Dismissed With Prejudice (9780061760631)

by Jance, Judith A.

  Someone was just answering Alvin Grant’s phone. “When you get done, park this thing, will you?”

  Ames nodded, holding the phone to his ear. He was looking ahead of us toward the pay parking lot off on our right. He was the one who saw it first.

  “Wait a minute, isn’t that the Suburban?”

  I looked where he was pointing, and sure enough there in the middle of the lot sat a hulking green and white Suburban. I could see the outline of the bumper sticker even though it was too far away for me to read the words.

  “I’ll be damned!” With that, I slammed the car door shut and started inside.

  Waterfall Park, as it’s called, takes up a quarter of a block. Walled in with red brick, it has a terrace with small outdoor tables, while in one corner a two-story-high waterfall drowns out the noise of city traffic with the roaring rush of flowing water. I headed for the open gate at a dead run, only to almost collide with a man in a heavy motorized wheelchair who was trying to maneuver through the same space at the same time I was.

  “Sorry,” the man said, but it didn’t sound like a man speaking. There was a tinny, canned quality to the voice.

  “My fault,” I said.

  I looked down at him then. He was an older man, probably well into his sixties, whose body was terribly twisted and bent. On his lap sat a computer, a laptop very much like the one I had seen Clay Woodruff using to single-handedly produce a hotel full of music in Port Angeles. Laboriously, the man pressed two keys on the computer. The voice said, “I’ll go.”

  Just then Bernice Oliver came hurrying over. “Sorry it took so long, Clarence. All the handicapped spots were taken.” She looked up at me. “Why hello, Detective Beaumont. I’d like you to meet my husband, Clarence.”

  The last thing I wanted to do right then was hold still for introductions, but there was no way to escape.

  “We’ve already met,” I said.

  Clarence Oliver once more pushed some buttons on the computer. It wasn’t an instantaneous process, because it took time for him to locate the keys with his badly crippled fingers. As soon as he did though, a motor whirred and the chair moved effortlessly through the gate. Bernice Oliver stood on the sidewalk, watching her husband’s slow but smooth progress as he negotiated the corner in front of the waterfall and rolled up the walkway to where a group of people were gathered at the far end of the park.

  “He did so want to come,” Bernice said to me. “It’s the least we could do. I don’t know how we would have managed if it hadn’t been for Mr. Kurobashi. It’s his invention, you see.”

  “What’s his invention?”

  “Why the computer, of course. Not the computer, but the program in it. You saw how it works—the voice synthesizer, moving the chair. That’s all Mr. Kurobashi’s doing. He did it for a lark, and wouldn’t take a dime for it, either. I never would have been able to keep Clarence at home this long if it hadn’t been for that. I have some help, of course. A visiting nurse comes in for a while every day, but that computer has been such a blessing. That was the worst thing about it. Losing the ability to communicate. The computer changed all that. Such a blessing,” she said again, and walked away.

  I stood for a moment longer, watching Bernice rejoin her husband and continue on to the others. I remembered Big Al’s and my conversation when we had speculated about the cause of Mrs. Oliver’s fierce loyalty to her dead boss. I had an answer to that question now, and it had absolutely nothing to do with screwing around. So Tadeo Kurobashi had done another good deed. Then what was his connection to a Mafia clan in Chicago?

  The delay at the gate had broken up my headlong plunge into the park, and now I stood there a few moments longer, trying to see who was there and who wasn’t. Clay Woodruff was easy to spot. He had come forward to meet the Olivers and was standing in front of them, nodding in agreement to something that had been said.

  Ames appeared behind me, rushing and out of breath. “I parked the car in a lot, but I had a hell of a time doing it,” he said. “What’s going on down here? Almost all the spaces are full.”

  “What did Grant have to say?”

  “You’re not going to believe it.”

  “Tell me, goddamnit.”

  “Christopher Davenport Senior is Aldo Pappinzino’s personal attorney.”

