by J. A. Jance
“I don’t know,” I told her. “She could be. Nothing I found this morning indicated otherwise. Albert died in the early seventies, but as far as I know, Elvira’s still around.”
“That doesn’t seem fair,” Sister Mary Katherine said. “How is it possible that Mimi died so young and yet Elvira is still walking around free as a bird after all these years? If she’s still alive, she must be in her eighties. I can’t imagine living with that kind of guilt for so many years. I wonder if she ever feels any remorse about what she did.”
“I doubt it,” I said. “Most of the killers I’ve met come up short in the remorse department.”
“After such a long time, could she still be convicted and go to jail?”
“There’s no statute of limitations on murder,” I said. “And I’m sure they have some sort of geriatric wing in the women’s prison down at Purdy, but I wouldn’t count on a conviction if I were you.”
“Why not?”
“Time, for one thing. As you said, the crime happened years ago. I’m going to do my best to send her there, but you’ll have to be patient. It won’t be easy.”
“Why not? There’s a witness,” Sister Mary Katherine objected, “an eyewitness who saw the whole thing.”
“Yes, but we’re talking about an eyewitness who took half a century to speak up. A good defense attorney will tear your testimony to shreds. And a jury is going to wonder what caused you to suddenly recall those events now. There are a lot of people out there who don’t go along with the idea of repressed memories, so I can’t base my entire case on your word alone. I’m going to have to dig up enough corroborating evidence that a prosecutor and a jury will be willing to go with it.”
“Can you find that kind of evidence?” she asked.
“I’ll do my best,” I told her. “Finding evidence is what I do. It’s what I’ve done all my life.”
“While all I’ve been doing is praying and sewing,” she said. I heard the self-reproach in her voice and knew Sister Mary Katherine was still holding Bonnie Jean Dunleavy’s silence against her.
“Sometimes,” I told her, “praying is the only thing that works.”
“It seems to me I should be the one telling you about the wonders of prayer,” Sister Mary Katherine said with a tight smile.
“That’s all right,” I told her. “No extra charge.”
She raised her hand, flagged down the waitress, and asked for her bill. She turned down my offer to pick up the check. “I like to pay my own way,” she said. “And I need to be heading out. I have some shopping to do before I leave town, but Sister Therese expects to have the road cleared by early this afternoon, and I want to be home well before dark.”
“I hadn’t realized the highway on Whidbey was closed.”
“Not the highway,” she said. “That’s open. The problem is our road-the private one that goes from the highway to the convent. There’s snow and several downed trees as well. But I’ve been away for days now, and I’m ready to be home, even if I have to get out and walk.”
Sister Mary Katherine struck me as the kind of woman who wouldn’t be above hiking through snow and ice to get where she wanted to go, but I wondered if she was strong-willed enough to deal with all the emotional fallout from that long-ago Saturday afternoon.
I helped her retrieve her bags from the bellman, then we stood together under the covered portico waiting for our vehicles to be brought around. A steady downpour was falling on the street outside. Compared with the previous days of bitter cold, the forty-degree weather felt downright balmy.
“Are you sure you’re going to be all right?” I asked again.
Sister Mary Katherine nodded. “Yes,” she said. “But it’s not easy. I just never thought I’d be involved in something like this. These kinds of things aren’t supposed to happen to people in my line of work.”
“You’d be surprised,” I said.
The parking valet drove up in a white Odyssey minivan. Once Sister Mary Katherine’s bags had been loaded, she turned back to me and held out her hand. “Thank you, Beau,” she said. “I’m sure working with you and Freddy-with people I know and trust-has made this far less traumatic than it would have been otherwise.”
“You’re welcome,” I said. I handed her one of my cards. “Call me if you remember anything more.”
She studied the card for a moment before slipping it into the pocket of her coat. “All right,” she said. “And you’ll let me know what’s going on?”
“Yes, but remember, this is going to take time.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said.
