Proof of Life

by J. A. Jance

  Roger hesitated, but only for a moment. Mel and I were regulars after all, and what I was asking must have seemed reasonable enough. He thumbed back to the proper page and then turned the book in my direction. I took several pictures, just to be on the safe side, and made for the door as the next group of exiting diners filed out toward the lobby.

  Back in the condo I found Lucy stretched out on her new bed with no evidence that she had moved a muscle in my absence.

  Phone in hand, I headed for the family room. I checked out the photos I’d just taken and found them to be wanting—which is to say, fuzzily out of focus and impossible to read.

  Knowing Todd Hatcher’s knack for computerized wizardry, I dialed his number.

  “What’s up?” he wanted to know.

  “Can I put you on retainer?” I asked.

  “For what?”

  “Maxwell Cole had dinner with someone at El Gaucho two nights before he died, and it would be helpful to know who that person was. I took a photo of the restaurant’s reservation register, but it’s not exactly legible. I’m hoping you’ll be able to enhance it for me.”

  “No problem,” Todd said, “and no payment, either.”

  “Thanks,” I told him.

  After sending the e-mail, I put in a call to Dr. Rosemary Mellon at the King County medical examiner’s office. Mel and I first encountered Dr. Mellon—or Dr. Roz, as she prefers to be called—when she was a relative newcomer to the ME’s office. We were investigating the deaths of a Seattle homicide detective named Delilah Ainsworth and that of a former partner of mine, a long-retired and exceedingly crooked cop named Rory (Mac) McPherson.

  When I’d had my knee replacement surgery, a bad case of opiate-induced hallucinations had brought me face-to-face with a very old cold case. The grisly murder of teenager Monica Wellington was the first homicide I ever worked as a full-fledged detective, and it had never been solved. In hopes of gaining permission to reexamine the case, I had gone looking for help in my old stomping grounds at Seattle PD. Detective Ainsworth was the one who had gotten the call.

  In the course of the investigation, when both she and Mac were found dead, the initial assumption had been one of murder/suicide. Cops on the scene theorized that, after shooting Delilah, Mac had committed suicide by locking himself in his garage along with an idling motor vehicle. Dr. Roz, a relative stranger to me at the time, was the one who had set the record straight by determining that the two deaths were actually the result of a double homicide. In addition, Dr. Mellon had tracked down some critical and long-neglected DNA evidence that had put us on the trail of Monica’s killer once and for all.

  When Dr. Roz first arrived at the ME’s office in Seattle, she was regarded as something of a maverick. Several years later her designation as maverick still held sway, possibly even more so than in the beginning. As far as she’s concerned, her role as a medical examiner was more of a sacred calling than it was a job. She’s someone who, as the saying goes, faithfully spoke for the dead, and she was utterly passionate about doing so. She moved to Seattle from Chicago because, as she told me once, “Chicago has too much snow and too many homicides.” She prefered to work the night shift because “that’s where the action is.” And because she had zero interest in so-called career advancements, she wasn’t afraid to color outside the lines.

  “Why if it isn’t my old friend J.P.,” she said, obviously lifting my information from caller ID. “Long time no see. Now that S.H.I.T. is shut down, what are you up to these days?”

  “This and that,” I said disingenuously.

  Dr. Roz laughed aloud. “Liar, liar, pants on fire!” she declared. “You wouldn’t be calling me at work at ten o’clock at night if you didn’t have a damned good reason to do so.”

  “You’ve got me there,” I admitted.

  “So?” she prodded.

  “Before I say another word, be advised,” I warned her. “It’s a case where I’ve got zero official standing.”

  “Which one?”

  “I’ve been asked to look into the death of Maxwell Cole.”

  “Oh, well,” she said. “That’s a hot mess.”

  Dr. Roz’s penchant for unrepentant gallows humor might possibly be another reason she was remoted, as opposed to demoted, from Chicago to Seattle. I get a kick out of her off-the-wall humor, but in my experience, higher-ups—the people hanging on to the brass ring for dear life—find it very easy to take offense at the slightest little thing.

