by G. M. Ford
“And they’ll just ship one over.”
“Sure. All I’ve got to do is tell them I may know who it is and want to have a look, then the transportation and final disposition costs come out of my budget and not theirs, and they do their happy dance.”
“Even death is a matter of money,” I said.
She smiled. “I’ll see you in the kitchen,” she said and padded out of the room.
Took me a couple minutes of crawling around the floor to find my clothes and another couple to get dressed. By the time I made it downstairs to the kitchen, four Eggos had come popping out of the toaster.
Rebecca forked them onto a paper plate, pulled a bottle of real maple syrup out of the pantry, and handed both to me. “I’m out of butter,” she announced.
We were both chewing away contentedly when she asked, “You figured out how you’re going to tell Alice Townsend what’s going on?”
I swallowed and said, “Not sure. Somehow I need to get to her without going out to her house. There’s no way for the parka brothers to find her unless I lead them there, and there’s no way I’m gonna take a chance of doing that.”
“He’s speaking at Downtown Baptist tonight,” she said around a mouthful of waffles.
“You sure?”
“SPD’s making a big deal of it. Calling out the storm troopers. They’re determined not to have the kind of mob scene they had the other night in Fremont.”
“I was there. It got ugly in a big hurry.”
She frowned. “He deserves it. He’s lucky every woman in town doesn’t go down there, drag him out in the street, and kick his ass.”
I waved my fork. “You know . . . I’ve met the guy, and I’m not sure he actually believes any of that male domination stuff. He’s sure as hell not living his life from that perspective. I think maybe he just says that crazy stuff to put people in the pews.”
“Is that better or worse?”
“I’m not sure.”
She got to her feet, threw the paper plate in the garbage and the fork in the sink.
“I’ve got to jump in the shower.”
“I’ll Uber home,” I said.
“Do you realize you just made a noun into an intransitive verb?”
I wiped my mouth. “Story of my life,” I said.
It was the lions and the Christians all over again, with pretty much the same results.
True to their word, the SPD was out in force. They’d formed a skirmish line all the way around the Downtown Baptist Church. Regular cops immediately behind the barrier, backed up by SWAT officers stationed at strategic intervals along the line.
I’d showed up an hour or so early and lucked into a curbside parking spot in the 1100 block of Tenth Avenue, right behind the church’s day-care center. From the look of it, tonight’s lecture was by invitation only. Everybody who started up the steps was being checked against some kind of list. Most were issued a blue badge and then ushered inside; a couple were sent packing. One guy was frog-walked back down the stairs and unceremoniously stuffed into a police cruiser.
On the other side of the yellow tape, seemed like every women’s organization in the city had a bone to pick with Aaron Townsend. The LGBT community was particularly strident in their dissent. The National Organization for Women was a bit more staid, but just as adamant, as were the Washington Women’s Foundation, the Refugee Women’s Alliance, and what I was estimating to be three or four hundred other folks of indeterminate gender and political affiliation.
When the big white tour bus stopped in the middle of Harvard Avenue, things looked like they were beginning to get interesting, so I got out of my car and leaned against the fender for a better view.
A moment after the bus door swung open with a hiss, Pastor and Mrs. Highsmith stepped out into the street, followed by a veritable herd of pastors and their significant others. I was guessing that what we had here were the pastors of all the churches which used to be Mount Zion Ministries, come in force this time to beard the lion in his den. And this time, they weren’t crashing the party either. Every one of them had a blue admittance badge plastered to his chest. This was definitely going to get interesting.
As the clutch of clergymen formed a tight muttering knot at the foot of the stairs, the wives peeled off in my direction, whispering among themselves as they waited for the next act to unfold.
Mrs. Highsmith caught sight of me and smiled. I smiled back and gave a little wave. I watched as she excused herself from the other women and began walking my way. “How nice to see you again, Mr. Waterman,” she said.
“Just couldn’t stay away,” I said. “Nice to see your husband’s not going it alone this time.”
“They’ve sworn not to interrupt. They’re calling it a silent vigil of protest.”
“I notice he’s not calling these things sermons anymore. The ad for this one called it a speech.”
“For the sake of the church,” she said. “That way they can charge admission. They’ll make more tonight than a month’s worth of donations.”
Out in the street, the cops were checking the pastors’ badges.
“Is that that poor Mr. Stone?” she asked.
She was looking through the window into the backseat of my car, where a streetlight lit up my collection of postmortem photos and other paperwork spread all over the seat.
“You know him?” I asked.
“He used to be part of Pastor Townsend’s congregation,” she replied. “As I understand it, he suffered some sort of mental breakdown and left the fold.”
I opened the car door and gathered up all the stuff that was scattered around.
I thumbed through it, found the picture of Blaine Peterson, and showed it to her.
“What about him?”
“His wife was a member, I think. As I understand it, he wasn’t a believer and wasn’t particularly happy that his wife was either.”
