by JA Jance
“Too long,” I admitted.
“Then I guess I’d better rustle up something to eat—scrambled eggs, most likely,” she added. “As I told you before, you can’t take those pills on an empty stomach.”
I was only too grateful to be ordered around. She herded me over to the window seat where I was able to stretch out flat while Marge bustled around bringing me pillows for both my head and under my knees as well as a very welcome duvet. When the duvet settled over me, I realized how cold I was. Marge must have come to the same conclusion, but when she reached for the crank to close the window, I stopped her.
“Who opened the windows?” I asked. “Did you do it or did she?”
“She did,” Marge said.
“All right, then,” I said. “Let’s make sure that hers are the only fingerprints the CSI techs find on that handle. When the detectives come up here, we need to be able to show them exactly how she got out. If you’re cold, go ahead and turn up the thermostat.”
“Turning up the heat with the windows open will cost a fortune,” Marge objected.
“It’s okay,” I told her. “For this one night, I can afford it. But tell me. How did she get in here in the first place?”
“I was outside, having a smoke. You know, on the sidewalk next to the garage wall, like you told me to. But it was raining. I was getting wet. I was about to let myself into the garage through the gate with the clicker when she came jogging up the sidewalk. She was wet, too. She said she lived in the building and had forgotten her key. Would I mind letting her in. After all, she was just a little bit of a thing. She looked perfectly harmless.”
I didn’t take Marge to task and tell her that was the oldest trick in the book and a surefire way to make a secure building totally not secure.
“Once we got into the elevator,” Marge continued, “I used my building key to run it. When I turned around to ask which floor she wanted, that’s when I first saw the gun. She must have had it hidden in her pocket. She said we were going wherever you lived. All the way up in the elevator, I kept hoping someone else would get on with us, but no one did.”
“How long was she here?”
“Not that long,” Marge said. “She held the gun on me the whole time. It must have been heavy because part of the time she kept it in her lap. It seemed like it was forever. I needed to pee so badly, I was afraid I was going to wet my pants, but I’d be damned if I’d ask that little bitch for permission. She wanted a cigarette, so I lit smokes for both of us. Sorry about that. I hope you don’t mind.”
Considering what might have happened to Marge Herndon in the course of the confrontation, having a little lingering cigarette smoke in the unit seemed like a small price to pay. Besides, the frigid wind leaking into the room had mostly cleared it out.
Marge left me alone and went to the kitchen. I have to give the woman that much credit. She knew her way around our cooktop.
“So she’s the one who killed those people out in Sammamish?” she called to me from the kitchen.
“I guess,” I answered. “What I don’t understand is how she knew to come here.”
“That’s easy,” Marge replied. “She told me she followed us when we left the press conference in Sammamish. She was there, too. She said that as soon as she saw you there, she knew who you were.”
My iPad was lying next to me on the window seat. I picked it up, switched it on, and opened the panoramic photo gallery. Sure enough, one of the series of panoramic shots had captured Faye Adcock, sitting on the aisle in the very last row. So I was right after all. The killer had come to the press conference. I had found her without realizing it. Once she recognized me, she must have understood the danger I posed to her getting away with what she’d done.
I was still thinking about that when I fell asleep with the iPad flat on my chest.
Mel woke me up a few minutes later. “Do you want to eat here or at the table?”
I was glad to be off my feet. “Here, please,” I said.
Mel returned a few minutes later carrying a TV tray. On it was a plate of bacon and scrambled eggs, along with a glass of juice and an eggcup containing a multicolored collection of pills. I sat up and Mel helped me maneuver the tray around my legs. I could see that my ankles were still mad at me. Since Marge wasn’t looking, I took the pills first thing. As I was lifting the first forkful of scrambled eggs to my mouth, Mel returned to the window seat with her own tray of food.
“Did they find her gun?” I asked.
