Dismissed With Prejudice (9780061760631) (16 page)

“We're police officers,” Big Al said.

“Cops!” She jumped as she spat out the word and would have slammed the door in our faces if Big Al hadn't caught it and held it open. Police officers weren't the lady's favorite people.

“Are you the owner of DataDump?” Big Al asked.

She nodded.

“We'd like to talk to you then, if you have a minute.”

She stepped aside, letting the door open a little wider but not inviting us inside. “What about?” she asked glumly.

“A company called MicroBridge.”

Her eyes dilated at the word. It takes real fear to make eyes do that in broad daylight.

“What about it?”

“You had someone working at a place called MicroBridge on Sunday night this last week, didn't you?”

“My husband, Dean.”

“Would it be possible to talk to him?”

“He's gone.”

“Do you know where he is or when he'll be back?”

“No.” We were getting answers, but we weren't getting much information, and we wouldn't either, not as long as she was scared to death. Somehow I had to relieve her fear enough so we could see what was behind it.

“Do you mind telling us how you got the MicroBridge job?” I asked.

“He called,” she said.

“Who did?”

“The owner. A guy named Kurobashi. He called Friday night after we were closed and left a message on the machine. Wanted us to do a job on Sunday. Offered to pay double.”

“Double?”

“You heard me, mister. That's what I said.” She seemed to have summoned a fresh supply of courage from somewhere deep within her. She looked me squarely in the face. “Dean didn't kill nobody,” she announced flatly.

With that, she turned her back on us and walked away, moving to a battered desk across the room. She seated herself behind it.

“Might just as well come on in,” she said wearily. “No sense standin' around in the doorway.”

“What do you mean, ‘Dean didn't kill nobody'?”

“That guy was already dead when Dean found him. He didn't do it. You've got no right to chase after him.”

“We just want to talk to your husband,” I said quietly. “To ask him some questions.”

“Sure you do,” she said, sounding unconvinced. She plucked a cigarette from an open pack of Marlboros on the desk, lit it, and dropped the match into a heaping, stale-smelling ashtray. She took a long drag on the cigarette, and her face hardened.

“Don't you go fuckin' with me, mister. I'm nobody's dummy. It's just like he said would happen, that you'd come here lookin' for a way to pin it on him.”

“You're saying that your husband didn't kill him, but that he saw the dead man?”

“That's right.”

Big Al had extracted his notebook from his jacket pocket and was starting to jot down the information. “What's your name please?” he asked.

She jerked her eyes in his direction. “Chrissey,” she answered. “Chrissey Morrison.” There was a note of defiance in the way she said her name.

“Did your husband say what time it was when he found the body?” I asked, trying to keep from saying anything that might sound accusatory.

“No.”

“When did he tell you this—after he got home?”

She nodded.

“What time was that?”

Chrissey Morrison shrugged. “Midnight, one o'clock. I don't know for sure. I was asleep.”

“He told you, but he didn't report it to the police? Why not?”

Tears sprang to Chrissey's eyes. “He was scared, that's why.”

“Scared of the dead man?” I asked.

She turned and looked at me. The defiance drained away, leaving her haggard and hollow-eyed. “Of you,” she answered.

“Of me? Or you mean of cops?”

She nodded. “Of cops. Of
all
cops. Dean already done some time. He was scared shitless that if he reported it…”

“What was he in for?”

Regaining control, she blew a languid plume of smoke into the air. “Drugs,” she answered casually.

And suddenly I knew where I had seen that worn, dispirited look before, in the wives and girlfriends who follow their menfolk to prison and who live as outcasts in the small towns outside the prison walls, their own lives on hold until the husbands are released.

Chrissey Morrison was a survivor, but there was no dignity in it, no victory. Dean was out now, and they were trying to go on, but his past still cast a shadow over everything they did. I didn't know Dean Morrison, but I felt sorry for his wife.

“Tell us exactly what Dean told you,” I urged.

“He was there late afternoon and evening. Musta started about five o'clock or thereabouts. He said about nine or so he finished and come back to the office after runnin' the shredder and found him like that, on the floor with a big old ashtray upside his head.” She paused. “From the way he was layin', Dean knowed right away he was dead.”

“What happened then?”

“Dean said he started to call the cops, but changed his mind and came home. He didn't want to get involved, figured they'd find a way to blame him for it. When I told him he should report it, he got mad as hell. He jumped in the truck and took off. I ain't seen him since.”

“Do you have any idea where he is? We just want to talk to him, to ask him some questions.”

