Long Time Gone

by J. A. Jance

  But Sister Mary Katherine wasn’t satisfied. “Still,” she said disapprovingly, “keeping quiet about such a thing is unforgivable.”

  The wine and coffee came. Sister Mary Katherine took a careful sip before asking, “What do we do now? Clearly this Marchbank woman was once my friend. I want to know whether or not her killers were ever brought to justice. Certainly I owe her that much. It’s the only way to atone for my silence back then.”

  I wanted to tell her to give the poor little kid she had once been a break, but Fred cut me off before I had a chance.

  “What do you know about forgotten memories?” he asked me.

  “Not much. It usually happens with kids who have been sexually molested, right?”

  Fred nodded. “Most of the time. But it can also have to do with some other early childhood trauma. Beau, you’re focused on the crime aspect of all this. My job has to do with helping Sister Mary Katherine rid herself of the nightmare that’s been robbing her and her nuns of their good night’s sleep. You’ve been able to verify some of the details of what happened and where. If we can compare additional details with what’s been buried in Sister Mary Katherine’s subconscious all this time, we may be able to bring it back into her conscious memory as well. Hypnosis is fine as far as it goes, but in my experience, dealing with the memory consciously is what it’s going to take to break the nightmare’s hold.”

  “But how?” Sister Mary Katherine asked.

  “Do you have the exact address where Madeline Marchbank was living when she was murdered?” Fred asked.

  “I don’t have it right this minute,” I told him. “But I can get it tomorrow once I can access official case files. By then I’ll be able to have vehicle licensing records as well. Why?”

  “I have appointments in the morning, but it might be helpful if you could drive her through her old neighborhood—past the house where she lived—to see if there’s a chance that recognizing familiar ground might be enough to cause a breakthrough in her memory barrier.”

  Sister Mary Katherine shook her head. “I doubt Mr. Beaumont has either the time or the inclination to drive me around my old neighborhood.”

  I remembered what Harry had said. Busying myself with the good sister’s difficulties would keep me from interfering in Ron’s situation.

  “You’re wrong about that,” I said. “In fact, there’s nothing I’d rather do. Give me a chance to get into the official records on the Marchbank case. I’ll also make copies of all the material I found today. Once I have the information I need, I’ll call and make arrangements to drive you to Mimi Marchbank’s former residence. By the way, when are you planning to head back to Whidbey?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon,” she said. “Weather permitting,” she added. “But believe me, if I need to stay longer, I will. I’m ready to put an end to this problem, and so is everyone else at Saint Benedict’s. In fact, they may be even more ready than I am.”

  My cell phone rang. “Beau?” Mel Soames asked. “I thought you said you’d be home all evening. I’m at your place, but the doorman said you took off.”

  “Sorry. Something came up, but I’m only a few minutes away. I’ll be there shortly.”

  I ended the call and turned back to Sister Mary Katherine. “I have to get back home. Give me until midmorning to gather information, then I’ll call you and we can figure out what to do next.” As I stood up, so did Fred. “You don’t have to leave,” I told him. “I’m sure I can catch a cab.”

  “No, I said I’d take you home,” he insisted, “and I will.”

  “I didn’t expect her to be so hard on herself for not telling someone what she had seen,” I said to Fred as we waited for the valet to return Fred’s Lexus. “She couldn’t have been more than four years old when the murder happened.”

  “She’s spent forty years as a Catholic nun,” Fred said. “I suspect you don’t do that without having a well-developed sense of responsibility for the state of humanity.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” I told him.

  With the lift from Fred, I was back at Belltown Terrace within ten minutes of Mel Soames’s phone call and found her waiting in the lobby. She was bundled in a long black leather coat complete with scarf, gloves, and boots. She surveyed my sweater and loafers with visible disdain. “You did take off in a hurry.”

  “As I said on the phone, something unexpected came up.”

  “How unexpected?” she asked. Her tone of voice was sharper than it should have been, and it put me on edge. So did the icy look on her face. I’ve finally learned that seeing an expression like that on a woman’s face usually means bad news for any man dumb enough to remain in close proximity.

