by J. A. Jance
Bonnie Elgin's smile disappeared. "It wasn't all that harmless," she said seriously. "That man could have been badly hurt. For all we know, maybe he is."
"Do you want me to stay around for the interview?" Ron asked. "I will if you'd like me to."
Bonnie took a deep breath. "No, that's all right. You're already late for your first meeting, and I'm not nearly as upset as I was when it first happened. You go on."
"But you'll call if you need me?"
"Yes," she agreed. "I will."
"And don't forget to show them the wrench."
"No. I won't."
Ron turned back to Sue and me. "I do have to go," he said. "But I really appreciate your coming over right away like this. I didn't know Seattle's police department was this responsive."
Neither did I. Ron Elgin left his wife standing in the middle of the room, hurried to the double entryway doors, picked up a waiting briefcase, and disappeared outside.
"So you were the driver in this morning's hit-and-run?" Sue asked.
I was surprised by the kindness in her voice. Sue was right. I had been distracted during the drive from Fishermen's Terminal, and I hadn't paid that much attention. But hit-and-run drivers aren't usually accorded all that much courtesy, not even when they finally come to their senses and report what happened.
Bonnie Elgin nodded somberly. She settled into a huge but elegantly upholstered easy chair, balancing her coffee mug on one knee.
"I was afraid I'd killed him," she said with a slight shudder. "I'll never forget the thump when I hit him. It was awful."
"Suppose you tell us about it," Sue suggested. "From the beginning."
"It was early," Bonnie said. "I left the house right at six-thirty. I was supposed to be in Kirkland at seven to meet with the contractor and the landscape architect. November's the best time to plant trees, you see, and seven was the only time we could all three get together. So I was heading over to the freeway. At that hour of the day, Emerson to Nickerson to Westlake is the quickest way to get there.
"I turned left onto Gilman and started toward Emerson. It was foggy. I don't think I was going very fast, but all of a sudden this guy ran out in front of me. I mean right in front. He didn't even look. I slammed on the brakes and swung the car to the left as hard as I could. But I hit him anyway, and he went flying into the air. The next thing I knew, the car was skidding, and I slammed into a signpost."
She stopped and shuddered.
"What happened then?" Sue asked.
"Naturally, I was scared to death. I thought sure I'd run over the guy and killed him, but actually I must have booted him out of the way. He landed up in a rockery along the street, in some kind of bushes. I got out of the car and went looking for him. When I finally found him, he was lying facedown and not moving. I was afraid he was either dead or else badly hurt.
"I ran back to my car and called nine-one-one on my cellular phone. I told them I'd hit someone and that maybe he was dead. And then, while I was still talking on the telephone, he got up all of a sudden and started to limp away. I put down the phone and went after him. He was bleeding. There was a cut on his face and another on his leg. His pant leg was torn to shreds. ‘You're hurt,' I said to him. ‘I've called the police and an ambulance. They'll be here in a minute.'
"He said, ‘No! No ambulance! No police! I'm okay, I'm okay. Leave me alone.' And he kept right on walking. I couldn't stop him. He crossed the street, climbed down over the edge of the embankment, and disappeared in that greenbelt that runs along the railroad track."
"Then what happened?"
"I don't remember exactly. By then another car had stopped. The driver got out. He came over to where I was and asked me if I was all right. It didn't take all that long for a patrol car to show up-only a minute or two. And the aid car came right after that, but by then the guy was long gone. The cop who was taking the report acted like it was all a big joke."
"A joke?" I asked.
Bonnie Elgin nodded. "They all seemed to get a big kick out of it. One of them said it was the damnedest hit-and-run he had ever seen. I hit the guy, and then he ran. I told them I didn't think it was funny. After that, they more or less straightened up and tended to business.
"Since the fellow I hit was long gone, the medics insisted on checking me out, making sure I was okay. I told them they didn't need to bother. I was fine, except now I think maybe I bruised my knee when I banged it against the dashboard. Anyway, pretty soon the aid car left. The cops were about to start measuring the skid marks, but they never got around to it."
