by J. A. Jance
“Cherisse and I are going to have a baby!”
I looked down gratefully at Lucy, who had unwittingly helped me navigate some potentially rocky generational shoals. Cherisse had taken my advice and spilled the beans to Scott. Just from his tone of voice, I could tell it had worked. Whatever objections he’d had to becoming a father had disappeared in a puff of smoke.
“That’s wonderful news, Scotty!” I told him. “Congratulations to you both.”
“Cherisse has been under the weather some lately,” Scott continued, “enough so that I’ve been worried about her, but now it turns out to be nothing but . . .”
“Morning sickness?” I supplied.
“Exactly,” he said. “Morning sickness. So, the reason I’m calling—if you and Mel are in town this weekend, we wondered if maybe the two of you would like to come over for dinner on Sunday evening so we can celebrate. I have the day off, and I’ll be doing the cooking.”
“I’ll have to talk it over with Mel once I get back upstairs,” I told him, “but I’m pretty sure you can count on our being there.”
Feeling lighter than air, I rushed back to the condo to report the conversation to Mel, who immediately put our Sunday dinner date into the calendar.
“Scott thought Cherisse was ‘under the weather,’” she repeated, “and he never once made the connection between that and the possibility of morning sickness?”
“Evidently not,” I answered.
Mel shook her head. “How can men be so dim sometimes?”
“Give us a break,” I told her. “Isn’t that part of our natural charm?”
CHAPTER 22
BACK IN THE OLD DAYS AT SEATTLE PD, THE EVIDENCE room was downstairs in the basement of the Public Safety Building. When they built the new police headquarters on Fifth Avenue, the sky-high, square inch value for downtown Seattle real estate made the cost of keeping mountains of evidence there prohibitive. As a consequence, the Evidence Unit was moved to Sodo, an industrial area south of the city center.
Originally the name Sodo was shorthand for “south of the dome,” the dome in question being the Kingdome. Then, of course, some local brainiac busy spending other people’s money decided to knock that venue down and build two stadiums—not for the price of one—and both in the same general area. Nowadays some people claim Sodo means “south of downtown,” but I’m not one of them.
Currently, Sodo’s biggest claim to fame is the “homeless encampment,” a lawless stretch of derelict RVs, buses, and other assorted vehicles that are allowed to park on city streets with complete impunity. The residents of same have a tendency to rape and murder one another with wild abandon and with few, if any, consequences.
Fortunately, the building housing the Evidence Unit, which looked like one of those commercial self-storage outfits, was located a fair distance south of the actual encampment. Since it’s also just up the street from the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab, there’s usually a considerable police presence in the area. I parked in a designated visitor spot in the lot out front and walked into the building with some confidence that the car would remain undisturbed until I came out again.
I soon discovered that Ron Peters was good to his word. The clerk at the front desk was expecting me and passed along a visitor pass with no hassle. I was ushered into an area my guide referred to as “the vault.” Signage was everywhere. NO FOOD OR DRINK ALLOWED! NO ELECTRONIC DEVICES IN EVIDENCE CUBICLES! I did as instructed and deposited my phone and iPad in the locker next to the door before being allowed into the cubicle itself.
The room contained no furnishings other than a single table and chair. In many ways it bore a very real resemblance to a law enforcement interview room, including the presence of an overhead camera eye designed to make sure no one perusing the contents of the evidence boxes did anything untoward. An old-fashioned yellow legal pad and a pen had been left on the table for my handwritten-note-taking convenience.
Since I was allowed to examine only one box of material at a time, I started with the container labeled with Marcia Kelsey’s name. When I removed the top from the banker’s box, I discovered a sign-out sheet attached to the lid. The log called for the first and last names of the person requesting access as well as dates and times. It came as no surprise that the name just above mine on the list turned out to be that of Maxwell Cole, and it wasn’t a one-time thing, either. He had come here to study the contents of the box on four separate occasions, all of them within the last two months. Clearly I wasn’t the only one with old-time connections. I doubted that Ron Peters had allowed Max into the evidence room, but someone had.
