by J. A. Jance
I, on the other hand, like that fire-counting minion from forest-service officialdom, live in the accountability sector, the cause-and-blame sector, the let’s-find-out-why-this-happened department. It’s a mind-set, a way of life, that doesn’t go away just because your calendar or Tony Freeman says you’re on vacation. So I sat in the plane and tried to force what I had learned about the two murders into some kind of meaningful whole.
That didn’t work very well. Nothing connected to this case turned out to be quite what I expected. My interview with Guy Lewis was a prime case in point. After hearing him talk openly in the N.A. meeting about his deteriorating second marriage, I was struck by the depth and obvious sincerity of his grief.
Maybe society had jokingly referred to Daphne as his trophy wife; maybe people had derided the king of chemical toilets for being a rich old fool—laughed at him because Daphne led him around by the gonads. But Guy Lewis’ relationship with Daphne was no joke to him. He had cared for her deeply and still did. Even though she was dead, Guy was fully prepared to stand up for her—to defend her memory in public if necessary despite the posthumous disclosure of Daphne’s none-too-savory past.
And the lady did have a past. That set me to wondering about Daphne herself, about whether or not Guy Lewis’ feelings for her had been reciprocated. Daphne had divorced Martin Shore, yet she had somehow managed to keep him hanging around on the sidelines, an arrangement my mother would have referred to as having your cake and eating it, too.
What kind of tortuous, winding path had carried Daphne Lewis from the modeling-scam/porno-queen days of her presumably first marriage in Yakima to the position of sought-after society matron in well-heeled Seattle? There’s a hell of a climb between those two extremes, and I’m not just talking about the Washington Cascades, either. How had Daphne managed to travel the distance from point A to point B, and what had she done in between?
A cool $150,000 was missing from the Lewis family financial coffers. Guy suspected Martin Shore and Tanya Dunseth had conspired together in some kind of scheme to blackmail Daphne. As far as I was concerned, that sounded like a bad case of wishful thinking on Guy’s part. Believing a complex conspiracy theory was probably a way for him to discount the disturbing reappearance of longtime rival Martin Shore.
I tried to compare the two vastly different versions of the Daphne Lewis/Tanya Dunseth story. Things didn’t quite add up. The chronology continued to be slightly off. Tanya claimed to be twenty-five years old. She also had told us that the Martin Shore video had been filmed when she was fifteen. Guy Lewis, on the other hand, maintained that he and Daphne had been together for a full ten years, and that her moviemaking days had ended years before that.
Which story was true? One wild card in the deck was Daphne herself. She was, after all, a con artist—a professional liar. There was always the possibility that the original story she told Guy—the one she used to land him—was an outright lie. For instance, she might have said she was out of the movie business when she was still in it up to her long-lashed eyeballs. She could also claim to have broken off with Shore when that wasn’t the case.
My first instinct was to trust Guy’s story, as far as it went. His version of life with Daphne was punctuated by easily verifiable facts—public records of marriages and divorces, events hosted and attended, etc. Tanya’s version had been short on actual dates. She had told us the Martin Shore movie had been filmed when she was “around” fifteen.
When people toss out the word “around” in that fashion, they’re usually hedging, giving themselves the benefit of the doubt. “Around” allows for a certain amount of slippage in either direction and makes corroboration difficult.
Based on that analysis alone, it was far more probable that Guy Lewis’ version offered more of the truth, but again, only insofar as he knew it. Prior to ten years ago, however, when it came to what Daphne had told him, all bets were off. Between Daphne and Tanya, I didn’t know which one to believe.
I was aware of a growing sense that something was basically wrong with Tanya Dunseth’s story. It’s like a tooth going bad. At first, the only thing that bothers is maybe a slight twinge when a chunk of cold lettuce wraps itself around the surface of the tooth. It’s not that serious, and it goes away, but that first shock of cold is symptomatic of something worse going on—something ominous beneath the surface and out of sight that says a root canal is coming.
