Taking the Fifth (3 page)

“Since when is Doc Baker too good to check out an OD?”

Riley stared at me incredulously. “You think that’s what it is? An overdose?”

I answered his question with one of my own. “Don’t you? When we find a dead man with half a pound of cocaine hidden in his pillowcase, we can usually draw some pretty logical conclusions.”

Something strange happened to Tom Riley’s face then. It contorted suddenly. At first I thought he was going to burst into tears.

I was wrong. Instead he began laughing, a strangled, air-gulping, rib-breaking, all-consuming laugh.

As I stood in that stuffy, confining bedroom with a man dead on the bed behind me, Tom Riley’s eerie, unnatural laughter made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

At last he grew quieter and regained enough composure so he could talk. “Jon didn’t OD,” he declared firmly.

“He didn’t? What did he die of, then?” I demanded.

“AIDS.”

Tom Riley’s single-word answer crackled through the silent room like heat lightning in a tinder-dry forest. Al Lindstrom’s stranglehold collapsed and Tom Riley, a limp, boneless rag doll, slipped silently to the floor.

“AIDS! Holy shit!” Big Al muttered, a stricken expression on his face.

Tom Riley took one look at Big Al’s face and began to laugh again.

Al Lindstrom didn’t think it was funny.

I didn’t either.

CHAPTER 3

DOCBAKER’S MOOD HADN’T IMPROVED any by the time I got him on the phone. Over his secretary’s strenuous protests, I had insisted that he be called away from an autopsy-in-progress.

“Beaumont, you jerk, what did you say the name was?”

“Thomas. Jonathan Thomas.”

“Sure. His nurse called in earlier this morning. I already had the notice from the attending physician. My people told Riley to go ahead and have them move the body.”

“Just like that? Without bothering to send somebody over? Without checking?”

“You been living under a rock or something, Beau? Jonathan Thomas died of AIDS. AIDS! His doctor notified my office over a week ago that death was imminent.”

“What does that have to do with whether or not you send somebody out?”

“Look, when an attending physician tells us his patient is dying of AIDS, we believe him. We take his word for it. He gives us a written notification that he’s willing to sign the death certificate to that effect, and we let it go at that. We’re out of it, understand?”

“But we found drugs hidden in his bed. It might have been an overdose. Or what if he was murdered?”

“What if? He was dying.”

“Doc, we need an autopsy here.”

“You don’t need an autopsy, you want one. There’s big difference. And who the hell do you think is going to do it? My people don’t want to, I can tell you that much, and I don’t blame them a bit.”

“But, Doc.”

“Don’t you ‘But, Doc’ me. My office has a written procedure for cases like this, and we’re following it to the letter. If you want an autopsy, get the attending physician to do it. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going back to the autopsy I was doing before I was so rudely interrupted.”

He slammed the receiver down in my ear. I turned to face the people in Jonathan Thomas’s living room who were waiting to hear Doc Baker’s answer.

Riley stood with his arms across his chest, glaring at me. “Well?” he demanded.

I nodded to the driver from the mortuary. “Go ahead and take him away,” I said. “But no embalming, and no other preparations until after I check with his doctor, is that clear?”

He nodded. “You won’t get no argument from me.”

I handed him my card. “My name’s Beaumont, Detective J. P. Beaumont. Now, where are you taking him?”

The driver glanced at my card and pocketed it. “Ramsey and Son Funeral Home over on East Pine.”

With that, he and his partner disappeared down the hallway. Al Lindstrom, Tom Riley, and I waited in the living room without exchanging a word until the two men returned, carefully carrying the body-laden stretcher between them.

Riley went to the door and held it open for them while they gingerly maneuvered the stretcher through the doorway and down the front steps. Only after the body had been loaded into the van and the vehicle had disappeared around the corner did Riley come back inside.

He glanced at Al and me in undisguised disgust. “Why are you still here?”

“We want to talk to you about Richard Morris,” I said.

Riley shrugged. “That worthless asshole? What about him? He should be home any minute. You can talk to him yourselves.”

“I take it he’s not a friend of yours?”

