by J. A. Jance
“Oh, for God’s sake, you useless little wimp,” Kramer growled. “Get the hell out of here before you barf all over our shoes.”
Retching, and trying to cover his mouth with his hand, Arnold bolted for the door to the apartment. He made it to the outside hallway, but just barely.
Audrey sighed and watched him go. If there had been footprints to be found in the carpeting of the doorway, they were gone now, mashed flat by Detective Arnold’s pell-mell retreat. “Damned kids!” she muttered, shaking her head.
Rank has its dubious privileges. In a world of parallel bureaucracies, an assistant medical examiner outranks mere detectives. Kramer and I followed Audrey into the gore-spattered bedroom. Seattle isn’t known for having flies in the dead of winter, but I heard an unmistakable buzzing of flies as we made our way into the room.
“Am I having a hot flash or is it hotter than hell in here?” Audrey demanded.
“It’s hot,” I said. “I checked the thermostat as I came by. It’s set at eighty.”
“Eighty? Christ!”
“You want me to turn it down?”
Audrey shook her head. “We’d better leave it where it is, at least until the crime scene techs show up. Of course, by then, we’ll all be baked to a crisp.”
Taking the lead, Audrey approached the bed from the left-hand side. “Yikes,” she said. “The whole back of her head is gone.”
“After you,” Kramer said, motioning me forward with an exaggerated bow.
Following the same path Audrey had taken, I, too, approached the bed. Because I had been watching my feet, I was right beside the bed when I finally looked up. The first thing I saw was the woman’s lifeless left hand dangling over the side of the bed—a left hand with a wedding ring. I didn’t recall that the girl on the tape had worn a ring of any kind. And looking further, at the terrible carnage of the bed itself, I realized at once that my initial theory was wrong. The exiting bullet had destroyed the back of her head, but the face was pretty much intact.
“It isn’t her,” I said. “It isn’t who I thought.”
“First it is and then it isn’t,” Phil Kramer said tauntingly from over my shoulder. “Make up your mind, Beaumont. So who is it now?”
“Don Wolf’s wife,” I answered.
“Are you sure?” Audrey asked.
“I think so, although I’ve only seen her picture. Her name’s Lizbeth. She’s from La Jolla, California. Bill Whitten told me that when Don Wolf moved to Seattle a couple of months ago, she stayed put in California waiting for the house to sell.”
“So maybe some of your guesswork isn’t so far off the mark after all,” Kramer said. “And maybe it’s still murder and/or suicide. Supposing the wife found out her husband was up here screwing around. She probably came looking for him with blood in her eye and then did herself in afterward. Closing these two cases should be duck soup.”
“Nobody’s closing anything until I know for sure who she is,” Audrey Cummings snapped. “I want positive I.D. Comparison with a picture isn’t good enough. I’ll want fingerprints and dental records or both.”
“This must be the place,” Janice Morraine said from the doorway, announcing the arrival of the crime scene investigators. “It’s hot as blue blazes in here. You don’t expect us to work in this much heat, do you?”
Janice, a criminalist by trade, is the lead crime scene investigator for the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab. Those who make the mistake of calling her a criminologist do so at their own risk. Smart ones never make the same mistake twice.
“It’s hot all right,” Audrey replied, “but don’t touch that thermostat until one of your guys dusts it for prints.”
Behind me, Kramer heaved an impatient sigh. “Dust it for prints? How come? The woman blew her brains out. Don’t tell me we’re going to squander the next three days jumping through hoops and treating the scene like it’s from a multiple—”
“There’s a weapon here on the bed. Looks like a three fifty-seven. That may be what killed her. For right now, I’m calling it homicidal violence. It was obviously close range. It may turn out to be suicide, but I doubt it.”
Kramer groaned. When you’re on a fast track, cases cleared in a hurry look better than those that take longer. A call of homicidal violence meant our job was just starting.
“What makes you say that?” he asked.
“The wall,” Audrey Cummings answered confidently. “Women don’t usually go out in ways that leave that kind of mess for somebody else to clean up.”
“Mess?” Kramer echoed.
“Mess,” Audrey Cummings repeated firmly.
“Okay,” Janice Morraine said, taking charge. “You’d best move out of the way and let us get started.”
While Janice Morraine and Audrey Cummings conferred near the bed, Kramer led the way out of the room. “I’ve never heard anything so dumb,” he grumbled under his breath.
“I think I’d shut up about that if I were you, Detective Kramer,” I told him. “At least as long as Audrey Cummings is within earshot.”
“But the mess? What kind of fruitcake reason is that?”
I shrugged, enjoying Detective Kramer’s annoyance. “When it comes to women,” I told him, “like it or not, there are some things you just have to accept on faith.”
Seven
I followed Kramer out of Don Wolf’s apartment, directly into the arms of Captain Lawrence Powell, who saw me and did a double take. “Watty said Detectives Kramer and Arnold were here. I thought you were supposed to be working on the floater?” he said.
It seemed to me I’d already been down that path. “I am working the floater,” I said. “This is his apartment. Our initial and still tentative I.D. would indicate that the dead woman found here is his wife.”
