by J. A. Jance
Erin thought for a moment before she answered. “Sneaky Pete’s, I suppose,” she said. “That was probably his favorite. It’s right at the bottom of the Counter Balance and only a few blocks from his house. He liked to go there in the evenings, grab something to eat, gab for a little, and have a drink or two before heading home.”
I remembered how that worked from back in my own boozing days. If you’re going to drink and drive, you’re always better off having to navigate a couple of blocks than a couple of miles.
“I heard you talked to Christopher,” Erin said, abruptly changing the subject.
“Yes,” I told her. “He sent me his time cards from last week. And I have the security footage from your apartment complex as well.”
“Does that mean we’ll both have provable alibis?”
“Yes,” I told her, without adding the words “assuming they check out.”
“That’s a relief, but I’m going to have to go. There’s a big private party at work tonight, and I offered to come in a couple of hours early to get ready.”
“Take care,” I told her. “I’ll be in touch.”
CHAPTER 23
I WENT IN SEARCH OF A CUP OF COFFEE AND WAS DIRECTED to a break room where the pay-to-play coffee machine yielded a cup of something that bore zero resemblance to real coffee. Knowing I wouldn’t be allowed to take the vile stuff into the cubicle with me, I took a chair in the break room and fired up my iPad.
My study of Christopher’s time cards and the films from Erin’s apartment complex soon led me to believe that both of their alibis would indeed stand up to investigative scrutiny. Then I went browsing on the Internet. As a member of S.H.I.T., I had become accustomed to and incredibly spoiled by having access to the extensive data available through LexisNexis as well as any number of other official and unofficial sources whenever I needed information. Now I was reduced to the thin gruel of what was routinely available online, which, to tell the truth, wasn’t much.
Remembering that page with the turned-down corner in the murder book, I googled the star witness in the Marcia Kelsey case and came up with any number of hits on Jason Ragsdale. What popped up on my screen were mostly connections to various legal proceedings. Reading between the lines, I came to the conclusion that Jason had grown up, attended law school, and come out the other end as a prominent divorce attorney in the Seattle-Tacoma area.
When I typed Todd Farraday’s name into the search engine, I expected a variation on that same theme for Mayor Farraday’s much-coddled son. What I ended up with instead was a brief obituary.
Todd Michael Farraday, age 43, went to his reward on Wednesday, January 4, after a long illness. He was laid to rest during a private ceremony at the family plot in Holy Name Family Cemetery in West Seattle. He was preceded in death by his parents, William M. Farraday and his mother, former Seattle mayor, Natalie Farraday Harden. He is survived by his loving stepfather, Lawrence Harden.
In lieu of flowers donations may be directed to The Refuge, P.O. Box 728, Seattle, 98143.
I read the article through once and then again because, in those few words, everything I had thought I knew about the case suddenly shifted into clearer focus. What is it they say? When it comes to politics, the cover-up is always worse than the crime itself. Nixon and Watergate? There you are. Todd had been the mayor’s son while he was busy making his school district bomb threats, and the whole thing had been kept dead quiet. Even now, however, I remembered the name of the guy who had warned Ron Peters and me away from looking into the issue. Larry Harden had been only a captain at the time, but eventually he had gone on to become chief of police.
During his brief tenure as head of the department—less than six months—Harden’s relationship with the rank and file had been anything but cordial. He was routinely referred to as either Chief Hard-nose Harden or Chief Hard-on Harden, depending on how pissed the speaker was at the time the name-calling occurred and whether or not it happened in mixed company. Forces had been lining up to expel him, when Harden had beaten everyone to the punch by resigning abruptly in order to run for some elective public office or other. After that he had fallen completely off my radar.
Considering the fact that I was newly sober at the time, it wasn’t surprising that I had neglected to notice that sometime after his departure, the former police chief and the former mayor had tied the knot. But now that I knew how things had turned out, I suspected that their lovey-dovey relationship predated both his promotion and their wedding by a number of years. In hindsight it was easy to understand how such a totally inept turkey had ended up being appointed chief.
