Silent Witness

By Lynnette Baughman

When Seattle investigative reporter Carly Benton discovers that protected witnesses are turning up dead, she starts a desperate search for one witness--her sister. Then her only ally, the deputy U.S marshal who knows where Miranda is hiding, is also murdered. With serious reservations, Carly joins Jack Fallon, a mysterious stranger who is suspected of murdering one of the witnesses. He and his shadowy network are trying to find the remaining witnesses to a violent crime five years earlier.
Meanwhile, news breaks that the Vice President of the United States is dying of an aggressive brain tumor, and the handsome junior U.S. Senator from Washington is about to slide like hot butter into a position one heartbeat away from the Presidency. Does he have a dark, maybe even criminal, side? Are the witnesses being murdered because a secret grand jury is in session?
Carly and Jack, and his network, need to keep the witnesses alive--and stay alive themselves to tell the story before it's too late.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lynnette Baughman
• Release date: Aug 6, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476217697

Lynnette Baughman

Lynnette lives in Sequim, Washington, with her husband Bill. She's a former newspaper editor and a long-time resident of New Mexico, having grown up in Las Cruces, and later raising a family in Los Alamos. Her favorite outdoor activities are hiking on the Olympic Peninsula and downhill skiing, usually in Utah.

Book preview

Chapter 1

The woman in the cheap rain poncho stood motionless in the recessed doorway long enough to hear the metal door marked No Entry clang shut behind her.

An ominous crack.

Irrevocable.

No going back.

The sound of a door shutting behind her was nothing new, but that didn’t make it easier.

Out on the bay, a foghorn groaned.

Shoulders hunched forward, she darted into the rain. Crossing the wide street on a diagonal, she bypassed the largest puddles. Even so, her white summer pumps filled with filthy water.

She no longer thought of herself by name.

Hadn’t had a name of her own for . . . so long.

Her red hair plastered against her face in the driving rain. No, wait. Her hair was mousy brown, with split ends. Cut in a god-awful shag. Ugly, but it had been worse.

And it had sure as hell been better. Rich auburn, softly conditioned, expertly layered. Feathered around her face to accent her green eyes. Or had they been hazel then?

Heavy rain had been a rare event when her hair was auburn. Rare, and nearly catastrophic.

She vividly recalled the night of the desert flood. Winter, yes, but what month? February? No, the end of January. Four, almost five months ago. A fireman had pulled her from her car in a stinking brown river that had been an intersection only minutes earlier.

When her feet touched land, her instinct had been to bolt away from the camera recording the dramatic rescue, but that would have attracted even more attention. Instead she’d gone limp, kept her head down, let them take her away in an ambulance. She gave a phone number to a nurse.

My husband, she’d said. Mumbled, too, her name and address, knowing it was the last time she’d use either of them.

While another nurse took her blood pressure and swabbed a nasty cut on her forehead, she kept her eyes on the clock. Twenty-five minutes crawled by until her loving husband appeared and signed her out of the emergency room.

All the way to her cheap, non-descript apartment, Ron—or had he called himself Don?—berated her for being stupid enough to drive into an underpass during a rainstorm.

Haven’t you ever heard of flashfloods? he’d snapped.

She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of admitting her ignorance. She would never see him again, so why care?

It was the motto that had helped her survive for the past five years. Why care?

Five years. Five. Years. The deal to which she’d acquiesced was six months, nine months at the most. Sure, she knew it could drag on to a year. But this? No. Incomprehensible that once inside the house of mirrors, her only safety—according to the operators of the funhouse—was to continue to cooperate.

Five years, evaporated. Life, not just interrupted, but gutted.

Thunder now, a gong in the city canyons. Cold summer rain. Running water; running feet. A shoe lost, recovered.

Memory again. Terror. The other rain, cold winter rain.

She’d stared into the winter downpour as desert thunder boomed. The steering wheel had no effect; same for the brakes. In a flash of sudden blinding light, she’d seen the concrete posts of the overpass loom ahead. Her little car backed, bobbed, and turned a complete, dizzying circle. Water sloshed around her ankles.

That’s when her car crashed into the concrete. With a horrible tearing of the metal, the steering wheel ripped out of her hands. A concrete post was somehow inside the car. She’d reached out for her door, but it was gone, too. The swirling water was sucking her out.

The only solid surface in her grasp was the headrest on her seat.

