Second Watch

by JA Jance

  “By which you mean to say that you’d like to leave today?”

  I nodded. I didn’t want to seem too eager, but I also wanted to be in Sammamish at city hall in time for that 11:00 A.M. press conference. Yes, the local newspeople would be covering it, but that wasn’t to say that they’d be covering all of it, and I didn’t want to miss anything important.

  “All right,” Dr. Auld said agreeably. “I’ll send someone in to help you get dressed. By the time your ride gets here, I should have the paperwork out of the way.”

  I called Marge Herndon the moment he was out of the room. “Okay,” I said. “Come get me.”

  I would find out in the course of the next several days that Marge Herndon had any number of failings, as Bob had so drolly warned me, but being late wasn’t one of them. She arrived in my room with a wheelchair in hand before I’d managed to get my clothes out of the locker, to say nothing of on my body.

  Marge was a stocky woman with a wide, square face topped by a mop of curly white hair. She looked more like an NFL tackle than she did a member of the caring professions. When I started trying to get dressed, she immediately took over.

  “Let me help you with that,” she told me brusquely. “Isn’t that why you hired me? Besides, it’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”

  In no time at all, she had armed herself with the proper release paperwork along with my take-home prescriptions, and we headed out. She wheeled me out the front door with a practiced hand and stopped me next to a waiting Accord, which she had left under the watchful eye of a parking valet.

  “I told you I’d be back in ten,” she told him. He nodded and gave me a halfhearted shake of his head. I got the message. He was glad I was the one getting in the car with the woman instead of him.

  She helped me into the passenger seat and then buckled me in as though I were a toddler incapable of performing such complicated procedures on my own. The wheelchair evidently belonged to her. She stowed that along with my loaner walker in the back, then climbed in behind the wheel.

  “Belltown Terrace?” she said.

  I had my iPad out. Google said that it would take us twenty-eight minutes to get from the hospital to city hall in Sammamish, longer with traffic.

  “No,” I said. “Do you know how to get from here to I-90?”

  It wasn’t the answer she expected. “I-90?” she asked. “Isn’t that the wrong direction?”

  “It’s the right direction for where I want to go this morning, and we’ve only got about half an hour to get there.”

  “Look,” she said. “You just got out of the hospital. I’m supposed to be taking care of you.”

  “I hired you to take care of me and to drive me. Now, either go where I’m telling you, or let me out and I’ll call a cab. It’s up to you. Do you want that five hundred bucks or not?”

  She gave me a scathing look and then roared out of the driveway, peeling rubber and leaving the parking valet watching us go and still shaking his head. Marge didn’t so much drive her Honda as aim it. She wove through spaces where I was afraid we were going to shred mirrors off the vehicles next to us, but she got us back down the hill and southbound on I-5 with breathtaking speed. I think she was hoping I’d object, but I had spent years with Mel Soames behind the wheel, and between Mel and Marge, there was no contest.

  “Where are we going?” she asked as we headed east on I-90.

  “The City of Sammamish,” I told her. “City hall. There’s a news conference starting in half an hour. You get a hundred-dollar bonus if I’m there before it starts. Do you know how to get there?”

  “No idea,” she said, “but I’m guessing that gadget in your hand has a map on it.” She nodded in the direction of my iPad. “I’m also guessing you’ll give me directions as we go.”

  You’ve heard that old adage about how money talks? In this case, the offer of a hundred-dollar bonus worked like a charm. Other than calling out directions, we didn’t exchange another word. When we arrived at the city government complex in Sammamish, the parking lot around the police department was full of media vans and official-looking vehicles. Marge picked out a woman leaving the library a few buildings away and followed her to her car. Then she waited in the parking aisle until the woman had stowed her bag of books and pulled out of the spot.

  “Isn’t it a long way from here to city hall?” I asked. I had seen the sign on the way past.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “It won’t be any skin off your nose. You’ll be the one in the chair; I’ll be the one doing the pushing.”

  Yes, ma’am.

  Thanks to all the OT practice at the hospital, we managed the maneuver of getting me out of her car with little difficulty. Once Marge had me in the chair, we set off for city hall with her handling the wheelchair in the same way she did her car—aiming rather than driving. She dove through spaces between people that were far too small, fully expecting them to get out of her way, which they did. Fortunately for all concerned, the people standing in her path looked up, caught the deadeye expression on Marge’s face, and leaped to safety.

  “Looks like there’s a big crowd over there by the doors,” she said, observing the mob scene from a distance. “What makes you think they’ll let us in?”

  My ticket to ride was there in my hip pocket along with my wallet—my Special Homicide Investigation Team badge and ID. Considering the cross-jurisdictional nature of the case, there was a good chance that someone else from S.H.I.T. Squad B might be in attendance. There was also an equally good chance that they wouldn’t be looking for me to be there at all, to say nothing of my showing up in a wheelchair.

  The room was essentially an auditorium, and it was standing room only. The stage consisted of a set of five desks that, under normal circumstances, would have been occupied by the mayor and members of the city council. These were not normal circumstances. A lectern spiked with a collection of microphones stood in the middle of the stage, but it was still empty. Marge had kept her part of the bargain, and we had arrived before the press conference started.

