The Sound of Rain Page 3

  “She was pretty hot,” Danny says.

  I give him the look.

  “Well,” he says, “I understand she was a predator, but if I were those boys, I doubt I’d have complained.”

  This is a conversation we’ve had before. “They were victims of a predator,” I say.

  “I get that,” he says, mockingly. “Right. A predator.”

  That leaves us with three doors to rattle. Three men, aged nineteen to seventy-five, are about to go through the drill, which comes as a price they pay for their crimes. No matter what they did, no matter how they excused it, none can escape what they’ve done. It follows them like a long shadow wherever they go.

  The entrance to Lake Washington Mobile Estates is anything but grand. Someone made an attempt to mark the neighborhood with a homemade sign on a sheet of painted plywood—the shape instantly reminds me of its origin, a basketball backboard. The elements and no homeowners’ dues have taken their toll. The W on Washington has faded away. A playground with some swings and a monkey bar is just beyond the sign. Danny makes some crack about the playground being akin to a candy dish for the offenders who call the neighborhood home. I don’t answer. I keep thinking about Kelsey and how she’s been taken somewhere. How she could be trapped in one of the mobile homes.

  “Holy crap,” Danny says. “They sure do up Christmas here.”

  “That they do,” I say, acknowledging the abundance of Christmas lights that engulf just about everything. The lights outline decks, spray over bare-limbed trees, and twist up flagpoles like a Christmas light kudzu vine invasion.

  “The power bills must be crazy high,” Danny says.

  “I imagine so.”

  I don’t tell him that I did some of my growing up in a place like this near Hoquiam, a perpetually struggling mill town on the Washington coast, a place where the sky and water are grayer than a gull’s wing. All year. Every day. I don’t mention that my mother, who had far grander ambitions than Hoquiam could offer, left my father and my sister and me. I hold back that, while we had no money, Dad insisted on putting up the biggest light display in town. It didn’t matter that the utility bill might not make it through the holidays. He took the risk. “Be some pretty big-time grinch to cut us off at Christmas,” he’d tell Stacy and me.

  I don’t tell Danny all the things about my past because I promised I’d keep it all inside. Stacy made me. She told me that I would have no family if she had to explain our past to Cy. So I never say a word. I don’t talk about the time the lights were turned off and we cooked dinner on a camp stove in the backyard. I never breathe a word to anyone that my father is still alive and suffering from Alzheimer’s in a government-paid care facility in Aberdeen. The difference between Stacy and me is that I think all that happened to us has made us better somehow. That there’s something good to be found amid the chaos. Something more understanding. Compassionate.

  I like to think that’s true.

  The wipers on Danny’s SUV need changing. The lights from the Christmas decorations send streaks of color over the windshield, making it hard to find the right house numbers.

  Nothing is sadder than a trailer park on a drizzly December day.

  At least that’s what I think as we make our way through the narrow streets with questions for people who, by whatever luck or misfortune, have had their stay right where they were while Bellevue grew up around them. Blue tarps keep drips at bay. A child’s Big Wheel sits next to a car that I doubt has been driven in years. Its wheels dig into the sodden soil as though the earth is trying to suck it out of view.

  “I talk. You pay attention,” Danny says.

  All right, asshole, I think.

  “Got it,” is what I say.

  Danny is the acting lead of our investigative unit and my lover, both attributes I question on nearly a daily basis. He’s handsome in the way that cops sometimes are. His body is his hobby. His phone is full of selfies in front of the mirror of his Bellevue condo. There’s nothing pornographic about the images, but he’s definitely fixated on his appearance. He’s a narcissist, and I wonder what it says about me that I’m willing to sleep with a man whose eyes constantly look past me in search of his own reflection.

  We’re working in teams under the direction of our lieutenant, Evan Cooper. Other pairs are working the residents of Space 47 and 102. Danny and I are going to Space 23. We’re looking for Alan Dawson, but there’s no answer when we knock. We ring the bell. Look in the windows. The TV in the front room is dark. The Christmas tree is glowing. We wind our way around a junk pile and some firewood to circle the perimeter of the mobile home, but we find no indication that anyone’s home.

