Improbable Cause

by J. A. Jance

  I held the bracelet up to the light. The logo said it was from Swedish Hospital up on First Hill, Pill Hill as the locals call the hospital district. In addition to the hospital's name, the bracelet contained a few other relevant bits of information: Dorothy Nielsen's name, her patient ID number, her blood type, and another name, a Dr. W. Leonard.

  As I stood there studying the bracelet, I couldn't help wondering. I recalled the ugly purple bruise on LeAnn Nielsen's face and remembered the determined way her mother-in-law had brushed aside my question about the origin of her injury. I still didn't know how Dorothy Nielsen had broken her hip.

  I suppose it was mostly idle curiosity on my part, but a homicide detective needs to learn all he can about the people involved in any given case. That includes the deceased. And now I wanted to know, once and for all, whether or not the late Dr. Frederick Nielsen was responsible for his mother's injury. I knew for sure he was a wife beater. Was he also a mommy basher?

  I picked up the phone book and located Dr. W. Leonard's office number in the Arnold Medical Pavilion on Madison. It was only 7:30 a.m., but on a whim I dialed the office number. A tinny answering machine told me that the doctor's office was open 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. Unless it was an emergency, they requested that I call back during office hours.

  This was no emergency. Dr. Nielsen was dead, and his mother had been released from the hospital. I put the bracelet back in my pocket along with a piece of paper on which I jotted Dr. W. Leonard's office number. Then I called Margie at the department, told her I had to stop off someplace on my way into the office, and set off for Cedar Heights to pay a call on Henry Calloway.

  I found him outside, watering the parched street trees that were planted in the sidewalk around his building.

  "They were looking a little sick to me," he said of the trees when I walked up. "They're not used to having to go this long without rain. I thought I'd help them along. What can I do for you, Detective Beaumont?"

  "Darlene Girvan paid me a call last night. I wanted to thank you for putting her in touch with me."

  "Happy to do it. You said to report anything unusual. That seemed pretty unusual to me."

  "To me, too," I said. "From her description of the car, do you recognize it? Does it belong to someone in the building?"

  "It may, but there's no way for me to tell. We've got more than a hundred cars in all, and it's hard to keep track of them. It seems like I'd remember one with its bumper all smashed in the way she said."

  "What about the license number? Do you keep any kind of listing of those?"

  "Nope. Too much trouble. People buy and sell cars all the time. We just keep track of the number of beepers we pass out to each tenant. They can move 'em around among cars to their heart's content."

  It figured. It would have simplified my life too much if they had done it any other way.

  "Have any openers been reported stolen lately?"

  Henry Calloway shook his head. "Nope," he replied.

  "Them's the breaks," I said, "but thanks just the same, Mr. Calloway."

  "My pleasure," he said.

  I left him to his hose and hurried on down to the department. Sergeant Watkins was waiting for me when I got to my desk.

  "I understand from Al here that the other suspect you were telling us about yesterday didn't pan out, is that right?"

  "That's correct."

  "So where does that leave you?"

  "Behind the eight ball," I told him.

  Watty frowned. "Listen, Beau, the guys upstairs are getting antsy on this one. They want progress, real progress, and they want it now!"

  "We're doing the best we can. I picked up another lead last night. We'll be checking that one out today."

  "Get on with it, then. By the way, I never got a report from yesterday."

  "I'll take care of it," I said. "What's the word on Martin?"

  "Nothing that I know of," Watty replied.

  "How long can they keep him up at Harborview?" I asked.

  "Seventy-two hours is the maximum on an involuntary commitment. You can bet they won't cut him loose a minute before that."

  "What about Damm? Has anybody talked to him yet?"

  "Powell's assigning two other guys to handle that end of the investigation."

  "How come? So he can squeeze us out of it?"

  Watty shrugged in a way that told me my assumption was correct. Captain Powell didn't like my answers, so he was pulling rank, sending in reinforcements in hopes of finding answers he liked better. You can do that when you're the captain.

  "Get out of here and let us go to work," I griped at Watty. "We're not accomplishing anything with you standing around here jawing."

  As soon as Sergeant Watkins was out of the room, Big Al asked, "What's the lead?"

  "One turned up on my doorstep last night at eleven: a lady who almost got run down by a car in the Cedar Heights commercial garage Saturday afternoon at one-thirty."

  "No shit!"

  "No shit," I repeated.

  "So what are we doing about it?"

  "We don't have that much to go on, first three letters on the license, dark, foreign make, bashed in rear bumper, that's it."

  "It's a start. All we need to do is get Olympia to supply all one thousand registrations on a printout and start looking."

  "Right," I agreed, "but first we're going to go talk to a doctor."

  "What about? You feeling sick?"

  "No, I'm not sick. About Dorothy Nielsen."