Riley’s narrow lower lip curled downward in a sneer of absolute contempt. “Hardly. Jon should have thrown that creep out months ago.”

“Why?”

I didn’t volunteer the information that Richard Morris would never be coming home again. That’s not my style. Asking questions is a Homicide detective’s prime directive. Ask first; tell later. Take first; give later. Ask any detective’s wife. More likely, ask his ex-wife.

Tom Riley hit us with an indictment of Richard Dathan Morris that bore a close resemblance to an ex-wife’s ravings. “Because Rick’s still out running the streets, for one thing, damn him. And because he doesn’t give a shit about anybody but himself. And because he wasn’t here last night when Jon needed him.”

“Did you see him at all last night?” Al interjected.

“He was here when I left. At eleven. Said he’d be home all night, the lying son of a bitch. I can’t believe he took off and left Jon here alone. So help me when I find him…” Riley let the remainder of his threat trail off unspoken.

Suddenly Riley gave me a sharp look, as though he had finally realized the focus and direction of our questions. We hadn’t come about Jonathan Thomas after all.

“Has Rick done something wrong?” he asked suddenly.

Riley’s abrupt shift in demeanor didn’t escape me. He had been rude and short with me to the point of physical violence when I had attempted to interfere with the removal of Jonathan Thomas’s body. But now, once he understood my questions were really about Richard Morris, now that I had held out the possibility that Morris was in some kind of trouble with the law, Riley switched to being downright cooperative.

Bearing this in mind, I, too, slipped into a different approach, addressing Tom Riley with far more deference and respect than I had used before. Respect is a useful tool, and when applied in reasonable proportions it inflates egos at the same time it loosens tongues.

“We don’t know, Mr. Riley. That’s what we’re trying to find out, why we came here in the first place. If you could just tell us whatever you can remember about last night, it would be a big help.”

Tom Riley walked over to the couch and sat down, rubbing his eyes wearily. “He worked yesterday,” he said.

“Morris did? Where?”

“At the Fifth Avenue, from eight in the morning until ten last night. At least, that’s what he said.”

“At the Fifth Avenue. The theater?”

Riley nodded. “That’s right. He was doing a load-in.”

“Load-in?” It wasn’t a term I recognized.

“A setup for a bus-and-truck show. He’s a stagehand.”

“For a what?” It seemed like Riley was speaking a foreign language.

“You know, one of those traveling road shows.”

“Do you know which one?”

“No idea. Some singer, I guess. I didn’t pay any attention. Rick’s such a blowhard that I don’t listen to half of what he says.”

“What time did he come home?”

“Around ten. I was just finishing putting Jon down. You know, giving him his medications, that sort of thing.”

Somehow, in the constant opening and closing of the front door, the cat had wandered back into the house. It chose that moment to insinuate itself into Tom Riley’s lap, where it curled up comfortably. For several long moments Riley sat there, absently stroking it, as if drawing some comfort from the cat’s silent presence.

The man sitting quietly with the contented cat in his lap was far different from the one who had taken a murderous lunge at me in the bedroom a short time before. Over the years, I’ve learned to pay attention to animals and how they react to people. They seem to have a phenomenal way of sorting the good from the bad, of attaching themselves to kind, compassionate people and avoiding the ones who are mean and aggressive. That fat, sleek cat was giving Tom Riley a hell of a good character reference.

“May I ask you a professional question, Mr. Riley?”

He started quickly, the way a person does when he’s fallen asleep in church or when his mind has wandered during the course of a conversation. “Pardon me?”

“I’d like to ask you a professional question.”

“All right.”

“Did anything about Jonathan Thomas’s condition last night lead you to believe that he would die before morning?”

He shook his head. “Not really. He was weaker than he had been. That was to be expected, but I didn’t think it was that bad. It’s been bothering me all day. I should have paid closer attention. I should have known the end was that close.”

“What about his breathing—had it changed at all?”

“No.”

“If you had known the end was near, would you have left or would you have stayed all night?”

My question cut right to the bone. Tom Riley’s gaze met mine, but his lower lip trembled. “I would have stayed,” he murmured.

“How long were you Jonathan’s nurse?”

“Five months.”