Right now, some of the surface details of Tanya’s story were cracking and moving apart. I worried about what implications that held for the foundation—the parts underground we didn’t know and couldn’t see. I didn’t like noticing. After all, it was only the beginning of a hunch, but if it proved correct, that meant Ralph Ames and yours truly had once more been led down the primrose path by yet another pretty face.
People who labor long in the accountability sector are trained not to leap to hasty conclusions. Hunches aren’t necessarily bad. Modern technology aside, well-played human hunches are responsible for most of the successful crime detection that goes on in this country. But homicide cops who don’t want to become laughing-stocks don’t flaunt their untried hunches in public. They keep them quiet while they go about checking details and verifying facts as much as possible. Only after that process is complete do they haul out the result and run it up a flagpole for all the world to see.
So when I got off the plane in Walla Walla, I didn’t go straight to the nearest public phone booth, dial the Ashland Hills, and leave a message for Ralph Ames saying “Watch out, we’re being played for suckers.” I abided by the unofficial rules of accountability behavior—and got both Ralph Ames and J.P. Beaumont royally screwed over in the process.
The landing approach in Walla Walla took us within sighting distance of the gray-walled state prison—the Walls of Walla Walla, as they’re called. It was odd to realize that I was visiting a town of approximately thirty thousand people, and the only folks I knew there were convicted felons. My connection to most of them was that of a police officer sending a never-ending parade of inmates up the river both literally and figuratively.
The state prison in Walla Walla is a repository for the worst dregs of Washington’s society—murderers, rapists, drug abusers, robbers, and burglars. In fact, part of my job is making sure the prison system runs at full capacity. My current errand, however, brought me in search of Roger and Willy Tompkins, two supposedly well-respected local citizens, who currently and in the past had lived their lives well outside the confines of the prison’s walls. Where was the justice in that?
Why should someone like Roger Tompkins—a man who had spent years routinely violating and terrorizing his very own daughter—be one of the keepers instead of one of the keepees? Why had he worked as a prison guard when he himself deserved to be a regular inmate just as much or more so than many of the people he guarded?
Extreme moral outrage doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for playing happy-go-lucky tourist. I took possession of the one rental car available—a stripped-down Ford Tempo. I found my way to the local TraveLodge, checked into a room, and then asked the room clerk for directions.
Walla Walla is a relatively small town, and the desk clerk was a clean-cut young man in his early twenties. Since I’d been told Willy Tompkins worked in the high school cafeteria, I decided to go ahead and ask the clerk about the couple to see if he, by any chance, knew someone named Roger and Willy Tompkins. It turned out he did.
“Oh sure,” he said, when I mentioned the Tompkins family. “Everybody knows them. I believe the old man’s retired now. She’s been a cook at the high school forever.”
So far, so good. Then the young clerk read-justed his carefully knotted tie and threw me a curve. “I played baseball with their grandson, Walter. I don’t believe Mrs. Tompkins ever missed a single home game in four years of ball. She was there rain or shine, win or lose. I always thought they should have given her a letter every time they gave Walt one.”
The phone rang, and the clerk turned
to answer it. I walked away from the desk feeling half-sick. What grandson? One old enough to be almost the same age as Tanya? I remembered her speaking at length about her father and her mother, but she hadn’t said a word about brothers and sisters, nor had she mentioned a nephew—a contemporary—being raised in the same town and/or household right along with her. From the way she told the story, I had assumed that she must have been raised as an only child. It seemed as though the kinds of things that had gone on in that dysfunctional family would have been far more difficult to control or conceal with the addition of even one more family member, to say nothing of several.
I drove to the address Ralph had given me. To all intents and purposes, this was Main Street U.S.A., home of Ozzie and Harriet and Father Knows Best. The Tompkins house turned out to be a well-maintained bungalow set in an immaculately kept but tiny yard. Sunset was still almost an hour away, but already the house was wearing its evening face with pooling halos of lamplight glowing through curtained but open windows.
