Proof of Life

by J. A. Jance

  “You’re losing it for sure,” I chastised myself aloud, which I admit wasn’t a big improvement over talking to the dog. Rambo may not have understood a word I was saying, but she thumped her tail at that comment, too.

  Unplugging my phone and iPad from their chargers, I took them and my cup of coffee into the living room, where my first call of the day was to Todd Hatcher.

  “Hey,” he said. “Long time no hear. How are things up in Bellingham?”

  “So-so,” I told him.

  “Right,” he said. “I heard about the OIS. Those are always tough.” (OIS is cop shorthand for officer-involved shooting.) “How’s Mel doing on that score?”

  “All right, I guess. The bad guy’s arraignment is today.”

  “How’s the officer?” Todd asked.

  “Still on administrative leave. The jerk shot him with a BB gun that looked for all the world like the real thing. I have no doubt that the incident will end up being declared a righteous shooting.”

  “Good,” Todd said. “Glad to hear it. Now, to what do I owe the honor?”

  “I’m calling to ask a favor,” I said. “I need some background information on a guy named Thomas Raines. I believe he’s a literary agent operating somewhere in the Seattle area.”

  “A literary agent?” Todd shot back. “Are you about to turn your hand to writing—like maybe you want to be the next Lieutenant Joe Kenda?”

  I knew about the TV series; in fact I had even watched a few episodes of Homicide Hunter. Although Kenda and I operated in different parts of the country, our mutual years in homicide more or less paralleled each other’s, and I sort of liked the guy’s plainspoken, matter-of-fact way of dealing with life-and-death matters.

  “Hardly,” I answered. “I’m investigating the death of an old acquaintance of mine, a guy named Maxwell Cole. Supposedly he was writing a book, and I’m told Raines was his agent. Max died last week in a house fire that has been officially ruled as accidental, but some of Max’s nearest and dearest think he may have been murdered.”

  “And something in this manuscript may have had something to do with it?” Todd asked.

  “Exactly,” I said. “I’ve been led to believe that what happened may have something to do with a homicide I investigated years ago. The victim’s name was Marcia Kelsey. I’d like to see if you can locate her widower—a Vietnam War–era army deserter whose real name is John Madsen. I’m short on details at the moment. I think he hailed from somewhere in the Midwest—North or South Dakota maybe.”

  “Okay,” Todd said. “I’ll be glad to look into all of this, but it won’t be until later on today. I’m fighting a deadline at the moment.”

  “Whenever you get around to it will be fine,” I told him. “Say hi to Julie for me.”

  “Will do,” he said and signed off.

  I read the online papers for a while. When it was time for my second cup of coffee, I returned to the kitchen to find that Rambo hadn’t moved. And that’s when I made up my mind. While I was waiting to see what Todd came up with, why not take a crack at finding out about Rambo’s situation as far as microchip and vaccination records were concerned?

  I located the phone number for the Bellingham PetsMart and learned that they did indeed have a vet on the premises. Taking my coffee with me, I returned to the master bedroom long enough to shower, shave, and dress.

  Once back in the kitchen, I gathered up my keys and wallet. Then, collecting the leash, I looked down at the dog and asked, “Do you want to go?”

  That’s when I discovered the word “go” happened to be one Rambo understood completely. She bounded off her bed and headed straight to the door, and not just any door, either, but to the correct one—the one that led out back to the garage and to where the car was parked rather than to the front yard.

  I fastened the leash to her brand-new leather collar and away we went. On Sunday evening, when she’d been riding in the back of Mel’s car, the dog had been through a trying day and had huddled miserably in a corner of the backseat. Obviously, today she was feeling better—more secure maybe? This time Rambo stood in the backseat of my S 550—taking up most of it, by the way—with her chin resting on my left-hand shoulder while I drove. I couldn’t help but be touched by the gesture—in more ways than one. By the time we arrived at our destination, I discovered a trail of dog slobber had left indelible tracks on the shoulder of my sport jacket.

