by Dick Lilly
Harms came through the trees from Falconer’s right, a place where a path had been trampled in the tall grass. He was wearing his standard issue polo shirt, sleeves tight over muscular arms; jeans and beat up – and at the moment muddy – running shoes. In deference to the officiousness that always bloated a crime scene, he’d slipped on the department-issued day-glow yellow vest complete with reflective tape and the word POLICE in block capitals across the back. Drying mud caked one of his pant legs. “Guys out by the street said you were on your way so here we are, Seattle’s finest at your service.”
“Thanks for the call.”
“You’re welcome, but actually we’re overwhelmed by fucking media and I wouldn’t want to discriminate against bloggers, the media of the future and all that.”
“Cheery as usual, aren’t you?”
Harms smiled with such insincerity his bleached teeth stayed hidden. “Fuck, nothing to be cheery about. I’ve got a real prominent dead guy. Everybody wants answers five minutes ago. The mayor was on the phone as soon as I got here. One of his golden boys, Deputy Chief Ricky Bander is here looking over my shoulder. Worse, Barclay was Bander’s brother-in-law. I expect you knew that.”
“Yep. Didn’t help him, though, did it?”
“No, and this is the worst fucking thing. Barclay’s our work. We’re still watching him and he gives us the slip – for the second time in a week – and goes and gets himself killed. Bander is pissed royal. I gather the families were close, says he’s been out on the boat with Barclay a lot. ‘This boat!’ He pats the hull, he’s almost crying. Then next moment he’s red-faced apoplectic with rage. Shit. I need results fast or it’s back to patrol.
“But so much for my innermost thoughts,” said Harms. Ironic, amused at himself and with a wide open smile. “You probably want to see Murder Boat II.”
“We’re not TV so some vivid descriptive writing always helps.”
“Oh, is there someone on your staff who does that?”
“Like I said, cheerful, not to mention always a supportive friend.”
“This way.” Harms ducked into the brush. “Port of Seattle built this mostly on a city street right-of-way, public property but never paved, probably did it to compensate for someplace else where they were screwing up salmon habitat with a container pier or something. There’s a bunch of these habitat restoration sites. Much needed, really, if I, a humble cop, can offer an opinion about the environment. Not that the port was the original culprit around here. Harbor Island and the whole industrial area along the river used to be mud flat. You know, great habitat for birds and fish. Our forefathers, well, mostly your forefathers, paved it.”
“Yeah, us blue-eyed types, so in a minute you’re going to ask me for a contribution to support People for Puget Sound.”
Harms ploughed ahead. Falconer ducked the branches whipping back as Harms’ passed. “Fuck you. There’s a point. I’m getting to it. When the port restored this property they built a side channel from the river almost all the way back to the road for salmon habitat. You saw it on the way in. River fills it a high tide. There was a high tide about eleven last night and that’s probably when the killer drove Barclay’s boat in as far as he could. He was towing our friend’s body – dead – tied to a rope at the stern. Here we are.”
They were suddenly in the open at the edge of the slough, ahead of them salt grasses and reeds sloped down to the mud, shining black in the sunlight. The bow of Barclay’s boat was wedged into the oily-looking ooze. Reeds brushed against the topsides.
“Must have come in fast,” said Faconer. “That would have kept the bow up and planing on the muck. That stuff is slippery as shit.”
“Yeah, tell me about it.” Harms gestured at his muddy pants. “I thought you were a sailboat guy.”
“Right, you could never get a sailboat in here.”
“You are such a wise ass, Falconer.”
They ducked under a second line of crime-scene tape strung from bush to tree to bush to make a perimeter about 20 feet away from the boat. “First call was ‘abandoned boat’ about 9 a.m. A nuisance-abatement call really, with about the priority of illegal dumping: back burner, way back. The Elliott Bay patrol boat comes when it can, no hurry.