Funny, I thought. The place doesn’t look like a candidate for House of Horrors.
As I pulled up to the curb, a late entry in the evening’s neighborhood lawn-mowing detail chattered noisily into action. Neatly covered trash cans lined the street, awaiting a morning pickup. Squaring my shoulders, I started toward the house. When I pushed it slightly, the rust-free gate sprang open without an accompanying squeak. Everything about the place—from the carefully edged walkway to the newly varnished, old-fashioned screen door—exhibited pride of ownership and careful attention to detail. It wasn’t at all what I expected.
I felt edgy walking up to the door. I believe most child molesters—” chesters,” as they’re called in prison parlance—are basically cowards. Otherwise, they wouldn’t victimize helpless children. That doesn’t mean they aren’t dangerous, however, or that they won’t turn on you if cornered or provoked. Some of the most vicious dog bites are inflicted by basically cowardly animals who find themselves trapped in unfamiliar situations. Cowardly people operate the same way.
Boarding the plane in Medford, I hadn’t wanted to fight my way through airport security while carrying my automatic. Instead, I had checked it with my luggage. By the time I stepped onto the Tompkinses’ wooden porch in Walla Walla, however, I was happy to have it with me—to feel the familiar weight of the weapon under my jacket and against my ribs. I couldn’t shake a surge of uneasiness as I realized I was totally on my own—out of reach and hailing distance of any kind of help or backup. My 9-mm automatic and I were it.
Moments after I rang the bell, the door was answered by a straight-backed African-American woman whose age I would have guessed to be somewhere around sixty. “Yes?” she said without opening the screen door. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m looking for either Roger or Willy Tompkins.”
She squinted at me, regarding my face through glasses that were probably designed primarily for reading. There wasn’t anything threatening or antagonistic in her manner, only the understandable wariness of a householder whose evening quiet has been interrupted by an unexpected and unknown visitor.
“Who are you?” she asked.
Vacation or not, old habits die hard. Although my standing as a Seattle P.D. detective carried no more weight in Walla Walla than it did in Ashland, I dug into my coat pocket and extracted my official I.D.
“My name’s J.P. Beaumont,” I said. “I’m with the Seattle Police Department. As I said, I’m looking for either Roger or Willy Tompkins.”
The woman turned back into the room. “Roger,” she said. “Maybe you’d better come here. This man’s a police officer, but he won’t tell me what he wants.”
A tall but slightly stopped, gray-haired black man appeared behind her. “What’s this all about?” he asked.
My mind reeled. This man was Roger? I must have made a mistake. Maybe I had given the desk clerk the wrong address. How could red-haired, green-eyed Tanya Dunseth’s parents be African-American? It didn’t make sense.
“I’m looking for Willy and Roger Tompkins,” I stammered quickly. “I want to talk to them about their daughter. I believe her name is Roseann.”
Sometimes when progress demands demolishing some stately old building, work crews will record the event for posterity. After first lacing the interior of the structure with explosives, they’ll capture on film the moments just before and just after detonation. At first dust flies, but the building itself seems untouched. Then, gradually, details change—the facade shifts out of focus—and the entire building begins to crumble.
The same thing happened to the old woman standing before me. Her face went slack, her features slightly fuzzy. She sagged back against the man behind her. He tried to catch her but only succeeded in cushioning the severity of her fall.
He knelt beside her, cradling her head and stroking her face. “Willy,” he said. “Willy, wake up. Are you all right?”
Willy? I thought. This can’t be Willy! I must be losing my mind.
The screen door was still closed. I had not been invited inside. At first, I was too stunned to do anything but look on helplessly through the door. Moments after she fell, the woman’s eyes flickered open. The man started to help her up, but somehow his feet became entangled in a throw rug, and they both went down in a heap. That was all I could stand. Uninvited, I wrenched open the screen door and tried to help lift them to their feet.