  “No shit!” I turned and sprinted into the park. I had gone only a few steps when George Yamamoto, seated at one of the tables on the terrace, stood up and raised his hand, motioning for silence. Almost instantly, the people grew still. Someone switched off the waterfall. Outside the confines of the tiny park, we could hear the rush of traffic which had previously been drowned out by the roaring water. From the band shell a block away came a wavering high-school-band rendition of “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” Inside Waterfall Park itself, it seemed almost eerily quiet.

  There was a woman dressed in black sitting at the table with George. Her back was to us, but George nodded to her before he began to speak. Even from the far corner, his voice carried throughout the park. Everyone fell silent. I had taken several more steps, but I stopped now in order to hear.

  “When Tadeo and I were young, this park was nothing but an empty lot. We met here as boys, years before Minidoka. This was where we learned to play baseball, to shoot baskets. I have invited you all here today, to honor our friend. Today I have learned things about Tadeo that I never knew before, things about people he helped, things he did that he never broadcast.

  “This is not a formal service, not a religious service. Tadeo was not a religious man. He was a good man. Tadeo did not want a funeral, and so no funeral was planned. This is instead a service of remembrance. His wife, Machiko, is here with us. She had not planned to come today, and many of you may never have met her. If you have a chance, and if Tadeo made a difference in your life, let her know about it. This may be your only opportunity.”

  He held out his hand toward the woman seated at the table and helped her to stand. She was wearing a long black silk kimono, and it wasn’t until she turned to face us that I realized it was Machiko Kurobashi. She nodded to the one hundred or so people who were gathered around, then she sat back down at the table. George Yamamoto raised his hand, and the waterfall once more roared to life.

  “I’ll be damned,” I said.

  “It’s a good thing you didn’t bet,” Ames said over my shoulder.

  Once more we started toward George’s table. He saw us coming and waved.

  “I believe you know both these people,” George said to Machiko as we got closer. She looked up at us and nodded.

  Stumped for something to say, I didn’t want to blurt out what Ames had just told me about Christopher Davenport. “I was worried about you,” I said finally. “I didn’t know you knew Mr. Woodruff.”

  “Didn’t,” she answered. “Do now. Good man.”

  “How is Kimi?”

  “Mr. Woodruff see Kimiko in Spokane today. Much better. Get well soon.”

  “Looks like you were just pushing panic buttons on that one,” Ames whispered under his breath.

  Machiko began struggling to get up. She had a new cane, a metal three-pronged one, to replace the treasured one made of gnarled wood. I took her elbow and helped her to her feet.

  She smiled up at me gratefully. “I talk to people,” she said.

  I turned to George, and he motioned for Ames and me to sit down. “How did all this happen?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Believe me, I have no idea. This morning, when she came to my office she said she had changed her mind and wanted to come to the memorial service. I was surprised.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  I watched Machiko limp her way through the crowd, stopping now and then to speak to someone. I noticed she didn’t shake hands, and she seemed to be carrying herself oddly, with one elbow stiffly bent. Her arm looked almost as though it were still in a sling although no sling was visible. I assumed that it was some lingering aftereffect of her injuries and didn’t think much a
bout it.

  She stopped briefly by the Olivers. Clay Woodruff was still there, talking animatedly. Machiko listened to what he had to say with a kind of grave interest, then she went on. When she was about halfway to the waterfall, I realized that she was no longer following a random path from person to person. She was moving purposefully, with some definite goal in mind.

  At almost the same instant, I saw Chris Davenport. He had obviously arrived late and was standing in the same gate we had all passed through earlier. He too was assessing the situation. Unerringly, Machiko was headed toward him.

  She stopped for a moment and seemed to struggle with her sleeve, not the one holding the cane, but the other one, the one I had thought was lame. The arm dropped to her side, and for only the briefest moment, the sun caught the glint of metal.

  With a flash of insight, I knew what I had seen, knew what was going to happen.

  Machiko Kurobashi had the sword in her hand, and she intended to use it.

  “My God,” I groaned. “She’s going to kill him.”