Mel shook her head. “Not yet. I told them about it, and I’m sure they will. The uniforms are out in force, doing an inch-by-inch search. It’s probably under one of the damaged vehicles, and some of those are going to have to be towed away.”
“This is going to be hard to explain,” I said, glancing at the still-open windows. Marge had cranked up the heat, however, and the room wasn’t as cold as it had been.
Mel laughed. “Not as hard as it could be,” she said. “Here, listen to this.” She pulled her iPhone out of her pocket, put it down on my tray, and pressed a button. Soon I was hearing Faye Adcock’s voice as well as my own.
I was dumbfounded. “Are you kidding? You recorded the whole thing?”
“Every bit of it,” Mel said with a grin. “The problem is, it’s audio only. I couldn’t get video because the phone was in my pocket.”
“Even so,” I said, “a recording like that won’t stand up in court.”
Mel shrugged her shoulders. “Doesn’t need to, but it’ll work as a deathbed confession. I think there’s a lot more latitude with those.”
We listened in silence to the whole thing until Marge’s horrified scream and the wailing of the automobile alarm announced that Faye Adcock had made her exit, stage left. It was actually stage right, but let’s not be picky.
Mel switched off the phone and put it away. “Are you going to go talk to Monica’s mother?”
“Tomorrow,” I said. “If you don’t mind driving.”
“No problem,” Mel said. “I just talked to Harry. He told me to take the whole week off. I’m yours for the duration.”
We had finished eating and had cleared out both the dishes and the TV trays when two Seattle homicide detectives—guys I didn’t recognize—showed up. And since Mel had run up the flag to the King County Sheriff’s Department, Detectives Monford and Anderson were hot on the Seattle PD investigators’ heels.
As expected, the four detectives began the process by interviewing Marge Herndon, Mel, and me on an individual basis. That was the only way to keep one eyewitness’s testimony from muddying someone else’s. King County detectives Monford and Anderson accompanied Marge back downstairs to the guest unit and interviewed her there. Seattle PD Homicide detective Taylor Derickson took Mel into the den and closed the doors behind them. I stayed on the window seat, still wrapped in the duvet while Seattle Homicide’s Detective Bonnie Hill did the interview honors.
Detective Hill was a poised and intense young woman. I could tell this was personal for her, and I thought I knew why. While she was setting her recording device, I got the drop on her before she ever lobbed a single question in my direction.
“You knew Detective Ainsworth?” I asked.
Biting her lip and fighting back tears, she nodded. “We came through the academy together.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “So let’s get this right.”
In order to make sense of the thing, I had to go back to the very beginning, starting with waking up in my hospital bed determined to reopen a cold case. I expected Detective Hill to object to that. Instead, she accepted my version of events at face value, and while she was letting the recorder do its job, she was also making quick but careful notes the whole time. In a funny way, she reminded me of Pickles Gurkey, and I suspected her case closure ratio would have a lot to do with her clear determination to cover all the bases.
I told her, to the best of my memory, about the interactions I had had with Delilah prior to her second fateful trip to see
Mac MacPherson. I told her about the missing evidence and about the sabotaged human resources microfiche. I told her about being worried when Delilah didn’t call me back in a timely fashion and about my summoning Assistant Chief Peters into the fray.
“You know Assistant Chief Peters?” she asked.
“We used to be partners.”
In the world of homicide cops, those five words speak volumes. She nodded, and I continued.
When I told Detective Hill about leaving the hospital and making an uninvited visit to the press conference, I switched on my iPad and showed her the photo of Faye Adcock sitting in the back of the room.
“That’s her,” I said, pointing to Faye’s face in the crowd. “I was looking for someone from Seattle PD who maybe shouldn’t have been there. I didn’t recognize Faye Adcock because, as far as I know, I had never seen her before today.”
I went on from there, explaining how Faye had followed Marge’s vehicle home from the press conference, how she had duped Marge in order to gain entry to the building, and finally about what was said in those few minutes prior to Faye’s fatal plunge. We had finished that part of the interview when the phone rang.
