Dismissed With Prejudice (9780061760631)

by Jance, Judith A.

  “Fingerprints?” I asked.

  “Several sets. They’ll be running them through the AFIS as soon as they can get the computer time, but that’ll only work if the killer is on file.”

  AFIS is the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, a recently purchased computerized program that had taken local law enforcement jurisdictions out of the Dark Ages and into the high-tech era of fingerprint identification.

  “We should have results on that by tomorrow,” George added.

  I tried to assimilate all the information George Yamamoto had given me. Every way I looked at it, none of it made any sense. “This doesn’t add up,” I said. “If the sword was that valuable, why the hell would the murderer go off and leave it lying there on the floor?”

  “He may not have known it was valuable. Maybe he was looking for something else, but what could be more important than a Masamune sword?” George asked.

  “And how exactly did Tadeo Kurobashi come to be in possession of it?”

  George took a long drink and shook his head. “I don’t know. I just flat don’t know. He couldn’t have afforded to buy it, I’m sure of that, not even when he was making good money. It’s a museum piece, Beau. We’re talking about lots of money, a million, maybe more.”

  “That much?

  George nodded.

  “But he was going through bankruptcy. If he had an asset that valuable up his sleeve, why was he losing his house, his business? Why didn’t he use it?” I waited for a moment, giving George a minute to collect himself before I asked the obvious question. “Could he possibly have stolen it?”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  “Why else wouldn’t he have unloaded it, then?”

  “I don’t know,” George answered.

  We were quiet for a moment, both of us thinking. “Well,” I said at last, “going back to the killer or killers, if they weren’t interested in the sword, they must have been after something else. Tadeo was an engineer. What exactly did he do?”

  “He designed things, ways of putting microwave and computers together, and other things as well.”

  “Do you have any idea what specific projects he might have been working on in the months before he died?”

  “No. In the last few years, we haven’t been that close, but maybe a new project is what they wanted.”

  “More likely, they wanted to destroy it,” I said. “Do you know anything about computer viruses?”

  “Who, me? I know they exist,” George answered, “but I don’t know anything at all about how they work. Why?”

  “Remember that poem we saw on Tadeo’s computer screen?”

  He nodded. “Sure. What about it?”

  “It’s a virus. We took Kimi by MicroBridge this afternoon. She wanted to go see if there was any sign of checkbooks or insurance papers there.”

  “Did you find any?”

  “No. We got the name and address of Kurobashi’s personal attorney, but what we discovered from the receptionist is that those lines we saw on his screen are actually part of a computer virus that’s invaded every file in every computer in the entire company. Most of the MicroBridge records are gone.”

  “Gone?” George echoed. “Surely they kept backup copies of everything in the computer.”

  “We asked Mrs. Oliver about that. She said that all backup copies of disks were missing this morning along with the other hard-copy documents that were removed from the files. She seemed to think they had merely been moved somewhere else in preparation for moving. My guess is that they’ve all been systematically destroyed.”

  “What makes you say that? Files don’t just get up and walk away over night.”

  “I didn’t say anything about walking away. Remember the bill on Tadeo’s desk this morning? It’s from a place called DataDump. Remember what it said at the top of the bill? If I remember right, their motto is Have shredder. Will travel.”

  “Damn,” George said.

  “Kimi told us that there was a guy there moving files when she was talking to her father.”

  “She must have told you that after I left,” George said thoughtfully, “but that means Tadeo not only knew about the shredding, but probably even hired it done. If he had most of those documents in his computer, though, it wouldn’t have mattered.”

  “Until someone infected the computer with a virus.”

  “And now it’s gone completely,” George added. There was a long pause while he fingered his drink. “Might they be in danger, too?”

  “Kimi and her mother?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Maybe they should stay in a motel for a while. Or should we ask the Kirkland police to keep an eye on them?”

  I remembered how Machiko had summarily rejected that idea when, for another reason, Kimiko had suggested it. Still, now that George mentioned it, the idea that they too might be at risk bothered me more than I let on. “They’re not in Kirkland,” I said. “They left this afternoon to drive to Pullman.”

  “Pullman!” George exclaimed. “Why there?”

  “Beats me. As soon as the movers finished getting the auction stuff out of the house, they took off.”

  “But what about the funeral? Who’s going to handle that?”

  “There isn’t going to be one.”

  “No funeral? How come? Everybody has funerals.”

  “Machiko said no funeral, no memorial service. She was adamant. Big Al and I took Kimi downtown and had her sign all the necessary papers. Tadeo is to be cremated and the remains sent to them in eastern Washington.”

  “That witch!” George murmured under his breath. “She’s got no right to do that.”

  “She has every right in the world, George,” I reminded him. “She’s his widow, remember?”

  “As if I could ever forget.” His voice was taut with emotion. There was something important lurking beneath the surface of his words, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  “What do you mean?”

  “She always acted as though she had married beneath her, instead of the other way around, as though his friends weren’t good enough for her. And now she thinks she can lock us out by not having a memorial service for him? No way, not if I have to do it myself.”

