by J. A. Jance
“Both broke,” I mused.
“You have to have pretty deep pockets to be able to weather the kind of financial storm there's been in Seattle's real estate market the last couple of years. My indicators say it's starting to turn around.”
“Are mine?”
“Are your what?”
“Are my pockets deep enough?”
Ames laughed again. “They are, Beau. Believe me, you'll do fine. Now, we should take a look at that penthouse. If you're going to buy it separately, I can draw up an earnest-money agreement today.”
I rummaged through my wallet and found the business card of the real estate lady at Belltown Terrace. “Call her,” I said. “I liked the water view best. Two bedrooms with a den.”
Ames seemed startled as he took the card. He had asked for a decision. I don't think he expected one quite that fast. “Just like that?” he asked.
“I looked at it Friday. It has a grill. I'm a sucker for barbecues.”
Ames left a short time later, setting off happily on his various missions. At least one Seattle real estate agent was in for a pleasant surprise that Sunday.
Alone, I mulled Ames' information. Broke. Both Ginger and Mona had been dead broke, battling for survival, trying to stay afloat. I found it hard to imagine Ginger living in that palatial estate, running like hell to keep up appearances. In Chelan, Mona and Sig must have been caught on the same kind of treadmill.
Ginger and Mona—both of them married above their station, both young and attractive, and both dead within days of one another, probably at the hands of the same killer. Mona Larson and Ginger Watkins indeed had a lot in common.
Peters' phone call interrupted my reverie. We see each other so little during the week that we have to check in on weekends. Indulging in his favorite vice, current events, he was determined to keep me well informed, whether or not I wanted to be.
“I don't suppose you've read the paper.”
“Good hunch.”
“Your friend Max has hit an all-time-record low for bad taste, a Death Row telephone interview with Philip Lathrop from Walla Walla. Asked Lathrop what he thought about Wilson knocking off Sig and Mona Larson.”
“I don't think I want to hear this,” I said.
“Lathrop's comment was, ‘It serves 'em right.’”
“That's why I don't read papers,” I told Peters.
“Maybe you've got a point,” Peters muttered.
Ida Newell dropped off my Sunday collection of crossword puzzles. I was working the second one when the phone rang. It was Hal Huggins. “They found him, Beau.”
“Who?”
“Wilson.”
“Where? When can I question him?”
“In Prosser. I'm on my way over there right now.” Hal hardly sounded jubilant. “But St. Peter's the only one who'll be asking him any questions.”
“He's dead? You're kidding! Who found him?”
“A troop of Boy Scouts out cleaning the bank along the Yakima River.”
“How long's he been dead?” My mind did a quick geographic review. Prosser was in Benton county, the county next to Pasco where Mona Larson died.
“I don't know, but I'm going over to find out.”
“What's the cause of death?”
“Initial report says drowning.”
“Drowning?” I repeated.
“I'll find out when I get there.”
I heard weariness and frustration in Hal's voice. He had followed a trail of questions, only to be robbed of both his suspect and his answers. To a homicide detective, answers are life's blood.
“Tough break, Hal,” I said.
“I know.” He paused. “I'd better go.” With that, he hung up.
I sat for a long time afterward holding the phone. When a recorded voice threatened me with bodily harm, I returned the receiver to its cradle.
Don Wilson was dead. That finished it, right? Supposedly.
Maybe it did for Hal Huggins. It sounded as if he was buying the whole program.
But I wasn't. Several things demanded consideration: Don Wilson's thawing chicken, his hungry cat, his unpacked protest gear, and an extraneous set of missing keys. All were perplexing loose ends that wouldn't go away, that refused to be tied up in neat little packages.
Loose ends bug me. If they didn't, I guess I'd be in another line of work.
CHAPTER
27
Anyone who's ever been on vacation knows how hard it is to return to work that first day. In my case, the vacation had been the culmination of months of being miserable and disconnected. It felt like I was going back to work after six months rather than a mere two weeks.
Peters spent the day at the courthouse on the dead wife-beater case. Both Peters and I were rooting for the woman, Delphina Sage. Delphina's husband, Rocky, came home drunk one Friday night and beat the crap out of her, same as he did every payday. The only difference was that, the day before, Delphina had bought herself a .22 pistol.
If she had shot him while he was beating her up, it wouldn't have been so bad. We would have called it self-defense and let it go at that. Instead, Delphina waited until Rocky was sound asleep, then plugged him full of holes. From talking to the kids and the neighbors, Peters and I figured Rocky was a bully badly in need of plugging, but Barbara Guffy, King County's chief prosecutor, has a thing about premeditation. She was after a murder conviction.
Peters and I had been working another case just prior to my leaving for Rosario. In two separate but—we believed—related incidents, some jackass had set fire to sleeping transients downtown. Detectives Lindstrom and Davis had one case, while Peters and I had the other. Our victim had died almost immediately, but the other transient still clung stubbornly to life in the burn unit at Harborview Hospital. Both victims remained unidentified.
I was reviewing what little we had to go on when Hank Wu stopped by my desk. “Any luck?” I asked.
