Improbable Cause

by J. A. Jance

  "She broke her wrist? How?"

  The doctor shook her head. "I don't remember now exactly what she said, it's such a long time ago, but she's always claimed to be accident prone. It wasn't until much later that I began to have some inkling of what was really going on."

  Slowly an important piece of Dr. Frederick Nielsen's background shifted into place. They say physical abuse runs in families, passed on from generation to generation like some genetically linked disease. "You mean her husband was abusive? He beat her?"

  "From the very beginning, I would imagine, and probably Freddie too," Dr. Leonard replied. "I could never understand why a woman like Dorothy would stay with a man like that. It's possible that she felt she had married above her station, and she wanted to stay there—nice house, nice clothes, all the usual amenities. She often talked about how grateful she was to be married to a professional man. That's what she called him."

  "Her husband?"

  Dr. Leonard nodded. "She said the same thing about Freddie eventually, about how proud she was that he had followed in his father's footsteps and become a dentist, too."

  "How many times did you treat her over the years?"

  "For injuries? I don't remember. Numerous times. I could look up her records. I haven't seen very much of her in the last few years, though, not since Fred Senior died. I was surprised when she showed up in the emergency room a few weeks ago.

  "Of course, awareness about this kind of abuse is much higher now. It's much more out in the open nowadays than it used to be," Dr. Leonard continued. "Even so, some women get mixed up with the same type of man over and over. I asked her that night in the emergency room if she had remarried, but she said no, that she lived with her son and daughter-in-law."

  "Did she tell you that the daughter-in-law had just taken the two grandchildren and run away to a shelter, a domestic violence shelter?"

  The bushy eyebrows waggled again. "No. Dorothy didn't tell me that, but one of her sisters did. We finally had managed to get Dorothy over a serious bladder infection, and I was trying to arrange for her release. I wanted her to go to a nursing home for a while rather than back into the same abusive environment with her son, but Dorothy was adamant. She wanted to return to her own home."

  "Did you see her son while she was here in the hospital?"

  "Freddie? Of course," Dr. Leonard answered. "He was very solicitous and accommodating the whole time his mother was hospitalized. He kept saying all the right words, that we should do whatever his mother needed to get well, that we should spare no expense. As far as he was concerned, money was no object. He'd pay the bill, no questions asked. He brought her flowers constantly and insisted that she have a private room. That kind of thing is standard, by the way."

  "Private rooms?"

  "No, no, no. That kind of behavior. Abusers do that, trying to get back in the victim's good graces. It usually works."

  "You said you talked to Mrs. Nielsen's sister?"

  "Both of them. When Dorothy absolutely refused to let me put her in a nursing home, I had to do something. I couldn't send her back home with her son. Another episode like that last one could very well kill her. This was bad enough."

  "So you asked Dorothy's sisters if she could stay with them."

  "That's right. I called and had them both come down to my office Saturday morning. I wanted to discuss my concerns with them.

  That's when they told me about the wife. I'm sure that's what sparked the attack on Dorothy—anger and frustration that his wife had somehow managed to slip out of his clutches, that she was no longer under his complete control."

  "Did you tell them what you thought had happened?" I asked.

  "I certainly did."

  "How did they take it?" I asked.

  "They were shocked, of course," Dr. Leonard replied. "Very upset, both of them."

  "How upset were they? What did they say?" I asked.

  Dr. Leonard paused, her face caught in the startled expression of someone who has just remembered something they had forgotten. "Why, forevermore!" she exclaimed. "I blanked it out completely until just this minute when you asked."

  "Blanked out what?"

  "One of them swore about it. I was shocked. I'd never heard that kind of talk from any of them. She said he should be taken care of once and for all."

  "Could what she said possibly be construed as a threat? Tell me what she said," I urged.

  "You want me to repeat it exactly?" Dr. Leonard asked.

  I nodded. "Word for word."

  Dr. Leonard sighed. "Let me think a minute. I believe she said, 'Somebody should kill that mother-fucking son of a bitch!' "

  Even as she spoke the words, Dr. Leonard seemed as surprised to hear them coming from her own lips as she had been when Rachel or Daisy had used them the first time. From the looks and sound of Dr. Leonard, I doubted she personally allowed herself anything stronger than an occasional darn.

  "Which one of them said it?" I asked. "Rachel or Daisy?"

  She shrugged. "I'm not sure. They look so much alike that I can never keep them straight. The one said it. The other one said, 'Don't be ridiculous.'"

  "What happened next?"

  "We talked for a while longer. They told me they'd see to it that Dorothy was taken care of, that they wouldn't let any more harm come to her. I told them I'd release her on Tuesday morning, if they could pick her up then. They needed that much time to build a wheelchair ramp, rent a bed, and get Dorothy's things moved into their house. After we finished making arrangements, they left."

  "Were they still upset?"

