Injustice for All

by J. A. Jance

  “Do you have reservations somewhere?” I asked.

  “No, we'll check into a motel after we get to town.”

  “Do I owe you any more money?” I asked, wondering if I should be prepared to write another check.

  “As a matter of fact,” he answered, “you'll be getting back some change.”

  “I'll look for you when you get here,” I said. “My parking space is number forty-eight. After you park, come on up to 1106. We'll go to lunch.”

  “Sounds great.”

  Peters called from home while I was drinking my second cup of coffee. He was reading his morning paper. “Somebody blabbed about the search warrant. I'll bet Huggins is pissed. The paper names Wilson as the major suspect in both Larson murders. Who's the leak?”

  Peters and I had hammered away on Don Wilson's thawing chicken over drinks after dinner. “Does the article mention Ginger Watkins?” I asked.

  “Not so far.”

  “I've gotta go, Peters.” I hung up and dialed Hal Huggins' number in Friday Harbor. It was busy and stayed that way. I tried the Sheriff's Department. “I'm sorry. Detective Huggins is unavailable.”

  “This is Detective Beaumont from Seattle. I'll hold. He'll talk to me.”

  I was right. Hal came on the line a minute later. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Beau. This place is a zoo. We've got reporters hanging from the ceiling fans. Somebody told them about the search warrant.”

  “Who?”

  “How the hell should I know?”

  “Pomeroy, maybe?” I asked. He was my first choice.

  “I don't think so. I asked him. He denied it six ways to Sunday. I think he's telling the truth. Musta been somebody else.”

  A voice spoke to Hal in the background, and I heard his muffled reply. “Hey,” he said into the phone. “I've gotta run. The press is eating me alive. I'll let you know if anything breaks.”

  I put down the phone and sat for a while. Eventually I called Ray in Pasco. He was at home. He sounded glad to hear from me.

  “What did they find in the Rabbit?” I asked him after the niceties.

  “Not in the Rabbit, on it. Mona's hair, and fibers from her jacket on the front bumper.”

  “No fingerprints?”

  “Yours, smudged. Must have worn gloves.”

  “Great. Terrific. When's Mona's funeral?”

  “It's over. Her brother brought in a bunch of Hell's Angels types from Idaho, cowboys on motorcycles. I went to the service. Except for the brother and his friends, no one was there.”

  At least I had sent flowers.

  I made a late lunch reservation for the Space Needle. It's one of Seattle's best-known tourist attractions. The combination of food and view are unbeatable.

  As I hung up the phone after making the reservation, I congratulated myself. It would be the first time I had visited the Space Needle since that night months ago when I went with Anne Corley. Maybe I was finally getting better.

  I said a small thank-you to Ginger Watkins wherever she was.

  Downtown is deserted on weekends. All the business people are home in the suburbs, mowing lawns and raking leaves. Farther downtown where the stores are, there are still crowds of shoppers, but not up in the Denny Regrade where I live. The flat stretches of the Regrade form a quiet village.

  Actually, the Regrade used to be as hilly as the rest of Seattle, but sometime during the early nineteen-hundreds, a city engineer named R. H. Thompson got carried away with his work and decided to sluice Denny Hill into Puget Sound. He wanted flat, and he got it; only the Depression stopped him before he got started on Queen Anne Hill. That kind of nonsense wouldn't get past environmentalists today, but it did then. Now the Denny Regrade is flat as a pancake.

  Expansion from downtown, also stopped by the Depression, left the Regrade as it is today, a neighborhood of condominiums and apartment buildings interspersed with offices and small businesses. New luxury high-rises and flea-bitten hotels coexist in relative harmony.

  I opened the door to my solitary lanai and went out to soak up some quiet morning sun. I needed to think.

  A couple of things were right at the top of my list. For one, why would the killer have carefully worn gloves to drive my car when he had blatantly left prints all over Ginger's calendar? Of course, he didn't expect the calendar to be found, but still, it was taking a hell of a chance.

