by JA Jance
“But I’m married,” I objected.
Pickles laughed ruefully. “So were some of the guys I just told you about,” he said. “Once one of these babes sets her cap for you, you won’t know what hit you.”
So although I didn’t mind going to the Dragon’s Head, I never became a regular like some of the other guys did. The Doghouse was a lot more my speed.
In the alley behind the restaurant, the most recent yellow grease barrel sat, awaiting pickup. It was on a loading dock that made for ease of handling, coming and going. It would have taken only a matter of a few seconds to tip it over and load it into a truck parked next to the wooden platform. Pickles and I canvassed that dark alley day and night, talking to the homeless people who frequented that space, trying to find anyone who might have seen the barrel in question disappear from its appointed spot on the weekend of Monica Wellington’s murder. To no avail. If there was a witness, we never found him.
That summer was the beginning of Ted Bundy’s long reign of terror in the Pacific Northwest. Over a period of months, a whole bevy of young women, coeds mostly, disappeared and died, with their bodies found later, dumped in out-of-the-way places. From a physical point of view, if you had placed Monica Wellington’s photo in among a montage of Ted Bundy’s other victims, she would have fit right in. She was young and good-looking. She wore her blond hair long and straight and parted in the middle.
Bundy’s killing spree lasted for months. Even after he was jailed, however, he continued to play cat-and-mouse games with investigators. He confessed to some of his murders but not to others, and he led officers to believe that he was responsible for deaths to which he was never officially linked.
Seattle PD and other law enforcement agencies in Washington spent inordinate amounts of money tracking Ted Bundy. Eventually the brass upstairs called a halt. One afternoon shortly after he was arrested in Utah and started singing like a bird, our Homicide unit was assembled for a special briefing with Assistant Chief of Police Kenneth Adcock.
Chief Adcock was a smooth operator, the exact opposite of Pickles, and I’d heard there had been bad blood between them somewhere back in the old days when they were both working Patrol. Now, with Adcock’s meteoric rise through the ranks, those days were far in the past for both of them.
Adcock stood at a podium with a sheaf of typed notes in hand, recounting the names of the victims for whom Bundy had accepted full responsibility. Then he read off five additional names, one of which was Monica Wellington’s. Pickles and I had been working the case off and on the whole time. In fact, we were the ones who had found the witness who claimed to have seen Monica and Ted Bundy together at a movie in the U. District on the night she disappeared, but without some kind of reliable physical evidence, we couldn’t make a positive connection.
“These cases are not officially closed,” Adcock announced. “There’s sufficient circumstantial evidence to lead us to conclude that Theodore Bundy was involved, even though he has not yet confessed to any of these other crimes. For those of you who have been actively working these cases, we thank you for your effort, but for now we’re done.”
Pickles raised his hand. “In other words, you’re saying these cases aren’t officially closed, but they could just as well be.”
Adcock smiled. “That’s right,” he said. “As in the past, you’ll continue to work these cases until something else comes up. I’m expecting that over time, less and less effort will be expended on these particular cases.”
“And what are we supposed to say to the families of these victims?” Pickles asked.
“Glad you asked that, Detective Gurkey,” Assistant Chief Adcock said, although from the look on his face, anyone within spitting distance of the man could clearly see that wasn’t true. “Tell them that we’re continuing with the investigations whenever and wherever we have the time, means, and personnel to do so.”
Minutes later, as we filed out of the meeting room, I heard Pickles muttering under his breath.
“Damned slimeball!” he exclaimed, slamming into his chair and propelling it into the battered metal desk that passed for furniture in our cubicle. Assistant Chief Adcock was held in low esteem by many of the rank and file, but I was a little surprised by Pickles’s outspoken reaction.
“But he said—” I began.
“I heard what Kenneth Adcock said,” Pickles replied. “But I’ve been around this joint long enough to understand what he means. He’s planning on making sure we’re busy with new cases every minute of every day. He’ll see to it. The other cases will simply succumb to the slow death of neglect. He can say they’re open cases until hell freezes over, but if no one is investigating them, they’re not open.”
I have to give it to Pickles. His prediction proved to be absolutely on the money. When the next new homicide case came up, it was ours. And whenever we thought we might have a moment when we could get back to the Monica Wellington case, something else would come up. Pretty soon her case was so far back on the back burner that no one even remembered it. Until that morning in the hospital with my passive exercise pump going a mile a minute and with the anti-blood-clot mattress whispering away.
Nurse Keith came in. “Up and at ’em, sunshine,” he said. “Ready for some breakfast? How’d you sleep?”
“All right,” I said aloud, swallowing the rest of the sentence.
That’s the part that went like this: “for someone with a guilty conscience.”
The sun was just breaking over the building next door. I could hear the clattering of trays as the breakfast lady came down the hallway. My eyelids were gummy with sleep and there was a sour taste in my mouth. It could have come from the meds I’d taken, but I suspect it had something to do with the bile of that broken promise, the one I’d made to Hannah Wellington.
CHAPTER 9
When Mel tried to call me that morning, I was busy with the physical therapy girls (“tyrants” would be a better word), who assured me that phone calls could wait, PT couldn’t. When it was PT or OT time, my phone was locked in the cabinet along with my iPad.