“That wasn’t from the first person to find it, though. Sometime earlier, the first person or persons looted it. Radios are gone. Some other instruments are missing, we have no idea what, holes in the panel, wires cut. Liquor cabinet empty. We’ve asked his wife what was usually on board, not that it matters.”
“They weren’t scared off by the body?”
“Pretty certain they didn’t see it. Our boat came by about 11 a.m. Tide was pretty high then and the officers thought they could just put a line on it and pull it back into the river. They ran the registration number but no answer at Barclay’s house so they went ahead, figuring they’d prevent further looting by getting the boat out of here.”
Falconer and Harms stood on the bank, hands in pockets, looking at the boat. Around them, the grass was trampled and muddy. Falconer could see the tracks of the gurney that had carried the body away. Deep wheel marks, a heavy man. On the boat, a police photographer clung to the ladder on the marlin tower, taking shots of the cockpit from various angles.
Noticing him, Harms said, “The photos probably won’t help. Unfortunately, most of the footprints on board are ours. The officers went aboard to look around and attach a towrope. That’s when one of the guys pulled in a line hanging over the stern. It was a tough pull so he thought it was an anchor until Barclay’s body came with it. Noose around the neck, body covered with black mud, he said it looked like a corpse pulled from an oil spill.
“We think he was dragged behind the boat, probably quite a ways. The killer stuck several big downrigger weights, maybe 20 pounds worth of lead, part of the boat’s salmon gear, into the pockets of a light jacket Barclay was wearing, we think to keep the body underwater while he towed it. The guys from the M.E.’s who picked him up said it looked like his head had started to tear away from the body.”
“A lovely detail you can be sure will appear in the Falconerblog account. Thank you, Bobby.”
“You owe me so much.”
“You still owe me a six-pack.”
“He was heavy, mid 200’s probably, had a gut so I guess that’s not surprising – the spine separating.” Harms was silent, musing for a moment about the indignities of violent death, pants full of shit from fear, face contorted by what, strangulation, drowning? And cops ask the relatives to come identify them. Jesus spare us, he thought.
“Yeah, but how did they kill him? You don’t just put a noose around someone’s neck and ask them to jump.”
“How the fuck should I know, Eric? At gun point? Maybe. Coulda been knocked out, drunk, drugged. We don’t know. Maybe the autopsy will tell. Give us some time here, buddy.”
“Sure Bobby,” Falconer temporized. “Meantime, we can talk about who did it.”
“Not a fucking clue, Eric.”
A wind came up, rippling the river. Falconer hoped it would blow away the haze, give the city some clarity.
Chapter 21, Luna Park
Saturday, June 14, 7 p.m.
Both held pints of Manny’s and drank in silence. On Luna Park’s rainbow-lit Wurlitzer Falconer had Janis Joplin’s “Bobby McGee” playing for the second time.
The song changed to “Whiter Shade of Pale.” Harms looked up from the tabletop where he’d been staring at rings of condensation from the glasses. “I never understood this song. What’s supposed to be going on? It’s like this goddamn case. I can give it a nice gloss but there’s something underneath I don’t get.”
“Like who the killer is?”
“Don’t be a prick, Eric. It pisses me off.”
“Sorry. Just trying to make up for my recently exposed limits as a writer with cut-to-the-chase questions.”
“Despite the crap, I will continue.”
“OK, I’ll hold my questions until the end.�
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“Thinking out loud here, Falconer. Off the record.”
“Bobby, you know there is no off-the-record. How many years have we known each other? I write the story, unfortunately as I have just learned, without any colorful descriptive language, but I am not here to do gotchas on cops and you know that.”
“‘Past results are no guarantee of future performance,’ or something like that, as it says on all those investment fund brochures I get in the mail.”
“OK, you’re uptight. Some killer has really got the department’s attention by knocking off the brother-in-law of a deputy chief. I feel for you. This can’t be any fun but shooting the shit with a journalist isn’t part of the problem, so don’t take it out on me.”
“Sorry. I even admit that every now and then you have a helpful idea. How’s that for an apology?”
“Happily accepted.”
