Believing Again (3 page)

“A BMW X5? Wow,” Danny said, as she ran her hand along the side of the car. “These babies get great reviews. And it’s an X5M, isn’t it? I read they have killer acceleration.”

“It does. But I won’t show off what it can do while we’re in the city, unless you swear you won’t give me a ticket.” He opened the passenger side door for her. “You a car freak? Sam told me you rebuilt a VW Beetle.”

“Yeah, my father taught me to love German cars. And this one’s a beauty.”

“Yes. It. Is.” He said each word with pride.

“Must be good to be you.”

“Not always. But right this minute it is
very
good to be me.” His smile was white-tooth dazzling, worthy of a model on the cover of a magazine or in an ad for some expensive men’s cologne. “It’s been a long time since the passenger in my vehicle has been prettier than the car.”

“The woman in your life wouldn’t be happy about that comment.”

“My mother and Hailey wouldn’t object to what I said, I’m sure. Wouldn’t even disagree.”

“Your mother? And who?”

“My niece. She’s three. She and my mother are the two women in my life — well, two females. Hailey is hardly a woman. And I thought police officers were trained to be subtle about getting information out of people. You might as well have asked the question outright.” Before she could respond, he said, “There’s no wife, girlfriend, fiancée, or significant other.”

Several emotions swirled around in her head. She was happy he wasn’t attached, flattered at the compliment, and horribly embarrassed by the clumsiness of her inquiry. That made her both uncomfortable and smugly happy, a combination of reactions she didn’t remember having together before.

For the ten minutes it took to get to the camp under the Burnside Bridge, they talked cars. Danny was only too happy to keep the conversation on a topic she loved, so she could forget her inept remark and keep herself from thinking too much about enjoying being with him.

Knowing how expensive his vehicle was, she was surprised that he drove right up to the camp. She wasn’t sure she would be that trusting. But then, the men she’d talked to at the other camp had so much respect for Jake, it was probably the same here. And that respect would undoubtedly extend to keeping hands off his car.

“How many people are here, do you think?” Danny asked as they walked through the camp.

“About twenty.”

“How many camps are there in town?”

“Now? Two of some size outdoors in the city proper, that I know of. You’ve seen them both. But that doesn’t count the smaller places where a couple guys bed down or the vacant buildings where a half dozen or so people squat until they’re rousted. Then there are individuals scattered around under overpasses and camped out in doorways. We try to get people into shelters when the weather turns but there aren’t enough beds for those who want them and there are some people who don’t want to come indoors.”

“Do you keep track of all of them? The people who live here, I mean.”

“We try to but it’s impossible. They move around. Move to someplace else.” He walked up to one huge box, some sort of large shipping crate from the look of it, the kind you only saw at the port full of other, smaller boxes. A door was cut into the front and heavy blankets insulated the top and sides against the weather. Through the open door, Danny saw a dim light and a blanket-covered floor. She thought she could see the outline of a person in the faint light.

Jake stopped a few feet back from the door and called, “Kaylea, it’s Jake Abrams. Are you there?”

A small, compactly built woman holding a flashlight crawled out through the opening. She was dressed in jeans and a heavy sweatshirt. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Given that she lived rough, she looked surprisingly neat and clean. It was hard to tell her age — her eyes looked like she’d seen a century of problems but her hands and neck looked young. Danny guessed she could be about her own age, around thirty. Her expression was wary, her mouth set in a hard line.

“Yeah, I’m here. Whaddya want?” she asked as she flicked off the light.

“I heard you were in the other camp with Jim Branson a few days ago. You know the police are trying to find out who shot him. This is Danny Hartmann.” He put his hand at the small of Danny’s back as he introduced her. “She’s one of the detectives working on the case. I was coming here to check on a couple of your neighbors so I brought her with me. I thought maybe you’d talk to her since you knew him. Detective Hartmann, this is Kaylea Garwood.”

Before Danny could say anything, the woman looked around nervously and said, “I don’t know anything about what happened to him.” She pulled the hood on her sweatshirt up over her head and started back into her shelter. “You’re wasting your time.”

Jake shot Danny a look that said “good luck” and took off for the center of the camp.