Hold on, lady! People above her, on the busy cross street, yelled to her that the fire department was there. Hold on, they’re coming now.

With her feet wedged against the frame of the missing door, she'd clawed at the headrest. Inch by inch her fingers slipped. More of her body was outside the car than inside.

Hold on, lady! I’m coming!

The voice was close. A man in a helmet, with a rope looped over his shoulder.

I can’t. Pain radiated up her arms. The urge to give up swirled in her mind, drowning her will.

He had a life jacket, and a voice full of comfort. I’ve got you.

She let go and burst out of the wreckage, slamming into the anvil of his chest. Her face remained above the water as rescuers hauled the two of them out of the wreckage, away from the whirlpool.

Oh, shit! He shouted and tightened his grip, below both of her arms. The people above them screamed a warning, a howl of sound before the hood of the pickup truck filled her field of vision. She closed her eyes, expecting death. Accepting it, but sorry to take him with her.

But instead the water gushed more fiercely. She opened her eyes; the truck was downstream, pinned against the wreckage of her car.

The shore was closer now. A line of men hauled hand over hand to save the two of them. She recognized solid ground under her feet.

And something else, in the periphery of her vision.

Cameras. Red lights beneath black lenses. Microphones.

Her worst enemies.

The events of the winter day, with its torrential downpour and swirling maelstrom, were a metaphor for her life: It’s cold, it's wet, and it sucks.

Look down. Fierce instinct had kicked in. Don’t look into the cameras.

She’d known instantly: that day would be her last in Las Vegas. Maybe they would send her back to alligator country. Or maybe another big city. Given the choice—and she knew choice was a luxury she wouldn’t have—she’d rather live with alligators. You knew where you stood with gators.

But, no such luck. City won the dice throw. This re-re-reincarnation had been to San Francisco. A job as an assistant to an assistant copy editor at a big daily newspaper.

She’d settled in, begun to breathe easier. Had even started looking people in the eyes. Just tonight she’d told a joke in the coffee room. Shared laughter released the strained muscles in her neck and rigid jaw, and she’d felt the tension run off her shoulders like summer drizzle. Such a small thing, laughter, and yet it was like crossing over into the Promised Land.

Until she’d seen a pair of eyes she knew. Eyes that fixed on hers, puzzled. Sadly, she’d made a phone call and clocked out at the back door. As she tugged the hood of the poncho over her head, she hoped she could get to the bus stop before the clouds opened up, but her luck, as usual, was crappy.

Some things never change.

White summer pumps. New. Ruined.

A gust tore away her hood; cold water seeped inside her poncho and dripped down her neck.

As nasty as that was, an even more unpleasant sensation made her look over her shoulder. Was he . . .? Was that man following her? What about the dark sedan? She detoured around two blocks, trying to recall the bus route. Where was another stop at this time of night? Had she turned left three times, or four?

The first question became a certainty. He was following her. She ignored the puddles now, running toward a street with more traffic, more business. Suddenly, the black car jumped the curb and blocked her path. She saw the metal box marked DAILY and SUNDAY go airborne and land with a screech on its side. Its front flew open like a giant jaw, ejecting newspapers into the gutter.

Not here! a man said from behind her. Get her in the car!

No! She screamed, but knew no one would hear her. As she felt herself lifted off the ground and shoved toward the open car door, she looked down at the already waterlogged front page. She hadn’t seen the news at work, busy instead proofreading obituaries and recipes for summer barbecues. She saw it now.

Vidal’s widow demands investigation

Suicide disputed in death of

U.S. Senator Waller’s chief of staff

Chapter 2

Breathe, Carly, Eldora said. In slowly, out, repeat. It's not just for mommies-to-be. What's the big hurry?

Sorry. What? Carly had no objection to breathing, but like everything else she did, it had to be quick. In, in, in, out, out, out. If ventilation was good, wouldn't hyperventilation be better?

Carly! May I have your attention, please? Eldora curled her upper lip. "You're looking for the waitress with your usual Hey, I’m late for my heart bypass surgery look."

Oh. Busted, Carly stabbed the last fragment of fruit on her plate and ate it without registering the taste. The entire meal at the Bainbridge Island bistro had been like that. A waste of flavor, ambiance, and money—and she had no money to waste.