He shook his head. “This stuff takes time, Beau. The Hmong don't come out of the woodwork and spill their guts just because Henry Wu snaps his fingers. What time did you say your interpreter leaves?”
“Today on the four-thirty Greyhound for Anacortes.”
“I'd say chances aren't very good.”
“Keep after it anyway.”
“Sure, glad to.” Hank sauntered away from my desk.
Ames had promised to call as soon as he heard anything on the real estate transactions. The penthouse earnest-money agreement called for a March closing date. “That way,” Ames had told me with a sly grin, “we'll keep the money in the family.”
He called just before lunch, sounding perplexed. “What's the matter, Ames? You sound upset.”
“I don't understand. They jumped on the penthouse deal, but they refused to consider the syndicate offer.”
“Why?”
“I don't know. Must have come up with another investor who's willing to buy in. That's all I can figure.”
“What happened?”
“That's what's so strange. When I talked to the project manager this morning, he was hot on the idea. Said he had to talk to one of the principals. Five minutes later, the deal was off. Just like that. One minute they needed the money; the next minute they didn't. The way they grabbed at that penthouse deal, even with a delayed closing, they don't expect to lose Belltown between now and March.”
At Ames' insistence I had studied the project's financial sheet. We were talking big money, several million dollars.
“How can someone come up with that kind of cash in five minutes' time?” I wondered aloud.
“I don't know,” Ames told me, “but I intend to find out.”
Ames was in no mood to go to lunch. Craving companionship, I tracked down Peters at the courthouse. The two of us walked to a salad bar at Fourth and Madison. He dismissed my questions about Delphina Sage with an impatient shake of his head. “I don't want to talk about it. You do any good this morning?” he asked.
“I went over everything we have on our
charbroiled John Doe. This afternoon I thought I'd check to see if Manny and Al's guy up in the burn unit can talk.”
“Don't hold your breath,” Peters said. “He couldn't last week.”
It sounded hopeless to me, and I said as much. “We'll never crack this one. There's nothing to go on. Besides, if bums kill bums, who gives a shit?”
Peters gave me a long, critical look. “We sure as hell won't crack it with that kind of attitude,” he responded. “You were supposed to come back from vacation with your enthusiasm back, all pumped up and rarin' to go, remember?”
“Go to hell,” I retorted. “What do you think about them finding Wilson?”
“We're talking burning transients, remember?” he reminded me.
“I'm not interested in burning transients. I want to talk about Don Wilson.”
“What about him? According to the papers, Hal Huggins has him dead to rights. Left a note and everything. What's there to talk about?”
“A note!” I exclaimed. “Are you serious?”
“Damn it, Beau. When are you going to stop being stubborn and start reading the papers? Yes, a note.”
For the first time I felt the smallest prick of annoyance toward Hal Huggins. My phone had worked well enough when he needed my help. So why hadn't he called me with the news of the note? “God damn that Huggins,” I grumbled. “What did the paper say?”
“That they found Wilson's body on the banks of the Yakima River just outside Prosser. Said he died of exposure, but that somebody found a suicide note.”
“Exposure? Initially they said drowning. Since when is exposure suicide?”
“I'm just telling you what it said in the paper.”
“And where did they find the note?”
“The article didn't say.”
I left Peters at the table and prowled the restaurant for a pay phone. Locating one in a hallway between the men's and ladies' restrooms, I placed a call to Friday Harbor. Hal Huggins was not in. The woman who answered had no idea when he was expected. I left word for him to call me and went back to Peters.
“Did they say how long he'd been dead?”
Peters shrugged and shook his head. “A couple of days, I guess. At least that's what they implied.”
“What about the note?”
“Just that there was one.”
I stared morosely into my cup. Peters was fast losing patience. “Look. This Wilson character isn't our case. When are you going to the hospital?”
“Right after lunch, I guess.”
He watched me drain my cup. “Know what your problem is, Beau?”
“What?”
“You just don't give a shit about burned-up bums.”
“We've been partners too long,” I told him.
I drove up to First Hill, Pill Hill as it's called because of all the hospitals. The burn victim in Harborview was in no condition to talk, at least not according to the dogfaced intensive-care nurse who barred my way. She said he had been hit by an infection and wasn't expected to make it.
I went down to Pioneer Square. I walked around talking to people, asking questions. It was tough. All of the drunks were too fuzzy to know who was sitting next to them right then, to say nothing of remembering someone who had been missing from the park bench almost three weeks. In their world, three weeks ago was ancient history.
By four o'clock I was parked outside the Greyhound terminal at Seventh and Stewart as Jenny and Ernie arrived by taxi. Ernie held two suitcases on his lap; Jenny struggled with a collection of shopping bags.
“Want some help?” I asked, coming up behind them.
They both turned. Jenny's face was radiant with that peculiar glow common to pregnant women. Ernie seemed relieved to find someone to help her with the luggage.
“She didn't spend it all,” he said, grinning. “But she came real close.” He wheeled along beside me as I carried bags and packages into the terminal and checked them onto the proper bus. “You never found Blia?” Ernie asked.
“No, and we've been looking.”
“If you find her, I'd still be willing to talk to her, but I hate to miss a full day's work.”
