by J. A. Jance
"And I'm sure you three are going to give her your full cooperation," Powell said with an encouraging smile.
"Absolutely," Detective Kramer replied at once, deftly executing a judicious U-turn. It amazed me that he could pull it off without so much as missing a beat. And without Captain Powell catching on to his game, either. "No question about that," Kramer continued. "We were just about to start dividing up responsibilities."
"How?" Powell asked.
No one had previously discussed the division of labor, but once again Kramer covered himself. "Since Beaumont here was already tracking down the floater's background and next-of-kin notification, we thought he should go on with that while Detective Arnold and I go to work on the neighborhood here."
The captain nodded. "Sounds reasonable," he said. "Let's not stand around here jawing about it, either. Get busy. I was in a meeting with Chief Rankin when the call came in. Do you realize that, counting this one, the city of Seattle now has a total of four homicides in just over two days? And if the one critical-condition drive-by victim at Harborview kicks off, that'll make five? Believe me, that doesn't bode well for the year, and it doesn't bode well for the chief, either. I'm putting you both on notice that he's going to be wanting progress. Immediate progress!"
"So what else is new?" I asked with a shrug. I couldn't resist the jibe. When the brass starts jumping up and down and demanding results yesterday, when they lose track of the fact that instant results often breed long-term disaster, that's when I have a hard time keeping a civil tongue in my mouth. In those situations, faced with all that bureaucratic huffing and puffing, I think a little healthy disrespect is good for all concerned. Kramer's exasperated answering glower warned me that he disagreed.
No doubt he wanted to distance himself from my moderately disrespectful jibe. Maybe he was worried that some of my reputation as Homicide's smart-ass-in-residence might rub off on him. And, although my comment may have irked Detective Kramer, it seemed to have very little effect on Captain Powell, who was more than capable of taking recalcitrant homicide cops in stride.
"Where do you stand on your end of it, Detective Beaumont?"
"I'd best be making some phone calls," I told him. "If Lizbeth Wolf turns out to be alive and well down in San Diego, then our tentative identification is wrong and we've got a Jane Doe dead in that apartment and two sets of next-of-kin notifications to handle."
"Get with the program, then," Powell told me. He turned to Kramer and Arnold. "And you two guys are canvassing the neighborhood?"
Kramer nodded. "And talking to the people in the building? All we're waiting on is an approximate time of death so we have some idea what to ask."
About that time, the elevator door opened. A police photographer stepped into the hallway. Captain Powell waved her into the apartment just as Audrey Cummings emerged, peeling off a pair of latex gloves. She must have heard the tail end of Kramer's answer.
"I'd say she's been dead for days. My guess, pending the autopsy, is two or three, but it could be less. The extreme heat in the apartment may have distorted the condition of the body. Who's going to be working on the identification?"
"I am," I answered. "I.D. and next of kin both."
Audrey nodded. "Good. Let me know what you find out. And remember, Beaumont. Positive I.D. None of this secondhand crap."
"Sure thing," I said. "I'll get on it right away."
I pushed the down button. When the elevator came, Jack Braman was inside and running the controls with a key. "That way, I can keep track of who comes and goes," he told me apologetically. "There's a whole bunch of reporters downstairs. I was afraid some of them would sneak into the garage and then go on upstairs without anyone knowing."
"Good thinking," I told him.
He stood there looking at me. The elevator key was in the lock, but since he hadn't pushed any buttons as yet, we still weren't moving.
"Is something wrong?" I asked.
He shrugged. "I was just wondering if…well, you know…"
"Know what?"
"Who it is? The person who's dead, I mean?"
"We don't know for sure. It may be his wife. We're checking."
"That would sure be better for me," he said.
His comment mystified me. "Better for you? What would?"
"If it turned out to be his wife," Braman replied. The elevator stopped, but he switched off the key, and the door didn't open. "Husbands and wives knock each other off all the time," he said. "That kind of thing happens. But if a hooker or even just a girlfriend were to turn up dead in the building, people might think I wasn't doing such a good job of managing the building. You understand that, don't you?"