"You, Ms. Benton, are in clear violation of the island's serenity ordinance. It’s a sin to worry on a day such as this when you’ve got sunshine and a day off. Quiche and cantaloupe al fresco. Something good is right around the corner. You’ll see."

The only thing Carly expected to see around the corner was a line of people—snaking toward an unemployment office. People who said misery loves company hadn't seen the faces, yesterday, of the employees at the formerly great Seattle newspaper.

Damn it. I've got to pee again. Eldora got to her feet, one hand beneath her large belly, as if she weren’t sure it would all go with her. Would you hold on to my pager? I don’t want to drop it in the you-know-what.

Sure. Carly dropped Eldora’s little black companion in the left pocket of her linen jacket so as not to mix it up with her own pager on her right. The pager, and the connected feeling it gave her, was one of the things she’d miss about her job at the big Seattle daily.

I beep, therefore I am.

Number one on her Things-I’ll-Miss list was her paycheck, meager though it was after three rounds of cuts in pay and hours. The first cuts, across the board and draconian in scope, drove fewer employees out the door than management desired. The second and third cuts reduced the newspaper’s expenses by four percent—and employee morale by forty percent.

Number two on that list was the thrill of waking up every day with possibilities. A new day, a new story. Or six, or ten.

She was Carly Benton, Reporter. Digging for a story wasn’t simply what she did for a paycheck. It was what she did. Period.

Of course, she was more than a business card with four phone numbers, an email address, and a pager code. More than a byline. She was self-confident. Spirited.

Unfortunately, that spirit hadn’t soaked through to her core.

And looming unemployment was less than half her anxiety. Worry about her sister was always at the back of her mind. Miranda. A name not said aloud except to her mom, in Arizona, about once a month, and to a deputy U. S. marshal about twice a year.

Here you go. Thanks for coming. The waitress set a black leather folder on the table and refilled their glasses of iced tea.

Carly resisted the urge to figure the bill and be ready to race away like a firefighter should the claxon ring. Instead she sipped her tea and noticed how the sun had dipped below the bistro's umbrella. Their late lunch had run really late.

In a corner of the narrow patio, an old man with a wild, gray beard and a girl who might be eight or nine focused intently on their chess board. Had they been there long? They must have been. Only seven pieces remained on the board.

I should have noticed. That's the kind of thing I usually soak right up. Lately, though . . .

Lately, life was soaking her up instead of the other way around. Journalism now was like a game of chess with ten kings and fifty pawns. No, with unlimited pawns. And all the kings were on one side. Her professional obituary could read, Award-winning Seattle reporter Carly Benton, 32, was shocked Monday to be handed her ass.

She examined the lunch bill and looked into her purse for the two twenties she'd gotten from the ATM. As she pulled one out, she tore up the offensive ATM receipt.

Yesterday her boss had given her—as he so indelicately put it—two more weeks at the trough. Eldora was scheduled to leave in three days for maternity leave, so Harry was authorized to give her three days on the job plus seven days of paid leave.

Eldora spoke of the two of them, newsroom sisters, socializing in the months to come. She'd used the phrase get together about ten times since Carly had picked her up in Seattle.

No, Eldora, we won't! Carly had shouted in her head. We won't get together. We worked together; we shared a foxhole while mortars exploded inside our careers and the smoke choked us. But it's over.

Aside from a visit by me to proclaim the baby gorgeous, and maybe one lunch six months from now—a big maybe—the two of us will be on opposite sides of a canyon.

Temp friends. Not BFF. Rather, Best Friends . . . For Now.

Not like sisters. Not anything like sisters.

She placed a twenty dollar bill inside the vinyl folder and zipped her purse.

But . . . Eldora is right. To worry on such a beautiful day—my day off—is a sin. Breathe slowly, in, out. Repeat.

Lolling in the sunshine still felt like playing hooky, but she soothed her overactive conscience. Harry Vanders, their boss, knew where they were.

Her own pager would be silent, unless a jumbo jet hit the Space Needle, or an aircraft carrier went aground on First Avenue. Technically, Eldora was on call for the news desk, but Harry didn’t think she should be far from a hospital. In the event a story broke before Eldora’s water did, he would dispatch one of the young reporters at the Seattle office rather than page her and risk making the news rather than covering it.

Odds were good the reporters were close at hand outside Harry’s office, biting their cuticles and openly updating their résumés.