Danny knew she had to keep Kaylea from going back inside where she couldn’t reach her. “I’m not here to ask about what happened at the other camp. I want to try and get a picture of what Jim was like. Sometimes that helps us figure everything out. Jake — Doctor Abrams — said he was your friend. I hoped you’d tell me about him. That you’d want to help us find who did this to him.”

Kaylea hesitated, her back still to Danny. After a long moment, she said softly, “Yeah, he was my friend.”

Looking around at the few curious men watching them, Danny said, “You know, I haven’t had enough coffee this morning. There’s a coffee cart in the next block. They have really good coffee. Want to walk there with me?”

The other woman turned, surprise written on her face. “You know about that place? The woman who owns it is nice. Never chases us away or anything. She even lets us have some of her day old stuff for practically nothing.”

Danny grinned. “Of course I know about Jumping Joe Java. I know where every coffee cart is for twenty blocks in either direction from the river. Bouncing from one to another is how I keep going some days. Come on. My treat.”

The two women walked in silence for a block and a half. When they got to the coffee cart, the owner greeted both of them by name, fixed them cups of coffee larger than the size Danny paid for, and threw in two doughnuts the detective gave to her companion, claiming she was dieting. Kaylea wolfed the pastries down and inhaled the coffee while Danny sipped at hers and observed the other woman.

When Kaylea was finished eating, Danny said, “Tell me about your friend Jim.”

Kaylea didn’t say anything for a long moment. When she began to speak, it was in a quiet voice. She didn’t look at Danny “We hung out together for maybe the past four months. He liked my shelter. Said it was cozier than his old tent so he stayed with me sometimes. He was kinda my protector because I’d told him what happened in Iraq. He wanted to make sure I was safe where I was living. Told everyone that if I got messed with, he’d mess with whoever did it.” She wiped her sleeve across her face.

Danny waited while Kaylea took a couple deep breaths and composed herself.

“Most everybody was afraid of him. I wasn’t. Maybe because I understand.” After another long silence and another wipe of her sleeve across her face, she continued, “He had PTSD. From the wars. And then he’d been hurt — something was wrong with his hip — that’s why he got out of the Army. But no matter what they did for him, he was still in pain. The two things together made him mean sometimes, especially when he drank. Which he did a lot, assuming he’d gotten his government check or had panhandled some. Got in a lot of fights. Last time he got sliced up with a knife.” She stopped.

Danny prompted her. “Is that how he got to know Doctor Abrams? He went to the clinic to get patched up?”

“I’m not sure if it was that or from going there for the PTSD. But he wasn’t going in any more. This last time, when he got cut up, he wouldn’t go to the clinic. Wouldn’t let me go there either. I had to find Doctor Abrams when he came around to check on guys.”

“Do you know why he was avoiding the clinic?”

“All he’d say was there was something — no, some
one
— there he didn’t trust.”

“Was it Jake Abrams?”

“Hell, no. He’s like some kind of god to all the guys around the camps.”

“But not to you?”

Kaylea stared at Danny with a spark of life in her eyes for the first time in their conversation. She slowly smiled. “Wondered if I’d get that past you. No, not to me.”

“Mind telling me why?” When Kaylea hesitated, Danny quickly added, “It’s okay if you don’t want to. It’s not official. I’m curious.”

“It’s a long story. I’ll put it this way. It’s not because of anything he’s done. He does good work. And he’s always been straight with me and everyone else, for that matter. But I’ve lost the capacity for hero worship.”

“Fair enough. I think I know what you mean. I sometimes feel the same way. Comes from seeing too many of the wrong kind of people in my job, I imagine.”

The expression on Kaylea’s face changed again, and softened into acceptance, if not trust. “I bet you do. See the wrong kind of people, I mean. Must not be very enjoyable.” She finished her coffee and began to gather up their cups and napkins.

Danny got the message. She stood up and helped clear the trash away. “There are parts of my job that aren’t fun, people who are a pain in the ass or worse. But meeting the other kind of people more than makes up for those times.” She hoped her smile conveyed that she thought her companion was in the latter category.

“One last thing, Detective,” Kaylea said as they walked back to the camp. “Jim talked in his sleep. Most of the time it was about Afghanistan and Iraq. Lately, though, he’d been talking about something else. I could never quite figure it out. It was all, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ ‘That’s crazy stuff.’ ‘I’ll have to tell someone if you don’t stop.’”