“That’s a long time,” I said gently. “Obviously you cared deeply about your patient. But why are you so opposed to an autopsy?”

“He didn’t want it. Gave specific orders. Besides, hadn’t he suffered enough indignity?” Riley asked.

“What if he was murdered?”

“Why would anyone bother to murder someone with only a week or so to live? That was all he had, at the most.”

“What if they didn’t want him to suffer?”

“You mean a mercy killing? Euthanasia?”

“It’s not unheard of. Would Rick Morris have been capable of something like that?”

“Are you kidding? He’s the most selfish person I ever met.”

“What about Jonathan’s parents?”

Riley shook his head. “I never met them. Jon told me they disowned him a year or so ago.”

“What about you?”

The last question, out of the blue, was calculated to blindside Tom Riley, to shock him into some kind of admission, if possible, or to reveal a reaction that would tell us he was hiding something. It didn’t work.

“I wouldn’t have left him to die alone,” he said quietly.

It was an odd reaction. Innocent people yell like mad when you accuse them of something they didn’t do. Guilty ones hide out in side issues. I had expected a hot denial to my blunt accusation. Instead, Riley had merely deflected my question.

I was silently mulling over Riley’s oblique response when Al stepped into the conversation. “You said you didn’t know his parents, that they had disowned him. Do you know where they are, what their names are?”

Riley got up and left the room. He returned, carrying a manila file folder. He opened it, shuffled through several pages, then picked out one and read from it. “Their names are Dorothy and William B. Thomas. They live over in Bellevue.” He handed the paper to Al, who scanned it and made a few brief notes in his notebook.

“Jon kept the folder by his bed,” Riley continued. “He made notes in it about what he wanted done, what mortuary, what kind of service, who was to be notified—that kind of thing. Including no autopsy,” he added, glancing meaningfully at me.

Al finished making his notes; then he gingerly handed the paper back to Riley like it was a loaded hand grenade. Unconsciously, he rubbed his hand on his pants. It was clear the very idea of AIDS scared the living crap out of Big Al Lindstrom.

“Was he still lucid at the end?” I asked.

“Sometimes.”

“The boys from Narcotics will be here in a few minutes to pick up the package. Is it possible that Jonathan was masterminding a drug ring of some kind from his sickbed?”

“Jon? Are you kidding? He wouldn’t have done something like that. Never. I knew him.”

“What about Rick?”

Riley shrugged. “He’s another story,” he said.

“You mean he could have been into selling drugs?”

“I don’t trust him any farther than I can throw him. He could be into anything.”

“Including dealing drugs?”

Riley nodded.

“What time did you get here this morning?”

“Seven-thirty or so.”

“And what was the place like when you got here?”

“It was a mess, a pigsty.”

I looked around the somewhat shabby living room. It wasn’t nearly the mess it had been when I had first seen it through the parted curtains. “Who straightened it up?” I asked.

“I did,” Riley answered. “Sometimes Jon would want me to wheel him out here. He complained that the bedroom was boring. I didn’t want him to see the place like that. It would have upset him. Besides, I looked in on him and thought he was asleep. I cleaned up while I was waiting for him to wake up.”

“It wasn’t a mess when you left here last night?”

He shook his head. “I figured Rick had invited people over during the night. He’s never learned to pick up after himself.”

“And he never will,” I added quietly.

Riley frowned and gave me a searching look. “What do you mean, he never will?”

“We believe that Richard Darthan Morris was the victim of a homicide late last night, down near the Pike Place Market.”

I watched carefully to see what kind of shock value my words might have on Tom Riley, R.N. If I expected an overreaction, I was in for a real disappointment.

“Good riddance,” he said quietly.

And that was all.

CHAPTER 4

TWO DETECTIVES FROMNARCOTICS stopped by a short time later and took charge of the package we’d found in Jonathan Thomas’s bedroom. By then, Tom Riley had decided to be more cooperative. He allowed us to go through the place pretty thoroughly. I guess we all expected to find a collection of drug paraphernalia somewhere on the premises. No such luck. The only drug-related equipment was that found with the sickroom supplies in a cabinet to which Riley claimed to have the solitary key.