Second Watch (22 page)

“So what’s the deal?” Larry asked, his tone turning serious. “Melody said the woman who died . . .”

“Detective Ainsworth,” I supplied.

“Yes, Ainsworth,” Larry said. “I knew Delilah briefly. She was still working Patrol back when I was there. Melody said this was all about reopening some cold case or other.”

“Yes,” I said. “The Monica Wellington homicide.”

“Oh, yes,” Larry said at once. “The Girl in the Barrel. We never did solve that one.”

“That’s the problem,” I said. “Delilah and I were in the process of reopening what we thought was a cold case when we learned that it had been marked closed in 1981. She also discovered that all the evidence from that case has gone missing. So here’s a head’s-up. Seattle PD’s Internal Affairs Division is going to be all over this, and I’m guessing you’ll be hearing from them sooner or later.”

“Sounds like it,” he agreed.

“So here’s the question, Larry,” I said. “Who was in charge of Seattle PD Homicide in 1981?”

“I was,” he replied without a moment’s hesitation.

“Did you mark the case closed?”

“Of course I didn’t!” He sounded indignant; offended. “I just told you. We never solved the case of the Girl in the Barrel. Is that why you’re calling me? You think I marked it closed to improve our numbers?”

“No,” I answered. “I’m not saying you did it, but I’m wondering who else could have. Who can you think of who would have gone over your head and made a call like that?”

“It would have to have been someone from upstairs,” Larry said gloomily. “Someone with a hell of a lot more brass than I had at the time, and probably someone way above my pay grade, but none of this makes any sense. Why would Mac shoot someone for simply reopening that case? It’s not like he was ever a suspect.”

“In the long run, it may not have had anything to do with Monica Wellington.”

“What then?”

“Mac and I were still working Patrol on the day we found the Girl in the Barrel. Two days later, when I came back, I had been moved up to Homicide and Mac had been moved over to the Motorcycle unit. Both of those moves meant a bump up the promotion ladder. So the question is, who signed off on those promotions?”

“I have no idea,” Larry answered. “I remember we were all a little surprised when you got dropped on our heads with no warning and, as a consequence, with no partner, but I can tell you for sure that it wasn’t me. I was still a detective at that point. Even so, it shouldn’t be too hard to find out. All you have to do is go to HR and have them track down the microfiche.”

“That’s exactly what Delilah Ainsworth did,” I told him, “and it didn’t work. The microfiche has been tampered with. That one day has been X-ed out of the record, as in completely removed. Our two promotions, along with whatever else happened on that day, have gone missing. I suspect that the records for that day were never put into the microfiche in the first place.”

“You’re saying you think the records were physically removed before being transferred to film?”

“That’s what Delilah was going to ask Mac about when she was killed. I know that because she called and told me that’s what she was on her way to do.”

“But why would Mac pull something like this?” Larry asked. “I mean, after all these years, what could it matter if one person signed off on the paperwork or another did?”

And that’s when I knew for sure that the holdback was still holding. Melody MacPherson still had no idea that her husband hadn’t murdered Delilah Ainsworth. Neither did Larry Powell. Just because I had blown Detectives Monford and Anderson’s cover with Brian Ainsworth didn’t mean I had to make the same mistake with Larry Powell.

“It’s hard to understand when someone goes completely off the rails like that,” I said.

Yes, I was hiding out in old-fashioned basic platitudes, but in some situations platitudes are the only things that work.

“I’ll say,” Larry agreed.

“So you don’t really hear much from Watty these days?” I asked casually.

“We get a card every Christmas, but that’s about it.”

Thank God for Christmas cards. I pulled up my list and typed “South Carolina” after Watty Watkins’s name.

“You got a town to go with that?”

“Aiken, I think,” he said. “I’ll check the list. If that’s wrong, I’ll give you a call back.”

I was just finishing up the phone call with Larry Powell when Mel emerged from her bedroom/study. Barefoot, she padded past my recliner, dropped a yellow sticky note on the armrest, and went on her way. She had written someone’s name on the paper—Glenn Madden—along with a telephone number that was clearly somewhere outside Washington state.

The name and phone number didn’t mean much, but the very existence of the note imparted a larger message. Whatever I had said or done earlier was forgiven. That’s one of the wonderful things about Mel Soames. It’s not that she doesn’t get angry occasionally. It’s impossible for two people to be married and not have the occasional snit fit that comes out of left field and knocks you on your butt. The difference between Mel and some of the other women I’ve known through the years, and most especially my first wife, is this: Mel gets over it. And so do I. We acknowledge what happened, and then we move on. Neither one of us sits around waiting for some kind of half-baked apology; there are no rounds of silent treatment that linger from one week to the next. Maybe that’s what it means to be married to a grown-up.

“Who’s this?” I asked, once the call ended.

“That’s the name of the guy who’s currently in charge of the Cacti reunions,” she answered. “I got his contact information off the Internet.”

Cacti. The 35th Infantry. Vietnam. Lennie D. I hadn’t asked Mel for help on that, but she had given it, and I was smart enough not to turn it down. Instead, I pulled out my phone and dialed the number.

