by J. A. Jance
I finally managed to turn west on Madison. Once out of the southbound gridlock, I made it back north with no further hassle. The Denny Regrade is a flat area north of Seattle’s downtown proper that has been carved from where Denny Hill used to be. It ends at the bottom of Queen Anne Hill. Denny Avenue runs on a diagonal across the northern end of the Regrade, providing a logical boundary. Logic disappears, however, in a sudden curve where, for no apparent reason other than to bedevil newcomers, Denny transforms itself briefly into a street called Western.
With three lanes of traffic roaring past, I ducked into a passenger load zone outside the building marked 3300 Western and tried to get my bearings. When I first moved back into the city, that block had been the site of a once-fine steak house. In its later years, the place degenerated into a singles-scene joint before shutting down altogether. For years, a fading billboard had promised that a hotel would soon be built on the property. Obviously, that plan had come adrift, because a spankingly new six-story glass-fronted office building sat there now.
The six-foot-tall brass letters that said D.G.I. were easy to spot. So was the fountain, closed down for the winter, that graced a front-door plaza. What wasn’t easy to find was parking. Just then, Chip Raymond sauntered out through the door, waving me around to the north end of the building, where I found a discreetly camouflaged entrance to an underground garage. Chip beat me back inside and waved me into a slot marked VISITOR.
“Have you been waiting long?”
Chip shook his head. “As soon as the report came in by phone, I figured the guy was probably your floater. I didn’t want to go charging in here to check it out without having you along. When Watty couldn’t find you right off, I grabbed some lunch on the way—a hamburger from Dick’s. I bought two. You want one?”
“No, thanks. I’m fine. What have you got?”
Chip unfolded a computer-generated piece of paper and read off the information. “Name’s Don Wolf. Donald R. Moved up here from La Jolla, California, a couple of months ago to assume the position of operations manager at Designer Genes International. Thirty-eight years old. Six feet one inch tall. Weighs about one eighty-five, one ninety. Blond hair. Blue eyes. Tattoo on right wrist that says MOTHER.”
“Way to go, Chip. It sounds like my guy, all right.”
“According to the man who called in the report—”
“Who was that?” I asked.
“Somebody named Bill Whitten,” Chip answered. “He’s the CEO of D.G.I. He said he and this Wolf character were supposed to have a meeting yesterday afternoon, and Wolf didn’t show.”
“For good reason,” I said.
Chip nodded. “There was supposed to be another meeting this morning—at seven. When Wolf didn’t show for that one either, Whitten started trying to track the guy down. The call was put through to my desk at ten o’clock, just a little while after you left the department.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Doesn’t that strike you as soon? Family members would report it in less than twenty-four hours. But that seems early for people at work.”
Chip nodded. “The same thought crossed my mind, but that’s before I learned about his car. Wolf is nowhere to be found, but his car is right here in the garage. It’s that white Intrepid over in the corner. I took a quick look at it and couldn’t see anything wrong. Anyway, the situation seemed thorny enough that I didn’t want to go upstairs to see Whitten without having somebody from Homicide along with me.”
“Good call, Chip,” I told him. “Let’s do it.”
We stepped into the elevator and rode up one floor to the lobby, where a sweet young thing was “womaning” a reception desk and switchboard. By mutual if unspoken agreement, Detective Raymond was the one who presented his credentials. There was no need to bring up the word homicide until we had a positive identification.
“We need to see Bill Whitten, please,” Chip said. “I believe he’s expecting us.”
Moments later, we were back in the elevator riding up to the sixth floor. The interior walls of the elevator were covered with some kind of upholstered material that still reeked of new dye. Because of my involvement with the syndicate that bought Belltown Terrace, I know a little about the development and relative cost of downtown Seattle real estate. This particular six-story building—underground parking garage, upholstered elevator, and all—hadn’t come cheap. An operation like this represented a big chunk of investment capital, especially considering that Designer Genes International was the building’s sole occupant.
