Evidence

CHAPTER 20

Detective-room brew has the refreshing tang of roofing tar and a meth-like ability to scrape the nerves raw.

Special Agent Gayle Lindstrom downed half a cup without complaint, rubbed her eyes, stretched and yawned and stretched again. Milo goes through a similar act when he’s faking casual. Lindstrom needed more practice.

Taking another sip, she finally gave the expected grimace, set the cup aside.

“Yes, Doreen finally surfaced. I had nothing to do with it but it still makes me cringe.” Reaching for the cup, she deliberated another swallow, decided against it. “Nothing the Bureau did pulled her in. Her own stupidity did.”

“She did a bad thing and got caught,” said Milo.

“She got busted for prostitution and dope five years ago. Want to take a wild guess where?”

“Seattle.”

“Heart of the city, downtown. I wouldn’t be surprised if she never left. Even though she spun us all kinds of tales about hitchhiking around the country, living off the land, none of her details came together correctly and what I get from her file is the bio of a natural-born compulsive liar.”

I said, “Des Backer traveled around the country for ten years. Did she claim to be with him?”

“As a matter of fact, she did, Doctor. Not as a constant companion, off and on. She spun weird yarns about living in forests, eating roots and shoots, foraging for wild mushrooms, whatever. But like I said, when it came to closing the deal on the finer points, as in dates, towns, cities, states, she fell apart. Bureau shrinks labeled her a histrionic personality.”

Milo said, “They examined her?”

“I’ve seen no clinical report.”

I said, “Meaning the diagnosis probably came from reviewing the file.”

“Do you disagree with the diagnosis, Doctor?”

“I don’t know enough to agree, or disagree.”

Lindstrom frowned. “No offense, but the psych stuff doesn’t really matter, does it? Same for Fredd’s nature-girl tales. Maybe part of it was true, maybe she was double-, triple-, quadruple-bluffing. The point is, no eco-crimes during that period can be traced to her, so either she was real good at covering her tracks or she and the other Seattle kids weren’t any big deal in the first place.”

I said, “Five years ago, Des Backer was in architecture school. Doreen’s turning to prostitution around then says they’d probably parted ways well before.”

“And…?”

“I’m just trying to nail down the time line.”

“I won’t argue with your logic.”

Milo said, “So she gets busted for hooking. How’d that lead to federal snitch?”

Lindstrom said, “I haven’t said anything about turning her.”

“Her identity was erased, cut the crap.”

Lindstrom played with a strap of her tank top. “Yes, we turned her, but it wasn’t the prostie part that scared her, it was the dope. We’re talking kilos of weed, pills in neat little bags plus some chunks of rock. Enough to put her away for a real long time.”

“She was a major-league dealer?”

“The stuff was found in the basement of a rooming house where she habitually took johns. Downtown Seattle, not far from the Pike market.”

“She just happens to be rooming with all that?”

“Sitting on top of it,” said Lindstrom. “Literally. One of those under-the-bed trapdoors right below her bounce-for-bucks mattress. Doreen’s bad luck was popping pills in front of a john who turned out to be undercover Seattle vice. She claimed it was Advil and that was later verified. But meanwhile, the room got seriously tossed. The city had just instituted one of those temporary moral crusades-too many tourists hassled by lowlifes-so warrants were a snap. Doreen claimed she had no idea the hatch existed in the first place, had never even looked under the bed. Maybe that’s even true. Lots of girls used the same room and the building was owned by a couple of Cambodian restaurateurs suspected of bringing in all sorts of bad stuff. By the time the Bureau got called in, they were gone and wrapped in layers of paper that dead-ended in Phnom Penh. Our plan was to confiscate the entire property under the RICO statutes but Seattle PD claimed the prize as theirs. There’s a cute little shopping center there now. Designer coffee, sushi bar, Italian cafe with great pastries, yuppie gym. Tanning salon, too, which could come in handy in Drizzle City.”

“You’ve visited recently.”

“I was there yesterday. Trying to learn what I could about Doreen. After we found out what happened to her here.”

“What’d you learn?”

“Not a thing.” Smile. “I did have a good panini at the Italian place.”

“How long since you had contact with Doreen?”

“I never had contact with her,” said Lindstrom, “I inherited her. And a bunch of others like her. If that sounds defensive, it is.”

“Bunch of snitches living off tax dollars who end up burning you. Business as usual, Gayle.”

The skin above Lindstrom’s neckline turned rosy. “Like it never happens to you guys? I happen to know for a fact that six years ago, one of your best female vice D’s was set up as a pimp in an apartment in Hollywood. Not some decoy thing, LAPD had a genuine D Two hiring and working real-life hookers on the street, running everything real businesslike, keeping books, recording income. All so you could pull in high-profile johns because a feminist on the city council screamed loud enough to get heard. So what happens to your grand plan? The street girls your D is supposed to boss slip her a roofie, strip her naked, take pictures of her being ganged by some of their thug boyfriends, put the photos online, and abscond to Mexico with the cash. There’s police work at its best.”

Milo’s expression said he’d never heard any of it before.

Gayle Lindstrom said, “News to you, huh? Well, then thank the LAPD obstruction squad. My point is, Milo, we all win some, lose some. And we all cover our collective butts. Yes, the Bureau thought Doreen might be useful because during the same period she claimed to be nature-girling with Backer, the whole eco-crazy scene had heated up in a really nasty way. I’m talking two small children of a genetics researcher-toddlers, for God’s sake-with third-degree burns after animal liberation nuts set fire to the family house because Daddy ran rats. I’m talking a bunch of loggers near the Washington-Canadian border getting blinded and losing limbs due to tree spikes. A Ronald McDonald house sprayed with threatening graffiti then overrun with live rats, with families living there. Families of kids with cancer, for God’s sake. All because someone doesn’t like Big Macs. These people are lunatics and they’re vicious. And in addition to that, at least a dozen residential construction projects had been turned to charcoal, so why wouldn’t we try to use Doreen? Everyone knew the dope really wasn’t hers, why not deal?”

I said, “What made you think Doreen had anything to offer?”

“She told my predecessors that she did. Started spilling the minute they had her in lockup, claiming all sorts of insider knowledge about the most radical fringe of the movement. People she’d come into contact with during her years on the road. What made her credible was her insistence on getting a pass for herself on anything she talked about. Implying she had been more than a bystander.”

Milo said, “But…”

Lindstrom turned to him. “You’re enjoying this way too much, but fine, I’ll open a vein for you: We protected her and she screwed us over. Happy, Father O’Shaughnessy? How many Hail Marys do I need to