  The front door opened and a group of people, sharing a laugh, tumbled into the lobby. They were all drenched in snow, having just been through some kind of killer snowball fight. All of them seemed to be having a very good time. Their high spirts and easygoing banter stood in stark contrast to Melissa Soames’s dour expression.

  “Maybe we should talk about this upstairs,” I suggested. “In private.”

  She nodded. “You’re right,” she agreed stiffly. “Privacy is probably a very good idea.”

  CHAPTER 8

  MOST OF THE TIME when people walk into my twenty-fifth-floor penthouse apartment, they are so agog at the wall-to-wall windows and amazing views that they’re momentarily struck dumb. I doubt Mel Soames even noticed the view. Blue eyes blazing, she rounded on me the moment I shut the door.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” she demanded.

  Seeing Melissa Soames that angry was a daunting sight. I was pretty sure I knew what she meant, but I decided to play dumb anyway. “What are you talking about?”

  “About your going to Ron Peters’s place this afternoon, as if you didn’t know!” she exclaimed. “Didn’t Harry give you strict orders to keep your nose out of it?”

  “Tracy called me,” I said in my defense. “She’s seventeen. Her dad had just been hauled off for questioning in handcuffs, her mother had gone to meet with a lawyer. She called me asking for help. Do you have any idea what it feels like to be a teenager in circumstances like that?”

  “You’d be surprised,” Mel returned.

  “Well, what was I supposed to do?”

  “Obey orders, for starters,” Mel shot back.

  “Who told you I had been there?” I asked the question more to get her off track than because I wanted an answer.

  “Does it matter?”

  My first guess was easy. Based on my latest meeting with Amy’s sharp-tongued sister and her obvious low opinion of me, I assumed Molly Wright to be the probable squealer. “It doesn’t matter at all,” I said. “Now, are you going to stay awhile? Would you like me to take your coat?”

  Mel seemed to consider. With a resigned shrug, she removed her gloves, stuffed them into a pocket, and then slipped out of the coat, folded it and laid it down beside her.

  “Something to drink?”

  This was a bluff, of course. I don’t keep booze in the house and only a limited supply of sodas.

  “Coffee,” she said. “I’m working.”

  Fortunately, I do keep a supply of Seattle’s Best Saturday Blend beans in my freezer. “I’ll be right back,” I said. “Make yourself comfortable.”

  Once the coffee was started, I came back into the living room. By then some of Mel’s temper had worn off. Like everyone else, she had gravitated toward the expanse of western-exposure windows and had settled on the window seat.

  “If you’re working, where’s Brad?” I asked.

  “His wife called. Their pipes are frozen. She needed him to come home.”

  “One of the joys of home ownership,” I said.

  “You know how it’s going to look, don’t you?” she asked.

  “Your being out working on your own?”

  “No, your going by Ron Peters’s place. It’s going to look like you went there to give Ron inside information on what’s going on in our invest
igation—information that you can then hand over to that slick attorney of his who, as I understand it, also happens to be your attorney of record.”

  “Look, Mel,” I said patiently. “I tried to explain this to Harry this morning. Ron and I have been friends for years. Ditto Ralph Ames. The three of us have shared a lot of ups and downs over that time. It’s only natural that Ron would turn to Ralph when he was in need of legal representation. Besides, how could I give Ron information I don’t have? I know Rosemary Peters died over the weekend, but Ron himself told me that. I know blood was found in Ron’s car. Amy told me that. And I heard there had been some kind of family altercation that caused suspicion to point at Ron.”

  “Where did that come from?”

  Maxwell Cole was the one who had provided that last little tidbit, but I knew if I told Melissa Soames that, she’d go ballistic on me again—something I wanted to avoid if at all possible.

  “Ron told me that, too,” I hedged. “And so did Tracy. Ron and Rosemary were in a legal wrangle over custody of his younger daughter, Heather.”

  From the kitchen, I heard the last of the water burble into the pot. “I hope you don’t take cream,” I said. “I’m out of cream.”

