“Exactly,” I said. “Hey, thanks again for lunch today. That was nice.”
“It was our pleasure. Besides-it’s your birthday. Or it will be soon. And besides that-we owe you. We keep making you buy lunch at the sushi joint, and you just keep doing it. We were starting to feel a little guilty.”
“What? You’ve just been using me as a meal ticket?”
“Hell yeah,” he laughed. “We’re cops. We’ll take all the free lunches we can get.”
“Well, it’s nice to know that at some point your conscience kicked in.”
Dwayne laughed again. “At some point. But then again, maybe it’s just because it was your birthday-who knows?”
We both laughed.
“That why you called?” he asked.
“Nah,” I said. “We need your advice.”
“Shoot.”
“After we left lunch today, we met with Toni’s little sister, Kelli.”
“I didn’t even know you had a little sister, Toni.”
“I do. She’s eighteen-graduates high school next week.”
I said, “Anyway, we met with her this afternoon. She told us that a friend of hers called her and said she’d run away from home because her stepfather had raped her. We went and talked to the mom and the stepfather this afternoon. We got the mom before the stepdad came home. She admits that it’s possible, and she also said that stepdad has beaten her-the mom-in the past. We’re wondering who we should be talking to at SPD.”
“Simple,” Dwayne said. “If you’re talking about the missing child, you need to talk to Nancy Stewart. Nancy’s the lieutenant in charge of our Vice and High Risk Victims Unit. She may want to bring in someone else, depending on the exact nature of the case, but I’d start with her. She’s an expert at that sort of thing. And she’s a real nice lady, too. Need me to set something up for you guys?”
“Yeah, we’d really appreciate it.”
“Let me call you right back.”
Ten minutes and two hundred yards later, he called back.
“You’re set,” he said. “She has a meeting first thing in the morning, but she can see you at eleven. That work?”
“That’s perfect. Thanks, Dwayne.” It was really nice to have friends in high places.
Chapter 3
I’m a pretty serious distance runner-have been ever since high school. My specialty now is half marathons. Seems that whatever your sport-baseball, football, running, you name it-at a certain level of performance, your body composition becomes a serious limiting factor. One of the keys to performing well is making sure your sport matches your body type. For me, it seems like the 13.1-mile half-marathon distance is ideal-it fits the best. It wasn’t always this way. In high school, I ran shorter, speedier distances, like the mile. Now, twelve years later, I like the longer races. They’re long enough that I can eventually run away from the pure speed guys (the 10k guys). And they’re short enough that I can still out-muscle the pure distance guys (like the marathoners). It’s the perfect distance for me. I like to compete in one race a month or thereabouts.
My personal best time of 1:12 means I’m usually fast enough to be near the front of the pack-top ten or so- but usually not fast enough to win. It’s right there-but it’s just out of reach. Sometimes-generally right after I finish just out of the top five-my friends will be impressed on the one hand and offer advice on the other-advice like maybe if I’d trained just a little longer (like those other guys), I could have made the podium. I don’t think so. If I actually believed that more training would enable me to finish higher, I might try to carve out some more time. The reality is, at some point, it’s back to those natural, God-given physical limits. When that happens, all the extra training in the world won’t let you run like Usain Bolt or swim like Michael Phelps. You either got it, or you don’t. I’m okay with this. I accept it. Fact is, most people never explore the edge of their own limitations. Even though I don’t win very often (three times in the last five years), I run because I like to find that edge. I keep at it.
Which is a long-winded way of explaining why I train year-round. The training keeps me in great shape all the time. Of course, the training also has the side benefit of allowing me to eat pretty much whatever I want without having to worry about it, and this is pretty cool, too. Maybe someday that will change-but for now, it’s working.
My training schedule is carefully structured to have me reach my athletic peak at various times in the year that coincide with the biggest races. It varies by time of year and by day of the week, but the pattern is similar year-round-I run shorter and harder on Tuesdays and Thursdays, longer and slower on Wednesdays. Fridays and Sundays are easy days. Saturdays are a bear-long and hard both. And Mondays-blessed Mondays-are a day of rest with no running at all. Today being Wednesday, the workout was a longish run at a moderate pace. For me-at this time in the season-this meant about ten miles in about an hour and fifteen minutes or so. I finished by 7:20, showered, and hit the office at eight o’clock on the dot. I walked straight into the conference room for our morning staff meeting.
After everyone was seated, I looked around the table. Kenny was there. I nodded to him. Then I turned to the tall, dark-haired man with shoulder-length black hair seated next to him. “How’s it goin’, Doc?” I asked.
He looked at me, smiled and then gave me a single nod-a fine answer for Doc-no words required.
Joaquin “Doc” Kiahtel is a Chiricahua Apache-claims to be a direct descendant of Cochise. I met Doc while we were both stationed at Fort Lewis just outside Tacoma when I worked to clear him from a little misunderstanding with some patrons of a local drinking establishment. We proved that Doc was acting purely in self-defense-even if all four of the guys who attacked him ended up in the hospital. Knowing what I know now about Doc’s background in the Army Rangers, I understand Doc actually exercised considerable restraint in the altercation: he didn’t kill a single one of ’em. Later, I got to really know him, and we became friends. Doc’s Special Forces background led me to offer him a position as director of security at our firm after he was discharged. I’m lucky that he accepted.
For the longest time, Doc was a solitary guy. It literally took him years to recover from the loss of his girlfriend who was killed by a hit-and-run driver in Fort Lewis in 2006. We got used to seeing Doc by himself. Then, two months ago, Toni and I met him at one of our favorite camping spots on the Olympic Peninsula and to our complete surprise, we found that he was accompanied by a woman! And a beautiful one at that! Toni and I were both struck nearly speechless when Doc introduced us to his “girlfriend,” Doctor Prita Dekhlikiseh-he just called her “Pri.” Unlike Doc-I mean Joaquin-Pri’s a
If I hadn’t been unconscious at the time, I’d have noticed Pri myself-she’s hard to miss at six feet tall. Like Doc, she’s also a Chiricahua Apache, although she’s from Oklahoma, and Doc is from New Mexico. Because of her, the last couple of months may have been the happiest I’ve ever seen Doc. When it comes to Pri, I’m a fan. I’d like her anyway, but I especially like her for what she means to Doc.
Also seated at the table was Richard Taylor. Richard’s a tall, lanky man in his early seventies. He’s a former Seattle Police Department detective who, twenty-four years ago, retired and opened a private investigation agency called Taylor Private Investigations. Toni and I met him when he was a guest lecturer at a police procedural course in our last year at U-Dub. When Richard told us he wanted to retire at the end of 2007, my wheels had started to turn. I made him an offer to buy him out when we graduated in December 2007. Three months later, Taylor Private Investigations became Logan Private Investigations.
With twenty-eight years at the Seattle PD, and with another twenty-four years in private practice (the last four with us), Richard is a walking Seattle criminal justice encyclopedia. I mean, the man knows everybody. He knows the history and background of every bar and nightclub in the area. He knows secrets: who owes what to whom, who slept with whom, where skeletons are buried-you name it. As an accurate information source, he’s completely irreplaceable.
And the really cool thing? Even though he’s officially retired and thus, done with the pressures of owning a business, he still likes to sit in on our cases and give us the benefit of his experience-for free! He says it keeps his