  If Chris Davenport was somehow behind all this, then I couldn’t quarrel with Machiko’s intention. But I had to stop her, no matter what. If the sword became a legitimate murder weapon, it would never be able to accomplish Tadeo Kurobashi’s dream. It would go back to the evidence room, not to Sotheby’s. For Tadeo’s sake, for Kimi’s, and most of all for Machiko’s, I had to stop her.

  I leaped to my feet, sending the metal chair crashing into the brick wall behind me. I vaulted over the low wrought-iron fence that separated the upper level of the terrace from the lower walkways. Machiko Kurobashi was diagonally away from me across the park. She was still a good ten steps away from Davenport when I knocked over the chair, and she turned, pausing slightly, to see what had caused the disturbance.

  Meanwhile, Davenport caught sight of her. He waved and moved eagerly in her direction, the phony metallic smile plastered on his chipmunk face.

  With both of them moving, they were closing on one another far too rapidly for me to get there in time. I had to do something to stop her.

  “Machiko,” I shouted. “Machiko Kusumi. Stop.”

  And she did. Long enough to turn and look at me. Long enough for me to reach her side and grasp her wrist.

  “Don’t,” I said. “Don’t do this. You mustn’t.”

  She tried to pull her wrist free from my hand. The sword, visible to me, was still concealed from Davenport behind a fold of the flowing kimono.

  “I must,” she whispered fiercely. “I must kill him. Let me go. Tadeo do this for me. I do it for him.”

  Davenport must have been close enough by then to hear her. He stopped in confusion and looked around, searching for an escape route, edging back the way he had come.

  But Machiko hadn’t given up. With an incredibly strong jerk, she pulled her hand free of mine, brandishing the tanto in the air. I knocked it down. Down and away. If it hadn’t been for the splints on my hand, I probably would have lost some fingers to the razor-sharp blade. The sword crashed to the ground and went spinning harmlessly across the bricks.

  Machiko dropped to the ground too. For a moment I thought I had hurt her, but she knelt there sobbing hopelessly. I ducked down beside her to see if she was injured.

  She wasn’t. Machiko Kurobashi had set her heart on revenge, and I had thwarted her, stayed her hand. She crouched there, weeping brokenheartedly. As soon as I understood that, I jumped back up and looked around for Christopher Davenport.

  He was gone. Disappeared completely, taking his metallic smile with him.

  “Stay here,” I ordered Machiko. “You stay here. I’ll go get him and bring him back.”

  Like most things, it was a hell of a lot easier said than done.

  CHAPTER 21

  I CHARGED OUT OF WATERFALL PARK JUST in time to see Davenport struggling with the lock on his car. A Nissan Pulsar with diagonal taillights. Barber pole striped taillights.

  By then I had drawn my gun. “Stop or I’ll shoot,” I yelled across the lot. It was an empty threat. The park behind the parking lot was full of people and the school band had launched into a spirited version of “Louie Louie.”

  I didn’t dare risk a shot, but Davenport didn’t know that. He turned and looked at me, and then sprinted away down the aisle of cars with me running after him. He turned left up Washington and then ducked into the alley halfway between Occidental and First. I can run pretty damn fast in a pinch, and I was gaining on him as we came tearing down the alley toward Yesler and James.

  I wasn’t far behind him, but again there was a crowd of people in front of us, and I couldn’t risk firing the .38.

  Falling in with a large group of pedestrians, Davenport crossed Yesler while I dodged through to a chorus of honking horns. I was still in the middle of James, when he, along with a crowd of fifty or so people, filed down a steep iron-railed stairway beside the Pioneer Building.

  That was when I realized that the group of pedestrians was actually part of a tour, a walking guided tour that makes hourly visits through what’s known as the Seattle Underground, an area of town that was cemented over shortly after the great fire of 1889. Third floors were arbitrarily declared ground floors and the streets and sidewalks were raised to that level. Bottle-bottom glass in iron grids was built into the sidewalks to provide light to the businesses that continued to prosper down below there for the next ten to twelve years.