  I had never seen George Yamamoto so uncharacteristically emotional. Machiko Kurobashi definitely pushed all his hot buttons.

  “Tell me about her,” I urged.

  “Tell you what about her?” he snapped back. “What do you want to know?”

  “Tadeo wasn’t her first husband?”

  “No. She got hooked up with some sleazebag during the occupation.”

  “Sleazebag?” I asked.

  “I kid you not. This guy was a real creep, a smalltime hood. When he got discharged from the army, he went back to his previous lines of work. He was into horses and Indian reservation cigarettes and whatever else he could lay hands on. And he wasn’t very good at any of it. They were living in a run-down apartment down in the International District when someone took care of him. My guess is, he owed money to somebody who decided to collect the hard way.”

  “When was that?”

  “Forty-seven, forty-eight. Somewhere around there. It’s a long time ago. I don’t remember exactly.”

  “And how did Tadeo meet her?”

  “He was working his way through school delivering groceries for a little Mom-and-Pop store down in that same neighborhood. With her rat of a husband dead, she went looking for somebody to take care of her, somebody nice who’d pay the bills and look out for her. Tadeo was it. As soon as she found him, she latched on to him for dear life.”

  “And when did they get married?”

  “I remember that. Nineteen forty-eight for sure. Tadeo was only twenty years old, a junior at the university. I often marveled at what he managed to accomplish, dragging her around behind him like so much dead weight. He got both his B.S. and his Masters from the university here, and then he went down to Stanford and picked up a Ph.D.”

  “Smart gu
y.”

  “He worked down in California for a number of years, for Hughes or one of those other big defense contractor types, then he came back up here and went to work for Boeing. I figured he’d play it safe and stay there. They don’t call it the Lazy B for nothing, but Tadeo couldn’t handle the pace. He wanted to make things happen, wanted to be a mover and shaker. He quit Boeing to work for RFLink in the late seventies and has been off on his own for the last three or four years.”

  “Kimi said something about there being hard feelings when he left his previous employer, RFLink. Do you know anything about that or the people who work there?”

  “No. He was pretty closed-mouthed about it when it happened. I got the feeling that his leaving wasn’t entirely voluntary.”

  “You mean he was fired.”

  George Yamamoto nodded reluctantly.

  “When’s the last time you saw him?”

  “Two months ago, down at the courthouse. I ran into him in the lobby. He had just lost the case, his patent infringement case.”

  “And did you know what losing that case meant to him?”

  “No, and he never let on. He acted as though it was no problem, said not to worry, that he’d be back on his feet in no time.”

  “Would his secretary, Mrs. Oliver, know what kinds of things he might have been working on?”

  “Mrs. Oliver? If she’s still with him, she’d know everything there is to know.”

  “You say that as though she’s been part of the picture for a long time.”

  “She has. She was his secretary when he worked for Boeing. When he left there, so did she. As far as I know, she’s been with him ever since.”

  “And you think she’d be privy to all his business dealings?”

  “You’ve got it.”

  “Anything between them?” I asked, knowing how the question would hurt, regardless of the answer.

  “You mean romantically?” George shook his head. “No,” he replied. “I don’t think so.”

  But it wasn’t the same kind of absolute answer he had given about whether or not the sword had been stolen. It made me wonder.

  Our drinks had been empty for a long time. I ordered another round. George Yamamoto had told me a whole lot I didn’t know about Tadeo Kurobashi, information I needed to get to the bottom of who had killed him and why. But there was still something missing, something about Tadeo and Machiko and George Yamamoto that I didn’t understand, something that would unlock their history together and help it make sense to me. For all our talking, nothing in what George had said had given me a clue about the long-standing antipathy he felt toward his friend’s widow.

  I looked at George. Disconsolate, he sat holding his drink but gazing without seeing at the black-and-white picture of a German shepherd which, along with twenty or so other doggie portraits, lined the walls of the Doghouse’s bar.

  It would have been easy to let it go. There was little reason to think that the years of enmity between George and Machiko could have anything to do with Tadeo’s death in the here and now. But detectives don’t let things go. It’s not part of our mental makeup.

  “What do you have against her?” I asked.

  George’s head came up. He looked at me, saying nothing, but he didn’t ask me who I was talking about. He knew I meant Machiko.

  “Why do you want to know?” he asked.

  “It could be important.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “I’d still like to know, George.”

  “He and my sister met in Minidoka,” he said evenly. “They weren’t engaged, but they had an understanding. Tomi was prepared to wait until Tadeo got out of school. Then Machiko came along. Once she got her claws in him, that was the end of it.”

  “And what happened to your sister?”

  “Tomi married someone else eventually. She died in childbirth when she was twenty-eight.”

  “That tells me what you have against Machiko,” I said, remembering the woman’s unleashed fury as she shook her finger at George and drove him out of her yard. “But it doesn’t tell me what she has against you.”

  George Yamamoto met my gaze and held it as he answered. “It was all a very long time ago,” he said. “I’m willing to let bygones be bygones. Machiko’s not. I’ve thought for years that Tadeo could have done better. I still do.”