  “No. Black is fine.”

  Minutes later, I returned to the living room with two mugs of coffee. I knew that meant I probably wouldn’t sleep very well for the second night in a row, but I wanted to appear hospitable enough to keep Mel from lighting into me again.

  “You’re sure you don’t know anything more than that?” she asked as I handed over her cup.

  “I understand that you and Brad took Ron someplace for questioning—to the office, presumably.”

  Mel pursed her lips as if considering what, if anything, she should say. After a pause she said, “Rosemary Peters was the on-prem manager of a soup kitchen run by an organization called Bread of Life Mission at Fifth and Puyallup in downtown Tacoma, not far from the Tacoma Dome. The place is closed over the weekend. On Monday morning, when her two cooks came in to start breakfast, the back door was unlocked, with no sign of forced entry, but Rosemary was nowhere to be found. Tacoma PD was summoned to the scene. They found a few blood spatters in the parking lot, along with a single shoe. Nothing else. No brass. No usable footprints. And, since the area is paved, no tire tracks, either.

  “Michael Lujan is on the Bread of Life board of directors. He’s also an attorney. He was doing pro bono work for Rosemary Peters in regard to the custody matter. She called him late Friday evening and said that after Ron Peters was served with the papers, he came roaring down to Tacoma and bitched her out. Said he’d—”

  “See her in hell before he’d hand Heather over,” I supplied.

  Mel looked at me questioningly. “He told you that?”

  “As I said earlier, Ron and I are friends—good friends.”

  “When Lujan heard what had happened, that Rosemary was missing, he called Tacoma PD and reported what Rosemary had told him about the incident with her ex. On Sunday afternoon a guy out walking with his dog along the edge of the tide flats stumbled across the body of a dead female. She was found at the bottom of the steep bank that runs along Commencement Bay just south of Brown’s Point. Tacoma PD responded to that incident as well. Sometime late Monday morning someone put two and two together and realized that the missing woman and the dead woman were one and the same. The unidentified gunshot victim was barefoot and wearing nothing but a T-shirt, panties, and robe in frigid weather. From the looks of it, she was forced into the trunk of the vehicle, probably at gunpoint, and then shot while the vehicle was still in the soup kitchen parking lot. The killer then transported the victim to a pullout along Highway 509, where he removed her from the vehicle and rolled her down a steep embankment. Fortunately she didn’t get hung up in a blackberry bramble. If she had, it might have been years before we found the body.”

  I thought about the muscles in Ron’s arms and the upper-body strength that came from years of pushing his own wheelchair and lifting himself in and out of vehicles. Unfortunately, none of this sounded as if it were beyond his physical capabilities.

  “No tire tracks there, either?” I asked.

  Mel shook her head. “Blacktop,” she said. “But we do have something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “There’s a restaurant just up the road—at Brown’s Point. We checked their security camera. We’ve got a grainy but identifiable video of Ron’s very distinctive vehicle going past the restaurant northbound at eleven fifty-nine P.M. Friday.”

  “His clamshell wheelchair topper is pretty distinctive, all right.” That’s what I said, but it wasn’t what I was thinking.

  What time did Tracy say she heard Ron’s car return to the carport? I wondered. Two A.M. or so? That would be just about time enough to make it home to Queen Anne Hill from Brown’s Point, which is between Tacoma and Federal Way.

  “Yes, it is,” Mel continued. “So based on the security tape and your report that someone had found dried blood in Ron’s car, Brad and I showed up armed with a search warrant. We also impounded his car. We found the blood, lots of it…” She paused, her eyes trained on my face. “And something else. Wedged into the wheel well, where he wouldn’t have seen it in the dark, was a single shoe—a shoe that matches the one found in the parking lot outside the Bread of Life Mission.”

  I felt like all the air had been sucked out of my lungs. For lack of something to say, I took Mel’s cup and mine and headed for the kitchen. My hands shook as I poured coffee. I stayed in the kitchen until my breathing and shaking hands were back under control.

  By the time I returned to the living room, Mel had kicked off her boots and had wrapped an afghan around her shoulders.

