Injustice for All (21 page)

Chastised, Ames accepted a proffered cup of coffee. “I had to wait for one guy’s plane to land in Japan.”

“Which building?” I asked. “The one with the barbecue?” “Belltown Terrace,” he said.

“Okay, that’s the one with the grill. What’s next?” “Tomorrow I make them an offer.”

I sat down opposite Ames with my own coffee cup. “I have a hard time seeing myself as a real estate magnate.”

“It’ll grow on you,” he assured me, smiling. “What do I do with this?” I asked, indicating the small apartment that had been my first and only haven after the painful split from Karen and the kids. “Sell it, or keep it and rent it out. It’s up to you.”

I remembered when the mortgage on the unit plus the childsupport I sent Karen had been an almost insurmountable problem every month. Things had changed. For the better.

I scrambled a couple of eggs while Ames fixed toast. I could summon no enthusiasm for this real-life game of Monopoly. Even though it was theoretically my money, I didn’t feel any sense of its belonging to me-or of my belonging to it, for that matter.

“What’s wrong, Beau?” he asked, finally noticing my genuine disinterest. “Mona Larson and Ginger Watkins,” I told him. “What about them, other than the obvious?”

“Something bothers me, and I can’t get a handle on it: some common denominator, besides Sig.”

“They were both broke,” Ames said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“They were both broke,” he repeated. “Mortgaged up the yingyang. Belltown didn’t work out the way they expected. First the cement strike caught them. When the units finally hit the market, they got clobbered by high interest rates.

“For a long time nothing sold. They all lost a bundle. The whole group mortgaged everything to pay the first segment of the construction loan last year, thinking they could hold out and make the money back through sales. The next segment is due the end of December. There’s no way they’ll meet it. If they could even pay the interest, they might forestall a sheriff’s sale, but after looking at the PDCs, I don’t think they can.”

“PDCs. What are they?”

“Public Disclosure Commission statements. Elected and appointed state officials fill out financial disclosure forms showing their earnings and holdings c that sort of thing. They’re a matter of public record. After looking them over, it’s clear that the parole board income was keeping both the Larson and Watkins households afloat.”

“What about Homer?”

Ames laughed. “He’s exempt. He holds rub public office. He’s always a bridesmaid but never a bride. He’s involved in campaigns all over the map, but he’s never a candidate himself. I’d guess he’s as bad off as everybody else, but he doesn’t have to fill out a form saying so.”

“Both broke,” I mused.

“You have to have pretty deep pockets to be able to weather the kind of financial storm there’s been in Seattle’s real estate market the last couple of years. My indicators say it’s starting to turn around.”

“Are mine?”

“Are your what?”

“Are my pockets deep enough?”

Ames laughed again. “They are, Beau. Believe me, you’ll do fine. Now, we should take a look at that penthouse. If you’re going to buy it separately, I can draw up an earnest-money agreement today.”

I rummaged through my wallet and found the business card of the real estate lady at Belltown Terrace. “Call her,” I said. “I liked the water view best. Two bedrooms with a den.”

Ames seemed startled as he took the card. He had asked for a decision. I don’t think he expected one quite that fast. “Just like that?” he asked. “I looked at it Friday.

It has a grill. I’m a sucker for barbecues. ” Ames left a short time later, setting off happily on his various missions. At least one Seattle real estate agent was in for a pleasant surprise that Sunday.

Alone, I mulled Ames’ information. Broke. Both Ginger and Mona had been dead broke, battling for survival, trying to stay afloat. I found it hard to imagine Ginger living in that palatial estate, running like hell to keep up appearances. In Chelan, Mona and Sig must have been caught on the same kind of treadmill.

Ginger and Mona-both of them married above their station, both young and attractive, and both dead within days of one another, probably at the hands of the same killer.

Mona Larson and Ginger Watkins indeed had a lot in common.

Peters’ phone call interrupted my reverie. We see each other so little during the week that we have to check in on weekends. Indulging in his favorite vice, current events, he was determined to keep me well informed, whether or not I wanted to be.

“I don’t suppose you’ve read the paper.”

“Good hunch.”

“Your friend Max has hit an all-time-record low for bad taste, a Death Row telephone interview with Philip Lathrop from Walla Walla. Asked Lathrop what he thought about Wilson knocking off Sig and Mona Larson.”