“Williams was with Sally Barclay all afternoon. Bander, Williams and I were over there for an hour just now. We’re all convinced the poor woman doesn’t know shit, had no idea what the twin boat thing was about, had nothing to go on but Barclay’s claims he knew nothing, that the second boat was some kind of scam but nothing he was involved in, which she believed. They’ve been married for 27 years. In her world he’s always been a wonderful and truthful and trustworthy guy. No one she knows or has ever heard of would want to kill him and she says she’s known all the clients over the years since she’s kept the company books and still does. She may be a little naïve, which is kinda surprising given who she’s been married to, but that’s the worst of it. That’s how it appears to SPD at the moment.”
“You guys ask her about current clients?”
“Yeah, of course. We’re not dummies. After I left, Williams went over to their offices with her. He’s got a list and he’ll have people out interviewing everybody on it first thing in the morning. Mrs. Barclay, who’s crying her eyes out most of the hour I’m there, says she’s never seen any income that looked odd to her but tomorrow we’re sending the financial guys over to have a look. We have a consultant on call for that kind of thing, would you believe it?”
Harms cell rang, sounding like an old-fashioned rotary-dial phone, just what you’d expect in the Luna Park time warp. He pulled it out of a belt holster, answered. “Just a sec, I’m with somebody. Hold on.”
“What happened to the siren?” asked Falconer.
“Not cool around citizens.” Harms headed out the door, passed the street-side tables and stood in the parking lot. Falconer waived at the waitress, pointed at their emptying pints.
“A new lead?” Falconer asked when Harms returned.
The detective avoided yes or no. “That’s what’s so frustrating. Like I said, I can give this case a nice gloss but there’s something we’re missing. I mean, Barclay shouldn’t even be involved, upstanding, well-off citizen that he is, assuming for the moment that political hacks fit in that category. But he’s been paid or bribed or blackmailed to provide cover for some kind of smuggling operation, probably drugs, from Canada to the U.S. Be coals to Newcastle going the other way, so it isn’t that. Then for some reason, maybe Barclay knows this or he doesn’t, turf fight or something, two of these guys end up murdered on the drug boat, which sinks after a collision. Hey, did I tell you? The state lab figured out what they hit. Paint found at the point of impact is a chemical match for the yellow the Coast Guard uses on its mid-channel buoys up and down the sound, part of their system for controlling the container ship traffic.”
“Thanks. There’s another detail I can use to add color to my writing.”
Harms let that bit of wit slide. “So we have two dead guys and a wrecked boat identical to Barclay’s and we look into everything the guy’s done for a year or more and we can’t make a connection. He’s a political or public affairs consultant, whatever you want to call him, who goes about his business, never meets up with any bad guys as far as we can tell, takes the boat up to his vacation cabin every month or six weeks like he has pretty regularly for almost ten years, this particular boat for the last five or six years. His wife says it was a getaway they both treasured, let them ‘lay back and recharge their batteries,’ in her words. Maybe the bad guys figured this out from afar. Maybe somebody who knows Barclay well enough to know his habits, an employee or former employee – we checked them all out – or boatyard guys or marina guys clever enough to figure out this decoy thing to cover running a sister ship up there and back at the same time. I don’t believe that, never did. Barclay knew. He played some kind of role. And the fact that he slipped our surveillance twice pretty much proves my point.”
“Not to mention that last night somebody killed him.”
“Yeah, not to mention that.”
Both men picked up their menus. The waitress arrived with their beers. “Two bacon cheeseburgers, one fries, one onion rings,” said Falconer.
“How do you know I want a bacon-cheeseburger?”
“Because we always order the same thing. We come here for the bacon cheeseburgers. And, notice my keen powers of observation here, you’ve already set your menu down and you didn’t really look at it.”
“I was reaching for my beer.”
“You’ve got two hands.”
“Waitress, I’ll have a bacon cheeseburger,” said Harms, flashing his bright white smile.
