up a little. Pearce rolled up the remains of his tostada in the 100 percent recycled paper bag and tossed it in back.
“Don’t break the limit getting over there,” Robinson told him. “We let him work on her a little, maybe this time she’ll press charges.”
“These guys regulars?” asked Pearce, putting the Chevy in drive and hanging a U across the oncoming traffic. “Kinda strange timing.”
Robinson grunted. Pearce still wasn’t up to speed on the precinct. In town, most domestic violence occurred in the evening, when folks were tense from a day’s work and a long commute and had had a couple of belts to unwind. But Renfrew Avenue South East was in the slurbs, the swathe of suburban slums in the unincorporated areas of the county stretching inland from the southern tip of Lake Washington. You were talking high unemployment, mothers on shift work, the kids at the childcare center, the men spending all day down at the stuccoed, mirror-windowed licensed restaurant where no one had ordered a meal in twenty years. Domestic tensions could flare up any time of the day or night, particularly at 14218 Renfrew Avenue.
Robinson had lost count of the times he’d been called to the Sullivan house, maybe because it always seemed like the same call. Guy beats up on his wife, someone calls 911, soon as you show up they both turn on you and tell you it’s none of your fucking business, wife denies he ever laid a hand on her, guy says she hurt herself falling, not a goddamn thing you can do. Robinson had hoped things might improve when they finally split up. Some chance. Wayne still hung around there half the time, the only difference was he had another woman down in Renton he was beating up too.
They drove up a hill dominated by a huge water tower and a sprinkling of conifers, degenerate offspring of the giants which had preceded them, past a bowling alley and a bingo hall, the Thrift Store and the Splash ‘n’ Dash car wash, the Silk Plant Center and the Hallmark outlet, by signs reading RENT-2-OWN AND NO HASSLE LOANS. It had started to rain again. Overhead, a suffocating mass of clouds miles high pressed down on the landscape. Robinson thought of the candid azure skies of his home state, and shivered.
Pearce took a left at the lights, passing a strip mall and the Faith in Focus Worship Center, whose reader board said “If life hands you lemons, make lemonade.” Then they were into the grid of residential streets, GI starter homes originally, small squat boxes with gravel lots surrounded by chain-link fencing, 25 mph limits, lots of all-way stops, no sidewalks. You had to be rich to walk these days, like the yuppies down by the lake. These people were too poor.
Except for a few decorative details, the house was identical to its neighbors. Woodgrain-effect vinyl siding, skimpy windows, a worn afghan draped over the sofa on the front porch, three pick-ups in various stages of cannibalization in the yard. There was no one around. Pearce parked by a telephone pole, blocking Robinson’s door. A yellow sign peeling off the pitted surface of the pole read Neighborhood Crime Watch: We report all suspicious persons and activity to our local police. Robinson logged in their arrival and squeezed painfully through the half-open door. Pearce was already striding up the path in a take-charge manner.
By the time Robinson caught up, the rookie had knocked several times at the door. There was no reply. Pearce rapped again, even more insistently.
“Police!”
A soft tintinnabulation of wind chimes from a neighboring house, the busy hum of a light aircraft overhead. Looking down at the rain-glistened porch steps, Robinson caught the reflection of a floatplane heading east toward the mountains, Lake Chelan maybe. He thought of the camping trip he and the boys had taken last summer up by Snoqualmie. That week his core had been good.
“Police!” Pearce yelled again. “Open up!”
He glanced at his partner.
“What do we do? Is this an exigent situation? That’d give us the right to go in.”
Kimo Robinson could have told him it didn’t make a damn bit of difference, this thing was never going to come to court. Instead he tried the handle. It turned. Robinson pushed the door open and stood on the threshold, scanning the room. Nothing seemed to have changed. Plastic leprechaun, three feet high, weighted for use as a doorstop. Doormat reading WELCOME TO THE SULLIVANS. White plastic cross on the back of the door with BLESS OUR HOME in gold. Thing played the “Hallelujah Chorus” in electronic chimes when you walked in, except the batteries were always out. The air was hot and thick and full of smells, food mostly, but also something else, something with an acrid edge. Robinson stiffened, his eyes searching the room.