“What about a telephone conference call?” I asked. “We could get you, Blia, and me all on the phone together.”
Ernie shook his head doubtfully. “You gotta remember that for the Hmong, coming to this country is like stepping into a time machine. She was raised one step out of the Stone Age. A telephone conference call is asking too much.”
“It was just an idea,” I said dismally.
Promptly at four-thirty the bus left for Anacortes. I dropped my company car off at the department and rode a free bus as far as the Westin. I needed to talk. Ames was stuck with me whether he liked it or not.
As it turned out, Ames was glad to see me. “I've been hitting one brick wall after another on the Belltown thing,” he complained. “I have some sources here in town, one in particular over at the Daily Journal of Commerce. He's mystified, too. Says nobody's acting like there's an outside investor. The real estate community is watching Belltown Terrace because of the sheriff's sale. He doesn't know who bailed them out.”
“Well, somebody did,” I said, settling onto Ames' bed. “Am I buying the penthouse?”
“If you still want it, considering you'd be buying it from them rather than the syndicate.”
I thought about it, but I had been fantasizing about barbecued ribs for three days. My mind was made up. “I want it,” I declared.
Ames nodded. “All right.” He changed the subject. “Tomorrow I have to go back to The Dalles. They left word this afternoon. I catch an early plane to Portland.”
“Want a ride to the airport? My car's back.”
He shook his head. “I'll take the hustle bus.”
We were ready to discuss our dinner when Peters called. “I figured I'd find you there. I just got out of court. What are you up to?”
“Ames and I are plotting dinner. Care to join us?”
He did. Afterwards, Ames returned to the Westin and Peters dropped by my apartment to chat. Around ten, just as Peters was ready to head home, the phone rang. It was the department. Another transient had been set afire in an alley encampment between First and Western off Cedar. Officers were on the scene. We took Peter's Datsun.
The building at First and Cedar is an office building with a penthouse restaurant on the fifth floor. The narrow alley behind it separates the building from two pay-parking lots. Between them sits a no-man's-land of black-berry bramble eight feet high. A small clearing had been carved beneath the thorny, dense branches with pieces of cardboard for flooring and walls.
Al Lindstrom and Manny Davis were at the scene. We didn't need to ask what was under the blanket in the blackberry clump. Once you've smelled the sweetish odor of charred human flesh, you never forget it.
“Same MO as before,” Al told us grimly. “Only it's a woman this time, one of the Regrade regulars. We've got a positive ID. Teresa Smith's her name. Looks like she was sleeping it off here in the brush when someone doused her with gasoline and lit a match.” The very fact that someone knew her name gave us a big leg up over the other two cases.
“Who reported it?” I asked.
He gestured toward the building above us. “A guy up there in the bar looked down and saw the fire just as it started. The bartender called 911, but it was too late by the time they got here.”
“Did he see anyone?”
“Saw a car drive off. Only headlights and taillights. No make or model.”
“So we're not dealing with another transient,” Peters commented. It was true. Downtown bums don't drive. They wander, foot-patrol style, throughout the downtown area, hanging out in loosely organized, ever-changing packs.
“How come she was by herself?”
One of the uniformed officers came up as I asked the question. “We found her boyfriend. The food bank up the street was open, and she passed out. The group left her to sleep it off while they went to get foo
d.”
A tall, weaving Indian with shoulder-length greasy hair broke free from a scraggly group at the end of the alley. He pushed his way toward us. “Where is she?” he mumbled.
Manny moved to head him off, but the drunk brushed him aside. “Where is she?” he repeated. He stopped in front of me and stood glaring balefully, swaying from side to side.
I brought out my ID and opened it in front of him. I motioned wordlessly toward the heap of blanket. He swung blearily to look where I pointed. When his eyes focused on the blanket, his knees crumpled under him. He sank to the ground, his face contorted with grief, shoulders heaving.
This was an empty hulk of humanity with nothing left to lose, yet I watched as he sustained still another loss. He stank. His hair and clothes were filthy. Blackened toes poked through his duct-taped shoes. But his anguish at the woman's death was real and affecting.
Grief is grief on any scale.
One of the patrolmen knelt beside him. “We've sent for Reverend Laura,” he said.
In the old days, Reverend Laura would have gone searching for heathens in Africa or South America. Today, the tall, raw-boned woman is a newly ordained Lutheran minister with a pint-sized church in a former Pike Place tavern. She ministers to downtown's homeless. Wearing her hair in a severe bun and with no makeup adorning her ruddy cheeks, she is both plain and plainspoken, but her every action brims with the milk of human kindness. She appeared within minutes and knelt beside the weeping man, taking his elbow and raising him to his feet.
“Come on, Roger,” she said kindly, “let's go to the mission.”
“Will you keep him there so we can reach him tomorrow?” I asked.
She nodded. An officer helped her load him into a car. We fanned out, asking questions of all bystanders, interviewing the patrons in Girvan's, including the man who had first reported the incident.
We found nothing, It took us until two A.M. to ascertain we had found nothing. Peters dropped me off at my place. “Why don't you stay here?” I offered. “You can have the bed. I'll sleep on the couch.”