Breach of Duty (9780061739637)

by Jance, Judith A.

  “How kind of you,” Annie Engebretson said. “I’ve already spoken with Hearthstone’s chaplain, Reverend Walters. He’s agreed that we can have a small memorial service right here in the chapel. As for the actual burial, I’m still not sure what to do about that. I suppose you know that Anthony was adopted?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it was a private affair, arranged by someone we met at church. Einer and I were both in our sixties then—far too old as far as the state is concerned to have been given a child. Even though we felt we had so much to offer, regular adoption channels were closed to us. So we found another way. Anthony’s paternal grandparents were missionaries over on Port Madison. They were also friends of my late husband. Anthony’s birth mother was a young Indian, barely fourteen at the time. She was also totally unsuitable. There was never any question of her marrying the boy. She was determined to keep the baby and raise him on her own. Once she discovered he was retarded, however, she was going to turn him over to the state and have him placed in one of those awful homes. That’s when Einer stepped in. He just wouldn’t stand for it. Anthony was three when he came to us. Einer was sixty-three, and I was sixty.”

  Listening to her, I couldn’t help thinking about what kind of strength of character it must have taken to tackle the job of child rearing at that age, even with a normal child.

  “Einer loved that boy beyond life itself,” Annie continued, while her eyes clouded with tears. “They told us that he’d never be able to learn anything, but Einer proved them all wrong. He taught Anthony so much, far more than anyone thought possible. Anthony was eighteen when we received word that his birth grandfather had died. Anthony was invited to the funeral, and Einer took him. He said he was old enough to go.”

  “His grandfather, that would have been David Half Moon?” I ventured tentatively even though my gut already knew the answer.

  Annie Engebretson nodded. “Yes,” she responded. “Anthony must have told you about it. The whole thing made such a big impression on him. That was all he talked about for months afterward—about seeing the canoe being raised up into the tree branches. I think that part of it must have seemed like magic to him. Sort of like the flying pirate ship in Peter Pan. He loved that story, begged Einer to read it to him over and over again. When it came out on video, we got him a copy. He wore it out. One of the reasons he liked the story so much was because it had Indians in it—not real Indians, but they seemed real enough to him. And maybe he liked it because, in a way, he knew he, too, was a little lost boy. That he’d never grow up.”

  With that Annie Engebretson burst into full-fledged tears. She groped blindly in the cuff of her sweater for a handkerchief. “From then on, Anthony begged to go back, but Einer had gotten sick. So he drew him a map. Not that Anthony would ever have been able to go by himself, just so he’d have it.”

  That map, lovingly made and lovingly given had, in the wrong hands, become Anthony Lawson’s death warrant.

  Annie Engebretson took a ragged breath. “I’m sorry to be such a wreck, Mr. Jonas,” she apologized. “At least Anthony is safe in the Lord’s hands now. The world can be such a cruel place for someone who’s different. In fact, I wondered earlier today, if that isn’t what happened to him—somebody playing some kind of cruel joke. Anthony never drank on his own, you see. And he never drove, either. I’d like to know who helped him get drunk like that. And who started the car for him, too, for that matter.”

  So would I, I thought.

  “But there’s no point in agonizing over such things,” Annie continued stoically. “What I have to do now is deal with making final arrangements.”

  She paused again and took a deep breath. Instead of looking at me, her eyes sought counsel from somewhere at the front of the wood-paneled chapel. “Anthony left the reservation when he was only three,” she said softly. “Except for that one visit when he was eighteen, he never went back. Still, knowing him the way I do, I think that’s really where he’d like to be buried. On the reservation with the other Indians. That’s how he thought of himself. As an Indian. But I’m an outsider there, Mr. Jonas. I have no idea how to go about doing such a thing. I asked Reverend Walters about it. He said he’d see what he could do, but he didn’t hold out much hope.”

  Suddenly, I found enough air in my lungs so that I could take a deep breath, too. I had come to see Annie under false pretenses, claiming to be her son’s friend. Now fate was letting me be a friend after all.

