The Killing: Uncommon Denominator Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Dedication

  Day One

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  Day Two

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  Day Three

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  Day Four

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  The Killing: Uncommon Denominator

  Print edition ISBN: 9781781169803

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781781169810

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark St, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: June 2014

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  The Killing © 2014 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.

  Artwork © 2014 American Movie Classics Company LLC. All rights reserved.

  Additional cover image © Shutterstock

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  TITANBOOKS.COM

  “Three great forces rule the world: stupidity, fear and greed.”

  ALBERT EINSTEIN

  For the fans.

  DAY ONE

  SEATTLE: JANUARY 24, 4:30 P.M.

  1

  Neil Campbell knew how to play the odds. Most people didn’t understand statistics the way Neil did. Because most people were stupid. They thought the more times you did something, or the longer you did it, the greater the probability became that you’d get the outcome you wanted. Play the lottery enough times, and sooner or later, you’re bound to hit it big, right?

  Not so. The truth was, each time Neil cooked up a batch of methamphetamine in his Rainier Valley Trailer Park kitchen, the chances of the whole mess blowing up in his face remained exactly the same. It didn’t matter how many times he’d done it before, each batch was potentially as dangerous as the first. He didn’t know the exact odds stacked against him, but he knew they were high. More than his chances of being caught in the crossfire of a drive-by, which were already considerably higher for him than for someone who didn’t live in a deteriorating trailer park in a forgotten section of Seattle. Not as low as being struck by lightning. Definitely greater than his chances of winning the lottery.

  Neil understood numbers. He’d been a computer programmer. And an actuary. And a cost estimator, and a day-trader, and an online poker player, and a bookie. Head Accountant for Jameson, Dunow, and Pierce had been his most recent iteration, which sounded a lot more impressive than his windowless cubicle had deserved, stuck in a strip mall shared with a hair salon, a sandwich shop, and three empty storefronts. After the King County grand jury had indicted the company six months previously on five felony counts of obtaining money by false pretenses, and another of forgery of a public record, the shopping mall got a fourth set of whitewashed windows and Neil got a new career. Lucky him. But he always landed on his feet. He knew how to press people’s buttons, to find their weaknesses, to exploit them. He had no pity for drones, and meth heads were so easy. But it was a pity that providing them with their crank put him at risk.

  A meth cooker could tip the odds in his favor, though: use only high quality ingredients, make sure his work area and equipment were cleaner than clean. Still, the risk remained. The important thing was not to get greedy. That’s where dumb people messed up. Doubling the size of the batch. Buying cheap ingredients. Buying Sudafed too often from the same place, or buying it the same time you bought your batteries and camping fuel. That was a purchase guaranteed to increase your chances of landing on the wrong side of a set of prison bars. A place Neil vowed he’d never end up again.

  He unwound the lithium foil from an Energizer battery four-pack and tore it into thumb-sized pieces, then shoved the pieces down the neck of a two-liter soda bottle, turning his head against the rotten egg smell as the lithium reacted with the anhydrous ammonia and the vent fan over the stove struggled to keep up. He topped off the bottle with Coleman lantern fuel, then screwed the lid tight.

  Outside, a car horn honked. Once, twice, then full-on, non-stop. He waited. The honking continued. He left the bottle on the table and walked over to the window and pushed the mini blinds aside and waved. Hugo waved back. The honking stopped. Neil sent him a smile: Good boy, yes, that’s exactly what Daddy wanted you to do, and Hugo flashed a cherubic Daddy! Daddy! Look at me! grin and leaned his full weight on the steering column again.

  Neil let the blinds fall. It wouldn’t be long before Hugo figured out how to unlock the car doors, and then what would he do? He couldn’t cook with him in the house. Wouldn’t. He wasn’t some lowlife tweaker getting high in front of his kid. He cooked for the cash.

  Hugo was the only other human being that Neil truly cared about. Hugo was his blood, his property. And Hugo was okay as long as he stayed in the car. Child Protective Services wouldn’t see it that way, and if Hugo didn’t stop announcing to anyone within a quarter mile that he’d shut him in there alone on a frigid January day, CPS was going to show up on his doorstep sooner rather than later. But he knew better than to put his son in danger. He understood the odds.

  He sat back down. Shook the bottle once to speed up the reaction, then gave the lid a quarter-turn to vent the gases without letting too much oxygen in.

  The bottle glowed red.

  2

  The explosion rattled windows and doors. In the house trailer across the street, Stephen Holder jumped off the sofa, grabbed his jacket, slid back the security chain, and banged out the front door.

  Seconds later, Logic joined him. Live-action drama beat Judge Judy any day.

  “Yo, fools—where’s the fire?” Ridgeback yelled, then doubled over laughing when he caught up to them in the front yard and saw the burning trailer.

  Logic—early twenties, drug skinny and wiry to Ridgeback’s gorilla-hairy 285—snorted.