“I don’t think I want to hear this,” I said. “Lathrop’s comment was, `It serves ‘em right.’ ” “That’s why I don’t read papers,” I told Peters. “Maybe you’ve got a point,”

Peters muttered. Ida Newell dropped off my Sunday collection of crossword puzzles.

I was working the second one when the phone rang. It was Hal Huggins. “They found him, Beau.”

“Who?”

“Wilson.”

“Where? When can I question him?”

“In Prosser. I’m on my way over there right now.” Hal hardly sounded jubilant. “But St. Peter’s the only one who’ll be asking him any questions.”

“He’s dead? You’re kidding! Who found him?”

“A troop of Boy Scouts out cleaning the bank along the Yakima River.” “How long’s he been dead?” My mind did a quick geographic review. Prosser was in Benton county, the county next to Pasco where Mona Larson died. “I don’t know, but I’m going over to find out.”

“What’s the cause of death?”

“Initial report says drowning.”

“Drowning?” I repeated.

“I’ll find out when I get there.”

I heard weariness and frustration in Hal’s voice. He had followed a trail of questions, only to be robbed of both his suspect and his answers. To a homicide detective, answers are life’s blood. “Tough break, Hal,” I said.

“I know.” He paused. “I’d better go.” With that, he hung up. I sat for a long time afterward holding the phone. When a recorded voice threatened me with bodily harm, I returned the receiver to its cradle. Don Wilson was dead. That finished it, right?

Supposedly. Maybe it did for Hal Huggins. It sounded as if he was buying the whole program.

But I wasn’t. Several things demanded consideration: Don Wilson’s thawing chicken, his hungry cat, his unpacked protest gear, and an extraneous set of missing keys.

All were perplexing loose ends that wouldn’t go away, that refused to be tied up in neat little packages. Loose ends bug me. If they didn’t, I guess I’d be in another line of work.

Chapter 27

ANYONE who’s ever been on vacation knows how hard it is to return to work that first day. In my case, the vacation had been the culmination of months of being miserable and disconnected. It felt like I was going back to work after six months rather than a mere two weeks. Peters spent the day at the courthouse on the dead wife-beater case. Both Peters and I were rooting for the woman, Delphina Sage. Delphina’s husband, Rocky, came home drunk one Friday night and beat the crap out of her, same as he did every payday. The only difference was that, the day before, Delphina had bought herself a .22 pistol.

If she had shot him while he was beating her up, it wouldn’t have been so bad. We would have called it self-defense and let it go at that. Instead, Delphina waited until Rocky was sound asleep, then plugged him full of holes. From talking to the kids and the neighbors, Peters and I figured Rocky was a bully badly in need of plugging, but Barbara Guffy, King County’s chief prosecutor, has a thing about premeditation.

She was after a murder conviction.

Peters and I had been working another case just prior to my leaving for Rosario.

In two separate but-we believed-related incidents, some jackass had set fire to sleeping transients downtown. Detectives Lindstrom and Davis had one case, while Peters and I had the other. Our victim had died almost immediately, but the other transient still clung stubbornly to life in the bum unit at Harborview Hospital. Both victims remained unidentified. I was reviewing what little we had to go on when Hank Wu stopped by my desk. “Any luck?” I asked.

He shook his head. “This stuff takes time, Beau. The H mong don’t come out of the woodwork and spill their guts just because Henry Wu snaps his finger. What time did you say your interpreter leaves?”

“Today on the four-thirty Greyhound for Anacortes.”

“I’d say chances aren’t very good.”

“Keep after it anyway.”

“Sure, glad to.” Hank sauntered away from my desk. Ames had promised to call as soon as he heard anything on the real estate transactions. The penthouse earnest-money agreement called for a March closing date. “That way,” Ames had told me with a sly grin, “we’ll keep the money in the family.”

He called just before lunch, sounding perplexed. “What’s the matter, Ames? You sound upset.”

“I don’t understand. They jumped on the penthouse deal, but they refused to consider the syndicate offer.”

.’Why?”

“I don’t know. Must have come up with another investor who’s willing to buy in. That’s all I can figure.”

“What happened?”

