More Perfect Union (9780061760228)

by Jance, Judith A.

  In less than a minute, Harding and I had gone from adversaries to allies. The shift was so sudden, it almost made me dizzy.

  “There are two other detectives who are actually assigned to the case,” I told him. “I’ve been working it anyway. I felt like it.”

  “Oh,” Harding replied with a nod. “I got that much from Watkins.”

  “Watkins?” I asked.

  “You know, Watkins, your sergeant up there in Seattle. I talked to him just a little while ago while we were still trying to check you out.”

  If Harding had talked to Sergeant Watkins, then my tail was already in a gate but good.

  “Wonderful,” I said. Watty would be ripped, ready to chew me to pieces. So would Detective Paul Kramer.

  I changed the subject. “Is that when she called you for help, then, after they told her I wasn’t assigned to the case?”

  “She never called.”

  “She didn’t? But what about the deputy who showed up at the house? How’d he get there?”

  “We sent him out to notify her about what had happened to her mother and her brother. Someone from the brother’s job had called us and asked us to let her know. As soon as she found out, she told the deputy about you. He radioed here for help while she loaded up her kids and headed for Seattle.”

  “To the hospital?” I asked.

  Harding nodded. “Harborview. The burn unit.” He cocked his head to one side and studied me. “I wonder what she would have done to you if my deputy hadn’t turned up right then.”

  It was a sobering thought. “I don’t want to think about it,” I said. There was a pause. “Did she mention any tapes to you?”

  Harding sat up straight, alert, interested. “Tapes? What kind of tapes?”

  I shrugged. “Beats me. Videotapes. Cassettes maybe. She let something slip about tapes, something about them being hidden in a safe place where no one would be able to find them.”

  “So she thought you were after her or the tapes.”

  “Or maybe both. Somebody must want those tapes real bad.”

  Harding pulled a small notebook from his pocket and jotted something into it. “I’ll call Watkins and have him put a guard on her.”

  “Good idea. On her brother, too,” I added.

  “Tell me more about the tapes.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know anything else, except if they were in her mother’s house, they’re gone now.”

  “Burned up?”

  “That’s right. I understand it’s a total loss. Not so much as a toothpick left standing.”

  I didn’t want to think about the house or Leona and Jimmy Rising, especially not Jimmy, but Harding had given me an opening.

  “How’d the fire start?”

  “Gas hot-water heater exploded. I guess initially the fire investigators thought it was an accident, but it didn’t take long for them to figure out otherwise. Not Linda, though. She knew right off.”

  “Knew what?”

  “That it wasn’t an accident. As soon as the deputy told her, she said ‘They did it again.’ And she was right. By then the arson guys in Bellevue had discovered that someone had messed around with the water-heater controls.”

  “And since I had been seen in the neighborhood the day before…”

  Harding nodded. “You got it. Everybody jumped to the wrong conclusion, including Linda Decker who figured you were after her even before she heard about the fire.”

  “If I’d been in her shoes, I probably would have thought the same thing,” I said.

  We were quiet for several moments and then Harding stood up. Slowly. Leaning against the desk for support like a man whose back hurts if he straightens up too fast.

  “Come on,” he said. “We’ll go back over to my office and get your stuff. I had your car towed into a garage here in town. No charge, of course, but we’ll have to bail it out of there before you’ll be able to head home.”

  By eleven o’clock, I was back on I-5 heading north. It had taken time to get my car out of the impound lot and then hours more at the St. Helen’s Hospital emergency room. They said my nose was broken but my shoulder wasn’t. I could have told them that myself, but Harding insisted on doing it right.

  As I drove, there was a dull ache in my shoulder where I’d fallen on the floor thanks to my friend Jamie. If it hurt this much already, by the next day it would be giving me fits. I was almost sorry I hadn’t accepted the doc’s offer of a painkiller, but I figured that and driving home to Seattle were contraindicated.

  It was less than twelve hours from the time I had turned off the freeway onto Highway 6 going to Pe Ell. Twelve hours and a lifetime ago.