Larry sniffed the air. “She’s been dead for a while.”
“A day or two,” I agreed. “With the thermostat turned up to eighty degrees, it doesn’t take long for a body to go bad.”
“You’re thinking it’s maybe a double, then?” he asked.
Kramer shook his head and horned his way into the conversation. “For my money, I’m thinking it’s maybe a homicide and/or suicide.”
“Audrey Cummings from the M.E.’s office doesn’t necessarily agree with that theory,” I mentioned while Kramer shot me a withering look.
“What does she say?” Captain Powell asked.
“She’s calling it a double,” Kramer grumbled. “And she’s going for a full-court press.”
“And I’m sure you three are going to give her your full cooperation,” Powell said with an encouraging smile.
“Absolutely,” Detective Kramer replied at once, deftly executing a judicious U-turn. It amazed me that he could pull it off without so much as missing a beat. And without Captain Powell catching on to his game, either. “No question about that,” Kramer continued. “We were just about to start dividing up responsibilities.”
“How?” Powell asked.
No one had previously discussed the division of labor, but once again Kramer covered himself. “Since Beaumont here was already tracking down the floater’s background and next-of-kin notification, we thought he should go on with that while Detective Arnold and I go to work on the neighborhood here.”
The captain nodded. “Sounds reasonable,” he said. “Let’s not stand around here jawing about it, either. Get busy. I was in a meeting with Chief Rankin when the call came in. Do you realize that, counting this one, the city of Seattle now has a total of four homicides in just over two days? And if the one critical-condition drive-by victim at Harborview kicks off, that’ll make five? Believe me, that doesn’t bode well for the year, and it doesn’t bode well for the chief, either. I’m putting you both on notice that he’s going to be wanting progress. Immediate progress!”
“So what else is new?” I asked with a shrug. I couldn’t resist the jibe. When the brass starts jumping up and down and demanding results yesterday, when they lose track of the fact that instant re
sults often breed long-term disaster, that’s when I have a hard time keeping a civil tongue in my mouth. In those situations, faced with all that bureaucratic huffing and puffing, I think a little healthy disrespect is good for all concerned. Kramer’s exasperated answering glower warned me that he disagreed.
No doubt he wanted to distance himself from my moderately disrespectful jibe. Maybe he was worried that some of my reputation as Homicide’s smart-ass-in-residence might rub off on him. And, although my comment may have irked Detective Kramer, it seemed to have very little effect on Captain Powell, who was more than capable of taking recalcitrant homicide cops in stride.
“Where do you stand on your end of it, Detective Beaumont?”
“I’d best be making some phone calls,” I told him. “If Lizbeth Wolf turns out to be alive and well down in San Diego, then our tentative identification is wrong and we’ve got a Jane Doe dead in that apartment and two sets of next-of-kin notifications to handle.”
“Get with the program, then,” Powell told me. He turned to Kramer and Arnold. “And you two guys are canvassing the neighborhood?”
Kramer nodded. “And talking to the people in the building? All we’re waiting on is an approximate time of death so we have some idea what to ask.”
About that time, the elevator door opened. A police photographer stepped into the hallway. Captain Powell waved her into the apartment just as Audrey Cummings emerged, peeling off a pair of latex gloves. She must have heard the tail end of Kramer’s answer.
“I’d say she’s been dead for days. My guess, pending the autopsy, is two or three, but it could be less. The extreme heat in the apartment may have distorted the condition of the body. Who’s going to be working on the identification?”
“I am,” I answered. “I.D. and next of kin both.”
Audrey nodded. “Good. Let me know what you find out. And remember, Beaumont. Positive I.D. None of this secondhand crap.”
“Sure thing,” I said. “I’ll get on it right away.”
I pushed the down button. When the elevator came, Jack Braman was inside and running the controls with a key. “That way, I can keep track of who comes and goes,” he told me apologetically. “There’s a whole bunch of reporters downstairs. I was afraid some of them would sneak into the garage and then go on upstairs without anyone knowing.”
“Good thinking,” I told him.
He stood there looking at me. The elevator key was in the lock, but since he hadn’t pushed any buttons as yet, we still weren’t moving.
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I was just wondering if…well, you know…”
“Know what?”
“Who it is? The person who’s dead, I mean?”
“We don’t know for sure. It may be his wife. We’re checking.”
“That would sure be better for me,” he said.
His comment mystified me. “Better for you? What would?”
“If it turned out to be his wife,” Braman replied. The elevator stopped, but he switched off the key, and the door didn’t open. “Husbands and wives knock each other off all the time,” he said. “That kind of thing happens. But if a hooker or even just a girlfriend were to turn up dead in the building, people might think I wasn’t doing such a good job of managing the building. You understand that, don’t you?”
“You’re telling me that from a PR standpoint, it’s more respectable for the building and better for your job performance if the victim turns out to be a resident’s wife instead of a girlfriend or a prostitute?”
Braman nodded. “Don’t you think so?” he asked, turning the key and opening the door.
“Actually,” I told him, “I’ve never given the matter a whole lot of thought.”
