“What’s so funny?” he asked her.
“Who said anything was funny?”
“You’re sure acting like it.”
Serving his vodka-tonic, she affected a look of sorrowful consternation. “The truth is, I’m quite sad.”
“Is that a fact?”
“I’m afraid so. Trouble is, it’s just so easy to misjudge someone, you know? You say to yourself, ‘Now there’s a real prince of a fellow. Straight as an arrow. The kind of guy who wouldn’t play around if he owned his own escort service.’ You know the kind I mean?”
Baird groaned and looked past her, at Leo. “What’s she got on me anyway?”
Leo, drying a beer mug, shook his head. “Dunno, but it sounds serious.”
“Oh, you bet it is,” she said, taking a piece of note paper out of her apron pocket with a flourish. “Since I wrote it down, I will deign to read it. ‘Jack B. Call 324-1822, signed Jeffers.’ ” She looked up at him, innocence incarnate. “You know anyone by that name, Jack? A woman, with a kind of dark, sexy voice.”
“Sure,” he said, taking the note. “Jeffers, right? Yeah, I’ve been screwing her a lot lately. In fact, any woman that might call me here, you can pretty well assume that I’m boning her on a regular basis.”
Sally smiled. “Well, that’s none of our business.”
Down the bar, Wyatt Earp had a comment. “He’s a lucky fellow, all right.”
“What time did she call?” Baird asked.
“A little before five.”
Baird took a long drink. “Well, I suppose I’d better hurry over to her place. She’s probably hotter than a pistol by now.”
Since Leo and the others all seemed to be enjoying this, Sally decided to stay with it, to go on beating her poor dead horse as long as she could.
“Well, a patron’s sex life is his own business, I always say. Far be it from me to judge anyone who isn’t running a tab.”
Baird slid his empty glass toward Leo. “She’s your wife,” he said. “It’s your duty to beat her on a regular basis.”
“I know, I know.” Leo shook his head. “But she’s got wiles, Jack. Wiles you would not believe.”
Sally picked up the phone behind the bar and placed it in front of Baird, which gave everyone a good laugh.
“Oh yes I would,” he said.
An hour later, Baird sat waiting at a small table on the landing behind Ivar’s Salmon House restaurant. To his right, over a low chain-link fence, the waters of Lake Union lapped against the concrete of the landing. A mile to the south, across the lake, the tallest of the downtown skyscrapers were catching a few random rays of sunset, the cloud cover having finally begun to break up. In front of him were a few dozen tables, occupied mostly by tourists and university students, many of whom had food they had bought at the restaurant’s outdoor fish bar, famous for its fried clams.
In the distance, beyond the landing, was Portage Bay and the ship canal, which connected Lake Washington with Puget Sound. As such, it was one of the busiest waterways in America, at times the bearer of a seemingly endless stream of pleasure craft going out to the Sound or returning from it. And finally there was the Interstate bridge, virtually overhead, eight lanes of traffic that produced a roar so constant one barely heard it after a time, somehow could sit back and enjoy the water and the boats and the seabirds in what seemed like peace and quiet.
Still, Baird considered it an odd place to meet Detective Jeffers. She had sounded serious on the phone, as if there were some urgency to their meeting, so he would have expected her to suggest some out-of-the-way bar or even a parking lot. But convenience had seemed more important to her than privacy. She said that her home, recently purchased, was in the Wallingford neighborhood, just up the hill from Ivar’s. Baird had told her that he would be there in twenty minutes. Early, he had stopped at the fish bar to load up on fried oysters, french fries, cole slaw, and two coffees, which he then carried on a tray down to the landing.
He had just begun to eat when she arrived, again in jeans and boots, though with a UW Huskies sweatshirt in place of a T-shirt and jacket.
“I have an extra coffee,” he said as she sat down. “And if you want some oysters, I can spare a few.”
“Coffee would be fine,” she told him. “Thank you.”
As he passed her the cup she lit a cigarette and glanced out over the water. “I love it here at dusk,” she said, smiling at him now. “In fact, I love this town. I wouldn’t live anywhere else.”