“No. He hasn't called or nothin'. I thought maybe he'd be back today, bein's it's our anniversary and all, but he ain't. Maybe he won't never come back.”

“We could put out a description of the truck,” I offered. “We could probably find him that way.”

She cringed visibly at the prospect. “Don't do that. Please don't do that. He'd think you were ar
restin' him and I don't know what would happen. He didn't do nothin'. Just let him come home on his own.”

“Did he tell you anything else about MicroBridge? Did he see anyone there? Talk to anyone?”

“He said a woman come in while he was there, a young gal. He said he thought she was the dead guy's daughter. Before he was dead. Dean said they started out talkin' real nice like and ended up fightin' somethin' terrible.”

“Did he tell you what they were fighting about?”

“No. He said later on he thought he heard a car drive away while he was out in the truck. He figured that was her leavin'. When he come back to the office to drop off the bill and the bags, that's when he found the body.”

“After the daughter left?” Big Al asked.

Chrissey nodded. My mind caught hold of the word
bags
. I didn't remember seeing any.

“What bags?” I asked.

“The bags of confetti. Our shredder makes confetti out of all them records and files and floppy disks that people want to get rid of. We always bring the bag back to the owner so he can be sure it's properly disposed of. That way there's never no question about what happens to it.”

“How big was this bag?” Big Al asked.

The woman looked at him. “Not bag,” she corrected. “Bags. Musta been several. Dean always takes along a big roll of them fifty-gallon trash
bags. I don't know how full they was, or how many. Depends on how much got shredded.”

“You're sure he said ‘bags' plural?” I asked.

“That's right. Said they was too heavy to carry, so he dragged 'em back in from the truck on a cart, a little handcart. When he finished, he called to the guy, but there was no answer. He said he looked around the rest of the buildin' but couldn't find nobody else, so he come back to leave the cart and the bill there in the office. That's when he found the body.”

“What did he do then?”

“Ran, I guess. Took off. He was so scared he left the cart right there where it was, and the bill too. Ran back to the truck and drove away. He went to a tavern a few blocks away and sat there and had himself a couple beers to calm himself down. Then he got to thinkin' that maybe you cops would come lookin' for him, so he went back, thought he'd get the bill and the cart, but the door to the dock was closed and locked. He couldn't get back inside.”

I glanced at Big Al. Bernard Rennermann had said the door to the loading dock was open. Not only that, Big Al and I had been all over the MicroBridge plant the morning Tadeo Kurobashi's body was found, and neither one of us had seen a trace of a cart with trash bags full of shredded confetti. Or an ashtray either.

“Tell us about the confetti. What's it like?”

“Like confetti. Everybody's seen confetti.”

“I know what it looks like, but it wasn't there when we got there. Why would someone take it? Could they put the pieces back together and tell what was on it?”

She shook her head. “No way. It'd be like a million-piece jigsaw puzzle.”

Chrissey Morrison watched us disinterestedly, with the air of someone too tired to care and too broken to lie. I decided to press the advantage.

“What did you husband get sent up for?”

Her gaze became brittle. “I already told you. Drugs. He got rehabilitated in jail. Been straight ever since he got out.”

“Did he ever steal anything, Mrs. Morrison?”

“No.” Just as I expected, her answer was too quick, too definitive, too defensive.

Playing for time, leaving her to squirm, I ran my finger along the marred edge of her wooden desk for several long seconds. “Would it be safe to assume that you and your husband don't make a lot of money in this business?”

“We make enough to get by,” she said. “We pay our bills.”

“But it's not easy, is it?”

She studied me warily as if trying to sniff out whatever trap I might be setting for her. “No,” she answered finally. “It ain't.”

“What if your husband happened across something very valuable, an ancient sword that was just lying there free for the taking? Would he have picked it up?”

“He didn't say nothin' about somethin' like that.” Her voice was tight, verging on panic.

“A sword was found with the body,” I said, “so we know he didn't take it.”

“Then why're you askin' me about it?”

“What do you think would have happened if he had seen it, though? Would he have taken it?”

“I don't understand…”

“Would he?” I insisted. “If he had seen it, would he have picked it up?”

She dropped her eyes. “A fancy sword? Probably. Dean'd know how to fence somethin' like that. He got sent up for drugs because that's the only thing they charged him with.”

I looked at Big Al. He was nodding.

She stood up, her face slack with despair. “You better go now. I don't want to talk no more. If he calls me, maybe I can make him turn himself in.”

