Long Time Gone (7 page)

“Okay, Harry,” I told him. “Okay. I can take a hint.”

Bent on following orders and hoping to keep my nose clean, I sat down and tried calling the special twenty-four-hour line at the Department of Motor Vehicles to see if I could locate licensing or vehicle information that would give me an address for either of Sister Mary Katherine’s parents, Sean and Molly Dunleavy. An unusual recorded message at the DMV told me that due to weather concerns the office was currently responding to emergency requests for information only. All others should call back at a later time. So much for state-run bureaucracies.

I sat there, staring out at the unfathomable blue of Elliott Bay and wondering what I should do next. That’s when I spotted the small round globe on top of the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
building a few short downhill blocks away. Why hadn’t I thought of that before? Newspapers have to put out editions every day, snow or no snow. Some of the answers I was looking for might be available in the morgue at the
P.-I.
at the bottom of the hill where I had watched cars playing crash-car derby in the snow the night before.

I had no intention of taking the 928 out on the street where it was likely to end up being run over by some SUV-wielding nutcase with too much horsepower and only the dimmest grasp of physics. I was going to have to walk. It took a while to locate my long-unused snow boots. Once I did, I realized I was hungry.

I’ve never been much of a cook. Marshmallows aren’t the only thing I don’t keep around my condo. Basic foodstuffs are also in short supply. I used to hang out at a neighborhood dive called the Doghouse, but that went away years ago. Since then, I’ve tried various other joints, none of which have had quite the same fit as the Doghouse. When I choose restaurants, I ignore menu and atmosphere in favor of proximity. The
P.-I.
office is located on Elliott. So is the Shanty, which may have been a little out of the way, but food is food. It also gave me an excuse for taking a longer but much flatter route to the newspaper.

As I said, the good news about the Shanty is that it’s close to the
P.-I.
The bad news about the Shanty is that it’s close to the
P.-I.
It’s also very small. As I stood in the open doorway knocking snow from my boots, I spotted none other than Maxwell Cole ensconced at the counter. If I could have ducked out without his seeing me, I would have, but it was already too late.

“Well, well, well,” he said in a loud voice that carried throughout the restaurant. “If it isn’t former Detective J. P. Beaumont. I was under the impression you worked mostly on the Eastside these days. Out slumming, I take it?”

Over the years I’ve occasionally had friends who, for one reason or another, dropped out of my life. Enemies tend to hang on forever. That’s certainly the way it is with Maxwell Cole.

Max and I go way back—all the way back to our frat days back at the University of Washington. He was dating a cute girl named Karen Moffitt. I took one look at her, decided she was the one for me, and stole her away from him. Max has been pissed about it ever since.

Unfortunately, Max and I work different sides of the same mean streets. He started out as a cub reporter at the
Post-Intelligencer
about the same time I went to work for Seattle PD. Since he’s never forgiven me for poaching Karen, he’s never given me anything but journalistic hatchet jobs whenever he’s had the chance. I’m a long way short of perfect. That means I’ve given him lots of opportunity to show me in a bad light. It wasn’t so annoying when he was a simple reporter. Back then he more or less had to stick to the facts. Now that he’s a seasoned, big-deal columnist, he’s allowed to say whatever he damn well pleases. And does.

Everybody in the tiny restaurant sensed the underlying antagonism in his voice. They all fell silent as if waiting for the equivalent of a schoolyard fight to break out right there at the lunch counter.

“Just looking for a little grub,” I said as pleasantly as I could manage.

For years the man has sported a handlebar mustache. It’s an affectation that doesn’t suit him. Think overfed walrus, droopy jowls and all. With a swipe of his arm, he cleared the place next to him at the counter, ceremoniously offering me a place to sit. The tiny restaurant was crowded. The only other available spot was at the far end of the counter. Ignoring Max’s invitation would be an obvious insult, one I’d be delivering on his own turf. Bad idea. And so, even knowing that it might cause trouble later, I took the stool he indicated.

“Thanks, Maxey,” I said. “That’s mighty decent of you.”

Assuming the confrontation was over, the other diners relaxed and resumed their chewing and talking. Max, who doesn’t appreciate being called Maxey, glared at me.

“I hear that old partner of yours is in a lot of trouble,” he said.