  “Wonder where the hell Dawson is,” Danny says. “I’d like to button this up before the feds get involved. This is my case.”

  My case, he says. I let it go.

  “It’s Christmas, Danny,” I say, indicating an inflated Santa in the neighbor’s yard. “People go places. They spend time with family.”

  He dismisses my words. “Pervs sit around and watch porn. No matter what the day is.”

  I think of saying pervs are people too, but I resist. “Maybe so,” I say instead. “Let’s ask the woman next-door. She’s watching from the window.”

  Her name is Viola Richards. My dad would have said she has a pretty face, so as not to insult her for her size. I imagine she’s a hundred pounds overweight. Her hair is a silver bun. She wears two small Christmas bulbs for earrings.

  A retired schoolteacher, I think, though I hope not. I hope a teacher’s pension would provide for a better retirement home than this mobile home park.

  “Dawsons are gone,” Viola says from the front door after we show her our ID and tell her we’re out on a routine investigation.

  “Where to, ma’am?” Danny asks.

  “I have no idea. Charlene has a sister in North Bend. Has nothing to do with her folks. Maybe they went up there to the sister’s place. Can’t be gone long. Left me a note to feed the cat.” She looks over at the Dawsons’ place, then back at us. “You’re here about that girl, aren’t you?”

  “We’re just out on a routine investigation, ma’am,” Danny says.

  “Routine, my ass.” Her tone is brittle. “I know what you’re up to. Every time there’s a whiff of something that involves a man and a young girl, you make a beeline for the Dawsons’.”

  “It might seem that way,” I say, “but that’s not true.”

  “No need to bullshit a bullshitter,” Viola says.

  All right, maybe not a retired teacher, I think. I’ve never heard any teacher talk like that.

  “Why don’t you people just leave them alone?” she asks. “Alan did his time. And if you ask me, he didn’t deserve it. He’s a good kid. Charlene stands by him. It’s just bullshit that you people have to come over here every few months and shake this place up like the people who live here are trash.”

  “No one thinks that,” I say, wanting to tell her that I used to be one of those people. When we were in a place like Lake Washington Mobile Estates, we didn’t think of ourselves as trash, either. Because we weren’t.

  “I see it every time someone comes in here looking, like you’re doing now. You think that someone like Alan is garbage for a mistake that he made. It’s not right. He’s not the kind of guy that would hurt a fly.”

  “No one is saying he is,” I say.

  “You are,” she says jabbing her finger at me, then at Danny. “The both of you. You think you’re so much better. I taught school at Enatai Elementary for thirty-three years.” Well there you go. My instincts were sound after all. “The parents there had boatloads of money. They showered me with gifts. Told me that I was the best thing that ever happened to their family. Some even said I was like a part of their family. But I wasn’t. I knew it.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  Viola picks up a yellow cat. She says the cat—“Tracks”—belongs to the Dawsons. Tracks purrs and she holds him close to her cheek, taking in the vibrations of a very content animal.

  I hand her my card and ask her to call me when the Dawsons return.

  “I probably won’t,” she says. “I’ll tell them you came by. That much I’ll do.”

  I thank her, and Danny and I start to leave.

  “You know something, detectives, you and I aren’t that much different.”

  I hold my breath a second. I don’t know how she could have sensed my past. I haven’t said a word of it. I only thought of it.

  “How’s that, Ms. Richards?” Danny asks. “How are we alike?”

  “You don’t see it yet,” she says, setting down the cat. “There will come a day when you do. The people who are so happy to see you, the ones who treat you like you’re one of them, will abandon you. You’re called a public servant for a reason. That’s how those people that have those fancy cars and water views think of you.”

  Danny shrugs. “Maybe so.”