  And the half-chicken bothered me. My mother was a firm believer in “Waste not, want not.” The idea of thawing meat when you had no intention of coming home didn't make sense. And how had he disappeared into thin air? And why had he unpacked all his protest materials before he left for Orcas?

  Questions. Always questions with no answers. And reporters buzzing around with their own sets of questions, never having brains enough not to print everything they knew, or thought they knew.

  Stymied, I went back inside to shower, shave, and dress. I was ready and waiting when Ernie and Jenny showed up at one-thirty. Jenny Rogers was a smiling woman, several years younger than Ernie. They were a matched set. Her flaming red hair and blue eyes made them look more like brother and sister than husband and wife. She had a pregnant shelf of tummy that could easily have held a coffee cup and saucer.

  “Any trouble with the car?” I asked.

  Jenny giggled. “Some,” she replied.

  I looked anxiously at Ernie, afraid something was wrong with the Porsche that he hadn't been able to fix. He grinned. “She had a hard time steering,” he explained. “The baby kept getting in the way.”

  Sports cars are not necessarily built for pregnant drivers.

  We decided to walk from my place to Seattle Center. I guess I had never noticed all the curb cuts in the sidewalks. Ernie wheeled along, easily keeping pace with Jenny and me.

  They found the Space Needle enchanting. Jenny had never been there, not even on the observation deck. She was delighted with the revolving restaurant, exuberant about the food. Her enjoyment was contagious. We had a great time. Eventually, however, conversation turned to business. Ernie reached in a pocket and pulled out an envelope which he handed to me. In it was a check for five hundred dollars, made out in my name. “What's this?” I asked.

  “The job didn't take nearly as long as I thought,” he answered. “That's your change.”

  I remembered Barney at Rosario telling me that Ernie was the best. I had doubted it then, but now I believed it. I'd checked, and couldn't have gotten the work done nearly that fast or cheap anywhere else. Taking a pen, I endorsed the check back to Jenny Rogers and handed it to her.

  She was stunned. “Why?” she asked.

  “For driving the car back, saving me a day of traveling. And for the baby. Ernie said you wanted to go shopping.”

  She looked at him quickly, questioning whether she should accept it. He shrugged, and she put the check in her purse.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Ernie looked uncomfortable. He changed the subject. “Did you see the paper this morning?”

  “I didn't see it, but I heard.”

  “The paper said it's because the parole board let that Lathrop guy out and he killed Wilson's wife.”

  I shrugged. “Could be,” I said.

  “Well, they still shouldn't have fired Blia,” Jenny said. Ernie shot a quick silencing glance in Jenny's direction. “Well, they shouldn't have,” she insisted, with a defiant shake of her head. “It's not fair.”

  “What's not fair?”

  “Blia Vang was a maid working at Rosario who got fired because she lost her keys. They said someone found them and used them to break into Mrs. Watkins' room.”

  I felt as if I had wandered into a conversation twenty minutes late. “Who's this again?”

  “Blia Vang. A friend of ours.” Jenny's blue eyes smoldered with indignation. “Somebody stole her keys, so they fired her.”

  “When?”

  Ernie broke in with an explanation. “Blia worked the day that man was murdered. She left her keys on a cart, and some
one took them. The hotel claimed she was careless and fired her.”

  My mind raced. Sig's key to Ginger's room had never been found, but the fact that the maid's keys had been stolen the same day was too much of a coincidence. My gut told me the missing keys were somehow related to the murder.

  “Does Hal Huggins know?”

  Ernie shrugged. “I don't know. She was too scared to say anything. The manager didn't find out until yesterday. When he did, he fired her on the spot.”

  “But has Hal talked to her?”

  “I doubt it. She took off on the next ferry,” Jenny interjected. “She would have been long gone before he knew.”

  I felt a mounting surge of excitement. Maybe she had seen someone in the hall, someone she could identify. “A material witness can't just walk away. She'll have to tell the authorities what she knows.”

  “She won't,” Jenny said.

  “She has to. She could be charged with obstruction of justice.”

  Jenny gave a sharp laugh. “Try explaining obstruction of justice to an Hmong refugee. That's why she ran away. She's scared. She almost died when they took her fingerprints. She won't talk to a cop.”