  “Okay,” I said. “I owe you that bonus.”

  Marge sniffed her approval. Then, instead of shoving me off to one side or the other at the back of the room, she made a beeline for the stage and parked me in the aisle next to the front row of seats. I wasn’t thrilled about being in the front row, but there were enough people with cameras hanging around and enough associated camera lighting that my relatively unauthorized presence wasn’t as obvious as it might have been otherwise.

  Once I was settled, Marge then proceeded to bully the person occupying the next seat over into going somewhere else. Bob was right. Where Marge was concerned, the word “bossy” didn’t quite cover it.

  One at a time, grim-faced people filed onto the stage and took seats at the desks. Most of them were law enforcement types, in uniform and out, many of whom I knew on a first-name basis. A total stranger, a white-haired guy wearing a custom-tailored suit, assumed his post at the lectern. He turned out to be the mayor.

  “This is a very sad day for our community,” he announced solemnly. “Not only do we have our first-ever homicide inside the city limits, we have a related suicide as well. Considering the seriousness of the situation and because at least one officer from another jurisdiction is involved, Randy Olmstead, our chief of police, made the decision to ask the King County Sheriff’s Department for help in investigating this case. It will be conducted as a joint investigation, but King County will be taking the lead. As a result, the first person we’ll be hearing from today is Captain Todd Thornton, the public information officer for the King County Sheriff’s Department.”

  Todd was someone I had interacted with occasionally through the years, and he was a consummate pro. His job was to give the initial picture as well as an overall view of what had happened and was happening now. He would tell the assembled reporters who was dead and how they died. I suspected that enough time had elapsed between the incident and now to allow for next of kin not
ifications. That meant Todd would also be able to release the names of the victims and offer reassurances to the public about the unlikelihood of additional suspects still being at large.

  Todd assumed his position at the bank of microphones and began his standard briefing.

  “At approximately ten forty-seven P.M. last night, a shooting occurred in the twenty-six thousand block of Northeast Forty-fifth Street here in Sammamish. The disturbance was reported at the time, but was assumed to be either a backfire or unauthorized use of fireworks. The shooting wasn’t confirmed until several hours later when officers went to do a welfare check at that address. Inside the home, officers found one victim, a female, dead from an apparent gunshot wound. A second individual was later located inside a closed garage where a vehicle had been left running. The second victim, a male, was thought to be suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning. He was treated at the scene but was declared dead on arrival at a local hospital. The victims have been identified as Detective Delilah Ainsworth, a homicide detective with Seattle PD, and Rory MacPherson, who received a medical retirement five years ago. He had been a motorcycle officer with the Seattle PD for many years.”

  This was all standard stuff. And because I already knew most of it, I only half listened to what was being said. Then, however, halfway through Todd’s recitation, it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps I wasn’t the only person in the room who knew what had been going on and that Delilah had come calling on Mac MacPherson in search of answers about Monica Wellington’s murder back in 1973.

  If that other person who was in the know was also responsible for the disappearance of the physical evidence in the case, along with the tampering on the HR microfiche records, it stood to reason that he or she was far more than a disinterested bystander in everything that was happening in the Sammamish City Hall. And if that was the case, what were the chances that that very person might well have come to the press conference this morning, wanting to know exactly how the investigation was going and whether there was anything that would point directly to him?

  First I fiddled with my iPad and found the proper application. Once I had 360 Panorama tuned up, I leaned over to Marge. “Stand up and punch this button. Then I want you to walk back up the aisle, turning around and around as you go and holding this in front of you like this.”

  “Right now?” Marge asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I want you to photograph all the people in the room, on both sides of the aisle.”

  “What happens when the flash goes off?” she asked. “I’ll look like an idiot.”

  “No, you won’t,” I countered. “There won’t be a flash. The camera in the iPad uses available light.”

  “If you want me to take pictures,” she said. “That’ll be extra. I didn’t sign on to work as your damned photographer!”

  I wanted the pictures way more than I wanted to argue. “Done,” I said. “Fifty bucks.”

  Dutifully, Marge accepted the iPad. I showed her how to switch on the application, then she headed up the aisle, strolling along and turning around and around as she went and doing a credible job of pretending to look for someone seated in the audience. By then I think most of the attendees were so focused on what Todd was saying that they didn’t notice her pirouetting her way up the aisle. Marge was anything but a lightweight, and her resemblance to the dancing hippos in Fantasia was striking.

  She didn’t come back immediately. From the sharp scent of cigarette smoke surrounding her when Marge returned, I knew she had taken the opportunity to go outside and have a quick drag or two. By the time she gave me back my iPad, Todd had announced that the King County Medical Examiner’s Office would conduct the autopsies later in the day. He then went on to field questions from the assembled members of the fourth estate. There were plenty of questions that were greeted with the standard “No comment.” Was there any known connection between Detective Ainsworth and Rory MacPherson? No comment. Was either one of them suspected of any wrongdoing? No comment. Was Detective Ainsworth working on a particular case? No comment. Was there any indication that a third party had been in the home prior to the shooting?

