by J. A. Jance
“The wife’s address and phone numbers?”
“Oh, of course. Here they are. You’ll let us know when you reach her? If she’s coming up to Seattle, she may need help with hotel or travel arrangements, that kind of thing.”
“Yes, Mrs. Compton. As soon as I reach her, I’ll let you know.”
“And when the tapes are ready, they should be sent where?”
I handed her one of my cards. “The Public Safety Building,” I said. “Homicide’s on the fifth floor.”
As I rode down in the plushly upholstered elevator, I remembered what Bill Whitten had said: “There are diversions, and there are diversions.” What had he meant by that? Did this building qualify? In order to do cutting-edge cancer research, was it really necessary to have a padded elevator? Or a condo on Lake Union? Don Wolf may have been a first-class bastard, but I wondered if perhaps he had been right when it came to Bill Whitten’s financial management of Designer Genes International.
Down in the garage, I peered in the windows of Don Wolf’s compulsively clean Intrepid. Not a piece of paper, not a single latte cup littered the spotless interior, nor was there a single fleck of mud on the outside. Over the years, I’ve learned to distrust people who keep either their vehicles or their desks too pristinely clean. Don Wolf was dead, but he was clearly just another case in point.
Wanting to learn more about Bill Whitten, I called the M.E.’s office at Harborview and asked to speak to Audrey Cummings. “Come on, Beau,” she objected when I told her what I wanted. “Can’t this wait? I was just running out to catch some lunch. I have to be in court by two.”
“Where are you going to lunch? Maybe I can meet you there.”
“Sure,” she said. “Meet me at the Gravity Bar. It’s probably not your kind of place. Do you know where it is?”
Audrey Cummings is a strict vegetarian. In the course of communications between someone like her and a devoted junk food junkie like me, the word lunch inevitably suffers in translation. The Gravity Bar is a juice bar located between First and Second on Virginia. I’ve been there once or twice with Ron Peters, and Audrey was absolutely right. It’s not my kind of joint. Carrots may be fine for rabbits, but when it comes to drinking the damned things, I draw the line.
“I know where it is,” I said.
“Good. Meet me there in fifteen minutes.”
I did. Perched on futuristic metal furniture that looked as if it had been liberated from the set of Blade Runner, I sipped a chewy glass of pulpy, freshly squeezed orange juice while Audrey ate her avocado, sprouts, and tomato croissant and downed two huge glasses of carrot juice.
“So tell me about Bill Whitten,” I said as she munched away.
“What about him?”
“Whatever you can tell me.”
“Smart man,” Audrey replied without hesitation. “Dedicated. Overbearing. Egotistical. Well connected. Long on drive, but short on science. I guess that about covers it.”
“He’s not a trained biotech researcher?” I asked.
“No, but enough money can rent a whole lot of talent.”
“And Whitten has that much money?”
Audrey frowned before she answered. “Earlier this year I heard a rumor that D.G.I. might be in trouble, but nothing really solid.”
“Where do you know him from?”
Audrey laughed. “Mostly from cancer charity functions, the auction circuit, that kind of thing. I’m sure you know the drill.” The laughter died and her brow furrowed. “You’re not thinking Bill Whitten had anything to do with Don Wolf’s murder, are you?”
“He told me so himself,” I answered. “Said he might just as well because I was sure to figure it out myself eventually. I believe the term he used was prime suspect. What do you think?”
Long before I finished asking the question, Audrey Cummings was already shaking her head in an emphatic no. “I don’t think so,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Did he tell you about his father?”
“He said something about him dying of cancer, I believe. Something about that leading him to what he’s doing now, to being involved in cancer research.”
“Gordon Whitten had cancer,” Audrey told me. “But he didn’t die of it.”
“What did he die of then?” I asked.
“He committed suicide,” she said. “He went down to Mexico for some kind of oddball alternative treatment. When that didn’t work, he killed himself. Blew his brains out. Believe me, if Bill Whitten was going to knock off Don Wolf, he wouldn’t have done it with a bullet to the back of the head. Never. Not in a million years.”
