by J. A. Jance
I picked up the phone and dialed the crime lab. Rocky answered the phone himself.
"Rocky, this is Detective Beaumont. What's up? I don't know anybody who works for the Joint Chiefs of Staff."
"We figured you did," Rocky answered. "If not them, maybe NASA. I mean, who else would have a solid-gold wrench? I suppose you've heard about all their two-hundred-dollar toilet seats."
"Wait a minute. Did you say solid gold?" I demanded.
"You got it. Nine-point-one ounces. The way I figure it, at three-thirty or so an ounce, that makes it your basic three-thousand-dollar wrench. And totally useless, besides. Gold's too soft to use on anything."
I couldn't quite believe my ears. "You mean the wrench Bonnie Elgin found, the one Sue Danielson dropped off, is made of solid gold?"
"Didn't you hear me the first time? The whole thing is covered with a thick layer of enamel, so you couldn't tell it right off. But after I finished lifting the prints, I put it under a microscope. I found a tiny chip in the enamel that was invisible to the naked eye. But the chip I saw looked like gold to me, so I measured the specific gravity. Sure enough. It's gold all right."
"I'll be damned," I said.
"Me, too," he agreed. "There were a bunch of prints on the damn thing. Who-all handled it?"
"Bonnie Elgin. The lady who was driving the car. And maybe her husband, although I don't know for sure."
"Find out for me, would you? If he did, we'll need both of them to come in to give us a set of elimination prints."
"Okay," I said. "No problem. It's not all that late. I'll give them a call right away."
After dropping off Rocky's call, I located the Elgins' phone number in my notebook and dialed them up. Bonnie herself answered, but there was a lot of noise in the background, as though there was a party going on. I identified myself and asked her if this was an inconvenient time to talk.
"It's fine," she said. "Go ahead."
"We need you to come down to the department tomorrow morning so we can take a set of fingerprints."
I heard a quick intake of breath. "That sounds bad."
"No. We're just trying to save the taxpayers a little money. It's expensive to run prints through AFIS." I caught myself talking cop jargon and backed up. "Sorry, that's the Automated Fingerprint Identification System," I explained. "By taking your fingerprints and comparing them to the ones lifted off the wrench, the print technician can tell which ones need to be processed and which ones don't. By the way, did your husband touch the wrench?"
"No. I'm pretty sure he didn't."
"Ask him, if you can. If he did, we'll need him to come in to be printed as well. Then, in addition to the prints, while you're down at the department, I'd like to set you up with our staff artist. Maybe you can put together one of those Identi-Kit sketches so we can have a little better idea of what this guy looks like."
Bonnie sounded doubtful. "I don't know if I can remember all that well. Is it important?"
From my point of view, I thought having a sketch was vital, but I didn't want to spook her. "Let's just say that we have uncovered some additional information. It's looking more likely than ever that there's a connection between the man you hit and the one who died in the fire at Fishermen's Terminal. So, yes, it could be very important."
Bonnie Elgin paused, but only for a moment. "What time do you want me there?"
"Is nine too early?"
"No. I'm up and out long before then. Nine will be fine."
After we rang off, I started to put down the phone. Then I thought better of it and dialed my grandmother. She had told me that she never goes to bed before the end of the eleven o'clock news. She answered on the second ring.
"Just thought I'd check and see how you're doing tonight."
"We're doing fine, Mandy and I," Beverly Piedmont returned. "She did manage to have a little something to eat. Kelly's right about the peanut butter. Mandy loved it, except for getting some stuck to the roof of her mouth. After that she ate a bite or two of her dog food as well, so she seems to be feeling better. I let her out for her walk a little while ago. Now we're sitting here waiting for the news to come on. What are you doing?"
"I just got home a few minutes ago. I'm going to kick off my shoes and unwind for a few minutes, then hit the sack early."
"It sounds as though you work too hard, Jonas," she chided gently, her voice full of grandmotherly concern. "You have to remember to take time to smell the flowers every day. Life's much too short if you don't."
"Thank you," I said, and meant it. "I'll try to remember that."