“Is that so?” I asked noncommittally. “Which partner would that be? I’ve had several over the years.”

A harried waitress swooped by and took my order for ham and eggs and coffee. Max, finished with his food, was nursing a cup of coffee. The waitress dropped off his check at the same time she took my order. If delivering his bill was a subtle hint for Max to eat, pay, and go, he didn’t take it.

“Peters,” he replied. “Ron Peters. His ex-wife was gunned down over the weekend.”

“Really,” I said.

“Are you telling me you don’t know anything about it?” he demanded.

I shook my head, and Max was only too happy to assume the role of the bearer of bad tidings. “Ron and his ex were involved in some kind of custody dispute. According to what I’ve heard, the wife’s attorney is the one who got the investigation pointed in Ron’s direction. Something about a threat Ron made last week.”

“You don’t say,” I said.

“With Peters being a cop and all, that means the Special Homicide division will be handling the investigation, right?”

Those of us who work there may affectionately refer to our agency as SHIT, but outsiders had best beware. They’re better off not referring to us by that moniker even if they think we are. As far as I was concerned, Maxwell Cole had made a good choice.

“I suppose so,” I said. “In fact, I believe it’s a state law.”

“What do you think?”

“About the law?” I asked, acting dim.

“About Ron Peters.”

“Come on, Max. You know I can’t discuss ongoing investigations.”

“So you’re saying it is an ongoing investigation after all?”

The short-order cook on duty was a regular speed demon. My food came just then. I salted and peppered the hell out of it, not because the food needed the extra seasoning, but because I needed to do something with my hands besides throttling Maxwell Cole’s bulging twenty-two-inch neck.

“Look,” I said finally. “Ron Peters is a good friend of mine. Whatever may or may not be going on in his life, I have two words for you, Max, and they are ‘No comment.’ If you want official information, I suggest you contact my boss, the Squad B commander.”

I grabbed a fresh napkin from the dispenser on the counter. After jotting Harry’s name and office phone number on it, I passed the napkin along to Max. He studied it for a minute before his portly face broke into a grin.

“You’re pulling my leg, right?” he asked.

“About what?”

“You want me to talk to somebody named Harry I. Ball? What kind of joke is that?”

That’s something Harry Ignatius Ball counts on. He likes dealing with people who make the mistake of thinking he’s some kind of joke. He sucks them in by playing dumb when he first meets them. Later on, when the opportunity presents itself, he revels in chewing those same people to pieces. From my point of view, it’s one of Harry’s most endearing qualities.

I could have warned Max to tread warily when it came to dealing with Harry, but I didn’t. Max didn’t deserve to be warned.

“It’s no joke,” I said. “Call him up and talk to him. It should be a laugh a minute.”

“I’ll just bet,” Max returned.

Max’s check was still there on the counter, halfway between my water glass and his empty coffee cup. He may have expected me to pick it up and pay for his breakfast, but I didn’t.

Tiring of my company at last, Max sighed and slapped a meaty paw over the bill, then he got up and waddled over to the cash register. I didn’t say good riddance, not even under my breath, but that’s what I was thinking.

Good riddance, and don’t let the door slam your butt on the way out
.

I
HADN
’
T BOTHERED
mentioning to Maxwell Cole that I was on my way to visit his digs at the
P.-I.,
and I carefully gave him plenty of lead time. I didn’t want the two of us walking in through the front door and stamping snow off our boots at the same time.

In a post-9/11 world, my SHIT squad ID was enough to get me past the guard at the front door. It took my ID, ten minutes of wheedling, and a call from someone in the attorney general’s office down in Olympia for me to gain access to the newspaper’s holy of holies, the morgue.

Over the years I’ve done my share of griping about newfangled technology. I’ve fought integrated-circuit advances all the way down the line—from cell phones to computers—until I finally admitted defeat or came to my senses, depending on your point of view. If I hadn’t already succumbed to the lure of computers, a day spent dealing with microfiche would have sent me plunging over the edge. Computers may be annoying, but microfiche is hell.

Because of Sister Mary Katherine’s age relative to mine, I knew we were dealing with a time frame that was in or near the early 1950s. Although she wasn’t sure, Mary Katherine seemed to be under the impression that her family had been living somewhere in the Seattle area.

