Ring In the Dead

by J. A. Jance

  It sounds like this was all straightforward, but it wasn’t. For one thing, it was an investigation that wasn’t supposed to be happening and had to be invisible. For another, almost everyone had other cases—­official cases—­that they were supposed to be working. Continuing to toil in the vineyards of the Evidence Room, I was one of two exceptions to that rule. The other one was Pickles Gurkey, who was now officially on administrative leave. Once he got out of the hospital, he was placed under arrest, and then allowed free on bond to await trial after his family posted his immense bail.

  I had visited with him in the hospital only once, after he was out of Intensive Care. He told me what he remembered from the crime scene—­that he had dropped his gun when the heart attack hit, but that he was sure he hadn’t pulled the trigger. Clearly Lieutenant Tatum wasn’t buying his story and neither was the King County prosecutor. I wanted to tell him that the guys from Homicide were working the problem and that we hadn’t forgotten him, but I didn’t dare. And I never went back to the hospital to see him again. I figured if Tatum got wind that there had been any kind of continuing contact between us, he’d be all over me.

  They say luck follows the guy who does the work. In that regard we were bound to get lucky eventually. I was down in the Evidence Room one afternoon when the clerk hunted me down and said someone was waiting outside to talk to me. The guy in the hall was a uniformed officer named Richard Vega. He was holding a copy of one of the Doghouse composites—­the one of the taller man with the light-­colored hair.

  “I’ve seen this guy,” he said, waving the sketch in my direction. “My sergeant sent me to Homicide to talk to you, and the clerk up there sent me down here.”

  “Where have you seen him?” I asked.

  “Hanging out down around Pioneer Square,” Vega said. “I’m thinking maybe he works somewhere around there.”

  I thought about the doughnut hole in my circle of pins. Pioneer Square would be well inside it. So maybe, if the guy lived or worked nearby, maybe he didn’t want to crap in his own bed or victimize establishments where he might want to be regarded as a regular paying customer.

  I knew just where to go. A few years earlier, a Chinese family had bought up a local deli named Bakeman’s. The joint was known all over the downtown area for and were doing land-­office business selling sandwiches made from fresh turkeys that were roasted on the premises every night.

  In regard to restaurant food, pundits often say, “You can get quick, cheap, or good. Pick any two.” As far as that was concerned, Bakeman’s was in a class by itself because they excelled in all three—­quick, cheap, and good! And since they were in the 100 block of Cherry, just down the street from the Public Safety Building, plenty of cops went there for lunch on a daily basis.

  Bakeman’s was one of the places without a beaded pin on my map, so I rushed there immediately, with a mimeographed copy of the tall guy’s composite sketch in hand. It was early, right at the beginning of the lunch rush. The young Asian guy at the cash register took my order: white turkey meat with cranberry sauce on white bread. Mayo and mustard, hold the lettuce and tomato. I handed over my money. When the clerk gave me back my change, he was already eyeing the next customer. That’s when I held up the sketch.

  “You know this guy?” I asked.

  “It’s lunch,” he replied. “Gotta keep the line moving.”

  “Have you ever seen him?” I repeated.

  He glowered at me. “I’m serving lunch here. I got customers.”

  I held up my badge next to the sketch. The clerk sighed and shook his head. “You guys,” he said wearily in a tone that said he thought all cops were royal pains in the ass.

  “Do you know him?” I insisted.

  He nodded. “White meat turkey on white, mayo, mustard, cranberry sauce. Almost like you, only he takes lettuce.”

  “Do you know his name?”

  “I don’t know names. I know orders. Works construction. Dirty clothes. Who’s next?”

  “So he comes in after working all day, orders white turkey on white. When does he come in? What time?”

  “Afternoons. Before we close. Around two or so. Next?”

  “Any day in particular?”

  “You want to talk more, order another sandwich.”

  “Done.” I said. “Give me the same as before, both of them to go.”

  “You didn’t say to go for the first one.”