I watched her drive away. By then my 928 was there as well. I got into the Porsche and headed for SPD. Melting snow and the warm driving rain combined to turn Seattle’s downtown streets into rivers. I felt sorry for hapless pedestrians trying to stay out of the way of rooster tails of oily, dirty spray kicked up in the wake of passing cars.
Even though the department is now in its new digs up the hill from the old Public Safety Building, out of habit I drove to the old parking garage on James where I used to be a regular customer. No one there recognized me or the 928. And the same thing was true for the new Seattle Police Department Headquarters building on Fifth Avenue. None of the officers on duty in the classy lobby had any idea of who I was. After being issued a visitor’s pass, I went upstairs to Records.
When I told the woman in charge what I wanted, she shook her head. “Oh, honey,” she said. “All cold case stuff that old is still down in the vault at the old Public Safety Building. You know where that is?”
“I’m pretty sure I can find it,” I assured her.
“Good. You go right on down there then. I’ll call ahead and let them know you’re coming.”
Being a typical Seattle native, I have a natural aversion to umbrellas. By the time I walked first up the hill and then back down again, I was wet through. And once I reached the building that had been my place of employment for so many years, I found out you really can’t go home again. The Public Safety Building, soon scheduled to meet the wrecking ball, was a pale shadow of its former self. One side of the once busy lobby was stacked with the cots used by a men’s homeless shelter that temporarily occupies that space overnight. A janitor was haphazardly mopping the granite floor. He nodded at me as I made my way to the bored security guard stationed near the elevator bank.
“Basement, right?” he asked, putting down his worn paperback.
That meant someone had called ahead to say I was coming. “Yes,” I said.
“Downstairs,” he said. “Take a right when you exit the elevators and go to the end of the corridor.”
Here no pass was necessary. The lobby may have been a cot warehouse, but the basement corridor was worse. It was stacked floor to ceiling with a collection of decrepit gray metal desks, shelving units and cubicle dividers, along with dozens of broken-down desk chairs missing backs and casters. I suspect my old fifth-floor desk was there in that collection of wreckage that looked more like a gigantic garage sale than a corridor.
I dodged my way through the maze of furniture and into what’s called the vault. The clerk in charge of the evidence room was a middle-aged lady whom I didn’t recognize. “This is from a long time ago,” she said, examining my request form complete with the specifics of the Mimi Marchbank murder. “It may take a while for me to dig this out,” she added. “Why don’t you have a seat?”
The only place to sit was at a battered wooden study carrel that looked as though it predated the junk in the corridor by several decades and made me wonder if it wasn’t a displaced refugee from an early version of the U. Dub Library.
Convinced I had come into the building entirely under everybody’s radar, I was taking a load off when, two minutes later, the door slammed open. A fighting-mad, rain-drenched Paul Kramer marched into the room.
That would be Captain Paul Kramer. At the time I left Seattle PD, it may have looked to the world as though I was bailing because of Sue Danielson’
s death. Sue, my partner at the time, had been gunned down by her ex-husband, and I admit it-her murder was a contributing factor to my leaving when I did. Sue’s senseless slaughter was one more than I could stand. But the other part of it was the fact that the departmental hierarchy had seen fit to promote a backstabbing worm like Paul Kramer to the rank of captain.
Sure, he had aced the test. I don’t question the fact that he had the scores to justify a promotion. What Kramer didn’t have were people skills. He was an ambitious, brownnosing jerk who flimflammed his superiors by being utterly scrupulous about his paperwork, but he wasn’t above hanging his fellow detectives out to dry whenever it suited him. He and I had been on a collision course from the first day he turned up in Homicide. Back then it was all I could do to tolerate being in the same room with him. In the aftermath of Sue’s death, the idea of having to report to the guy was more than I could handle.
Now, years later, someone had gone to the trouble of sounding an alarm and letting him know I was in the building. Territorial as any dog, he had hurried down the hill and down to the basement to lift his leg metaphorically and pee in my shoe.