Mel answered and then opened the glass doors between the den and the living room. “That was the doorman,” she said. “Ron Peters is on his way up.”
That news apparently made a good impression on Detective Hill. I saw her brief nod, but she didn’t shut down the recording.
“Did Ms. Adcock say anything to you about the missing evidence or the HR discrepancy?” she asked.
“Not to me,” I told her. “She might have had the motive, but I doubt she had the opportunity. My guess would be that her husband took care of that part of the problem before he left the department.”
“When was that again?”
“In 1981.”
“Were they already digitizing records that early?” Detective Hill asked.
“Definitely not,” I said. “I think the physical records themselves disappeared long before the microfiche record was created.”
The doorbell rang. Mel hurried out of the den to answer it. Ron rolled into the living room, Mel at his side and with her hand in his.
“Thank God you’re both all right!” he exclaimed. He parked his chair next to where I was sitting. Making my knees and his chair maneuver together for a hug wasn’t easy, but we managed.
“Has someone notified Faye’s son?” I asked.
Ron nodded. “Officers are on their way to his home right now.”
A few minutes later, Detectives Monford and Anderson showed up, having finished with their debriefing of Marge Herndon.
Hugo Monford looked at Mel. “I understand you have an audio recording of the incident?”
Mel nodded. “Do you want to hear it now?”
Ron Peters, dressed in his uniform, was clearly the top-ranking officer in attendance. When he nodded his assent, Mel turned on the recording and played it. The roomful of detectives listened in stunned, multijurisdictional silence while Faye Adcock’s own voice cleared three of their current cases—two homicides and a suicide—and Monica Wellington’s cold case as well. The other cases, even Delilah’s, may have belonged to them. Monica Wellington’s was all mine.
When the recording ended, Ron nodded toward the still-open windows. The heat pump was doing a great job of keeping up, but the room was still chilly.
“Faye Adcock opened the windows?”
I nodded. “I made sure no one else has touched them.”
Ron turned to Detective Hill and issued an order. “I want someone from CSI up here right away to dust for prints on that handle. And let them know they are not to make a mess on the window seat!”
In due time CSI techs came and went, and eventually the windows got closed. The detectives left in a group, with Monford and Anderson headed for Brian Ainsworth’s home in Ballard to bring him up-to-date on this latest development. At last Mel, Ron, and I were the only ones left.
“Do you want me to send officers over to Leavenworth tomorrow to talk to Monica Wellington’s family?”
I shook my head. “Thanks for the offer, but no. Mel has the day off. She says she’ll drive me. It was my case. I need to be the one to give Hannah Wellington the news.”
“What about the situation with Delilah’s family?” he added. “I understand that her funeral is scheduled for Wednesday and that her husband has specifically requested that there be no fallen-officer trappings to her service?”
“That’s correct,” I said. “Brian Ainsworth said that people Delilah worked with are welcome to show up, but he’d prefer that they did so in civilian clothing rather than in uniform. I asked to serve as an honorary pallbearer in hopes of calling out the killer. It turns out that’s no longer necessary, but that’s what I’ll be doing all the same.”
Ron Peters glanced questioningly at my nearby walker. “Are you sure you’re up for that?”
“As I said, I’ll be honorary only,” I assured him. “I’ll be carrying all the blame. Somebody else will have to do the physical lifting.”
Ron was too good a friend to try telling me it wasn’t my fault. We both knew better.
CHAPTER 23
I slept like a brick that night. It could have been because no one came in to check my vitals. It could have been because the bedroom got so warm in the process of heating the open-windowed living room that it was simply toasty in there. It could have been because I had seriously overdone it in the course of the day. It could have been because Monica Wellington’s homicide was finally put to rest. It could have been because Mel was in bed beside me. Or it could have been all of the above.