“You ask him about it?”

“Sure. But he said it was the usual. I tried to tell him it was different but he brushed me off.”

They’d reached the camp and Danny noticed Jake watching them as they went to Kaylea’s shelter.

She put out her hand to the woman. “I appreciate your talking to me, Kaylea. And I’m sorry about your friend.”

“Thanks for the coffee,” Kaylea said in a gruff voice and disappeared into her shelter.

Danny felt Jake standing behind her before she heard his voice. “You were gone quite a while.”

“Just went for coffee. You finished making your rounds?” She could see he was holding his curiosity at bay, wanting to ask her about the conversation she’d had but aware of Kaylea’s presence five feet away from them.

“Yup. We can go whenever you’re ready.”

As soon as they got to his vehicle, he said, “So, Kaylea. Did you talk about anything of interest?”

“You, for one thing. She said Jim thought the world of you, like all the other guys did. She’s not quite as impressed. Fresh out of hero worship, was the way she described it. Seems like she’s a bit skittish about you.”

He sounded like he was swallowing a laugh. “I’m not surprised. She doesn’t have a lot of trust in men in general. Not after what happened to her in Iraq.”

“She alluded to something happening to her there but I didn’t push about it and she didn’t give me any details. I assume she was in the military.”

“Yeah, Army mechanic. Good one, I understand. But she had a rough time on her last tour. She was raped. More than once. By the same officer.”

“Jesus. Was he court-martialed?”

“No. He was her commanding officer and she didn’t turn him in.”

“What the hell kind of system lets that happen?”

“A fucked up one. Less than 10 percent of the rapes that occur in the military are prosecuted. And only two percent of those accused are convicted.”

“That’s appalling. Why … ?”

Jake made an irritated gesture. “I’d rather hear what she did talk about, if that’s okay, not what she didn’t.”

“Patience not your strong suit, Doctor Abrams?” Danny nudged him in the ribs with her elbow, trying to lighten the atmosphere that had gotten suddenly quite dark — as it always seemed to whenever he talked about anything connected with serving in the military.

She was rewarded with a half-smile, so she continued, “She said Jim had been avoiding the clinic lately and had told her to do the same. He said there was someone there he didn’t trust.”

“So that’s it. I wondered why he only saw me in the camp. She say who the person was?”

“Other than it wasn’t you, no. He didn’t tell her. But he still wanted you to treat him so you’re off the hook.” She hesitated for a moment. “Were Jim and Kaylea … uh … Were they intimate?”

“I assume so. She asked for birth control about the time he started hanging out with her. I was surprised. When she first came to the clinic we did a full history, and asked about sexual activity so we could test for STDs if we needed to. She was adamant that she’d had no contact whatsoever with any man. I thought she might be a lesbian until the birth control request. Shortly after that, one of the nurses told me about what happened in Iraq. Somehow Jim found out and promised to keep her safe.”

“She said she told him. And that’s how she described him — as her protector. She obviously cared for him.”

“Anything else interesting?”

“Jim had been having bad dreams and was talking in his sleep.”

“That goes along with the PTSD.”

“But he was talking about different stuff. Someone was doing something Jim didn’t like and he was telling the person he’d have to report him if he didn’t stop. If that was more than a random dream or a flashback to a war zone, it might be a motive for murder.”

Nothing was breaking for them. Not that Danny had ever thought this would be an easy case to clear. The members of the transient community wanted nothing to do with the police. They wouldn’t even talk to a female cop who traveled with an escort they trusted — Danny almost always took Jake with her when she made a trip to the camp. She’d hoped there’d be someone with something worthwhile to tell her and a willingness to do so. It hadn’t happened.

So far, she and Sam had unearthed only two pieces of potentially useful information. First, in one of the shootings Jake had mentioned that had occurred before the murder, a man
had
been slightly wounded. He’d gone to the ER and told them he’d been in a fight — consequently, the hospital report of a gunshot wound made no mention of a drive-by shooting into a transient camp. And no one at the camp had thought to tell Jake — or anyone else — about something that seemed to be only some random event.