Long Time Gone

by J. A. Jance

  “You’ve got no right to come charging in here like this without so much as a by-your-leave,” someone was saying.

  “I just came by to talk to you,” Paul Kramer said. “I wanted to go over some phone records with you. I knocked, but you must not have heard—” He stopped. “Wait a minute. What’s that?”

  “What’s what?”

  “There on the floor.”

  “Paint,” Bill Winkler answered. “Red paint. One of my guys spilled it earlier this week. I decided covering it over would be easier than cleaning it up.”

  “It doesn’t look like paint to me,” Kramer said. “It looks more like blood—a lot of it. I think you’d better come with me, Mr. Winkler. I’d say we have far more to discuss than phone records.”

  “Like hell!” Bill Winkler responded. I heard a dull thud—the kind of noise you hear on a football field when one player crashes into another, only I doubted anyone here was wearing protective padding. I looked at Mel. She was already reaching for her phone.

  Inside, the sounds of a desperate struggle continued. We both had our backup weapons—lightweight Glocks that were fine up close but would be useless from a distance. That meant for our guns to be useful we had to be inside the building, but neither of us was wearing a vest. Mel’s was probably in her trunk. Mine was at home.

  “Go,” she told me in an urgent whisper. “Once you’re inside, you go left. I’ll go right as soon as I’m off the phone.”

  I stepped through the door and into the warehouse just as a muffled gunshot ended the struggle. Only half the cavernous room was lit by the feeble glow of hanging fluorescent shop lights. Thankful for the dim lighting, I dodged forward between ranks of mostly empty metal shelving. Finally I was close enough that I could see the outline of a man standing still, breathing heavily, and looking down. I could also see the outline of the gun in his hand.

  I caught a flash of movement off to my right as Mel Soames darted through the door and then disappeared behind a tall wooden counter. “Drop it!” she shouted. “We’ve got the place surrounded. Put down your weapon and get down on the floor, facedown.”

  Surrounded? I knew she was bluffing. Mel knew she was bluffing. All we could hope was that Bill Winkler had no idea.

  But he must have. “Hell, no!” he exclaimed. With that he turned and set off at a dead run for the far side of the building, where only now I could see the outline of another door. He reached it, pulled it open, and then stood behind it, using it for cover as he sprayed the interior of the building with a barrage of automatic gunfire.

  For a moment, after the door banged shut, I stood where I was. “Kramer,” I shouted. “It’s Beaumont. Can you hear me? Are you all right?”

  His response was more groan than anything else. “Go get him. Don’t let him get away.”

  I turned and sprinted toward the door. Mel was there waiting. “Here,” she said, and thrust a set of keys into my hand.

  “They’re from his van,” she said. “I saw them and took them when I was making the call. Without your vest, we’ll be better off in vehicles.”

  “Right,” I said. And away we went.

  CHAPTER 23

  AS WE EXITED THE BUILDING, the first of several squad cars came streaming through the gate. Those guys had weapons and vests and they were all a hell of a lot younger than either Mel or me. While the young Turks went sprinting off toward the back of the building, Mel and I hurried back inside, with Mel redialing 911 and calling for medics as we went.

  We found Paul Kramer lying faceup on the concrete floor. He looked so pallid in the yellow-tinged glow of the fluorescent lights that at first I was afraid he was already dead, but when we reached him, he was still breathing.

  “Thank God!” I exclaimed.

  He had been wearing a vest. Unfortunately, a single bullet had sliced through the edge at the bottom of the vest and veered into his ample gut. He was doing his best to maintain some kind of pressure on the bloody wound, but he was losing it and slipping into unconsciousness. I moved his hand aside and put my own in place of his. Kramer was a pain in the ass, but I had never wished him this kind of ill.

  “Stay with me, Kramer,” I ordered. “You son of a bitch, you’d better not give up and die on me now. What in blazes were you thinking coming here alone?”

  His eyes blinked open briefly and then closed again. “Hurts,” he murmured. “Hurts like hell.”