Whatever the reason, I slept. When I awoke feeling surprisingly rested in the morning, I found myself with a severe craving for something like pancakes or waffles, swimming in a lake of maple syrup.
Marge came into the bedroom, handed me a cup of coffee, and immediately disabused me of the notion that I could choose my own menu. Pancakes and waffles were deemed to contain far too many carbs and not enough protein. Besides, she was already making sausage and eggs.
Mel came back down the hall from her bathroom. She was dressed, made up, and ready to rumble. “It’s about time you woke up,” she said. “PT in half an hour.”
I put off showering until after PT. Instead, I dressed myself in an appropriate set of sweats and used the canes to take myself into the dining room for breakfast.
Marge observed my arrival at the dining room table with a grudging nod of approval. “Not bad,” she said, “especially considering you’re just one week out.”
I accepted her comment as high praise and tucked into my sausage and eggs. I prefer my eggs over easy. Marge’s eggs of choice were definitely over hard, but the eggs appeared fully cooked, as if by magic, and I did not complain. Instead, I expressed sincere thanks and ate as directed.
“I talked to Ron while I was getting dressed,” Mel said. “Seattle PD has hammered out an agreement with King County and Sammamish that says they won’t be releasing any details until midafternoon. That gives us time to get to Leavenworth and talk to Monica’s mother before the media bombshell drops.”
I knew Ron Peters had probably had to talk like a Dutch uncle in order to make that happen, and I was grateful for that, too. “We’ll head out as soon as I finish PT.”
There’s nothing like waking up alive the day after being held at gunpoint to induce a permanent attitude of gratitude.
During PT I noticed that, with Ida Witherspoon’s help, taking one turn around the running track wasn’t nearly as challenging as it had been the day before. And I’m happy to report that my range of motion had improved by a tiny margin as well.
After Ida left, I showered—on my own this time—and got dressed. I chose a charcoal gray suit, a plain white shirt, and a subdued blue-and-gray-striped tie. When it comes time to talk to a grieving family member, it’s best to look the part.
Mel came into the bedroom and watched in amazement as I used the
strange sock-applying gadget to put on my compression stockings. My ankles were still a little swollen from the previous day’s long car ride, but they weren’t nearly as bad as they had been.
“Canes or walker?” Mel asked as we started out of the unit.
“Both,” I said, “just to be on the safe side.”
I walked out to the elevator using the canes, but I was glad to know she was dragging the walker along just in case.
This time I opted to ride in the far roomier Mercedes. When we drove out of the underground parking lot, it was into the bright sunlight of a crisp autumn day. As we drove across Lake Washington on 520, the water, mirroring the sky, was a deep shade of blue. We drove up 405 to Woodinville and then out to Highway 2. We were both subdued and we didn’t talk much. Notifying families is serious business, and I was worried about what I would say. I hoped that reopening Hannah Wellington’s decades-old wound might also offer some measure of comfort.
We had no difficulty in finding Hannah’s cozy home—little more than a cottage—on Benton Street, two blocks north of the highway. I hadn’t called ahead, so she wasn’t expecting us.
We found her dressed in a pair of child-size Oshkosh overalls, raking leaves inside her minuscule front yard. The last time I’d seen her, both in real life and in the dream, she had worn her hair long and straight. It was white now, and braided into plaits that wrapped around her head like a crown. She was as straight and upright as ever. I guess the best way to put it would be unbowed. Whatever life had thrown at her, this was a woman who had borne up under it with determination and grace.
Hannah quit raking when the car stopped out front. She stripped off her gloves and stood waiting while Mel came around to the passenger side to help me out of the car. With a wary glance at the somewhat bumpy terrain, I opted for the safety of the walker over the supposedly more decorative canes.
“I’m not sure you remember me, Mrs. Wellington,” I said, as we made our slow way up the grass-covered walkway. “My name is J. P. Beaumont. This is my partner, Mel Soames.”