More Perfect Union (9780061760228)

by Jance, Judith A.

  “Something about her kids. I don’t know exactly.”

  The nurse had gone on into the nurses’ station and was studying a chart. “Can you call the chaplain’s office?” I asked.

  She looked annoyed, but she picked up the phone, dialed a number, and handed the receiver to me. A woman answered. “Lucille Kenmore. How may I help you?”

  “You’re the chaplain?” I asked.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Did you just send someone up for Linda Decker on the ninth floor?”

  “No, I certainly didn’t. I’m involved in a conference right now. If you could just leave your number…”

  I handed the phone back to the nurse. My mind was racing. If the person who came for Linda Decker wasn’t from the chaplain’s office, then it was someone who had lied to the guard to gain access.

  I turned to the guard. “How long ago did they leave?”

  “Not that long ago. A few minutes maybe. I’m surprised you didn’t run into them in the elevator.”

  The nurse was looking at me. “Is there a problem?”

  “Do you have a phone number for Jimmy Rising’s sister?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “No buts. Get it for me and get it fast. She may have been taken out of here against her will.”

  The guard shook his head, looking skeptical. “I doubt that. She knew the guy. She called him by name.”

  “What name?”

  “Harry.”

  Harry Campbell. Shit! A wave of gooseflesh washed down my legs. My guess was that somehow Campbell had stumbled onto the fact that we were after him and he had decided to buy himself a little insurance. If one hostage was good, three would be better.

  I wheeled on the nurse, who still hadn’t moved. “Get me that number and get it now!” I barked.

  “This is highly irregular.”

  “Look, lady, don’t you understand? Lives are at stake!”

  That finally jarred her loose. She took a metal-covered chart from its place on the counter and ran her finger down the first page. “Here it is,” she said. “Would you like me to dial it for you?”

  When she handed me the receiver I could hear a phone ringing at the other end. It was on its sixth ring when someone finally answered, a woman’s voice still thick and groggy with sleep.

  “Is Linda there?” I asked.

  “No. Oh, wait. Maybe she came in and I didn’t hear her.”

  “But this is where she’s staying?”

  “Yes, but she’s been at the hospital most of the time.”

  “Are her kids there?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “Listen to me, and listen very carefully. My name’s Beaumont, Detective J. P. Beaumont with the Seattle Police.”

  “Oh, I remember you, Detective Beaumont. I’m Sandy. Remember? From micrographics.”

  That was almost more than I could have hoped for—someone I knew. I wouldn’t have to start the explanations from scratch. “Sandy,” I said, “you’ve got to get those kids out of there.”

  “But they’re asleep.”

  “Listen. I only have time to say this once. Wake them up. Get them out of the house. Where do you live?”

  “On the back side of Queen Anne Hill just a few blocks from Northwest Center,” she answered. “I usually walk to work.”

  “Load those kids into your car. You do have a car, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Take them somewhere, anywhere. My place. Do you know where Belltown Terrace is at Second and Broad?”

  “I’ve driven past it.”

  “Take the kids there. Now. Call my apartment. A man named Ames will answer. Tell him I told you to come there and wait, understand?”

  “But what’s the rush?”

  “I can’t explain now, Sandy, but hurry. Please. Give me your address.”

  Sandy Carson’s street address was on 13th. I took it down and then dropped both the phone and the note into the mystified guard’s hand. “Call 911,” I ordered. “Have them send a squad car to this address. No lights and no sirens, got that? Tell them to wait for me there.” I headed for the elevator.

  “Yes, but…”

  “And get hold of Sergeant Watkins. Give him a message for me. Tell him that if Kramer and Davis are still in Edmonds, they’re barking up the wrong goddamned tree. That’s where they need to be. The address in your hand.”

  The elevator door slid shut behind me. The ride was surprisingly quick. It went all the way from the ninth floor to the bottom without stopping for anyone else. I couldn’t believe my luck. As soon as I got on the street, though, I realized I’d screwed up. I had no idea what kind of car Harry Campbell might be driving, and I had no way of finding out. Once more I wished I had taken Ames’ advice and installed a cellular phone in the 928.

  The engine of the Porsche roared to life when I turned the key. Pulling a fast U-turn on Jefferson, I headed back toward Boren. The lights ahead of me turned green as I started down the hill. Fortunately, there weren’t any stray pedestrians. And no traffic cops, either. I was doing sixty when I had to slow down for the Y at Stewart.

  There was a car ahead of me, and I just made the yellow arrow onto Denny Way. The lights had been with me from the top of the hill. I knew I was making incredibly good time, but all the speed in the world would be meaningless unless Harry Campbell was going where I thought he was going.

  On Denny Way my luck with the traffic came to an end. There was a car, an older-model Datsun, poking along in the left-hand lane ahead of me, and a Chevron gasoline tanker tooling along at my side. I flashed my high beams at the Datsun. Instead of moving to the right out of the way, it slowed, swerved toward the left, and straddled the yellow traffic divider in the middle of the roadway without leaving enough room between it and the tanker for me to pass.