For me, opening that evidence box was like stepping into a time machine. The murder book was front and center, but I set that aside to sort through a collection of physical evidence that consisted mostly of the bloodstained clothing—the heavy woolen skirt and the maroon turtleneck—Marcia had been wearing the night she was gunned down in the old school district offices on Lower Queen Anne Hill.
I remembered standing and peering into the janitor’s closet that was the crime scene for that long-ago homicide and looking down at the tangle of limbs that had once been two living, breathing people. Our initial theory of the case was that Marcia and Alvin Chambers had been involved in some kind of romantic relationship and that Marcia had shot Alvin Chambers before taking her own life. We had dug the spent bullet from the .38 special out of the brain-spattered Sheetrock behind Marcia’s shattered head. A twelve-by-twelve square of sheetrock containing the bullet hole had been cut out of the wall. That hunk of sheetrock was there in the evidence box along with the misshapen slug that had taken Marcia Kelsey’s life. That deadly chunk of lead, no doubt still containing traces of blood, was properly sealed away in a labeled evidence bag.
Back when all this happened, DNA analysis of evidence was not yet a blip on the radar of forensic science. These days crime scene techs might well have been able to find traces of Jennifer Lafflyn’s DNA on the bodies of both her victims, but that was not the case when the school district homicides occurred. In addition, since that little sexy number had been employed in the building and had every right to be there, both Kramer and I had discounted the importance of her having been the one who discovered the bodies. Our bad—and a mistake that had very nearly cost Erin Kelsey her life.
Marcia’s case hadn’t remained unsolved long enough to go cold. The investigation into her death hadn’t occupied detectives for months or years. In fact, it had been resolved in only a matter of days with the perpetrator dead of her own volition after that fatal plunge off the bridge deck. The relatively quick resolution meant there was far less material in the box than there would have been otherwise.
Crime scene photos were present, of course, along with Doc Baker’s autopsy results. In addition, there was an assortment of reports, some handwritten and some typed, with most of them signed by Paul Kramer, who had hogged the report-writing duties on that case in order to make himself look good and make me look bad. When I came across reports written in my own handwriting, the first thing I noticed was that my penmanship back then was a lot neater and more readable than it is now.
As I paged through the murder book, bits and pieces of the investigation came back to me. We had learned that the murder weapon had belonged to the second victim, Alvin Chambers. I had been surprised that a school district security guard would have been packing a loaded weapon, but it turned out the school district had been under siege due to a number of unpopular school closures along with some sticky labor union negotiations in which both Marcia Kelsey and her lover, Andrea Stovall, had been directly involved.
As a result of all the public turmoil, the district office had been targeted by a number of bomb threats. While striving to downplay the seriousness of the threats, school officials had gone to the extraordinary length of hiring armed security guards rather than unarmed ones. Unfortunately for Alvin Chambers, although he had been carrying a loaded weapon at the time, he had lacked the kind of combat train
ing that might have enabled him to maintain control of his weapon rather than allowing his assailant to turn it against him.
As soon as I saw Charlotte Chambers’s name in the murder book, I remembered the next-of-kin notification, when she had absolutely discounted the possibility that her husband might have been involved in an adulterous affair with another woman—an assertion that had eventually proved to be true—and the Pete Kelsey notification, in which everything he told us about his and Marcia’s “perfect” marriage had wound up being a total fabrication. In the course of the investigation, Kramer and I had stumbled on the fact that Maxwell Cole was close friends with both our murder victim and her widower.
I skimmed along through the pages of the murder book, picking out a word here and there, but mostly relying on memory to fill in the details. Then I hit on something odd—a single page where the corner had been turned down. The page in question turned out to be one of my handwritten reports dealing with a kid named Todd Farraday.
