On a clear day the big house on Mercer Island would have had a stunning view of the Seattle skyline. But fog cloaked the scene in a featureless gray mist.
Cabot knocked on the front door. There was no answer. He hadn’t expected one.
He went around the side of the house, through the professionally tended gardens and down the sloping lawn to the private dock.
A sleek boat bobbed at the end of the wooden dock. Josh Preston, dressed in a dark windbreaker, was in the back of the boat. He was concentrating so intently on wiping down the wooden railing that he did not notice his visitor until Cabot stepped onto the dock.
“Doing a little cleanup work, Preston?” Cabot asked. “Blood spatter is always a problem. The stuff flies everywhere.”
Josh straightened abruptly, gripping the wet rag in one hand. “Sutter. What the hell are you doing here?”
Cabot came to a halt at the far end of the dock. “I thought we should have a little chat.”
“If this is about your investigation, forget it. I answered your questions. I don’t have anything else to say. As you can see, I’m a little busy at the moment.”
“You’re wasting your time. No matter how much you scrub down that boat, you’ll miss some traces of Tucker Fleming’s blood. The forensics people are really good. All they need is a trace amount and they’ll be able to nail you for the murder.”
Josh watched him, unmoving. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Get off my property before I call the cops.”
“I don’t think you’re going to call them, at least not until you get the boat cleaned up. But I used to be a cop and I can promise you that you’ll never get all the blood. My advice is to sink the boat. That’s your only chance of getting rid of the evidence.”
“You’re not making any sense. What’s all this talk about Fleming’s blood? Are you telling me he’s dead?”
“Yep, and by the way, you waited a beat too long before you asked that question. You might want to be a little faster off the mark when the police come around asking about the death of yet another Night Watch employee. And, sooner or later, they will come around.”
“If the police thought I killed Fleming, they would be here by now. Instead, I find myself talking to you. Why is that?”
“You know why. I’m here to talk business. I know you murdered Fleming and planned to pin the blame on Laurel Jenner. Maybe, under other circumstances, you would have let Kate Delbridge take the fall. But she left town, so you were forced to use Laurel.”
“That’s pure bullshit. You can’t prove any of it.”
“Maybe not all of it, but I don’t have to do that. All I need to do is give the cops a reason to suspect that you were the killer. See, I know how cops think. They like the basics – motive, opportunity and the weapon, preferably with fingerprints and gunshot residue.”
“You don’t have any of those things, but I’d be interested to hear exactly what you think you’ve got.”
“Sure. Let’s start with motive. Your company is in trouble. You burned through the first round of venture capital months ago and you need more. But a while back you realized that someone on your staff was embezzling from you. You couldn’t go out for more cash until you stopped the bleed. But you were desperate to keep the financial situation as quiet as possible. The rumors of embezzlement would have ruined your chances of attracting new money. You didn’t dare hire an outside cybersecurity firm. Too much chance of a leak to the financial press. So you set out to find the embezzler yourself. After all, you used to be one of the hotshot wonder boys of the tech world.”
“For your information, I’m still damn good.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Cabot said. “You conducted a secret investigation of your own employees. In the course of prowling through their online lives, you didn’t find the embezzler, but you did discover that Tucker Fleming was on the trail of what might be a fortune – the money that went missing when Quinton Zane’s cult was destroyed. You found out that Fleming believed he was Zane’s biological son.”
“Sounds like Fleming was mentally unbalanced.”
“The fact that Fleming was obsessed with Zane and Zane’s cult made it easy to manipulate him, didn’t it? You sent him a series of well-disguised messages. You made him think that his father was communicating with him. Fleming desperately wanted to believe that he really was chatting with his father. You thought you could just sit back and let Fleming run, maybe lead you to the missing money.”
“You’re sounding as mentally unbalanced as Fleming.”
“You figured you’d let Fleming take all the risks. You planned to wait until he found the money. At that point you would have moved in and grabbed the cash. Of course, you would have had to get rid of Fleming in the process, but that wouldn’t have been complicated.”
Josh grunted in disgust. “You really are crazy.”
“Unfortunately for you, things started going wrong. That’s the problem with trying to control an obsessed individual like Fleming. He was erratic and unpredictable, and ultimately he screwed up everything. After he burned down that house outside of Wallerton and tried to murder a young man in the process, you knew you had to end the game. The cops were looking for him. If they found him, there was a very real risk they might find you.”
“You can’t prove any of this.”
Cabot ignored him. “You murdered Fleming sometime late last night or early this morning. But you made a few mistakes. Probably because you were in a hurry. One of your mistakes was using Laurel Jenner’s gun. I’m sure you planned to return it to her gun safe sometime today. After that you intended to call in an anonymous tip to the cops.”
“I’m going to be charitable and go with the theory that you’re delusional. You’re just not making any sense.”
“How about we talk business now? Will that sound more sensible?”
“What business could I possibly have with you?”
“Back at the start of this thing, I had the same goal as you,” Cabot said. “I thought Virginia Troy would lead me to the money her mother tucked away all those years ago. But things didn’t work out as I planned. You were right. It was all a fantasy.”
“You’re saying the money is gone?”
“As far as I can tell, Kimberly Troy, with the help of some friends, did manage to conceal a fortune in an offshore account. But someone got to it – probably years ago.”