  “Yes,” I agreed, “but does it happen be a hot mess you can discuss?”

  “On the record or off?” she asked.

  “Off,” I said, “as in just between old friends.”

  “All right then,” Roz said, “here goes. I’m calling it as an accidental death. It shouldn’t come as a big surprise to anyone that knocking off a few stiff ones and then taking a sleeping aid before crawling into bed to smoke a cigar is a pretty bad idea, especially if there happens to be an oxygen tank in use at the same time.”

  During my years in Homicide I learned that fires are often set in hopes of covering up evidence connected to some other crime, one that directly preceded the arson. Most crooks aren’t nearly as smart as they think they are. A lot of them are school dropouts who, as a result, are sadly lacking in terms of basic scientific knowledge. They have no idea, for example, that the human body consists of approximately 60 percent water. That means that trying to use arson in order to disappear incriminating evidence in a homicide case is generally a bad idea. Absent a crematorium designed especially for that purpose, human bodies are deucedly difficult to transform from flesh and blood into ash.

  “Wait, the guy was burned to a crisp, but you were able to do a tox screen?” I asked.

  “He wasn’t burned to a crisp,” Roz said. “He made it out of the bedroom, but that was it. By the time the firefighters reached him, he had some second- and third-degree burns, but smoke inhalation is what really got him, probably sooner than later.”

  “Thank God for small blessings,” I said.

  “You can say that again,” Roz agreed. “The victim was unresponsive at the scene, but he wasn’t dead. The tox screen results still aren’t back, but his blood alcohol level was off the charts. The EMTs said they found the remains of a partially smoked cigar in the room. In other words, the man was blitzed out of his gourd and smoking in bed. What more do you want?”

  “So you’re saying his death was accidental then—with no wiggle room?”

  “Not as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Do you happen to have the name of the lead homicide investigator on the case?”

  “There is no lead homicide investigator,” Roz replied, “only the duty sergeant from ABS.”

  ABS stands for Arson Bomb Squad. In terms of Seattle PD’s callout order, when there’s a fire that may result in injury or death, Dispatch summons the on-duty sergeant from ABS. He’s the one who makes the final determination about whether or not to call in homicide detectives.

  “And the sergeant in question would be?”

  “Al Thorne,” Roz answered at once. “Sergeant Albert Thorne. Do you want his numbers?”

  Getting Thorne’s numbers from someone else would mean my having to go through channels, a course of action I definitely didn’t want to tackle.

  “Absolutely,” I told her.

  Al Thorne’s name happened to be one I recognized. I suppose everyone who signs up to become a cop does so with illusions of somehow saving the world. Inside that group, however, there are two distinct subgroups. The first consists of the ambitious ones who are determined to go to the head of the class no matter what. Those are the guys who end up being the stars—what I like to call the FBOAs—Future Brass of America. With their eyes focused on the prize, they mostly keep their noses clean. They spend hours writing impeccable reports in which all the i’s are properly dotted and the t’s are properly crossed and that consistently show them in the best possible light. Those are the guys and gals, for that matter, who w
ill make a big show of following all the rules exactly, especially the most insane ones, and you can damned well bet that they will be one hundred percent politically correct at all times—at least in public.

  On the opposite side of the coin are the worker bees—the ones who want to be left alone to do their jobs so they can go home safely at the end of their shifts. They have zero interest in climbing the rungs of departmental ladders. Their reports are probably less than perfect, but they perform their jobs dutifully and with workmanlike attention to detail. If they do happen to bend a rule or two now and then? Too bad. And because they have no delusions of grandeur about rising to the top of any given heap, they don’t give a crap about being politically correct, either.

  A notable exception to those two generalizations would be my wife, Mel Soames, who happens to be an interesting amalgam of both—full-tilt brass and worker bee.