When I put down the telephone receiver, I did finally kick off my shoes. Then I sat back in the creaking leather recliner and gave my grandmother's advice some serious thought.
It had been a day that had brought me face-to-face with my own mortality. It's one thing to deal with homicides on a daily basis. That's my job, and Gunter Gebhardt's death was far more work than it was personal.
The knowledge that my grandfather's ashes still waited on the entryway table brought death into much too close proximity. Not only that, hearing about what had happened to Lars Torvoldsen-someone I still saw as a kid I grew up with-hit me where I lived. Last but not least in that regard, Karen Livingston, my ex-wife, was never far from my thoughts. The two of us had been divorced for a long time, but she was still the mother of my children and the grandmother of little Kayla. Karen had also just finished up undergoing her third round of chemo in a little less than two years.
Damn.
So what if Champagne Al had developed a slight paunch and no longer had any reason to use H. A. Hair Arranger. I didn't use it anymore, either, but that was more because of my perpetual crew cut than because my hair was falling out. Still, Al and I had cause to count our blessings. The two of us were still alive and in reasonably good health. For how long? I wondered morbidly. How does that old saying go? First you get old, and then you die.
On that cheery note, I must have dozed off for a little while, lying back in the recliner and probably snoring. I'd like to believe I didn't drool, but I was sound asleep when the telephone at my elbow startled me awake.
"Hello?" I answered uncertainly.
"Detective Beaumont?"
"Yes."
"My name is Jacek," the man said. "Detective Stan Jacek."
I cleared my throat and tried to sound more on top of things. "Where are you from, Detective Jacek? And what can I do for you?"
"I apologize for calling so late, but I was just talking to Rocky. You know, Rocky Washington down at the State Patrol crime lab? I'm not sure why, but he said I should give you a call. He thought you'd want to talk to me about this, even if I had to wake you up to do it."
I wasn't the least bit sure Rocky knew what the hell he was talking about. Glancing at my watch, I saw it was late, all right-twenty after eleven. I remembered Rocky Washington telling me he was due to be off shift by now. With the budget problems in the crime lab, something must have happened to keep him working overtime, something important.
"Talk to me about what?" I grumbled. "And where did you say you're from?"
"Sorry, I guess I didn't. I'm from the Island County Sheriff's Department up in Coupeville on Whidbey. We had a little problem here on Camano Island tonight. A fire. As I understand it, Rocky's on his way up here right now in one of the evidence vans. He's the one who gave me your number, by the way. He said he didn't want to take the time to call you himself."
A fire on Camano Island? The words caused an uncomfortable tightening in the pit of my stomach. "What kind of fire?" I asked.
"A house fire," he answered. "One fatality. That's the only one we've found so far. Some of the house is still too hot for anyone to go inside, but from what I could see of what's left, it looks as though the place was pretty well tossed before the fire was set."
"A robbery then?" I asked.
"Possibly," he returned.
"Any witnesses?"
"None so far, and I'm not too hopeful ab
out that, although we're starting to check out the neighbors right now. The house sits off by itself in a swale down near the water, so there aren't clear sight lines from any of the nearby houses."
By the time Jacek had told me that much, I was able to guess the rest, especially in view of the Rocky Washington connection. Jacek's investigation and mine had to be linked in some way. The fire on Camano Island had something to do with the earlier fire at Fishermen's Terminal. Using my shoulder to hold the telephone receiver to my ear, I fumbled clumsily in my notebook, trying to locate Alan Torvoldsen's scrap of paper-the piece of paper on which he had penciled the Camano Island address of Gunter Gebhardt's cute little side dish.
Once I had the address in my hand, I still didn't want to blurt out the information to Stan Jacek. Homicide cops are generally cautious folks who believe in playing their cards close to their chests. We don't willingly share information with others, and that's possibly one of the things that accounts for the high divorce rate among members of homicide squads. We especially don't like sharing information with someone we don't know who is clearly a member of an opposing team.
I wanted Stan Jacek to have to talk before I did, and that may sound childish. It's probably a holdover from some long-ago game of darers-go-first.