  I picked up the phone and dialed Dr. Leonard's number. "Doctor's office," the receptionist said.

  "I'd like to talk to Dr. Leonard, please."

  "The doctor is busy seeing patients at the moment. May I say who's calling?"

  "My name's Beaumont. Detective J. P. Beaumont."

  "Are you already a patient of Dr. Leonard's, Mr. Beaumont?"

  "No, I'm not."

  "The doctor isn't taking any new patients at this time."

  "I don't want to become a patient. I'm a detective with the Seattle Police Department. I need to speak to the doctor regarding a case I'm working on."

  "We'll have to schedule you for an appointment. The doctor doesn't see people without appointments. I could work you in on Monday. Would two-thirty be all right?"

  The woman's voice was bright and cheerful enough, but I had a feeling I hadn't connected to her brain. If she had one.

  "I don't believe you understand," I said. "I need to talk to the doctor for a few minutes regarding one of his patients."

  "Her," the woman said.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "One of her patients," the receptionist answered. "Dr. Leonard is a woman."

  "Right," I said. "Fine." I was beginning to lose my cool. It was draining out the heels of my shoes. "As I said, I'm working a homicide case, and it's vital that I speak to Dr. Leonard regarding one of her patients."

  "Well, she's leaving here in about ten minutes. I doubt you can catch her. She's scheduled for surgery in a little while. You can come by this afternoon and wait if you want to. Maybe I can work you in. She'll be back here by three at the latest."

  "We'll be there at three," I said.

  I put down the phone, shaking my head.

  "We're not going to see the doctor, then?" Al asked.

  "Not until three o'clock," I said.

  Al picked up the phone and made the call to the Department of Licensing while I wrote up my report. People think that in this world of computers, the information police jurisdictions need is readily and instantly available. We should be able to feed minimal details into a machine and have the information back in a flash, right? Wrong.

  The nature of bureaucracy is that things can only happen on schedule, and partial plate inquiries are printed only at night and mailed out the next day. Big Al finally made a deal so someone could at least come down to Olympia and pick the list up when it was ready. Then we'd be able to do the fun part, the physical labor of going through the list
one at a time, by hand. Don't tell me about computers being labor saving devices. I'm not convinced.

  We sorted our way through the maze of bureaucratic bullshit and afterward, on our way to lunch, took a side trip through the crime lab, where we picked up a facsimile of the shoe print Bill Foster had gotten from the crime scene. By two-thirty we were on our way to the Arnold Medical Pavilion. For a change, traffic was light. We walked into the good doctor's office right at three o'clock.

  We were there. Dr. Leonard wasn't. As soon as I gave the receptionist my name, she started apologizing.

  "I'm so sorry. I didn't have a number, so I couldn't get back to you. There's been an accident. Dr. Leonard is back in surgery. We canceled all her appointments for the afternoon, and I didn't know how to get ahold of you."

  "What about tomorrow morning?" I asked.

  "Tomorrow looks good," she said. "If you could be here by eight-thirty, I'll try to get you in before the first patient."

  It was the best of a bad bargain.

  We went back to the department and scrounged through what information we had, but nothing new turned up. After work, I went home and called the restaurant to make dinner reservations for Amy and Peters. I didn't ask to speak to Darlene—I wasn't up to that kind of mental sparring.

  Once I was off the phone, I felt lonely, at loose ends. I finally went downstairs to see the girls. Trade and Heather were already tucked in bed, but they weren't asleep. Mrs. Edwards was reading to them. She handed me the book, and I took over.

  The book was Little House on the Prairie. The trials and tribulations of the Ingalls family were tame, pristine almost, when stacked up against the Nielsens and the Rushes of this world. Reading the story made me homesick for a saner, less sordid planet—one I've never lived on.

  And never will.

  CHAPTER 20

  Nobody called me Friday morning, so naturally I overslept. It was already five to eight when I opened my eyes. I called the department and left word with Margie for Big Al to call me as soon as he got in, then I jumped into the shower.

  My phone was ringing by the time I turned off the water. "You're late," Big Al groused when I answered.

  "I noticed. Pick up a car and come get me," I said.

  "What do you think I am, your personal chauffeur? Do you want I should bring the limo?"

  "Come on, Al. Get off it. I overslept. Come get me so we don't miss our chance to see the lady doctor."

  I went outside to wait for him and was surprised to find there had been a definite change in the weather. Summers in Seattle are like that—hot one day and chilly the next. What visitors don't understand is that too many days without rain, too many hours of uninterrupted sunshine, cause Seattlites to get crabby. They welcome the return of cool cloudy days. Several passersby smiled and nodded cheerful hellos as they walked by, bending into the chill wind tunnel that swirled around the base of my building.