“Madden residence,” said the woman who answered. She said it in a way that indicated she was used to handling phone calls from relative strangers.

“My name is J. P. Beaumont,” I said. “I was in the Thirty-fifth Infantry. I understand Glenn Madden’s been instrumental in putting together the reunions. Would it be possible to speak with him?”

“He’s actually in Pittsburgh. There was a reunion this weekend. I don’t expect him back here in Colorado Springs until late tomorrow evening. Did you not receive your invitation?”

“I did,” I said lamely. “I must have mislaid it.”

“Would you like me to have him call you?”

“Sure,” I said. “It’s nothing urgent. If the convention is going on, he no doubt has his hands full.”

“The reunion is over. Today is a board meeting.”

I gave her my name and number so she could write it down. As soon as I thanked her and ended the call, I turned to Mel, who had abandoned the living room window seat in favor of the other easy chair, which is to say the chair that isn’t a recliner, in the den. She immediately reached over and handed me another sticky note. That one said “Sister Mary Katherine Donnelly.” On it was another phone number.

“New Mexico?” I asked.

Mel nodded.

“You said it’s a convent.” I glanced at my watch. It was midafternoon. “Should I call?”

Mel shrugged. “What’s the worst that can happen?” she said. “If they’re not accepting phone calls, they’ll most likely have voice mail.”

But there wasn’t a recording. When I asked for Sister Mary Katherine, whoever had answered the phone at Santa Teresa’s said simply, “One moment, please.” The receiver, obviously part of an old landline set, clattered noisily onto a counter. There was a long pause. I could make out the sound of women’s voices murmuring in the background. Eventually someone answered.

I remembered the steely-eyed woman with her gold-framed glasses and her no-nonsense attitude. I estimated that she must have been somewhere in her fifties when I last saw her. That meant she was somewhere in her nineties now. She sounded just as firm and uncompromising as she had back then.

“Who’s calling, please?” she asked.

“My name is Beaumont,” I said. “J. P. Beaumont. I was a Seattle PD Homicide detective the last time I spoke to you, in the spring of 1973. Two of your students were witnesses in a case I was working on, and I was hoping you could give me some help.”

“I recall that unfortunate situation very well. The boys, the Evil Twins, as I’m afraid we sometimes called them, had discovered the body of a homicide victim and called it in to the authorities. I seem to remember that you came to the school to interview them along with another detective.”

I can only hope that when I hit that age, I have even half that much grasp on what happened forty years or so in the past.

“Yes,” I said. “That’s correct, and Frankie and Donnie Dodd were the boys in question.”

“Believe me, the two of them were a real handful,” Sister Mary Katherine said. “They were always getting into some kind of mischief. Still, they weren’t bad boys, and I was sorry when their mother pulled them out of school. I’ve always wondered what became of them.”

“I believe their mother remarried,” I replied. “It looks as though they were adopted by their new stepfather. Donnie died a decade ago as the result of an automobile accident. Frankie still lives and works in Yakima. That was where his mother was from originally and where she and her husband made a life for themselves after she left Seattle.”

“Well,” Sister Mary Katherine said briskly. “Since it sounds as though you know a lot more about them than I do, why are you calling me?”

I didn’t want to make the same kind of blunder with her that I had made with Mel a little earlier, so I tried to tread lightly.

“As I recall, their mother lived alone. I don’t remember her having any kind of job, but the family lived in a nice enough house and the boys attended Saints Peter and Paul school. Tuition there couldn’t have been cheap. I’m just curious as to whether you have any clue about how a single mom managed all that back then. Were they allowed to go there on a scholarship of some kind?”

I heard the sudden reticence in Sister Mary Katherine’s voice the moment she replied, “I don’t see why that should be any concern of yours, especially after all this time.”

Sister Mary Katherine’s sharp response was the verbal equivalent of a solid rap on the knuckle with a ruler, and my hackles went up.

“It was just that the boys were the closest thing we had to eyewitnesses to what had happened to our victim,” I said. “Not to the actual crime itself, of course, but to the disposal of the body. Now that we’re reopening the case, I was simply wondering if there was anything more to it than that.”

“Francis and Donald Dodd were never scholarship students,” Sister Mary Katherine declared. “Their school fees were paid in full.”

“By whom?”

“That’s entirely confidential,” she said firmly. “If one of the family members chooses to tell you, that’s up to them. You certainly won’t hear it from me. Good day, Mr. Beaumont.”

The phone banged down in my ear. It would have been easy to be upset, but I wasn’t. I realized that something important had just happened. For reasons I had yet to understand, I knew I was on the right track.

I looked over at Mel. “We need to go to Yakima.”

There was no need to attempt the “go see the autumn leaves” routine. This was business.

“I’ll go get the car keys,” she said. “Do you need to take any more medication before we go?”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s probably a good idea. And don’t forget the string cheese.”