"You're telling me that from a PR standpoint, it's more respectable for the building and better for your job performance if the victim turns out to be a resident's wife instead of a girlfriend or a prostitute?"
Braman nodded. "Don't you think so?" he asked, turning the key and opening the door.
"Actually," I told him, "I've never given the matter a whole lot of thought."
Just as Braman had warned me, a miniconvocation of local representatives of the Fourth Estate was taking place in the entry courtyard of the Lake View Condominiums. Phil Grimes, the guy who'd been tapped to replace Ron Peters in Media Relations, was standing in the middle of the crowd and being bombarded by the roving pack of reporters. It seemed obvious to me that since he'd just arrived on the scene, he probably wouldn't have much of anything to report. That didn't keep the newsies from peppering him with questions.
Using Grimes as a diversion, I headed for my car. I was almost there and thinking I had made a clean getaway when I heard someone calling me. "Detective Beaumont."
I stopped and looked back. Behind me, missing her cameraman, was the same television reporter I'd encountered twice the previous day, both at Pier 70 and out in front of Belltown Terrace during the soapsuds debacle. High heels clicking on the cement, she came hurrying after me. She was surprisingly old for a female television reporter-forty at least-but her makeup and clothing certainly made the most of what was there.
"Maribeth George," she said, holding out her hand. "Could I talk to you for a minute?"
Knowing who she was and what she did, I didn't exactly fall all over myself in my eagerness for a private chat. Years of being a cop have bred in me an instinctive distrust for the media-any kind of media. Even good-looking women in nice clothing. Maybe especially good-looking women.
"Miss George," I said coolly. "No doubt you've been in the news game long enough to know that detectives aren't supposed to talk to reporters."
My rebuff didn't seem to faze her. "Not even off the record?" she asked. "I left Stan and his camera over there," she added, jerking her head back toward the noisy group of reporters still eddying around Phil Grimes. "It's just the two of us. No recording devices of any kind."
"What do you want to talk about?" I asked.
Maribeth George had short brunette hair with a vivid streak of white that started just over her left eyebrow. Her dark-gray eyes, fringed by long, thick lashes, were made darker still by the carefully applied makeup that surrounded them.
"Somebody's dead in there, right?"
I nodded. With Audrey's van emblazoned with a KING COUNTY MEDICAL EXAMINER logo parked in the driveway, there wasn't much point in denying the obvious.
"Is this victim related to…" Maribeth George paused, "to yesterday's shooting victim down by Pier Seventy?"
I crossed my arms. The response was absolutely instinctive. So far, all that should have been internal law enforcement information only, including the fact that Don Wolf had died of a gunshot wound rather than drowning. As soon as I made the defensive, giveaway gesture, I could have kicked myself for it. Instead, I tried to cover up the instinctive faux pas.
"Shooting victim?" I asked, feigning innocence.
The reporter's somber gray eyes grew troubled and darker still. "The man they fished out of the water yesterday. Is that case related to this one? And i
f so, who are these people?"
"With regard to the second question, we're withholding names pending notification of next of kin. As for the first one, now that you mention it, maybe you'd like to explain to me exactly what makes you think that the man in the water was shot."
"A woman in a wheelchair told me," Maribeth George answered at once.
"What woman in what wheelchair?"
"The one down at Pier Seventy yesterday morning. She wasn't actually on the pier when I got there, but she said she had been. She claimed she was one of the people who found the body, but she didn't give me her name. In fact, she refused to give me her name. And now…" Maribeth's voice trailed off into nothing.
"Now what?" I prodded.
"I know you were working on that other case yesterday. I saw you there. And I know that homicide cases get passed around in rotation, so you most likely wouldn't be working on a new one unless it was somehow related to the one you were already working on. Right?"