  I thought back to the devastated look on Machiko’s face as she heard the news of her husband’s death and at her gritty determination to follow through with whatever he had wanted, no matter what the personal cost to her.

  For the first time I began to wonder exactly what kind of man Tadeo Kurobashi had been, what had made him tick. I looked at George, sitting there grieving over the loss of his friend. The dead man obviously had made a deep impression on the people closest to him, had engendered powerful and conflicting loyalties in his wife, his friends, and also his secretary. Only Kimiko, his embattled daughter, seemed immune to her father’s charm.

  Not only Kimiko, I thought grimly. Somebody else was immune as well, so immune that they had killed him. I felt a renewed sense of urgency to find out who that person was.

  CHAPTER 7

  WHEN I GOT BACK HOME TO BELLTOWN Terrace it was after eight. The first thing I saw after I came in the door was the repeated flashing of the red light on my answering machine. Machines that count messages can be damned imperious.

  I punched the playback button. One of the calls was from a telephone solicitor for the Seattle Repertory Theater, trying to sell me season tickets for their fabulous upcoming season. One was from a guy who wanted to be my stockbroker. All the rest were from Ralph Ames, my attorney.

  Each message from Ames was time-dated, and they were scattered from early afternoon on, beginning in a two o’clock, breezy see-you-at-the-meeting-at-six tone and ending on a downright surly note at 7:59. Needless to say, I had not gone to the meeting, didn’t remember I was supposed to, and didn’t know where it was or what it was about. It was probably something concerning the real estate syndicate that owns Belltown Terrace, but that was only an educated guess.

  Ames’ final message said, “We’ve given up on you. I’ve canceled the meeting. I’ll probably be back at the apartment before you are.”

  Who was “we”? I wondered. And how pissed was Ralph Ames really? Knowing I had screwed up royally, I poured myself another MacNaughton’s just for the hell of it. With the drink in hand, and with my injured fingers still throbbing painfully inside their metal splints, I settled down to wait for the other shoe to drop. It didn’t take long. In less than ten minutes, I heard the unmistakable scrape of Ralph Ames’ key in the lock.

  I was sitting in the shadowy darkness of the living room when he walked in and saw me there. I have to give him credit for letting me have the slightest benefit of the doubt. He graciously allowed me to plead innocent until proven guilty.

  “What happened?” he asked. “Get stuck working late on a case?”

  “I forgot,” I said, not willing to play games or make excuses.

  “Forgot?” he echoed.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  Unfortunately, apologies were not the order of the day. Ralph Ames blew his stack.

  “Goddamnit, Beau, we set both the time and place specifically so you could be there. Six other people, not counting myself, built their day around that schedule, and you can sit there and say you forgot?”

  You get used to those kinds of recriminations from a wife, and gradually, over a period of time, you develop a certain immunity. Coming from Ralph Ames, though, from a man who is both my attorney and my friend, they had a slightly different impact.

  Still, feigning indifference, I took a sip of my drink while ice cubes clinked noisily against the side of the glass. Except for that, the room was silent. Ames reached back to the wall switch and turned on the light. He looked hard at the glass, but he said nothing more. Comment or no, the dumbest kid in the class would have gotten the message that Ralph Ames disapproved. Even a
slightly smashed J. P. Beaumont read him loud and clear.

  “How come you forgot?” he asked.

  Time to go on the offensive. “Jesus H. Christ, Ralph! If I knew that, I would have remembered. I’ve had a tough day.”

  “You left the department at five-fifteen.”

  “You’ve been checking on me?”

  “Damned right. I went by to give you a lift, but you were already gone, and since your latest reprimand, I didn’t want to risk leaving a business message with Margie.”

  At the instigation of one of the newer detectives, a jerk named Kramer, Watty had climbed my frame about my receiving nonofficial phone calls while on duty. Of course, I wasn’t alone, but nobody else in the homicide squad drives a Porsche 928, and the last thing I needed was any more trouble with the brass.

  Saying nothing more, Ames went into the kitchen, poured himself a glass of orange juice, and came back to the living room, seating himself on the window seat across from me.

  “How are the fingers?” he asked.

  “Fine,” I answered warily, not willing to admit that they hurt like hell and not sure if he was really off the subject or merely coming at it from a different direction. I’ve seen Ames in action often enough to know he makes a formidable opponent. I didn’t like this feeling of the two of us being on opposite sides of the fence.

  “You’re lucky you didn’t lose them.”

  “Yeah,” I answered. “I guess I am.”

  There was a pause while we sat in not-so-companionable silence. Depth-charged silence was more like it. Naturally, I was the first one to break. After all, I was the guilty party.

  “So what happened at the meeting?” I asked, keeping my tone light and casual.

  “Nothing. Without you, there wasn’t much point. I told them I’d try to reset it for later.”

  “Good,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

  Again the room became still. Ames was looking at me, studying me, building up to say something. Meanwhile, I paged through my mental catalog of smart-assed answers, preparing to pull one out and use it. I had a wisecrack all loaded up and ready to light when he surprised me by dropping the issue entirely.