Authors: J. A. Jance
“If you find her, I’d still be willing to talk to her, but I hate to miss a full day’s work.”
“What about a telephone conference, call?” I asked. “We could get you, Blia, and me all on the phone together.”
Ernie shook his head doubtfully. “You gotta remember that for the H mong, coming to this country is like stepping into a time machine. She was raised one step out of the Stone Age. A telephone conference call is asking too much.”
“It was just an idea,” I said dismally.
Promptly at four-thirty the bus left for Anacortes. I dropped my company car off at the department and rode a free bus as far as the Westin. I needed to talk. Ames was stuck with me whether he liked it or not. As it turned out, Ames was glad to see me. “I’ve been hitting one brick wall after another on the Belltown thing,” he complained. “I have some sources here in town, one in particular over at the Daily Journal of Commerce. He’s mystified, too. Says nobody’s acting like there’s an outside investor. The real estate community is watching Belltown Terrace because of the sheriff’s sale. He doesn’t know who bailed them out.”
“Well, somebody did,” I said, settling onto Ames’ bed. “Am I buying the penthouse?”
“If you still want it, considering you’d be buying it from them rather than the syndicate.”
I thought about it, but I had been fantasizing about barbecued ribs for three days.
My mind was made up. “I want it,” I declared. Ames nodded. “All right.” He changed the subject. “Tomorrow I have to go back to The Dalles. They left word this afternoon.
I catch an early plane to Portland.”
“Want a ride to the airport? My car’s back.”
He shook his head. “I’ll take the hustle bus.”
We were ready to discuss our dinner when Peters called. “I figured I’d find you there.
I just got out of court. What are you up to?” “Ames and I are plotting dinner. Care to join us?” He did. Afterwards, Ames returned to the Westin and Peters dropped by my apartment to chat. Around ten, just as Peters was ready to head home, the phone rang. It was the department. Another transient had been set afire in an alley encampment between First and Western off Cedar. Officers were on the scene. We took Peter’s Datsun.
The building at First and Cedar is an office building with a penthouse restaurant on the fifth floor. The narrow alley behind it separates the building from two pay-parking lots. Between them sits a no-man’s-land of blackberry bramble eight feet high. A small clearing had been carved beneath the thorny, dense branches with pieces of cardboard for flooring and walls. Al Lindstrom and Manny Davis were at the scene.
We didn’t need to ask what was under the blanket in the blackberry clump. Once you’ve smelled the sweetish odor of charred human flesh, you never forget it. “Same MO as before,”
A1 told us grimly. “Only it’s a woman this time, one of the Regrade regulars. We’ve got a positive ID. Teresa Smith’s her name. Looks like she was sleeping it off here in the brush when someone doused her with gasoline and lit a match.” The very fact that someone knew her name gave us a big leg up over the other two cases.
“Who reported it?” I asked.
He gestured toward the building above us. “A guy up there in the bar looked down and saw the fire just as it started. The bartender called 911, but it was too late by the time they got here. “
“Did he see anyone?”
“Saw a car drive off. Only headlights and taillights. No make or model. ” “So we’re not dealing with another transient,” Peters commented. It was true. Downtown bums don’t drive. They wander, foot-patrol style, throughout the downtown area, hanging out in loosely organized, ever-changing packs. “How come she was by herself?”
One of the uniformed officers came up as I asked the question. “We found her boyfriend.
The food bank up the street was open, and she passed out. The group left her to sleep it off while they went to get food.” A tall, weaving Indian with shoulder-length greasy hair broke free from a scraggly group at the end of the alley. He pushed his way toward us. “Where is she?” he mumbled.
Manny moved to head him off, but the drunk brushed him aside. “Where is she?” he repeated. He stopped in front of me and stood glaring balefully, swaying from side to side.
I brought out my ID and opened it in front of him. I motioned wordlessly toward the heap of blanket. He swung blearily to look where I pointed. When his eyes focused on the blanket, his knees crumpled under him. He sank to the ground, his face contorted with grief, shoulders heaving. This was an empty hulk of humanity with nothing left to lose, yet I watched as he sustained still another loss. He stank. His hair and clothes were filthy. Blackened toes poked through his duct-taped shoes. But his anguish at the woman’s death was real and affecting. Grief is grief on any scale.
One of the patrolmen knelt beside him. “We’ve sent for Reverend Laura,” he said.
