Look, it’s beneficial to both of us.”
“Just a second.”
He could hear the paper being shuffled.
Cooper came back onto the line. “I thought that Spokane address
looked familiar. It’s the same address that was listed on the vic’s license.”
“Can I have the number?”
“Who reported the body?”
“Andre Fonck. One of your Deputies ran the plate when they
picked me up. He works at Microsoft. How about the number?”
“No. I sent someone from Spokane County out to that address. I’m
still waiting to hear back from them.”
He waited, knowing that Cooper wasn’t finished.
“Do you, uh, have a visual on that vehicle?”
Bowden smiled. “How about the phone number?”
Cooper read it, and Bowden wrote it down.
“Sorry. The Jeep is missing along with Adam’s sister, Michelle.
The two of them came from Spokane together. They were supposed to go back
the morning that Adam died.”
“We just got ourselves another suspect.”
“Or another victim.”
Bowden sat in his car and
loaded ammunition into the two extra clips he had purchased at the gun range.
He had called Ian Fonck after talking to Cooper and found out that Michelle
hadn’t returned home as planned, and that a missing person report had been
filed with Spokane County. Things were being taken care of on that end.
He tucked the Glock into
the holster under his left arm and drove to the Enterprise office. A bell on
the front door beeped as he opened it. The man behind the counter looked up as
he walked in.
He grinned at his new
customer. “Hello. How can I help you?”
Just like a car
salesman
,
Bowden thought. He reached
into his wallet and pulled out a card.
“Tom Jones,” he said.
“National Insurance. It seems that one of your rentals hit one of my clients.”
He handed the business card over the counter, and the man took it.
He looked at the card
momentarily and reached his hand out. “Kevin Goode. This shouldn’t be a
problem.”
“No. Except that it was hit
and run. Maybe the person who rented the car was unaware that any damage
occurred. I thought I’d get in touch with them before going to the police. It’s
easier on all parties that way.”
“Yeah. You got the plate?”
Bowden gave it to him and a
moment later he held a printout in his hands. “Has the car been returned?”
Kevin looked at the paper.
“No. And it was checked out at the airport.”
Bowden walked back to his
car, keeping the paper dry by holding it under his jacket. He slid into the
driver’s seat and held the printout on the steering wheel as he read it. The
car had been rented to Bill Kent out of New York. He looked at the address but
didn’t recognize it even though it had a good zip code.
Other than the zip code, he
suspected that the rest of the information was false. He confirmed it with a
brief phone call to a friend working at NYPD.
The phone rang in his hand.
It surprised him. He hadn’t given the number out to anyone.
“Hello?”
“Chase Bowden? Detective
Cooper.”
“Yeah?”
“We found the Jeep. Do you
want to come out?”
He thought about that for a
second. Cooper was inviting him to a crime scene. It wasn’t done often.
“Sure. Where’s it at?”
“The south end of Lake
Sammamish.”
“Where’s that?”
“Issaquah. North of I-90.”
“I’m in Bellevue. It
shouldn’t take too long to get there.”
“Don’t hurry. We’re waiting
on the dive team.”
“Is Michelle in the car? Do
you know?”
“I don’t know yet. The car’s
too deep to see into it.”
“Thanks.”
He pushed the off button
and set the phone down.
Why the call? It wasn’t professional courtesy. Cooper wanted
something.
He found the scene easily
but was turned away by a uniform directing traffic. He found the nearest place
to park, and pulled his heavy coat out of the back seat. He put it on and
zipped it closed, shoving his hands deep into the pockets.
The wind was picking up
again, flapping the yellow police tape that cordoned off the scene. He stopped
by the tape with a small group of reporters and cameramen. An officer stood
with his back to the group and watched the scene below. He didn’t envy him. It
was too cold and wet to be standing around babysitting the press.
“Hello, Officer. I’m Chase
Bowden. Detective Cooper asked me to come down.”
The officer turned around
and searched him with his eyes. “You a reporter?”
“No. Like I said, Jim asked
me down.”
“How about some ID?”