“Hello there, Beaumont,” he said, sounding as obnoxiously official as ever. “Long time no see. Imagine meeting you here.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “Imagine that.”
He meandered over to the counter and looked around for a piece of paper that might give him a clue as to why I was there. Fortunately, the clerk had taken my request with her when she had wandered off through the towering maze of sagging metal shelving. If Captain Kramer wanted to find out what I was doing in the evidence room, he was going to have to come straight out and ask-which he did with as much hail-fellow-well-met phoniness as he could muster.
“What brings you back to the old stamping ground?”
“Working a case,” I said.
“Really,” he said. “For SHIT?”
“Yup,” I told him. “That’s where I hang my hat these days.”
Kramer leaned back against the counter and folded his arms across his chest. “Your being here wouldn’t have anything to do with what’s going on with Ron Peters, would it?”
I could have answered the question straight out, but Kramer has always brought out the worst in me. This was no exception. “Since Ron and I are good friends, wouldn’t that be a clear conflict of interest?” I asked.
Kramer made a sour face. “When has that ever stopped you?” he asked.
“It might not have stopped me, but I happen to work for the Washington State Attorney General’s office. Ross Connors doesn’t tolerate that kind of thing.”
“That must mean you’re working one of our old cases then? Did you clear it with anyone upstairs before you came down here?”
When he said “upstairs,” he wasn’t talking about the sleepy security guard up in the lobby. He meant upstairs upstairs-back on the top floors of the new building where the brass hang out.
“Paul,” I told him patiently, “I have a badge, and I have an assignment. Special Homicide means just exactly that-special. I don’t have to clear what I’m doing with you or with anyone else.”
“It seems to me that as a simple matter of interdepartmental courtesy, you would have stopped by…”
“Look, Kramer,” I interrupted. “Can it. I don’t work for you. I don’t answer to you. If you have any questions about what I’m doing here, you’re more than welcome to contact my boss and find out.”
“And your boss would be?”
Before I could reply, the clerk returned to the counter carrying a document box. She looked from me to Kramer.
“Oh, Captain Kramer,” she said. “I didn’t hear you come in. Is there something I can do for you?”
“Sure,” he said, staring pointedly at the box she was carrying. “I’ll sign for that, Sandy. Mr. Beaumont and I can take it back to my office where we can go through it together.”
In the bad old days, I probably would have punched him out, but I like to think I’m older and wiser now. Besides, there was no point. Eager to be of help, the clerk produced the proper form, which Kramer signed with all due ceremony. Then, picking up the box-my evidence box-he turned back to me. “Shall we?” he asked.
Kramer had the box in his hands-a box that contained all the surviving evidence as well as the musty case books to Madeline Marchbank’s murder, a homicide that was more than fifty years old. Kramer had the box, but he didn’t have access to the information I had recently unearthed-eyewitness accounts to that murder from both Bonnie Jean Dunleavy’s and Sister Mary Katherine’s separate points of view. Without those bits of the puzzle or the information I had managed to pull together, the box was just that-a useless thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle with all the critical pieces missing. Kramer could study whatever was in the box until hell froze over. Without my help, he wouldn’t learn a thing.
“No, thanks, Paul,” I said after a moment. “That’s all right. Be my guest. Go through it on your own.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out one of my business cards. “Here’s my number,” I added, dropping the card on the dust-laden lid to the box. “Give me a call a little later. I’ll be very interested to hear what you find out.”
With that, I opened the door to the evidence room and stepped back into the cluttered basement corridor. I left Paul Kramer standing there with his mouth open, holding on to the box and holding on to all his unanswered questions as well. It wasn’t a very dramatic exit. It wasn’t one of those high-testosterone departures where you go out in a blaze of gun-firing glory, but from my point of view, it still felt damned good.
