Payment in Kind

by J. A. Jance

  “Yes. I never saw her or talked to her after that.”

  “Were you here all the rest of the night?”

  The minute pause before he answered made me wonder if he was telling the truth.

  “Until around ten-thirty or so,” he said. “It was getting late and she wasn't home. I tried calling her direct line, but there was no answer, so I drove over to her office. Her car was there, but I couldn't raise anybody, not even the security guard. I checked a couple of other places and went back by her office again around midnight. By then her car was gone from the lot and I thought maybe we had just missed each other in transit, but when I got back here, she still wasn't home. I realized then that wherever she was, she didn't want to be found. I went to bed. There was no point in staying up any later. I had some contracting work to do early this morning.”

  “You said you noticed her car was missing from the parking lot?”

  “That's right. Marcia has…had an assigned spot, and she always parked there, even at night. It's a good one, close to the door, and the snow wouldn't have kept her from using it.”

  A possibly devious husband and a missing car were two more things that didn't fit with Doc Baker's suicide theory. I asked for the make and model of Marcia Kelsey's turbocharged Volvo. With vehicles abandoned in the snow all over the city, someone's misplaced car could be illegally parked directly in front of Seattle P.D.'s headquarters in the Public Safety Building and it wouldn't be discovered for days.

  Kramer returned to the kitchen, announcing that a call had come in for Pete Kelsey, that Erin wanted to give him her arrival times and flight numbers. While Pete went to pick up the phone in the other room, Detective Kramer edged his way over to me.

  “I've got some news for you,” he said under his breath. “From Doc Baker. They haven't completed the autopsies yet, but he did have one gem for us, a preliminary finding that he thought we ought to know about.”

  “What's that?”

  “The doc says we've got a double on our hands.”

  “You mean Pete Kelsey's right? Marcia didn't commit suicide after all?”

  Detective Kramer nodded. “That's right. And how do you suppose he figured that out before anybody else did? You can bet it's got nothing whatsoever to do with her being a goddamn vegetarian! It's because he did it. He caught 'em in the act and decided to put an end to it.”

  Even though I suspected Pete Kelsey had lied to me about something, that didn't necessarily make him a killer. “Wait just a minute here, Kramer. Did Doc Baker tell you something more about Pete Kelsey, something I ought to know?”

  “Doc Baker treats me like shit. He didn't tell me a goddamned thing, but I'm smart enough to put two and two together. That longhaired freak invites us in here and serves us homemade bread and coffee like we're some kind of visiting royalty instead of cops investigating his wife's murder. He admits he knows she's been whoring around on him, but he still acts grief-stricken. What a load of crap! I'm not falling for it. Kelsey's cool. Too damn cool, if you ask me. All we have to do is wait. He's bound to trip himself up.”

  Kramer's absolute conviction that Kelsey was our man caught me off guard. Jumping to those kinds of conclusions so early in an investigation is bad for everyone concerned. It's too easy to go looking for answers that will match some preset scenario, to create a set of erroneous self-fulfilling prophecies, rather than focusing on what really happened.

  “Hold up a minute, Kramer,” I cautioned. “Let's back off a little.”

  He shook his head stubbornly. “I'm not backing off an inch,” he declared. “Not one goddamn inch!”

  As he said the words, Kramer reached across the counter to the place where Pete Kelsey had been sitting. Without touching the handle, he picked up a teaspoon that had been lying in Kelsey's saucer. With a single smug look at me, he placed the spoon in a glassine bag and dropped it into his pocket.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Fingerprints,” Kramer responded with a smile. “Maybe our friend Kelsey has a police record someplace and his prints are on file with AFIS. If not, we'll happen to have a couple handy. Just in case.”

  AFIS is the state of Washington's new Automated Fingerprint Identification System, a computerized program that's turning previously unusable fingerprints into valuable crime-solving evidence.

  “That's not entirely legal,” I pointed out.

  “Neither is homicide,” Kramer returned. “If you want to squeal about it, Detective Beaumont, go right ahead. Be my guest. Meanwhile, I'm going out to start the car.”

  Kramer left, taking the pilfered spoon with him, and I didn't try to stop him.

  Kramer didn't have to convince me. Between lifting a spoon and nailing some creep who was responsible for the cold-blooded execution of two people, there was absolutely no contest.

  Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.

  Chapter 8

  I waited until Pete Kelsey returned to the kitchen. He paused in the doorway and gave me a long, searching look. It seemed to me that he somehow sensed that things had changed between us. He was right. They had, and not for the better.

  “We're going now,” I said, handing him one of my business cards. “Call me if anything comes up that you think I should know about.”

  He nodded, but he tossed the card on the countertop in an offhand, don't-call-us-we'll-call-you fashion. “Do you need me to show you the way out?” he asked.

  “No. I'm sure I can find it.” I made my way down the stairway and through the immaculate garage. I let myself out onto the street, where Kramer was sitting in the already idling Reliant.