  Mel whipped off her dove-gray blazer and put it under his head. “Stay here,” she told me. “I’ve got a blanket in my trunk.” She took off like a shot.

  “I’m sorry…” Kramer began.

  “Forget about it,” I said. “Don’t talk. Save your strength. The ambulance will be here soon.”

  Mel returned a minute or so later carrying a plaid wool blanket which she unfolded and carefully placed over Kramer’s body. His eyes blinked open again as he felt the weight of the blanket. “Catch him?” he mumbled.

  “Not yet,” Mel said. “They’re looking. He evidently had a boat of some kind moored out back. He took off in that. The uniforms have called for more help—a helicopter, a police boat, and a canine unit. Don’t worry. They’ll find him.”

  A wailing siren announced the arrival of an aid car and soon a troop of EMTs jogged through the door.

  “Over here,” Mel shouted, standing up and waving. “We’re over here.”

  Within seconds, the latex-gloved EMTs took over. Now that the crisis was out of my hands, I moved to one side, feeling surprisingly shaky.

  “Are you all right?” Mel asked.

  I nodded.

  “You should probably go wash up,” she said. “You’re covered with blood. The rest room’s right over there.”

  She was right. There was lots of blood. I went into the rest room and spent the better part of five minutes letting the soap and water sluice over my hands, but the blood didn’t want to let go. The water in the bowl turned pink time after time. Even when I could no longer see it, I knew it was still there—on my hands and on my clothing. When I finally exited the rest room, Mel was waiting outside. Her dove-gray outfit and white blouse were as bloodstained as mine. Clearly we were a matched pair.

  “That’s what you get for wearing good clothes so early in the day,” I told her. “You’re a mess, too.”

  “According to my mother, I always was,” she said.

  I looked around the interior of the warehouse. The place was crawling with cops, in uniform and out, but the EMTs and Kramer were nowhere in sight.

  “Where’d they take him? Harborview?”

  Mel nodded. “I told Detective Monroe, the lead investigator, that’s where we’d be going, too. I gave her our cell-phone numbers.”

  I remembered Sasha Monroe’s first day in uniform. Now she was a lead investigator. Feeling old as the hills didn’t improve my frame of mind.

  “Let’s go then,” Mel said.

  As we drove out through the gate, the neighborhood was parked full of patrol cars, but somehow Bill Winkler had given them the slip.

  “What the hell was Kramer doing there alone?” I demanded.

  Mel laughed. “Are you trying to tell me you’ve never done anything stupid?”

  “Well…”

  “We were pushing him,” she said. “I’m sure he had access to the same phone records we have. The only difference is he went through them, and we haven’t. He wanted to ace us out of solving the case. Once he figured out what was up, he didn’t want to wait around until any of his guys showed up.”

  “And besides,” I added, “he’s invincible.”

  “Exactly,” Mel agreed.

  The two of us were already in the ICU waiting room—the same waiting room I’d occupied the night before—when Kramer’s wife, Sally, and his daughter, Sue Ann, showed up. Sue Ann was fifteen and could have been a dead ringer for Heather Peters, except Sue Ann’s hair was green.

  When they first saw the blood on my clothing both Sally and her daughter flinched away from me. Once we’d all b
een introduced, though, Sally went off to see what she could learn about her husband’s condition. I could see Mel watching Sue Ann as the two Kramer women walked away.

  “That’s one reason I never wanted to have kids,” Mel said. “They always have to rebel against their parents. Her green hair must drive her father absolutely nuts. Think about it. If I’d ever had kids, they probably would have turned out to be Democrats.”

  “Would that have been so bad?” I asked.

  Mel scowled at me. “Of course it would have been bad,” she returned as though my question were too ignorant to answer. “Only a true independent could even think such a thing.” And then, after a pause, she added, “I may have to give up on you after all.”

  Sally Kramer returned a few minutes later. “The doctors are resectioning his bowel, so it’s going to take time. Detective Monroe called while we were on our way here and told us what you’d done. Thank you, Mr. Beaumont. Thank you so very much.”

  “It’s Beau,” I said. “And you’re welcome.”