And put that way, I have to admit, Audrey Cummings’ theory made a lot of sense. What it sure as hell didn’t do was make my job any easier.
A few minutes later, when she had to rush off to her court appearance, I headed north to the Fremont district to take a look at Don Wolf’s condo. A message taped to the security phone at the Lake View Condos announced that the manager had been called away and would return in a few minutes.
Retreating to my car, I pulled out my laptop and made a start at translating my notepad notes into a form the brass at Seattle P.D. deem acceptable. I still don’t know what I did wrong, but smack in the middle of writing a paragraph, the damn cursor quit. It got stuck halfway through the words Designer Genes and wouldn’t budge. A little box appeared in the middle of the screen. GENERAL PROTECTION FAULT, I think it said, or words to that effect. YOU MUST SAVE YOUR WORK OR YOU WILL LOSE IT.
Which, of course, was a lie. The cursor was stuck. I couldn’t have saved my work if my life had depended on it.
In over twenty years of being a cop, the words GENERAL PROTECTION FAULT have never once popped up in the pages of my never-ending series of dog-eared little notebooks. They never have, and they never will. Which is why, slick though they may be, computers will never altogether replace pencil and paper.
And they won’t replace detectives, either.
Six
Jack Braman, the Lake View Condo’s surprisingly youthful manager, returned eventually. He was short, round, and effusively helpful. When I clued him in as to what was going on, he was suitably distressed. With keys jangling nervously on a heavy key ring, he led me to the elevator of the five-story complex.
“I’ve been managing condos for three years now,” he said, shaking his head. “Never had one of my residents get murdered before, although I guess Don Wolf was a likely enough candidate.”
To look at him, Jack Braman didn’t appear old enough to be out of high school for three years, to say nothing of managing condos.
“What do you mean by that?” I asked.
Braman shrugged. “From what I understand, he had a wife down in California somewhere, but being married sure as hell didn’t seem to slow him down none. If you catch my drift,” he added.
“You mean Don Wolf had female visitors?”
“Constantly.”
“The same one or different ones?”
Jack Braman shook his head. “Different ones, although there was one who was here so much I was starting to think maybe she was his wife. But there were younger ones as well. Girls who were closer to my age than his.”
“Hookers?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t know about that,” he said. “Not for sure, but I guess they could have been.”
Flushing furiously, Jack Braman turned the key in the lock and pushed open the door to Don Wolf’s apartment. As soon as he did so, the appallingly unmistakable odor of death gushed out into the hallway.
Braman’s eyes widened. He gagged and choked and almost fell. “My God. What’s that awful smell?” he demanded.
Had Jack Braman ever been a homicide cop, he wouldn’t have had to ask. I reached out a hand to steady him and to keep him from stepping forward into the apartment and possibly destroying evidence.
“Go call nine one one,” I said. “Tell the dispatcher to send a patrol car and a crime scene investigation team. Tell the operator to notify the
medical examiner’s office.”
Braman looked at me through watering eyes. “Medical examiner?” he repeated. “That means somebody’s dead here. I thought you said Don Wolf died somewhere else. Out on the water or something.”
“I did.”
“But what’s this, then?” Braman asked weakly. His color had gone so bad I was afraid he was going to pitch forward flat on his face. “If somebody’s dead in here, who is it?”
“That’s what we have to find out,” I said. “Go make the call. Hurry now.”
Shaking his head, Jack Braman shambled away. Meanwhile, I sidestepped around the door, avoiding the usual traffic pattern, and eased my way into the overheated room.
If this was Don Wolf’s apartment, the place was totally in character. It was neat as a pin. Nothing in the elegantly appointed living room appeared to be out of place. The door had been locked when Jack Braman opened it, and there was no sign of forced entry.
Trying not to disturb any footprints, I skirted the edge of the fine white carpet as I headed for the hallway. There the reek of decaying flesh seemed far worse than in the living room. Breathing through my mouth and using a handkerchief to grip the knob, I opened a closed bedroom door. Even though I’d had ample warning, the overpowering stench inside left me gagging.