"Why not?"
"Because all of a sudden all hell broke loose. There were sirens and ambulances and fire trucks coming from every direction. None of them came past where we were on Gilman, because they all turned off on Emerson to get over to the terminal. A minute or so later, somebody radioed the guys who were there with me. They told me they had been called to the fire along with everybody else. They gave me a case number and told me someone would finish taking the report later, and then they left. I have the case number right here, in case you want it."
She reached into a pocket, pulled out a slip of paper, and handed it to me. I jotted down the case number. "What did you do then?"
"I called Ron," Bonnie answered. "Luckily, he was still home. He asked me if the car was drivable, and I told him I didn't know. So he came down to see. And it was. We got it home all right. I've called the dealer. He's sending out a driver to pick it up sometime this morning. He's bringing me a loaner."
"Your husband said something about a wrench."
"That's right. It's still in my purse. I'll go get it."
"Tell us about it first."
"When Ron got there, he turned the key in the ignition, and the car started right up. But then he noticed that the hood ornament was missing. You know about Mercedes hood ornaments, don't you? It's better now, but there was a real epidemic of hood-ornament theft a couple of years ago. We lost seven by the time it was all said and done. It's a small thing, really, but it drives Ron bonkers.
"As soon as he saw it was gone, he turned off the motor and said we weren't leaving until we found the damn thing. And we did, surprisingly enough. It's in my purse, too. That reminds me. I've got to remember to give it to the loaner-car driver so the body shop can put it back on the hood when they fix the car. Hang on. I'll go get them both while I'm thinking about it." Bonnie Elgin put her coffee mug down on a cut-crystal coaster and dashed off upstairs. She returned a few minutes later.
"It's bent," she said matter-of-factly, looking down at the shiny round chrome object in her hand. "I didn't notice that before. We'll probably have to get a new one anyway."
"Could I see the wrench?" I asked.
She handed me a small box-end wrench-about a 5/16, although oddly enough, there were no markings on it to indicate what size it was or who had made it, either. And for some strange reason somebody had painted it with a solid layer of enamel.
Sue and I weren't playing with a full deck of information, but since we had been sent because Bonnie Elgin's hit-and-run supposedly had something to do with the homicide on the Isolde, it was best to treat the wrench as though it were an important piece of evidence. Better safe than sorry. Using a cloth handkerchief and a glassine bag, I stashed the wrench in my inside jacket pocket. Meanwhile, Bonnie Elgin continued talking.
"I found the wrench first, before Ron caught sight of the hood ornament lying over against the curb. He said the wrench probably belonged to the guy I hit-that the impact most likely knocked it out of his pocket. He said that if we ever found out who that was, maybe we could give it back to him. Ron's a big believer in complete sets of tools."
"Me, too," I said.
"So do you need to look at the car?" she asked. "Or did the two cops get enough information on that earlier? I'm really not sure whether or not the man I hit was in the crosswalk. There is one around there, but I don't remember exactly where I was in relation to it when all this happened. Are you going to
give me a ticket?"
"Mrs. Elgin," Sue Danielson explained. "We're not really here to investigate the automobile accident. That's up to Patrol. We're here because of a fatal fire at Fishermen's Terminal early this morning. It was discovered a few minutes after your accident. We have reason to believe it was an arson fire, so anyone seen running from that same general area around the time the incident occurred would certainly be a person of interest. What, if anything, can you tell us about the man you hit?"
"He was Hispanic," Bonnie Elgin said immediately. "I know that much. He had an accent. A heavy Spanish accent."
"You said he was injured and bleeding. Where?"
"There was a cut over his eye."
"Right or left?"
She stared for a moment and then gestured to an invisible point in space. "Left, I think."
"And his leg?"
"It was definitely the right leg. And that was bleeding, too. Pretty badly, I think. From a cut on his knee. My guess is that one will probably need stitches."
"What was he wearing?"
