Seattle Quake 9.2 (A Jackie Harlan Mystery Book 1) Read online

  SEATTLE QUAKE 9.2

  (A Jackie Harlan Mystery)

  By

  Marti Talbott

  -

  © 2011 All Rights Reserved

  Editor: Frankie Sutton

  Table of Contents

  More Marti Talbott Books

  They knew it could happen - scientists had been warning them for years. Yet, nearly two million people living in the greater Seattle area went about their daily lives as usual. A Detective Agency thought they had found a missing woman, an upstart radio station was on the air, and an eccentric banker had just started a round of golf. Thousands were driving on freeways, shopping in malls, awaiting flights, working in downtown high-rises, and on buses in the bus tunnel.

  They knew -- they just didn't believe it could happen to them.

  (This book is dedicated to Ham Radio Operators all over the world who open the lines of communication after a disaster. Although it was written over 20 years ago and the technology may be a little out of date, this book still honors their hard, behind the scenes work.)

  All of Marti Talbott’s Books are suitable for ages 14 and above.

  (This book was written in the early 1980s and many places and things have changed since then.)

  CHAPTER 1

  A little more than 33 kilometers below the earth's surface, two massive sheets of solid rock strained to move in opposite directions. Beginning deep in the Olympic Mountains, the jagged and deadly fault line stretched beneath the town of Bremerton, under the waters of Elliott Bay and directly below the City of Seattle. For centuries the mammoth walls remained quiet and in place, with thousands of tons of pressure prevented from shifting by the slanted ledge of the southern wall locked tight against the slanted ledge of the Northern. Week after week, month after month, year after year, and decade after decade, the tension increased - until at last, a tiny crack appeared in the northern ledge.

  Sunday Afternoon, July 7

  From a small landing pad in the foothills of the Olympic Mountains a Sikorsky CH-54A Sky crane slowly lifted into the air. At first glance, its royal blue bubble face resembled a mutant dragonfly, with two dark tinted windows set in silver frames for eyes and a wide, threatening silver slit for a mouth. Long rear legs with hydraulic joints extended from the round, thin body and the tail sloped upward. Duel, free turbine Pratt and Whitney engines powered the matching blue blades, whipping the air with the sound of a hundred stampeding horses and generating enough shaft horsepower to lift twenty-five tons. Originally designed to hoist cargo off ships, the air crane belonged to an unlikely trio, had a modified body and housed a sophisticated, satellite linked tracking system.

  At the age of twenty-four Jackie Tate married Private Detective Dane Harlan. He taught her everything he knew, worked exotic exciting cases and showed her the world. But when the baby came they bought a house in Jefferson, Iowa, accepted less provocative assignments and settled down. A short two years later, someone simply walked away with their son Brian. For months, they feverishly followed every lead, ran background checks on hundreds of people and imagined all possibilities. But in the end, the best private detective team in the world couldn't find their own son. Jackie withdrew and Dane drank himself to death.

  It was Carl Kingsley, a nearly forgotten high school friend and chopper pilot, who brought Jackie back from the abyss. He owned a floundering air crane business, a shabby mobile home and part interest in a small drug company he hoped was on the brink of discovering a new wonder drug. He also had an ex-wife determined to take it all.

  In less than two days, and with the help of Michael Sorenson, Jackie tempted the ex-wife to settle for the sure thing -- the riches soon to be derived from the drug company. Or so the wife was led to believe. Carl retained his beloved air crane and his mobile home, Jackie awoke from her nightmare and the three of them began the Harlan Detective Agency. Not surprisingly, the drug company went out of business.

  The new Harlan Detective Agency specialized in finding lost people, even those who didn't want to be found, and the company flourished. A few well-paying jobs later, they bought two new mobile homes complete with backup generators and roof mounted satellite dishes. Carl gave the air crane a paint job, Jackie designed a new modified body and Michael installed every conceivable electronic device on the market. Relocating between jobs was easy. The huge air crane simply lifted the mobile homes and flew away. For each assignment, Jackie found remote locations for their home base so Carl and Michael could hike, hunt, fish, and occasionally get lost in all parts of the world. And so it was, that their latest home setting was tucked away in the dense foliage at the base of the Olympic Mountains.