“Does that make a total of three?” She smiled slightly behind two lip rings, amused with herself.
“Just two, thanks,” said Harms laughing. “And now back to murder,” he said when she had gone. “Safest presumption right now is that Barclay was killed because he knew something, could expose someone and that person is the killer or hired the killer.”
“And now that we’ve stated the obvious. . . ?”
“Lay off, Eric. You risk pissing me off again. And at this point in this case, I am doing you a big favor talking about it at all.”
“I’m buying.”
“OK, peace offering. Anyway, motive we’ve got. We just don’t have any suspects. No scoop for you there, though. Bander made that statement officially in front of the cameras this afternoon.”
“Yeah, I saw it while I was back at the office updating our ‘Death Boat’ story with Barclay’s murder.”
A kid got onto the mechanical Batmobile that was part of Luna Park’s mid-century décor and his mother fed it quarters. Falconer and Harms leaned closer to hear each other over the grinding of gears that bounced and swayed the car, vibrating squeals out of the boy.
“Bobby, my feeling all along has been that Barclay’s partner or partners, whatever you want to call them, are white collar associates of his. Somebody in the world he frequents as a consultant, somebody maybe even known to us in politics or business. And since you guys haven’t found any ‘underworld characters’” – Falconer made quotes in the air – “in his life or any unusual behavior, I’d say that’s the kind of guy, or I suppose, gal, you should be looking for.”
“That would make sense if you could explain why that kind of person would be a drug smuggler or get involved with bringing illegals into the country.”
“I have no idea. Just that it’s not out of the question. We can worry about motive later.”
The cheeseburgers arrived. Harms squeezed a pool of ketchup onto his plate. “Best when they’re hot.” He dipped a fry shiny with oil into the sauce.
“A more immediate problem,” Falconer went on, “and I imagine you guys have some interest in this, is how your killer got out of a deserted industrial area after running the boat aground. In fact, first thing he’d have had to do is climb the fence. Sign said the viewpoint is locked up at 11 p.m. After that, what’d he do? Hitchhike? Picked up by an accomplice?”
“I hate to disappoint you by relating anything that would demonstrate SPD’s competence at police work, but we do know that. And thanks to the miracle of modern cell phone technology, I learned this myself a few minutes ago. A guy over at Duwamish Marina across the river found a small inflatable
tied next to his boat when he came down to do some work this afternoon. Sally Barclay says it sounds like the one from their boat. Our killer apparently rowed across the river. Maybe got ride from there or had a car waiting in the parking lot.”
“And so, now what?”
“You know the routine, Eric. We interview people to see if anybody at the marina saw anybody. We wait for the autopsy report so we can sound smart about the cause of death. We try to reconstruct Barclay’s movements up to the time he got on the boat, see if he met anybody.”
“Shouldn’t be hard. You had a team following him.”
“Sadly, cut back a little. Manpower. Tight budgets. You know. Shortly after he had lunch with you, he picked up his car from the garage between Sixth and Seventh on Olive and drove less than five minutes via Fifth Avenue to the Columbia Center garage and we never saw him come out. The damn building has something like 10 entrances from the street. Not to mention the place is connected by a tunnel to two other office buildings, the Seattle Municipal Tower and Bank of America’s 800 Fifth Avenue center, both of which have garages and probably ten more exits.”
Falconer spoke through a mouthful of burger. “Yeah, but we’re talking about a building that’s a block from police headquarters. Call in the reinforcements.”
“Doesn’t work like that, nothing but brass and clerical staff in there. All the real cops are at the West Precinct a mile away. And, anyway, this isn’t a deal you do with sirens and lights. In fact, though – I’m embarrassed to tell you this – we had Bander and several others watching the entrances on the south and east sides from their office windows. No luck. His car’s still in there, so we think he was driven out of Columbia Center or one of the other garages. We’ve got people looking at surveillance tapes and interviewing the parking attendants, but, hell, he could have been hidden in the back of a van or just the backseat of some BMW with tinted windows, who knows?”