In the old days, Reverend Laura would have gone searching for heathens in Africa or South America. Today, the tall, rawboned woman is a newly ordained Lutheran minister with a pintsized church in a former Pike Place tavern. She ministers to downtown’s homeless. Wearing her hair in a severe bun and with no makeup adorning her ruddy cheeks, she is both plain and plainspoken, but her every action brims with the milk of human kindness. She appeared within minutes and knelt beside the weeping man, taking his elbow and raising him to his feet.
“Come on, Roger,” she said kindly, “let’s go to the mission. ” “Will you keep him there so we can reach him tomorrow?” I asked. She nodded. An officer helped her load him into a car. We fanned out, asking questions of all bystanders, interviewing the patrons in Girvan’s, including the than who had first reported the incident. We found nothing, It took us until two A.M. to ascertain we had found nothing. Peters dropped me off at my place. “Why don’t you stay here?” I offered. “You can have the bed.
I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“No, thanks,” he replied. “I’d better get home.”
I’m sure I was sound asleep before he reached the floating bridge.
Chapter 28
I WOKE up Tuesday morning, tired but with a renewed sense of purpose. Roger Bear Claw’s grief had catapulted burning transients out of the realm of the inconsequential.
Years of discipline took over, bringing focus and motivation. Ginger, Mona, and Wilson were Hal’s bailiwick. Teresa Smith and a dead John Doe were mine. By seven-thirty I was at my desk. Peters stopped by on his way to the courthhouse. He dropped a newspaper onto my desk. “Thought you’d want to read Max’s column,” he said.
It was there in lurid black and white, all about Ginger Watkins’ murder. He told the whole story, including the blood-alcohol count, speculating what conversation she and Wilson might have shared over those last few drinks. Columnists speculate with impunity. They also rationalize. Cole’s conclusion was that Wilson had taken his own life after destroying those responsible for the deaths of his wife and child.
With typical tunnel vision, he ignored the fact that Mona Larson had never served on the parole board. The moral of the story-and with Max there is always a moral-was couched in snide asides about inept law-enforcement officers. No one was exempt-from the Washington State Patrol and the San Juan County Sheriff’s Department to the Pasco City Police. There was, however, one notable omission. J. P. Beaumont’s name wasn’t mentioned, not once. Evidently Ralph Ames’ threat of libel had struck terror in Max’s black little heart.
Peters was still there when I finished reading the article. I tossed the paper back to him. “Where the hell does he get his information? Huggins swears there’s no leak in his department, but the stuff about the throttle linkage was known only by Huggins, Rogers, me and the killer.” Peters shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter, does it?
Wilson’s dead; the case is closed. Maybe now you can get your mind back on the job.
I should be done with the Sage case by noon.”
After Peters left, At, Manny, and I did a quick huddle. “So who’s got a grudge against bums?” Manny asked.
“Every taxpaying, law-abiding citizen,” A1 Lindstrom grumped. Al is a typical hardworking Scandinavian squarehead with a natural aversion to any able-bodied person who beats the system by not holding down a real job. Al and Manny went to the Pike Place Mission for another talk with Roger Bear Claw, while I was dispatched to Harborview Hospital to check on the surviving John Doe. Before I had a chance to leave my desk, the phone rang. It was Hal Huggins. I tried to check the annoyance in my voice. “It’s about time you got around to calling me.”
“Lay off, Beau. I’m up to my neck. It’s just as well Wilson’s dead. The county couldn’t afford two first-degree murder trials.”
“You’re sure Wilson did it? All three of them?” “Absolutely. Didn’t you hear about the note?” “Vaguely. But exposure? People don’t just go out in the woods and wait to die. Besides, it hasn’t been cold.”
“Who knows? Maybe he fell in some water. That’ll do it. Look, Beau, I’m not calling the shots, the coroner is c. By the way,” he added, “we found his car parked on a side street in Prosser. The note was there.” “How long had it been there?”
“I can’t tell you that. We’re trying to reconstruct Wilson’s movements from the time he left Orcas. So far we’re not having much luck, but there’s no doubt the note is his. The prints check. Handwriting checks. What more do you want?”
“What about the chicken?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Beau, lay off that chicken. Maybe he didn’t plan to kill them when he left home; but after he did, he couldn’t very well go back without getting caught, not even to eat his chicken or feed his goddamned cat.”