Or maybe Harry wouldn’t send anyone. He might wait, instead, for a citizen journalist to put photos, eyewitness reports, et cetera, on the web. He could pluck it like a fat goose.

I’m back. Eldora settled gently into the wrought iron chair. Did you do the math?

Carly opened the black folder. Twenty each will cover it, including the tip. And here’s your pager.

Eldora added her cash. Let’s go to the baby store.

Baby store? What else could you possibly need? No, let me rephrase that. Is there any baby product on earth you don’t already have four of?

Carly had attended a baby shower for Eldora, who’d shown the good sense to marry into a large family with plenty of money. Her own gift had been a pathetically cheap set of three receiving blankets, but her friend had been deluged with extravagant clothes and furnishings from her in-laws.

It’s not about need. I got another gift card. Let’s go see what my options are.

Eldora? I’m surprised to see you here. An elderly woman at the far side of the adjacent table tapped her cane.

Eldora sighed. I’ll just be a minute.

No problem. Carly stood, smoothed her wrinkled jacket, and glanced around the patio. She’d gotten very good in the past five years at glancing while actually examining the face of every woman in her target range: white, under forty, over eighteen.

Looking for Miranda.

It was a pointless exercise, a meaningless obsession. Her sister absolutely could not be in or near Seattle. And furthermore, her hair and even her eye color were probably changed. A visual search made as much sense as knocking on wood assured good luck. That is, no sense. And yet she did it.

Five days. Five days. The two words looped through her mind and replayed. Five days. Five days.

It would all go smoothly.

Then why hasn’t Geri Robinson called me back?

Worry tugged at her mind like a puppy with an expensive shoe, and she tried to pry it loose.

She’d called their official go-between, Deputy United States Marshal Geri Robinson, three times in the past day and a half, and heard nothing. Zilch. Their arrangement, for the past three years, was that Robinson would call her one week before their annual phone call to set the time and place and to review the rules of engagement. This would be the fourth phone call.

Rules. As if Carly didn’t know full well how little she could say—and how dangerous it would be for Miranda if anyone but Geri Robinson knew her current name and location.

Sunday, Miranda’s thirty-fifth birthday, was now five days off. Carly expected to have a few minutes on the phone with her only sister. Restricted, yes. Supervised, yes. But contact. Disembodied human to disembodied human.

She inhaled, held it for courage, and dialed Robinson’s direct, no-official-title-stated number again.

One ring. Click. You’ve reached the office of Geri Robinson. Sorry, but I’m out of the office . . .

Carly disconnected without leaving another message.

Something is wrong. She was more sure of that with every hour that passed. What she'd eaten for lunch threatened to reappear.

Let’s go, Eldora said, swooping past her like a figurehead on the bow of a frigate. I have a twenty minute window before I have to pee again, and we’re four minutes in.

Carly moved to let a gaggle of girls flow down the sidewalk. Their winter white skin was bare to soak in as much sun as possible.

I was like . . . He goes . . . She’s all like . . .

Their exuberance made Carly feel stodgy. Their collective butchery of the English language made her crazy.

Eldora was hailed by two well-dressed women about their age. She muttered an apology to Carly.

Oh my God. William's obnoxious sister-in-law. I promise I won't be long.

Don't worry about it. My phone is ringing.

Carly walked away from the women and their shrill greetings in order to answer her phone. In the bright sunlight she couldn't make out the caller ID. Hello?

Carly! I . . . I saw her!

The voice was familiar, but the desperate, breathy sound made her take a few seconds to identify her mother.

Carly? Did you hear me?

There was no need to ask, Who? The tension in her mom's voice could mean one of two things. Either she had a noose around her neck, or she believed she'd seen Miranda.

Where?

Santa Fe. I'm here on a bus tour, with the senior center. I was on the Plaza—

When? Did she see you? How sure are you it was her?

An hour ago. Walking past a store I was in; she stopped to look at a necklace in the window. Carly, I got a good look at her. I'm positive it was her. I went outside as soon as she moved away, but she was gone.

How many times had Carly thought she'd seen Miranda and been wrong? Three times she'd actually followed a total stranger until she got a better look.

I wasn't going to say anything, of course, or let her see me. I wouldn't do anything to scare her.

I know, Mom, I know. You wouldn't. She took a deep breath. Are you still . . . there?