  In the mid-sixties, fueled by post-World’s Fair euphoria, an enterprising Seattle entrepreneur had mucked out and shored up parts of the underground and had begun offering guided tours in the city’s dusty, rubble-filled basement.

  I had gone on the tour once myself, with my son’s Cub Scout den, and I knew from that visit that the stairs beneath the Pioneer Building formed the entrance to the last portion of the tour. It ended there with a locked door leading into the Underground’s museum and gift shop.

  So Christopher Davenport had made a big mistake. He had allowed himself to be trapped in a box canyon, a dead end.

  The tour’s guide had gone on ahead into another dimly lighted room while the last straggler held open the metal screened gate to let me in. “I got stuck in traffic,” I said apologetically.

  “No problem,” he replied, and hurried off after his wife and kiddies.

  I expected the place to be cool and quiet, but instead, just inside the door, a barred wooden gate led off to the left where three huge air-conditioning units threw off a tremendous amount of heat and noise.

  “Come on in here so you can hear,” the guide called from the next room. I did as I was told, edging into the room where a group of fifty or so people stood clumped around an old tin bathtub while the guide did a five-minute memorized talk. I worked my way through the crowd, looking for my quarry, but Davenport wasn’t there.

  When the guide wasn’t looking, I sidled into the next room, where lighted displays showed various old-time store windows. My feet sounded hollow on the heavy wooden planks. This room was cool and damp and lined with cobwebs. Chris Davenport was nowhere in sight, and there were no side passages where he could have hidden. I tried the door to the museum, but it was securely locked.

  I knew that once the guide had finished her talk, the audience would be free to wander around on their own for a few minutes before the door leading into the museum and gift shop was unlocked and the people were herded back upstairs.

  There was no way for Davenport to get out ahead of time, and he was not mingling with the group. So he must have slipped away in that first room somewhere. Chances were, he was still there.

  The guide was just finishing her talk as I came back through the middle room. She gave me a reproving glare, but I ignored her and went back to the entrance with its heat and noise, where muted sunlight filtered down the stairs and sifted in through the metal grating.

  I could see now that there was a crawl space that led back up past the air-conditioning units. Davenport had to be there. It was the only place left where he coul
d be hiding. Stepping quietly, I moved to one side of the wall just inside the door and waited.

  A good five minutes passed. Soon I heard the guide’s voice. “Everybody out?” she called.

  I didn’t answer. I stood pressed against the wall with the sweat running down my face, dripping into my eyes, blinding me. I didn’t wipe it away. The waiting seemed to go on forever; then, suddenly, I heard a noise, a muffled scraping noise that was different from the steady thrum of motors.

  He was back there, in with the mechanical equipment. I had him trapped. He moved forward cautiously, fumbling with the metal bar used to shut the wooden gate and discourage tourists from taking a wrong turn and straying off the guided path. Still I didn’t move. I stood, holding my breath, wanting to have him clearly out in front of me before I made a move and showed myself.

  Davenport backed into the light. He was carrying something in his hand, something heavy-looking.

  “Stop right there,” I commanded. “Drop it.”

  Instead, he swung around toward me. He was holding a hunk of iron grid studded with thick, purple glass. He moved so quickly that the piece of metal whacked into the barrel of my .38, knocking it loose from my hand and sending it skittering across the wooden walkway.

  In a split second I had to choose between going for him and going for the gun. The Smith and Wesson was too far away. I dove for Davenport’s knees and knocked him away from me. He grunted in surprise as the piece of metal dropped from his hand and fell harmlessly away.

  We were even now. No, that’s not true. We weren’t even, I was better off. I could tell from the way he fell that he didn’t know how, that he had never played a day’s worth of tackle football in his life. Chris Davenport was a goddamned wimp.

  He tried to squirm away from me, scrabbling toward the gun, but I caught him by the legs and hauled him back. I flipped him over on his back and held him one-handed by the neck of his shirt, while his bulgy little eyes almost popped out of his head.

  “Let me go. You’ve got nothing on me,” he screeched in panic. “You’re choking me.”