  Up and down the street, Rainier Valley residents watched the spectacle in the gathering gloom. Flames poured from the trailer’s windows and door. No one attempted a rescue. House trailers were notorious fire traps, decrepit house trailers even more so, decrepit house trailers with an out-of-control meth fire in the kitchen the absolute worst. If the cooker who lived there was inside, he wasn’t coming out.

  “Yo—lookit.” Ridg
eback jabbed a finger into Holder’s arm and pointed toward a battered Escort in the trailer’s driveway. Holder squinted. Inside the car, backlit against the flames, he saw movement. A little boy waving his stubby baby arms and crying.

  “What you doin’, fool?” Logic called as Holder sprinted across the street, dodging the crispy bits of house trailer that littered the yard and fluttered like fireworks from the sky. The air reeked of ammonia and burning plastic. Holder pulled his sweatshirt over his mouth and nose. He grabbed the driver’s door handle, then jerked his hand back, the metal red-hot, pulled his jacket sleeve over his hand, and tried again.

  Locked.

  Another explosion from inside the trailer. Heat singed the back of Holder’s neck, curled his hair. He pulled his hoodie over his head and rapped on the car window, smiled at the little squawler, mimed opening the door. But the boy couldn’t. Or wouldn’t.

  He looked around. Found a fist-sized rock in a row of rounded beach stones lining a long-forgotten flowerbed, and smashed the backseat window. He scrambled in, reached between the front seats, and grabbed a handful of jacket. Dragged the boy into the back and scrambled out again before the heat ignited the fumes in the gas tank and the whole thing blew.

  In the distance, sirens.

  Holder tucked the howler under his arm and sprinted across the street.

  Logic high-fived him as he ran up, and slapped him on the back.

  “Yo, fool—look at you! You a he-ro!”

  Holder’s retort was lost in a wail of sirens as a fire truck and an EMS unit turned the corner. They drove to within a hundred feet of the burning trailer and stopped.

  “What they doin’?” Ridgeback asked after several seconds had passed and nothing had happened. “How come they not gettin’ out?”

  “They ’fraid a gettin’ high,” Holder said.

  Logic laughed. He and Holder bumped fists.

  Holder could have told them that a contact high was the least of the firefighters’ problems. That the phosphine gas fumes from a meth fire could overwhelm a firefighter in seconds. Permanently destroy their lungs. That the hydriodic acid formed during meth production can dissolve your skin just as quickly. That a meth fire was so toxic, nothing was going to be done to help the cook inside the trailer until the Hazmat guys arrived. Basic stuff. Firefighting 101. Stuff he learned his first year at the Academy.

  Instead, he rocked on his heels and watched the flames lick up the siding and melt the tarpaper along the edge of the roof; just another fool hanging with his BFFs. Standing among the empty beer cans and rusty bicycles littering the lawn of a broken-down trailer, holding the wailing son of a cooker who just blew hisself up.

  Ain’t undercover grand.

  “Le’s go inside,” Ridgeback said. “It’s cold out here.”

  And dark. And rainy. And for Holder, potentially dangerous. When the cops rolled up, he was as likely to get picked up and questioned as his BFFs. Maybe even more so. Holder didn’t just dress the part of a player, he was the part: boot-cut jeans, layered oversized hoodie, mustache, and a soul patch with a chin strap and a goatee. A skinny six-two, though his weight was due to genetics, not drug abuse. Cigarette tucked behind his ear. Scruffy light brown hair, dark lady-killer bedroom eyes, and a lazy drawl he’d perfected as a teenager that made him sound like he was permanently stoned. No one would mistake him for an officer with the King County Sheriff Department, even if he’d been wearing a suit and a tie—certainly not the two Seattle Police Department units that rolled up and parked in front of the trailer next to the one that was on fire. Seven years, vice and narcotics. Mostly undercover. Street level stuff. Buys and busts. Joaquin shooting Rahim. Blah, blah.

  He nodded at the patrol cars and held out the kid toward Ridgeback. “Gotta go.”

  Ridgeback shoved his hands in his pockets. “Hells nah. You found him, you keep him. I ain’t your lame-ass babysitter.”

  “I’m not askin’ you to keep him, fool. Give him to the cops. You be the hero.”

  Ridgeback considered, straightened, held out his hands. The boy wrapped his arms more tightly around Holder’s neck. Holder peeled him loose and handed him off. Started down the sidewalk, then stopped, looked back. Little man waitin’ for his pops to come and get him—that was just sad.

  He slouched off with his head down, hands shoved deep into his jacket pockets, a ratty-assed junkie looking for a place to score, as the Hazmat team arrived at last and the serious action began. He watched from the corner of his eye as the pumper started knocking back the fire and the EMS guys finally broke out a stretcher. Saw the uniformed officers—unis—get out of their car and trudge up the broken sidewalk to the neighboring trailer. He noted the open door, Tiffany’s red Toyota in the driveway.

  The lead officer stepped carefully over the rotting porch boards and did the cop knock with the flat of his hand against the side of the trailer, then announced himself and went in.

  Moments later, he came back out. He bent his head and spoke into his shoulder radio.

