Second Watch

by JA Jance

  “That link was only in somebody’s vivid imagination,” I said. “There wasn’t any physical evidence with Ted Bundy’s name on it connecting the two. No DNA. Nothing.”

  “Nor to anyone else, either,” Ron agreed. “But there was plenty of circumstantial evidence. Once Bundy was arrested, at least two eyewitnesses came forward placing him with Monica on the night she was murdered.”

  “If he did it, let me prove it,” I said.

  “He’s dead.”

  “So is she.”

  “What’s the point, then?” Ron asked. “What are you hoping to accomplish?”

  “I’m hoping to keep a promise I made to Monica’s mother—that I’d find the guy who was responsible.”

  “Dead or alive.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “All right, then,” Ron said. “Here’s the deal. I’ll give you my full cooperation on this with one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That it’s a joint investigation. It’s got to be Special Homicide and Seattle PD, working together. Everyone knows we’re friends. If I give you and Special Homicide carte blanche to rummage through one of our homicide investigations, especially one like the Bundy case, I’ll be putting my own head on the chopping block.”

  “So what are you suggesting?” I asked.

  “I’ll be assigning Delilah Ainsworth of the Cold Case squad to work with you on this.”

  I remembered Delilah Ainsworth from when she showed up in Patrol as a fresh-faced and very good-looking recruit right out of the academy. Being a cop named Delilah is bad enough, but the way the woman filled out her Seattle PD uniform back then was downright biblical—as in Samson and Delilah. At the time, she had seemed far too young to be a cop, and it was impossible for me to imagine that now she was old enough to be a seasoned detective. On the surface the situation with her was a lot like Jared Peters being too young for Cub Scouts. With one big difference—Mel would not be pleased.

  “You know better than most how I feel about working with partners,” I said, in hopes of changing his mind. “Besides,” I added, “Delilah must already have one, and so do I.”

  “Her partner just took off for six months of maternity leave, and yours happens to be up in Bellingham at the moment, putting out fires,” Ron observed. “I’m talking about literal fires, by the way.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “In case you haven’t tuned in to the news this afternoon, Bellingham has had a rash of arson-related fires today, with notes left at the scenes claiming that they were protesting police brutality.”

  The fires had evidently happened after Mel’s appearance on the noon news, which I had not yet gone back to finish watching. And this new development explained why Mel hadn’t gotten around to texting me back.

  “So what’s it going to be?” Ron pressed. “Work the case with Detective Ainsworth or not work it at all?”

  The idea of a homicide detective taking off for maternity leave was a bit mind-bending. In addition, I suspected Mel wouldn’t be happy about my working with anyone who wasn’t her. My wife isn’t the least bit insecure. Still, I doubt there are many wives who would be thrilled to have their spouses working as partners with someone as—let’s just say—well-endowed as Delilah Ainsworth. But I also understood that it was Ron’s way or the highway. I could work the case on his terms, with his blessing and with Delilah’s help, or I wouldn’t work it at all.

  “Done,” I said.

  “All right,” he said, brightening. “I’ll have Delilah get in touch. As long as you’re laid up here, you won’t be able to do much in the way of legwork, and once you get out, you won’t be cleared for driving, either. But there is one other condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “No publicity. The press isn’t what it used to be, but if they somehow get wind that we’re looking into one of the cases that was originally attributed to Ted Bundy, all hell will break loose.”

  “No problemo,” I said. “I don’t like the press any better than you do.”

  “Yes,” Ron Peters agreed, “I already knew that, but right this minute I have a lot more to lose than you do. I actually need this job, because I still have a kid to put through college.”

  With that, Ron Peters started to turn his chair and head for the door. “Hey,” I called after him. “I have one more thing to say, too. Thanks for that reference for Scott. I’m sure it helped get him in the door.”

  “Getting in the door is one thing,” Ron observed. “After that, it will be up to him.”

  Ron left. Dinner came. I was just settling in to some surprisingly good mac and cheese when my phone rang. It was Mel.

  “I only have a couple of minutes,” she said, sounding harried and rushed. “You won’t believe the kind of day I’ve had. I thought I’d be able to get away and come home tonight, so I could see you, but it’s not going to happen.”

  “My day’s been pretty unbelievable, too, but you go first,” I told her. “You tell me about your day, and I’ll tell you about mine.”

  It was not a fair trade. By the time I got around to my part of the conversation, my latest dose of pain medication was starting to kick in, and I ended up telling Mel a lot more than I had originally intended.

  “Wait a minute,” Mel said. “You’re telling me that you’ve gotten Ross Connors to open up a forty-year-old homicide case because you had a dream about the victim? Is that what you’re saying, that you dreamed this whole thing up?”

  As I said, I’ve never been a capable liar to begin with, and the drugs made me that much worse.

  “Pretty much,” I admitted, “although I didn’t exactly mention the dream part. I told him it was about my first homicide case—my first unsolved homicide case—and that I needed to close it.”