Since I was a candidate for both, I had already learned that there’s a fine line between physical therapy and occupational therapy. From what I could tell, PT seemed primarily focused on increasing the range of motion in both of my new knees. Progress was measured before and after every round in the hospital’s minigym, and every millimeter of improvement was noted on my chart. Occupational therapists were aimed more toward improving my post-op living skills—getting up and down stairs, in and out of pretend cars, and in and out of ordinary beds, which, it turns out, are usually much lower—and much softer—than the ones in the hospital.
Back in my room after the latest round, I had retrieved my phone and was sending Mel a text message, apologizing for missing her call, when Ross Connors appeared in my doorway. Ross always looks like he’s on his way to a campaign fund-raiser. In this case, that wasn’t far from wrong, since he had stopped by on his way to give a noontime speech to some service group or another—Rotarians, maybe?—who were meeting at the WAC, the Washington Athletic Club, in downtown Seattle.
“Did you see Mel on the news?” he asked.
“Which channel?”
“All of them,” he said. “The local news has been all over the mess up in Bellingham, and the media is spinning the police-brutality angle. You know how it goes. If it bleeds, it leads.”
When I reached for my iPad, Ross gave me a somewhat skeptical and disapproving sniff. The attorney general’s idea of electronic communications doesn’t extend much beyond using a television remote. He’s a guy who runs a whole department of state government without making use of a personal computer, to say nothing of an iPad. I used the hospital’s Wi-Fi system to bring up a local television news site. As soon as Mel’s face appeared on the screen, I showed the video to Ross Connors. As a card-carrying Luddite, he was nothing short of amazed.
In the meantime, I was watching my lovely wife, looking a lot more tired tha
n usual, as she faced down a mob of microphone-packing reporters backed up by cameramen wielding video equipment.
“As you all know, the deceased, Mr. Reginald Abernathy, was arrested and booked into the Whatcom County Jail on charges of disturbing the peace and resisting arrest. He was released on his own recognizance on Friday afternoon. At the time, he exhibited no apparent ill effects as a result of the Tasering incident that preceded his arrest. After he failed to respond to voice and text messages on Monday, friends went to his residence early Tuesday morning, where he was found to be nonresponsive. We are still awaiting the results from his autopsy.”
“The officers clearly used excessive force,” one of the reporters commented. “Why haven’t they been placed on administrative leave?”
“The decision about placing them on leave is one that belongs to the Bellingham Police Department,” Mel replied. “As I said at the beginning of this interview, I’m with the state attorney general’s Special Homicide Investigation Team, which has been called in to assist in the investigation. So far we’ve found no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the officers.”
“So you’re saying Mr. Abernathy’s death was a homicide?”
“I’m saying our department has been asked to assist Bellingham PD in conducting an outside investigation of what happened. That means we are asking questions and looking for answers. That doesn’t mean we came here with a set of preconceived notions. Once we have reached some conclusions, we will advise Bellingham PD of our findings. At that point, they will decide what action, if any, should be taken with regard to the officers involved.”
“Do you think their attack on Mr. Abernathy was racially motivated?”
I noticed the tiny twitch in the corner of Mel’s mouth before she answered. It’s a signal I’ve seen before, and it often comes just before she lets someone have it with both verbal barrels. When I see that twitch I know enough to duck and run for cover. In this instance she stayed resolutely on message.
“I’m not at all sure that what happened between the two officers and the deceased could be characterized as an attack, and I’ve seen nothing to indicate that this is a racial matter.”
The reporter, however, merely doubled down. “But Mr. Abernathy is black.”
“He was also recorded destroying property and attacking police officers,” Mel replied. “That’s criminal behavior regardless of the color of his skin or theirs.”
“Look at the way she handles those reporters,” Ross observed. “She could be a politician, you know. Has she ever thought of running for office?”
“Mel?” I said. “Are you kidding? She wouldn’t get to first base. She has no interest in telling people what they want to hear, and she’d rather kick ass than kiss it.”
Like the reporter, Ross doubled down. “I still think she’d be a real asset in the state legislature.”
Knowing I could go back and view the video later, I switched off the iPad, cutting Mel off in midanswer. “How’s this thing in Bellingham going to turn out?”
“I’m like everyone else in the law enforcement community,” Ross said. “I’m hoping like hell the tox screen shows an overdose. Otherwise those cops are probably toast, and what started out as a small problem in Bellingham will turn into a big one for all of us, with the anti-Taser folks claiming that they’re as much deadly force as hollow-point bullets.”
Mel will be right there in the middle of it, and I won’t, I thought grudgingly.
There’s no rule that says I can’t be a sore loser. Before the surgery, my knees had gone a long way toward making me feel irrelevant. Now, stuck in a hospital bed, I felt even more so. And Ross Connors’s well-intentioned effort of dropping by to cheer me up seemed to be having exactly the opposite effect. But as long as he was there and feeling magnanimous, I decided to pop the question that two nights of drug-induced blasts from the past had engendered.
“I was wondering if you could do me a favor,” I said.