  “I didn’t know I was getting two sandwiches then, either. Now I want them both to go. But tell me, does he come in on a certain day?”

  The clerk looked as though he was ready to leap across the counter and strangle me. Instead he glowered at the servers who were putting my sandwiches together. “Both of those turkeys on white are to go,” he shouted, and then he glared back at me. “Tuesdays maybe?” he said. “Sometimes Wednesdays, but not every week. Takes his sandwiches to go. Puts them in a lunch pail.”

  My heart skipped with joy because this happened to be Tuesday.

  I gave the clerk my money. He handed me my change. “Next?”

  From the way he shouted, I knew better than to press my luck. Without asking any more questions, I took my sandwiches and left. Giddy with excitement, I practically floated back up Cherry to the Public Safety Building, where I rode straight up to the fifth floor, dodged past Captain Tompkins’s Fishbowl, and ducked into the cubicle shared by Detectives Powell and Watkins. They were both in. They looked up in surprise when I entered. Surprise turned to welcome when they caught a whiff of the turkey sandwiches.

  By two o’clock that afternoon, the three of us had set up shop. Worried that the two guys might have seen me in the Doghouse the day Pickles and I were there at the same time, I stayed across the street, tucked into the shady alcove of a building that let me watch the door to Bakeman’s while using the excuse of smoking a cigarette to hang around outside. Watty, who wasn’t as fast on his feet as Larry Powell was, stayed in an unmarked car parked at the bottom of Cherry, while Larry went inside and ate a leisurely bowl of soup. I had also contacted Officer Vega and asked him to hang around at the corner of First and Cherry. I was worried that if the suspect was on foot and headed westbound on the eastbound street, Watty wouldn’t be able to follow in his vehicle.

  At 2:20 I saw the suspect, trudging up Cherry from First carrying a heavy-­duty lunch pail. He certainly looked like the guy in the sketch. He was dressed in grimy clothes and appeared to have put in a hard day of manual labor. I watched him walk past the spot where Watty was waiting at the curb. By the time he turned into Bakeman’s, my heart was pounding in my chest. There was nothing to do now but wait.

  I checked my watch. The crowd inside the restaurant had died down. With no line, it would take only a ­couple of minutes for him to order his sandwich, pay, pick up his food, and leave. At 2:26 he appeared again. He stood for a moment at the top of the worn marble steps, then he stepped down, turned right, and headed back down to First. He walked past Watty’s vehicle, which was parked at the curb, all right, but it was also pointed in the wrong direction on the one-­way street.

  I slipped out of my hidey-­hole and made my way down the hill. When I got to the corner of First, I waved off Vega. After that, it was up to me. When I turned right onto First, I could see the suspect half a block ahead of me walking uphill. Two blocks later, he turned into a run-­down building called the Hargrave Hotel.

  In theater circles, SRO means standing room only, and that’s considered to be a good thing. In hotel-­speak, SRO means single room occupancy, and it’s generally not such a good thing. The Hargrave was a flea-­bitten flophouse straight out of Roger Miller’s “King of the Road.” It might have been a lot swankier in an earlier era. Now, though, it was four stories of misery, with ten shoddy rooms, two grim toilets, and one moldy shower per floor. Bring your own towel.

  I waited outside until I saw Mr. Lunch Pail get into the creaky
elevator and close the brass folding gate behind him. By then, Watty had managed to make it around the block. After flagging him down, I stepped into the building lobby, where a grubby, pockmarked marble countertop served as a front desk. Behind it sat a balding man with a green plastic see-­through visor perched on his head.

  He looked up at me as I entered. “If you’re selling something,” he told me, “we ain’t buying.”

  I held up my badge and my composite sketch. As soon as he saw the drawing, the desk clerk glanced reflexively toward the elevator. The dial above the elevator showed that the car had stopped on floor three. Clearly this was a one-­elevator building.

  “Who’s this?” I asked.