No one in earshot was paying the least attention to her, but, still, she didn't dare say the name of the city aloud. The city where Miranda might be hiding.

No. I'm on the bus, in the lavatory. We're on our way to Old Town Albuquerque. We're going to Las Cruces tomorrow and home on Thursday.

Carly heard a thump. Her mom called, I’ll be right out.

Call me later, Mom.

I will. Love you.

Love you, too.

She'd barely closed her phone when Eldora grabbed her elbow and pressed her toward the street.

Let's go, warp speed. If I have to listen to that bitch gush anymore I'll stab her with a butter knife.

The two of them crossed the street to Kidsville, the new store for babies and children. Carly had parked behind it in the lot shared by five businesses.

I want to show you the changing table I’m getting. Eldora plowed through the entrance and charged directly ahead, down an aisle of cribs. Oh, I forgot to tell you—I switched our order to a different crib. See? Don’t you like this one better?

Carly ran her hand along the crib railing and nodded. Sure, sure. Good choice, whatever. What she was thinking was: Is Miranda safe? Is she really in Santa Fe, or did Mom want so much to see her that she projected Miranda's face onto a look-alike? Is there any way Miranda could give me a clue on Sunday, when we talk?

Talking in code wasn’t an option. Miranda had vanished from the earth, so to speak, before they'd devised a code.

It wasn’t as if they’d been together, and then—suddenly—separated. Their whole lives had been more about separation than sisterhood. Miranda, age eight, chose their father, and Carly, age five, chose their mother.

What kind of mess did Miranda stumble into that landed her in this so-called temporary witness protection? What did she see? Where?

Her only letter, the one Geri Robinson delivered, said she had to go into hiding for about nine months but it could be twice that long.

Mirrors were as common as cribs in the store, so she couldn't avoid her own image. She was . . . unremarkable. Average height and weight, brown hair, called sable by her mom, in an utterly wash-and-wear wedge, clipped close in the back. Only her eyes were, in her unvarnished opinion, remarkable. Somewhere between indigo and violet.

Like Elizabeth Taylor, said her mom.

Like your eyes, Mom. Like Miranda’s eyes.

The changing tables are way at the rear, Eldora returned to reclaim Carly's wandering attention.

Carly followed in her friend's wake. Twice she rear-ended her when Eldora made sudden unscheduled stops to say, Oh, my gosh, how cute is that? at the sight of baby wonders such as a jumper seat that played Pop Goes the Weasel and a crib mobile that played The Teddy Bears’ Picnic.

So intent was she on not plowing into Eldora that she was blind-sided by a falling box. The heavy cardboard box, easily four feet on a side, slipped out of the hands of an employee on a ladder. The falling box crashed into a display of pillows for breastfeeding, and landed—still hard—on Carly’s right foot.

Oh, sh—sugar! she managed to sputter as she hopped on her left foot while swinging her throbbing right foot in circles in the air like a can-can dancer.

Carly! Eldora said at the same time the employee said, Ma’am! and slid down the ladder to hold her elbow and apologize profusely.

Someone took her other elbow, and she looked to her left and up . . . up . . . Hmmm. Up into eyes-so-blue and jaw-so-strong she almost burbled with delight. Oh, my God. OMG.

Pain displaced her editorial review of the man at her elbow. Gingerly, she lowered her foot to the floor and mumbled through her clenched teeth that she was all right.

Blue Eyes insisted she sit on the mound of pillows and told the employee to get the manager over there. Then he knelt in front of her and slipped her shoe off.

Does it hurt if I press on it?

She coughed and cleared her throat. Only a little. Actually, it’s getting better. It didn’t land on my toes.

I’m lying because it’s the polite thing to do, she said with her eyes. I’m actually in excruciating pain. Carry me out of here. Please.

Clearly, she'd seen An Officer and a Gentleman too many times.

I’m really sorry, he said, looking at her from eye level and smiling.

She noticed half a dozen things about him. Tall, handsome, strong, great smile, blue eyes, red eyes.

Red eyes?

Yes. The whites of his eyes were shot through with tiny red lines; his strong jaw had a stubble of beard; his sports coat showed deep creases. Light blue shirt unbuttoned at the neck; loop of a necktie hung over the side pocket of his sports coat.

All this said fatigue.

Had he been up all night? Maybe he’d been on the road, or on a long flight. There was something edgy about him, something that said Danger. A coiled snake. An electric fence.

