Improbable Cause (9780061745034)

by Jance, Judith A.

  But to get back to the community service officers. They are called to reported cases of domestic violence, the ones where someone—usually a woman—has had the crap beaten out of her. The CSOs take over where street cops leave off. Once the initial police report has been taken, they provide moral support for the victims, as well as transportation to a local safe house.

  I was vaguely aware that safe houses existed in Seattle, three of them by actual count, but this was my first experience at trying to find someone who was staying in one. I was surprised to find myself running smack into a brick wall, a petite red-haired brick wall whose name was Marilyn McDougal.

  There are always rumors downtown of street cops and detectives running afoul of the CSOs, but this was the first time I had tangled with one. It turned out that all those rumors were fact, not fiction.

  If I had seen Marilyn McDougal on the street, I might have thought her cute, but I’d hate to think what would have happened to anyone dumb enough to call her that to her face. They wouldn’t do it twice, that’s for damn sure. She was like a little bull terrier, all growl and teeth and determined as hell.

  She sat there, dwarfed by the bulk of her regulation-sized desk. Her brown, lightweight summer uniform was open at the collar. With horn-rimmed glasses pushed up into curly red hair like some offbeat crown, she regarded me with a kind of regal disdain.

  “Of course we don’t give out that information,” she said archly in answer to my question about the location of the various shelters in Seattle.

  “What do you mean you don’t give it out?” I demanded. “Not even to fellow cops? Aren’t we playing on the same team?”

  She smiled a chilly smile. “Let me remind you that we’re not all cops, Detective Beaumont. There happen to be a few cops who beat their wives, too, you know,” she added.

  “I’m not one of them,” I snapped back. “I’m not even married.”

  Unruffled, Marilyn McDougal looked meaningfully from me to the wide gold band on Big Al Lindstrom’s ring finger. “He is,” she said, “but it doesn’t matter if you are or aren’t. We don’t divulge the shelters’ locations to anyone. That’s a closely guarded secret. Besides,” she added, “you haven’t said why you want to know.”

  No, I hadn’t said why, deliberately hadn’t said why, and wasn’t going to if I could help it. After all, if Marilyn McDougal was reluctant to talk to us then, how much more reluctant would she be once she knew we were working a homicide investigation, once she figured out that one of her little safe-house chicks, LeAnn Nielsen, was a prime suspect.

  “But CSOs do deliver the women to these safe houses, don’t they? Isn’t that your job?” Al tried attacking the problem from the flank.

  Unperturbed, Marilyn McDougal nodded. “Right. About eighty percent of the time we’re the ones who take them. But not directly.”

  “What does that mean? Either you do or you don’t.”

  Marilyn McDougal shook her head impatiently. “Look,” she said. “The women who work in these shelters put their lives on the line every single day. They’re not cops. They don’t carry weapons. The husbands are frantic to find their wives, want to get them back no matter what. The CSOs take the women to a drop point, some public place near the shelter. One of the shelter workers meets them there, picks the woman up, and takes her the rest of the way.”

  I could hardly fault the cloak-and-dagger mentality. After all, we were investigating a homicide. Frederick Nielsen was dead and his abused wife was under suspicion.

  “So how would we go about getting in touch with someone in one of the shelters? What would you suggest?”

  Marilyn shrugged. “You could call and leave a message. They won’t tell you whether or not she’s there, but they’ll post a message on the bulletin board. She can call you back or not. The choice is up to her.”

  “What do you suppose the chances are that she’d actually return the call?”

  “Not very good.”

  “That’s about what I figured.” The brick wall wasn’t giving an inch. I got up to leave. “Come on, Al, let’s get going. We’re wasting time.”

  Al eased his bulky frame out of the chair while Marilyn McDougal leaned back in hers, a sharpened yellow pencil balanced deftly between two opposing index fingers. She regarded me seriously over the top of the pencil.

  “Are you going to stop playing games and tell me what this is all about, Detective Beaumont?”