“That’s what’s so strange. When I talked to the project manager this morning, he was hot on the idea. Said he had to talk to one of the principals. Five minutes later, the deal was off. Just like that. One minute they needed the money; the next minute they didn’t. The way they grabbed at that penthouse deal, even with a delayed closing, they don’t expect to lose Belltown between now and March.”

At Ames’ insistence I had studied the project’s financial sheet. We were talking big money, several million dollars.

“How can someone come up with that kind of cash in five minutes’ time?” I wondered aloud.

“I don’t know,” Ames told me, “but I intend to find out.”

Ames was in no mood to go to lunch. Craving companionship, I tracked down Peters at the courthouse. The two of us walked to a salad bar at Fourth and Madison. He dismissed my questions about Delphina Sage with an impatient shake of his head. “I don’t want to talk about it. You do any good this morning?” he asked.

“I went over everything we have on our charbroiled John Doe. This afternoon I thought I’d check to see if Manny and Al’s guy up in the burn unit can talk.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” Peters said. “He couldn’t last week. ” It sounded hopeless to me, and I said as much. “We’ll never crack this one. There’s nothing to go on. Besides, if bums kill bums, who gives a shit?”

Peters gave me a long, critical look. “We sure as hell won’t crack it with that kind of attitude,” he responded. “You were supposed to come back from vacation with your enthusiasm back, all pumped up and rarin’ to go, remember?”

“Go to hell,” I retorted. “What do you think about them finding Wilson?” “We’re talking burning transients, remember?” he reminded me. “I’m not interested in burning transients.

I want to talk about Don Wilson.”

“What about him? According to the papers, Hal Huggins has him dead to rights. Left a note and everything. What’s there to talk about?” “A note!” I exclaimed. “Are you serious?”

“Damn it, Beau. When are you going to stop being stubborn and start reading the papers?

Yes, a note.”

For the first time I felt the smallest prick of annoyance toward Hal Huggins. My phone had worked well enough when he needed my help. So why hadn’t he called me with the news of the note? “God damn that Huggins,” I grumbled. “What did the paper say?”

“That they found Wilson’s body on the banks of the Yakima River just outside Prosser.

Said he died of exposure, but that somebody found a suicide note. “

“Exposure? Initially they said drowning. Since when is exposure suicide?” “I’m just telling you what it said in the paper.”

“And where did they find the note?”

“The article didn’t say.”

I left Peters at the table and prowled the restaurant for a pay phone. Locating one in a hallway between the men’s and ladies’ restmoms, I placed a call to Friday Harbor.

Hal Huggins was not in. The woman who answered had no idea when he was expected.

I left word for him to call me and went back to Peters.

“Did they say how long he’d been dead?”

Peters shrugged and shook his head. “A couple of days, I guess. At least that’s what they implied.”

“What about the note?”

“Just that there was one.”

I stared morosely into my cup. Peters was fast losing patience. “Look. This Wilson character isn’t our case. When are you going to the hospital?” “Right after lunch, I guess.”

He watched me drain my cup. “Know what your problem is, Beau?” :’What?”

“You just don’t give a shit about burned-up bums.”

“We’ve been partners too long,” I told him. I drove up to First Hill, Pill Hill as it’s called because of all the hospitals. The bum victim in Harborview was in no condition to talk, at least not according to the dogfaced intensive-care nurse who barred my way. She said he had been hit by an infection and wasn’t expected to make it. I went down to Pioneer Square. I walked around talking to people, asking questions.

It was tough. All of the drunks were too fuzzy to know who was sitting next to them right then, to say nothing of remembering someone who had been missing from the park bench almost three weeks. In their world, three weeks ago was ancient history.

By four o’clock I was parked outside the Greyhound terminal at Seventh and Stewart as Jenny and Ernie arrived by taxi. Ernie held two suitcases on his lap; Jenny struggled with a collection of shopping bags. “Want some help?” I asked, coming up behind them.

They both turned. Jenny’s face was radiant with that peculiar glow common to pregnant women. Ernie seemed relieved to find someone to help her with the luggage.

“She didn’t spend it all,” he said, grinning. “But she came real close.” He wheeled along beside me as I carried bags and packages into the terminal and checked them onto the proper bus. “You never found Blia?” Ernie asked. “No, and we’ve been looking.”