  Dr. Leonard nodded. "Yes indeed. I heard them arguing in the hallway outside my door while they waited for the elevator, but I didn't place any importance on it at the time."

  She was quiet for a moment. "That's what you're thinking, isn't it," she added with a shrewd glance in my direction. "You think one of them may be... ?" She left the remainder of the question unspoken.

  I nodded. "Or both."

  "Oh, dear no. That would be dreadful. What in the world would happen to Dorothy?"

  "Unfortunately, Dr. Leonard, that's not my concern," I said.

  "It ought to be," she replied stiffly.

  When I left Dr. Leonard's cluttered office a few minutes later, there were several patients waiting outside, waiting for their scheduled appointments.

  Only when I stepped out of the Arnold Medical Pavilion into a gentle rain and the cool breeze did I remember that I was on foot. Big Al had taken the car to Olympia. I hopped across Madison and caught a Metro bus down the hill. On the way, I jotted down some notes on my meeting with Dr. Leonard.

  Writing it down helped clarify my own thinking. Supposing Rachel and Daisy hadn't suspected the real source of Dorothy's broken hip until they learned about it from Dr. Leonard on Saturday morning. What if one or both of them had decided to take the law into their own hands and do something about it?

  That sounded like motive to me.

  The bus moved at a snail's pace, and I was suddenly in a tremendous hurry. I finally jumped ship at Fourth and Madison, with my mind running at full throttle. Big Al might very well bring back official confirmation from the Department of Licensing, but I had a better idea. In order to do it, I planned to dash into the departmental garage, grab a car without ever showing my face in the Public Safety Building, and go straight to the Edinburgh Arms.

  Nice try, but no time. Captain Powell and Sergeant Watkins were also in the garage lobby waiting for a car.

  "Hey, Beau, what's the hurry?" Sergeant Watkins asked as I rushed past them. "What's happening? I hear Detective Lindstrom's on his way to Olympia to pick up a partial license printout."

  "Right," I answered.

  "You seem to be in quite a hurry, Detective Beaumont," Captain Powell observed. "Are you two on to something?"

  "Maybe," I said. "I just talked to Dorothy Nielsen's doctor."

  "What for?"

  "Look, Captain, I'm in a hurry. I need to check out a car. Can't
we talk about this later?"

  "We'll talk about it now," Captain Powell said. "I want to know what's going on."

  "I've got one detail to verify, but I'm checking into his aunts."

  Captain Powell shook his head in shocked disbelief. "His aunts? Those two nice ladies? Come now, Beaumont. I've had several dealings with Dr. Nielsen's aunts in the past few days. In fact, one of them called me just this morning about the memorial service on Saturday. She sounded reasonable enough to me. They both did. Neither one of them strikes me as a cold-blooded killer, someone capable of using a dental pick as a hole punch on somebody else's throat."

  "Perfectly reasonable or not," I replied, "we're within a hair of having probable cause to arrest them."

  "Improbable cause is a hell of a lot more like it," Powell returned derisively. "We've got a perfectly good ex-con in custody, but you'd rather pin the murder on a couple of sweet little old ladies. You're slipping, Beaumont. You are really slipping."

  Their car arrived just then. The two of them got in and drove away, leaving me standing there in the garage with smoke pouring out both my ears. So far the evidence I had may have been strictly circumstantial, but I knew in my bones we were finally on the right track.

  My car came eventually, and I drove straight to the Edinburgh Arms. Instead of entering the driveway, I went around to the back of the complex and parked on the street near the long row of neat, brick garages. The doors all had a thick coat of fresh cream-colored paint, and the windows at the top of each door were uniformly clean and polished.

  There were no numbers on the garages, no identification of any kind to tell which garage belonged to which unit, and I sure as hell wasn't going to go ask.

  I started at one end of the building and worked my way to the other, stopping at each door and standing on tiptoe to peer through the glass. I was about two-thirds down the row when I hit pay dirt.

  Parked inside one of the garage stalls was an older model black BMW with a mangled rear bumper. The first two letters, the K and the R, were plainly visible, but the rest of the license plate was obscured by twisted chrome. No wonder Darlene could only remember the first three letters on the plate. That was all she could see.

  I raced back to my car and headed downtown. As I drove, pieces of the puzzle swooped around and around in my head like airplanes waiting to land. The BMW had to be one of Dr. Nielsen's cars. Whoever was driving it would have had the garage door opener for sure and possibly access to the office as well. Office keys and car keys often share the same key ring. That would explain how the killer had unlocked the dead bolt to get inside.

  But Darlene had said the driver of the foreign car was a man. What about that? Suddenly I remembered how Daisy and Rachel had looked once they donned their khaki Woodland Park Zoo docent uniforms. The matching pith helmets had totally concealed their hair. From a distance, especially if they had been seated in a fast-moving car, either one of them could have been mistaken for a man. For that matter, in the dim light of the garage, a pith helmet could have passed for a Washington State Patrol trooper's campaign hat.

