The Call of the Mild Read online

  Rushton wheeled silently to the rear door, which opened automatically as he approached it, then closed behind him. Gus reached for the envelope, but Shawn snatched it out of his hands.

  “You won’t be needing any background information,” Shawn said. “I’ve already solved the case.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  When Shawn was little, Henry had a recurring fantasy that one day the two of them would partner up on the Santa Barbara Police Department. There wasn’t much of a chance it would ever happen, of course. The department had strict rules against relatives working closely together. But there was nothing that made Henry happier than imagining himself and Shawn, father and son, cracking case after case together.

  Then Shawn started to talk, and Henry gave up on the fantasy. But sitting in the generic accounting office that served as the mailing address for the Fluffy Foundation and watching Officer Rasmussen interview the skinny little dweeb who administered the charity, Henry felt those old feelings stirring for the first time in decades.

  This is what he had always dreamed of, the relationship he’d thought possible only with blood kin. The dance between partners who could coordinate their strategy without a word. Rasmussen ran the interrogation, but Henry was able to direct him with nothing more than the slightest of looks. It was like telepathy—the real thing, not the phony version Shawn practiced.

  Within minutes of their arrival in the one-man office nestled between a convenience store and a Laundromat in a down-market strip mall, Rasmussen started getting the information they needed. The Fluffy Foundation had been in operation for five years, and while it had recently begun to attract some new donors, almost all its money came from the anonymous angel who had set up the fund. That person had started the charity with a donation of fifty thousand dollars, and similar amounts came in at irregular intervals. The dweeb had been alerted to expect another gift shortly.

  This sent Henry’s internal radar tingling. If Ellen Svaco was indeed the anonymous donor behind the foundation, there was no trace of it in any of her financial records. And if she was about to have fifty thousand untraceable dollars to give away, that would have given someone fifty thousand good reasons to kill her. Their entire case could depend on the answer to Rasmussen’s next question: Who is the anonymous donor?

  Henry gave Rasmussen the nod, and the officer sat forward in his chair. “It’s very important that you tell us the identity of your donor.”

  The dweeb pushed his horn-rims up the bridge of his nose with the tip of a pencil and cleared his throat nervously. “I’m sorry, but I can’t do that,” he said.

  “Not even if I told you it was a matter of life and death?” Rasmussen said.

  “Not without a court order,” the dweeb said. “I’m just not at liberty to divulge that information.”

  Rasmussen hesitated for a moment, then got up. “Thank you for your time,” he said. “We’ll come back when we have a warrant.”

  It took Henry a couple of seconds to realize that Rasmussen was actually walking towards the door. Henry leaped up out of his chair and grabbed the officer before he could reach the knob. “What are you doing?” he whispered furiously.

  “ ‘If the law doesn’t respect the law, then no one will,’ ” Rasmussen said proudly. “ ‘The police officer must act with complete fidelity to the rules, or the force is nothing but a mob.’ You taught me all that.”

  If Henry had had more hair, he would have pulled it out. For a moment he considered pulling out Rasmussen’s. Instead he moved the officer back towards the dweeb’s desk.

  “I’m thrilled you remember my lessons so well,” Henry said. “But that was a classroom situation. This is real life.”

  “ ‘If our principles can’t stand up in the face of an adverse reality, they aren’t principles, they’re just whims,’ ” Rasmussen said. “I’ve lived my life by that.”

  “And I’m really flattered,” Henry said. “But you might want to cover your ears right now.”

  “Why?”

  Henry marched up to the dweeb and pounded his fist on the desk. “Listen, pal,” he barked, “we’ve got reason to believe this entire charity is a front set up to launder drug money. And that makes you a kingpin. So unless you want to spend the rest of your pathetic life in supermax, you will give us the name of your donor.”

  The dweeb looked like he was about to cry. Rasmussen rushed up to the desk. “That’s not exactly true,” he said. “What Detective Spencer means—”

  “—is that you’ll be lucky to get life,” Henry said. “If we find evidence that some of this drug money is going to support terrorists, we’ll go for the death penalty.”