  I looked around. The crowd of eager newsies no longer jammed the neighborhood. It was too damn cold. Either they had retreated to the warmth of their vehicles parked a block below on Boston or they had abandoned the field entirely and returned to their individual newsrooms.

  “Well?” Kramer asked as soon as I climbed into the car and fastened my seat belt.

  “Well what?” I returned.

  “What do you think? Do you agree or not?”

  “You mean have you convinced me that Pete Kelsey's our man? No, you haven't. It's all conjecture, Kramer, without any supportive facts. He may have lied to us about some things, but so far I can't see that we have a smidgen of solid evidence.”

  Kramer shook his massive head. “Come off it, Beaumont. Show me your stuff. Ever since I got to Homicide, everyone's told me about you and your terrific hunches.”

  “My ‘terrific hunches,’ as you call them, sure as hell aren't telling me that Pete Kelsey is a killer.”

  Kramer didn't bother to mask his disgust. “You know what's the matter with you? You fell for all that open marriage bullshit. That doesn't mean the poor bastard wasn't being led around by the balls. He was. That wife of his must have been a real piece of work, but then, so's Kelsey.

  “I think he fed us that whole line of crap just to throw us off track, to make us think he knew what she was up to the whole time. My guess is, he didn't. I'll lay you odds he just found out his wife was two-timing him and decided to put a stop to it once and for all. Where I come from, jealousy's still a pretty damn good motive for murder.”

  We were headed back to the department. I suppose I could have argued with Detective Kramer on the way, told him that he was being premature and lectured him about jumping to conclusions, but I didn't. Reluctantly, and based on my own observations, I was forced to admit that there was some plausibility in what Kramer was saying.

  By then, Kramer was wearing on me, getting on my nerves. I'm basically an impatient person. I always have been, and sobering up hasn't made any difference. Through my work in the AA program, I've been trying to learn to accept the things I can't change and to change the things I can.

  I couldn't change Detective Kramer, couldn't keep him from running off at the mouth, but I could and did get out of the car. I had him drop me at the garage entrance. Bypassing the elevators, I took to the stairwells and pounded my way up
to the fifth floor while Kramer parked the car.

  Margie, my clerk, had two messages for me. One was from Big Al telling me not to worry, that he was much better, but that he was taking a few days of personal leave to help Molly while she finished recuperating. The other was from a lady named Kendra Meadows, who identified herself as the director of Personnel for the Seattle school district.

  It was after three. With the midwinter afternoon waning fast, I figured I'd better hurry and get back to Kendra Meadows before she left her office and headed home.

  As soon as she answered the phone, I could tell from the low, husky timbre of her voice that Kendra Meadows was a middle-aged black woman. She was all business.

  “I have a memo here from Dr. Savage telling me that I'm supposed to render whatever assistance you may find necessary, Detective Beaumont. Phone numbers, addresses, that sort of thing. I'll be here the rest of the afternoon if you want to stop by. My directions are to stay as late as you need me to.”

  Dr. Savage had pulled out all the stops on this one. Kendra Meadows was ready and willing to help, but I didn't yet know exactly what help we would need. Not only that, we had a mound of paperwork to tend to before we called it a day. I hedged for time.

  “Things have gotten pretty hectic around here today,” I said lamely. “Will you be in your office tomorrow?”

  “I don't see any reason why I wouldn't,” she countered.

  If Kendra Meadows had a sense of humor, none of it leaked into her telephone presence. “I come to work every day, Detective Beaumont, rain or shine.”

  “Good,” I said. “Either Detective Kramer or myself will be in to see you tomorrow then.”

  Over my desk I keep a ribald poster featuring a bare-assed kid sitting forlornly on a pot. The caption says, “The job's not finished until the paperwork's done.” The same can be said of police work. I was reaching in one of my drawers for a blank report form when Detective Kramer's bulky frame appeared in the door of my cubicle.

  “Boy, do I have a deal for you,” he said.

  “What's that?” I turned to look at him. He was holding up his own fanfold of messages.

  “How about if I push the papers around here and you go back up to the district office and pick up their bomb threat file? Doris Walker called three different times to say it was ready and were we going to pick it up today.”

  I found it interesting that although I had been the one who had actually talked to Doris Walker, somehow all three of her messages had been shuffled to Kramer. None had come to me. I had heard rumors from one or two of the other detectives who had been stuck working with Paul Kramer that he had developed a system for hogging important messages and that he loved doing reports. All of them. Believe me, for homicide cops, this is not normal behavior.

  Both items had raised eyebrows, although to my knowledge, no one had filed an official grievance on the issue. The report-writing incidents in particular had provoked numerous derogatory comments, the general consensus being that Kramer volunteered to do the paperwork so he could write things his way and make Detective Paul Kramer look good. Officially. That didn't scare me in the least. No matter what he wrote, it wouldn't be any skin off my nose. I sure as hell wasn't lobbying for a promotion, and I hate paperwork.

  “You bet,” I told him. “Sold.”