"Jeans. Tennis shoes. A jacket-a green jacket. Only a windbreaker, really. It didn't look like it was warm enough for this weather."
"Any identifying features-a beard, mustache, that kind of thing?"
"Not that I remember."
"How tall was he?"
"Not very. Only five-five or maybe five-six. And not very heavy, either. Medium build."
To me, five-five sounded smaller than medium, but that's all a matter of perspective.
"Which way did he go when he walked away?" I asked.
"The same way he came," Bonnie Elgin answered. "Back down the embankment to the railroad tracks. It seemed like he was more scared of talking to the police than he was of being hit by a car. Right then I couldn't understand why he was leaving, but if he was involved with the fire, I suppose then it all makes sense, doesn't it?"
"Yes," I said. "I suppose it does."
By the time we left Bonnie Elgin's house on Perkins Lane, it was almost ten-thirty. The fog had burned off fairly well. Out on Puget Sound, the water was still mostly gunmetal gray, but here and there overhead were occasional chips of pale blue sky.
"Back to Fishermen's Terminal?" Sue Danielson asked as she started up the Mustang.
"Let's swing by that crosswalk on Gilman," I told her. "I want to get out and take a look around."
It wasn't difficult to find the location of the accident. A splatter of shattered glass marked the point of impact. As far as that was concerned, Bonnie Elgin was in luck. The glass was well south of the crosswalk. Generally speaking, it's not good to hit pedestrians at all. But if you have to hit one, it's better not to do it in a marked crosswalk. Everyone, from judges to insurance companies, takes a dim view of that.
Sue parked the car. I got out and walked over to the guardrail on the far side of the street. Heading down the embankment, a trail of footprints dug deep into the soft, wet earth on the other side. The person who had left those tracks had been in one hell of a hurry. From where I stood, I could look across the railroad cut and see the long creosoted beams that formed the retaining wall for the bank on the far side of the cut, but the metal tracks themselves were out of sight.
Avoiding the footprints, I hitched my legs over the guardrail and climbed down. Even stepping carefully, the compressed mud squished beneath my feet, bubbling up around my heels and into my shoes. I stopped at the edge of the embankment. Just below me, hunkered up against the retaining wall on my side of the cut, was a makeshift tent. A blue tarp had been draped over a sheltering framework of blackberry bramble. Inside was a single box spring, minus the mattress, and the remains of a recent campfire.
I had stumbled uninvited into the home of one of Seattle's homeless, and from the looks of it, so had the injured victim of Bonnie Elgin's hit-and-run. There were several bright red bloodstains on the fabric of the box spring.
As I scrambled back up the incline to the guardrail, it struck me how little physical distance separated the Elgins' marble foyer with its magnificent domed ceiling from this tarpaulin-covered hovel. Existing almost side by side, both were part of Seattle's Magnolia Bluff community, and yet they represented realities so separate and alien that they could just as well have been on different planets.
Or else in parallel universes.
5
Sue Danielson wanted to go straight back to Fishermen's Terminal and see what was happening there, but I persuaded her otherwise. Until members of the crime-scene team finished up with their physical examination of the Isolde, there wasn't all that much for a couple of stray homicide detectives to do but to stand around with our hands in our pockets and look useless and/or pretty, depending on your point of view.
So we turned off Emerson onto Twenty-third, parked in a triangular chuck-holed mire that passed for a parking lot and did an impromptu but thorough shoe-leather tour of the neighborhood. The strip of land on the far side of the railroad tracks contained a collection of small, one- and two-man businesses. We must have dropped in on ten or twelve offices and shops in the area bordered by Emerson and West Elmore. Most of them faced southwest and overlooked the railroad cut that sliced across the northeastern slope of Magnolia Bluff.
Looking out each succeeding window, I was surprised to learn that the blue tarp that seemed so exposed from directly above it was really well concealed from observers on the other side of the cut. The sheltering berry bramble that served as a tent pole not only provided support, it also offered camouflage. Only twice did we catch glimpses of the bright blue plastic. Both of those flashes were seen from businesses due east of both the tent and the crosswalk on Gilman.