He smiled wryly. “These days I’m not too fond of it.”
“That’s understandable.”
For a few moments neither of them said anything. Jeffers sat there looking at him with her smoky green eyes. She took another drag on her cigarette. Exhaling, she shook her head.
“I’m worried about you, you know.”
“You don’t have to be. I’m a cautious sort of guy.”
“Oh sure. Tracking down a psycho like Slade and threatening him.”
“Did Lucca send you here?”
That made her laugh. “No, I’m afraid not. But he’s the main reason I wanted to see you—to explain about that ridiculous scene at your house yesterday.”
“Ridiculous?” Baird said. “I don’t know. At the end, he seemed to explain things pretty clearly.”
“But he didn’t give you any reasons—just orders. The case he mentioned, it’s the same one I told you about—the bank clerk, Barbara Evans, the woman we think Slade raped. What we’re working on is his alibi, this friend of his who claims Slade was with him at the time. The man is lying, and he knows we know he’s lying, but he’s scared to death of Slade. They were in juvenile detention together—both of them about sixteen at the time—and he claims that back then, Slade bragged about killing some bum out around Kent. Supposedly he just picked out a guy at random, some drunk sleeping in an alley, and brained him with a hammer, then threw him in a dumpster.
“The story’s impossible to check, because bums are rarely reported missing and no body turned up. Which isn’t surprising. With the trucks they have nowadays, nobody looks inside the dumpster—they just power-lift it and dump it in the back, compress it, and out it goes to the landfill. God knows how many bodies there are in those places. So this guy’s story could be true. In any case, it’s something for you to think about. Good reason not to push Slade too far.”
Not yet finished with his oysters, Baird was glad that he had a good stomach. He also considered it a good thing that Jeffers had to lean close to be heard over the roar from the bridge. Otherwise he figured everyone around them would have been staring at her.
“You’ve got a point,” he said.
“You just can’t play games with this guy, Mister Baird. He’s obviously a criminal psychopath. You can’t predict his behavior. You may think you’re getting to him—scaring him, winning him over, whatever it is you’re trying to do—but you can’t rely on it. He might just smile and put a knife in you.”
Since Baird already knew this, or at least sensed it, the only words of hers that stuck in his mind were “Mister Baird.” “I realize all that,” he said. “And incidentally, my name is Jack. Friends, enemies, everybody calls me Jack.”
“I knew your name.”
“But you’d rather keep things formal?”
“Not at all—Jack.” She smiled. “And my name is not Detective, it’s Lee. My middle name actually. I can’t tell you the first one—my father had this thing about poets.”
“Let me guess,” he said. “Edgar?”
She laughed. “Edgar?”
“Edgar Lee Masters. Spoon River stuff.”
“No, I’m afraid not. But it would be an improvement.”
“One more shot, okay?” he said. “Annabel?”
“My God!” She looked genuinely astonished. “You’re kind of spooky.”
“‘I and my Annabel Lee, in this kingdom by the sea.’ Tennyson, right? I used to teach English in high school.”
“Now that I didn’t
know.”
“I liked the summers off.”
Her smile faded. “He was a Jamaican. My mother is French Creole. When I was eleven, he was killed robbing a bank.”
Baird looked closely at her. “Are you serious?”
“Afraid so.”
“I’m sorry.”
She turned and gazed out at the lake, where a large white sailboat was moving past, under power, headed for Lake Washington. “He was no damn good,” she said.
“Well, he appears to have had good genes.” Baird wanted to bite his tongue. It was the kind of inane comment he liked to leave unsaid.
She made no reply, and the two of them slipped into an awkward silence. He had no idea what to say next, for he still couldn’t quite understand the purpose of this supposedly urgent meeting. Granted, it was important for him to know about the dumpster killing, but Jeffers had already told him about the Discovery Park case and that Slade was still a suspect in that murder. Then too, she could have told him all this on the telephone. Of course there was still Sally’s interpretation of things, but Baird knew better. A woman who looked like Lee Jeffers certainly wouldn’t lack for amorous opportunities. And being a detective—apparently an ambitious one—she would know better than to get into an affair with a married man, especially one involved in a case she was working on. Now if he had been ten years younger and ten times richer, then maybe Sally would have been on the right track. But not now. He was confident of that.