  “You got a warrant?”

  “Not at the moment,” I returned mildly, “but I’m wondering how this place would measure up if somebody happened to schedule a surprise inspection from the Health Department?” When he didn’t reply, I pressed my advantage. “Who?” I insisted.

  “Benjamin Smith.”

  “How long has he been here?”

  The clerk shrugged. “A ­couple of months, I guess. Pays his rent right on time every week.”

  “Where does he work?”

  “He’s a laborer down at that new stadium they’re building. The Kingdome, I think it’s called. What do you want him for?”

  “Girl trouble,” I said quickly. “As in underage. Might be better for your relationship with the Health Department if he didn’t know that anybody had come by asking about him.”

  Visor Man nodded vigorously. “My lips are sealed,” he said.

  I ducked back outside. By then, Larry had caught up and was waiting in the front seat of the car with Watty. I climbed into the back. “The clerk says our guy’s name is Benjamin Smith. That may or may not be an alias.”

  “So if he is our guy,” Larry said, “what do we do now? Even if we can get his prints and connect him to the Doghouse crime scene, that still won’t be enough to let Pickles off the hook. It’ll be his word against Smith’s word. Might be enough for reasonable doubt, but I’m not sure. We need to find a way to corroborate Pickles’s version of the story.”

  I thought about that. Presumably there had been three ­people present when Lulu McCaffey was gunned down. We had found two of them. Now we needed to locate the third. The blond guy was the one who had usually shown up in the establishments marked by the bead pattern on the map in my garage. When it had become clear that the light-­haired guy was doing dine-­and-­dash with a collection of different pals, I had given up carrying the short guy’s sketch and focused instead on the tall one. Now I had a hunch.

  “Do either of you have that other Doghouse composite?” I asked.

  “I think so,” Watty said. “Hand me the notebook there on the backseat.” I gave it to him. He rummaged through it for several long minutes before finally handing me what I wanted.

  “Wait here,” I said. “And open the door so I can get out.”

  With the new sketch in hand, I hurried back into the lobby. When the desk clerk looked up and saw me, he gave a disgusted sigh. “You again,” he said.

  I held up the drawing. “Have you ever seen this guy?”

  “Sure,” he said. “That’s Fred—­Fred Beman. Everybody called him Cowboy Fred.”

  “Does he live here, too?” I asked.

  “Used to. Left sometime in July.”

  “Do you know where he went?”

  “He’s in Walla Walla,” the clerk said. “Went back home to the family farm. At least, that’s what he said he was going to do when he left here With these guys, you can never tell how much is truth and how much is fiction.”

  “Did he leave a forwarding address?”

  The clerk turned away from me and pulled a long, narrow file box out of the bottom drawer of a file cabinet behind him. Inside the box was a collection of three-­by-­five cards. After thumbing through them, he pulled out one and handed it to me. All that was on it was a phone number and a P.O. box number in Walla Walla.

  It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

  Detectives Watkins and Powell and I went straight back to the department and looked up Frederick Beman. There were two Frederick Bemans listed. The composite sketch was surprisingly close to the younger one’s Department of Licensing photo. His driving record included three DUIs. He’d had a pickup once, but that had been totaled during one of the DUI incidents. The DMV showed no current vehicles listed in his name, although there were several listed for his father, Frederick Beman, Sr., who owned a horse ranch somewhere outside Walla Walla.

  “Looks like we’re going to Walla Walla,” Larry Powell said.

  “When?” I asked.

  “Right now.”

  I glanced at my watch. It was after four in the afternoon. “How are we going to do that?”

  “We’re going to drive,” Larry said. “We’ll take turns. You go check out a car. Make sure it has a full tank of gas. I’ll clear it with the captain.”