I suppose one of the reasons detectives and journalists are always at one another's throats is that we're so much alike. We're all in the business of finding out what happened and who did what to whom, and we all want to be first in nailing down that information. An observant Maribeth George had put two and two together. Reporters, especially good-looking ones who are smart enough to come up with the correct answer of four, are definitely bad company for the likes of me.
"I trust you'll forgive me if right this minute I can't say yes or no," I said, reaching into my pocket and pulling out a card. "But I would most definitely be interested in whether or not this wheelchair lady of yours calls again."
Maribeth studied my face for a moment before she took the card. "I see," she said. "So that's how it is."
I nodded. She shrugged and stuffed my card into the pocket of her blazer. "I doubt I'll hear from her again," Maribeth said.
"But if you do, you can reach me at any one of those numbers," I said helpfully.
Maribeth George smiled. "Or I could just come across the street from the station and buzz you on your security phone. By the way, whatever happened with that soapsuds thing? The manager told me he thought little girls who live in the building were responsible for making the mess."
Talking to women can be mind-boggling at times. Maribeth George skipped effortlessly from murder to soapsuds in less than a heartbeat. "The girls didn't have anything to do with it," I answered shortly.
"You know them then?" Maribeth asked. "The little girls, I mean."
"Yes." I didn't add that I had supposedly been in charge of the girls at the time in question. Had I been doing my child-care job properly, the finger of suspicion never would have been pointed in their direction in the first place.
"The girls aren't yours, are they?"
"No. They're the daughters of a friend of mine."
"Well," she said, giving me one of her cards in exchange for mine. "Whoever did it," she said, "it doesn't seem like that big a deal."
"Right," I said. "It isn't. Now back to your wheelchair lady. You aren't planning to write anything about her, are you?"
Our conversation was like a fast-moving game of Ping-Pong with first one player on the offensive and then the other. It was my turn to spike the ball over the net. That comment immediately put Maribeth George on the defensive.
"I was," Maribeth said after a pause.
"Please don't," I said. "Not right away. If you run it prematurely, there's a chance it could jeopardize the investigation."
"Which one?" she asked.
I shook my head and didn't answer. "Maybe both?" she asked. The woman was downright dangerous. "What about after you make an arrest?"
"At that point," I said, "you're welcome to broadcast anything you want. You'll wait then?"
She nodded. "I suppose," she said.
I started to walk away, then turned back to her with one last question. "There were a lot of people down at Pier Seventy yesterday morning. Why do you think the wheelchair lady picked you out of the crowd as the person to talk to-or did she talk to lots of people and you're the only one who's bothered to come forward?"
Maribeth shrugged and laughed a surprisingly self-deprecating laugh. "You know how it is when you're a media babe," she said with a grin. "Lots of people feel like they know you even though you don't know them. I've been a frequent and almost daily guest in thousands of homes since I came back to Seattle last summer. She probably thinks of me as a friend of the family."
"Media babe?" I repeated, not quite believing my ears. "I would have thought…"
Maribeth laughed aloud. When she did, I noticed that her teeth were white and straight. "That the words media babe aren't exactly politically correct," I added.
"You're right," she agreed. "They aren't, and I'd strongly recommend against you using them in public, especially if there are female reporters anywhere within hearing distance. It's like African Americans and the N word. When blacks use it on other blacks, they usually do so with impunity. If you or I were to use it, all hell would break loose."
"What would happen if I called you a media babe?"
She grinned again. "You know about hell, fury, and women, don't you?"
I'm not used to joking around with reporters, but I laughed in spite of myself. "I feel the same way about outsiders who call detectives dicks," I told her.
"See there?" she said.
Phil Grimes disappeared into the building. We could both see that the group that had surrounded him was starting to break up. "Hey, Maribeth," the cameraman called. "Where'd you run off to?"
"Gotta go," she said to me. "See you around."
