Wrongful Death: A Novel Page 4

  THE PIKE PLACE MARKET bustled with the lunch crowd. People in the Northwest knew to get outside when good weather materialized, and the day had dawned cold and clear, though ominous dark clouds gathered to the north. Sloane took a seat at a wrought iron table on the deck of the Coco Cabana and sipped an Arnold Palmer, lemonade and iced tea, while looking down on the open-air market where fish vendors barked out orders and crowds gathered to watch them toss huge salmon.

  Charles Jenkins had called on his cell phone to let Sloane know he was going to be late due to traffic from freeway construction. The big man had lived like a hermit in a four-room caretaker’s shack on Camano Island for thirty years until, two years earlier, Joe Branick had also sent him a package. Inside had been a classified CIA file compiled largely by Jenkins, one that he had long thought had been destroyed. Jenkins had ultimately handed Sloane that same file when the two men met on a West Virginia bluff overlooking the darkened waters of Evitts Run, a tributary of the Shenandoah.

  “Joe meant for you to have this,” Jenkins had said. “Hopefully it will answer some of your questions.”

  “Can you tell me what happened?” Sloane had asked.

  “You sure you’re ready to hear this now?”

  “I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to hear it, Mr. Jenkins. But I don’t have a choice. I have no idea who I am.”

  Jenkins told Sloane of a village in the mountains of southern Mexico where a young boy, Sloane, was giving speeches so moving the people were referring to them as “sermons.” Southern revolutionaries were promoting the boy to be the one to lead them from poverty and oppression and restore a proud and independent Mexico. Unfortunately, the uprising coincided with the Middle Eastern oil embargoes, and the United States, in need of an alternative fuel source, could not allow the uprising to destabilize its relationship with the Mexican government. Jenkins had been the CIA field officer tasked to infiltrate the village and report on the boy.

  “I filed a report after each visit,” he had told Sloane as they watched the moon shimmer off the water’s blackened surface. “I convinced them that the threat was real, that you were real.”

  What had resulted was an assault on the village by a U.S. paramilitary force, and a massacre. Sloane had miraculously managed to survive, but not before witnessing horrible atrocities, including the rape and murder of his mother. When Joe Branick and Charles Jenkins entered the smoldering remains of the village the following morning, they found the boy hiding and decided to keep him hidden. They created a new identity, David Allen Sloane, a seven-year-old who had died in a car accident, forged adoption papers, and placed him in a foster home in Southern California. Then Jenkins, too, went into hiding, moving as far from Langley as he could, to the horse farm on Camano Island.

  For nearly thirty years they had both lived in anonymity.

  When the waitress returned, Charles Jenkins towered behind her. Jenkins was like the container ships that passed Sloane’s home. Big enough to block out the sun, he caused waves wherever he went. When he removed his wraparound sunglasses, revealing sparkling green eyes—uncommon for a man of African American descent—women swooned.

  “Can I get you anything to drink?” the waitress asked, beaming.

  Jenkins pointed to the glass in Sloane’s hand. “Bring me whatever he’s drinking. What are you drinking?”

  “An Arnold Palmer,” Sloane said.

  Jenkins gave it a disapproving frown. “As long as it doesn’t come with an umbrella,” he said, causing the waitress to giggle as she left. He sat rubbing his bare arms. “What do you have against sitting inside?”

  “How long have you lived here and you don’t wear a jacket?” Sloane was comfortable in the black leather jacket Tina had bought him on their honeymoon to Florence.

  “I do wear a jacket, when I’m outside. Lady Frankenstein said you wanted to have lunch. I eat inside. I left my jacket in the car.” He continued to rub his arms. “It’s freezing.”

  “I thought you grew up in New Jersey?”

  “Why do you think I left? I don’t do snow or ice unless it’s in a drink.”

  One of the fish vendors called out an order from below and the crowd screamed and scattered from a flying fish. It was a tourist gimmick, the fish made of fabric.

  “How’s Alex?” Sloane asked.

  “Still using the ‘M’ word. Last night she tried to lure me into sex on a blanket in the garden.”