Holding Willy between us, Roger and I guided her to a nearby couch. She had twisted her ankle and now could barely put any weight on it. Once seated, she turned on me, leveling a hard, tearstained stare in my direction. When she spoke, however, her words were directed strictly to her husband.
“Roger,” she said, “you get this man out of my house, and you get him out now!”
“But, Willy,” he objected, “your ankle’s swelling like crazy. We should probably carry you to the doctor.” He stood up, went back over to the door, and retrieved her wire-rimmed glasses from where they had fallen. Wiping them on his shirt, he handed them to her.
“We’re not doing anything at all until that man is gone,” she insisted flatly. “Not one thing.”
The old man looked at me helplessly. “We’d best step outside,” he said.
I was already apologizing before we ever reached the front porch. “Obviously, there’s been a terrible mistake. You’re Roger Tompkins?”
He nodded. “As far as I know. Have been for going on seventy years now.”
“That means the person who claimed to be your daughter was lying.”
“You’ve met someone who says that?” He sounded shocked.
“Yes, a young woman down in Ashland, Oregon. She told us that she was Roseann Charlene Tompkins from Walla Walla, Washington. She said you were a guard in the prison.”
“I was, until I retired a few years back.”
“She said your wife was a cook at the school.”
“That’s also correct. Willy retired from there just this past month.”
“I’m so sorry to have disturbed you, Mr. Tompkins, and to have upset your wife. Obviously, this young woman can’t possibly be your daughter. She’s a red-haired Caucasian.”
“There’s a better reason than that,” Roger Tompkins returned with restrained dignity. “Our daughter is dead.”
“Dead?” I repeated, sounding like an insubstantial echo.
Tompkins nodded. “Roseann died back in 1968. She was a change-of-life baby—our last one. She was only four months old when she died. That’s why Willy’s so upset. I’m sure she thought it was someone playing another one of those ugly pranks. We had phone calls about it at the time—some of ’em pretty bad—people saying we must have killed her, that kind of thing. Back then nobody talked about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. People know more about it these days. It’s been a long time, but I don’t think Willy ever got over it, not altogether.”
In all my life, I don’t remember ever feeling more the heel. And stupid besides. Tanya Dunseth had seen Ra
lph and me coming a mile away. Her heartrending tale of monstrous abuse had left us putty in her hands. Even I—a prizewinning chump if ever there was one—could see that Roger Tompkins was no monster.
“I’m sorry to have disturbed you, Mr. Tompkins, and to have brought your painful ordeal back to the surface. I had no idea.”
“No,” Roger Tompkins said kindly. “I’m sure you didn’t. Who is this troubled young woman, anyway? Why would she do such a thing?”
“That,” I declared hotly, “is something I intend to find out. She’s obviously gone to the extent of learning as much about you as possible. For instance, she knew your address and where both you and your wife worked. It’s an old stunt people pull when they have something to hide. They go back through old newspaper files and assume the identity of a child who died at an early age but at approximately the same time.”
“In order to get a Social Security number, wouldn’t she need a birth certificate? You said this girl is white. As you can see, Willy and I most certainly are not.”
“Actually, Mr. Tompkins, it’s even more complicated than that. She was using an entirely different identity for official purposes, and it turns out that one’s fake, too.”
We had walked out to the street and were standing beside my rental car. Roger Tompkins clicked his tongue. “How truly unfortunate,” he said thoughtfully. “Circles within circles, wheels within wheels. To spin a trail of lies like that, she must be very disturbed.”
“You could say that again,” I said. “You certainly could. Please express my sincere apologies to your wife. I hope her ankle isn’t hurt too badly. I’d be happy to help take her to an emergency room if you wanted.”
“Oh,” Roger Tompkins answered with an easy smile, “that won’t be necessary. She’ll be fine. We’ll go to the doctor tomorrow morning if need be. Willy’s a pretty tough old bird. We both are. We’ve had to be.”