  “I may be able to help you there,” I offered tentatively.

  “Really?” The hope in Annie Engebretson’s quavering voice worried me. What if I couldn’t deliver?

  “A friend of mine, Darla Cunningham, is a Quinault,” I said. “Through a strange set of circumstances, I’ve learned that her father, Henry Leaping Deer, went to school with David Half Moon. They were friends all through boarding school.”

  Annie’s eyes widened. “With Anthony’s grandfather?”

  “That’s right. Henry Leaping Deer may be a Quinault, not a Suquamish, but if anyone could help you make those kinds of arrangements, I’m sure he could.”

  “You think he’d do that?”

  “I’m almost sure of it,” I said.

  “Do you have any idea how I could reach this man, this Leaping Deer?”

  “He lives up at Taholah. He may or may not have a phone. But his daughter lives here in Seattle. She teaches in the physics department at the university. As I said, her name is Darla Cunningham. You probably can’t reach her tonight, but if you try the university tomorrow…”

  Annie already had a pen and notebook in hand. “Darla Cunningham and Henry Leaping Deer,” she murmured as she wrote. “I’ll be in touch with one or both of them first thing in the morning.”

  I stood up. “I’d best be going,” I said. “I’m sure I’ve taken far too much of your time as it is. But I do have one more question. If your name is Engebretson, why was Anthony’s last name Lawson?”

  “Lawson was his mother’s name, and Anthony was the name she gave him,” Annie said. “And that was the only thing she asked of us. That we leave his name the way it was.”

  Annie stood up, too. Before I could dodge out of the way, she had stepped forward and wrapped me in an all-enveloping hug. “I don’t know how to thank you, Mr. Jonas,” she said. “You’ve been such a great help. Your coming here tonight has truly been the answer to a prayer. Now then, is there any way I’ll be able to get in touch with you to let you know when the memorial service will be?”

  That’s not my usual role in life—as the answer to someone’s prayer. To my knowledge, no one else had ever called me that, certainly not to my face. And, in view of the fact I had earned that status in Annie Engebretson’s eyes through lies and misrepresentation, I was more than slightly embarrassed. I think I was blushing. Fortunately for me, the gloom in the dimly lit chapel kept it from showing.

  “Glad to be of service,” I mumbled. “And don’t worry about notifying me as to the time of the memorial service,” I added. “I’m sure someone from down at the Hurricane Cafe will let me know when it is.”

  “You work there, too?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “But I know several people who do.”

  Fifteen

  It’s difficult for someone my size and build to feel lighter than air, but that’s exactly how I felt as I drove away from the Hearthside—lighter than air. I had pulled it off. I had played Sue’s hunch, one everyone else had discounted, and we had come up winners.

  I wanted to call Sue and crow, to let her know that in my humble opinion we had kicked butt. When I dialed her number, though, her voice mail came on almost immediately. That usually means both lines are busy, and this wasn’t a message I wanted to leave on an answering machine.

  Next I tried calling Audrey. At the ME’s office, the voice mail message under her name said Audrey was currently out of the office and would return calls as soon as possible. I didn’t want to leave a message there, either, since there
was a possibility somebody else might pick up Audrey’s voice mail. It wouldn’t be a good idea to have a recording of Detective J. P. Beaumont’s voice brimming over with good news about two cases he wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near.

  My third attempt at placing a call went to Bridget Hargrave. That one went through. She must have been sitting on top of the phone because she answered midway through the first ring.

  “Jimmy?”

  “Sorry to disappoint you, Miss Hargrave. This is Detective Beaumont. Any news?”

  “No,” she answered. “None.”

  That was too bad. Jimmy Greenjeans’s continuing absence definitely constituted a dark cloud on an otherwise rapidly clearing horizon. That bothered me. It was evidently bothering Bridget even more than it did me.

  “I’m afraid, Detective Beaumont,” she sobbed into the phone. “I’m afraid he’s dead.”

  So was I.

  “Did Jimmy ever talk to you about Anthony Lawson?”