  The brick wall won. I sat back down. So did Big Al.

  “It’s a homicide,” I said. If sneaking around hadn’t worked with Marilyn McDougal, maybe honesty was the best policy after all. It couldn’t hurt to try.

  “I figured as much. Whose?” she asked.

  “A man by the name of Nielsen—Dr. Frederick Nielsen. He’s a dentist with a house on Green Lake and a swish office up in the Denny Regrade.”

  “And the woman?”

  “LeAnn Nielsen, his wife.”

  “Why are you trying to find her—notification of next of kin or is she a suspect?’

  “Both,” I said simply.

  Marilyn dropped the pencil onto her desk, got up, and walked to the door of her office. “Wait right here,” she said. It was an order, not an invitation.

  “Now what?” Al asked.

  “Beats me,” I replied. I’ve long since given up trying to understand how women think. It’s too complicated. Besides, Marilyn McDougal was in a league by herself. She came back a few minutes later. “I checked our records. We didn’t transport her,” she announced firmly. “Which means, if she’s actually there, that she checked in on her own. What makes you think she is?”

  “The husband’s secretary told us. So did his aunt.”

  “I see. Are there children?”

  “Two. A boy and a girl as I understand it. Seven and eight.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Saturday. The body wasn’t found until this morning. We’re worried someone will slip the name to the media before we have a chance to notify the wife.”

  “If she didn’t do it,” Marilyn added.

  “That’s right.”

  She sat back down at her desk. “It happens over and over. We see it all the time. They stay too long, until they feel totally trapped and can’t see any other way to break the cycle. They end up trying to fight fire with fire and somebody gets hurt or killed.”

  She didn’t seem to be talking to us. With a sudden, decisive movement, she spun the Rolodex on her desk, picked up the discarded pencil, and jotted a series of names and telephone numbers onto a piece of paper. When she finished, she handed the paper to me.

  “Those are the numbers of each of the three shelters. The women on that list are the executive directors. When you call them, tell them I gave you their names. I don’t know exactly what the reaction will be, but I expect they’ll want to be sure the wife is properly notified so the family isn’t traumatized more than they already are.”

  “What made you change you mind?” I asked.

  Marilyn shook her head again. “It’s got to stop,” she said. “The violence must stop somewhere. Killing the sons of bitches isn’t the answer.”

  On that score, we were in total agreement.

  “I’d try Phoenix House first,” Marilyn added. “The last one. It’s fairly new. It has better facilities for women with children.”

  “Thanks,” I told her. “We’ll do that.”

  Once outside the door I noticed Al was shaking his head. “We may do it all right,” he said, “but not today. It’s past quitting time. We’re having company for dinner. Molly’ll have my ears if I get home much later than this. I’m already in deep shit.”

  We drove back to the Public Safety Building. Al took off from the parking garage without bothering to come upstairs. I was in no particular rush to get home, however, so I stopped by our cubicle long enough to try calling the three numbers Marilyn McDougal had given us. Shelter directors must keep bankers hours because at ten to five not one of the three was
in her office. I left messages with my name and both telephone numbers and headed home.

  A man’s home is his castle, right? It’s supposed to be a haven of tranquility where he can recover from the slings and arrows that the world and his job throw at him, right? And since I live in the penthouse of one of Seattle’s newest condominiums, it should have been true. But when I got off the elevator and saw the two distinct puddles dripped on the carpet outside my front door, I knew there was trouble afoot.

  Ron Peters, my partner until March when he was badly injured, was still confined to the rehabilitation floor at Harborview Hospital. His dippy ex-wife had disappeared into thin air while on a religious mission to South America. As far as his kids were concerned, that left things pretty much up to me.

  I had moved Peters’ two young daughters, Heather and Tracie, as well as their live-in baby-sitter, Mrs. Edwards, into a vacant unit several floors below mine. It was a hell of a lot easier for me to pay the extra rent than it was to run back and forth across Lake Washington to their house in Kirkland. Mrs. Edwards is by and large a fine baby-sitter, but during Mrs. Edwards’ occasional naps, the girls tend to get into mischief.