  “It’s not drug money!” the dweeb said feebly.

  “We do know that,” Rasmussen said.

  Henry pushed him out of the way and pounded on the table. “The name! It’s Svaco, isn’t it?”

  The dweeb gulped so hard his Adam’s apple nearly tore through his throat. “Yes, the donor’s name is Svaco.”

  Henry turned to Rasmussen and gave him a tight smile. “Here’s one I probably forgot to mention in class: Make the case first; make it pretty later.”

  “It’s no good,” Rasmussen said. “We can’t use that information. It’s tainted.”

  “Except we’re not putting Ellen Svaco on trial,” Henry said. “We’re trying to solve her murder. And this man has just given us the vital clue we need.”

  He patted Rasmussen on the shoulder and stalked to the door. Rasmussen stayed at the desk and handed the dweeb a business card. “Thank you so much for your cooperation. I assure you, we will arrange for a warrant so that you will not have violated your fiduciary duty to your client. Do you have any questions?”

  “Yes. One,” the dweeb said. “Did he say, ‘Ellen’?”

  “Yes, Ellen Svaco, your donor,” Rasmussen said.

  “I don’t know who that is,” the dweeb said. “The foundation’s principal donor is Arnold Svaco. That’s the only Svaco I know.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “You always do this,” Gus said. “You say you solved the case, and then when I ask for details, it turns out you’re not even close to a solution. You’ve just come up with some obscure detail that half the time has nothing to do with anything.”

  “Because the other half of the time it has everything to do with everything,” Shawn says. “And those are the ones that people remember. You can get away with a dozen wrong guesses in a row as long as you hit the last one out of the park.”

  “We’re not in a park, we’re in a law firm,” Gus said. “And we’re about to be away on some corporate retreat.”

  “Which is why it doesn’t matter if I’ve actually solved the murder or not,” Shawn said. “Because there’s no way I’m staging a reveal before we get to ride on the company helicopter.”

  “You’re going to let a killer go free so you can go joyriding in the sky?”

  “So we can go joyriding in the sky,” Shawn said. “Personally, I can’t think of a better reason to let a killer go free. Except maybe if he has such a rare blood type that he is the only tissue match for an innocent little girl who will die without an organ transplant, but he won’t agree to the operation unless he gets a full pardon.”

  “Sure, but once you set him free, how will you guarantee he’ll go through with the transplant?” Gus said. “And what if she needs a second transplant later? And what if he does give the girl the organ, but then he kills again? Do you think that little girl would want to know her life was purchased with the blood of innocents? And what if the transplant surgeon is secretly in love with the killer’s wife, but she is loyal to her husband, so the doctor is planning to have something go wrong in the operation, killing the convict and making the wife available?”

  “What are you talking about?” Shawn said.

  “The same thing you are,” Gus said. “General Hospital circa 1991.”

  “They really did run out of steam, didn’t they?” Shawn said. “I mean, afte
r you’ve seen Robin Scorpio befriending space aliens, how are you supposed to take it seriously when she says she’s HIV-positive? Not that I ever watched soap operas, of course.”

  “Right, me neither,” Gus said.

  “Anyway, the real point is that the killer won’t be getting away at all, because we’ll be going with him,” Shawn said. “And we know who he is.”

  “We do?”

  “Didn’t I just get done telling you we did?” Shawn said.

  “You told me you did,” Gus said. “But you didn’t say who it was. And I’m not getting into any aircraft until you do.”

  Shawn let out a deep sigh. “You’re taking a lot of the fun out of this,” he said, but Gus’ sharp gaze didn’t waver. “Fine, it’s Shark Boy.”

  “William Shatner?” Gus said, then remembered he hadn’t had a chance to share his nicknames with Shawn. “I mean, Morton Mathis? How do you know?”