I reached into my pocket, pulled out my phone, and thumbed my way to the photo I’d taken of Biggs and Bostick at the church building on West Woodland.
“What about these two?” I asked.
She blanched and brought a hand to her throat. “Oh . . . those two,” she said.
“You know them?”
“Unfortunately.” She tapped the screen with her finger. “Nate Tuttle—he’s the man who left all the properties to Aaron Townsend. A good-hearted soul if ever there was one—he used to take in foster children. Something like thirty of them. Rescued lots of children over the years. Created quite a few good, successful Christian souls. But these two . . .” Her finger shook. “These two were the last boys he took in, and I’m afraid they were beyond Nate’s help. All they were interested in was the money.”
“What money?”
She heaved a sigh. “Nate was a little eccentric, I’m afraid. He didn’t trust banks, so, back in his younger days, he used to keep quite a bit of cash around the house all the time. Those two idiots were just convinced that the money still had to be around one of his properties somewhere. They badgered the church council about it, disrupted meetings and services, injured a man who tried to make them leave, and constantly harassed Pastor Townsend and his family, when the truth was that, by the time Nate passed away, all the cash had long since gone toward his medical expenses.” She shook her head. “But those two just wouldn’t listen. It was really quite awful.”
She made a disgusted face. “I know we’re all God’s children,” she said. “But people like those two give one pause to wonder.”
A rumble began to ripple over the assembled multitude as two lines of uniformed officers began parting the mob like the Red Sea. We watched as they pushed the crowd back, using their batons to force open a corridor. Shouts began to fill the air in the moment before Aaron and Alice Townsend came into view. They linked arms and held their ground as the corridor directly in front of them collapsed in a melee of churning arms and legs. As the cops began to clear the way, one body at a time, I decided to go with my lead-in.
&
nbsp; “Did you know the first Mrs. Townsend?” I asked.
Mrs. Highsmith nodded. “Tracy was a kind soul, but not very strong,” she said. “Not really prepared for the kind of life she found herself in.”
“How so?” I asked.
“Poor thing was just overwhelmed by Aaron’s level of success. She never wanted anything like that. All that notoriety was just too much for her. It was like she was smothered by it all.”
I cast a glance over at the crowd scene. “Doesn’t seem to bother the present Mrs. Townsend,” I said.
She either smiled or grimaced. It was hard to tell. “Alice is a different kettle of fish altogether,” she said. “That’s a woman who knew what she wanted from day one. She swallowed Aaron Townsend like the whale swallowed Jonah.”
The cops had finally cleared the way. Aaron and Alice Townsend were moving forward again. When they reached the top of the stairs, Pastor Highsmith and the loyal opposition fell in behind them. I watched as the other wives began to follow their husbands up the stairs.
“I have to go,” Mrs. Highsmith said.
I reached into my jacket pocket and came out with a note I’d written earlier in the day. “You think maybe you could give this to Alice Townsend for me?”
“I’ll do my best,” she promised.
I believed her.
I stayed around long enough to hear the rousing cheer Townsend got as he walked to the microphone, then walked down to Broadway for a cup of coffee.
The Grind House was a classic Seattle coffee shop. All fancy-ass coffees, dried-out pastries, and people pecking at laptops. I weathered the usual poor bastard look from the barista when I ordered regular coffee with cream and sugar, found myself a table along the wall, and sipped at the java while I tried to figure out why in hell Aaron and Alice Townsend had lied to me about not knowing Stone, Peterson, Biggs, and Bostick. No matter which way I turned it, I couldn’t come up with a good reason for them to lie about it.
The door tinkled. I looked up and she was coming down the aisle, slowly, carefully, as if she were approaching the edge of a cliff. I gestured toward the other chair.
She just stood there, glaring at me. I figured she was thinking about turning around and walking out in the ten seconds before she finally took a seat.
“Can I get you something?” I asked.
“What do you want?”
“To apologize.”
“If you’re looking for money, my husband knows about my past,” she said. “So if you think—”
I cut her off. “I’m not. Nothing like that.”
Now that I really studied her, I realized that her face didn’t move much. Big things like her smile and the frown she was wearing now appeared natural enough, but the subtler movements were missing, as if her face had been created in place and designed to operate only within certain narrow limits.
“Then what do you want?” she asked again.
“I told you I want to apologize.”
“For what?”
“For sticking my nose into your life, when it wasn’t any of my business.”
“And that’s how you got the name Tuesday Jo.”
“I was investigating something else and I . . . I seemed to have opened a can of worms.”
“What can of worms?”
I told her. About sending her prints to IAFIS and my little adventure in Las Vegas. It took a while. She sat in stunned silence for the better part of thirty seconds after I’d finished.
“Do they know who . . . I mean, about me? About Alice Townsend?”
“No,” I said. “There’s no way they know who you are now.”
She huffed. “Then why tell me about it? I’ve left that life behind me.”
“Because there’s a couple of bananas from Vegas in town, nosing around.”
She rolled her eyes. “Those goombas never give up.”
