Emerald City Read Free Page B

their rural homes over the Sound. The drivers looked shocked and bruised, as if a day on this side of the water had exhausted them.
    I walked down the hill to where water lapped against a pebble beach, sat at a picnic table and unfolded the investigator’s report. The brevity was beautiful, professionally terse and abrupt, with everything compressed on to a single sheet of paper. A call to 911 had been logged at 10.15 on Saturday night, a female asking for an ambulance, saying she’d found Craig passed out with a syringe by his side. The paramedics had arrived inside ten minutes. They’d attempted to resuscitate him but without any luck; he was dead by the time they reached the house. He was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.
    The investigator had interviewed the woman – her name carefully blacked out – and discovered she was Craig’s girlfriend. She’d come home after her shift waiting tables at Denny’s, let herself in and found him. Her time card seemed to confirm the story. There was no indication of a struggle, no break-in. The heroin had been cooked up in a spoon that was lying out on the table.
    The only thing wrong was that the girlfriend insisted Craig hadn’t been a junkie. She admitted they’d both shot up regularly in the past, but not this year. The admission of a drug history seemed to be enough to satisfy the investigator. He concluded that Craig had either shot up too much or the drughad been stronger than he’d anticipated. He’d been drinking, too, with a very high alcohol level in his bloodstream.
    It all pointed to a terrible, unfortunate accident. Another dead druggie, good riddance, end of story, next. I put the paper back in my jacket and crossed over the road, stopping at the car to pull a comb from my bag and run it through my hair, trying to look vaguely professional. Kenyon was just one block long, scrambling sharply up the hillside from the main drag. The houses were Thirties single story frame buildings that looked as if they’d all been bought from the Sears catalog. Back when they were put up all this would have been country, surrounded by crops and livestock. They’d have been the urban pioneers. Now it was just one more tiny part of the city’s suburbs, the gardens all tidy, grass neatly clipped. They were homes to people who might not have owned a lot but valued what they possessed, the cars all older, lovingly polished sedans in the driveways. It looked so typical of everything in West Seattle, neat and ordered, stuck in the fifties, as if somebody had transported Mayberry to the Northwest.
    Some strands of yellow crime scene tape still clung to the porch of Craig’s house, the only thing to distinguish it from any of the others. The paint was recent, white with green trim, and Craig’s old truck, the beat-up F150 with the camper shell I’d seen at plenty of gigs, was still sitting in front of the garage. There was nothing to indicate who’d lived there, no quirkiness, no eccentricity, no garbage. The lawn in the front yard needed cutting. Around the borders plants I couldn’t name were starting to poke through, green shoots rising tentatively. Spring really was here, but he’d never see it.
    I stood back and took a deep breath. No one was outside, nothing was moving on the street. If I was going to find out more I’d need to start knockingon doors and talking to Craig’s neighbors. He’d lived there for several months; they must have had a sense of him.
    I took a deep breath. It was time to become a reporter.
    At the next house up the street a woman answered, warily keeping the door on a chain. Her hair was grey and stylishly short, her eyes sharp and inquisitive.
    â€œHi,” I introduced myself. “My name’s Laura Benton. I’m writing about what happened to Mr Adler.”
    She shook her head and at first I thought she didn’t want to talk to me. I’d already