by J. A. Jance
“Long time no see, Max,” I said, rising to my feet and holding out my hand. “How’s it going?”
“Not bad,” Max said. He swayed slightly as he spoke, as though he might have had a bit too much to drink. Then, nodding briefly in Mel’s direction, he added, “I presume this is the little woman?”
His looks may have changed, but clearly he hadn’t improved in the brains department. Talk about getting off on the wrong foot! Take it from me, calling Mel Soames “little anything” is not recommended.
“Please,” I said. “Allow me to introduce my wife, Melissa Soames—Chief of Police Melissa Soames. Mel, this is Maxwell Cole.”
She offered him her hand along with a frosty look that was one step short of lethal. “Glad to meet you,” she said.
“From Bellingham, I believe?” Max asked, wading in where angels fear to tread.
“That’s correct,” she told him. “I’m chief of police in Bellingham.”
“Is that where the two of you are living now?” he asked.
I sat back down. “We have a place there,” I answered, “but we kept the condo here as well.”
“The one just up the street?” Max jerked his head in the direction of Belltown Terrace.
I wasn’t much liking this Spanish Inquisition style of questioning, but short of making a scene, I had to go along to get along. “That’s right,” I said. “How about you?”
“I’m back in my folks’ old place up on Queen Anne,” he said. “I rented it out for a time while I was down in California, but I hung on to it just in case I might want to come back. Someday I suppose someone will make me an offer that’s too good to refuse. Once they do, I’ll be out of there and living it up in Palm Springs or somewhere warm. What about you? What are you up to these days? I guess that cold case gig with Ross Connors came to a screeching halt.”
Considering the terrible wreck that had happened just blocks from here, the one in which Ross Connors had lost his life and Harry I. Ball both his legs, it was a shockingly poor choice of words. Whether or not it was deliberate on Max’s part, I couldn’t tell, but I spotted the grimace of distaste that flashed across Mel’s face and knew that Max had just managed to dig himself an even deeper hole.
“Keeping busy,” I said noncommittally.
What I really wanted was for him to shut up and walk away. He didn’t.
“I’ve been doing some blogging of late,” Max offered, although I hadn’t asked. “Just to keep my hand in, as it were. I’ve come up with an idea that might actually be worthy of turning into a book. Maybe we could sit down and chew the fat about it one of these days.”
“Sure,” I said, not really meaning it. “Any time. Just give me a call.”
Our waiter showed up, pushing his dessert cart, but he was forced to park it on the far side of the Maxwell Cole roadblock. This being El Gaucho, the waiter was too polite to say anything. Instead, he stood there silently with his arms crossed waiting for Max to get the message and take his leave.
“Glad to,” Max said, “but I’ll need a number.”
Reluctantly, I hauled out my wallet and handed over the only business card I had in my possession at the time—one that happened to be from TLC—The Last Chance.
Max held the card up to his eyes and peered at it, frowning. He was groping for a pair of reading glasses when the helpful waiter whipped out one of the tiny flashlights the restaurant provides to make menu reading easier for people of a certain age.
“Who’s The Last Chance?” Max asked, reading from the now-illuminated text.
“It’s a volunteer cold case squad, one I work with on occasion,” I explained. “A friend of mine hooked me up with them a few months ago.”
“Oh,” Max said, nodding. “I see.” He pocketed the card. “Weren’t you working on that cold case from Seattle PD, the one where that lady cop got blown away?”
That was a topic I most assuredly did not want to discuss with Maxwell Cole.
“The ‘lady cop’ in question happened to have a name—Detective Delilah Ainsworth.”
Something in my voice must have warned Max away. He took a backward step. “I believe that was a very old case,” he said. “Did you get much pushback?”
“Not so much,” I said, struggling to keep my voice even. I didn’t dare glance in Mel’s direction. I knew she understood how much Detective Ainsworth’s senseless death still haunted me.
For the first time Max seemed to notice the presence of our very patient waiter.