He pulled out his New York
driver’s license and handed it across the tape. The officer looked at it and
handed it back.
The officer blew on his
hands. “If Cooper isn’t expecting you, I’ll arrest you for obstructing an
investigation.” He paused a second to let that sink in. “Do you still want me
to ask?”
Chase wondered if it was a
set-up, but figured that Cooper wouldn’t be able to get everyone to go along
with it. “Yeah. Give him a call.”
The officer keyed the mike
on his shoulder and spoke into it. “David One, were you expecting a visitor?”
“Affirmative. Where’s he
at?”
“With the media.”
“Received. I’ll come get
him.”
The officer looked back at
Bowden and sighed. “He’s on his way.”
He knew the officer was
disappointed. An arrest would get him out of the wind and cold. He recognized
Cooper once he broke free of the crowd at the water’s edge. When he had covered
about half the distance, Bowden raised his hand and waved. Cooper signaled him
to come down and the two met on the closed-off street next to a Medic Unit.
Cooper greeted him without
any formalities. “The Dive Team is getting ready to go in. Let’s go out on the
dock.”
Three members from the Dive Team sat on the edge of the dock in
black scuba gear. They were testing the airflow from their tanks and adjusting
their facemasks. They slid into the water as Bowden and Cooper stepped onto the
dock. Ten feet of water covered the roof of the Jeep. It wasn’t a deep dive but
the water was murky and obscured the divers from view.
The two men stood in silence waiting for news from below. About
ten minutes after the dive was started, one of the men surfaced.
He pulled out his mouthpiece and looked up at Cooper. “It’s
empty. Do you want us to hook it?”
Cooper nodded and yelled to the crowd on shore. “Bring the tow
truck down.”
Chase decided that it was time to find out what was going on.
“So, why am I here?”
“Why’d you leave the CIA?”
“I went out on disability.”
“I know that. But you could have worked in the office.”
“I’m not that way. I’ve got to be doing stuff. I can’t sit on my
tail all the time.”
Cooper smiled. “Maybe Vincent is right about you.”
Bowden remained silent.
Cooper looked over at him, then back out at the water. “I’ve
decided that you’re not a suspect.”
“That’s not why you asked me to come out here.”
“No. No it wasn’t. I need to know what you’ve got… where you get
your information.”
“It’s all foot work.”
“How did you know about Andre? That he called 911?”
He looked over at Cooper. “Screw you.”
“I told you, you’re not a suspect.”
He hunched his shoulders to get the coat closer to his ears, and
walked away from Cooper.
“Hold it! Tell me about the other car.” Cooper took two quick
steps and grabbed Bowden’s shoulder.
He spun around, shaking the hand from him. He glared at Cooper.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Tell me about the rental car. Why is it important?”
“Do your own work.”
“I am. The car was rented by Bill Kent out of New York. I’ve got
a friend back there checking it out.”
“That’s a dead end. Fake name and address.”
Cooper looked awed. “You already got that?”
He finally realized that part of the reason Cooper had asked him
to come to the scene was to make another trade. They found one car he wanted
and called him in. If they found the other car, it would happen again.
“Andre picked up a tail this morning. The rental. It followed
him to work.”
Cooper bit his lower lip as he thought about the information.
“The driver made me when we reached the Campus. He was a white
male in his late twenties with wavy, brown hair, medium length. He’s of medium
build, running towards athletic and has a square jaw and prominent cheekbones.
No facial hair. He was wearing a bulky, tan coat that looked like it was
fabric, not leather.”
Cooper smiled. “I wish all our witnesses were that observant.”
Bowden scratched his chin
and looked over at the Jeep. A young black woman from SID had finished checking
the outside of the vehicle and opened the driver’s door. An inch of water
covered the floor of the vehicle. She looked at it for a moment, then returned
to her van. She hauled a wet-vac out of the van and over to the Jeep. It took a
moment for someone to run an electrical cord to her, then she began sucking the
water out of the jeep. She poured the water from the vacuum through a very fine
sieve and put the sieve and the filter into an evidence box.