  “Does anyone know where she went?”

  Jenny and Ernie exchanged glances. “Maybe,” Jenny said reluctantly. “But I tell you, she won't talk to you or Hal either. She's scared.”

  It occurred to me suddenly that Jenny and Ernie Rogers seemed to be far more than casually involved. “Wait a minute. How do you know so much about her?”

  Jenny looked shyly at Ernie. He answered with a mildly reproving glare. “We work with the refugees,” he explained. “An Hmong saved my life while I was in 'Nam. I'm the one who got her the job at Rosario in the first place. I feel pretty bad about it. We both do.”

  I was like an old, flop-eared hound stumbling across a fresh scent. “Would you help me find her?” I asked, attempting to contain my elation. Their heads shook in silent unison.

  “I'll get an interpreter,” I argued. “I'd be off duty, no uniform, no badge. This could be important. She may have seen someone or something nobody else saw.”

  Jenny's manner softened when she understood I believed Blia innocent of any wrong-doing. Ernie remained adamant.

  “There might be a reward,” I added as a last resort.

  “She won't talk to you,” Ernie said. “Even if you find her, she won't talk.”

  “She would if you went along to translate,” Jenny suggested. Ernie gave Jenny a black look, but his resistance was weakening. He sat for a long time, looking at me, weighing the pros and cons.

  “You're sure she wouldn't get into any trouble?” he asked.

  “I guarantee it.”

  “In that case,” Ernie Rogers said gruffly, “I guess it couldn't hurt to talk to her.”

  CHAPTER

  26

  I could hardly wait to get home. Jenny had told me there was a possibility Blia Vang was staying with relatives in Seattle. I wanted to start looking for her.

  While Ernie waited in the cab, Jenny and I retrieved luggage from the Porsche. In the elevator, Jenny thanked me again for both the money and lunch. It made me uneasy. Being an anonymous benefactor is a hell of a lot easier than looking gratitude in the face.

  “Buy something nice for the baby,” I said, patting her tummy.

  She smiled and stood on tiptoe, leaning over her pregnant belly to give me a peck on the cheek as the elevator door opened to let her off. She gave me the name of a motel near Green Lake in case I needed to get in touch with them.

  Back in my apartment I called Detective Henry Wu, a third generation Seattelite of Chinese extraction. Hank came to homicide from the University of Washington with a major in police science and a minor in Far Eastern studies.

  “Hey, Beau,” he said, when I told him who was calling. “When you coming back?”

  “Monday,” I said. “But I need your help today. What do you know about Hmong refugees here in town?”

  “A very tightly knit group,” he replied. “They don't trust outsiders. With good reason, mostly.”

  “Do you have any friends there?”

  “I've got an ear there,” he allowed. “Not a friend. Why? What do you need?”

  “There's young woman, used to be a maid up at Rosario. Her name is Blia Vang. They fired her for losing a set of keys. I need to talk to her.”

  “What about? Is this official police business?”

  “More like unofficial police business. Remember old Hal Huggins?”

  “Sure.”

  “He's working a homicide on Orcas. This woman may have a lead for him. She took off before he could talk to her. Rumor has it she's in Seattle, staying with relatives. I've got an interpreter, someone she knows, a fellow named Ernie Rogers. I need to ask her a couple questions. Off the record. No badge, no uniform, nothing. There's even a reward, if that helps.”

  “Money isn't going to make a hell of a lot of difference if she has to talk to a cop.”

  “Don't tell her I'm a cop. Say a friend of Ernie Rogers needs to talk to her.”

  “I'll try,” Hank agreed, “but don't hold your breath. Is that all?”

  “Well, actually, there's one more thing.”

  “Shoot.”

  “My interpreter is in town until four-thirty Monday afternoon. That's when the bus leaves for Anacortes.”

  “Jesus Christ, Beau! This is Saturday.”

  “Call somebody. Leave a message. It's important.”

  “Right,” he said sarcastically. “The Hmong all have phones and folks to take messages. I'll see what I can do.”

  “Thanks, Hank. I appreciate it.”