  That’s exactly what I did. While the guys at Motor Pool were gassing up the car, I called Karen and told her I wouldn’t be home. Since she was stuck there alone with a toddler and a colicky baby, she was not happy to hear that I was off on a cross-­state adventure, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. Captain Tompkins wasn’t thrilled, either, especially with having three members of his Homicide Unit tied up in what he termed a “wild-­goose chase,” but he relented finally, too. Larry convinced him that this was basically my lead, but that I was too green to chase after it alone. So off we went, all three of us.

  Walla Walla is a long way from Seattle—­two hundred and fifty miles, give or take. With me sitting in the backseat, I’m sure ­people who saw us thought I was a crook being hauled off to jail somewhere. We took turns driving. By the time we got into Walla Walla, it was too late to do much of anything but get a room and wait for morning. We opted for one room with two double beds. Not the best arrangement, but bunking with Watty beat sleeping on the floor or out in the car. The next morning, over coffee, we were all complaining about how everyone else snored, so I guess it was pretty even-­Steven on that score.

  After breakfast we found our way to Beman Arabians. There was a main house and several immense barns with an office complex at the near end of one of them. There were also a number of outbuildings that looked as though they were occupied by workers of one stripe or another. When we asked for Fred Beman, we were directed to the office, where we found a handsome, white-­haired, older gentleman seated behind a messy desk. When he stood up and stepped out from behind the desk to greet us, he looked for the all the world as if he had simply emerged, cowboy boots and all, from one of those old Gene Autry movies I loved so much when I was a kid. One look at him was enough to tell us that this might be Fred Beman, but not the one we wanted.

  Larry Powell held up his badge. “We’re looking for Fred Beman, a younger Fred Beman.”

  The old man stared at the badge for a moment, then looked back at Larry. “That would be Fred Junior, my son. What’s he done now?”

  “We’re actually interested in a friend of his,” Larry said. “A friend from Seattle.”

  Beman shook his head. “Don’t know nothin’ about any of those. When Freddie came skedaddlin’ back home this summer and begged me to give him another chance, I figured he was in some kind of hot water or other. He’s out back shovelin’ shit. I told him if he wanted to get back in my good graces and into the family business, he’d be startin’ from the bottom.”

  With that Fred Senior led the way out of his office and into the barn. It was pungent with the smell of horses and hay. We found Fred Junior in one of the stalls, pitchfork in hand. He must have taken after his mother because he didn’t look anything like his dad. He didn’t smell like his dad, either. His father carried a thick cloud of Old Spice with him wherever he went. The air around Junior reeked of perspira
tion flavored with something else—­vodka most likely. Anyone who thinks vodka doesn’t smell hasn’t spent any time around a serious drunk. Fred Junior may not have been driving at the moment, but he was most definitely still drinking.

  “Someone to see you, Freddie,” the old man said, then he turned on the worn heels of his cowboy boots and walked away. It was clear from his posture that whatever problem we represented was his son’s problem, and he would have to deal with it on his own.

  Fred Junior leaned on the handle of the pitchfork. “What’s this about?”

  I held up my badge. “It’s about your friend Benjamin,” I said.

  A wary look crossed Fred’s face. I had learned at the academy that an assailant with a knife can cut down a guy with a gun before there’s time to pull the trigger. I calculated that the wicked metal tines on the long-­handled pitchfork could poke holes in my guts faster than any handheld knife. I was glad I had Watty and Larry Powell there for backup if need be. The problem was, I wanted this guy alive and talking, far more than I wanted him dead.

  “What about him?” Fred said.

  “He’s been telling us some interesting stories,” I said casually. “He told us you shot a woman a few weeks ago—­shot her in cold blood in the parking lot of the Doghouse Restaurant in Seattle.”

  The only light in the barn came from the open stall doors along the side of the building and from a few grimy windows up near the roof. Still, even in the relative gloom of the barn, I saw the color drain from his face. The muscles in his jaw clenched.

  “I never,” he said. “I was there, but I never shot her. I told him, ‘Hey, man. I’ve got the money. Let’s just pay the woman.’ But Benjy’s crazy. He picked up the gun and fired away.”