  Sergeant Al Thorne, a known entity, was an old hand and definitely a member of the worker bee category. He’s several years younger than I was, but he had long been to Seattle PD’s Arson Bomb Squad what I was to Homicide. Once he got where he wanted to be, he stayed put. Just knowing that he was involved in Max’s case buoyed my spirits. He was a lot more likely to talk to me than some young hotshot homicide cop who’s still trying to learn up from down and who would have immediately dismissed me as a pathetic has-been.

  “Anything else?” Rosemary Mellon asked once she finished giving me the phone numbers.

  “Not right now, Dr. Roz,” I told her. “Thanks for the help.”

  I hung up. At that very moment, Lucy appeared in the doorway of the family room and stood staring at me. I am trainable. I got the message from those impenetrable black eyes. I also got the leash. We rode down in the elevator, went out through the locking gates on P-1, and walked kitty-corner across the street.

  Out there in the dark and the cold, I was a bit startled to find that Lucy and I were not alone. Another man, bundled against the cold, was walking what looked to me like a pit bull. To my surprise, neither dog took much interest in the other.

  “Fine-looking animal you’ve got there,” the man said, nodding in Lucy’s direction. “What’s his name?”

  “Thanks,” I said, “her name’s Lucy.”

  “Surprised to have company out here,” he continued. “Billy Bob and me usually have this park all to ourselves this time of night.”

  “We’re a little new at this,” I said. “You live around here?”

  “You could say that,” he replied with a mirthless chuckle.

  “We’re in the neighborhood.”

  Lucy did what needed doing, after which I busied myself doing my part. By the time we were done, Billy Bob and his owner seemed to have vanished into midair. Only as we headed back into Belltown Terrace did I notice him unloading tarps and blankets from a parked grocery cart and setting up camp inside a small sheltered alcove outside one of the building’s emergency exits.

  When I first moved to Belltown Terrace, the Regrade was relatively free of crazed bicycle riders, homeless people, and drug dealers. In those days the most challenging enforcement areas in the downtown Seattle area had been down around Pioneer Square and at Third and Pike. Now those issues are everywhere.

  I guess that’s what the city fathers really meant when they told us we should “share the wealth.”

  CHAPTER 16

  IN THE OLD DAYS, I WOULD HAVE COME BACK INSIDE, picked up the phone, and dialed Al Thorne’s number on the spot. Since he’d been working the third watch on Sunday morning, there was a good chance he was either on the job or not sleeping anyway. In this case, however, I decided it was time for me to hit the hay.

  I moved Lucy’s new bed from the living room, where I had placed it originally, to the bedroom. When I got into my bed, she seemed content enough to climb into hers. I awakened the next morning, fighting to breathe, and it wasn’t because I was having a heart attack. The huge black dog was looming over me, breathing in whenever I breathed out and leaving me gasping for air.

  The clock said 7:30. Wishing profoundly that the condo had a doggy door, I crawled out of bed, threw on some clothes. Before Lucy and I made our trek downstairs, I stuffed a Ziploc bag filled with some of Lucy’s kibble in my pocket, just in case Billy Bob and his human companion were still camped out across the street. By the time we got there, however, they had already packed up and gone elsewhere. Lucy and I were back inside and riding the elevator when my phone rang. Expecting a morning wake-up call from Mel, I was surprised to see my daughter-in-law’s name in the caller ID window.

  “Morning, Cherisse,” I said. “How are things?”

  “I’m taking the day off,” she announced. “I was wondering if I could come up and see you.”

  That’s the weird things about cell phones. In the old days, when Ma Bell was the only game in town, if I placed a call to my mother, say, I was pretty sure that when she answered, she’d be standing by the black rotary dial phone mounted on the wall next to the kitchen table. The moment she said hello, I could picture the scene exactly. When Cherisse asked if she could come visit, she most likely thought she’d have to drive up to Bellingham. She had no way of knowing I had answered the phone from the elevator of our downtown Seattle condo.

  “No problem,” I said. “As it happens, I’m here in town at the moment. When would you like to get together and where? Would you like me to stop by the house?”

  “No,” she said quickly—a little too quickly. “Don’t come here. I’d rather meet somewhere else.”