That’s when the last pieces of the puzzle slipped into place. Wasn’t that exactly what Amelia Rourke had told me? That Max had been concerned about pushback from some big fish at Seattle PD, someone from back in the day who might still have enough pull inside the department to carry out a whole new cover-up?
Lawrence Harden certainly qualified as far as being a big fish was concerned, and he also understood the subtle ins and outs of finagling a cover-up. From where I was sitting in the Evidence Unit’s break room, it seemed likely that he would have been in favor of making sure the bomb threat accusations against his future stepson went nowhere. That had taken a good deal of political pull back then, but did Harden still have the same kind of juice at his disposal all these years later? It seemed likely to me that Lawrence Harden was the can of worms Maxwell Cole had inadvertently kicked over, and that he was also the reason Max was dead.
I ran through the time line in my head. Mel and I had run into Max at El Gaucho on the evening of Friday the 13th. (I’m a superstitious guy. I remember things like that.) Todd had died a few days earlier. It was possible that at the time Max had been chatting with Mel and me, he had yet to hear the news of Todd’s death. If Max had learned about it sometime during the day on Saturday, that might account for his sudden uptick of concern about his own safety, resulting in his asking Erin to contact me in case something untoward happened to him.
I went back to the obituary and read through it again, parsing all the words and making notes along the way. Todd had succumbed at what I thought to be a very young age from what was termed “a long illness,” a euphemism that could be used to conceal a multitude of sins, including long-term drug or alcohol abuse. So what exactly was Todd’s cause of death? Thinking the notice’s “in lieu of” suggestion might provide a clue, I clicked on the word “Refuge” and was taken straight to a link for the Refuge Shelter, located on Aurora Boulevard North, a self-described “wet house” for hopeless alcoholics who also happen to be homeless.
Long illness indeed! In most homeless shelters, sobriety is mandatory rather than optional and the sine qua non for being granted admission. If you go seeking shelter from, say, the Salvation Army, for example, there’s no point in showing up drunk or high. In recent years, however, a number of do-gooders out there—ones who generally regard themselves as the smartest people in the room—have begun to push back on that way of thinking. Maintaining that mandatory sobriety raises the bar for admission far too high; they have branched off into creating shelters where homeless drunks can check in and keep right on drinking. Seattle boasts two wet house facilities. The first one, located on Eastlake, has been operational for years. The Refuge seemed to be the new kid on the block.
As a former drunk, allow me to say, straight out, that I think the whole idea of “wet houses” is nuts. Giving drunks places to stay while they proceed to drink themselves to death seems counterproductive. The world is a funny place, however, and it takes all kinds. That’s when something else Amelia Rourke had said to me came to mind. Max had mentioned that he wished he’d never talked to “that drunk,” without mentioning anyone by name. Was Todd Farraday the drunk in question? Right that minute, I was prepared to bet money on it.
I’ve seen search-and-rescue bloodhounds on the job occasionally, and once one of those animals catches a scent, the dog is on it. Homicide investigators operate the same way.
I was up and out of that break room so fast it would have made your head spin. Telling the clerk I was done for the day and that he could have his evidence box back, I made for the parking lot, dialing Todd Hatcher on the way.
“Do you happen to have that intern handy?” I asked when he answered.
“It’s Saturday,” he reminded me. “Student interns don’t work on weekends. Why? What do you need?”
“Everything there is to know on three people—Todd Farraday, recently deceased; his mother, Natalie Farraday Harden; and Natalie’s second husband and Todd’s stepfather, a guy by the name of Larry Harden. Harden may be listed as either Larry or Lawrence. I’m not sure which.”
“And how soon do you need this information?”
“ASAP, of course,” I told him.
“Right,” Hatcher said. “I get it, immediately if not sooner, but just for the record, I ought to charge more if I’m having to investigate someone named Todd.”
“You’re charging now?” I asked.
“No,” he said with a laugh, “just kidding.”