"What makes Rocky Washington think I'd have any interest in a beach house out on Camano Island?" I asked guardedly.
As soon as I heard Detective Jacek sigh, I knew I had won the first round.
"I saw the victim," he admitted. "It's pretty rough. You don't happen to have a queasy stomach, do you, Detective Beaumont?"
The careful way he asked the question, his tone of voice. It all fit.
"Let me take a wild guess," I said. "Was the corpse mutilated, by any chance? Did this arsonist of yours take the time to whack off all the victim's fingers and toes?"
"All of them," Jacek answered at once. Then, when his brain caught up with his mouth, when he realized exactly what I'd said, there was a long pause. "How in the hell did you know about that?" he demanded. "Did Rocky already call and tell you?"
"No," I answered. "He didn't."
"But how…?"
"That means either I'm some kind of mind reader," I interrupted, "or else we're both working the same case."
"The same case?" he echoed. "How could that be?"
"We had a fatality fire here in Seattle earlier today-a boat fire down at Fishermen's Terminal first thing this morning. One dead male, burned to a crisp with all of his missing fingers and toes toasted to potato chips in a pie plate that was left sitting on his chest."
The phone line went silent for a moment, then Jacek said, "You're absolutely right. If it's not the same guy, we've got a helluva trend starting."
I was already slipping on my shoes. "Where are you right now?" I asked.
"I'm out on Camano, but I told Rocky I'd meet him over in Stanwood. Have you ever been here?"
"Once, years ago. For a Memorial Day picnic."
"Rocky Washington hasn't even done that. The roads and lanes can turn into an impossible maze if you don't know exactly where you're going. I figured it would be easier for me to meet Rocky in Stanwood and lead him out here than it would to try giving him directions over the phone."
"How long ago did he leave?"
"Not very long ago. He was just heading down to get the van when I called you."
"Good," I said. "If you're meeting him, you can meet me, too. I'll be there as soon as I can, and it won't take long. I'm far enough north of the Public Safety Building that I may actually beat him there. Where will you be?"
"As you come into Stanwood, you'll see a blinking red light with a grocery store and shopping center on the far right-hand corner. I'll be waiting there, in the parking lot. What'll you be driving?" he asked. "That way I'll know what to look for."
"A Porsche 928," I said. "Guard red."
"Right," he said, "and I'll be in my Rolls." He paused for a moment, then said, "You're kidding about the Porsche, aren't you?"
"No, I really will be driving a 928."
"What the hell kind of cop are you?" he demanded. "Narcotics? Vice?"
I figured Detective Stan Jacek didn't need to know that this was a special-order 928-one I had purchased to replace another one that had been blown to bits months earlier in a propane explosion down in Ashland, Oregon. So I didn't tell Jacek any of that.
"I'm nothing but a plain old detective," I answered. "Same as you."
10
Dead on my feet, I finally crawled into bed at four in the morning and set the alarm for seven. The alarm woke me. As soon as I managed to shake the cobwebs out of my head well enough to be able to talk, I called Sue Danielson at home.
She sounded disgustingly chipper and wide awake. "I hope you had a good night's sleep last night," I told her.
"As a matter of fact, I did. Why?"
"Because the ball's in your court this morning," I said. "There's a whole lot to be handled, and unless I catch an hour or two of sleep before I come into the office, I'm not going to be worth diddly-squat."
"I take it you and Alan Torvoldsen tied one on last night?" she returned.
It's funny, but when a dedicated drinker lays off the sauce, it's invisible to most people. Once you've established a reputation as a boozer, the reputation sticks, regardless. That was something Champagne Al Torvoldsen and J. P. Beaumont shared in common.
"Actually, I spent most of the night alternately sweating like a pig or freezing my ass off, prowling around the scene of a house fire up on Camano Island. It was still hot in places."
"A house fire on Camano Island?" Sue asked. "Why would you want to do something like that?"
