Free Indigo Slam: An Elvis Cole Novel by Robert Crais

meant. I guess if you’re a printer, you like to read about printing.
    I took a quick peek in the bath, then went to the bedroom. Clark Haines wasn’t there either. A neatly made double bed sat against the wall, along with a chest and a dresser and a drafting table. I glanced into the closet. One bed, one toothbrush, one set of toiletries, one used towel, no luggage or alternative bedding. More photographs of the same woman sat upon the chest and the dresser, only some of these showed a smiling African-American man. Wilson Brownell. An in-progress drawing was tacked down onto the drafting table, pen and ink, done with very fine lines, showing an almost photographic reproduction of the Seattle skyline. Wilson Brownell might be a lush, but he was also a gifted artist and I wondered if it was he who had trained Clark. Maybe Clark had come up here for art lessons.
    I went through the nightstand and the chest, and was working through the dresser when I noticed a small Kodak snapshot wedged along the bottom edge of the dresser’s mirror, half hidden behind yet more photographs of the woman. It was a color shot of two couples standing on a fishing pier, one of the couples Brownell and the woman, the other a much younger Caucasian couple. The Caucasian woman had dark wavy hair, pale skin, and glasses. She looked exactly like an older, adult version of Teresa Haines. She was smiling at the camera, and holding hands with a thin guy whose hairline was already starting to recede. I took down the picture and turned it over. On the back, someone had written:
Me and Edna, Clark and Rachel Hewitt, 1986
. I looked at the picture again. The Caucasian woman had to be Teri’s mother, and the man had to be Clark, only the name wasn’t Haines, it was
Hewitt
.
    I put the picture in my pocket, made sure everything else was like I had found it, then let myself out the window, walked around to the street, and once more climbed the stairs. The C-SPAN Lady’s door was still open, and she was still shaking her remote at her television. Guess if I watched Congress all day I’d want to shake something, too.
    I said, “One more thing.”
    Her eyes narrowed, and she muted the sound.
    I held out the picture, and this time I didn’t bother to smile. “Is this one of the people who come and go?”
    She looked at the picture, then she looked back at me. “He owe you money, too?”
    “Everybody owes me money. I have a generous nature.”
    She held out her hand and brushed her thumb across her fingers. “How about extendin’ some’a that generosity my way?”
    I gave her a crisp new twenty.
    “He showed up a week ago, Thursday. Stayed a couple of days, then left. You shoulda heard all the carryin’ on.”
    “What do you mean?”
    She made a sour face and waved the remote. “Moanin’ and cryin’, moanin’ and cryin’. I don’t know what all was goin’ on in there.” She made a little shudder, like she didn’t want to know. “I ain’t seen him since.”
    “Appreciate the help.”
    She turned back to the C-SPAN and made the twenty disappear. “Don’t mention it.”
    Sooner or later it always gets down to money.

8
    New World Printing was east of the Duwamish Waterway between Georgetown and Boeing Field in a tract of older industrial buildings that were built when red bricks and ironwork were cheap. The front of the building contained a fancy glass entrance and a receptionist who would pick up her phone and tell Mr. Brownell that a Mr. Cole wanted to see him. Considering Mr. Brownell’s uncooperative response when I phoned, it was likely that Brownell would (at worst) refuse to see me, or (at best) be warned of my approach and therefore prepared to stonewall. This was not good. I have found that if you can surprise people in their workplace, they are often concerned with avoiding an embarrassing scene, and you can jam them into cooperating. This is advanced detective work at its finest.
    I parked at the curb and walked around to the