  Big Al picked me up in front of Belltown Terrace at 8:23, giving us just under seven minutes to drive through traffic and make it to the top of Madison for our appointment with Dr. W. Leonard. As he threaded his way through traffic, Al glanced in my direction.

  "I'm just going to drop you off, if that's all right with you."

  "Why?" I asked. "What are you up to?"

  "Olympia," he answered. "The Department of Licensing has our printout ready. They're waiting for someone to come pick it up. I'm volunteering for the job."

  I didn't object. Al had first dibs. He was the one who had checked out the car. He dropped me in front of the Arnold Medical Pavilion a few minutes late, but when I stepped off the elevator, the door to Dr. Leonard's office was still locked. I knocked. A latch clicked and the door opened.

  A squat, stocky woman with short-cropped yellowish gray hair and a pugnacious nose opened the door. She looked to be in her late sixties or early seventies. She was vital and alert. "What can I do for you?" she asked curtly.

  "I'm looking for Dr. Leonard."

  "What do you want her for?"

  "I need to discuss one of her patients." I had already gone over this ground with the air-headed receptionist and I resented having to do it again with someone who was probably a cleaning lady.

  "Which one?" the woman asked.

  "Look," I said, "couldn't I just speak with the doctor? It would save a lot of time."

  "I am the doctor," she answered sharply. "Now, which one of my patients do you want to discuss?"

  From the severity of her tone, I knew I'd been reprimanded. Dr. Leonard and I weren't exactly getting off on the right foot.

  "I'm sorry, Dr. Leonard," I apologized. "The patient is a woman by the name of Dorothy Nielsen. Her only son was murdered last Saturday."

  "Really!" she exclaimed, her shaggy eyebrows arching in surprise. With that, Dr. Wilhelmina Leonard swept open the door and motioned me into a waiting room. "My receptionist isn't here yet. Let's go back to my office, shall we?"

  I followed her through a small suite of examining rooms and into a cramped, untidy office. Unlike Dr. Nielsen's compulsively clean quarters, this one looked as if it had been bombed. The desk was littered with a jumbled mound of papers, files, and open magazines. Had she sat behind the desk, I doubt she would have been able to see over the top of it. Several sweaters and jackets were strewn around the room, and on a hook behind the door hung at least three tired lab jackets.

  Dr. Leonard walked in, cleared one side chair of clothing and general debris, and casually tossed the resulting armload into one corner of the room. "Won't you sit down?" she suggested, offering me the chair.

  I sat. She perched on the front of the desk, while I worried about whether or not she would start an avalanche.

  "Adele mentioned you to me yesterday. I seem to recall that she said something about you're being a police officer. Is that true?" she asked suspiciously.

  I nodded and gave her my identification, which she examined with exaggerated care. When she finished, she handed it back to me with a flourish. Then she leaned back on the desk, folding her arms across an ample waist.

  "All right, then," she said. "Now that I know you're a legitimate police officer, what can I do for you?"

  "As I said, I'd like to talk with you about Dorothy Nielsen."

  "First, maybe you'd better tell me about what happened to her son."

  That seemed fair enough. "Dr. Frederick Nielsen was murdered in his downtown office on Saturday afternoon by person or persons unknown."

  Dr. Leonard had sharp hazel eyes and a face that betrayed nothing of what was going on behind it. "How was he murdered?" she asked.

  "Someone stabbed him with a dental pick. He bled to death."

  She nodded. "I see," she said impassively. "If you're here because you think his mother may have had something to do with it, you'd better think again. I can tell you that she was in the hospital for four solid weeks before I dismissed her on Tuesday. It would have been impossible for her to have been involved."

  "Dorothy Nielsen isn't under suspicion," I said quietly. "Actually, I'm a little surprised to hear you say she might be."

  Dr. Leonard bristled at that. "I said no such thing! Why are you here, then? Why did you want to talk to me?"

  "How did Dorothy Nielsen break her hip?" I asked.

  Dr. Leonard didn't reply immediately. When she did, her answer was subdued, controlled. "She said she fell down some stairs."

  "Do you believe that?" I asked Dr. Leonard gave me a long appraising glance. "Tell me once again: Mrs. Nielsen is in no way under suspicion?"

  "No, she's not."

  "In that case, I suppose I could go ahead and tell you what I think without betraying my doctor /patient relationship. Remember, this is only speculation on my part. I'm convinced she was pushed. She claimed she fell, of course, but I don't believe it. Her other injuries weren't consistent with a fall."

  "What other injuries?"

  "Bruises on her arms and shoulders. A cut on her face just below her eye. I asked her about it, but she
denied it. She's always denied it."

  "What do you mean, 'always'?"

  Dr. Leonard smiled. "Dorothy Nielsen has been my patient for almost forty years now, Detective Beaumont, since before Freddy was born. In fact, she came to me with that first broken wrist while she was pregnant with him."