  “The guy in the lake? Tony you mean, the retard at work. Yes, Jimmy talked about him sometimes. He worried about him—that people were taking advantage. He said that every once in a while someone on the wait staff cheated him out of tips because he didn’t know any better. But that was all he ever said. You don’t think it was someone from there who killed him, do you? Someone who worked at the Hurricane Cafe?”

  I knew exactly who had done it. What was lacking was proof. “No,” I said. “I doubt it was anyone who worked there. I’d better…”

  “Detective Beaumont, please don’t hang up,” Bridget Hargrave interrupted. “I need to ask you something.”

  “What?”

  “My mother came by a little while ago. She’s…well…sort of stuck up, if you know what I mean. She says dating a bartender is beneath me. That’s the way she put it—beneath me. She says the reason Jimmy didn’t show up is that he was nervous about meeting her. That he took off so he wouldn’t have to. She told me I was silly to be so worried about him and that I should have gone to dinner without him. We had a big fight over it. What do you think?”

  There are few men who aren’t at least slightly cowed at the prospect of meeting future in-laws. On the other hand, as a bartender dealing with the Hurricane Cafe’s day-to-day flotsam-and-jetsam clientele, it didn’t seem likely that a mere “stuck-up” woman would scare Jimmy into running for cover. I wondered if Bridget’s mother wasn’t downplaying the disappearance issue for her own purposes, hoping to drive a wedge between her daughter and her less-than-wonderful choice of heartthrobs. On the other hand, it seemed to me that Bridget had every reason to be worried about what had happened to Jimmy. I also thought she deserved a straight answer.

  “Bridget,” I said carefully, “in my opinion, Jimmy’s disappearance has nothing whatever to do with your mother and everything to do with Tony Lawson. I can’t say any more right now, and I need to have your word that you won’t pass that information along to anyone—anyone at all—until I give you the goahead. Understood?”

  “I understand,” she said.

  “Hang onto those phone numbers I gave you. If you hear from Jimmy—if he calls you or shows up at your apartment—promise that you’ll call me right away.”

  “I promise.”

  “Good,” I said. “I have to hang up now. I’m going into my garage. The signal doesn’t work very well from underground.”

  I parked on P-3 and then rode the elevator up. I stopped in the lobby long enough to collect my mail. The doorman was busy chatting with people I’d never seen before, so I didn’t have to bother making small talk on my way upstairs. Picking up messages has become such a way of life these days that as soon as I shed my jacket and shoulder holster, I went straight to the phone.

  One message was from Ron Peters saying that artichoke-hearts pizza was on the menu that night in case I felt like coming downstairs and joining them. A glance at my watch told me 9:00 was far too late for dinner. The second was from Ralph Ames reminding me not to forget our dinner date for the following night. Taken together, the two messages left me chuckling that my friends go to such lengths to make sure I don’t starve to death. The third and last caller, clocking in at 4:45, didn’t bother to identify himself.

  “Detective Beaumont, I really need to talk…”

  That was all there was to it. The recording stopped in midsentence and didn’t resume. I played it again, thinking that something was amiss with the recorder. After playing it a second time, I played it once more after that. It was on the third time through that I finally recognized the voice. Barry Newsome!

  Once I knew who it was, I listened to the recording a fourth time, just to see if I had missed something, and I had. At the very end, just after the word “talk,” there was a little burst of sound, but it wasn’t anything I could recognize. The beginning of a shout perhaps. Or maybe a door opening or closing. Without a competent sound engineer tweaking the tape, there was no way to tell. What didn’t require a sound engineer to unravel was the nervousness in Barry Newsome’s voice. He was either upset or scared, maybe both, and looking for me.

  I slammed down the phone. There was no point in dialing 911. Whatever had happened was several hours old. My first instinct was to call back, but the Seward Park file, complete with all relevant phone numbers, was in my laptop. As per usual, the computer was down in the garage, safely locked inside the trunk of my 928.