“So you’re closing the case?” I asked.
“Not completely. As I said, we’re still retracing his movements from the time he left Orcas until he showed up in the river. ” “How long has he been dead?”
“Old man Scott says two to three days at the most.”
“Not `Calls It Like I Sees ‘Em’ Scott!”
“That’s right. One and the same. He’s still Benton County Coroner. He’s up for reelection next week.”
Only three counties in Washington-King, Pierce, and Whatcom-have medical examiners.
All the rest rely on an antiquated county coroner system. Whoever runs for office is elected without any consideration of qualifications. Garfield Scott had earned both his nickname and a permanent place in the Bungler’s Hall of Fame when he declared a man dead of a heart attack, only to turn him over and discover a knife still buried in the victim’s chest. “Can’t you get another opinion? What if Wilson’s been dead longer than that, like since before Mona died?”
“Dammit, Beau. I already told you, I’m not calling the shots. There’s an election next week, remember? Scott would never hold still for a second opinion.”
I changed the subject. “Who went to Maxwell Cole with Ginger’s murder?” I asked.
There was a moment’s pause. “I don’t have any idea.”
“Somebody did,” I told him grimly. “It’s front-page stuff in this morning’s P. I.“
“Not anybody from my department, I can tell you that!” Huggins’ hackles were up, and so were mine. He attempted to smooth things over. “Thanks for all your help, Beau.”
“Think nothing of it,” I said. Obviously he didn’t. On my way up to Harborview, I tried to shift gears from one case to another. The same intensive-care nurse stopped me. “He can’t talk to you,” she snapped. “He’s dying.”
“Look,” I said wearily. “Can he communicate at all?” “He can nod and shake his head.
That’s it.”
“Even that may tell me something. Someone else died last night, a woman. She never made it as far as the hospital. Without his help, the toll could go higher.”
She relented a little. I could see it in the set of her mouth. “Please,” I wheedled, taking advantage of her hesitation. She glared at me, then marched briskly down the hall, her rubbersoled shoes squeaking on the highly polished tile floor. I stood there waiting, uncertain if she was throwing me out or taking it under advisement.
She came back a few minutes later carrying a sterilized uniform, booties, and a face mask. Wordlessly, she helped me don compulsory ICU costume.
“You can see him for five minutes. No more.”
One look convinced me that Teresa Smith was a hell of a lot better off for dying on the spot. What little was visible of the man’s puffy face was fused in a featureless mass of flesh that bore little resemblance to a human being. Tubes went in and out his arms and throat. His breathing was labored. “He’s awake,” the nurse said, although I don’t know how she knew that. “We call him Mr. Smith.”
I stood by the bed, astonished by my revulsion. I’m a homicide cop. I’m supposed to be used to the worst life can dish out. Five minutes left no time for niceties.
He was dying. I think he knew it. “I’m a cop, Mr. Smith. A detective. They’ll only let me talk for five minutes. Somebody else got burned last night, up on First Avenue. We think it’s the same guy who burned you. Can you help us?”
There was no response. I couldn’t tell if he heard me. “Did you see anyone?”
He nodded, so slightly, that I wasn’t sure he had moved. “Someone you knew?”
This time there was no mistaking it. The mass of flesh moved slightly from side to side. The answer was no.
“One person?”
A minute nod. We were playing handball Twenty Questions. Every question had to count.
There wouldn’t be any second chances, not with this Mr. Smith. “Male?” Another nod.
He groaned with the effort. “Young?”
He nodded again, barely, but his breathing changed. The nurse took me by the arm.
“Enough,” she said firmly. “He’s fallen asleep. You’ve worn him out.”
She led me outside the intensive care unit, where I shed the sterile clothes. “Thank you,” I said. She bustled away without acknowledgment. She was a tough old bat, but nobody with the least tendency to a soft heart could work there.
Back in the ofce I had a despondent Peters on my hands. “They convicted her,” he said. “Not Murder One, but a minimum of twenty years for killing that worthless bastard.
What the hell ever happened to justice?” “Sometimes there’s no such thing,” I told him. “So get to work. ” We did. We spent the afternoon with Manny and Al. The information that it was somebody young, probably a kid, constituted the first tiny break in the case. One kid, one young punk, who liked to bum people up. Who was he? Where was he from? Was he black, white, Asian?