  I hung up. One of the hardest things about this business is waiting. You put an idea out into the ether, then you wait to see if anything happens. Television detectives notwithstanding, a lot of times nothing does.

  On Saturday, nothing happened. I finally got around to unpacking the suitcases I had brought home and stashed in the bedroom without opening. On the table beside my recliner, I discovered the bill from Rosario. Ames had impressed on me the value of saving copies of all bills as potential weapons in future battles with the IRS. I stowed the bill away in a shoe box reserved for that purpose, your basic lowtech-filing system.

  I tried Ames. Since it was cocktail hour on Saturday evening, I thought he might be persuaded into coming over. No dice. Claimed he was in the middle of something vital and couldn't take a break. More than a little put out, I walked across the street to the Cinerama and watched the original uncut version of Oklahoma for the seventh time.

  Afterward, I went home, to bed but not to sleep. Thoughts of Ginger Watkins and Mona Larson haunted me. There was a common denominator, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

  It was after three when I fell asleep. The phone rang at six. It was Ames—bright, cheerful, energetic Ames—calling on the security phone from the lobby. “Let me in, Beau. I'm downstairs.”

  I staggered into the kitchen and started coffee. When I opened the door, Ames bounced into the apartment, brimming over with excitement. “I have the deal put together. The other syndicate members want to know if you're going to buy the penthouse before the purchase of the building, or if you want to rent it back.” Words tumbled out in a torrent.

  “In that case, you wouldn't be able to buy it outright for five years, but considering the tax write-offs on the building, you needn't worry.”

  “Wait a goddamned minute here, Ames! Do you mean to tell me you woke me up at six o'clock on Sunday morning because you put a real estate package together?”

  Chastised, Ames accepted a proffered cup of coffee. “I had to wait for one guy's plane to land in Japan.”

  “Which building?” I asked. “The one with the barbecue?”

  “Beltown Terrace,” he said.

  “Okay, that's the one with the grill. What's next?”

  “Tomorrow I make them an offer.”

  I sat down opposite Ames with my own coffee cup. “I have a har
d time seeing myself as a real estate magnate.”

  “It'll grow on you,” he assured me, smiling.

  “What do I do with this?” I asked, indicating the small apartment that had been my first and only haven after the painful split from Karen and the kids.

  “Sell it, or keep it and rent it out. It's up to you.”

  I remembered when the mortgage on the unit plus the child-support I sent Karen had been an almost insurmountable problem every month. Things had changed. For the better.

  I scrambled a couple of eggs while Ames fixed toast. I could summon no enthusiasm for this real-life game of Monopoly. Even though it was theoretically my money, I didn't feel any sense of its belonging to me—or of my belonging to it, for that matter.

  “What's wrong, Beau?” he asked, finally noticing my genuine disinterest.

  “Mona Larson and Ginger Watkins,” I told him.

  “What about them, other than the obvious?”

  “Something bothers me, and I can't get a handle on it: some common denominator, besides Sig.”

  “They were both broke,” Ames said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “They were both broke,” he repeated. “Mortgaged up the yingyang. Belltown didn't work out the way they expected. First the cement strike caught them. When the units finally hit the market, they got clobbered by high interest rates.

  “For a long time nothing sold. They all lost a bundle. The whole group mortgaged everything to pay the first segment of the construction loan last year, thinking they could hold out and make the money back through sales. The next segment is due the end of December. There's no way they'll meet it. If they could even pay the interest, they might forestall a sheriff's sale, but after looking at the PDCs, I don't think they can.”

  “PDCs. What are they?”

  “Public Disclosure Commission statements. Elected and appointed state officials fill out financial disclosure forms showing their earnings and holdings…that sort of thing. They're a matter of public record. After looking them over, it's clear that the parole board income was keeping both the Larson and Watkins house-holds afloat.”

  “What about Homer?”

  Ames laughed. “He's exempt. He holds no public office. He's always a bridesmaid but never a bride. He's involved in campaigns all over the map, but he's never a candidate himself. I'd guess he's as bad off as everybody else, but he doesn't have to fill out a form saying so.”