  Their thirteen-year record of finding people was excellent, so when one of the wealthiest men in the world contacted them, Jackie wasn't surprised. She was surprised however, to learn Evan Cole wanted them to find his first wife Christina -- a woman lost at sea nearly thirty years before. Lost at sea, he thought, until her diamond-and-ruby wedding ring turned up in a New York pawnshop. It took Harlan Detective Agency six months to track the ring back to a robbery recovery in Los Angeles. But the LAPD had no record of the ring's original owner and no one filed a claim with any known insurance company. The trail went cold.

  In the off hours with nothing but cold trails to contemplate, Jackie often ran her son's fingerprints through a Department of Motor vehicles. Soon, Brian would be old enough for a learner's permit. The question was, which DMV, which county, which state and which country? For fun, she ran the name Christina Cole -- nothing. She expanded the search, eliminated the name, added 5' 6" in height, 125 pounds, give or take 25, dark hair, age 54, and blue eyes. The numbers were astronomical.

  It was Michael's genius with computers that led them to Seattle. Christina was born with two birthmarks, one the size of a quarter hidden beneath her dark hair, and a dime-sized one midway up her right forearm. Birthmarks sometimes turn to melanoma, a deadly form of cancer. It was a long shot, but Michael found thirty-six cases of birthmark melanomas in the US. Three were dead and the rest were the wrong age, sex or height. But suppose Christina Cole lied about her age? Yes there was one -- a woman living in Seattle. Upon hearing the news, Evan Cole was ecstatic.

  *

  Seattle's beauty was breathtaking and for a long moment the air crane held its position just above the Olympic Peninsula, allowing the snow-capped, spiny ridges behind it to showcase the chopper’s long, sleek lines. Just across the Strait of Juan De Fuca, Canada's Vancouver Island lay less than twenty miles north of the American coastline. To the east, a multitude of large and small islands dotted the intricate, sparkling waterways of Puget Sound. And beyond that, an imaginary line separated Puget Sound from Elliott Bay, a four-mile wide inlet lapping against Seattle's waterfront.

  Computer whiz Michael Anthony Sorenson kept his thick, brown hair cropped short and wore gold-rimmed glasses. As soon as the air crane was away, he darted inside the first mobile home, sat down at a counter and turned to face six monitors. Three were blank, while the others used the computer-aged image of Christina as a screen saver.

  Along the far wall of the modified air crane body, Jackie Harlan sat in a plush chair securely bolted to the floor. A pretty, brown eyed woman in her late thirties, she was surrounded by still more computer equipment and watched an identical set of six wall-mounted monitors. In the tail section, four empty chairs faced front, with a narrow hallway between them and full-length windows on each side. On the outside, just below the passenger windows, one-by-four foot panels contained hundreds of tiny light bulbs flashing the chopper’s 'HDA1' identification.

  Jackie was smartly dressed in blue hig
h heels, nylons, a white blouse and a royal blue suit, with strands of long auburn hair resting on the shoulders of her jacket. She entered her password and watched her exclusively designed software program light up three of the monitors with different images -- an aerial map of Seattle, a recent picture of Evan Cole and the computer-aged likeness of Christina. Along the bottom of Christina’s picture ran a grid that normally displayed her heart beat, but just now it was flat-lined.

  She spoke to Carl through her headset microphone, typed commands on her keyboard and waited for the air crane to begin its flight over the wide Olympic Peninsula. Mounted on the under-carriage, three oddly shaped video cameras with high tech antennas and telescope lenses, clicked into action. Instantly, her remaining monitors lit up. Just then, a small red light flashed in the lower, right-hand corner of the first monitor. She quickly hit a hot key at the top of her keyboard, opening the line so both Carl in the pilot's seat and Michael on the ground could listen. She took the call, "Good afternoon, sir."

  Thousands of miles away, the mature man's English was sprinkled with an Irish accent, "I cannot bear the suspense. Is this the one? Have you found her?"