CHAPTER 18

M
el drove us from Seattle to Yakima, about a hundred and forty miles to the east and over the Cascade Mountains, without actually breaking the sound barrier and without getting a speeding ticket, either. I suppose the leaves were turning as we drove across Snoqualmie Pass, but the truth is, we were hunkered down and talking. We’ve both put in a lot of years in the world of law enforcement, but the idea of coming face-to-face with the possibility of crooks in the cop shop still has the power to shock and dismay. That had to be what this was. Whoever had tampered with the evidence and the microfiche had to be a cop, and one who was a long way up the food chain.

We were over the pass and driving past Easton when my phone rang. “Mr. Beaumont?” a stranger’s voice asked. “This is Glenn Madden. My wife said you called.”

I could hear the sounds of voices and laughter in the background. Obviously Madden hadn’t waited until he got home from the board meeting to give me a call.

“Thanks for getting back to me so soon,” I said. “I didn’t mean that you should drop everything to call me.”

Madden laughed. “When one of our guys calls, I jump right on it,” he said. “Especially if it’s someone who hasn’t been in touch before. Usually there’s a good reason for their calling right then, and if there’s some kind of crisis—”

“No crisis,” I said quickly. “Not at all. I was in the Thirty-fifth in Vietnam,” I said. “I’m trying to get in touch with the fiancée of one of the guys I served with, a guy who died. It’s something I should have done a long time ago, but I never did. Now that so many years have passed, I hope it’s not too late, but since they weren’t married, I’m not even sure you can help me—”

“Hang on,” he said. “Let me open up my database.”

“Really, if you’re still at the convention . . .”

“No, this is fine. Give me the name.”

“Second Lieutenant Leonard D. Davis,” I said. “From Bisbee, Arizona. He died on August 2, 1966.”

I could hear computer keys clicking in the background. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Where do you live?”

“Seattle,” I replied.

“The fiancée’s married name is Bonnie Abney,” Madden said. “And you’re in luck. She lives somewhere in your neck of the woods, on an island called Whidbey. Do you know where that is?”

By then I had my iPad out and was typing a note of my own. “Yes, I know where Whidbey Island is, but do you mind spelling her name?”

He did so, and I typed it in.

“I remember her well,” Madden said.

That stopped me. For a moment I wondered if somehow this Madden guy had been in our outfit. He went on to explain without my having to ask.

“One of Second Lieutenant Davis’s friends from West Point, and someone who served with him, encouraged Ms. Abney to come to one of our conventions several years ago. She was the first woman to speak at one of them; she made quite an impression. Out of courtesy to her, though, I’d rather not give out her contact information. I’ll be glad to pass along yours to her instead. I hope you don’t mind. With things like this, there’s always a chance that she’d rather not go there.”

“Of course,” I said. “That makes perfect sense. You already have my name and number, so feel free to give her those.”

“Can I tell her what this is about?”

“Yes,” I said. “Please tell her that Second Lieutenant Davis saved my life, and that I have a few mementos I’d like to pass along to her. If she’s interested, that is. I don’t want to apply any undue pressure.”

“Right,” Madden said. “We’ll put the ball in her court and see what she does with it.”

“Thanks for getting back to me so fast,” I said. “I really appreciate it.”

“No problem,” he said. “Your name’s in my database, but I see that you haven’t attended any of our gatherings.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said. “Don’t give up on me.”

He ended the call.

“So you found her?” Mel asked.

I nodded. “She lives on Whidbey. Madden is going to send my information to her rather than the other way around.”

Mel nodded. “Sounds reasonable to me.”

We drove on in silence for the space of several miles before she asked, “What mementos?”

“The ones I showed you,” I said.

I reached into my pocket and retrieved the items I had stowed there after Marge brought the box up from the storage unit—three aces of spades and three chunks of what should have been lethal shrapnel. I had taken them out of my pocket and left them on the dresser last night, and had put them back in my pocket that morning when I dressed to go downstairs to the running track.

Mel glanced at what I was holding in my hand and then turned her eyes back to the highway.

“I thought you said he gave you four aces of spades,” she said.

“He did,” I said quietly. “I used one.”

And that was the real reason I didn’t go to reunions. As a cop, I’ve had to shoot people, but they have always been bad people. This was different. It was my fifth day in Pleiku, and my second day on patrol. I saw the guy, took my shot, dropped him, and left my calling card.

Nobody had invented video games in 1966, but that’s how it had seemed at first, like it was all some kind of game. Except it wasn’t. That other guy, the one I killed—the one on whose bloodied chest I left my own playing card—was a soldier the same as I was. He was out on patrol, doing his job, doing what his government had told him to do. And wherever his family was, he never went back there—back home to his parents or his wife or his sweetheart or his kids.

It stopped being a game for me the moment I dropped that card. I never used another, although I could have, and I never asked for a replacement. And after Lennie D. died, I don’t think anyone else did, either. From then on it was definitely not a game. It hurt too much and was far too deadly.

Another ten miles at least must have passed before Mel spoke again. “Do you think she’ll want them?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“And what will you do with them if she doesn’t?” Mel asked. “Put them back downstairs in the storage unit?”

“I’m not sure,” I said, but even then, I was thinking about that wall in Washington and about how I had heard that people sometimes left things there as a remembrance to the fallen.

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” Mel said, reaching over and patting the numb spot on my thigh. “We’ll figure it out together.”