  “Did your wife make this?” she asked. “It’s lovely.”

  “Neither one of my wives were into crocheting,” I said. “My grandmother made that for me.”

  “Oh,” Mel said.

  I sat back down beside her. I had no idea what to say. Neither did she, evidently. For a time we both sipped our respective coffees in silence.

  “I knew you and Ron Peters had been partners,” she said finally. “But I guess I didn’t realize how tight you were and still are.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “We’re tight, all right.” For a while I thought I was going to let it go at that, but then I surprised myself and told Melissa Soames the rest of it.

  “When Ron and I first started working together, I thought he was a prissy jerk. He was a vegan, and that pissed the hell out of me. I mean, how many vegan cops do you know? I gave him a hard time about it every chance I got. Then, in the course of the case we were working on, I met this woman, an amazing woman, and fell in love with her. Anne was her name, Anne Corley. I realized eventually that she was…well, let’s say troubled…but I was in love and figured it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle. Except she was more than troubled, so troubled she suckered me into shooting her on the afternoon of our wedding day. They didn’t call her death suicide by cop back then, but that’s what it was.”

  “I had no idea,” Mel said after a long pause. “I’m sorry.”

  I nodded. “It happened a long time ago. I got winged by a bullet in the shoot-out. Once the doctors got through with me, Ron Peters was the one who dragged me home from Harborview Hospital. Not here—but to my old apartment. This is the one I bought after Anne died, and soon after I found out how well off she had left me as far as money is concerned.”

  Mel looked around the room as if taking it in for the first time. “She left you all this?”

  I nodded. “And more.” I was silent for a long time. I didn’t resume the story until Mel shifted restlessly on the window seat.

  “But to go back to Ron. When we came home from the ER, he helped me up to my room in the Royal Crest. There, right in plain sight on the kitchen counter, was what was left of our wedding cake. Ron never said a word. He just picked it up and stuffed it down the garbage disposal. We’ve been friends ever since. L
ater on, Ralph Ames, who was Anne’s attorney originally, helped Ron get his kids back from a drug-dealing commune in eastern Oregon, where Rosemary had taken up residence.”

  “So the three of you have a history.”

  “You could say that,” I agreed. “Just call us the three musketeers.”

  I talked about Ron then, telling Mel everything I knew about him. She took notes and asked occasional questions. I probably sounded pretty lame. Maybe I was hoping that if I could convince Mel that Ron Peters was a good guy, I could also get her to disregard the mounting evidence against him. The unchanging expression on her face told me I wasn’t making any progress.

  “So that’s it, then?” she asked when I finally ran out of steam.

  “Pretty much.”

  She closed her notebook, stuffed it in her purse, and retrieved one of her boots from the floor.

  “Where is he?” I asked, expecting her to say the King County Jail in downtown Seattle, or else the Justice Center out in Kent.

  “He’s back home for now,” Mel answered. “At least until the preliminary hearing. We were going to arrest him, but none of the local jails would take him.”

  “Because he’s a cop?”

  “That’s part of it,” Mel conceded. “But also because of his physical situation. Mrs. Peters and your friend, Ralph Ames, made it quite clear that wherever he ended up, the facility needed to be prepared to handle his ongoing medical needs.”

  “As in elimination issues?” I asked, stating what I knew about Ron’s physical challenges as diplomatically as possible.

  Mel simply nodded. “That and the possibility of his developing bedsores—or maybe they call them chair sores. If the AG’s office had its own detention facility, it might be different, but none of the jail commanders we talked to were willing to accept the liability. We had to take him back home for now.”

  “Doesn’t that leave Ross Connors open to charges of playing favorites?”

  Finished zipping up her second boot, Mel gave me a wan smile. “Maybe. But even Ross Connors doesn’t carry much weight when it comes to local officials worrying about possible liability claims. Besides, realistically speaking, Ron Peters doesn’t seem like much of a flight risk. His kids and his wife are here. We’ve confiscated his Camry and his weapons. What’s he going to do?”