Summer comes late in the Pacific Northwest. The rains last from late September until early July, so if Mary Katherine’s recollection of the blue dress with the yellow flowers was accurate, we were dealing with summer or possibly very late spring.

People act as though the decade of the fifties was a halcyon June-and-Ward-Cleaver age when everyone knew everyone else and no one bothered locking their doors. Maybe that was true in some places. I’m certain that there weren’t nearly the number of homicides back then as there are now. Bearing that in mind, I figured a stabbing death that had occurred in someone’s front yard would be page-one news. Even if the murder occurred outside Seattle proper, it would have made headlines in what was then and still is considered to be a statewide newspaper.

A surprisingly helpful clerk who, it turned out, was actually a student intern aided me in locating what I wanted—microfiche copies of newspapers that had been published between April and October, starting in 1949. I wasn’t actually allowed to touch the microfiche—the clerk had to load it into the machine prior to my scanning through it.

Lots of people would be amazed at how blindingly boring detective work can be—especially when you’re scrolling through page after page after page of blue-and-white microfiche print. My hunch had been right. Back then, homicide cases from all over the state had indeed been front-page fodder. One or two of them seemed promising, but once I read through the articles, the facts didn’t seem to coincide with anything Sister Mary Katherine had told us.

By two o’clock, I had finished 1949. I also had a splitting headache, but something good had happened. Headache or no, while I was concentrating on scrolling through those old stories, I most certainly hadn’t been thinking about Ron Peters and his problems. Rather than calling it a day, I asked the clerk for the next set and started in on 1950.

Halfway through May, in a newspaper dated Tuesday, May 16, 1950, I found what I was looking for: a headline that read “Seattle Woman Murdered in Her Bed.” Bed wasn’t quite right, but I continued reading anyway.

Madeline wasn’t quite the right name, but wasn’t Mimi a nickname for Madeline? And having the victim stabbed to death in her bed didn’t square with what Mary Katherine had reported either, but I remembered that by the time Bonnie Jeanne had ventured out of her hiding place that day, the body had disappeared. I had assumed it had been loaded into a waiting vehicle and carted off for dumping elsewhere. Was it possible that the killers had simply moved the body into the house and then arranged the room to make it look as if the crime had been committed there?

So the time frame fit. Saturday afternoon was what Bonnie Jean had said—Saturday afternoon while she waited for her parents.

I was startled when two familiar names tumbled out at me in the same paragraph. William “Wink” Winkler had been a rough-and-tumble cop whose case-closure rates had helped him rise like a rocket through the ranks of Seattle PD. By the midfifties he had reached the exalted position of assistant chief of police. In 1950 he had been riding high and was on his way up. Five short years later he had been caught up in the web of graft and corruption that had been widespread inside the force at that time. As the pattern of payoffs and double-dealings became public, Wink Winkler had been one of the first officers forced to resign. As I remembered the story, something like twenty officers had been tried and convicted of various charges. Many of those had gone to jail. I had no idea whether or not Wink Winkler was one of them.

In a different way, Al Marchbank was also a Seattle-area legend. He was a local boy who had made good. He had been sent off to some East Coast boarding school at an early age and had just graduated from an Ivy League law school when World War II broke out. In 1943, he joined the army and spent most of the war working in Washington, D.C.

He returned to Seattle after the war. Using his well-heeled parents’ contacts, he established a successful law practice. By the midfifties he and a partner, Phil Landreth, were beginning to put together a collection of small-town radio stations that would soon become Marchbank Broadcasting, a medium-size media fish that would eventually be swallowed whole by a much larger media entity. Unlike that of Wink Winkler, who seemed to have disappeared into utter obscurity, the Marchbank name still held sway in Seattle more than half a century later in the form of the Albert P. and Elvira S. Marchbank Foundation. Likewise, Phil Landreth had gone on to make a name for himself in local and statewide politics. I couldn’t help thinking that as a child Bonnie Jean Dunleavy had encountered a collection of pretty heavy hitters.