  “It’s not a maybe,” she says. “It’s a fact.”

  When we get back in the car, Danny turns to me. “What a total bitch,” he says. “We come around trying to work a case and she pontificates about our standing in the community. Such bullshit. I bet she was the world’s worst teacher. I bet the parents at that school couldn’t stand her.”

  I don’t tell Danny what I think. I just don’t need to go there right now. But I’m pretty sure that Viola Richards is right. Stacy would agree with her, that’s for sure. She’d remind me that as long as we pretend we come from a decent family, people will treat us like we are one of them. God knows Stacy’s Cy, for one, is all about appearances. I wonder if Danny would be with me if he knew where I came from.

  It’s late and we’re hungry. Danny suggests dinner. I know where this is going, and while it feels very, very wrong, I acquiesce.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  While we drive east on I-90 to the Snoqualmie Casino, we talk about Julian and Angela Chase. We talk about the things that don’t add up. The fact that Angela refuses to talk to us. How she complained about her husband being mad if she didn’t get home before him. How the lab tech’s report indicated that no other fingerprints than Angela’s, the children’s, and Julian’s were found on the BMW.

  “Something so wrong with that family,” I say.

  Danny keeps his eyes on the road. “Every family is fucked up. You and your sister are deep into a love/hate relationship.”

  “And I get the distinct impression that you enjoy pointing that out whenever you can. Danny, you don’t need to remind me.”

  “I don’t think Angela Chase is the type to off her kid,” he says. “My money’s on the pervert in the trailer park.”

  He’s talking about Alan Dawson. “He was seventeen when he had sex with the fifteen-year-old,” I say.

  “He’s a pervert.”

  “Maybe,” I say. “But having sex with your underage girlfriend, now his wife, is a far cry from kidnapping a little girl.”

  “Who says that he hasn’t done it before and we just missed it? Slimeballs like that get away with shit all the time.”

  Lieutenant Cooper texts us that the others in the park have checked out. All had decent alibis. Alan Dawson still hasn’t turned up. His sister told police that he and his wife had already left when they did a door knock in North Bend.

  That night I win a hundred dollars on the slots while Danny loses almost $5,000 at the blackjack table. I know that my victory is a small one, but I know better than to rub it in his face. He doesn’t like being one-upped by anyone. He blew a gasket when one of the guys was promoted over him at Bellevue PD. Said it was because the other officer was Asian and there had been pressure to increase the diversity of the department. I’m not so sure. I never said so, but I thought Ken Yamamoto was the far better candidate.

  I wander the casino while Danny stews at the bar, commiserating with the other big losers of the night. This place might even be sadder than Alan Dawson’s trailer park. Giant, fake evergreens fill the ballroom, and enormous gold-and-red balls hang from streamers that move ever so slowly as people make their way to their favorite chair, favorite barstool, favorite waitress. The casino marketing team is promoting a holiday theme—The Twelve Days of Christmas Rewards. All the hype and sparkle pushes me to think back to the previous Christmas Eve at Stacy and Cy’s and how Emma delighted in the old My Pretty Pony set that I had brought her.

  “I found it in Dad’s stuff,” I told my sister.

  Stacy looked at it. No smile. Just a look. “We could have bought her a new one, Nic,” she said, sipping her chardonnay from a Baccarat crystal goblet. It was, after all, a special occasion. It was one of the days when I, the spinster aunt, was invited to be a part of the family.

  Emma latched on to the plastic replica of a little girl’s dream of a stable. One with pink horses, purple manes, and jewels that never lose their luster.

  “This is the one we played with,” I said to Stacy. “Remember?”

  She eyed the set. “Did you Lysol it?”

  “I dusted it. I didn’t think it needed to be disinfected. It was in storage. In a box. No one but us touched it.”

  Stacy made a dismissive face and guzzled her wine. She’d probably get drunk and go to bed, leaving me talking to Cy about all the things he had to do at Microsoft and how there wasn’t enough time in the day or night to be as important as he was. It’s the way our gatherings had been going. He talked. I listened.