Most of the people we spoke to were startled to learn that the makeshift shelter existed at all, that it lay-just out of sight-in what was, to all appearances, a permanent no-man's-land along the Burlington Northern's railroad right-of-way. I had hoped to find some observant witness able to tell us something about the tent's occupant and where we might find him. No deal.
The people we spoke to either feigned astonishment or else seemed downright uncomfortable to learn someone actually lived in a cut where hobos have traditionally hung out since the bad old days of the thirties. The issue of homelessness tends to disappear if you don't see actual living evidence of it up close and personal each and every day. The last person I talked to was a young woman who, despite the chill weather, was bundled up and sitting next to a concrete picnic table on the very edge of the bank. She clutched an oversized plastic traveling mug from the Chevron Beverage Club in one hand and a smoldering cigarette in the other.
In Seattle in the nineties, smokers are generally considered personae non gratae. People who smoke are required to slink outside with their cigarettes so they don't pollute the breathing mechanisms of their nonsmoking colleagues with their pall of secondhand smoke.
From the rim of cigarette butts that surrounded the table, this woman wasn't the only tobacco addict in the neighborhood who'd recently come here to smoke. Even in this alternating cold, wet weather, she was still sitting outside. I wondered how many of those outdoor smokers were courting the same kind of exotic pneumonia that had killed my grandfather.
When the woman saw me approaching, she pulled her coffee mug closer into her down jacket and guiltily moved the cigarette so it was below the level of the tabletop as though I were one of Seattle's smoke police. When I showed her my Seattle Police Department I.D., she seemed relieved to see I was only a homicide detective rather than some radical secondhand-smoke prohibitionist. The cigarette reappeared from under the table.
"Whaddya want?" she asked vaguely.
"Did you happen to see anyone unusual around here this morning, someone who didn't seem to fit in the neighborhood?"
She shook her head, tossing her mall-bang hair. "It was real foggy," she answered.
"Have you noticed a derelict-a tramp or street person-any time recently? Or have you seen anyone down near that blue tent on the other side of the cut?"
&
nbsp; "What blue tent?" she asked, blowing a white plume of smoke into the air.
I pointed. "See that patch of blue over there on the face of the cliff?"
"Where?"
"Just above the timbers of the retaining wall. The blue you see is actually a tarp. It looks as though someone may be living there. I was hoping someone from here in the neighborhood might know who that person is or where I might find him."
The woman frowned. She gave me a doubtful look-as though she thought I was some kind of nut-and then looked in the direction I was pointing. "You mean somebody actually lives over there?" she asked finally. "No kidding?"
"No kidding."
"Well," she said. "I wouldn't know anything about that. Besides, why would somebody want to live down there in that hole with all those trains going past? They'd have to be crazy. What a stupid idea!"
She was young and more than slightly arrogant. She had a warm coat, wore a small diamond engagement ring on her left hand, and had enough extra money to squander two bucks per pack on her daily ration of cigarettes. Her whole attitude irked me. I suspected that she believed the reality of homelessness would never touch her personally. For her sake, I hoped she was right.
"What do you want him for?"
"There was a fire this morning over at Fishermen's Terminal, and…"
"I heard about that. Somebody died in it, didn't they?"
"Yes…"
She stood up, ground out her cigarette in the hard-packed earth beneath her feet, then pulled her coat more tightly around her. "My boyfriend will have a fit when he hears about the fire," she said. "He's from Bellevue. He keeps telling me I should find another job, someplace over on the East Side. He thinks my working in the city is too dangerous and stuff, know what I mean?"
I could have explained to her that every neighborhood has its own peculiar dangers, even ones on the East Side of Lake Washington, but her cigarette/coffee break must have been over. She headed across the street toward a tiny insurance office without giving me so much as a backward glance. No doubt there was a desk inside where she toiled away feeding letters and numbers into the keyboard and memory of some computer.