That obnoxious little dork had been the son of Seattle’s then mayor, Natalie Farraday. I may have forgotten about him in the meantime, but just seeing his name brought everything about him back to me in a flash. Todd had been a smart but troubled kid, living in the shadow of a political powerhouse of a mother. He’d made the school district bomb threats in hopes of earning points with the other kids so he could be considered one of the regular guys. Instead, when Todd’s mother had pulled strings and gotten him off, the whole game had blown up in his face. I doubted that the shenanigan had improved his status with the other kids. In fact, on that score he’d probably ended up worse off than he’d been before. And although he may have come away with a clean record as far as criminal charges were concerned, I suspected that his hard-nosed mother would most likely have exacted her own pound of flesh.
When Ron Peters and I had called on Todd at his mother’s home up on Kinnear, it had been on the very off chance that the bomb threats might somehow be related to the Marcia Kelsey homicide investigation. Ironically enough, although Todd and the bomb had nothing directly to do with our case, he had nonetheless pointed us in the direction of a friend of his, Jason Ragsdale, who, although not directly involved in the bomb threats, had turned out to be the very eyewitness we needed.
The day before the homicides, Seattle had been hit by a terrific snowstorm. With traffic pretty much shut down city-wide, Jason had snuck out of the house for some late-night unauthorized urban skiing on the snow-covered slopes of Queen Anne Hill. Speeding past the school district office, he had not only seen the assailant with her weapon in hand, but also later heard gunshots. His first instinct had been to dismiss the sound of the shots as a car backfiring. Later, though, when he became aware of the homicides, he had been afraid to come forward, for fear of landing in hot water with his parents. His eyewitness account of having seen an armed young female at the scene initially led us to wonder if perhaps Erin had been responsible for her mother’s death. Only later did we discover the Jennifer Lafflyn connection.
If, as I suspected, Max was the person who had turned down the corner of that particular page, which of the two names written there—Todd’s or Jason’s—had snagged his attention? I jotted both of them onto my yellow pad for future reference and then continued to leaf through the book, scanning as I went.
One piece at a time, the fiction that had been Pete and Marcia Kelsey’s lives fell apart. I read through the parts where we had learned Pete Kelsey’s real identity as an army deserter named John Madsen. Finally I read about the arson fire that had obliterated the Kelsey home. A late-night meet-up with me down at the old Dog House Restaurant on Seventh was the only reason Erin hadn’t been home alone when the fire was set. The fact that Erin hadn’t died in the fire was what had fueled that final life-and-death struggle on the Magnolia Bridge.
When I finished with Marcia’s evidence box, I called for the clerk and sent that one back in exchange for one labeled with Alvin Chambers’s name. Once again, Maxwell Cole’s name was listed on the log sheet, but it appeared only once. In other words, Max hadn’t been as interested in the material devoted to Alvin as he had in that relating to Marcia, and understandably so. Pete, Marcia, and Erin had been Jennifer’s primary targets. In the evidence room, as in the homicide itself, poor Alvin had been little more than second banana.
Taking my cue from Max, I made a far more cursory examination of the second box than I had of the first one. I set aside the bloodstained security guard uniform and focused my attention on the murder book. Some of the reports I found there were virtual copies of the ones I had previously read in Marcia’s. Reading between the lines, I recognized the gradual downward arc of Alvin’s life. He had once been a minister of some kind, but the presence of a troubled wife, one suffering from a combination of both physical and mental issues, had eventually forced him to leave the church. He’d ended up taking the security guard position as a way of making ends meet.
As for his wife? It was during an interview with Charlotte Chambers where we had finally started to learn the truth about the ménage à trois reality of Pete Kelsey’s life and about Marcia’s long-term relationship with her lover, Andrea Stovall. Now, knowing what I did about Maxwell Cole’s own secret life, I couldn’t help but wonder how he must have felt back then when the lies surrounding his friends’ existence had been stripped away and dragged out into the harsh light of day.