  Those are the kind of hours that make a man old before his time. Driving home that night I was feeling downright ancient.

  When the elevator door slipped open on the twenty-fifth floor of Belltown Terrace, an ocean of garlic washed over me. The garlic was thick enough that I could smell it despite my broken nose. Without opening the door I knew Ralph Ames was inside my apartment, cooking up a storm. My interior designer created a kitchen that unleashed Ames’ culinary genius.

  As I walked in the door, Ames glanced up from ladling a pot full of fettucini Alfredo into one of my best bowls. “How about a midnight snack,” he grinned. “I’ll bet you’re starved.”

  Two places were set in the dining room. The middle of the table held a large wooden bowl of tossed salad as well as an uncorked bottle of wine.

  I had kicked off my shoes and was shrugging out of my jacket when Ames came into the dining room and put the bowl of fettucini on the table. He gave me an appraising look.

  “Other than a pair of shiners and a hole in your knee, how are you, Beau?”

  I knew about the hole in my knee, but shiners? “You’re shitting me.”

  Ames shook his head. “Go look for yourself,” he said.

  I did, he was right. I looked like hell.

  “What did you do, walk into a door?”

  “An eight-by-ten timber,” I answered.

  “Same difference. Are you hungry?”

  “You bet.” It had been some time since that long-ago breakfast Marilyn Sykes had fed me. I may not be the type to cook fettucini, but I certainly don’t object to eating it. I dished up a mountain of salad and started on that while Ames poured two glasses of wine.

  “By the way,” he said. “Marilyn Sykes called here looking for you a couple of times. I told her you’d give her a call as soon as we finished eating. Hope you don’t mind, but I filled her in on some of the details.”

  “Things would be a hell of a lot different if I had been home alone in my own little beddy-bye,” I said. “Marilyn’s alibi was what did the trick.”

  One of the things I appreciate most about Ames is that he’s not above saying he told me so, but he doesn’t usually rub my nose in it. He simply nodded. “I figured as much,” he said.

  “There are a few other messages as well,” he added. “Two calls from Sergeant Watkins, and one from someone named Kramer. He sounded real upset. What’s this all about?”

  And so, during the course of our late-night dinner, I explained to Ralph Ames what I could about what was going on. I told him about finding Logan Tyree’s body and about what I regarded as the erroneous determination of accidental death. I told him about Logan Tyree’s womenfolk, his moderately grief-stricken widow and his grieving ex-fiancée. I told him about my meeting with Jimmy Rising and the subsequent fire. Sometime later, over wine, I even remembered to tell him about Angie Dixon and the news photo that had captured her fatal plunge from Masters Plaza.

  Ralph Ames listened to it all, nodding from time to time, asking questions periodically. “There does seem to be a pattern,” he observed when I finished. “Certainly with Logan Tyree the killer or killers went to some length to make his death look like an accident. And the woman falling off the building sounds like an accident, too. Is there any connection between them?”

  “Between Logan and Angie Dixon?” I s
hook my head. “Other than the fact that they were in the same union, there’s no connection that I know of. Logan Tyree taught a certified welding class for apprentices. Presumably Angie Dixon was in Logan’s class.”

  “The same one, you think?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe, or maybe a later one.”

  “But you think they all knew each other?”

  “Probably.”

  “What are you going to do about it?” Ames asked.

  “Nothing. Not a goddamned thing. From now on, it’s hands off as far as I’m concerned.”

  Ames smiled. “I’m glad you’re being sensible for a change, Beau. From what he said on the phone, I’m afraid Sergeant Watkins will insist on it.”

  That turned out to be something of an understatement.

  CHAPTER

  15

  I didn’t go to the department the next day. I didn’t have to. The mountain came to Mohammed. Sergeant Watkins turned up on the security phone downstairs at ten after eight. Once Watty was inside my apartment, Ralph Ames stayed around only long enough to say a polite hello and then made himself scarce while the sergeant and I retreated into the den.