  When we got to the parking lot, I wasn’t sure what to do—leave the dog in the car or take her inside? Looking around the parking lot, I noticed that other people, accompanied by dogs on leashes and seemingly without a care in the world, were walking in and out of the store. It wasn’t long before I decided to do the same. I’ll admit, I was more than a little worried about how Rambo would react not only to unfamiliar surroundings but also to the presence of strange dogs. Much to my surprise, she seemed totally at ease.

  When I asked a clerk up front about checking for a microchip, she immediately directed us to the veterinarian’s office located at the back of the store. On the way there, some fuzzy but fierce little leashed dog came charging out of a side aisle, barking its little head off. Much to Rambo’s credit, she shied out of the way but kept right on walking.

  When we reached the vet’s reception area, Rambo was tall enough that she could stand flat-footed with her chin resting on the counter. Giving the dog a wary look, the clerk seated there asked, “May I help you?”

  “I’m fostering this dog,” I explained. “I need to see if she has a microchip and to figure out whether or not her shots are up to date.”

  “Of course,” she said. “No problem. We check for chips all the time. Right this way. What’s your dog’s name?”

  “Rambo.”

  “What kind of dog is he?” she asked, bringing out a wand that looked like something the TSA might use at an airport check-in.

  “Irish wolfhound we think,” I answered. “And it’s a she not a he.”

  “Rambo’s a girl?” she asked. “Are you kidding?”

  “Look,” I said. “we’re just adopting the dog; we didn’t get to name her.”

  “Okay then,” she said, passing the wand over Rambo’s shoulder, “here we go, and yes, she does have a chip.” The woman studied the wand for a moment or two, and then scribbled some information onto a piece of paper, which she handed over to me. On it were two sets of numbers. The first one was long enough to resemble the serial number on a refrigerator. The second was a phone number.

  “What do I do with these?”

  “The first number is the one on Rambo’s chip,” she told me. “The other number is the chip provider’s toll-free number. If you call there, someone should be able to tell you what you need to know.”

  I was in the process of dialing the number when a woman approached the counter with two little dogs who immediately and vocally decided that Rambo was their sworn enemy. What the hell is it about little dogs? At any rate, I decided that the phone call would be best made from the privacy of my car. Back to the parking lot we went, and I placed the call from there.

  Although the clerk had said the people at the chip company would help me, it turns out that wasn’t exactly true. As the agent at the call center carefully explained to me, it was her job to take the chip number and then call the pet’s owners to let them know the missing animal’s current location. I tried to explain to her, quite reasonably, I thought, that Rambo wasn’t actually missing. I was the dog’s new caregiver—“new human” were the words the call center agent used—and I was merely attempting to locate Rambo’s shot records.

  Mel is an expert at bucking bureaucracies—at going over, through, or around them. Me? Not so much. I didn’t try explaining that any call to the telephone number the chip people had on record would most likely go unanswered due to the fact that a) Kenneth Purcell was in jail and b) the rest of the family was in hiding. In any event, the call center person was utterly obdurate. She didn’t come right out and say, “You’ll find sympa
thy in the dictionary between shit and syphilis,” but it was very close.

  I upped my volume and asked to speak to her supervisor, and to her supervisor, and to the supervisor beyond that. Eventually I was advised that although they were unable to give me any additional information about Rambo’s owners (which I already had, by the way), they could at least give me the name of the vet who had installed the microchip. Hallelujah!

  Within minutes I was on the phone to the practice of someone named Dr. Dennis White. The woman there listened quietly while I told her that Rambo was temporarily in my wife’s and my care and that I needed her shot records. Moments later I was both surprised and relieved to be told that Rambo’s shots were completely up to date. That meant I didn’t have to take the poor dog back inside PetsMart and have her shot full of unnecessary holes. Not only that, but Rambo had a valid license in Bellingham, although the tag itself wasn’t currently in my possession.