Two hours into the process, I left the cubicle for a pit stop and a detour in the corridor long enough to check for messages on my phone. There were two new e-mail notifications, along with a voice mail from Erin. I listened to that one before checking the others.
“A Seattle PD homicide detective was here up until just a few minutes ago asking questions about Uncle Max,” Erin’s recorded voice told me. “His name is Blaylock—Detective Kevin Blaylock. He’s investigating the hit-and-run death of someone named Duc Nguyen. He asked me if I knew of any connections between Max and this Nguyen person. I told him I’d never heard of the guy. I gave him your name and number. I hope you don’t mind.
“Before he left, though, Blaylock gave me some good news. He told me that Uncle Max’s death is now considered suspicious rather than accidental. Thank you, Mr. Beaumont. I don’t know how you made that happen, but you did.”
I appreciated being given the credit for the change of status on Max’s case, but that really should have gone to Al Thorne. As for the vehicular homicide situation? Cases like that are investigated, of course, but resolving one of those doesn’t come with the same kind of public awareness or as much departmental oversight and focus as one sees in the more high-profile ones.
Shootings and stabbings automatically garner media attention for both the victims and the detectives conducting the investigations. Vehicular homicides are usually handed off to someone near the bottom of the homicide unit’s pecking order—either a beardless newbie youth or some gimpy old guy on his way out. Either way, those cases have a high probability of being shelved as opposed to solved.
It occurred to me that if I passed along the fingerprint evidence connecting Duc Nguyen to the death of Maxwell Cole, it might improve the odds for both of those cases to have a successful outcome.
I thought about that for a moment or two as I started checking my e-mails. The first one came from the management team at Erin’s apartment complex. As promised, the “bored” Saturday morning guy had delivered, and the message contained several video files. Three were labeled parking lot. Two others were marked “Building J. Interior” and “Building J.” Combing through security footage is about as much fun as watching paint dry, so I marked that one as unread and went on to the next message. That one came from Christopher Cassidy and contained what appeared to be time cards. I marked that one as unread, too, and then called Erin back.
“Beaumont here,” I said when she answered. “If Max’s death has been booted into the suspicious column, it sounds like good news all around. Does that mean I’m fired?”
“Do you want
to be?”
The truth is, I didn’t. I was feeling engaged and focused in a way I hadn’t felt for months on end. And with the fingerprint stuff still in abeyance, I knew I was holding an important piece of the puzzle.
“I’d still like to know exactly what Max was investigating,” I told her. “I’ve spent the last couple of hours going through the old evidence boxes, and it’s clear Max was doing the same thing.”
“He went through the evidence boxes, too?”
“Yes.”
“But why? What was he looking for? Something to do with Pete and Marcia, maybe?” Erin asked. “Maybe they were involved in something else besides just pretending to be my parents.”
I had heard the profound regret in John Madsen’s voice when he spoke of his long estrangement from Erin. I knew that his love for Erin as well as his parenting of her had been anything but empty pretense. That had been true back then, at the time of Marcia’s death, and his anonymous presence at Max’s funeral showed that it still was. However, I couldn’t very well go into any of that with Erin, at least not right now. Nor was this the time to discuss some of the more colorful details my investigation into Maxwell Cole’s existence had so far revealed about his own hidden life. Those kinds of disclosures—including Erin’s unsuspecting involvement with Amelia Rourke and the DQC—would have to be done in a face-to-face encounter.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to keep digging,” I added after a pause. “Whatever Max found has to have more to do with the present than it does with the past, but what exactly did you say to Detective Blaylock?”
“Like I said, he asked me if Max and the other dead guy, Nguyen, were friends or acquaintances. I told him I had no idea. I’ve certainly never heard the name before, and I couldn’t imagine why Max would be involved with a young gangbanger from the Rainier Valley.”
“Is there anyplace special where Max actually did hang out?” It was a question I should have thought to ask much earlier, and I kicked myself now for not having done so.