“Okay then,” he said, giving us a half wave as he finally moved away from our table. “See you around.”
He headed out, leaning heavily on his cane as he dodged between tables and dragging his oxygen cart behind him. Mel waited until the waiter had performed his flaming-bananas magic and the dessert plates had been placed in front of us before she said anything more.
“So that was Maxwell Cole!”
By the time Mel and I had met up, the digital age had overtaken the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Maxwell Cole had gone south looking for greener journalistic pastures. Since he was now back from what had obviously been a brief sojourn in California, those hoped-for greener pastures must not have materialized. That also meant, however, that beyond the bare bones of the narrative—long-term loathing and disrespect on both sides—Mel wasn’t exactly completely up to speed on Max’s and my mutual history.
She knew, for example, that Max and I had been fraternity brothers back in the day at the University of Washington. She also was aware that I had scored my first wife, Karen, by stealing her out from under Max’s nose. I’m pretty sure I neglected to tell her about my punching the guy’s lights out once—not one of my finest hours. As we dug into our bananas Foster, I saw no need to go into any of those gory details right that minute. We were out on the town, having fun, and enjoying the moment. Given all that, it seemed silly to dig up that ancient history, so I didn’t.
“That’s the guy all right,” I agreed, “the very one.”
During dessert, the waiter reappeared twice—first to proffer a box of selected teas to the lady and second to present a box of cigar choices from El Gaucho’s famed humidor. The cigars were offered even though the health police have seen to it that the restaurant’s beloved cigar lounge no longer existed. Mel accepted the tea; I passed on both counts, although I have to admit the idea of settling in to smoke a handmade cigar was more than a little tempting.
I glanced at Mel, who was shaking her head as she stirred Splenda into her Earl Grey.
“What?” I asked.
“You’d think someone who’s on oxygen might have gotten the memo that smoking cigars is a bad idea.”
“You’d think,” I agreed with a nod.
It was a tiny, sharp shard of conversation in an evening’s worth of pleasant and relaxing talk, but one I would have reason to remember in the coming days—and definitely not in a good way.
CHAPTER 3
WE WENT TO THE PLAY ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON. DULCINEA was a knockout, and Sancho Panza was great. Don Quixote, however, was only so-so. I guess it’s true, you really can’t win ’em all. I had expected the play to be followed by a quiet evening all to ourselves, dining on the previous night’s leftovers, but that was not to be. The city of Bellingham had other ideas.
The report of an officer-involved shooting in Bellingham meant that Mel had to head back up I-5 immediately after the show ended. A call to Scott told me that he was doing fine and needed no further hand-holding. With that in mind, I packed up the leftovers and headed north as well.
The torrential downpours continued. I drove through several squalls where the windshield wipers couldn’t keep up with the rain, to say nothing of the spray kicked up by jerks in sports cars, SUVs, and eighteen-wheelers who didn’t have brains enough to slow down even a little bit. The talking heads on the radio reported that the Cascades continued to be hammered with snow. With both Stevens and Snoqualmie Passes currently closed, I was glad to be traveling north rather than east
or west. Along I-5, the highway’s proximity to the ocean meant there wasn’t any snow or ice to deal with, just water—but the radio reporter’s daunting list of nearby rivers at or approaching flood stage made me glad our house in Fairhaven was up on a bluff rather than down in a valley.
Just so you know, Fairhaven was founded in the 1880s, but in the early 1900s the village was incorporated into the city of Bellingham. One of the reasons we had bought a house there was that although it was officially “in” the city, it was also “out” of it. Considering Mel’s highly visible position as chief of police, we needed at least a modicum of privacy.
Halfway there, I called Mel to see how things were going. “My officer is fine and out on administrative leave,” she told me. “The guy he shot is not. He’s not room temperature at the moment, but he’s hospitalized in critical condition.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“A DV,” she said.