And yet, his voice and his touch were soothing.

She looked away from his face to the center of her foot. The white boomerang shape was quickly turning red.

I’m sorry, he repeated. He was getting that playpen down for me.

Playpen? For you? She met his gaze and kept her smile steady, hoping Blue Eyes would say it was a gift for a friend.

My wife is having a baby in a month, and I thought I’d surprise her with a playpen and highchair.

Carly jerked her foot out of his hand and stood. I’m fine. Tell the manager . . . never mind. I’m fine. Eldora, let’s go. She’d taken only four or five steps away, gritting her teeth to keep from limping, when her pager went off.

Eldora pulled hers out of her pocket and frowned. That’s odd. I’m the one on call.

Carly’s bleeped again and she checked the number. Let’s go outside and I’ll call in.

On the sidewalk in front of the store, she called Harry Vanders on her low-end-of-the-price-scale cell phone. At pressers where TV producers pulled out their fancy tech pads—she'd lost track of the names by now—she was lucky to have a cell phone and two ballpoint pens.

Kitsap County Sheriff’s Department has a floater, Harry said. One-eighth of a mile north of Fay Bainbridge State Park. Lucky you’re over there.

Yeah, right. I should buy a lottery ticket, quick before my luck changes.

He told her where to turn off Sunshine Road to the state park and how to find the nearby home of the Ingram family.

Susan Ingram and her sixteen-year-old son found the body. The dad is in Seattle, heading for the ferry to get home.

Okay, Harry. What can you tell me? Specifically, she wanted to know why he’d called her, on her day off, rather than Eldora.

Is Eldora with you?

Yes.

Tell her to go home, get a head start on her leave.

All right. She waited, figuring this was by definition a pregnant pause.

Harry cleared his throat. I don’t want to send her to this one. The deceased on the beach is a pregnant woman. Pretty far along. Definitely homicide.

Definitely homicide? Odd description, coming from Harry, who never saw a police report he believed. Maybe the deceased had a knife sticking out of her, or a bullet hole. But even then, in many cases, an accident was possible, or suicide.

Carly? Harry added. Her hands were cut off.

Well, so much for suicide. "Umm, I see. I’m on my way."

What’s up? Eldora held up her silent pager and raised her eyebrows.

It’s just as I thought. Carly snapped her phone closed. That rat Harry is playing favorites. Your leave starts now, and I have the opportunity to work in the fresh air on the shore of Puget Sound.

At least, she hoped it was fresh air. Length of time since death could change that.

What’s Harry up to? I’m on call until five. I can pull my own oar. She put both hands on her hips just as the baby made an emphatic kick followed by a stretch that made her belly list to one side.

It’s a gift horse, girl. Don’t check the back teeth.

Well, I’ll admit my doctor has been nagging me about my feet swelling.

Uh-oh. Carly snapped her fingers. We came in my car. I could drive you to the ferry if you want to go right now.

Eldora waved her off. I’m going to shop a while. And visit another ladies’ room, or two or three. I’ll walk to the ferry and call William to pick me up in Seattle. Not a problem. Call me later, okay?

Carly watched Eldora return to the store, then stepped off the curb, careful to put more weight on her good foot, the left one. To her right she saw the tall father-to-be steering a cart with two giant boxes balanced precariously across the top. He directed the cart down the flat section of the curb.

How’s your foot? he called.

A little bruised, but I’ll be fine.

I recommend ice. Again with the killer smile. Some on the foot, some in a glass with Grey Goose.

Probably good advice. Thanks. She gritted her teeth to prevent a yip of pain from escaping, gave him a half wave and headed for her car. She tried to appear graceful and unhurt, but suspected she looked like Peg Leg the Pirate.

LEFT, right, LEFT, right, LEFT right.

Chapter 3

Carly's phone played a few bars of the ring tone of her boss. Vanders had chosen Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries because he'd been a helicopter pilot in Vietnam and admired the movie Apocalypse Now, but that music in Carly's head would always be Elmer Fudd in a Norse helmet singing, Kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit.

Yo, Harry, I’m almost there. In fact, I see the park entrance up ahead.

That’s why I called. Police are going to block the only parking lot any minute now. I looked on Google Earth and found a back door.

She drove past the state park sign where a Kitsap County Sheriff’s Department car was, in fact, angled