The article continued:

That was the end of that first story. The clerk helpfully made a hard copy of that one for me. Then I scrolled through the next several weeks of newspapers, watching as the story unfolded. Madeline Marchbank’s funeral at Saint Mark’s Cathedral on Friday, May 19, was a well-attended affair that merited front-page attention. The microfiche record indicated the existence of a photo that could be retrieved from the photo file. When I asked the clerk to bring me a copy of that, the picture featured a grief-stricken Albert Marchbank, accompanied by his wife, Elvira, pushing a wheelchair-bound Abigail Marchbank down a rain-slick sidewalk.

Once the funeral was over, stories related to Madeline Marchbank’s death gradually migrated from front page to back, growing ever smaller as they went. Despite Detective Winkler’s best efforts, no suspects were ever identified. Nowhere was there any mention of a child who may have witnessed the fatal attack on Madeline Marchbank. Without testimony from that small, frightened witness, the case had gone cold—until now, until remnants from a recurring nightmare had awakened Sister Mary Katherine’s haunting memories out of their sound sleep.

I sat back in the chair and rubbed my burning eyes.

“Will that be all?” the intern asked. “I was supposed to go to lunch at two. I’m not allowed to leave you alone, and no one else came in today.”

She was young and not terribly attractive, but she was also bright and willing to help. She’d gone to the trouble of making her way in to work on a day when lots of other people had begged off. I hoped she’d go far.

“No,” I said, gathering my sheaf of papers. “That’s all for now. You’ve been a great help. What’s your name again?”

“Linda,” she said. “Linda Carter.” She shrugged apologetically and added, “My father’s last name is Carter. When he was young, he loved
Wonder Woman
on TV. When I was born, he just couldn’t resist.”

“Works for me,” I said. “You’ve certainly worked wonders for me today. Hope I haven’t made you too late for lunch.”

She smiled shyly. “Thanks,” she said. “And don’t worry about lunch. I don’t mind. It’s usually so boring around here. It was fun to have something useful to do for a change.”

I rode the elevator to the lobby and turned in my visitor’s badge. I went outside and joined the clutch of coat-swaddled smokers who had been exiled outside in the freezing weather. Standing in a pall of secondhand smoke, I contemplated the steep climb back up to Second Avenue and wondered if I should once again take the long way around.

The morgue had been so confined that I had turned my cell phone on “silent” while I was there. Still wavering about what route to take, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and checked it. There were three messages waiting.

The first was from Ralph Ames. “Hey, Beau,” he said. “Sorry to say I struck out. I called Ron and let him know what the deal was. I offered to come over and be there to back him up, but he said thanks but no thanks. If he isn’t interested in my help, there’s not much I can do. I wanted to let you know that I tried.”

The second call followed Ralph’s by a matter of minutes. It was from my colleague, Melissa Soames. “Hey, J.P.,” she said. “This is Mel. According to Harry, we need to talk. Give me a call ASAP.”

The third message came from Tracy Peters. She was crying. “Uncle Beau? Mom’s not here, and I can’t reach her. I don’t know what to do. Two people, a man and a woman, showed up a little while ago with a search warrant for Dad’s car. When they left, they took him with them, and they didn’t say where they were going. Now there’s a big tow truck down in the driveway. Some guy is loading Dad’s Camry onto it right now. Please call me back or else come by. We need you.”

The call had come in a good two hours earlier.

I immediately tried calling back, but there was no answer. This was hardly a surprise. No doubt Ron Peters’s home and his family were in the midst of a full media onslaught. If they were smart, they would be hunkered down inside, not answering phones or doorbells. I stuffed the phone back in my pocket, ducked my chin into my chest, and ran up the hill.

Amazingly enough, I didn’t slip and fall on my butt, and I didn’t have a heart attack or collapse before I hit Second Avenue, either, but it was close. I was still panting when I staggered up to the lobby at Belltown Terrace. Jerome opened the door to let me in.

“Hey, man,” he said. “What’s with you? You been running that four-minute mile again?”

“More like ten,” I gasped. “But I need a car or a cab. With either four-wheel drive and snow tires or chains, I don’t care which. And I need it now.”

“A good doorman is like a Boy Scout. We’re always prepared,” he said with a grin. “I have a friend who drives a cab, and he and I have an arrangement. He came to work today with his cab all decked out in chains. I’ve got his cell number right here, and I’ve been calling him all day long whenever any of my people need help. I’ll give him a call.”

“Please,” I said. “I don’t know how long I’m going to need him, but tell him I’ll make it worth his while.”