  “The first part was easy,” Shawn said. “He’s wearing a watch that looks like it costs more than your car.” Shawn glanced down at the Timex on his wrist. “Of course, so am I. But his looks like it costs more than a good car—until you notice that the leather strap is actually plastic. It’s a cheap knockoff. His tan is sprayed on. There was a dried water spot on his silk tie where he tried to wash off a stain instead of spending a few dollars on dry cleaning, and his manicure is weeks old. He’s not used to getting them, or he’d never have let it get chipped like that.”

  “That’s how you knew he was a recent transplant,” Gus said. “But what makes you think he’s the killer?”

  “It was the way he reacted when he thought I was reading his mind,” Shawn said. “He panicked. But there was nothing I was saying that everyone in the room didn’t already know. They’d all been here when he arrived at the firm; it wasn’t a secret he was from out of town. And the fact that he hasn’t won a big case since he got here is the kind of statistic that every lawyer in a firm like this knows. He was afraid I was going to reveal something they didn’t know. Which means he’s got a secret.”

  “Maybe he watches Supernanny,” Gus said.

  “Yes, that’s it,” Shawn said. “He’s got bad taste in reality television. Or he’s a killer with recent blood on his poorly manicured hands. Either way, we’re going to be right by his side until we know for sure.”

  At first this sounded reassuring—at least until Gus thought it through. “We’re going to be right by his side in a tiny cabin hundreds of feet in the air.”

  Shawn ignored the obvious implications. “And then we’re going to be with him at some fabulous resort,” Shawn said. “And we’ll have to stick with him wherever he goes. To the pool, to the spa, to the five-star restaurant. We’ll make the sacrifice.”

  “What makes you think we’re going to some fabulous resort?” Gus said.

  “It’s a corporate retreat,” Shawn said. “Remember the one you went on?”

  Several years ago Gus’ pharmaceuticals company had hosted a retreat for its entire sales force at the Four Seasons in Santa Barbara. Gus had spent three of the most glorious days of his life sipping fruity concoctions by the pool while flotillas of waiters came by to offer gleaming silver trays piled high with the best finger food he’d ever tasted. It wasn’t until the end of the weekend that he realized he’d been supposed to sit through a series of seminars and training sessions, and that his failure to do so meant he’d never be invited back for another retreat.

  “That was completely different,” Gus said.

  “Sure, a pharmaceuticals company has to spend some of its money actually making products, so they can’t blow it all on their retreat,” Shawn said. “What kind of expenses does a law firm have besides legal pads? Because if you buy them by the ten-pack, you’d be surprised how cheap they are. Which means they can put on one hell of a weekend.”

  Gus was sure there was something wrong in Shawn’s reasoning. It all sounded so perfect, so appealing that there had to be a catch. But as he worked it over in his mind, there was nothing that stuck out. Maybe they had finally found something too good to be true that wasn’t.

  “Let’s go catch a killer,” Gus said.

  “Right after we catch some shrimp.”

  Shawn tossed the manila envelope back on the table. Files scattered its length.

  “Don’t you think we might need those?” Gus said.

  “For what?” Shawn said. “We already know who our killer is. What else could possibly be in that envelope that we’d need?”

  “Maybe there’s a second killer,” Gus said.

  Shawn glared at him as if he’d just handed him a surgeon general’s warning that cocktail sauce causes cancer. Then he let out an exaggerated sigh, marched back to the table, and scooped all the files together, shoving them back in the manila envelope.

  “Happy now?” he said. “You can read these when I’m checking out the previews on Spectravision.”

  Gus was happy. As they left the conference room, he was filled with a feeling of great contentment. This case had started out as a chore, turned into a nightmare, and now was looking like it was going to be the best job they’d ever tackled. To go on a luxury retreat and reveal a killer while they were there; people shelled out small fortunes for murder mystery weekends like that. Only this one was real—and they’d be getting paid. Gus couldn’t imagine anything better.