  I’m sure the mischief is mostly inadvertent on their part. In fact, when they left the swimming pool with Mrs. Edwards sound asleep in a deck chair, the plan was simply to raid my refrigerator for the sodas they knew I keep there as special treats.

  But the sodas had somehow evolved into ice cream floats that had overflowed and slopped all over my kitchen floor. They were both down on their hands and knees trying to mop up the mess when they heard my key in the lock. One of them jumped and the remains of her float disappeared entirely under the drip tray of my refrigerator. If it had been ten years earlier, if it had been my own kids, Kelly and Scott, I probably would have raised hell. I’ve evidently mellowed with age. I helped clean up the mess, fixed the tearful Heather a replacement float, and went in search of the still slumbering Mrs. Edwards.

  “Oh dear,” she said when I shook her awake. “I must have dozed off. They didn’t get into any trouble, did they?”

  “No trouble at all,” I said. Did I say mellow? Soft in the head is more like it. I didn’t even chew Mrs. Edwards out for sleeping on the job. She looked worn out. Besides, both Heather and Tracie swim like fish.

  I left the girls with Mrs. Edwards on the sixth floor and went back up to my apartment. I dialed Ron Peters’ number at Harborview. He answered on his speaker-phone.

  “How’s it going?” I asked.

  “Can’t complain,” he replied. “How about you?”

  “Big Al and I got sent out on that murder in the Regrade today, the one in the dentist’s office.”

  “What does it look like?”

  “Domestic violence probably. The husband was a first-class shit. We think maybe the wife hooked up with a carpet installer to do him in.”

  “Same old story. We’ve heard it dozens of times,” Peters said. “Anything I can do to help?”

  During the months of confinement, Peters had functioned behind the scenes as the third man on Al’s and my team, using the telephone to track down leads we didn’t have time to pursue ourselves. It was a way of letting him keep his hand in.

  “As a matter of fact there is,” I told him. “You can check around with the local emergency rooms and see if someone came in Saturday or Sunday with some bad scratches. Deep cuts, probably, made with the teeth of a carpet kicker.”

  “Ouch,” Peters said. “I’ve seen those before. They’re wicked.”

  “You’ve got that right,” I said. “The van the guy was driving had blood all over it, but he’s disappeared. Maybe you can help us get a line on him.”

  “I’ll do my best. By the way, how are the girls?”

  “They’re fine. They were here just a while ago. I invited them up for an ice cream float. We all had a good time. I probably spoiled their dinners.”

  There was a pause. “Thanks,” Peters said. He sounded about half choked up.

  “Don’t make a big deal out of it, Peters,” I told him. “It’s just like taking the girls to see Bambi. I needed an excuse so I could have a float, too.”

  CHAPTER

  8

  The bachelor life doesn’t have a lot to recommend it, especially if you’re a lousy cook. One exception, however, is the ability to kick off your shoes in the middle of the living room and take a nap right after work, without anyone telling you that you need to mow the lawn or haul the garbage cans out to the street.

  I’m what’s known as a world-class sleeper. If left undisturbed, these afternoon naps of mine can sometimes last right on through to morning. Unless the phone rings, which it did. Right at nine o’clock.

  “Detective Beaumont, please,” a woman’s voice said. It was a crisp, businesslike voice I didn’t recognize.

  “Yes,” I mumbled, trying not to sound as groggy as I felt.

  “My name is Alice Fields. I’m the executive director of Phoenix House. You left a message for me to call you. I was going to wait until morning, but then I had another call tonight from Marilyn McDougal.”

  My stupefied brain cells finally woke up and snapped to attention. “Oh yes, Miss Fields. Thanks for returning my call.”