When she said that, I realized that Chrissey Morrison still thought her husband was under suspicion.

“Chrissey, listen very carefully. As I told you, we know your husband didn't take the sword, and we're pretty sure he didn't kill anybody, either.”

She stared at me blankly. I still wasn't getting through. Chrissey Morrison was a whole lot more loyal than she was smart.

“Are you listening to me?” I demanded.

She frowned. “If Dean didn't take nothin', and if he didn't kill nobody, then why're you hasslin' me like this?”

“You're sure he didn't say anything at all about a sword being there with the body?”

“No, goddamnit, an ashtray. Don't you listen to nothin'?”

“But no sword.”

“I already tol' you.”

“Maybe you didn't understand me the first time. This sword we're talking about was with the body when we found it, so if your husband didn't see one, then the killer may still have been there at the same time your husband was. And that's why we have to talk to him the moment he shows up. He may have seen or heard something that would help us.”

“You mean you don't think he did it?”

She had finally gotten the message. “No, but he may have seen whoever did.” I handed her one of my cards with my home number scribbled on the back. “Will you have him call us?”

She crushed the card in her hand and nodded wordlessly. For the second time, tears welled in her eyes.

We got up to leave. I paused in the doorway. “When you see your husband, you might tell him from me that he's damn lucky to be alive.”

“I'll tell him,” she whispered. “I sure enough will.”

“T
ELL ME JUST THIS ONE THING
,” B
IG
Al said, as we climbed into the car for the return drive to the department. “How the hell does someone who got sent up for drugs manage to get licensed and bonded to run a shredding company?”

“Don't ask,” I responded. “You don't want to know and neither do I.”

“Are you going to head on over to Port Angeles today?” he asked.

Baseball teams have designated hitters. In Big Al's and my partnership, I'm the designated traveler. Allen Lindstrom lives to eat, and he's especially partial to his wife's brand of home cooking. He doesn't like to go anywhere if he can't be back in time for dinner. Other than Ralph Ames, I've seldom met a bachelor whose dinners were worth going home for. Mine certainly aren't, so if traveling is optional, I go and Big Al stays home.

“That's the plan,” I said, except the plan didn't work according to schedule. Going to Port Angeles to see Clay Woodruff that Thursday afternoon got shoved aside by something else.

Before we made it all the way inside the garage at the Public Safety Building, we were dispatched back out and sent to one of the city's better-known crack houses over on East Yesler. There, sometime during the night, in a filthy apartment that reeked of urine and vomit and human feces, a young hotshot drug addict named Hubert Jones had OD'd on heroin. He had fallen onto a bare mattress on the floor in one corner of what passed for a living room—a dying room in this case—and had been left lying where he fell. It was morning before any of his drugged-up pals bothered to call in a report.

The dead man's driver's license revealed that he had turned twenty-one just two months earlier. When we started asking questions about him and about what had happened during the night, nobody in the house knew anything, heard anything, or saw anything.

These were people who had fried their brains on drugs but whose bodies hadn't yet given up the fight. From what we could ascertain, Hubert Jones had died alone in a room filled with at least two dozen partying zombies, none of whom had bothered to notice. With cretins like that for friends, Hubert Jones had no need of enemies.

It's hard for cops to get emotionally involved in cases like that. It's hard to care. We all get them, though, and far too often. With anti-drug hysteria running at a fever pitch, police jurisdictions all over the country, hounded by the press, are under
tremendous pressure to
do
something. Exactly what, nobody's sure.

And so, when another case crops up, we go through the motions. We ask all the usual questions and write down the usual non-answers. We visit the grieving next-of-kin, usually and painfully the parents, and do what we can, with our questions and our forms, to make sense out of the tragedies of their children's amputated lives. Sometimes we find out who's at fault; more often, we don't. When we're finished, we go home or else we move on to the next case. After a while, all OD's look alike, and it's hard to give a rat's ass. You're just grateful as hell that it isn't your own kid being packed off to the morgue.

On that particular day, Hubert Jones' squalid death took precedence over Tadeo Kurobashi's murder, over my going to Port Angeles to talk with Clay Woodruff. More than the critical forty-eight hours had passed since Tadeo's death, and the odds against our actually finding his killer were going up exponentially.

By the time we finished the next-of-kin visit, it was quitting time, and quit we did. Hubert Jones' wretched life and meaningless death sure as hell weren't worthy of our working overtime. All I wanted to do was go home and put my feet up.