  “If you’re going to board her or take her on a plane and someone needs her info,” Dr. White’s clerk advised me, “just have whoever it is call here. I’ll be glad to fax them whatever information they need.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you so much.”

  I was about to hang up. “One other thing,” Dr. White’s assistant added.

  “What’s that?”

  “Are Nancy and the kids okay?” she asked.

  Clearly the clerk knew more about the Purcells’ family situation than I would have expected.

  “They’re fine,” I said.

  “Thank goodness,” she breathed. “And whoever you are, thank you for looking after Rambo. She’s a very good dog.”

  CHAPTER 12

  RAMBO AND I WERE ON OUR WAY HOME FROM WHAT I REGARDED as an altogether successful trip to PetsMart when the phone rang. It was Todd.

  “I thought you were on a deadline,” I told him. “I didn’t expect to hear back from you this soon.”

  “I don’t have all of your info, but I do have some,” Todd said. “I have a couple of student interns working for me these days, and I put one of them on the case. From the information she just handed me, I can tell you that Thomas Raines is seventy-six years old, a Seattle native who attended Franklin High School. In the eighties he was an outspoken gay activist, raising money for AIDS research on the one hand and for comprehensive care for patients diagnosed with AIDS on the other. From what I can gather, back then the care in question amounted to little more than hospice kinds of services due to the fact that regular hospitals weren’t eager to admit patients suffering from AIDS.”

  Remembering back to the bad old days, I knew all of that to be true. In the beginning, being given an AIDS diagnosis had been an automatic death sentence.

  Look, I came of age in the fifties. I know how gay people were treated back then—the insults, the name-calling, the bullying. Much as I’d like to pretend otherwise, I’m sure I was guilty of those kinds of baiting on occasion. Kids who didn’t quite fit in were in for it. As for the ones who were suspected of being gay? They had more to deal with than just the torment dished out at school or on the playground. I’m sure plenty of scorn and denial was served up by their families at home, right along with the evening meal.

  I remember a long-ago homicide case where a woman, the mother of a recently deceased AIDS victim, had insisted to her son’s grieving partner that if her son had somehow developed AIDS, he must have gotten it from a toilet seat! That was the beginning of my own personal wake-up call.

  As for Thomas Raines? “If the guy was ‘out’ in public back then,” I told Todd, “we’re talking about a gay guy with balls.”

  Todd laughed. “I have to agree with you there. He was a lot more ‘out’ back then than he is these days. He started his literary agency about fifteen years ago. The authors he represents are mostly mainstream fiction—mysteries and sci-fi both. He also represents a couple of true crime writers, and several of those seem to be doing very well. Raines and his longtime partner, a retired real estate developer, live in a penthouse condo out in Madison Park. That’s where you come in.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Have you ever heard of six degrees of separation?”

  “Sure,” I replied. “It’s the idea that every person is somehow linked to every other person through a network of intersecting lines.”

  “Close enough,” Todd agreed. “In this instance, you and Thomas Raines share the same interior designer. There was a big spread about Raines and his partner’s condo in a national architectural magazine. I recognized the designer’s name because Julie and I met Jim Hunt when we came to the open house for Harry I. Ball’s condo remodel, remember?”

  It turns out I remembered very well. I had roped Jim, my personal decorator, into spearheading the project to make Harry’s place more accessible to someone who was a double amputee. It had been a complex undertaking, and we had all been there—Jim, Mel, and me along with all the other people from S.H.I.T.—to welcome Harry home from the hospital upon his release from rehab. Come to think of it, Margie had been absolutely aglow that day when she drove him home and wheeled him into the house. I should have known at the time that something was up.

  As for Thomas Raines and Jim Hunt? They were about the same age—mid-seventies. The AIDS scourge in Seattle in the eighties had greatly reduced the numbers of surviving gay men in that demographic. Based on that, it was hardly surprising that the two of them would know one another.