  “And Ron Peters is going along with this—assigning this Ainsworth woman to work with you on it?” Mel gave an exasperated sigh. “There’s a reason it’s called ‘sick leave,’ ” she said. “And this is definitely sick. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Better yet, I’ll try to see you tomorrow. I need to come home to get a change of clothes. Maybe I can knock some sense into your head while I’m there. If not your head, then I’ll take a crack at Ross Connors’s head.”

  She hung up then. Clearly she was upset with me, but that was all right. I hadn’t been entirely straight with Ross Connors or Ron Peters, but I wasn’t married to either one of them. I was married to Mel, and that made all the difference.

  That night, for the first time since I’d come into the hospital, I slept like a baby, and with no oddball dreams, either. I seem to remember that they woke me up for vitals periodically, but I went straight back to sleep.

  Having a clear conscience is a wonderful thing.

  CHAPTER 11

  Detective Delilah Ainsworth was waiting in my room the next day when I came back from my morning round of PT. She looked utterly spectacular in a fire-engine-red pantsuit with a top underneath that showed more than a hint of cleavage. The hair that I remembered as pretty much blond was now a soft shade of brunette with a tasteful frost job.

  She watched in silence as the attendant helped me into bed and relieved me of the walker. Then she stood up on a pair of amazingly high heels—the kind that usually turn up only on TV shows—and tottered over to the bed, a move that put me at eye level with some pretty spectacular scenery. Naturally, she caught me enjoying the view.

  “I’ll make you a deal,” she said. “You don’t look at my boobs, I don’t look at your knees.”

  It was the kind of no-BS introduction that Mel would have loved. That was my first hint that if and when my new partner and Mel ever met, they would get along like gangbusters.

  “Fair enough,” I replied.

  “And since neither one of us appears to be built for foot chases and/or physical combat, if we’re going to be working together, we’d better count on brains rather than brawn,” she added, pulling an iPad out of a large purse with what looked like multicolored Mick
ey Mouse ears all over it. “Now what’s this about?”

  I admit it. I was impressed. The women I’ve known who have risen through the ranks to become detectives have all been capable, competent, and tough. But to be a homicide cop named Delilah isn’t an easy call. And to tackle the job while wearing a bright red pantsuit and scarlet nail polish and carrying an immense, brightly colored purse that screams “Disneyland” all over it? That takes balls! Have I mentioned that Mel also happens to adore brightly colored, humongous, and wonderfully expensive purses?

  “How much do you know?” I asked.

  “Not much at all,” Delilah replied. “When I showed up at work this morning, my captain told me to get my ass up here to meet some guy who works Special Homicide for the attorney general’s office. It turns out that would be you, although no one actually got around to explaining how or why I’m supposed to be working with someone who’s currently flat on his back in a hospital bed.”

  “Did your captain tell you what case we’d be working?”

  “No.”

  “Did he tell you that Assistant Chief Peters and I used to be partners a long time ago?”

  “No, he didn’t mention that, either, but I suppose that gives you a little pull inside the department.”

  “A little,” I agreed. “How about the name Ted Bundy? Does that ring a bell?”

  “Ted Bundy’s name rings everybody’s bell,” she replied.

  “Monica Wellington was murdered in April of 1973. She was from Leavenworth, first kid in her family to go to a four-year college. The autopsy revealed that she was pregnant at the time she was strangled to death, but no boyfriend ever came forward.”

  “So you’re saying the father of the baby could be the doer?” Delilah asked.

  I nodded.

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing. It was the first homicide case I ever worked, and it was never solved, at least not to my satisfaction,” I told her. “My first partner and I worked it off and on for the better part of two years. When Ted Bundy was arrested in Utah in 1975, he was linked to the Wellington case by two eyewitnesses who claimed to have seen the two of them together at a movie theater in Seattle the Friday evening Monica was murdered. The problem was, we never found any additional corroborating evidence, and there was never any solid physical evidence—the kind that would stand up in court—that linked Bundy to the Wellington homicide. Even so, eventually the case was deemed closed by the powers that be. Game over.”

  “Until now,” Delilah said.

  I nodded.

  “So what’s the point of reopening a case that has been closed since I was in kindergarten?” Delilah asked. “If we’re going to be working this case, I need to know why.”

  The first rule for getting out of holes is to stop digging. The first rule for being partners is to tell the truth. This clearly ambitious young woman deserved the truth, at least up to a point, and if she chucked it back in my face, so be it.

  “Because the victim told me so,” I said. “In a dream. She told me it wasn’t solved.”

  Delilah blinked. “When?” she asked. “While you’ve been here and under the influence of powerful narcotics?”

  She had hit that nail on the head. “Yes,” I admitted. “I was under the influence of drugs when she told me that. Still, that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”

  “So are you prone to seeing visions and having hallucinations?” she asked. “I mean, do they happen often?” I caught a tiny hint of sarcasm in her voice.

  “No,” I declared hotly. “I’m not claiming premonitions, either. This is pure gut instinct—cop gut instinct. Both my memory and my conscience took a direct hit.”