I got in the car and typed the name “Refuge” into my GPS. The shelter’s physical presence turned out to be in the 3900 block of Aurora Avenue North, otherwise known as State Route 99.
For years Highway 99 provided a usable secondary controlled-access route running north and south through downtown Seattle. Much of that was via first a raised highway known as the Alaskan Way Viaduct and then the Battery Street Tunnel, which leads back to surface streets. The Washington Department of Transportation is currently revising that route and is in the process of constructing a tunnel to carry Highway 99’s traffic.
Naturally the project has been beset by huge delays and mounting cost overruns. A couple of years ago the drilling machine they’re using, affectionately dubbed “Big Bertha,” got tangled up in some unexpected construction debris and was out of service for months on end. The ongoing traffic delays have made using the viaduct an iffy proposition, but my GPS said Highway 99 through the Battery Street tunnel was my best option. Since this was a Saturday and construction workers were most likely not working, I crossed my fingers and took her advice.
That stretch of Highway 99 on the far side of the Aurora Bridge has long been a haven for dodgy flophouse-style motels rife with prostitution, drug use, and, yes, homelessness. I suppose part of the rationale for locating a wet house shelter in that neighborhood was that their most likely clientele would feel more at home in that part of the city than they would anywhere else.
Once I arrived, it was apparent that someone had bought up two of the former motels, given them an extensive upgrade, and deemed them fit for their current higher purpose. I parked in a visitors’ slot. After pressing a button to be buzzed inside, I walked into a well-furnished lobby area that, despite the polished floor and upscale furnishings, still reeked of the same antiseptic scents that you find in low-end rehab facilities, which, come to think of it, this one was. Rather than being for the old and the frail, this was for unrepentant drunks, several of whom were seated here and there around the lobby. They eyed me suspiciously as I entered and continued to monitor my every word and gesture with rapt attention. No doubt they had me pegged as some kind of cop, and they were wondering who among them was about to have a world of hurt visited on his or her head.
The muscle-bound young man seated behind the front desk reminded me of the bouncer at DQC. “May I help you?” he asked. His name tag identified him as Mr. Bannerman.
“I’d like to speak to someone about one of your former clients,” I said, “a man by the name of Todd Farraday.”
“Our residents all have HIPPA protections,” the gatekeeper told me.
I thought he was probably blowing smoke just to get rid of me since the Refuge didn’t seem to have all the trappings of a health-care facility. Refusing to take the hint, I pointed toward the visitor sign-in sheet.
“I’m actually investigating one of Mr. Farraday’s visitors,” I told him, “a man named Maxwell Cole. Since Mr. Cole wasn’t a resident here, I’m pretty sure he didn’t have HIPPA protection.”
Mr. Bannerman crossed his arms. “We regard our residents’ visitor information as confidential as well, although I suppose, if you had a warrant, I could let you check the guest register.”
We both knew I didn’t have a warrant, not on me, and since I hadn’t shown any kind of ID, he knew good and well that I wasn’t a cop. But since the other people in the room were still paying attention, I let things play out a little longer.
“Mr. Cole was murdered just under a week ago,” I continued, “a few days after Mr. Farraday passed away. It’s possible the two deaths were somehow related, at least that’s my current theory.”
Mr. Bannerman didn’t budge. “Due to their alcohol consumption, our residents often have issues,” he said. “On occasion, those issues lead to unfortunate results and even untimely deaths. I can assure you, however, that Mr. Farraday’s death was neither unexpected nor avoidable, may he rest in peace.”
The last, I’m sure, was for the benefit of those listening in on the conversation. I had the distinct impression that Bannerman wasn’t nearly as sympathetic about Todd Farraday’s untimely demise as he wanted the other residents to believe. Bannerman had a job to do, and he was doing it, but he was there for his paycheck and not because he had the milk of human kindness running in his veins.