Chip Raymond was evidently having much the same thought. He ran one finger across the plush material that covered the walls. “No wonder cancer research is so expensive,” he said.
I nodded. “Whatever kind of genes we’re talking about, they must be solid-gold plated.”
Just then, the elevator door opened and we stepped off into another lobby with a desk occupied by a vividly made up, middle-aged lady who greeted us with a gracious smile when Chip presented his card. “Mr. Whitten’s on the phone right now,” she said. “I’m his assistant, Deanna Compton. He asked that I show you into the conference room. Would either of you care for coffee?”
If I had encountered Deanna Compton and her unruly mane of red hair on the street, I would have taken her for either a real estate maven or a well-to-do matron. She was dressed in a flawless, navy-colored, double-breasted pantsuit. She wore spike heels that barely peeked out from beneath the hem of her pants. With all the gold on her body—rings on nearly every finger, earrings, and several gold chains—I’m surprised she didn’t clank like a knight in armor.
“Is your coffee genetically engineered?” I asked.
Deanna smiled again, this time with somewhat strained tolerance, as though mine was an old and not entirely welcome joke.
“I wouldn’t know about that,” she said. “We use Starbucks. You’ll have to ask them.”
Chip passed on the offer of coffee; I accepted. While she went to fetch same, I examined our surroundings. The mostly glass-walled conference room was sumptuously appointed. The windowed wall to the west looked out almost eyeball to eyeball with the huge globe that sits atop the Seattle Post-Intelligencer building on Elliott. Beyond that was the slate expanse of Elliott Bay edged by Bainbridge Island in the distance.
The furnishings in the conference room—oblong table, ten chairs, and an enormous credenza—were made of some kind of light-colored wood, polished to a high gloss. Like everything else in the D.G.I. building, the furniture spoke of quality, of designers working for someone with both an eye for class and a bottomless checkbook.
Chip and I both took chairs along the far side of the table. When Deanna Compton returned, bearing a cup of coffee, she opened a drawer in the credenza and pulled out a brass, felt-bottomed coaster. Examination of the coaster revealed an engraved version of the Designer Genes International company logo—the letters D, G, and I artfully entwined to mimic a credible modern rendering of an ancient coat of arms.
“First class all the way,” I muttered to Detective Raymond, passing him the coaster.
He glanced down at it with an “I’ll say,” and handed it back.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” a portly, balding man announced from the open doorway of the conference room. Compared to the way the secretary was dressed, this guy looked like your basic rumpled bed. His khaki-colored double-breasted suit could have used a good pressing. “I see Deanna brought you coffee,” he said.
Chip and I both rose in greeting. “Mr. Whitten?” Chip asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m Detective Raymond with Missing Persons. I talked to you on the phone earlier. This is Detective Beaumont.”
Whitten moved briskly into the room and shook our hands with a broad-handed, surprisingly strong grip. Then he took a seat at the end of the table. “I don’t know why you guys are bothering to hang around here,” he grumbled irritably. “If Don Wolf had shown up for work this morning, I wouldn’t have called you, now would I?”
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br /> “It’s possible we may have already found him,” I suggested quietly.
Whitten looked at me sharply. “Really. Where?”
Without a word, I extracted one of my business cards from my wallet and slid it down the table where it stopped directly in front of him. Whitten picked it up, held it out at the far end of his arm, and squinted at it.
“This says Homicide,” he objected, looking questioningly from the card back to me. “I thought you were from Missing Persons.”
“Chip here is from Missing Persons,” I said. “I’m Homicide.”
There was a long pause during which Bill Whitten’s eyes sought mine. It’s a moment that happens in every investigation when the people closest to the victim first become aware that the unthinkable has happened. Homicide cops are trained to observe the survivor’s reactions, to gauge whether or not the response is typical, and if not, why not.
Whitten leaned back in his chair and steepled his thick fingers under his chin. “I see,” he said. “You’re saying you think Don Wolf is dead? When did this happen?”