Because the blinds were closed, the room was enveloped in a dusky gloom. Even so, it was still possible to see the grim spatter pattern of blood and gore that had been sprayed across the headboard and the wall over the bed where a lump of pathetically still humanity lay concealed beneath a brightly colored comforter.
Obviously, the person on the bed was dead. Once upon a time, I would have rushed forward just to make sure there was nothing I could do. Once, but not now. This isn’t the good old days. When it comes to murder cases, investigating officers find themselves on trial right along with the defendants. Under the minute glare of the media, even the slightest misstep in procedure can be damning. As a consequence, we’ve all learned to avoid doing anything that might jeopardize the chain of evidence.
In other words, standing in the doorway of that foul-smelling room, I couldn’t afford to do a damn thing, not without other cops to witness my actions and to back up my assertions of whatever was found there. And from that position, although I could see the form on the bed, the mound of covers made it impossible to see whether the victim was man or woman, adult or child. That didn’t keep me from drawing my own possible conclusions.
Is it Latty? I wondered. That would make sense. She had threatened Wolf on the videotape. Had she made good on that threat, only to be stricken by overwhelming guilt afterward?
The very possibility filled me with an ineffable sadness. The blonde I had seen on the video had been so young and vital and beautiful. It offended me to think of her taking her own life. Given society’s deplorable track record for apprehending and prosecuting rapists, it isn’t too surprising that some victims resort to vigilante justice. But why commit suicide? In this case, it seemed to me that even the dumbest court-appointed attorney in town could have gotten her off.
Outside the building, the distinctive wailing of separate sirens announced the arrival of several emergency vehicles in the street below—as a fire truck, a Medic-One van, and at least one blue-and-white converged on the Lake View Condominiums. Hurriedly, I made my way back to the entrance to the apartment. The person in the bed had been dead for days. With no hope of a lifesaving rescue, I wanted to intercept the crush of well-intentioned, fully booted EMTs and firemen who were no doubt on their way.
Out in the hallway, I almost collided with the first person who burst out of the elevator—a pasty-faced Jack Braman. Right on his heels was a grizzled Seattle Fire Department captain, a man I’d seen on occasion over the years. Nostrils distended, he stopped in midstride. Like me, he knew as soon as he smelled the odor that there was no point in going any farther.
“Too late?” he asked. I nodded. The captain turned back to his milling crew. “Okay, guys. Nothing to be done. If we hang around here, we’ll only be in the way. Somebody grab that elevator before it gets away.”
Herding his squad like a brood of unruly chicks, the captain corralled them back into the elevator door. Jack Braman, too, hovered uncertainly in the hallway. He seemed undecided about whether to go or stay.
“I guess I’d better head back downstairs,” he said, swallowing hard, and leaping into the elevator just as the door closed. “That way, I can let people in if they need to be.”
“Good idea,” I said. “You go ahead.”
With the elevator gone, I glanced around at the rest of the fifth floor. There were evidently four apartments and a locked utility door of some kind. The room behind it might have been a garbage chute or maybe a laundry room. Early on this weekday afternoon, none of the other fifth-floor residents were home. If they had been, they certainly would have been in the hallway by now.
I had heard the elevator open and shut downstairs. Now it was once again creeping upward. I hurried back to the elevator lobby in order to be there when the door opened once again.
This time, the first person off the elevator was Audrey Cummings. “I thought you were stuck in court,” I said.
She shook her head. “My case was continued. I was already in my car on my way back to the office when the call came through. I should get the prize for being here before anybody else.”
Right behind Audrey, almost treading on the backs of her high-heeled shoes, was my own personal nemesis from Seattle P.D., none other than Detective Paul Kramer. He was accompanied by his most recently acquired partner, a novice detective named Sam Arnold.
Kramer looked at me. I looked at him. “What are you doing here?” we both said at the same time. It sounded almost like one of those responsive readings at church, but believe me, neither one of us asked the question with joyous, worshipful, or love-filled hearts.