  “We got a 10-84.”

  “You want an ambulance with that?” the radio crackled back.

  “Negative,” the cop said.

  Holder ambled faster. Turned the corner, and broke into a run.

  10-84. Coroner case. A dead body.

  3

  Detective Sarah Linden—long red hair pulled back into a ponytail, navy police jacket buttoned over one of the high-necked Scandinavian sweaters she tended to favor—stood in the living room of the run-down trailer. She could hear muffled voices from outside; the firefighters were still working on the burnt wreckage next door. She bent over the body jammed between an overturned coffee table and a faded sofa. Male. Caucasian. Maybe six feet, 230 pounds. Early to mid-thirties. Blond hair. Socks, no shoes. Jeans and a black sweater. Stretched out on his side with one arm over his head and his fingers extended like he was reaching for something. Like a basketball player going for a jump shot, or an outfielder trying to snag a homerun ball. Small-caliber entrance wound in the center of his forehead. Eyes open with the slightly surprised look of the newly dead.

  “You found him?” she asked the SPD uniform.

  “Yes, Ma’am,” the officer answered. “They were afraid the fire was going to spread, so they sent me over. The door was open.” Defensive. Knowing the question would be asked, and not just by Sarah.

  “Name?”

  “Johnson. Sam.”

  He reeled off the rest of the pertinent information: unit number, incident number, badge number, his time of arrival, the steps he had taken to secure the scene. Under Sarah’s unwavering gaze he backed out of the trailer, leaving her standing alone.

  Sarah turned a slow circle looking for objects out of place. A pillow on the floor could have been thrown. A spilled ashtray might indicate a struggle. A torn magazine. A dangling curtain. Her eyes scanned every corner as she mentally filed the scene away, the body’s sprawl, the tired furniture. A crime scene was compromised the moment somebody found the body. You only got one chance before the techs finished with it and the yellow tape came down.

  “You ready?” One of the techs, standing in the doorway.

  Sarah nodded and turned to leave. The techs moved in, taking photographs, bagging evidence, collecting samples. She stepped onto the front porch and shielded her eyes against the drizzle, then started for the crowd behind the police tape. The gawkers melted away at her approach like ice cream on a summer sidewalk. In a place like this, a detective was better at breaking up a crowd than a riot squad.

  She walked up to the only person who stood her ground. Mid-forties. Jet-black hair. Light blue Inuit-style embroidered anorak. Skin like tanned leather.

  “You the manager?” she asked. Only someone who had a stake in the outcome would stick around.

  The woman nodded.

  “Name?”

  “Caroline Fraser”

  “Who owns the trailer?”

  “Tiffany. Tiffany Crane. They say there’s a dead man inside. Is
it the boyfriend?”

  “Do you know where Ms. Crane is now?”

  The woman shook her head. “She pays her lot rent on time, I don’t ask where she goes.”

  “Does she always pay on time?”

  “Yes. No. Well, except for last month. After the boyfriend moved in.”

  “Does anyone else live in the house? Kids? His? Hers?”

  “No one. Listen, can I go now? I gotta call the owners. Tell ’em what happened before they see it on the news.” Sarah held out her card. “If you think of anything else—” “Yeah, yeah, I know. Give you a call.” The woman shoved the card in her coat pocket without looking at it and hurried off.

  Sarah turned around and squinted against the failing light to study the Crane trailer. Emergency lights strobed as the firemen at the trailer next door mopped up. The radio said it was a meth explosion. A man had been badly burned. The incidents could be related. Or not.

  She took out her phone. “Rick? It’s Sarah. I’m sorry. I’m going to have to cancel our dinner plans… I know. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

  She made another call.

  “Regi? Sarah. I have to work late tonight… I know, I already called him… Yeah, another time. Listen, can you keep Jack overnight? I can pick him up for school in the morning… Thanks. I owe you.” She returned the phone to her pocket. “Did you run the plates?” she asked the uni, nodding toward a faded red Corolla in the trailer’s driveway.

  “The car belongs to the trailer’s owner. Tiffany Crane.”

  “Do we have an I.D. on the vic?”

  “Lance Marsee. M-A-R-S-E-E. Age thirty-two according to the driver’s license in his wallet. No priors.”

  “Can I see the wallet?”

  The uni handed over an evidence bag, not yet sealed. Sarah fished out a man’s leather wallet, good quality. Better than most trailer residents would own. She flipped it open, scanning the usual array of credit cards and small bills. She fished out a dog-eared business card in Lance Marsee’s name, which declared him to be an employee of Stratoco. The company name was unfamiliar to her, and the card itself looked like it had been in the wallet for quite some time. Perhaps Marsee didn’t have many opportunities to hand them out. At the back of the wallet was a photograph, carefully folded. The recently deceased stood with his arm around a blonde woman’s shoulders. They looked like a couple. Was the woman Tiffany Crane? It was an outdoor shot; Puget Sound or possibly Lake Washington. Pine trees and a strip of silver-gray water in the background.