His was a measured, emotionless reaction, the response of someone to expected, rather than unexpected, news, and one that fully justified Chip Raymond’s reluctance to approach the D.G.I. interview without having someone from Homicide along for the ride.
“At this juncture, we’re not one-hundred-percent sure,” I told him. “An unidentified body washed up in the water off Pier Seventy early yesterday morning. As you know, that’s only a matter of a few blocks from here. From the sound of the description you gave Detective Raymond, I’d have to say the dead man could very well be your missing Don Wolf. We’ll need someone to come over to the morgue at Harborview to verify our tentative identification.”
“He was in the water? What happened, did he drown?”
I shook my head. “It’s too soon to say. There’ll have to be an autopsy report. That’ll take a few days, and a toxicology report will take a few weeks beyond that. My suspicion, however, is that death came instantly in the form of a wound from a single bullet.”
Bill Whitten blanched visibly. “Don was murdered then?”
“We’re investigating the case as a homicide,” I corrected. “Whether or not the victim turns out to be Don Wolf remains to be seen. That’s why we’re here. We need someone who knew Don Wolf to come along down to the morgue and try to give us a positive I.D.”
“You want me to do that?” Whitten asked.
I nodded. “That would be the first step. Actually, the third. Before we leave the building, I’d like to take a look at Mr. Wolf’s office for a moment, and also at his car, if I may. I understand it’s still parked in the garage.”
“Certainly, but—”
“Furthermore, until we have ascertained whether or not the dead man is Mr. Wolf, it would probably be better if you didn’t mention any of this to anybody, just in case the victim turns out to be someone else.”
“Not even to Deanna…to Mrs. Compton, my secretary?” he asked.
“No,” I responded. “Not even to her.”
Whitten led us out of the conference room and diagonally across the reception area to an office located in the southeast corner of the building. The door was closed, but unlocked. “Here it is,” he said, opening the door into an airy, windowed room.
Don Wolf’s office was as compulsively clean and carefully organized as the furniture in a model home. Nothing at all appeared to have been disturbed. A bank of carefully framed diplomas graced one of the two nonwindowed walls. The other was covered with bookshelves. On the credenza behind the desk was a framed, eight-by-ten photo—a head shot of a smiling, glasses-wearing brunette.
“That’s his wife,” Whitten told me when he saw me looking at the picture. “Her name’s Lizbeth. She’s still down in La Jolla, waiting for the house to sell.”
“That’s enough for now,” I said. “We can come back here later. Please ask that no one go in or out of this room until we do, would you?”
Whitten nodded. “Mrs. Compton will see to it,” he said. As we left Don Wolf’s office, we stopped in front of his assistant’s desk. “Please cancel my appointments for this morning, Deanna, and for lunch as well. This may take some time. Also, please lock up Don’s office and don’t allow anyone in it until further notice.”
“Certainly,” Deanna Compton said, frowning up at him. “Is anything wrong?”
“I don’t know,” he returned. “It’s too soon to tell.”
Detective Raymond and I had arrived at the building in separate cars. If this was going to be a homicide investigation, there was no further reason for Raymond to stay involved. Down in the parking garage, he took his vehicle and headed back to the Public Safety Building while I drove Bill Whitten to the medical examiner’s office in the basement of Harborview Hospital.
Those kinds of victim identification trips, often made in the company of a grieving relative or a close personal friend of the deceased, can be emotionally devastating at times. Some survivors chatter incessantly as a device to hold back the looming reality as well as the pain. Others endure the awful ordeal in stoic silence. Moments into the ride I realized Bill Whitten was no close personal friend.
We had just turned into traffic on Western when he leaned back in his seat, loosening the seat belt around his considerable girth, and heaved a gloomy sigh. “I might just as well tell you this right up front,” he said.
“Tell me what?”
“Don Wolf and I didn’t get along. In fact, I hated the son of a bitch. I’ll probably end up being what you cops call the prime suspect.”