“We’re working on a plan.”
“Who’s we?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“What’s the plan?”
“Theresa Calder is about to be dead and buried.”
“How’s that going to happen?”
“Can’t tell you that either.”
Another strained silence.
“Is there anything I can do?” she asked finally.
“You might consider keeping a lower profile for the next week or so, if that’s possible.”
She was shaking her head before I finished the sentence. “Believe me, I’ve tried,” she said in a low voice. “My husband . . .” She paused, as if choosing her words carefully.
“My husband is transformed by his work,” she said after a moment. “It’s like he becomes someone else when he preaches. Someone who lights up a room. Someone who knows what the rest of us don’t.” She shook her head again. “He can’t stop. He doesn’t feel alive unless he’s got an audience.” She got to her feet. “He says he becomes filled with the Lord,” she said. “But sometimes I think he’s just full of himself.” Her eyes narrowed. “Men are like that.”
I stood up.
“I’ve got to get back. I hope you know what you’re doing,” she said.
“Me too.”
“Why didn’t you just mind your own damn business?”
“I really wish I knew the answer to that.”
According to the following morning’s Seattle Times, Aaron Townsend’s speech had been a rather contentious affair, punctuated by a series of outbursts from the audience, which had resulted in a number of people being forcibly removed from the building. The rest of the article rehashed the rise and fall of his career as leader of Mount Zion Ministries and speculated on precisely how he had become such a polarizing figure within the local religious community.
I was on my second cup of coffee when Rebecca called. “I’ve got one,” she said.
“A body?”
“From Pierce County. A Jane Doe. Perfect for our purposes. Been dead for more than a week, most of it spent in Commencement Bay. There’s a problem though.”
“What’s that?”
“We have to go get it. Harry Downes, the Pierce County ME, is the cheapest SOB alive. Which means I’d need to provide a van, which I can manage, and a transportation crew, which I can’t.”
“You can’t use your regular guys,” I said. “’Cause that would create a paper trail with the union that you might have to explain later.”
“Right.”
“I could—”
“No. It can’t be you. I can turn off the CCTV system in our garage when I leave tonight, but whoever picks up the body will be on TV the whole time they’re in the Pierce County building. We need a couple of guys from off the grid.”
“Oh . . . I know twenty or thirty of those.”
“Maybe George and somebody else. Not Norman or Ralphie.”
“I’ll find somebody.”
“They need to be sober.”
I laughed out loud.
“And you need to clean them up. They need to look like county employees. I can provide a couple sets of scrubs so they look official.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow afternoon.”
“Tomorrow’s Saturday.”
“Which is perfect. We’ve got crews on call, but nobody’s actually on site.”
“What if they get a call?”
“That’s a chance we’re just going to have to take.”
“I’ll get on it.”
“I need to find her a burial plot.”
“I’ve got a few,” I said.
“Where?”
“Up at Lakeside.”
“How’d you end up with those?”
“They were supposed to be for my father’s sisters, but they all ended up moving down to Scottsdale and Palm Springs and getting buried down there, so I ended up with four extra plots.”
“There’s something terribly ironic about an unclaimed Jane Doe ending up on top of Capitol Hill, spending her eternity with the city’s movers and shakers.”
&nbs
p; “I kinda like it.”
“The beef brothers came around again this morning. Filed an official request to see the body. They’re saying they think it’s someone they know, using another name. I explained that only family members were allowed to view the remains, but that I’d check with my boss to see if maybe we couldn’t make an exception.”
“You don’t have a boss.”
“Yeah, but they don’t know that.”
“Can we let ’em look?” I asked.
“I’m thinking it might be the fastest way to get rid of them. I’ve seen the postmortems. About the time I pull back that sheet those two are going to wish they were doing something else. Ms. Doe is pretty far gone.”
“You’d have made a great criminal,” I said.
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“I’ll find us some volunteers.”
“I’ll call Pierce County. Tell them they’ll be down tomorrow for the remains.”
Whoever it was who said there wasn’t much point in putting lipstick on a pig was right. George Paris and Red Lopez were as clean and sanitary as they’d been in years, but, even to the casual observer, something about them was still a bit off-kilter, as if living on the streets for long enough robbed a man of his tribal affiliation, like some piece of his soul was forever lost . . . something that couldn’t be replaced by a haircut and a new pair of shoes.
I thought back to that kid living under the freeway, a kid who could never be a part of regular society again, ’cause once the light of belonging is extinguished, you’re in the dark forever. Always on the outside looking in.
I’d often thought that was why George had kept his driver’s license current, as if being entitled to drive was a link with better times he wasn’t willing to sever, even though he didn’t own a car, and didn’t know anybody but me who did. The license was a filament to his better days, a link that, in his mind, separated him from the truly lost.
It was one thirty on Saturday afternoon. The boys were stomping around in their crinkly new scrubs when Rebecca pulled into my driveway driving a white King County Coroner’s van and got out.