“I appreciate your telling me about this,” he said finally. “I mean about Slade. I’ll be careful. I’ll try not to see him again.”
“Try?”
“Correction—I won’t see him again.”
The green eyes regarded him coolly, almost knowingly, as if she had been taking lessons from Ellen. “I wish I could believe that,” she said, lighting another cigarette.
For some reason, Baird could not bring himself to reassure her.
Exhaling, she shook her head in puzzlement. “You know, one of the strangest aspects of this whole thing is Sergeant Lucca’s attitude toward you. And that’s one of the reasons I wanted to see you again—to explain things. I can imagine how much he pisses you off.”
Baird shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. I just figured he’s got a nasty disposition.”
She gave a wry smile. “I’m afraid that’s about it. He’s a terrific detective. They say he’s got a better record than the chief himself. But I’m afraid it’s his whole life. He had a couple of brief marriages. No kids. He never dates, never takes time off. He must have years of vacation time built up. And…well, that’s all there is. He seems to get colder and ruder every day he lives—not just to the public, but to us too, his fellow dicks. But I guess he’s reserved a special place in hell for citizens who try to do our job for us.”
“Cheeky bastards like me, you mean.”
“He might say that. I wouldn’t.”
Baird was hoping he finally had heard the last about Sergeant Lucca, but Jeffers unfortunately had more for him. “It’s weird, but the only people he’s consistently decent to are the enemy—our suspects and perps. Them, he gives every consideration. His bible, I guess, is the Rights of the Accused. Which is one of the reasons the guys call him Bleeding Hart. Hart’s his first name, you see.”
In Baird’s mind a caution light had come on. Why, he wondered, was she telling him all this if not to disarm him, make him think that he and she were on the same side, against Lucca. Forget him, she seemed to be saying. Trust me. Tell me your plans.
He smiled now, almost apologetically. “I hate to be rude myself, but I really don’t give a damn about your sergeant. It’s you I’d prefer to know about.”
“Like what?”
“Well, like do you brush your teeth sideways or up and down?”
Jeffers laughed, showing her beautiful teeth. “Neither,” she said. “I just run my tongue over them now and then.”
“I’ll have to try that.” Catching her look, he amended his statement. “On my own teeth.”
From that point on, their conversation was more casual, less about Slade and the case and more about themselves, especially about Detective Jeffers. After her father’s death in New Orleans, her mother had moved to Los Angeles with Lee and Lee’s two older brothers. At eighteen, Lee moved to Seattle on her own and gradually worked her way through the university, getting a bachelor’s degree in Law Enforcement Administration. At twenty-five, she joined the Seattle police force and despite the benefits of affirmative action, was not promoted to detective until she was thirty-one, five years before.
She had been married twice: at eighteen to a local rich kid whose family managed to get the marriage annulled, and then, a decade later, to a narcotics detective who became such a heavy cocaine user himself that he eventually quit the force and became a dealer. Jeffers had divorced him by then and ever since, she said, had managed to stay “free and clear of men.”
“For now, that’s the way I like it,” she went on. “If Mister Right ever comes along, I’ll probably arrest him for loitering or something.”
It was dark by now. Across the lake the downtown skyscrapers had a cold, unearthly beauty, which perversely came to life on the water, where their myriad lights shimmered gold and white, even gas-company blue. Close by, the ducks and seagulls were ending their long day of warfare, the ducks as usual winning in the water, while the gulls controlled the air. Baird picked the last morsel off his tray, a french fry, and tossed it to the ducks, one of which gobbled it on the fly.
“You ready to go?” he asked.
Jeffers nodded. “Yes. It’s getting cool.”
Baird followed her up the gangway and fell in beside her as they went around to the front of the restaurant, passing under the trees.
“I’ll walk you to your car,” he said.
She smiled at him. “Then you’ll have quite a walk. I left it at home. I wanted the exercise.”