Even if Harry I. Ball or Ross Connors ended up calling me on the carpet later, it was still worth doing. And given half a chance, I’d do it again.
CHAPTER 10
I could have bailed right then. I could have called Harry and dropped the case along with the dust-covered evidence box right in Kramer’s lap, but I wasn’t ready to do that. I guess what I really wanted to know was where all this was going. Was the attorney general’s office’s involvement really as benign as I’d been told, or was there more to it than the simple fact that Ross Connors and Father Andrew had played football together back in high school? I wouldn’t know what Paul Harvey and his much younger successor continue to call “the rest of the story” until I had followed the Marchbank murder trail all the way to the end.
I spent more than twenty years at Seattle PD, most of it in Homicide. I’ve forgotten the details of most of the killers we caught and sent to prison, but every day of my life I carry around a complete catalog of the ones who got away. I can tell you the names and ages of the victims along with where, when, and how they died. Those ugly memories sit lodged in my heart, but unlike grains of sand trapped inside oyster shells, my remembered victims don’t turn into iridescent pearls. Instead, they show up in the middle of the night, waking or sleeping, as an ugly Greek chorus of accusatory ghosts demanding to know why I allowed their unnatural deaths to pass into oblivion and their killers to go free.
I can also list by name all the grieving relatives-parents, sisters, brothers, and occasionally even children-who called me each year, usually on or near the anniversary of their loved ones’ deaths. The family members called looking for closure. They called wondering if anything new had turned up. They called asking if anyone was still looking for their loved one’s killer and seeking reassurance that someone else-anyone else-still cared.
Yes, William Winkler may have run off the rails when he got moved upstairs in Seattle PD, and yes, he may have been drummed out of the corps along with a lot of other dirty cops back in the mid-to late fifties, but once a homicide detective, always a homicide detective. Mimi Marchbank’s murder had happened on his watch, and her killer was one of Wink’s loose ends. I didn’t know whether or not the man was still alive, but if he was-and if he was still in possession of his faculties-I guessed he’d remember everything that was in Paul Kramer’s dusty evidence box-everything to be found in the box and possibly more besides
.
While I stood in the garage lobby waiting for the attendant to return the 928, I called directory assistance. There were five Winklers listed. Two of them were listed as William and one was initial W only. Rather than dialing the three at random, I tried a different tack.
The International Order of Footprinters is a service organization made up of some still active but mostly retired law enforcement folks. The Seattle area chapter includes people who once served and protected in King, Pierce, Snohomish, and Thurston counties, and in various municipal jurisdictions as well-Seattle, Renton, Tacoma, Bellevue, and Everett. Some of the retired officers served in local branches of the FBI, the DEA, and the INS or in local port-policing agencies. There may be some ongoing competition and sibling rivalry among those branches, but once you graduate into Footprinters, it’s time to get over it and let bygones be bygones.
Martin Woodman, a long-retired FBI special-agent-in-charge, is the grand old man of the Seattle area chapter. Widowed for at least twenty years now, he lives alone in the Wall Street Tower, which used to be called the Grosvenor House, and spends his long afternoons and relatively short evenings hanging out at the Five-Spot Cafe. Marty is too old and arthritic to carry on as part of the Keystone Kops anymore, and he’s served in all the organization’s various elective offices, both local and national, on numerous occasions. Now that he’s slowing down, he limits his Footprinters involvement to that of self-appointed goodwill ambassador.
Whenever former or retired cops from this side of the mountains run into difficulties, Marty is on hand to look out for them regardless of where or when they served. He makes it a point to visit and collect get-well cards for whoever ends up in a hospital, and when somebody dies, Marty is on hand to make sure the deceased officer is laid to rest with all due ceremony and respect. It’s his personal mission in life to make sure those old cops and their families aren’t forgotten. You have to respect a guy like that. Marty Wood was the one man in Seattle who would know for sure whether or not Wink Winkler was still alive. He’d also probably know where I could find him.