  A little warning bell sounded in my head. Something was amiss. “Name the time and place,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

  “Julia’s in Wallingford?” she asked tentatively. “In about an hour?”

  “Cherisse,” I said, “is something wrong? Are you okay? Is Scott?”

  “He’s fine,” she said, again a little too quickly. “I just need to talk to you.”

  I’ve learned over time that when women tell me something is “fine,” it ain’t necessarily so.

  I dished up Lucy’s food and water and then showered and dressed while she was eating. When I was ready to leave, I was up in the air about what I should do with the dog. Should I take Lucy along or leave her at home? Without knowing how long I’d be gone, there wasn’t much choice.

  “Do you want to go?” I asked, picking up the leash.

  The dog’s answer was a definitive yes. With her dancing at the door, it was all I could do to fasten the leash. We drove without incident to Wallingford, where I was amazed to find on-street parking. As I got out of the car, Lucy seemed poised to leap after me.

  “Wait in the car,” I told her. It wasn’t exactly “Wait on the rug,” but close enough. Then, switching my phone to silent, I went inside.

  When I arrived, Cherisse was already seated at a table with a menu laid out in front of her. Ordinarily, Cherisse is a beautiful young woman—a brunette with flashing brown eyes. Today that beauty was lacking. She looked wan—her skin color was sallow. There were dark circles under her eyes, and she looked as though she hadn’t slept in days.

  “Hey, Cherisse,” I said cheerily, slipping onto the chair directly across from her. “How are things?”

  For an answer she simply burst into tears.

  Like most men my age—no, like most men of any age, I don’t do well with weeping women. I’m always at a loss about what I should say or do, so in this case, I said nothing. I simply let her cry. Other people in the room noticed. From the stink-eyed looks leveled in my direction, customers and waitstaff alike held me entirely responsible for whatever was wrong. As far as they were concerned, Cherisse’s meltdown was all my fault.

  Finally she managed to get a grip. “Sorry,” she mumbled, using an already soggy tissue to blow her nose and wipe her eyes.

  I reached across the table and covered her hand with mine. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “I wish you were my dad,” she said.

  Oh boy! At that point, so
did I, but that wasn’t possible, because Cherisse’s father, Pierre Madrigal, had succumbed to a recurrence of prostate cancer years earlier, soon after Scott and Cherisse’s fairy-tale wedding on a beach on Oahu.

  The two kids had met as undergraduates while earning degrees in electrical engineering down in California. At the time, Cherisse, a native of France, had been in this country on a student visa. Their wedding, several years later, had pulled her out of the immigration limbo world of H-1B visas by giving her access first to a green card and eventually U.S. citizenship.

  As far as I could tell, Cherisse and Scott were getting along fine. Other than Scott’s tearful fit the other day, I had seen no signs of trouble anywhere along the way, but what do parents ever know about their kids’ relationships? What does anyone ever know about what goes on behind closed doors in someone else’s life? Maybe what I had viewed as a happily-ever-after story was in fact one of those complicated sham green-card marriages. Sitting across the table from her, I worried that perhaps, since Cherisse now had her U.S. citizenship in hand, she was about to throw poor Scotty under the bus.

  “I’m sorry about your father,” I said at last, breaking a long silence during which my phone had vibrated twice inside my pocket, signaling two different calls. “I’m sure you miss him terribly.”

  I think Mel would have been incredibly proud of me for making such an adroit deflection.

  “I do,” Cherisse said. “Most people can talk to their mothers about things like this, but not me. I was always closer to my dad.”

  I felt a stab of envy. I doubted my own daughter, Kelly, would ever say she was closer to me than she was to her mother—never in a million years.

  “Things like what?” I asked.

  “Like having kids,” she said.

  Suddenly I was transported back to the previous Friday, when Scotty had been out of his head on post-op anesthetic and blabbing to me about his being too old to have kids. And now here was Cherisse broaching the same subject? With me? Her father-in-law? Unfortunately I already knew way more about this than I should have. I played dumb.