DV is cop speak for domestic violence. “The woman who called 911 reported that her husband had a gun. Naturally my officers showed up with weapons drawn. What the wife failed to mention and maybe didn’t even know was that the gun in question was a BB gun, which the bad guy promptly fired. We found at least one of the BBs. It had bounced off my guy’s vest and ended up in his shirt pocket.”
A civilian hearing that might think, Wait a minute here. A cop uses his service weapon to shoot the shit out of some poor guy armed with nothing but a BB gun? How unfair is that and how do you spell police brutality? The problem is, that civilian is probably thinking about one of those Daisy BB guns from back in the old days, like the one the poor kid’s mother worries may cause him to shoot his eye out in A Christmas Story.
I’m definitely not a civilian. “What kind of BB gun?” I asked.
“A Beretta Px4 Storm Pellet-BB Pistol,” Mel answered.
I happen to have a nodding acquaintance with those. They’re made by Umarex. If you have a computer handy, you might want to google them just for the hell of it. Once you do, I double-dare you to come face-to-face with one of those in the heat of battle and decide it’s a BB gun instead of the real thing. Cops in those kinds of situations are scared to death and jacked up on adrenaline. Confronted with armed assailants with guns in their hands and fingers on triggers, they tend to shoot first and ask questions later. And although pellets fired from one of those aren’t likely to kill you, without that officer’s vest in place, the BB that hit Mel’s guy in the chest would have smarted some.
I knew that. Mel knew that. But there are plenty of people out there—the second-guessers of the world—the Monday morning quarterbacks who have never once put their own lives on the line—who want to turn every police shooting into a media crap storm. Reporters were probably already descending on Bellingham en masse. I knew full well that, along with the officer who had pulled the trigger, Mel would be their next-best target.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Still at the scene,” she said. “As far as the investigation is concerned, we can’t afford to leave any stones unturned. There’ll be a press conference later tonight, and I’ll need to stop by the hospital before that.”
“In other words, I shouldn’t wait up?”
“That would be my guess.”
“Okay,” I said. “Stay safe and stay warm.”
“Too late for the warm part,” she said. “I’m already soaked to the skin.”
I drove on home, where I divided the leftovers scrupulously in half and then ate my share. I watched the boob tube for a while, but I was in bed and fast asleep long before Mel got home.
When I crept out of bed the next morning, she was sawing logs, and I left her to it. I fired up the coffee machine and then turned on the news. It was Sunday morning, so the third-string newsies on the local channels hadn’t yet built up a good head of steam as far as the officer-involved shooting was concerned. The would-be shooter was still hospitalized with his condition listed as critical. As for the officer? He was still on administrative leave. There was nothing new to report other than the fact that neither the shooting victim nor the officer was African-American or Hispanic. Hopefully that meant the race card wouldn’t be played in this case, but the report failed to mention that the hospitalized “victim” had been in the process of beating the crap out of his wife when he had been rudely interrupted by the arrival of the cops.
I checked the TV guide to see when the Seahawks’ game was due to start. I’m not a huge NFL fan, but when your local team ends up in the playoffs, you’re more or less duty bound to pay attention, especially when Seattle is pitted against Green Bay with the Packers already in the playoffs as well. Then, while the TV droned in the background, I took my iPad over to my new and surprisingly comfortable easy chair by the front windows, where I settled in to “read the papers.” Be advised that I use the term papers very loosely, because the electronic news media I follow these days and the sites where I do my crossword puzzles have nothing to do with paper and ink.
The talking heads were blabbing away in the half hour leading up to kickoff when I saw a headline on the Seattle Times site that caught my attention: ONE DEAD IN QUEEN ANNE HOUSE FIRE. Local news is local news, and Queen Anne Hill is the next neighborhood over from the Denny Regrade. Since proximity is everything, I read the whole article.
Overnight the Seattle Fire Department responded to an early morning two alarm blaze on Queen Anne’s Bigelow Avenue where at least one victim is known to have perished. The fire was spotted at 2:30 AM by a passerby who immediately called 911. By the time units arrived on the scene, the upper story of the house was fully engulfed.