  “Coffee?” I asked.

  Watty shook his head. “It’s not a social visit. Just what the hell do you think you’re pulling, Beau? Since when do homicide detectives go out and investigate any damn case they please? Since when did I stop making the assignments?”

  “I didn’t do it on purpose. It just happened. You know how that Tyree case started. He floated up right under my nose while I was working on the movie set. I know I wasn’t assigned, but I was involved. I couldn’t help it.”

  “That’s bullshit, Beau, and you know it. ‘I couldn’t help it’ is an excuse a little kid uses on his mother after he wets his pants. You didn’t try to help it. You got a wild hair up your ass that Kramer and Manny had it all wrong, and you set out hell-bent for leather to prove it.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “Maybe nothing! What’s going on between you and Kramer anyway? He’s been in my office twice this week complaining that you were messing around in his case. Bird-dogging him. I told him he was full of it, that you were working on the movie and later that you were on vacation. Obviously I was wrong. The shit is really going to hit the fan when he finds out about what happened yesterday.”

  “I think he already has. He called here last night before I got home.”

  “But you didn’t talk to him?”

  I shook my head. “Not yet.”

  “If I were you, Beau, I’d do some pretty serious thinking before I called him. He’s pissed as hell, and he has every right to be. So’s Manny. The homicide squad’s based on teamwork, remember? We’re supposed to work together, all of us. I don’t need some loose cannon rolling around on deck screwing up the works for everybody.”

  There wasn’t a damn thing I could say, because I knew Watty was right, and he was only warming up.

  “We’ve worked together for a long time, Beau, been through the wars together, but you left me with my ass hanging out on this one. I spent all day yesterday dodging bullets in every direction. Calls from upstairs, calls from the press, and yes, goddamnit, calls from some of my own squad. All of ’em asking the same thing. All of ’em wanting to know what the hell was going on and how the hell you ended up in that woman’s basement without any clothes on.”

  “Shorts,” I put in lamely. “I still had my shorts on.”

  “Big fucking deal. Tell me about it. What happened?”

  I took a deep breath. “I was convinced that Logan Tyree’s death wasn’t an accident.”

  “That’s no answer,” Watty interrupted. “Harbor Patrol disagrees with you. So does the Coast Guard. And the same goes for Manny Davis and Paul Kramer. Logan Tyree’s their baby, and don’t you forget it.”

  “But you asked me how it happened and I’m telling you. I was interested, so I talked to people—his friends, his ex-wife, people he worked with. They all said the same thing, that Tyree was careful, exceptionally careful, that he wouldn’t have been out in a boat without the fume sensors and the blower working properly.”

  “That’s it?” Watty demanded. “That’s all you had?”

  “Then there was the fight with his girlfriend. One of the neighbors said they had a serious quarrel and that they broke up a week or so before it happened.”

  “Breaking up with his girlfriend days before he died doesn’t tell me Logan Tyree was murdered.”

  “There was something else as well. Tyree told his neighbor that he had to take some kind of action. I forget the words exactly, but something about a man doing what a man has to do.”

  “And this neighbor…”

  “His name’s Corbett, Red Corbett.”

  “What else did he tell you?”

  “He gave me Linda Decker’s name. Told me how to get in touch with her.”

  “How come, Beau? Why’d this Red Corbett character spill his guts to you and not to Manny and Paul? I’ve got their reports. I remember seeing Corbett’s name. He told them some of this, but not all.”

  “Can I help it if Paul Kramer’s an asshole?”

  “Leave personalities out of this, Beau.”

  I went on. “Corbett offered to give Manny and Kramer Linda’s name, but they said they didn’t need it. That since the death was an accident, the ex-wife’s name was enough.”

  Watty was shaking his head before I finished. “So they made a mistake. Kramer’s new to homicide. He’s entitled to some mistakes, but by the time they decided they did need to talk to her, Linda Decker was already gone. Not even her mother knew where she was. How’d you manage to find her when they couldn’t?”

