Thicker Than Water by G. M. Ford

Author:G. M. Ford
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: AmazonEncore
Published: 2012-07-17T04:00:00+00:00

Marty had managed to promote a cup of coffee from the Mickey D’s across the street, which meant he’d been on the scene for quite some time. He had his ears hunkered down inside his collar as he walked my way. He looked cold.

“You wanna have a look before they haul it off?” he asked.

I said I did.

“I spoke with PE,” he said, referring to the Parking Enforcement Division of the SPD. “There were four tickets on the windshield and another two in the glove box,” he said. “They say it’s been here five days. The three officers who do the sweeps down here say they gave her a free ride for a couple of nights.” He shrugged, as if to dismiss their largesse. “They figured they’d already written her up four times, you know, maybe enough was enough.”

“Remarkable restraint,” I commented.

“To protect and serve.”

“I don’t get how two of the tickets got in the glove box,” I said as we walked.

“Not from around here,” Marty said. “They were issued early last week over in Wallingford, two days apart.”

Rebecca’s green BMW X3 was angled into a spot directly beneath the southbound lanes of the viaduct. Two guys from Liberty Towing were hooking it up to the inclined bed of their truck as we approached.

They waited patiently as I opened all the doors and poked around inside the car for quite some time. I don’t know what I was expecting to find, maybe just a sense of Rebecca clinging to the carpets or the headliner or something. It was weird, but I just had to do it.

Marty read my mind. “Forensics is gonna give it a full go,” he assured me.

“Where in Wallingford?” I asked.

“On Eastern,” he said. “Between Forty-second and Forty-third.”

I closed my eyes and pictured the neighborhood. Nice area. A mixture of older Victorians and postwar craftsman cottages. One of those narrow-street neighborhoods that was built before the automobile ruled the world. No driveways. If you met somebody coming the other way on Eastern Avenue, one of you had to duck in among the parked cars to let the other guy pass. Strictly single-family residential. No commercial activity of any kind. Nothing to hint at why her car had been illegally parked in that part of town.

“Harbor Patrol swept that area of the Duwamish Waterway behind Saint David’s Transport. Came up empty.”

“What about those freaks in the Cadillac?”

“What about ’em?”

“Aren’t you going to pick ’em up?”

He shrugged. “No probable cause,” he said.

“What about the assault on the security guard? That ought to be enough to get ’em in and at least sweat ’em a bit.”

“As of a couple of hours ago, the security guard doesn’t remember a damn thing. All he recalls is waking up on the lawn with a broken face. The docs say it’s a fairly common reaction to a severe concussion.”

“I saw it happen.”

“You want to spend your day giving depositions?” he asked. “They’ll bail out and be back on the streets in under an hour. You know it, and I know it, and they know it.

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