My emotional battery had just about run down. The days of almost round-the-clock work and concentration had drained me, and I found myself filled with a vague sense of uneasiness. It wasn't
anything physical. Thanks to Dr. Blair, my hand was feeling much better. There was, however, on the periphery of my mind, the nagging knowledge that I hadn't done as I'd been told and gone to see Dr. Wang.

Sitting in the recliner, I noticed how quiet the apartment was. Far too quiet. Ames had left a message on the answering machine saying that he and Winter were driving over to eastern Washington to visit with Machiko Kurobashi at Honeydale Farm. I missed the kind of creative uproar that seems to accompany Ralph Ames wherever he goes. And I missed having Peters' kids popping in and out unannounced in hopes of snagging some forbidden treat. And I missed having someone there to talk to. And I was restless as hell.

About six, I picked up the phone, dialed the Mercer Island Police Department, and asked to be put through to the chief. The words
police chief
didn't used to make me think of sex. Ever. But that was before I got to know Marilyn Sykes. Before I
really
got to know her.

Mercer Island is one of Seattle's suburban neighbors, an independent bedroom community in the middle of Lake Washington with its own city government. Marilyn Sykes, the Mercer Island police chief, and I have a sometime thing going. Like me, she works too much and plays too little. She answered the phone in her office on the second ring.

“It's six o'clock. Why are you still working?”

“Do you have any better ideas?”

“Actually I do. What are you having for dinner?”

She laughed. “Lean Cuisine. Again. As usual.”

“How about leftover linguini primavera?”

“At your house? If you've got leftovers, that must mean Ralph Ames is still in town.”

“In Washington, but not in town.”

“Is that a hint?”

“An invitation,” I corrected.

“Are you sure you're up to it? How are the fingers?”

The damn fingers again! “Now that they've stopped hurting, they're fine,” I answered. “Believe me, I never felt better.”

“So I don't need to bring over a pot of chicken soup?”

“No. Your toothbrush.”

“I'll be there in twenty minutes,” she said.

And she was. That's one of the reasons I like Marilyn Sykes. She doesn't require engraved invitations or lots of advance notice.

We never did get around to the linguini. When I woke up at six o'clock on Friday morning, Marilyn was plastered against my back, one hand wrapped around my middle, snoring softly. I felt the soft swell of breast against the skin of my shoulder blade and the arousing tickle of her pubic hair against my butt.

We've been around one another enough now that I no longer wake up in a blind panic, trying desperately to figure out who's in bed next to me. I know upon waking and without looking that it's
Marilyn, and I'm grateful to have her there. We've never discussed the fact that she snores. I probably do too.

I lay there for a while, delighted to notice that my fingers weren't throbbing. Between Marilyn's capable ministrations and Dr. Blair's red-hot paper clip, I was feeling a whole lot better. A gentle euphoria slipped over me as I relived the previous evening's activities. Neither Marilyn nor I had anything to apologize for in the screwing department. On that score alone, I felt downright terrific. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I thought Dr. Blair must have had his wires crossed. It wasn't possible for someone who felt this good to be sick. Enlarged liver, my ass! Enlarged something else.

Marilyn stirred in her sleep. A hand grazed my chest.

“Awake?” I asked, turning to face her.

“Mmmmmm,” she answered.

I couldn't tell if that meant yes or no. “Which is it?” I asked.

“Depends on the question.”

She snuggled comfortably against my chest, nuzzling into the curve of my neck. Totally un-police chief like behavior.

“What time do you have to be at work today?” I asked.

“Eight. I told them last night that I might be running late.”

“Oh no, you won't. I have to be at work at eight, too. Do you want breakfast?”

“Not exactly,” she said.

“Me neither,” I said, eating myself on top of her. She pulled my face down to hers and gave me a lingering kiss. A demanding kiss.

When I drew back from her lips, Marilyn's eyes were open, and she was smiling. “Good morning,” she whispered.

“Don't talk,” I said, and buried myself inside her, which is why, without ever having breakfast, I was ten minutes late to work and Marilyn Sykes was twenty. The good thing about being chief of police is that not many people have nerve enough to ask a police chief where she's been or what she's been doing, and even if they had asked, Marilyn Sykes is the type who probably would have told them.

I wasn't that lucky. Big Al was waiting for me, and so was Sergeant Watkins.

“You working banker's hours these days?” Watty demanded.

Watty and I have had numerous run-ins of late, particularly since my series of hassles with Paul Kramer, one of the newer detectives on the squad. I'll admit, I haven't been busting my butt to mend fences, but then neither has Watty.