“Then I’ll drive you home.”
“What about my exercise?”
“It’s already dark,” he said. “On foot in this town at night—you want to chance that?”
“Come to think of it—no. Police protection being what it is.”
Baird smiled. When they came to his car, he unlocked the passenger door and closed it behind her, even though he knew it was an unnecessarily chivalrous gesture. Ellen, in similar circumstances, would probably have informed the man of his gaffe. But Lee Jeffers said nothing.
As Baird got in next to her, she ran her hand along the edge of the seat. “Real leather, huh? I love the smell.”
“Well, this is my office,” he explained. “I spend a lot of time in it. And then too, it’s deductible.”
“It still smells good.”
Baird smiled at that, for some reason unperturbed that she had just stuck a pin in one of his gassier balloons.
After she gave him directions, he told her that he didn’t smell the leather at all. “Just your perfume,” he added.
“I don’t wear perfume.”
“Maybe your shampoo then.”
“It’s unscented.”
He looked at her and found her smiling, evidently still having a little fun with him. And he wondered if she comprehended in the slightest the effect she had on him—as she undoubtedly would have had on most men—in such close quarters. Her legs in the tight jeans, her lustrous black hair, the curve of her breasts under the sweatshirt, her eyes so beautiful and expressive in the dashboard’s glow—there seemed to be nothing else in the car, nothing else anywhere.
“We’re here,” she said. “The brown one on the right.”
On each side of the street was a row of almost identical bungalows, one-time blue-collar homes now prized as yuppie starter houses, close to downtown, well-made, good investments.
“If it weren’t for the house across the street,” she said, “I’d have a view of the lake.”
“Damned inconsiderate of them.”
“I know.”
Though sh
e had her hand on the door, she didn’t open it yet. And suddenly her expression was grave. “No more personal meetings with Slade, okay?”
“What if he keeps turning up, a hundred feet away?”
She shrugged. “There’s no law against it. But if he does, call me, all right?”
“At the station?”
“Or here.”
“Okay,” he said. “And thank you.”
She smiled at him. “Well, thank you. For the coffee. And the lift.”
It was an awkward moment. Baird wanted very much to reach over and touch her in some way, shake her hand or maybe even kiss her on the cheek. But it was not his way, trying to get close to a woman other than Ellen. And even if he could have overcome that inhibition, he knew he would only have made the moment more awkward. So he didn’t move. Jeffers opened the door and got out of the car.
“I’ll wait till you get inside,” he said.
She laughed again, just as she had that first night. “I’m armed, remember?”
Baird didn’t give Ellen any explanation for his lateness other than to repeat what he’d said on the phone: that he had stopped off at Leo’s. He was still afraid that they had not seen the last of Slade and that he might have to resume his campaign against him, “get in his face,” as he considered it. And to do that without arousing Ellen’s suspicions, he figured he would have to first set up a pattern of unexplained late nights. He knew this wasn’t going to add to the peace and harmony of his home life, but he considered that a small price to pay for Kathy’s safety.
There was no sign of Slade the next few days, however. And on Thursday night Ellen dragged Baird and Kathy to a local theater group’s presentation of a play titled Checking Off, which the playbill described as a “stunning send-up of Chekhov’s Three Sisters.” Since Baird was not even a fan of legitimate theater, believing the movies could almost always do it better, avant-garde theater was to him simply another word for agony, especially when it was presented on the cheap in a one-time Baptist Church that should have been claimed by fire generations past. Almost everything in the building was wood, and all of it creaked, especially the seats. Unhappily the wood also magnified sound, bouncing decibels back and forth like Ping Pong balls. Worst of all was the kind of sound it bounced: the local theatrical crowd in full throat, able finally to let it all out, the honk and squawk and screech of phony accents, all that gassy thespian enthusiasm they had to keep in check nine-to-five at the ad agency. And this being Capitol Hill, there was no shortage of men gesturing like Bette Davis, no dearth of large, crew-cut females in suits and ties, hulking over their pretty little dates, girls who looked like Dutch boys.
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