  Rather than race all the way down to P-3 in the elevator, I picked up the phone and dialed Bellevue information. The operator could find no listing for Don Atkins, but she did come up with one for Barry Newsome. I dialed it at once, only to run afoul of some of the phone company’s most recent devices designed to bedevil the phone-using public—caller ID complete with call blocking.

  Instead of ringing at the other end, a recorded message played in my ear. “The number you have reached does not accept blocked calls. In order to reach your party, you will have to unblock your number for this one call only. To do that, press…”

  I’m a homicide detective and have been for most of my adult working life. Because of the kinds of people cops have to deal with on a regular basis, almost all the police officers I know have unlisted telephone numbers. For a long time, I resisted. When I finally knuckled under, however, what drove me over the edge wasn’t receiving threatening phone calls from people I’ve helped send to the slammer. It was, instead, the unending flood of telemarketing solicitation calls. The ones I found most annoying came from the boiler-room operation of some lamebrained East Coast securities dealer.

  These scuzzy guys always call me at 9:00 their time which happens to be 6:00 A.M. Pacific. The concept of time zones seems to be one that never penetrates their dim bulbs. Nor does the word “No.” I turn them down for an Initial Public Offering one week, only to have them call back the next week to offer the next hot deal. After about the twentieth call, I asked the phone company to put a trap on my line, but that didn’t work either since the East Coast longdistance provider wouldn’t play ball. Finally, I had no choice but to change over to an unlisted number.

  Now, however, my fancy two-line push-button phone with its unlisted number didn’t allow me to get through to Barry Newsome’s equally up-to-date phone. Much as I don’t want to give up the convenience of modern telecommunications, there are still occasions when I find myself longing for the good old days when you picked up a phone and some nice, living lady gave you a straightforward, “Number, please.”

  After dialing the appropriate code to unblock my number, I sat down in the recliner and slipped off my shoes while I listened to it ring. It was answered on the third ring.

  “Beau?” a male voice said. “Is that you?”

  Stunned, I tried to identify the voice. The person sounded like neither Barry Newsome nor Don Atkins, yet he obviously knew me on a personal basis. My unlisted phone is listed under the name of J. P. Beaumont. Only someone who actually knew me would call me Beau.

  “Who’s this?” I asked.

  “Tim Blaine
,” he said. “Somebody from the department must have told you I’d be here.”

  Tim Blaine was a Bellevue homicide dick I had met months earlier in the course of unraveling a New Year’s Day murder in downtown Seattle. The last I had heard from Tim, he was dating Latty Gibson, a young woman who had been one of several suspects in that case.

  “We’re a little busy here right now,” Tim continued, “but I can tell you you’re on the list.”

  “What list are you talking about?” I asked.

  “The wedding invitation list,” he replied. “What did you think I meant? Anyway, the wedding’s in late June, the next-to-last Saturday. As soon as the invitations get back from the printer, you’ll get yours. After all, since you’re the person who introduced us, Latty and I both want you to be at the wedding.”

  “Congratulations,” I told him. “I’m delighted to hear about the wedding. But I wasn’t trying to reach you. I was calling Barry Newsome. What are you doing there, Tim? What’s going on?”

  The tenor of Tim’s voice changed from personal to professional. “Are you a friend of his?”

  “Hardly. He’s part of an investigation…”

  “Was part of an investigation,” Tim corrected. “He doesn’t exist anymore. Barry Newsome is dead, Beau. I’m no medical examiner, but it looks to me like he took at least two bullets to the heart.”

  I was stunned. “That’s why you’re there, you’re investigating a homicide?”

  “Two,” Tim replied.

  Two? Just hearing the word made me almost sick to my stomach. Barry Newsome and who else? My mind flew at once to the missing Jimmy Greenjeans.

  “The second victim doesn’t happen to have green hair, does he?” I asked.

  Blaine laughed. “What the hell are you smoking these days, Beau? Of course he doesn’t have green hair. Other than a bullet in the back of his head, he looks like a pretty normal guy in your basic Men’s Wearhouse double-breasted suit. Do you know something about this?”