  Jackie directed her answer toward Evan Cole's photograph on her far left screen, "I wish I could say yes and be sure of it. Our subject has dark hair, is the right height, has the right blood type, and closely resembles the computer-aged picture. She's old enough and her medical records mention a scar matching a childhood appendectomy. But she wears long sleeves even in summer, and we have yet to get a picture of anything resembling a birthmark on her arm. Without that, I can't be positive."

  "I see. It is a small birthmark, less than...”

  "I know, sir."

  "Of course you do." Evan Cole stood near a large office window with an exceptional view of the Statue of Liberty. A touch of gray along the sides of his neatly trimmed dark hair made him look distinguished and his Irish eyes glistened. He wore an expensive, charcoal suit with a pristine white shirt open at the collar, and highly polished black shoes. "Forgive me, I do not think straight where she is concerned. What's happening now?"

  "Well, right now we're off to see if we can get a closer look. She lives in an apartment with large picture windows facing the Bay and we're hoping to catch a glimpse of her without long sleeves. We've hidden a camera in the fire alarm across the hall from her front door and we've tapped her phone. I've also become good friends with her over the Internet. She thinks it is a chance meeting in an art chat room."

  "An art chat room?"

  "She's taken up painting and she's really quite good at it. Mister Cole, the woman has a daughter."

  "…a daughter?"

  "Yes, sir. Her daughter is married with two daughters of her own. She was born five months and four days after the day your wife was reported missing at sea."

  Evan did not speak. Instead, he aimlessly stared at the rose-colored carpet on the floor of his expensively decorated office, "A daughter? Christina hid a daughter from me? Is she mine?" He paused to think for a moment, "Five months … she must be mine. Does she look like me?"

  "Sir, I don't think you should get excited just yet. Thousands of women fit Christina's profile and without your wife's dental records, only the birthmark can give us a positive identification."

  "You're right, of course. I've been disappointed too many times to get out of hand now. Anything else?"

  Jackie hesitated, lightly biting her lip, "Well, we have stumbled across something unusual. Our subject has two bank accounts. She works in an office, deposits her paycheck and pays all her bills with one account. The other has a balance of exactly $10,000.00 in checking with nothing in savings."

  "You mean it does not draw interest?"

  "Not a cent. She hasn't touched the account for a long time. It appears she drew out large sums to pay for her daughter's college education, and then left it alone. The odd thing is, no matter how much she spent, the balance remained at exactly $10,000.00."

  Evan Cole turned away from the window and stared at the five-foot painting of his young wife hanging on a far wall. Christina wore a satin blue, strapless gown the exact color of her eyes with a delicate diamond-and-ruby necklace and tiny white diamonds in her long, dark hair. Her eyes were filled with love and her smile was adoring. "But Christina had no money of her own and nothing was missing. How old is this account?"

  "We're checking into that now. I'll call when we have something more definite."

  In the mobile home, Michael studied his upper, middle screen. The mock figure of a woman was lying on a bed in a three-dimensional composite of an apartment, and in this screen as well, the still flat-lined graph at the bottom was supposed to be monitoring her heartbeat. In a second screen, he replaced Evan's picture with an image generated by the hallway camera. As soon as Evan Cole hung up, he spoke into his headset, "You didn't tell him about her heart condition."

  "I see no reason to just yet. Michael, she hasn't moved in more than an hour. Are you sure the equipment is working?"

  Michael frowned and folded his arms, "I'm sure, she's just sleeping on her side again. The system only works when the necklace is flat on her chest, you know, and we wouldn't have this problem if you'd let me put a microphone in her bedroom."

  "And how would I explain that to Mister Cole? We promised not to invade anyone's privacy and we've already put in a lot more equipment than he authorized. Besides, what if she finds it, panics and runs?"

  "Okay, I get the point." He unfolded his arms and typed a new command on his keyboard. Instantly, the aerial map changed to a close-up of a necklace, "By the way, the necklace matches the ring perfectly, except for the slightly altered mounting we had our guy put in when she wanted it cleaned. Mister Cole had the necklace and the ring made by a jeweler in London."

  "That's wonderful, Michael."

  "So tell me this. Why does a woman fake her death to get away from a husband, and then faithfully wear the necklace he gave her? She only takes it off to shower. And I found something else, she's got scars around both wrists -- like maybe she's been tied up."