“You hated him?” I asked. “How come?”
“Because he was out to get me,” he said. “He came here two months ago. According to his résumé, he was some kind of hotshot financial guru. His résumé said he was a real genius, a Harvard-educated, MBA-wielding, money-raising fiend in the world of genetic engineering. I even sold the board of directors on him. The problem is, Don Wolf may have looked great on paper, but in person he was something else. He was one of those smart-assed guys who won’t take direction from anybody. A total jerk, in other words, but it’s hard to tell that from a résumé and a couple of interviews.”
I stole a glance in Bill Whitten’s direction. He sat with his arms folded staunchly across his chest, with his eyes staring out the front windshield. “Detective Raymond told me you and he had a meeting scheduled for yesterday. What was that all about?”
Whitten considered for some time before he answered. “He was going to take me to the board of directors and ask them to force me out,” he said finally. “Me, the guy who started D.G.I. and built it from the ground up!”
“Why?”
There was another long pause while Whitten’s face reddened with suppressed fury. “He claimed he’d found evidence of wrongdoing on my part, that I’d been illegally skimming money and diverting it to my own use.”
“Had you?” I asked.
“No, goddamn it! I hadn’t. Don Wolf brought in some money, I’ll give him that. He said he could deliver investors, and he did. The problem is, those investor dollars came with all kinds of strings. He was undermining me and badmouthing me every chance he could get. He made so much trouble that some members of the board of directors have actually started questioning my every move, including Saturday-morning quarterbacking my decision to build this building. I keep trying to tell them that you can’t attract the best people if you don’t have a world-class research facility. D.G.I. is that, and I’m the one who made it happen. Little old me—Billy Whitten from Seattle, Washington.”
“Would it have worked?” I asked.
Whitten glowered at me. “Would what have worked?”
“Would Don Wolf have been able to force you out?”
He shrugged. “I guess we’ll never know now, will we.”
“Maybe not,” I agreed, but what I had already heard was enough to spell the beginning of motive. From that point of view, everything Bill Whitten said would bear careful
scrutiny.
Because of a massive ongoing construction project at Harborview Hospital, we had to park two blocks away, but the walk turned out to be pleasant enough. Pale midday sun was beginning to burn through the overcast, turning the day almost balmy. It felt more like spring than early January.
Once inside the M.E.’s dingy basement lobby, I asked for Dr. Cummings. Within moments, Audrey emerged from her own private office dressed in her usual crisply sensible costume. I started to introduce her to Bill Whitten, but that proved unnecessary.
“Why, Bill,” she said, smiling a friendly greeting and holding out her hand. “How good to see you again. What in the world are you doing here?”
Whitten jerked his head in my direction. “I’m with him,” he said. “Detective Beaumont here seems to think the unidentified body that was found off Pier Seventy yesterday belongs to someone who works for D.G.I.” He stopped and then added a slight modification, “Someone who used to work for D.G.I.”
Frowning, Audrey turned to me. “Really?”
I nodded in confirmation. “There’s a good possibility,” I said.
Audrey Cummings shook her head sympathetically. “One of your people? That’s too bad, Bill. I certainly hope not.”
“Don Wolf never was what you could call one of my people,” Whitten replied with a grim smile. “In fact, as far as I’m concerned, if the dead man turns out to be him, I’ll be the first to say it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.”
Coming from a self-admitted prime suspect, that blurted comment came as a surprising admission. He said it right there in public, in front of God and everybody. Usually, good manners dictate that people—even suspects—not speak ill of the dead, certainly not that soon after somebody kicks off. But with regard to Donald R. Wolf, although Bill Whitten was the first to express that derogatory sentiment, he certainly wasn’t the last.
The body tagged with a John Doe label around his toe did indeed turn out to be Don Wolf’s. A departed Don Wolf’s. But as I was to learn over the next few days, the man was hardly anybody’s dearly departed Don Wolf.