  After all, when the car had sped past her, Darlene Girvan was damn lucky just to be alive. I could hardly fault her powers of observation at a time like that.

  I parked in the Public Safety Building garage and pushed my way into an already crowded elevator. I was headed for my cubicle, but Margie stopped me as I sprinted past her desk.

  "Hey, have you heard the news?"

  "What news?"

  "Detective Lindstrom called in from Olympia. He was all excited. One of the license numbers belongs to Dr. Nielsen. He had stopped for coffee and spotted the name on the list while he was waiting for his food."

  "I know," I said.

  Margie's face fell. "Somebody already told you? I thought I'd get to you first."

  I shook my head. "You did, but I'm a detective, remember? How long ago did you talk to him? Where is he now?"

  "Only about fifteen minutes ago. I'm sure he's on his way back."

  "All right. Get somebody to patch you back through to him. Tell him to get here on the double. I'll have the search warrant ready by the time he gets here."

  The search warrant was signed and sitting on my desk long before Big Al showed his face. As I sat there waiting for him, I had some time to think. They weren't good thoughts.

  Detectives usually get a real rush when they close a case. It's like an addictive drug, a high that we live for. But the rush was missing this time.

  Every scrap of information we had gathered showed Dr. Frederick Nielsen to be something less than your basic, all-around nice guy. In fact, our victim was a wholesale son of a bitch who had learned what he knew about life at his father's knee. He had damaged and abused all those whose lives had touched his.

  And now someone was going to have to track down his two LOL aunties, arrest them, and charge them with homicide.

  It wasn't a task I relished.

  CHAPTER 21

  There's something almost un-American about reading someone their rights when they're wearing a red-checked gingham apron and kneading bread dough. Remembering Rachel's trick from the previous time, however, Al and I decided to cover both entrances to the Edinburgh Arms apartment. He went to the front door while I went around to the back.

  Rachel was in the kitchen with her hands covered with flour. Tiny white specks dusted her eyebrows and eyelashes. Buddy was confined to a cage in one corner of the kitchen.

  "Freeze, sucker!” I heard through the screen door as soon as I knocked.

  "Why, hello, Detective Beaumont," Rachel said, smiling in greeting and holding the door open to let me in. "How are you today? Cool weather like this always makes me want to bake, even in the summertime."

  "This isn't a social visit, Rachel. Detective Lindstrom's at the front door." Through the dining room I heard Dorothy Nielsen call for Big Al to let himself in.

  "Why, whatever is he doing there?" Rachel asked.

  "What's your name? What's your name?" Buddy wanted to know.

  I ignored him and focused all my attention on Rachel. "You gave us the slip the last time, remember? We're taking precautions."

  Smiling again, she shrugged and returned to the counter, where she picked up a smooth round cushion of bread dough that had been sitting on a floured breadboard. "I explained all about that," she said. "I wanted to be the one to tell Dotty."

  "I think it's time we stopped the charade, Rachel. We're here with a search warrant."

  She stood there holding the dough, looking at me. "A search warrant?" she repeated, frowning. "What for?"

  There were voices coming from the other room. Dorothy Nielsen had evidently captured Al and drawn him into conversation. Without waiting for him to show up in the kitchen, I pulled my plastic-covered copy of the Miranda warning from my pocket and began to recite it. After all these years I don't really need the cue card, but I keep it in my hand, just in case.

  When I finished, Rachel was still holding the dough. She hadn't moved. "Why did you do that?"

  "Because you and your sister are under investigation for the murder of your nephew."

  The bread dough dropped unnoticed onto the breadboard.

  "No!" she said.

  "Yes," I responded. "Where were you on Saturday afternoon?"

  "I was at the hospital, with Dotty."

  "All afternoon?"

  "From noon until four or so."

  "Will anyone remember seeing you there?"

  "I don't know. Dotty surely. I don't know about anybody else. The nurses perhaps."

  Big Al appeared in the dining room doorway and was greeted by Buddy's usual salutation. Al made a face, but he spoke directly to Rachel. "Good afternoon, ma'am," he said. She didn't seem to notice him. Her eyes were glued on me.

  "Tell us about your visit to Dr. Leonard's office that morning."

  "What about it?"

  "What happened?"

  "She told us that Dotty refused to go into a nursing home. She a
sked if we could have her here with us for a while."

  For some reason, Rachel was still shying away from giving us totally straight answers. Verbally I forced her into a corner. "Why did she need a nursing home? Why couldn't she just go back home with her son?"

  "She couldn't because he—" Rachel blurted, then she stopped.

  "Because he what?"

  She lifted the hem of the apron and wiped her hands with it. "He beat her," she said hopelessly, keeping her voice hushed and leveling a meaningful glance at the open doorway behind Big Al. "Freddie beat his own mother. I still can't believe it. The doctor said that's how her hip got broken."