“Doctor's orders.” I answered with a tiny white lie, and Watty didn't question it. With a disgusted shrug of his shoulders, he walked away.

“I've got a message here for you,” Big Al said. “George Yamamoto wants to see you right away.”

“Where are you going?”

“To see Captain Powell.”

“What about?”

“Maxwell Cole is doing a feature on Hubert Jones' mother. He wants to interview one of the detectives. Powell says I'm elected.”

“Thank God for small favors,” I responded.

Maxwell Cole is a longtime acquaintance of mine, a crime reporter turned columnist, whose profession naturally puts him at odds with cops in general and me in particular. We can't be in the same room together without setting off explosions. Powell probably figured, and rightly so, that any interview Maxwell Cole did with me would not reflect favorably on the Seattle Police Department.

Counting my blessings, I dashed down the stairway and into the crime lab to talk with George Yamamoto. As soon as I saw him, I knew something was wrong. George was sitting alone at his desk, staring at his phone. I knocked on his door frame twice before he heard me and looked up, his narrow face drained and haggard.

“Come in,” he said, motioning wearily. “Come in and close the door.”

“What's the matter, George? You look beat.”

He cocked his head to one side. The slightest hint of a sardonic smile played around the corners of his lips. “Beaten? Maybe I am. Isn't that Ralph Ames a friend of yours?”

“Yes.”

“A good poker player?” Yamamoto asked.

I shrugged. “I wouldn't know about that. I don't play poker.”

George nodded wisely. “I do. He's a good bluffer. I believe I've just been blackmailed, Detective Beaumont, and unless I'm sadly mistaken, your friend Ralph Ames is behind it.”

“Ames? Blackmail? No way.” I almost laughed aloud, but George's coldly humorless expression stifled the urge.

“There are many degrees of blackmail, Detective Beaumont, and this is probably fairly benign, but it's blackmail nonetheless.”

“Jesus Christ,” I groaned. “What the hell is going on? I don't understand any of this. And how you got the crazy idea that Ralph Ames is behind it—”

“He is,” George interrupted. “Ames and that Winter fellow.”

“What could Ralph Ames or Archie Winter possibly have on you?”

“Not them,” Yamamoto said quietly. “Machiko.”

“This doesn't make sense.”

“Ames and Winter came here yesterday wanting to see the sword, and I showed it to them. Winter has solid credentials. He agreed with me that the sword is a genuine Masamune. Now, this morning, I have a call from Machiko Kurobashi telling me that if I don't release the sword to her at once, she'll go to the media with the story.”

“What story?”

“Conflict of interest. The newspapers will lap it up. She'll tell them how I'm keeping the sword because of the long-standing feud between us.”

“But how can she get away with that if it's not true?”

George Yamamoto leaned back in his chair, his fingertips templed in front of his nose. “But that's where you're wrong, Detective Beaumont. It is true. I thought the sword was Tadeo's. One of the reasons I didn't want to release it to her is that I didn't think she deserved to touch it. Now Winter tells me the sword is rightfully hers. Her maiden name was Kusumi.”

I nodded. “I thought as much when Winter was talking about it the other night, when he told me that the other matching pieces had been found in the ruins of Nagasaki.”

“What exactly do you know about Machiko's background?” George asked.

“Not much. Only what you told me, that she came to this country as a war bride, an occupation bride really, and that she married Tadeo after her first husband died.”

“She was a whore!” George Yamamoto declared vehemently, slamming his fist into his desktop. “Machiko Kurobashi was a no-good worthless whore!”

For a long moment it was silent in George Yamamoto's small private office. In the outer lab, beyond the closed door, humming voices droned and telephones rang faintly. No one beyond the
confines of his private office seemed aware of the outburst.

“You don't know that for sure, do you, George?”

He nodded. “Yes, I know it for sure. I told you before about Tomi, my sister. When Machiko showed up out of nowhere and took Tadeo away, I wanted to find out about her. I had friends who were able to check into her background. They told me she was working the streets in Tokyo when she met and married her first husband. I reported what I had found out to Tadeo, but he said it didn't matter. He married her anyway.”

George swung around in his chair and stared angrily out his office window, a dingy pane of water-splotched glass overlooking Third Avenue.

“I've run this department for years without a hint of scandal,” George said slowly, “and as long as I give her back the sword, that will continue to be true. No scandal. No problem. She claims she needs to borrow it for a day or two.”