  “I hope you fell for it.”

  Jenkins smiled. “The things I do for love.”

  Sloane sipped his drink. “Why don’t you get married? Guys would kill to have a woman like Alex swooning over them.”

  “Trust me, the swooning part is over.”

  “What, did she get glasses?”

  “Ha-ha. You’re a regular Henny Youngman this morning, aren’t you?”

  “Henny Youngman?” Sloane asked.

  “You don’t know Henny Youngman?” Jenkins shook his head, disgusted. “‘A man goes to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist says, ‘You’re crazy.’ The man says, ‘I want a second opinion!’ So the doctor says, ‘Okay, you’re ugly too!’”

  Sloane gave him a blank stare.

  “I am old.” Jenkins looked out over the roof of the market at the sun shining on Elliott Bay. “Maybe I should get married.”

  Though Jenkins had never confided in him, Sloane suspected that he was uncomfortable with the disparity between his and Alex’s ages. Alex was just twenty-eight.

  “It’s not as scary as you make it sound.”

  “Alex wants kids.”

  “So?”

  “So, I’ll be fifty-four in May,” Jenkins said.

  The waitress returned with Jenkins’s drink. Sloane ordered a salad and a bowl of black bean soup. Jenkins ordered the soup plus a chicken and rice entree. “I have to have something more than rabbit food,” he said, bringing more giggles from the waitress.

  Sloane handed him an envelope. “We received the check on the Ramirez matter.”

  “No appeal?”

  It had been Alex’s idea that Jenkins work for Sloane, though Jenkins didn’t know it. She had pulled Sloane aside at a barbecue on the Camano farm when he and Tina moved to Seattle, and said she thought Jenkins was bored and looking for something to do after rebuilding their home. Sloane needed an investigator, but he had been reluctant to ask an ex-CIA field operative, thinking it would be an insult. Alex, who had also once worked as a field operative—the person Joe Branick chose to deliver the classified file to Jenkins—convinced Sloane otherwise, though he knew her true motivation was to get Jenkins out of the house. He was driving her crazy just sitting around. Jenkins had initially feigned disinterest, but he took the work and had since helped Sloane on several of his cases. Sloane had enjoyed his company.

  “They always talk a good game. In the end they pay.”

  “What happened with Gonzalez?”

  “Jury came back yesterday. One point six,” Sloane said.

  “No wonder you’re buying lunch.”

  “Actually, I need your help on another matter.”

  “That was fast.”

  “A woman tracked me down after court yesterday. Her husband was a national guardsman killed in Iraq.”

  Jenkins shook his head. “The similarities to Vietnam frighten the hell out of me.”

  “Let’s hope we don’t have to lose fifty thousand before we get out.”

  “Amen to that. How did your guy die?”

  “A bullet to the side,” Sloane said.

  “How does that translate into a lawsuit?”

  “I’m not sure it does,” Sloane agreed. “I told her I’d look into it. She was willing to accept his death until the New York Times published that report about soldiers dying because their body armor was insufficient.”

  Jenkins sat back and sipped his drink. “If she had anyone else as her lawyer, I’d say it’s a dead-bang loser. And I’m not sure even you can pull the rabbit out of this hat.”

  Sloane p
ulled the witness statements from his briefcase and handed them across the table. “She got these through a FOIA request. Something caught my eye while reading them last night. Take a look.”

  Jenkins removed his sunglasses and stretched out his arms.

  “Alex isn’t the only one who needs glasses,” Sloane said.

  “Don’t start.”

  By the time Jenkins had finished reading the four statements, they were halfway through lunch. “Are these your highlights?” he asked.

  “Have you read the Bible, Charlie?”

  “I was raised Baptist. I didn’t have a choice. It was burned into my memory. I can recite chapter and verse.”

  “So you’re familiar with the four Gospels.”

  “Intimately.”

  “Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Four men, all recording the same historical events, yet each Gospel is different. Why is that?”

  “Different perspectives.”