He indicated the tech
by nodding in her direction. “Can we talk to her?”
“Sure.” Cooper walked over
to the Jeep. “How’s it look, Julie?”
She glanced up. “Hi, Jim.
Who ya got with you?”
“Chase Bowden. Works out of
New York.”
Julie smiled at him from
where she sat in the Jeep. “What brings you to the left coast?”
Cooper answered. “He’s
working on a case that’s entwined with the Fonck murder. He actually gave us
the Jeep and the tie-in.”
Julie held up a clear
plastic baggy with a crumpled cigarette box in it. “Does your girl smoke?”
Chase shrugged his
shoulders. “It’s not likely that she would smoke Marlboros.”
Julie smiled, showing
perfect white teeth. “No. And there are no ashes. I’m thinking that the idiot
who dumped the Jeep, smoked his last cigarette on the way here, flicked the
butt out the window and tossed the empty box behind him. I’ll bet we get prints
off it, too.”
Cooper nodded. “They are
stupid, aren’t they?”
Bowden almost nodded in
agreement. It was a common statement in police work that was made whenever a
criminal left a piece of evidence behind, or somehow implicated himself.
He stated the other
possibility. “They might belong to the victim. We know he rode in the car with
his sister.”
Julie nodded and spoke with
an edge to her voice. “I’ll compare them.”
Bowden could tell she was a
little irritated at him. The comparison of latent prints to the victim was a
routine procedure.
Cooper rubbed his hands
together and smiled. “Anything else we should know about?”
Julie climbed out, and
said, “They used a car to push the Jeep into the lake.”
A gust of wind blew her
black hair over her face. She turned her face to the wind so that it would blow
her hair back, then clamped it in place with a hand. She walked to the back of
the Jeep and pointed at the bumper.
“The other car was lower
than the Jeep. See how the rubber cover is pushed up?”
Bowden looked at the cover
on the bumper. He couldn’t see any difference. “Couldn’t that have happened in
a previous accident?”
“It’s possible. But the way
I’m reading the scene is like this. One person drives the Jeep down here and is
followed by someone in a second car. The guy driving the Jeep doesn’t want to
jump out of the car while it is rolling because it’s muddy and raining, and he
doesn’t want to slip and fall. So he stops the car here and leaves it in
neutral.” Julie pointed to a piece of level ground. “He gets in the other car
and they use it to push the Jeep to the decline.”
Julie pointed at two tire
marks in the mud where a vehicle had fought for traction. “These are two thin
to be the Jeep’s tracks. Also, the Jeep was in four-wheel drive. We’d have four
of these marks out here instead of two. Someone used their ride home to push
the Jeep into the lake. I’ve made a cast, but with this rain, the edges aren’t
very good.”
Bowden nodded. It made
sense. That left a couple questions unanswered though. Did Michelle drive the
Jeep or was she kidnapped? He slid his hand under the hood of his jacket and
passed his fingers through his hair, as if it might help him think. Then he pulled
the hood lower.
“Any sign of a struggle
inside the Jeep?”
Julie looked at him and her
eyebrows came together. “Nothing obvious. I haven’t had much time here.”
“We’ll leave you alone so
you can work on it,” Cooper said, grabbing Bowden’s shoulder and turning him
away from the Jeep.
They took several steps
before Cooper spoke. “You think Michelle dumped it?”
“I don’t know. It’s
fifty-fifty now. I really expected her body to be in the Jeep.”
Cooper laughed. “I know.
You end up being disappointed that you were wrong; but relieved.”
They walked back to the
police tape near Bowden’s car.
Cooper sighed. “So what happened with you and the CIA?”
Chris clinched his teeth. He still couldn’t talk about it
without getting mad.
Cooper saw the reaction. “I’ve got sources too. I wouldn’t let
any schmuck walk through a crime scene like that. So, why’d you leave?”
Bowden shook his head and stuffed his hands into his pockets. He
stared at Cooper wondering what his source might have said. “I got injured in
the line of duty. Took a bullet in the shoulder. They jerked me out of the field
and stuffed me in a chair.”