“Because they’ll just tell me they told me so. Especially Dad. About Dillon, I mean. Dad told me Dillon was trouble the first time he met him. I thought he was just being…well…Dad. I mean, isn’t that what fathers usually do?”
“Just because your father was right is no reason not to call him,” I said. “Your parents need to know where you are. Come on. I’ll take you home.”
“No,” she said. “I don’t want to go home. There’s that place down on First Avenue, the one that’s a shelter for homeless teenagers.”
“Heather,” I said, “you’re not homeless. You have two wonderful parents. They both love you. They want the best for you. That’s why they took such an instant dislike to Dillon. They didn’t think he had your best interests at heart. From where I’m standing, I’d say they were right to be concerned. But you can’t cut them out of your life. Parents are bound to be right some of the time.”
Heather began to cry. “But I’m embarrassed,” she said. “I don’t want to talk to them.”
“Because Dillon beat you up?” I asked. “Or is there some other reason?”
“You mean like am I pregnant or something?” she asked.
The thought had crossed my mind. “Yes,” I said.
“Well, I’m not!” Heather declared defiantly. “I’m on the pill, if you must know.”
Pill or no pill, I was relieved to hear she wasn’t pregnant.
“I’m guessing Amy didn’t get them for you,” I said.
“You’re right,” Heather said. “Molly got them for me. She said she didn’t want anything bad to happen.”
“How very thoughtful of her,” I said.
“I couldn’t talk to Dad about it,” Heather said. “He wouldn’t have understood.”
Neither did I.
“Well,” I said. “No matter what, we still have to call your parents. Whether or not you go home is up to you and them, but you have to let them know you’re safe. You owe them that much.”
“All right,” Heather conceded at last. “Go ahead and call.”
So I did. Ron picked up the phone on the first ring. That was hardly surprising. Had I been in his position, I would have been sitting by the telephone, too. I didn’t waste time on pleasantries.
“Heather’s here with me,” I said. “She showed up a little while ago, and she’s fine.”
Ron’s answer took me aback. “No,” he said. “We still haven’t heard from her. We’re pretty worried.”
I thought maybe I hadn’t spoken clearly enough. Or maybe the call had broken up.
“I said, Heather’s here,” I repeated, speaking a little louder this time. “She’s fine. Do you want me to bring her home or do you or Amy want to come get her?”
“No,” he said. “That isn’t necessary. I appreciate the offer, but we’ve had about all the company we can stand.”
I felt like I was watching a movie where the soundtrack is a minute or two out of sync with the visual images. Ron’s disjointed responses seemed to have nothing at all to do with what I was saying. I was about to repeat myself for a third time when it finally dawned on me that the problem wasn’t my hearing or his. Something was wrong at Ron and Amy’s house. Ron was trying to warn me by speaking in a form of code.
When Ron Peters and I worked as partners for Seattle PD, we knew each other so well that we could almost read each other’s mind. It happens that way when you’re chasing bad guys and your life depends on knowing in advance what your partner is likely to say or do. But Ron and I hadn’t worked together that way for years, and I wasn’t sure what he was telling me.
“I’ll keep her here with me then,” I said. “She’ll be safe.”
“Good,” Ron responded. “That’ll be great.”
There was no code-breaking technology necessary to translate that last statement. The relief in his voice was readily apparent. Whatever was going on at Ron and Amy’s house, Ron wanted Heather kept as far away from the action as possible.
I put the phone down. Heather was staring at me from across the room. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Dad’s so mad at me that he doesn’t want me to come home, right?”
I didn’t answer immediately. I was trying to make sense of Ron’s seemingly disconnected answers and to formulate some reasonable course of action.
“Is there a chance that Dillon went back to your house looking for you?” I asked.
Heather stopped short. “You think he’s there? With Mom and Dad, waiting for me to show up?”
“It’s possible,” I said, but the wariness in Ron’s voice and his intentionally misleading statements spoke to something more ominous than simply having an unwelcome boyfriend hanging around the house.
“Does Dillon have access to any weapons?” I asked.
“He has a gun, if that’s what you mean,” Heather said. “I’ve seen it in his apartment sometimes, but I don’t know if he had it along with him yesterday in the car.”
“What kind of gun?” I asked.
“I don’t know exactly. It looked sort of like Dad’s.”
“A thirty-eight?” I asked. “A Glock, maybe?”
Heather shrugged. “I never really looked at it. Guns don’t interest me very much.”
That made Ron’s answers far more understandable. If Dillon was there, not only was the boyfriend violent, he was also possibly armed and dangerous. So what were my possible courses of action? Call 911 and tell the Seattle PD dispatcher that there was a potential hostage situation on Queen Anne Hill? They’d send in an Emergency Response Team, with sirens blaring and lights flashing. And if that happened, what were the chances that Jared or Tracy or Amy might end up caught in some kind of cross fire? That didn’t seem like a good option, but neither did sitting around doing nothing, not when my showing up even a few minutes earlier might have saved Sue Danielson’s life.
Lost in thought, I almost didn’t hear Heather’s question. “You don’t think he’d hurt them, do you?” she asked.
“You didn’t think he’d hurt you,” I returned.
She turned away from me and didn’t answer. A moment later she turned back. “Maybe I should call there,” she said. “That way I could find out if Dillon really is there, find out what he wants.”
It was a sensible suggestion. I picked up the handset, dialed the code to block caller ID, switched on the speaker option, and handed it over. “Be my guest,” I said.
“Dad!” Heather exclaimed when Ron came on the line. “It’s me, Heather. I’m fine.”
“This isn’t a good time right now,” Ron said brusquely. “If you’d call back later-”
“Is Dillon there, Dad? What does he want? Can I speak to him?”
The telephone clicked in Heather’s ear as Ron ended the call.
“He hung up on me!” a dismayed Heather said. “He wouldn’t even talk to me.”
“Couldn’t,” I corrected. “But calling again was the right thing to do. Things must be pretty tough at the house for him to drop your call like that.”
I was now more convinced than ever that Dillon was there. The trick was going to be getting him out of the house and away from the family. Only when Ron, Amy, and the kids were safe would it be time to bring Dillon Middleton to ground.
Heather had seen only the one handgun. If Mel Soames and Brad Norton had been doing their jobs, all of Ron’s weapons would have been confiscated and hauled away until the investigation into Rosemary’s homicide was concluded. That was a good thing. Facing down a deranged kid with one handgun at his disposal was bad enough. Dealing with one armed with a whole arsenal was out of the question.
Suddenly I had an idea. “Where exactly is the door you and Tracy use to sneak in and out of the house?”
“It’s on the north side of the house,” Heather answered. “On that side we’re close to the house next door, but there’s a trellis with a huge vine on it that covers that whole wall. If we stay behind that, we can get almost all the way out to the street without being seen.”
“Does Dillon know about it-the door, I mean?”
“I guess so.”
“And do you still keep it locked?”