  I took long enough to put in a “Locate Car” call to 911 on Marcia Kelsey's vehicle in the hopes that somebody might stumble across it. The dispatcher took my “Homicide Hold” request seriously, but he didn't offer much hope of success.

  “You want us to locate a misplaced car in this weather? Go ahead and give me the info, Beaumont, but don't hold your breath. With the streets the way they are, I'd say the chances of our finding it are slim to nonexistent.”

  Two minutes later, I was on my way. The streets were still relatively deserted, and the people who were out seemed to be in a jovial holiday mood. I grabbed one of the Queen Anne-bound buses on Third Avenue rather than go through the hassle of checking out a departmental car. That way, once I had Doris Walker's file in hand, I could go directly home, settle into my user-friendly recliner for a while, and maybe get a little perspective on the day.

  It was something to look forward to, a bright spot on the horizon.

  Doris Walker was waiting for me at her upstairs desk. The file folder in question had been placed in a large, unmarked manila envelope, which she handed over to me with a relieved sigh.

  “Did you ever talk to that poor woman?” she asked.

  “You mean Mrs. Chambers?” Doris nodded.

  “Yes,” I said. “We told her. Right after we left here this morning.”

  Doris seemed immensely relieved. “Good. And is she all right?”

  It was a somewhat naive question. I'm afraid my response was more curt than Doris Walker deserved. “As right as she's going to be, for someone whose husband just died.”

  “I'm sure,” Mrs. Walker said with an embarrassed duck of her chin. “It must be terrible for her. I can't imagine how I'd deal with it if something like that ever happened to my Donald.”

  “With a little luck,” I told her, “You'll never have to.”

  Taking the envelope she gave me, I left the office and headed for home. I could have gone to see Kendra Meadows, but I still didn't know what to ask her. Rather than wait for yet another bus, I wrapped the ugly glow-in-the-dark scarf around my neck, shoved gloved hands deep in my pockets, and set off down the hill, cutting through a winter-wonderland Seattle Center. Except for the muffled shouts of a few children having a snowball fight near the frozen International Fountain, the place was almost totally deserted.

  As I walked, my fondest hope was that Belltown Terrace's recalcitrant heat pumps were once more working properly. I came to the corner of Second and Broad and paused, waiting for the light to change. Suddenly, behind me, somebody yelled, “Look out!”

  Luckily for me, my reflexes still work fine. I dodged out of the way just in time to avoid being creamed by a tightly packed snowball that had been lobbed off the sixth-floor running track of Belltown Terrace. I looked up and saw Heather Peters grinning down at me and getting ready to take another potshot.

  “Heather,” I yelled, “knock that off before someone gets hurt.”

  The happy grin disappeared from Heather's face. “See there?” I heard Tracie's high-pitched reproving voice. “I told you we shouldn't. Now we're in for it!”

  “Meet me at the elevator, you two,” I ordered, fully prepared to march upstairs and chew ass.

  “Don't be too hard on them,” a woman's voice said. The voice that had called out the timely warning belonged to an elderly lady who, leaning heavily on a cane, was making her way slowly along the snowy sidewalk.

  “They're only young once, you know,” she added with an understanding smile. “Remember, it doesn't snow here all that often.”

  Mollified a little by her wise counsel, I toned down the rhetoric enough so that once I found them, all the girls got was a good talking to about the dangers of throwing anything at all off high-rise buildings. The bawling out was followed, in short order, by steaming mugs of hot chocolate all around.

  Disciplinary lines tend to get a little fuzzy when the miscreants don't happen to be your own flesh and blood, or maybe I'm just turning into a middle-aged softy.

  After drinking their cocoa, the girls left my apartment to return to their own, and I retreated to the comforting confines of my ancient recliner, reveling in my living room's toasty seventy-degree temperature. I was sitting there lapping up creature comforts when the phone rang.

  “Hey, Beau. You going tonight?”

  At once I recognized the thin voice as that of Lars Jenssen, a retired halibut fisherman who serves as my sponsor in the Regrade Regulars, an AA group that meets each Monday night in a restaurant just up Second Avenue from where I live.

  My doctor-ordered stay at the Ironwood Ranch dryout farm in Arizona may have been cut short through circumstances beyond my control, but I had deci
ded that I owed it to myself and to my ailing liver to straighten up and fly right. For the time being, anyhow. Working on my own and with Lars Jenssen's continuing help, I was halfway through the prescribed ninety meetings in ninety days that are supposed to get boozy lives back on track again.

  Lars lived another block up Second in a fourth-floor brick walk-up apartment that was a long way from my penthouse luxury, but he never complained.

  “I'll stop by for you around six-thirty,” he said, not waiting for me to say yes or no.

  I thought of my shiny little 928 securely parked in the garage downstairs. It was safe and sound, and considering road conditions, I wanted to keep it that way. Nevertheless, I felt a moral obligation to offer Lars a ride in the frigid weather.

  “Look, Lars, I don't much want to drive. Someone will end up creaming my car if I do, but we could always take a taxi. How about if I grab a cab and stop by to pick you up?”