  Reassured that Kramer might make it, Mel was impatient to leave the hospital. “Since it’s going to be a while before we hear any more, let’s go home and change,” she suggested. “I’ll drop you off.”

  As we rode down in the elevator and walked through the lobby, people caught sight of the blood and slunk out of our way as though we were carriers of some dreadfully contagious disease.

  “Are we still on for the funeral?” Mel asked when she pulled up and stopped in front of Belltown Terrace.

  “We can go,” I said, “but with everything else that’s going on, we probably won’t have a chance to talk to Raelene today. And I think I’m going to grab some shut-eye first. I’m dead on my feet.”

  “Me, too,” Mel said. “I’ll call you at one, and I’ll be here to pick you up by one-thirty.”

  I was too damn exhausted to argue. “Fine,” I said. “See you then.”

  “Whooey, Mr. Beaumont!” Jerome Grimes exclaimed as he opened the door to let me into the lobby. “If you don’t look like you’ve been in a hell of a fight.”

  I was too tired to venture that old joke about how bad the other guy must look. I was glad none of my fellow residents rode with me in the elevator as I went upstairs. Once in my apartment, I undressed and stood in a hot shower for the better part of twenty minutes. After that I fell into bed.

  Good to her word, Mel called me at the stroke of one. “I’m just now leaving my apartment,” she said. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  I didn’t bother telling her to drive carefully. It wouldn’t make any difference. I was waiting in the lobby, dressed but barely conscious, when she pulled up half an hour later. “Sorry it took so long,” she said.

  “For most people it is a thirty-minute drive,” I pointed out.

  Mel gave me a look, and we headed for Saint Mark’s Cathedral. “Any word on Winkler?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “He gave everybody the slip. When I last talked to Detective Monroe, she was still on the scene. They found Winkler’s boat, but they haven’t found him. They’re still looking. Detective Monroe says the crime scene folks are there examining the blood spatter. Her guess is that’s where Wink Winkler bit it. She also says it wasn’t a suicide.”

  “His son pulled the trigger?”

  “Presumably. Monroe wants us to get together with Kendall Jackson and Hank Ramsdahl after the funeral. I told her that would be fine.”

  Mel nodded. “What about Kramer?” she asked.

  “Sally says he’s finally out of surgery but not out of the woods. I told her we’d come by there later, too.”

  “Good.”

  The funeral was a long-drawn-out affair, but not nearly as crowded as I would have expected. Elvira Marchbank had evidently outlived most of her contemporaries. Tom and Raelene Landreth were there, sitting together in the front row. Tom had cleaned up reasonably well for the event, although, if you got close enough, you could tell he’d had at least a nip or two of Scotch to brace himself for the ordeal. Next to him, dressed in a black designer suit, Raelene looked genuinely bereft—far more so than she had appeared the day before, when I had spoken to her in her office.

  A former governor, the head of the Seattle Symphony, and the director of the Seattle Opera all took to the podium to say how much of a difference Elvira and Albert Marchbank’s financial support had made to the social fabric of the city. At least that’s what I assume they said. I dozed through much of the ceremony and all of the music. I roused myself, though, when Tom Landreth strode to the microphone as the last of the speakers listed on the program.

  “Thank you for coming,” he said. “Elvira Marchbank has always been part of my life. As you have heard today, she was an elegant, charming, witty woman. She was also one who knew her own mind and insisted on having things done her way. She set out detailed instructions for her funeral. She chose the speakers and the music. She has asked that her remains be cremated and scattered in the waters of her beloved Puget Sound. Even though she has left us, I can assure you that, through the Marchbank Foundation, the contributions she and Albert have made over the years will continue in perpetuity.

  “It was Elvira’s wish that this day would end with a celebration of her life. So my wife, Raelene, and I would like you all to join us for food and refreshments at the Marchbank Foundation. It’s exactly what Elvira would have wanted.”

  As people began to file out of the church, I wondered how different Elvira’s funeral would have been had Sister Mary Katherine’s murder allegations been made public. How many people would have been here, too, if Elvira had carried through on her stated intention to dissolve the Marchbank Foundation? Certainly the social movers and shakers had been in attendance out of respect for Elvira, but they were also there because they were looking for continuing financial support from those left in charge of the foundation—Tom and Raelene.