“What?” Ross asked. “That’s what I’m here for. Whatever you need, you’ve got it.”
“I’d like you to reopen a homicide case.”
Ross was the chief law enforcement officer in the state of Washington. Regardless of jurisdiction, if he said a case was reopened, it was.
“Really,” he said with a frown. “Which one?”
“A girl named Monica Wellington,” I said.
Ross shook his head. “Never heard of her.”
Cops and reporters refer to “cold cases.” For the family, a case never goes cold. It’s a piece of continuing hurt that may no longer be white hot, but that doesn’t mean it goes away, either.
“Monica was a University of Washington coed who died in April of 1973. I was part of the team that worked that case, back when I first got promoted to Homicide.”
“And it never got solved?”
I shook my head. “It got closed but not solved. Unofficially that case was lumped in with all of Ted Bundy’s cases once he was taken down.”
“What you’re saying is that the homicide wasn’t solved to your satisfaction,” Connors said. “What about Seattle PD’s Cold Case squad? They’ve been doing good work the last couple of years.”
“I’d be willing to bet no one’s taken a look at the Wellington case.”
“Why?” Ross asked. “Because it might still step on someone’s toes, even though it’s close to forty years old? That’s sort of a stretch, don’t you think?”
“Maybe,” I agreed.
“If I were to reopen it, theoretically, I mean,” Connors said, “I suppose you’re thinking I should assign you to the investigation?”
“I’m familiar with the case,” I said. “I knew the people involved. I’m also the guy who made a promise to the victim’s mother that we’d get the guy—that he wouldn’t get away with it. If it turns out Ted Bundy wasn’t responsible, whoever did it has gotten away with it.”
“Why the sudden interest?” Ross asked. “What makes you think Ted Bundy didn’t do it, and why now?”
I couldn’t very well tell him the truth—that the victim herself had dropped by to give me a push in that direction. That seemed like a surefire way to go from being on temporary medical leave to being out the door permanently.
I shrugged. “I guess it’s because Monica’s killer is the one that got away. Every Homicide cop has one of those. This one is mine.”
Ross appeared to accept that statement at face value, but he still wasn’t happy. “If it looks like my agency and you in particular are looking into cases that were handled by your old outfit, couldn’t that cause some hard feelings?” Connors objected. “For instance, bringing up one of those long-shelved cases might be seen as venturing into Internal Affairs territory. You know how popular those guys are.”
“I’ve never been one to worry about popularity,” I replied. “Besides, I’ve been away from Seattle PD for a long time. The only guy I know who still works there is Assistant Chief Ron Peters, and I can’t see how any of this would blow back on him. Monica Wellington’s murder happened almost a decade before Ron set foot in the department.”
Ross Connors seemed to consider my proposition. “All right, then,” he said, heaving himself out of the chair. “Consider it done. I suppose handing a guy like you a case to work on is better than bringing you flowers.”
“Infinitely,” I agreed.
“And, I suppose, even though you’re officially on sick leave, that wouldn’t keep you from working on this.”
“Have iPad, will travel,” I said.
“But speaking of blowback,” Ross added, “I don’t want any grief from Mel about this.”
That made two of us, but I didn’t care to put that concern into words.
“Don’t worry.” I grinned. “At this point, anything that keeps me occupied and out of her hair will be a welcome diversion.”
Ross Connors exited the room, leaving me feeling more alert and energized than I had been in weeks. There’s nothing like a case to get an old H
omicide dog’s juices flowing again. I finished my text to Mel, telling her she looked great on TV (a small white lie), then I switched on my iPad and started making a list of the people I’d need to see:
Hannah Wellington, the victim’s mother. Since there was no further mention of her after the one in her husband’s obituary, I had to assume that Monica’s mother was still among the living and, unless I was sadly mistaken, probably still residing in Leavenworth.
Larry Powell, the lead detective in the case. Larry had left Seattle PD prior to the time I did, resigning to look after his wife, who had been diagnosed with ALS. In fact, it was Powell’s successor, a guy I couldn’t stand, Phil Kramer, who had been the catalyst for my leaving the department as well. I seemed to remember that Larry’s wife had died, that he had eventually remarried and was now living somewhere in Arizona.
Watty Watkins. He had left Seattle PD, too, some time after I did. I had no idea where he was living now.
Doc Baker, the guy who did the autopsy, had long since retired. For all I knew he had croaked out, just as Pickles Gurkey had.
Gail Buchanan, the victim’s roommate. In the intervening years, she had probably married, maybe even more than once. Tracking her down wouldn’t be easy, but it could be done.
Donnie and Frankie Dodd, the kids who had found Monica’s body. Whatever had become of those two? I had always wondered if they had known more than they let on. Watty had put interviewing them off-limits, but this many years later, maybe that didn’t matter anymore. What if one or the other of them had something he wanted to get off his chest?
Rory MacPherson. Yes, good old Mac, my partner in Patrol from way back then. We had been the first cops on the scene of Monica’s homicide, and we had gotten along all right when we worked together, but once the partnership was over, it was like an acrimonious divorce. We went our separate ways, and there had been enough people in Seattle PD that we stayed separate.