  He might have, though, if he’d noticed the other paper that had fallen out of the envelope when Shawn tossed it on the table. Unfortunately, the glossy brochure had slid along the polished surface and fallen to the floor, where neither of them saw it.

  So Gus never saw the photos of the barren mountaintop, or the tiny raft swamped by enormous waves, or the string of climbers hanging from a line pitoned into a sheer cliff face. He never read the slogan “A bond that will never break.” And he never saw the name of the company that had put the brochure together:

  High Mountain Wilderness Retreats.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Gus had always wanted to ride in a helicopter. If he had ever put together a list of things he wanted to do before he died, the chopper flight would probably come in no lower than number seven, right below “Win the Tour de France” and just above “Make up a list of things to do before you die.”

  But no helicopter ride he had ever imagined came close to this one. Because all the helicopters he’d ever imagined were drawn from some kind of objective reality. And Gus’ reality never included the kind of fantasies that only the truly rich indulge in.

  From the outside it looked like any large chopper. But once the passenger door slid open, Gus and Shawn were staring into the most opulent living room they had ever seen. The walls and deep armchairs were covered in a fabric woven by the only company in the world so exclusive that it became famous for keeping Oprah out. A giant flat-screen dominated the front of the passenger compartment; a Sub-Zero Wine Captain filled with every conceivable beverage nestled below it, alongside a cabinet of stemware Gus suspected was Baccarat.

  What was most remarkable about the helicopter didn’t become apparent until the doors had closed and they started to lift off the ground. Gus was expecting the ride to be so deafeningly loud that conversation would be impossible except for a few shouted exchanges. But the chopper’s cabin was no louder than that of his Echo.

  Not that the silence made conversation any more appealing to the passengers. As soon as the lawyers belted themselves into their armchairs, each pulled out an iPhone or a BlackBerry and started typing as if they were afraid their thumbs were going to be amputated as soon as they landed. If they were excited to be going on this retreat, they certainly didn’t show it. None of them had even changed out of office attire, or in the case of Jade Greenway, her enveloping green aura. You’d think at least one guy would have slipped into his Tommy Bahamas to be ready to relax on arrival. But they might as well have been flying off to take the world’s longest series of depositions.

  Gus was content to ride in luxurious quiet all
the way to wherever they were going. He could use this time to study the files Rushton had given them. At first he was concerned that the lawyers would notice he was reading up on them and demand to know why. But ten minutes into the flight not one of them had even glanced up from their devices long enough to acknowledge that he was in the cabin. Gus flipped open the tray table from his armrest and started to page through the file.

  It was every bit as exciting as he would have expected a law firm personnel file to be: a collection of CVs, each with a picture stapled to it. Gus was hoping that Rushton might have included a little note here and there to give them some inside information, but there was nothing.

  The first CV belonged to Kiri, whose real name was Gwendolyn Shrike. Gus was not surprised to discover that she was the firm’s chief litigator. He was right when he assumed she was a warrior, even if her primary weapon was not the long-sword but the longer brief. She had an almost unbroken record of wins, and she’d thrice won the California Bar Association’s Litigator of the Year award, along with two nominations for something called The Piranha, apparently handed out by the less formal Trial Lawyers League.

  But it was her nonprofessional affiliations that Gus found fascinating—and a little terrifying. Gwendolyn wasn’t only a warrior in the courtroom. She’d fenced on the California state team and had made it all the way to the nationals. She had medals in archery, both with the crossbow and the long. And she held black belts in three different martial arts. Gus hoped fervently that Shawn was right about Mathis being the killer; he had no desire to go up against this woman.

  Suppressing a shudder at the thought, Gus flipped a page and saw Doc Savage’s bright smile beaming up at him. To Gus’ surprise, he read that Savage actually was the guy’s family name, although his first name was not Doc but Kirk. His résumé was brief and to the point: Yale Law, followed by ten years at a New York firm, then another ten at Rushton, Morelock, as its lead tax attorney. He’d donated a lot of time to various environmental concerns and had chaired a benefit to clean up the bay.