  “Anyway,” Todd continued, “I’m e-mailing you a report of sorts. It includes contact information, addresses, etc. Remember it was done by an intern, so don’t expect it to be professional grade, highly organized, or grammatically correct, but I think it’ll give you what you need.”

  “Thanks, Todd,” I told him. “I owe you big-time. The next time you and Julie are in town, dinner’s on me.”

  I hung up the phone and immediately dialed Jim Hunt’s number. He is not your basic morning person, but it was early afternoon now, and I was pretty sure he’d be up taking nourishment.

  “What gives, Beau?” he asked when he answered the phone. I still haven’t quite adjusted to this new world order in which everyone on earth knows who’s calling on the phone long before they even say hello.

  “I’m looking for some help,” I told him.

  “You’ve bought another house,” he said at once.

  That made me laugh. “No,” I said, “not that. An acquaintance of mine died in a house fire on Queen Anne Hill last weekend, and I’ve been asked to look into the situation.”

  “Maxwell Cole?” Jim asked.

  That stopped me cold. “You knew him?” I asked.

  “I knew of him,” Jim corrected. “I remember reading some of his stuff back in the day, but it was big news over the weekend. Not that many fatality house fires on Queen Anne Hill recently. I put two and two together and came up with four.”

  “I’m really calling about someone else right now,” I said. “Thomas Raines.”

  “What about him?”

  “My understanding is that Max was working on a book—had most likely even sold a book—and that Thomas Raines was his literary agent. What can you tell me about the guy?”

  “When it comes to furniture, he has way better taste than you do,” Jim said, “although that’s not really saying much.”

  “No, it’s not,” I agreed, “but I need to talk to this Raines character and see if he has any idea about what was going on in Max’s life in the months and weeks before his death.”

  “As in did someone have it in for him?”

  “Exactly, so I’m planning on giving Mr. Raines a call, but before I phone him up, introduce myself, and start asking questions, I was wondering if there was anything up front that I needed to know about the man.”

  “Tommy’s true blue, all wool, and a yard wide,” Jim said. “He’s also a man of his word.”

  I could hardly have expected a higher recommendation than that, but I was about to get one.

  “Would
you like me to give him a call and tell him what’s up?” Jim asked. “I think he and his partner, Sid, are planning to head down to their place in Palm Springs in the next little while. If you want to talk to him, you should do it sooner rather than later.”

  “A personal introduction from you would be a huge help,” I said.

  “Okay,” Jim replied. “Let me see what I can do.”

  Once back home, I pulled into the garage and immediately led Rambo around to the front of the house, where I let her off leash to relieve herself. By the time I unlocked the front door to let myself inside, she had already dashed in through the doggy door and was lapping water in the kitchen. Note to self: Rambo is one fast learner!

  The lunch pickings at home were exceedingly slim. I settled on a package of Top Ramen and was in the process of heating same when my phone rang with CALLER UNKNOWN showing in the window. I expected it to be some kind of robocall with an automated survey of some kind or letting me know that I’d just won an all-expenses-paid two-day cruise to the Bahamas.

  “Mr. Beaumont?” said a male voice.

  “Yes.”

  “Thomas Raines here. I just got off the phone with our mutual friend, Jim Hunt. I understand from him that you’re looking into Max’s death and need to speak to me about it. Do you really think his death wasn’t accidental?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  “Dying the way he did is utterly horrifying, and if someone is responsible, I’ll be happy to do everything in my power to help.”

  “I was wondering if there would be a time when the two of us could sit down to talk?” I asked.

  “That’s the whole problem,” Thomas continued. “My partner and I are flying out of town early tomorrow, and we won’t be back for the better part of a month. If you want to get together before then, it’ll have to be this evening sometime.”

  “Sure,” I said, “no problem. What time?”

  “Say seven?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I can do that. Where?”