  I knew that if our situations were reversed, I’d be every bit as skeptical as she was. For obvious reasons, I made no mention of the Lennie D. situation. I told myself it was because that wasn’t remotely a police matter. Monica Wellington’s murder was. And just in case I haven’t mentioned it before now, I may not be an excellent liar, but I’m great when it comes to the fine art of creative rationalization.

  “So when you had this little chat with our long-dead victim, why didn’t you come right out and ask her?” Delilah said. “I mean, if she’d gone ahead and told you who did it, wouldn’t that save everybody a whole lot of time and trouble?”

  Delilah’s jab was deftly delivered—a polite way of making fun of me and letting me know that she thought I was pretty much full of it.

  “At the time, Monica was too busy taking me to task for not keeping a promise to her mother.”

  “What promise?” Delilah wanted to know.

  “To find her daughter’s killer,” I replied. “The problem is, that’s a promise I made at Monica’s funeral.”

  “Which was after the victim was already dead.”

  “Correct.”

  “So how did Monica even know about it?”

  I shrugged. “You tell me.”

  “But she didn’t say specifically that Ted Bundy did it.”

  “No,” I agreed, “and she didn’t say he didn’t do it, either.”

  “In other words, it could go either way?”

  I nodded.

  “Do this for me,” Delilah said. “If this Monica vision happens to show up again, why don’t you ask her? If anybody ever finds out why we reopened this case, we’re both going to look really stupid.”

  I knew I was being razzed, so I was careful not to bite.

  “Stupid or not, I’d like to be able to tell her mother for sure what happened to her daughter,” I answered after a pause. “Either Ted Bundy did it or he didn’t. And regardless of what brought the situation to mind, I feel honor bound to pursue it.”

  That must have been the right answer. We sat there in silence again for the better part of a minute. Finally Detective Ainsworth nodded. Picking up her iPad, she used her index finger to move the slide on the screen that turned it on.

  “I guess that means we’d better get started,” she said. “Tell me what you know.”

  The easiest way to do that, of course, was to simply copy the list I had made on my iPad and send it to hers. We then spent the next hour going over the people on the list, discussing where they might be found these days and what, if anything, they might have to offer this reopened investigation. When we finished, Delilah gave me a searching look.

  “Is there any remaining physical evidence?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I believe there used to be. Whether it still exists is another question.”

  “Times have changed since then,” Delilah remarked. “Evidence that couldn’t yield DNA results back then might be able to now. What about her clothing?”

  “As far as I know, it was never found.”

  “What about Ted Bundy’s other victims?” she asked. “Were any of them found in similar circumstances?”

  “As in a barrel?”

  Delilah nodded.

  “No, as far as I know, that would’ve been a one-off. I’m not aware of similar cases.”

  “Did you check other jurisdictions?”

  “We did,” I said, “but back then those kinds of checks were a lot more difficult. You couldn’t just click a mouse to look for other cases the way we can now.”

  Delilah nodded. “That’s where I’ll start,” she said. “I’ll look for similar victimology.”

  With that she stood up and slipped her iPad into her purse. “After that, I’ll review the murder book along with whatever physical evidence is still extant. If there’s something that might yield current DNA results, I’ll see what I can do about getting it tested. I’ll also try to get a line on everyone on this list. I’ll locate them, but I won’t interview them. We should probably do that together. How much longer do you expect to be here?”

  In the preceding days my surgeon had stuck his head in the room periodically, but his visits had mostly been done in passing. When it came to real information, the nurses were the most reliable sources.

  “They tell me
I’m in here for another couple of days. When you do two knees at once, you qualify for extra rehab.”

  “Great,” Delilah observed drily. “I’ll try to remember when it’s my turn to get in line for new knees. What about driving?” she asked. “How soon will you be able to do that?”

  “Not for several weeks, most likely.”

  Delilah nodded. “All right, then,” she said. “Once you’re out, I’ll be driving and you’ll be riding. In the meantime, I’ll go to work and I’ll try to keep you posted on my progress.”

  She left then. I had turned down my morning pain pill. Now I was sorry. I rectified that error when they brought me lunch so I could be ready for whatever torture the PT ladies dished out that afternoon. After that I napped for a little while. I like to think it was because I had finally done enough on my part to get the Monica Wellington ball rolling that no dark ghosts from my past made unwelcome appearances that afternoon. There were dreams all right, but the one that stayed with me was of a long-ago Easter egg hunt on the shores of Lake Tapps when Kelly and Scott were little. The kids were cute. The eggs were brightly colored. And it wasn’t raining. That’s what made it a dream. It’s always raining for Easter egg hunts in the spring.

  Later in the afternoon I did another session of PT and an additional session of OT, but by then I was really starting to get bored. I made up for lost time and used my iPad to do all the crossword puzzles I had missed that week. Then I ate dinner while watching the local evening news. One of the stories I saw there threw me into a tailspin. It’s the kind of story that’s been repeated countless times on TV stations all over the country in the last few years. A soldier from Fort Lewis, a twenty-two-year-old private, had been killed by an IED in Afghanistan. Forty years later in another war in another time zone, another kid wasn’t coming home from the battlefield the same way Lennie D. hadn’t come home.