  Once again, Todd’s answer was a swift “No comment,” but there was the smallest tell in one corner of his mouth before he answered the question. I’m not sure how many other people noticed the tiny twitch, but I’ve spent a lifetime trying to sort out who’s telling the truth and who isn’t. As far as I was concerned, it was a clear signal that someone else had been in Mac MacPherson’s home on the night in question, someone else who wasn’t either Mac or Delilah.

  I listened carefully to all the speakers who followed Todd and noticed that there was one critical item that went unmentioned by all concerned. This crime was “blue on blue.” It was one cop, retired or not, killing another cop. And it wasn’t a case of accidental friendly fire, either. From what was said as well as from what went unsaid, a clearer picture of the incident began to emerge. Rory MacPherson had evidently been lying in wait for Delilah. As soon as she set foot in his house, he had gunned her down before rolling his wheelchair out to the garage, where he managed to take his own life.

  When Todd Thornton finished, he yielded the lectern to Alan Walsh, one of the gun guys from the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab. He reported that three handguns had been collected from the crime scene. One was a .38 semiautomatic Smith & Wesson that belonged to Detective Ainsworth; another was a Glock 17 that was evidently her backup weapon. Arriving officers had found both of her weapons still in their holsters, and neither of them had been fired recently. The third weapon, a Colt .45, was registered to Mr. MacPherson. That one had been found in the garage in the possession of the second victim and, unlike the others, appeared to have been recently fired.

  I listened to everything Alan Walsh said. Obviously he wasn’t saying everything he knew. He wouldn’t. That wasn’t how the press conference game was played. Switching my iPad over to Notes, I set myself reminders to talk to both Thornton and Walsh later, when they didn’t have lights, cameras, and microphones aimed in their direction. I knew that what they would say to the press and what they would say to a fellow cop would be two entirely different things. I also made a note to check with the M.E. once the autopsies had been performed. My badge had gotten me into the press conference, and it would get me in to talk to those other folks as well—as long as no one tumbled to the fact that I was currently on medical leave.

  My phone rang. I checked caller ID. When I saw it was Mel, I switched it off. If she had heard about Delilah’s death, the jig was about to be up. I didn’t want to have that conversation in public. In fact, I didn’t want to have the conversation at all.

  When the press conference wound down, Marge used my chair as a battering ram to get us back up the aisle and out into the parking lot. Her mutters of “Step aside” and “Clear the path” were far more effective in herding people out of her way than her occasional and ostensibly insincere “Sorry.”

  Out on the sidewalk, it became clear that Marge had every intention of leaving me parked outside the front door while she went to retrieve her car. That wasn’t a popular option with me. I had caught sight of Ron Peters in the crowd of uniformed SPD folks. He had told me to stay out of the case on a friend-to-friend basis, but if he found out I was there, I knew he wouldn’t hesitate to call my boss.

  “I’d rather go straight to the car,” I said.

  “Of course you would,” Marge grumbled. “Maybe it doesn’t look like it’s uphill, but trust me, it is.”

  Under protest, she wheeled me back to the car, growling all the way. Once I was belted into the passenger seat, I turned on my iPad while Marge loaded the chair in the back. Unsurprisingly, there was a single irate message from Mel:

  Your phone is off. You’re not at the hospital. I heard about Delilah.

  What’s going on?

  I stowed the iPad without responding.

  “I think I’m about due for some pain meds,” I
said to Marge once she was in the driver’s seat. Naturally, my prescriptions were in the trunk along with the chair.

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” she said. “You’re supposed to take them with food. Do you want to stop along the way, or do you want to wait until I get you home?”

  “Home will be fine,” I said.

  The truth is, pain meds or not, I was out like a light within a few blocks of leaving the Sammamish City Hall, and I didn’t wake up again until Marge parked in front of the garage gate at Belltown Terrace.

  “What am I supposed to do with my car?” she asked. “Parking fees in downtown Seattle are higher than a cat’s back.”

  I used the remote on my key ring to let her in. “Parking on the top floor of the garage, P-1, is free on the weekends. During the week use the parking valet. Tell the attendant to give you the daily all-day rate. I’ll pay.”

  Once Marge had negotiated the parking issue, she used my building key to access the elevator. “What floor?” she asked, standing by the controls.

  “Penthouse,” I said.

  “Figures,” she returned.

  Once inside the unit, if Marge was impressed by her surroundings, she certainly didn’t let on. “Where do you want to be?” she asked. “In bed?”

  “No,” I said. “I’ve spent the last five days in bed. There’s a recliner in the study. That’s where I want to be. It has a better view.”

  She helped me out of the wheelchair and got me into the recliner. I could tell I was way beyond ready for my pain meds. “No pain meds without food,” she insisted. “Now what do you want to eat?”

  “I’m not sure what we have.”

  The answer to that was nothing much. Neither Mel nor I are great when it comes to domesticity. I’m a notoriously bad cook and she’s not much better. As a result, we generally eat out or order in.

  Marge left me alone for a few moments. I was trying to mask the pain by concentrating on the blue waters of Puget Sound out to the west when she returned, bringing with her a tray containing my pills, a glass of water, and two string cheeses.