“It’s gone?” Josh went still. “Who found it?”
“I have no idea. Maybe one of Quinton Zane’s followers. Hell, maybe Zane himself.”
“Quinton Zane is dead.”
“So they say. But you know how it is with those Internet rumors. Can’t believe any of them. The bottom line here is that the money disappeared. That brings me to you.”
“Yeah? How the fuck did that happen?”
“You were the person who was sending messages to Fleming, pretending to be his father.”
“Bullshit.”
“I know you did a lot of research into the history of Zane’s cult in order to sound authentic.”
Josh’s eyes burned with a cold fury. “How do you know that?”
“One of the first things you learn in my business is that lovers always know more about each other than even they realize.”
“Are you talking about Laurel Jenner?”
“She didn’t take kindly to having her gun stolen and used in a crime, by the way,” Cabot said. “Turns out she caught you searching online for information about Zane’s cult a few times. But let’s get back to our business arrangement.”
“What business arrangement?”
“Here’s my offer. I’ll keep quiet about the game you were playing with Tucker Fleming. Hell, I’ll even throw in a freebie – he was the guy who was embezzling from you, so now that he’s dead, Night Watch will stop bleeding cash. In exchange, I want fifty percent of whatever you get when you go out for your next round of funding for Night Watch.”
“Do you really believe you can blackmail me?” Josh asked very softly.
“I prefer to think of it as a business arrangement.”
“You are just a dumb PI who is playing way out of his league, Sutter. There’s no way you can prove that I spoofed Fleming, let alone that I killed him.”
“Now, see, that’s where you’re wrong. I admit I’m not a red-hot cybersecurity investigator, but I’ve got this intern – a young wonder boy, just like you used to be. He said to tell you that you obviously haven’t gotten on the Darknet lately to read up on the last couple of software and firmware updates for your phone. Apparently there were some issues that were not fixed. I won’t pretend I understood all the details. All I know is that he was able to get me what I needed on you. Has your phone been a little slow lately?”
“You’re bluffing.”
“Believe whatever you want to believe. I’ll give you a little time to think about it. But don’t take too long. There’s not a chance in hell that you can sneak the gun back into Laurel’s house. She’s already talking to the cops. Probably giving them a list of people who might have known the code on her gun safe. It will be a very short list, won’t it? You’ll be right at the top.”
Preston’s face contorted with the full force of his fury.
“You are causing me way too much trouble,” he said. “I’m done with you.”
He reached down under a seat. When he straightened, he had a pistol in his hand.
But Cabot had already grabbed the boat hook. He swung it in a sweeping arc as Preston tried to take aim.
The boat hook slammed into Preston’s shoulder just as he squeezed off a shot. The gun roared, the sound echoing in the fog.
Preston had been going for a chest shot, but the impact of the boat hook knocked him off balance, ruining his aim. The bullet caught Cabot in his left arm. The jolt sent him reeling.
So much for the Kevlar vest Schwartz loaned me, he thought. No such thing as a perfect plan.
Preston was bringing the gun up again, going for another shot. With his left arm out of commission, Cabot knew he would not have the leverage and power he needed to take another swipe with the boat hook.
He rolled to his feet, seized a heavy coil of rope with his right hand and hurled it at Preston.
Preston managed to dodge the uncoiling rope, but in the process he lost his balance and went down on one knee. The boat rocked violently.
Cabot launched himself into the craft before Preston could recover. His weight and the sudden impact caused the small vessel to bounce and shudder in the water. He went down, taking Preston with him.
“Freeze,” someone yelled.
Preston tried to toss the gun over the side, but Cabot was sprawled on top of him, using his good arm to pin Preston’s gun hand to the bottom of the boat.
Two uniformed officers appeared at the end of the dock. They looked down into the boat, guns drawn.
“Drop the gun,” one of them barked.
“Fuck,” Preston hissed.
But he released his grip on the gun. One of the officers got into the boat to collect the weapon.
“Careful with the gun,” Cabot said. “It’s stolen. Pretty sure it’s the same gun that was used to kill Tucker Fleming.”
Anson jogged across the lawn. He was accompanied by a young man in plain clothes who had a gun in one hand and a badge in the other.
Schwartz eyed the growing stain on Cabot’s windbreaker. “So much for the vest.”
“Yeah,” Cabot said. He was suddenly aware of the ice and fire in his upper left arm. “The same thought occurred to me.”
“The medics are on the way,” Schwartz said.
The officers got cuffs on Preston and hauled him up onto the dock.
Anson helped Cabot out of the boat.
“Sit down,” Anson ordered.
He started to remove the jacket. Cabot groaned.
“Take it easy,” he said. “That hurts.”
“I’ll bet,” Anson said.
He got the jacket off and clamped a hand around the bleeding wound.
“Virginia isn’t going to like this,” Anson said. “I seem to recall you assuring her that your big plan to confront Preston was perfectly safe because you would be wearing a vest.”
“Tell me the truth, Anson. Do you think this little incident is going to hurt my image as a hotshot private eye?”
“Doesn’t do it any good,” Anson said. “Lucky for you, Virginia has noticed that you have other qualities.”
Cabot realized he was greatly cheered by that thought. “You’re right. Lucky me. Still, she isn’t going to like this.”
“No,” Anson said. “She won’t.”