  "Tied up?"

  "Yes. I wish I could think of some other explanation."

  Jackie turned in her swivel chair and thoughtfully looked out the window. "You think she's been abused and that's why she faked her death?"

  "Maybe. Our background check on Evan Cole didn't indicate anything violent, but I think I'll have a little chat with his second wife's sister. If anyone knows his history, she does."

  "Good idea, the last thing we want to do is find a wife for an abusive husband."

  *

  In the summer afternoons, when it wasn't raining, sixty-six-year old Sam Taylor liked sitting on the end of a West Seattle pier with his legs dangling over the edge. His milk-white hair complimented his blue eyes, and more often than not, he wore headphones connected to a transistor radio in his shirt pocket. His favorite was KMPR, a new talk radio station owned by his son, Max.

  Behind him, homes and apartments dotted the hillside where thousands of people enjoyed an impressive view of the water and Greater Seattle. On both sides of the pier, rows and rows of moored pleasure boats sloshed with the rhythm of the sea. To his right, in the wide southern curve of Elliott Bay, Harbor Island's multiple docks displayed huge land cranes capable of lifting full railroad cars off enormous cargo ships. Overhead, airplanes of varying sizes passed every three minutes, completing their final fifteen-mile descent into Boeing Field or SeaTac Airport.

  Further around the curve tugboats, cruise ships, dinner ships and the Victoria Clipper dotted piers jutting out from shops and restaurants. And behind the waterfront lay the colorful and magnificent city of Seattle. Eight blocks deep and twenty-six blocks long, downtown Seattle loomed high on a hill, with graduating levels of glistening sky scrapers. Among them, the impressive Winningham Blue Building stood forty-seven floors high, covered an entire city block and was a mere three blocks from the waterfront.

  On the northern end of the twenty-six blocks, a
n enormous water fountain and the Space Needle marked the middle of The Seattle Center. And just northeast of the Seattle Center, the ground sloped upward toward the top of Queen Anne Hill. Named for a time when the weight of one trolley going downhill pulled another trolley up, the steep grade of the nine block "counterbalance" ascended four blocks, leveled off, and then continued up the next four blocks.

  From where Sam Taylor sat, the view was magnificent. The air was fresh and free of pollution, the "Emerald City" was its usual green, and never did he have to wait more than an hour to see something new or unexpected. Sam opened his box of order-out fried chicken, set it on the pier beside him and popped the pull-tab on a can of soda. He took a sip, put it down and reached for a chicken leg. Wearing an old brown fishing hat, he laughed at something said on the radio and started to watch two tugs maneuver a freighter toward Harbor Island.

  Something unique caught his attention. A loud clapping noise signaled the slow descent of the largest chopper he had ever seen. And there was more -- there was some kind of a disturbance in the water.

  *

  Queen Anne Hill was only ten minutes from downtown by Metro bus and sported three and a half vital communication towers on her top. Vital that is, until 60 and 70 story skyscrapers were built downtown. After that, radio and television had a higher place from which to transmit, and after that came satellites and satellite dishes. Still, the towers on top of Queen Anne Hill were useful for other things such as cell phones, weather and traffic cameras, and one Amateur Radio repeater. Between two of the towers, in the attic of an old two-story house, Sam Taylor's son, Max, built his talk-radio station, KMPR.

  A tall man with shoulder length blond hair, Max spent weeks putting in a plaster ceiling, adding three coats of lusterless paint and setting up the soundproof booth with an adjoining studio. The control room was small and housed the "board" with inputs for each mike. Cartridge players ran commercial spots, promos, show intros, and news sound bites. In addition, the board held a four-track tape deck, a CD player and a computer complete with monitor. On the opposite side of the control room sat a 5 kW transmitter the size of a phone booth with more equipment on both sides. Overhead, a long florescent light hung from chains and offered a pale white glow. The console, dotted with tuning dials and switches held a ten-line telephone and faced a large, soundproof window overlooking the studio. In the studio, another console sat lengthwise with its own hanging light, a ceiling fan, a ten-line phone, various switches, dials, and a second computer monitor.