  Mel and I were headed for her car when someone tugged at my sleeve. “Beau?”

  I turned and was surprised to find Sister Mary Katherine and another nun standing behind me. The second woman was tiny, a good ten years older than Sister Mary Katherine. The somber occasion hadn’t clouded the merry twinkle in Sister Mary Katherine’s eyes.

  “I’d like you to meet Sister Elizabeth,” she said. “She’s a good friend of mine. I believe I told you something about her, Beau. Before Sister Elizabeth took her vows, she was Maribeth Hogan. Many years ago she was my camp counselor.”

  I remembered the story well—about how a camp counselor had looked out for Bonnie Jean Dunleavy during the terrible hours, days, and weeks after her parents died in the car accident. Somehow it came as no surprise that Maribeth, like her younger charge, had also become a nun.

  “Yes,” I said. “I do remember. I’m glad to meet you.” The grip of Sister Elizabeth’s handshake was far stronger than I would have expected. “And this is a colleague of mine, Melissa Soames.”

  “Are you going to the reception?” Sister Mary Katherine asked.

  I nodded. “Me, too,” she continued. “For closure.”

  I wasn’t at all sure I agreed that visiting the old murder scene one last time was necessary, but I kept my mouth shut. If Sister Mary Katherine and Freddy had decided closure was called for, who was I to argue the point?

  “One more thing,” Sister Mary Katherine added. “I heard the terrible news about Dillon Middleton as I was driving into town this morning. That young friend of yours, Heather—is she all right?”

  “She’s not all right now,” I said. “But she will be eventually.”

  “Yes,” Sister Mary Katherine said. “She will. I’ll keep on praying for her. So will everyone at Saint Benedict’s.”

  Mel, impatient with the delay, waited until we were in the car before she called me on my sin of omission. “Shouldn’t you have told Sister Mary Katherine about what’s going on with Bill Winkler and Captain Kramer?”

  “No,” I said, “I don’t think so. This all started when Sister
Mary Katherine went to see Elvira. She’s already carrying around enough guilt. Why add more right now? She’ll find out soon enough.”

  Mel and I weren’t the first to arrive at Elvira Marchbank’s postfuneral reception, nor were we the last. Sister Mary Katherine parked her minivan directly behind Mel’s BMW. The four of us ambled up the walkway together. Tom Landreth, a potent drink in hand, stood at the doorway, personally and expansively welcoming arriving guests. I would have expected to find the Marchbank Foundation’s executive director at the door as well, but Raelene Landreth was nowhere in evidence.

  Uniformed servers greeted guests as well, taking coats or orders for drinks. Mel and I gratefully accepted cups of coffee. As I took the first sip, I caught sight of Sister Mary Katherine walking the perimeter of the room with her head bowed and hands clasped as though she were treading hallowed ground and finally having a chance to honor Mimi Marchbank, the murdered woman who had once been kind to an isolated child named Bonnie Jean Dunleavy.

  The room was crowded. People were talking and laughing while a string quartet played in the background. It seemed more like a high-class cocktail party than it did a postfuneral reception. Having had nothing to eat since breakfast, I started in on a plate stacked high with hors d’oeuvres when, much to my surprise, Detectives Jackson and Ramsdahl came looking for me.

  “What are you guys doing here?” I asked.

  “Looking for Raelene Landreth,” Jackson said grimly. “Somebody finally got a look at the phone records Kramer dug up. If calling each other twenty times a day is any indication, I’d say she and Bill Winkler are going at it hot and heavy. We’re thinking she may have some idea of where he’s disappeared to. She may even have picked him up when we were looking for him and brought him here. Now which one is she?”

  “She was at the funeral,” I told them, “but I haven’t seen her since.”

  Mel had joined us in time to hear the news. “Whoa,” she said. “That puts things in a whole new light. Hold on while I go ask Tom Landreth if he’s seen his wife.”