  “Mrs. Fields,” she corrected firmly. She spoke with a sharp Midwestern twang that made her sound as though she had just stepped off the train from Minneapolis-Saint Paul.

  “I understand you’re looking for a woman who may possibly be a resident in our shelter.”

  J. P. Beaumont wasn’t much of a poker player, but neither was Alice Fields. I was bright enough to figure out that she wouldn’t be calling me four hours after quitting time if she didn’t know LeAnn Nielsen from a hole in the wall, if she didn’t give a damn.

  “Might be a resident” like hell! That’s what I thought, but I didn’t say it aloud. “Did Marilyn tell you that LeAnn Nielsen’s husband is dead?” I asked.

  There was a sigh, a long weary sigh. “Yes, she told me. She also said that you’re in charge of the murder investigation. What I want to know is this: is his wife under suspicion or not?”

  “At this stage, the whole world is under suspicion.” It was half truth, half quip. It met with icy rejection.

  “In that case, Detective Beaumont, I don’t believe we have anything further to discuss.”

  “No, wait. Right now we need to reach LeAnn for two reasons, the most important of which is to tell her of her husband’s death. We’ve held off releasing his name pending notification of next of kin, but that doesn’t mean one of the television or radio stations might not get it from another source and put it on the air.”

  “What’s the other reason?” Alice Fields asked.

  “We’ll need to ask her some questions, to see if she can shed any light on the case.”

  “Which is another way of saying she is a suspect.”

  I wasn’t making much of a dent in Alice Fields’ suit of armor. “We know she was expected at her husband’s office shortly before he died. She may have seen or overheard something that would be of help to us in solving the case.”

  There was dead silence on the other end of the phone. It lasted so long that I began to wonder if Alice Fields had hung up on me.

  “Do you know where the Hi-Spot Cafe is?” she asked at last. “It’s in the Madrona district, at Thirty-fourth and Union.”

  “I don’t know it, but I’m sure I can find it.”

  “Meet me there tomorrow morning at nine,” Alice Fields said decisively.

  “How will I know you?” I asked. I’m a veteran of enough missed connections that I’ve finally learned to ask important questions before I go looking for someone I don’t know at a place I don’t know either.

  “I’m short, white hair, glasses—” she began, then she stopped. “I have a better idea. Tell them you want to sit at the round table. That room’s far enough off the beaten path that we’ll have some privacy, especially on a Tuesday morning.”

  She hung up without
bothering to wait for me to say yes or no and without saying good-bye, either. I realized later that I hadn’t asked her if she’d be bringing LeAnn Nielsen along to the Hi-Spot Cafe. It was just as well. She wouldn’t have told me anyway.

  My ice cream float was long gone. I was starving. I padded out to the kitchen in hopes of finding food, but before I could lay hands on the refrigerator door handle, the phone rang again.

  “Hi there, Beau.” It was Ron Peters, speaking to me from the echoing distance of his handless speaker-phone. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”

  “Don’t worry about it. You’re not the first. I had another call a minute ago. That’s the one that woke me up.”

  “What are you doing sleeping at this time of night? It’s not that late. Besides, I thought you’d want to know what I found out.”

  “Who found out?” I recognized Amy Fitzgerald’s voice speaking in the background.

  Peters laughed. “Excuse me. What Amy found out.”

  Amy Fitzgerald had been Peters’ physical therapist during the months he had been confined in Harborview Hospital. She was still his physical therapist as far as I knew, but by now she was also quite a bit more than that. Her off-duty hours seemed to revolve around Ron Peters’ room.

  “About Larry Martin?” I asked.

  “That’s right. A woman brought him in to Harborview Emergency Room on Saturday afternoon about one-thirty. He said he was a carpet installer and that one of his tools had fallen on him. They put twenty stitches in his face and head.”

  “Twenty stitches? That’s some cut,” I said. “It must have fallen from a long way up.”

  “Amy says there would have been a lot of blood. I guess facial cuts bleed like crazy.”