  “I talked to her brother.”

  “The retard? The one who’s in the hospital?”

  “Is that what Kramer told you about Jimmy Rising, that he’s a retard?”

  “Developmentally disabled. You like that better?”

  “Look, Watty, whatever’s wrong with him, Jimmy Rising is one hell of a nice guy. He would have told Kramer and Manny just what he told me if they had bothered to listen. They ran right over him, ignored him, treated him like shit.”

  “And you didn’t?”

  “That’s right.”

  Watty leaned back on the couch and looked at me, his arms folded over his chest. I had worked with Sergeant Watkins for a long time, but I had never seen him so thoroughly steamed.

  “You’re out to lunch on this one, Beau. This case, accident or not, is none of your goddamned business.”

  “So I’ll leave it alone,” I said.

  “You’d by God better!”

  “What about the woman who fell off the building?”

  “What about her?”

  “Is that classified as an accident, too?”

  “Are you saying the two deaths are related?”

  “Can you prove they’re not?”

  After this exchange we sat there for several long moments with neither one of us speaking. Finally, abruptly, Watty stood up to go.

  “I came over here to tell you to mind your own business, Beau. It’s not an official warning. Kramer hasn’t filed a grievance yet. If he does, then it will have to be official, go across desks, through channels, and end up in your file. But just because it isn’t official yet, don’t get the idea that you’re home free. You’re not.

  “I’ve known you for years, Beau. This isn’t like you. I know you’re a good cop. I can’t believe you’d pull such a dumb-ass trick. With you down there by yourself, if that crazy broad in Pe Ell had blown you away, it wouldn’t have done anybody a damn bit of good.

  “I don’t usually pay much attention to departmental gossip. Neither do you, but I think it’s time you did. This is a hell of a nice place you have here. That 928 you drive is a sweet little piece of machinery. I happen to know where all of it came from, but you’re getting a whole lot of notoriety both inside and outside the department. People are starting to talk about the playboy cop. When you go a
round pulling fool stunts like this, it sure as hell adds fuel to the fire.”

  I must have winced when he said it. The words “playboy cop” had hurt badly enough when I heard them from Paul Kramer. Coming from Watty, from someone I’ve worked with for years, someone I respect, they cut clear to the bone.

  He didn’t miss my reaction. “So you have heard it then,” Watty said.

  I nodded.

  “Being a cop isn’t something you do when you feel like it. It isn’t something you do now and then just to keep your hand in. It’s not a goddamned part-time job. It’s something you do because you have to, because it’s in your blood. But you do it by the rules. If you’re tired of those rules, if you’re tired of taking orders and being on the team, then quit. Get the hell out.

  “Your net worth doesn’t mean a damn thing to me, Beaumont. It doesn’t make you sergeant. I’m still calling the shots. I assign the cases, and my people answer to me. I don’t need any goddamned Lone Ranger on my squad. I won’t tolerate it, and if you’ve got a problem with that, then maybe you’d better make this vacation permanent or put in for a transfer. You got that?”

  “I’ve got it,” I said.

  I followed Watty to the door. He opened it and stepped into the hallway, then he turned back. “If I were you, I’d have someone take a look at that nose. It looks broken to me.”

  I watched him go. Watty had just climbed all over my frame, but he still worried about my goddamned broken nose. That hurt almost as much as the ass-chewing.

  Ralph Ames came out of the guest room with an empty coffee cup in one hand and a fistful of papers in the other. He had told me that as long as he was in Seattle he could just as well do some work for the Belltown Terrace real-estate syndicate and save himself another trip later.

  “How was it?” he asked, refilling his cup.

  “Pretty rough,” I said. “Watty told me to shape up or ship out. Either get back on the team or get the hell off it altogether. From the sound of it, he doesn’t much care which way it goes.”

  “I see,” Ames said and let it go at that. He took the fresh cup of coffee and disappeared into the guest room, leaving me to stew in my own juices.