An entertainment center dominated the end wall, the big wood-effect TV flanked by dusty gaps where Wayne had moved out his stereo and speakers. His plush velour recliner rocker was still there, though, lined up with the TV, Dad’s throne. A chunky sofa too big for the room, upholstered in bright mustard and tomato soup brocade, faced an octagonal coffee table with a smoked glass top standing on a stained, simulated sheepskin rug. Beneath that lay brown deep-shag carpeting with plastic strips to protect the heavy traffic areas.
It was Pearce who spotted the bare leg thrust out from behind the sofa. The foot was clad in a pink fluffy slipper. Motioning the rookie to stay put, Robinson walked along the ridged plastic runner until he could see the rest of the body. It was a woman. She was wearing a faded blue bathrobe over a white synthetic nightgown. Her henna-tinted hair was arranged in a tightly interlocking mass of whorls, her face pressed into the carpet.
“What is it? What’s the matter?”
Pearce sounded panicky. Robinson knelt down and turned the woman over. It was Dawn Sullivan. There was blood in her hair. She didn’t seem to be breathing, and her skin felt cold and clammy.
“Go take a look in the other rooms,” he told Pearce, just to get him out of there.
As the rookie headed off toward the master bedroom, Robinson undipped the portable radio from his belt.
“Frank Three, Frank Three. Woman down, unresponsive. Get me an aid car.”
He was responding to a follow-up question from the call receiver when he heard Pearce’s scream. Running to the doorway, he collided heavily with the rookie on his way back out.
“What the hell?” he demanded.
Pearce shook his head. He looked as though he was about to cry. Grabbing his mouth with one hand, he plunged past his partner and out of the front door. Robinson started after him, then turned back. He drew his pistol and stepped warily into the room. The bed unmade, female clothing strewn around, no sign of any serious disturbance. The light was dimmed by layers of grimy net curtains and a dust-laden valance of folds and flounces that resembled bad meringue. A flicker of movement caught his attention. A mobile suspended over a crib. Plastic figures of animals and birds in bright primary colors revolved slowly in the draft from the heating vent.
Then he heard a noise, somewhere between a groan and a gurgle. It seemed to be coming from the crib. Robinson remembered that the Sullivans had had another child just before they broke up. The “Accident,” Dawn called it. Kimo Robinson thought that was kind of gross, even though the little thing couldn’t understand. The noise was repeated, more urgently. He walked over to the crib, feeling awkward and incompetent. Hopefully the EMTs would know how to calm a baby.
But this baby did not need calming. Even before he reached the crib, Robinson realized that the noise he had heard was coming from beyond the window, out in the front yard, where Bill Pearce was hurling up a curdled mess of half-digested Tex-Mex. The baby, by contrast, lay quiet and still, its tiny fingers clutching at nothing, its pale blue eyes wide open, a neat, blackened hole punched in the center of its forehead. The mass of blood and brain fragments which had hemorrhaged from its nose and mouth lay congealing on the pillow and quilt.
By the time Patrol Sergeant Alex Mitchell arrived at the house, the body count had risen to four. The Fire Department’s paramedics had been and gone. Those guys would do CPR on anything with a heart left to pump, but once they looked the scene over they knew they were wasting their time there.
Mitchell had driven fast-siren and lights, touching a hundred- down Highway 169 from the headquarters of Third Precinct at Maple Ridge. “Get me a sergeant,” Robinson had blurted hoarsely over the radio. Everyone knew what that meant. To make matters worse, the field trainee had flipped completely, and it was only after another patrolman showed up to hold his hand that it had been possible to complete the search of the property. That was when they’d found the other victims downstairs in the basement, two boys about ten years old.
Next thing some woman name of Kelly Shelden turned up at the door, saying she was the person who’d called 911 in the first place.
“When I saw what’d happened I just freaked. I mean, I know Wayne’s crazy, but I never thought he’d do