  Sure enough, that’s pretty much how it went down. Though that day was a little different, and I was glad about it. He was distracted. He kept looking down at his phone.

  “Everything okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Just another shit storm in China. They want to take over the world, but they can’t put together a phone worth a damn. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother.”

  He tapped out an answer to a text.

  I considered telling him I had breast cancer, just to see if he was even paying attention to me, but there was no point in that. I was a piece of furniture that came with his wife. The hope chest with nothing in it. Nothing useful.

  “Cy,” I said. “I think I’m going to take off.”

  He looked up. “Huh? It’s early.”

  “I’m working tomorrow,” I said, fishing for my coat and purse on the massive entry table by the front door.

  “That sucks.”

  I rolled my shoulders as I pulled on my coat. “Someone has to.”

  “What’s your boyfriend up to? Aren’t you going to spend the day with him? It’s Christmas, for crying out loud.”

  “We’re working a case.”

  “Good night, Nicole,” he said, looking down at the solitaire game on his phone.

  “Tell Stacy and Emma Merry Christmas,” I said as I pulled the door shut and headed for my car.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Julian Chase sits across from me and Danny in the interview room. We’ve tried three times to get him and his wife to come in to make a formal statement, but Angela is a roadblock.

  “She’s too upset,” her husband tells us. “She can’t even eat or sleep. You’re making things very difficult for her. Do your job and find Kelsey. My wife already told you everything she knows.”

  We push, in a nice way at first. We tell her lawyer that we are sorry. That we understand that nothing could be worse than having a child disappear. That we care about finding Kelsey. She’s our number one concern right now. That we need her help to find her. Then we shift tone, telling the lawyer that Angela looks bad. Indifferent. Maybe even guilty.

  And yet Angela still balks. She puts up a wall. She tells us to spend our time looking for Kelsey and to leave her alone.

  Now, finally, we at least have Julian Chase down here.

  Kelsey has been missing for forty-eight hours. It’s the day after Christmas and the Bellevue Police Department looks like a silver-and-gold bomb has been detonated, the remnants of wrapping paper from the holiday gift exchange that netted me four gift cards.

  Gift cards, I know, are for people that no one really knows. The teacher. The bus driver. The officer two cubes down from mine.

  “I’m worried,” Julian says, struggling to come up with the words.

  “We understand,” I say.

  “Is the FBI helping?” he asks. “They should be helping to find Kelsey.”

  “We’ve reported to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children,” I tell him. “It’s not a federal case. No ransom claim has been made.”

  He looks beat down. Dark circles underscore his eyes. Even the wavy hair that had repelled water so handily when we stood in the parking lot at Target has flattened.

  Danny enters the room and takes a seat, and I ask if Julian wants coffee. He says he does. So does Danny. I leave them alone and return with a couple of cups and some creamer and sugar packs. I want some too, but I only have two hands.

  “How are you holding up, Mr. Chase?” I ask.

  “Julian,” he says. “Not good.”

  I nod and push the packets of creamer and sugar across the table.

  “Black’s fine.”

  Danny speaks up. “You said on the phone that you thought your wife wasn’t telling you everything.”

  He sips his coffee. “Yeah. We’ve gone round and round about it. It’s been rough. It’s like she doesn’t want to even talk about it.”

  “What has she said?” I ask.

  “The same thing she told you at Target. Kelsey acted up. She took her to the car. Left her there and then, well, when she came back she was gone.”

  “Right,” I say. “That’s what she told us.”

  “What are you thinking, Julian?” Danny asks.

  Julian addresses me. “You’re a woman. You wouldn’t do that to your kid, would you?” He looks at me with kind, penetrating eyes.

  “I don’t have any children, but, if I did, I wouldn’t,” I tell him. “You’re right. I don’t imagine many moms would.”

  Julian looks down at his coffee.