  Sloane put down his fork. “I once heard a priest reason that an argument for the accuracy of the Gospels is the fact that they are different, that if someone had wanted to perpetrate a fraud, they would have made them identical, or nearly so. I can also tell you from experience that people don’t inherently remember or see things the same way. Put two people on a street corner to witness a car accident and you’ll get two different versions.” Sloane tapped the witness statements. “These four men were involved in a harrowing ordeal, and yet they each remember it damn near identically: Caught in a sandstorm, they drive off course and are suddenly ambushed. The details are impressive.”

  Jenkins flipped through a statement. “You think these were coordinated, someone made sure they said the same thing?”

  Sloane shrugged. “I don’t know. The other options are the men got together to get the story straight, which also makes it interesting, or it’s a coincidence.”

  “Which neither of us believe in.” Jenkins put down the statements. “Still, seems thin for a lawsuit, Counselor. You sure you’re only curious?”

  Sloane watched a ferry crossing Elliott Bay. “I thought about Joe Branick yesterday.”

  “Listen, what Joe did he did as much out of guilt as he did out of altruism. Both of us felt responsible for what had happened to you. He was trying to right a wrong and he died doing it, but that doesn’t mean you have to try to right every wrong to honor him.”

  “She needs help. I’m thinking maybe my reputation might, you know…”

  “Get the government to pay her some money to get rid of her.”

  “It’s better than nothing.”

  Jenkins picked up the statements. “You want me to find these guys?”

  “They should be back stateside by now.” Sloane’s cell phone rang. He considered the caller ID window. “It’s Carolyn.”

  “That woman scares me,” Jenkins said. “Why doesn’t she like me?”

  Sloane flipped open the phone. “She loves you.”

  “Can you and the Jolly Green Giant take a break from checking out the eye candy for a minute to work?” Carolyn asked.

  Sloane chuckled. “Charles says he loves you too.”

  Jenkins looked genuinely concerned.

  “Right,” Carolyn said. “I found you a military lawyer. Don’t know anything about him, but you said pronto, so this is pronto. You get what you get.”

  Sloane took out a pen and turned over the napkin. “Thanks. Go ahead.”

  “He’s a solo practitioner in Pioneer Square. Says he has to be in court at two-thirty for a DUI hearing—not sure if he’s the defendant or the lawyer. Otherwise, he starts an assault and battery trial tomorrow and won’t be available for the next four to five days. So it’s today or two weeks, unless he’s convicted and gets sent to jail.”

  “Carolyn, do you know Henny Youngman?”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind.” Sloane considered his watch. “Call him back and tell him I’ll meet him at his office at one-thirty. Anything else going on?”

  “I’m getting my nails done at two.”

  “Good for you. Tell you what, bring me the bill. We’ll call it a perk for the Gonzalez verdict.”

  “Big spender. I should have told you I was shopping for a big-screen TV.”

  PIONEER SQUARE

  SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

  SLOANE PARKED IN the triangular garage at First Avenue and walked down Washington Street looking for building addresses. Pioneer Square was Seattle’s other downtown tourist attraction, with maple trees and low-rise, red-brick buildings that harked back to a different era. The entrance to John Kannin’s building was near Occidental Square, a haven for the homeless and mentally ill. Shopping carts stuffed with plastic bags circled a bronze monument to Seattle’s firefighters that pigeons had defaced a gray-white.

  Sloane walked into a small lobby and considered a display case identifying the building tenants. He ascended an interior marble staircase and pushed through a smoked-glass door stenciled “John Kannin Law Firm P.S.” Legal books, binders, and files cluttered a desk in a small reception area with shelving along three walls. Narrow windows emitted slats of dull light in which danced floating dust motes.

  “Are you David Sloane?” The man who appeared in the doorway to Sloane’s left looked younger than Sloane had, for some reason, expected. “I’m John Kannin.” He had a deep baritone voice, befitting a trial lawyer.

  “Thanks for seeing me,” Sloane said.

  “You’re interested in military law?”

  “My secretary said you don’t have much time.”

  Kannin gestured to the desk. “My secretary didn’t come in today. If she had, I would have known that my two-thirty hearing has been kicked over a week. Come on in.”