  Just then the driver’s door flew open and a body fell out of the front seat of the Datsun, rolling over and over into the oncoming lane. My steel-belted radials smoked to a stop as I stood on the brakes, and the driver of the tanker blared his horn. Suddenly the body on the street rose to its feet and came scrambling toward me, arms waving frantically. I recognized Linda Decker’s face as she grabbed desperately for my door.

  “Please help me,” she gasped, wrenching my door open. “Help me. He’s got a gun.”

  “Get in, quick,” I told her. “He won’t get away.”

  She stopped and stared at me. “It’s you!” she exclaimed. “How did you find me?”

  “Never mind. Get in the car, goddamnit.”

  The truck driver had stopped half a block away and now he too came dashing up to the Porsche. “Lady, are you all right? Is something the matter?”

  By then Linda was finally moving toward the rider’s door. I leaned out the window and called to the truck driver. “Do you have a CB in that rig?”

  He nodded. “Sure.”

  “Notify Seattle P.D. There’s a fugitive in that Datsun up there. His name’s Harry Campbell. He’s armed and dangerous. What’s your license number, Linda?”

  She was crying, but she managed to choke out an answer. I started to relay it to the driver, but he waved me on. “Got it,” he said and started back for his truck while I rammed the gas pedal to the floor and we shot forward. Ahead of us, the taillights from the Datsun bounced back over the median and into traffic. Campbell was still heading west on Denny.

  “He said he had my kids, that they were down in the car. That’s why I went with him. He wanted me to drive him to Canada, using us as cover. He took me down the stairs,” she added. “He was afraid we might meet somebody in the elevator.”

  “He was right,” I said grimly. “You would have.”

  “I thought he’d done something to the kids, but when I found out they weren’t in the car, that he wanted me to drive him to the house, I decided I’d try to get away from him before we got there.”

  “You did great,” I told her. “And the kids are fine. I told Sandy Carson to take them to my place.” />
  “Thank you,” Linda murmured.

  “Glad to be of service.”

  The Datsun was a few blocks ahead of us, but I didn’t try to close the gap. Instead, I concentrated on maintaining visual contact. That was enough. No heroics. Not with Linda Decker in the car. Patrol cars were on their way. I’d let some Joe Blow patrol officer bring the guy to ground. At least it wouldn’t be Detective Paul Kramer. Let him put that in his pipe and smoke it.

  “But how did you know what was happening?” Linda Decker asked. “How did you know where he’d go?”

  “I got lucky for a change,” I told her. “For once in my life, I flat got lucky.”

  CHAPTER

  25

  A rookie fresh out of the academy actually made the arrest. That was fine with me. As long as it wasn’t Paul Kramer putting the cuffs on Harry Campbell’s wrists, I didn’t much care who did.

  Ralph Ames had been far more right than he knew when he said it was going to be a long night. The sun was already up by the time Linda Decker and I left the department to go back to Belltown Terrace. And it was after five when she and Sandy Carson packed the two sleeping kids down to Sandy’s car for the short ride home.

  I was sound asleep at six when the phone rang. It was Linda Decker. The hospital had just called her. Jimmy Rising was dead.

  He had been so badly burned, and the road back would have been so tough, that I couldn’t help thinking he was better off, but I felt sick just the same. If there was anyone Upstairs keeping score, the good guys had lost big in this particular skirmish.

  The next time I saw Linda Decker, it was the afternoon of Jimmy Rising’s funeral at a cemetery somewhere in the wilds of Bellevue. She came over and stood beside me as they lowered Jimmy’s simple casket into the ground.

  “They’re in there with him, you know,” she said softly.

  “Pardon me?”

  “The thermos and the lunch pail you gave him. If heaven’s perfect, Jimmy will have a job to go to every day. He’ll need them.”

  Linda Decker walked away from me then. Her kids wanted her for something, and I was glad she left. I wouldn’t have been able to talk for the lump in my throat.

  As I started back toward where the cars were parked, Martin Green fell into step beside me. I had seen him in the funeral chapel, but we hadn’t spoken.

  “She’s a gutsy little thing,” he said, nodding toward Linda’s retreating figure. “Did you know she’s coming back to work at the hall?”

  “No. I hadn’t heard.”

  “It took some selling. I finally talked her into it. The union needs women like her,” Green continued. “The good ones. The ones with some backbone.”

  “She’s long on backbone all right,” I said, remembering how Linda Decker had looked in Pe Ell when she’d been staring down at me over the barrel of a gun. “I wouldn’t cross her if I were you.”

  Martin Green chuckled. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I already figured that out.”

  So maybe ironworkers Local 165 will turn out to be a more perfect union after all. Good for Martin Green. Good for Linda Decker. I’m sure she’ll do a fine job of raising those kids no matter what kind of work she does, but it’ll be easier to do it by herself on the kind of money she’ll make working construction than it would be on what she’d earn tending bar in some backwater like Pe Ell.

  About that time I caught sight of Linda’s two kids standing together next to the funeral parlor’s limousine, waiting for their mother. Jason was holding his little sister’s hand protectively. As I got closer to the children, I could hear they were arguing.

  “Is too,” Jason insisted.

  “Is not,” Allison responded. When I walked across the parking lot to get in the Porsche, they followed at a respectful distance.