"Because Detective Stan Jacek of the Island County Sheriff's Department asked me to. By the time he called me, he already knew it was a fatality fire, and he was hoping I could help him figure out who the victim is. We did pick up a letter from the scene-actually from a singed white Cadillac parked in the driveway outside the house. One of Jacek's deputies found it.
"It was addressed to somebody named Denise Whitney, and the address was the same as the burned house. The letter was signed ‘Mom,' and the envelope had an Anchorage, Alaska, return address. By now I'm sure Detective Jacek's followed up on that, trying to locate next of kin."
"Wait just a minute," Sue interrupted. "How come this Island County detective is pulling you in to investigate his case?"
"Because," I said, "we think it may be the same perpetrator as whoever killed Gunter Gebhardt."
As briefly as possible, I brought Sue up to speed, telling her everything I could remember, starting with the phone call from Detective Jacek at 11:00 P. M. I told her about the grisly copycat connections between the Camano Island homicide and our own. I explained, however, that there were some notable differences between the two separate blazes.
For instance, the one on Camano had been started by setting fire to piles of newspaper scattered in separate rooms throughout the house. Unlike the blaze on the Isolde, there were no apparent signs of a liquid accelerant in most of the house, but that was a long way from conclusive. It was possible that subsequent arson investigation would reveal the use of accelerant in that part of the house that had still been too hot to handle by the time I left the scene to return to the city.
Attempting to be thorough, I became so caught up in telling the story that I never saw it coming. When I finally finished my recitation and shut up, I was dumbfounded to find that Sue Danielson was steamed-at me.
"How come you didn't call me right away?" she demanded angrily. "You should have let me know the minute all this came up."
"Detective Jacek's call didn't come in until after eleven. I figured you were sound asleep in bed by then. Besides, you've got kids at home to worry about. You can't spend half the night traipsing around all over the countryside with them there by themselves."
"Wait a minute here, Detective J. P. Beaumont," she bridled. "Wait just one goddamned minute! Since when do you have the right to
make those kinds of decisions for me? I'm a big girl. And in case you haven't noticed, I'm also a sworn police officer. I've been working outside the home all my life, and all my kids' lives, too.
"Jared Danielson may be a jerk at times, but he's not a baby. I started out working night shift at the Communications Center while he was still in diapers. My sons Jared and Chris both understand that my job is what keeps food on the table and a roof over our heads. They know there are times when they have to look after themselves because I can't always be here."
"I stand corrected," I said, although I was sitting on the edge of my bed at the time. When faced with that kind of an unexpected, cross-gender firefight, I've learned to shape up and apologize right away. Somebody told me once that the first rule of holes is that when you're standing in one up to your eyeballs, stop digging.
In this instance, that strategy worked.
"So what is it you need me to do?" Sue asked, sounding somewhat mollified.
I explained the bit about the solid-gold wrench, then, and told her Bonnie Elgin was due at the department at nine to have her fingerprints taken and to work on an Identi-Kit sketch of our missing hit-and-run victim.
"Bonnie most likely will need to be walked through the process, have her hand held a little," I said. "Evidently, she's never been involved in anything like this before, and I think she's nervous about it."
"I can certainly understand that," Sue said briskly. "What else needs doing?"
"Be in touch with Detective Jacek." I gave her both his phone as well as his fax number at the Island County seat in Coupeville. "As soon as we can get a photo from Else, we need to fax Jacek a picture of Gunter Gebhardt-one taken while he was still alive."
"What's that for?" Sue asked.
"For him to show to the neighbors on Camano. I have a feeling Gunter may have been spending a good deal of time up there."
"And what makes you think that?"
Sue's last question brought me face-to-face with my second sin of omission-I hadn't yet briefed her on my conversation with Alan Torvoldsen, either.
"I believe Gunter Gebhardt was playing the field," I told her. "I heard it first from Alan Torvoldsen earlier last night, but I heard it again from people who live around the fire scene. Camano Island is one of those places where nothing much happens. The fire was like a neighborhood picnic. Everybody in town must have showed up last night to find out what was going on. Jacek and I talked to most of them, including the real estate man who sold the place to the new owners two years ago.