Just as Braman had warned me, a miniconvocation of local representatives of the Fourth Estate was taking place in the entry courtyard of the Lake View Condominiums. Phil Grimes, the guy who’d been tapped to replace Ron Peters in Media Relations, was standing in the middle of the crowd and being bombarded by the roving pack of reporters. It seemed obvious to me that since he’d just arrived on the scene, he probably wouldn’t have much of anything to report. That didn’t keep the newsies from peppering him with questions.
Using Grimes as a diversion, I headed for my car. I was almost there and thinking I had made a clean getaway when I heard someone calling me. “Detective Beaumont.”
I stopped and looked back. Behind me, missing her cameraman, was the same television reporter I’d encountered twice the previous day, both at Pier 70 and out in front of Belltown Terrace during the soapsuds debacle. High heels clicking on the cement, she came hurrying after me. She was surprisingly old for a female television reporter—forty at least—but her makeup and clothing certainly made the most of what was there.
“Maribeth George,” she said, holding out her hand. “Could I talk to you for a minute?”
Knowing who she was and what she did, I didn’t exactly fall all over myself in my eagerness for a private chat. Years of being a cop have bred in me an instinctive distrust for the media—any kind of media. Even good-looking women in nice clothing. Maybe especially good-looking women.
“Miss George,” I said coolly. “No doubt you’ve been in the news game long enough to know that detectives aren’t supposed to talk to reporters.”
My rebuff didn’t seem to faze her. “Not even off the record?” she asked. “I left Stan and his camera over there,” she added, jerking her head back toward the noisy group of reporters still eddying around Phil Grimes. “It’s just the two of us. No recording devices of any kind.”
“What do you want to talk about?” I asked.
Maribeth George had short brunette hair with a vivid streak of white that started just over her left eyebrow. Her dark-gray eyes, fringed by long, thick lashes, were made darker still by the carefully applied makeup that surrounded them.
“Somebody’s dead in there, right?”
I nodded. With Audrey’s van emblazoned with a KING COUNTY MEDICAL EXAMINER logo parked in the driveway, there wasn’t much point in denying the obvious.
“Is this victim related to…” Maribeth George paused, “to yesterday’s shooting victim down by Pier Seventy?”
I crossed my arms. The response was absolutely instinctive. So far, all that should have been internal law enforcement information only, including the fact that Don Wolf had died of a gunshot wound rather than drowning. As soon as I made the defensive, giveaway gesture, I could have kicked myself for it. Instead, I tried to cover up the instinctive faux pas.
“Shooting victim?” I asked, feigning innocence.
The reporter’s somber gray eyes grew troubled and darker still. “The man they fished out of the water yesterday. Is that case related to this one? And if so, who are these people?”
“With regard to the second question, we’re withholding names pending notification of next of kin. As for the first one, now that you mention it, maybe you’d like to explain to me exactly what makes you think that the man in the water was shot.”
“A woman in a wheelchair told me,” Maribeth George answered at once.
“What woman in what wheelchair?”
“The one down at Pier Seventy yesterday morning. She wasn’t actually on the pier when I got there, but she said she had been. She claimed she was one of the people who found the body, but she didn’t give me her name. In fact, she refused to give me her name. And now…” Maribeth’s voice trailed off into nothing.
“Now what?” I prodded.
“I know you were working on that other case yesterday. I saw you there. And I know that homicide cases get passed around in rotation, so you most likely wouldn’t be working on a new one unless it was somehow related to the one you were already working on. Right?”
I suppose one of the reasons detectives and journalists are always at one another’s throats is that we’re so much alike. We’re all in the business of finding out what happened and who did what to whom, and we
all want to be first in nailing down that information. An observant Maribeth George had put two and two together. Reporters, especially good-looking ones who are smart enough to come up with the correct answer of four, are definitely bad company for the likes of me.
“I trust you’ll forgive me if right this minute I can’t say yes or no,” I said, reaching into my pocket and pulling out a card. “But I would most definitely be interested in whether or not this wheelchair lady of yours calls again.”
Maribeth studied my face for a moment before she took the card. “I see,” she said. “So that’s how it is.”
I nodded. She shrugged and stuffed my card into the pocket of her blazer. “I doubt I’ll hear from her again,” Maribeth said.
“But if you do, you can reach me at any one of those numbers,” I said helpfully.
Maribeth George smiled. “Or I could just come across the street from the station and buzz you on your security phone. By the way, whatever happened with that soapsuds thing? The manager told me he thought little girls who live in the building were responsible for making the mess.”
Talking to women can be mind-boggling at times. Maribeth George skipped effortlessly from murder to soapsuds in less than a heartbeat. “The girls didn’t have anything to do with it,” I answered shortly.
“You know them then?” Maribeth asked. “The little girls, I mean.”
“Yes.” I didn’t add that I had supposedly been in charge of the girls at the time in question. Had I been doing my child-care job properly, the finger of suspicion never would have been pointed in their direction in the first place.
“The girls aren’t yours, are they?”
“No. They’re the daughters of a friend of mine.”
“Well,” she said, giving me one of her cards in exchange for mine. “Whoever did it,” she said, “it doesn’t seem like that big a deal.”