Fire department personnel are still on the scene, checking for hot spots. The victim, presumed to be the owner, was transported to Harborview Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. His identification is being withheld, pending notification of next of kin.
That was it. It’s the kind of article I’ve read countless times over the years—a snippet of news that’s long on drama and short on details. I had no inkling at the time that it would have anything at all to do with me, nor did I guess that the unnamed victim would turn out to be someone I knew personally.
Mel, wearing a robe and with her hair still damp from the shower, emerged from the bedroom about then, in search of coffee. As far as Mel Soames is concerned, her taking a shower before drinking coffee could mean only one thing:
“You’re going in to the office?” I asked.
“What do you think? How bad is the media playing it?”
“Relatively even-handed so far,” I told her.
“That’ll change if the victim croaks out.”
“I thought he was okay.”
“Still critical,” Mel answered. “I checked on him just a couple of minutes ago. He took a turn for the worse overnight due to some kind of complications. He’s currently back in the ICU. So yes, I’ll be going to the office. I’ll probably be there most of the day.”
“Breakfast first?” I asked.
My asking the question should not be confused with an offer on my part to actually cook. I’m useless when it comes to kitchens, and Mel isn’t much better. Our favorite Sunday morning breakfast treat turns out to be huevos rancheros at Pepe’s, a family-run Mexican food joint in downtown Fairhaven. It’s only a little over half a mile away from our house, and lots of Sundays we walk it. (Thank God for my new knees.) But this cold January morning, with torrential rain still pounding down, was not the kind of day to go for a midmorning stroll.
“The usual?” Mel asked.
“Works for me,” I said, “although if you’re going into work, you should probably pass on your customary mimosa.”
In the end, we took separate vehicles and were both soaking wet by the time we walked from our cars to the restaurant. Because of the nature of Mel’s job, she’s on everybody’s radar in town, so we didn’t talk shop during breakfast. I sent her on her mimosa-free way as soon as we finished eating our late-morning meal, while I returned home
to watch the remainder of the game—a 17–14 nail-biting victory that the Hawks pulled off by scoring a Hail Mary 48-yard field goal with thirty seconds left on the clock.
I confess, I felt a bit silly, sitting there all by myself, yelling my head off, but it was that kind of game. When it was over, I made another cup of java and returned to my iPad, intent on working the crosswords. That’s when I noticed the updated headline: LONGTIME SEATTLE REPORTER DIES IN FIRE.
Longtime Post-Intelligencer crime reporter and columnist, 72-year-old Maxwell Oscar Cole, perished overnight in a fire at his home in the Queen Anne neighborhood.
Firefighting units were summoned to the blaze at 2:30 am by a passerby who dialed 911 after seeing flames inside the two-story home on Bigelow Avenue. By the time units arrived on the scene, the upper level of the home was fully engulfed.
Firefighters were able to effect a rescue, although Mr. Cole was unresponsive at the scene. He was transported to Harborview Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. The investigation is continuing.
For many years, Mr. Cole was considered to be one of the city’s leading crime reporters. Once the PI switched over to being a virtual publication, Mr. Cole left the Seattle area to work in newsrooms first in San Francisco and later on in Los Angeles. In recent years, he’s maintained a blog dealing with reminiscences of his years as a local crime writer. He was said to be at work on a book at the time of his death.
Funeral arrangements are pending.
CHAPTER 4
WHEN I WAS IN MY TWENTIES, I WAS IMMORTAL AND didn’t bother reading the obituaries. Yes, my mother had died of cancer, but she was old—in her midforties. Then, in my thirties and after I became a homicide cop, I started paying more attention because people I knew did die. Bad guys died. Fellow officers died. Some were taken out by car crashes or struck down by physical ailments, but some, who found the pain of living more than they could bear, went out of their own volition and on their own timetable.