Detective Kramer and I don’t get along. We haven’t from the first day we laid eyes on each other. He’s one of those ambitious, ass-kissing sons of bitches who’s out to make a reputation for himself, no matter what. If somebody gets in his way, too bad. He’ll walk over or through them to get where he’s going. I’ve pretty much made up my mind that if the day ever comes when Paul Kramer gets promoted to a supervisory position in Homicide, that’s the day I turn in my badge.
We’re not talking one-sided here. The feeling is clearly mutual. Paul Kramer seems to resent the hell out of everything about me. He’s forever griping about my money, about where I live, about the clothes I wear, and the car I drive. For some reason, my penthouse unit at Belltown Terrace really chaps his butt. He never fails to razz me about me and my high-roller neighbors. Maybe it was funny the first ten or fifteen times he mentioned it, but it isn’t funny anymore.
“I’m working,” I said. “What about you?”
“And how’d you get here before we did?” Kramer demanded, squaring off in front of me there in the hallway “Watty assigned the call to us. Besides, I thought you were supposed to be chasing after the New Year’s floater.”
“I am,” I answered, making an effort to keep my voice even. “This happens to be the floater’s apartment. I’m the one who found the body in there.”
The attempt to keep the strain out of my voice must not have been too successful, at least not as far as Audrey Cummings was concerned.
“Now boys,” she said, slipping between us. “Be nice. What do you have here, Beau?”
“This way,” I said, leading them to the door to Don Wolf’s apartment. “The body’s on a bed in the bedroom. I didn’t go all the way into the room for fear of disturbing something important. It may be a suicide.”
“Suicide?” Kramer sneered. “You haven’t been in the room, but already you’ve figured out that it’s suicide? Beaumont here must have inherited some of Superman’s X-ray vision,” he added over his shoulder to his young partner. Sam Arnold had just come to Homicide after a two-year tour of duty in Property Crimes. This couldn’t hav
e been more than his second or third case.
“Yes, sir,” Kramer continued. “Detective Beaumont here is the latest version of the Man of Steel.”
Ignoring him, Audrey pulled out a notebook and began scribbling preliminary notes. “Can you give me any background?”
“It turns out my floater raped a woman in his office several nights ago. On the twenty-seventh. The victim threatened to kill him afterward. I’m thinking she may have made good on the threat and then killed herself afterward.”
“Name?” Audrey asked.
“Of the rape victim? Latty. That’s all I have on her so far.”
“Wait a minute,” Kramer objected. “Wait just a damn minute. You’re telling me the floater is a rapist? How do you know that?”
“Because I saw it,” I snapped. “On tape.”
“He did it at D.G.I.?” Audrey asked.
“That’s right.”
“What’s a D.G.I.?” Kramer demanded. “Sounds like the two of you are talking in code.”
“Designer Genes International. That’s the biotech company down on Western where Don Wolf worked. When he brought the girl into his office, a hidden security camera recorded the whole thing.”
“The rape you mean.” Kramer grinned. “That sounds pretty kinky. Where can I get a copy of this tape, or are you putting it out on a pay-per-view basis?”
Pocketing her notebook, Audrey proceeded to the apartment door. “We could just as well get started,” Audrey said. “You’ve called for a crime scene team?”
“They were summoned the same time you were. They should be here any minute.”
Without entering the room, she turned on Sam Arnold and fixed him with a reproving stare. “When we go on in, stick close to the wall and well away from any footprints or spatters. You got that, Detective Arnold?”
Kramer’s hapless new partner cringed under her gaze. Something told me this wasn’t the first time he had dealt with the lady.
“Got it!” he repeated quickly. “Yes, ma’am.”
Out in the hallway, the awful stench had dissipated a little, but once inside the apartment, the odor was again overpowering. We headed toward the bedroom, following the same circuitous path I had used earlier. Sam Arnold made it around the perimeter of the room all right, but as he neared the bedroom door in the hallway, the smell proved too much. He began making a small gurgling noise in his throat.