  “See there?” Jason announced archly as soon as I opened the door to the 928. “It is too him. I told you.”

  When I turned on the ignition, the cellular phone let me know I’d had a call. The readout didn’t tell me who had called, but I knew. Ralph Ames was the only person so far who had the number. I called him back and told him to meet me at the Doghouse for lunch.

  There wasn’t much traffic on the bridge, and Lake Washington was as still and blue as the sky above it. I drove along and thought about Harry Campbell. He had turned out to be a wormy shit. As soon as he saw the writing on the wall, he spilled his guts, thinking that by naming names first and by agreeing to turn state’s evidence, he might be able to work himself some kind of deal. That remains to be seen. It’s up to the prosecutor’s office. Once we turn creeps over to them, it’s out of our hands.

  According to both Campbell and Martinson, Don Kaplan had been the brains of the outfit, all the while seeming to be working the problem right along with Martin Green. Which just goes to show what a hell of a good judge of character I am. Martin Green wasn’t the only one snowed by Don Kaplan. So was J. P. Beaumont.

  It was Kaplan who had discovered the leak and sicced Harry Campbell on Logan Tyree and Angie Dixon in a futile attempt at damage control to cover up disclosure of those worthless tapes. In the state of Washington, conspiracy to commit murder is as good as doing the job yourself. In a year or so, maybe Don Kaplan and Harry Campbell will be occupying neighboring cells on Death Row in Walla Walla.

  Ames was waiting when I got to the Doghouse. He had already ordered—for both of us. Wanda brought me my bacon and eggs, accompanied by a knowing smile. “I saw your friend’s picture in the paper this morning,” she said.

  “What friend is that?” I asked.

  “You know. The movie star.”

  “What about him?”

  “He got married in Las Vegas yesterday to some woman he met while he was here in Seattle.”

  “Derrick Parker got married?” I asked incredulously, not quite trusting my ears. “You’ve got to be kidding!”

  Wanda shook her head. “Hold on, I think I can find the picture.”

  Sure enough, when she brought it, there was Derrick Parker, grinning from ear to ear. Next to him stood a radiant Merrilee Jackson.

  I didn’t say a word. Who the hell am I to criticize whirlwind courtships?

  When we got up to leave, there was a man waiting for a table. Somewhat oversized, he was wearing a black-and-white T-shirt. I’M FAT BUT YOU’RE UGLY, the shirt proclaimed. I CAN GO ON A DIET.

  I’m sure Ralph Ames thought I was crazy when I burst out laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked.

  I nodded toward the shirt. “It reminds me of Detective Kramer and J. P. Beaumont.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Kramer’s probably still down at the department sopping up every bit of glory he can muster.”

  “So?”

  “So maybe I am a playboy cop, and maybe Kramer will turn out to be Chief some day when he grows up, but I’m like that fat man who can go on a diet. I can always quit. Anytime I want to.”

  Ralph Ames looked at me speculatively. “Anytime,” he agreed, nodding. “It’s up to you.”

  About the Author

  New York Times bestselling author J.A. JANCE was born in South Dakota, brought up in Bisbee, Arizona, and now lives with her husband in Seattle, Washington, and Tucson, Arizona. Readers can visit her online at www.jajance.com.

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  Resounding praise for the novels of

  New York Times bestselling author

  J. A. JANCE

  “JANCE…[CREATES] CHARACTERS SO REAL you want to reach out and hug—or strangle—them. Her dialogue always rings true, and the cases unravel in an interesting, yet never contrived way.”

  Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “Jance just keeps getting better.”

  Traverse City Record-Eagle

  “Jance brings the reader along with suspense, wit, surprise, and intense feeling…She has a great ability to put the reader into the setting in which she writes.”

>   Huntsville Times

  “[Jance] can spin a good tale…She remains one of the best mystery writers in North America.”

  Ottawa Citizen

  “J. A. JANCE DOES NOT DISAPPOINT.”

  Washington Times

  Joanna Brady Mysteries by

  J.A. Jance

  EXIT WOUNDS • PARADISE LOST

  DEVIL'S CLAW • OUTLAW MOUNTAIN

  RATTLESNAKE CROSSING • SKELETON CANYON

  DEAD TO RIGHTS • SHOOT/DON'T SHOOT

  TOMBSTONE COURAGE • DESERT HEAT

  Detective J.P. Beaumont Mysteries by

  J.A. Jance

  BIRDS OF PREY

  BREACH OF DUTY • NAME WITHHELD

  LYING IN WAIT • FAILURE TO APPEAR

  WITHOUT DUE PROCESS • PAYMENT IN KIND

  MINOR IN POSSESSION • DISMISSED WITH PREJUDICE

  A MORE PERFECT UNION • IMPROBABLE CAUSE

  TAKING THE FIFTH • TRIAL BY FURY

  INJUSTICE FOR ALL • UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY

  and

  DAY OF THE DEAD • PARTNER IN CRIME

  KISS OF THE BEES • HOUR OF THE HUNTER

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A MORE PERFECT UNION. Copyright © 2006 by J.A. Jance. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  ePub edition July 2006 ISBN 9780061760228

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