Two newly arrived visitors approached the desk, and Mr. Bannerman was quick to turn his attention on them. I waited while he called one of the other residents to let him know he had a pair of visitors waiting in the lobby. From that conversation I was able to ascertain that visitations usually took place in the lobby area rather than in the individual units themselves. Under the circumstances, that seemed reasonable enough. The last thing the Refuge needed would be drunken private parties attended by people who weren’t residents of the facility.
Finished with the newcomers, Bannerman turned back to me, shaking his head in annoyance when he realized that his pointed attempt at brushing me off hadn’t worked.
“As I said before,” he told me, “if you want access to the visitors’ log, you’ll need to come back with a warrant.”
Cops aren’t allowed to offer bribes. Had I been carrying a badge, I could never have done this. I knew going in that Bannerman would never take me up on it. However, for the benefit of the audience in the lobby, I reached for my wallet. “What about if I brought along my friend Franklin?” I asked. “Would that work?”
Bannerman’s meaty muscles flexed under his shirtsleeves. “I don’t take bribes,” he snarled at me. “Either bring me a warrant or it’s no deal. Now get the hell out of here, and don’t let the door hit you in the butt on the way.”
I retreated as far as my car. Rather than starting it up, however, I pulled out my iPad and spent a few minutes completing that morning’s unfinished crossword puzzle, all the while waiting to see if I had managed to set the hook. Sure enough, a few minutes later, there was a sharp rap on the window next to my head. A grizzled old guy, leaning heavily on a walker, stood just outside the car. As soon as I buzzed down the window, the unwelcome stink of secondhand vodka flowed into my Mercedes. People who claim vodka doesn’t smell don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. It’s unmistakable.
“Is that hundred bucks still on offer?” he wanted to know.
“Depends on what you’re prepared to give me,” I told him.
“Todd was good friends with a guy by the name of Patrick Donahue. I’m pretty sure he’s up in his room right now. I could go tell him you need to talk to him.”
I immediately pulled out my wallet and handed over the hundred. “You can tell Mr. Donahue from me that I have one of these for him, too, in case he’s interested. Let him know that I’m here to talk to him about Todd’s connection to a friend of mine, Maxwell Cole.”
“The guy who’s dead?”
Obviously Mr. Walker Guy had been paying very close attention to the conversation between me an
d Mr. Bannerman.
“That’s right,” I said, “Cole is the one who’s dead.”
The guy stuffed the hundred into his shirt pocket and then shuffled back indoors as fast as he could go, reminding me for all the world of Arte Johnson, that doddering old character who used to be on Laugh-In—the one who could never quite manage to wrap his arms around that elusive sweet little beauty, Goldie Hawn.
Now that my first bribe had borne fruit, I settled in to see if the second one would do so as well. The next tap on the window was on the passenger side. I opened the window. “Patrick?” I asked.
A tall, painfully thin guy leaned down and peered inside. “That’s me,” he said.
“Do you have a couple of minutes to talk?” I asked.
“That depends,” he said. “Show me the money.”
Like his predecessor, he pocketed the bill first thing. Once the cash was stowed, he reached for the door handle. “We can’t talk here,” he said. “No telling who might be watching. We should probably go for a ride.”
“All right,” I told him. “Get in.”
He did, and off we went. As we pulled onto Aurora, I noticed that Patrick kept a close eye on everything around us. Considering the wary focus he aimed at the rearview mirror on the passenger side of the car, I didn’t think he was just checking for oncoming traffic.
CHAPTER 24
I STARTED TO ASK, “WHAT’S YOUR POISON?” BUT THOUGHT better of it. The yellowish cast to Patrick’s skin and the distended belly on an otherwise skeletal frame was something I had seen before, mostly at AA meetings. Those two symptoms taken together generally mean liver disease—late-stage liver disease.
“Where to?” I asked.
Instead of heading off to the nearest bar as I had more or less expected, Patrick directed me to a hip little coffee shop in Greenlake. “It’s a little out of my price range most of the time,” he said wistfully. “My daughter won’t have anything to do with me these days, but my granddaughter brings me here occasionally as a special treat.”