She trotted off to rejoin her cameraman, and I climbed into my car. Glancing at my watch, I was surprised to see that the afternoon was half shot. It was already after three. Other than finding a second body, I had accomplished very little. I still had done nothing at all about contacting Don Wolf's next of kin or about finding some kind of foolproof verification for Lizbeth Wolf's I.D. Bearing all that in mind, I headed straight for the office.
On my way to my cubicle in the Public Safety Building, I had to walk directly past Sergeant Watkins' desk.
"Wait a minute," Watty said. "Don't go down there without taking this with you."
He handed me a large white envelope with D.G.I.'s return address printed in the upper right-hand corner. The words HANDLE WITH CARE-CONTAINS VIDEOTAPES had been handwritten in huge block letters across the top of the envelope. No doubt these were the tapes Deanna Compton was going to copy and send me.
Watty looked up at me and grinned. "What is it?" he asked. "One of those Blockbuster evenings?"
"Not exactly," I told him. "I don't think any of these will be quite that good."
As I continued down the hallway I ripped open the envelope and shook out the contents. A typed memo fell into my hand along with the three tapes.
To: Detective J. P. Beaumont
From: Deanna Compton
Enclosed please find copies of the tapes you requested. I have cued them all to what I believe are the pertinent spots so you won't have to go scrolling through the whole thing.
If I can be of any further assistance, please be sure to let me know.
Deanna Compton, for Bill Whitten
For a moment, I considered calling Designer Genes International and letting Bill Whitten know what was going on, that Don Wolf's wife was most likely dead right along with her husband. But I decided against it. Just because Audrey Cummings didn't think Bill Whitten was capable of shooting someone didn't mean I had to agree. As far as I was concerned, Whitten was still a suspect.
With the tapes and note still in hand, I bypassed my own office in favor of one of the small conference rooms at the end of the hall. There, I plugged the first tape into the slot of the VCR. I had a one-in-three chance of picking the right tape first time up to bat, and I won big.
True to her word, Deanna Compton had cued the tape to the right place. When the tape came on the screen, Latty and Don Wolf were sta
nding in the elevator. Wolf was standing next to the controls, and Latty was pressed into the far corner, with as much distance between the two of them as was humanly possible in that confined space.
I watched the whole sequence. The whole time they were in the elevator they maintained an absolute silence. "One down, two to go," I said, pulling the useless tape out of the VCR and inserting another.
The second tape was the one with the rape on it. There was no need to watch that one again. I ejected it, and inserted the third. This time, the screen held two separate, side-by-side images. Both cameras were mounted from much the same position over the front entryway door of D.G.I., but they were aimed in opposite directions. One looked out on the driveway and the busy street beyond. The other focused on the front door of the building. The readout in the corner of the screen said: DECEMBER 28, 12:06:32 A.M. That meant this was from Thursday morning, less than ten minutes after Don Wolf's assault on the girl named Latty.
Seconds later, the elevator door opened. Latty and Don Wolf came across the lighted lobby toward the door. Wolf was still dressed in his shirt sleeves; Latty still clutched his oversized jacket around her ruined clothing.
As they came toward the lobby door, a sudden movement from the other part of the screen caught my eye. Glancing there, I expected to see the arrival of a cab. Instead, the driveway area where the cab would naturally have stopped was empty. Puzzled about the unidentified movement, I flipped the remote control to rewind.
Because I don't watch television all that much, I'm not nearly as handy with what Heather calls clickers as Ron's two girls are. Naturally, I overshot the mark and came to a stop with the readout showing DECEMBER 27, 11:45:50 P.M. I had rewound beyond the place where I wanted to stop by almost twenty-five minutes.
"Damn!" I muttered aloud. "Too far."
I was about to fast-forward the tape when a car slid into the camera's viewfinder and stopped in front of the building. The headlights went off, but no one got out. From everything Bill Whitten had said, I had assumed Don Wolf and Latty had been alone in the building, but here, only a few minutes before the two of them had appeared on the screen in Don Wolf's office, someone else had made a midnight call on the headquarters of Designer Genes International.