  Kannin led Sloane into an interior office with the same dark wood shelving along one wall. The other walls were brick. A book wedged in the sash propped open a window behind a large desk, allowing in the sounds of passing cars, the trolley, and men arguing on the street below.

  “Fresh air,” Sloane said. “You don’t find that inside buildings too often anymore.”

  Kannin looked to the window. “It helps clear my brain.” He removed a file from one of two chairs. “Take a seat.” There was a round table in the corner, covered with stacks of paper—obviously the overflow from the neat stacks on the floor lining the brick wall. Post-its atop the stacks served as to-do lists. Kannin looked to have a thriving practice. Diplomas hung from the picture molding by fishing line. He had graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy and the Willamette University College of Law in Oregon. Both were good schools.

  Sloane estimated Kannin to be six foot three and well built through the shoulders and chest. He had coal-black hair with traces of gray and eyes the same color. He wore a white dress shirt and a blue tie, though he’d lowered the knot and unbuttoned the top button. Slipping behind his desk, he said, “I’d offer you coffee, but the way I make it, you might as well lick the asphalt.”

  Sloane sat. “Then I’ll pass, thank you.” He pointed to the diplomas. “You graduated from the Air Force Academy.”

  “I played a little football there.”

  “Linebacker,” Sloane guessed.

  “Offensive line. Players weren’t as big back when I was playing. What I really wanted to do was to fly jets, but I was too big for the cockpit.” He laughed. “After that I lost interest. I graduated with a degree in engineering.”

  “How’d you make it to law school?”

  “I decided I liked arguing with people better than math. How about you? What’s your story?”

  “Marines out of high school, saw some combat in Grenada, but lost interest too. I decided I better get an education and moved to San Francisco based on a picture I’d seen in a magazine.”

  “Pretty spontaneous.”

  “I’ve been known to do that,” Sloane said, thinking of the military psychiatrist’s assessment. “Eventually I graduated from Hastings and had a practice for about a dozen years in the city before moving here a couple y
ears ago.”

  “What brought you to Seattle?”

  “My wife took a job here as a partner in an architecture firm with a friend. If I wanted to marry her, I had to move.”

  Kannin nodded. “Ah. Love. How do you like Seattle?”

  “The summers are easy. It’s taken a bit to acclimate to the winters. Bought my Gore-Tex and waterproof shoes.” Sloane pointed to one of the framed diplomas. “Are you in the reserves?”

  This brought another laugh. “When I realized I wasn’t going to fly jets, I pretty much decided the military wasn’t my mug of beer. I did my four years and got out.”

  “So I take it you weren’t a JAG,” Sloane said, referring to a judge advocate general, a military lawyer.

  “I’m a JAG’s worst nightmare. I represent families trying to obtain their military benefits. As you might imagine, business has picked up with the war. The JAG lawyers think I’m a nuisance, but so do the prosecutors I try cases against, so at least I’m consistent. I like to shake things up—lets me know I’m doing my job.”

  Sloane laughed. He got a good feeling about Kannin. “Have you ever sued the military in a non-benefits case?”

  “Once,” Kannin said. He sat up. “Private Jasmine Evans was living in military housing on base. One Friday night there’s a knock on her door. Three off-duty soldiers stand on her porch with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, a case of beer, and a deck of cards. She knows them. They’re all friendly, so she lets them in. They start playing cards and drinking. Things are okay until one of the guys suggests they play strip poker. She declines, but the others think it’s a good idea and start removing their clothes. Private Evans starts to feel uncomfortable and asks them to leave. They start calling her names: ‘tease,’ ‘bitch,’ ‘whore.’ She tells them to go fuck themselves. The soldiers beat and rape her.”

  “Horrible,” Sloane said.

  “I’m just getting started. She goes to the military hospital and shortly thereafter an officer pays her a visit. Ostensibly he’s there to take a report. Only she notices he’s more interested in her blood alcohol level than the rape. He tells her it would be best to drop the matter, that it will only make her an outcast among the troops.”