Proof of Life

by J. A. Jance

  Looking around and realizing we were out of luck, I shook my head in frustration. Whatever illegal goods Bian Duong had stored here were long gone. We had discovered her hiding place a day late and a dollar short!

  As the lift returned, bringing Mel and two of the techs, I stalked off on my own, wandering through the empty shelving in the faint hope that something had been overlooked and left behind. The far end of the room wasn’t as well lit as the rest, but when I spotted a bump of some kind, I walked over to investigate.

  In the far corner I found an eight-by-ten area where the decking had been pried up and stacked off to one side. Next to the planking was the mound I’d seen, which consisted of a pile of damp earth that had been dug out of the ground. I stepped around the dirt and stared into the resulting hole. What I saw there sent a chill down my spine. The distinctly shaped cavity—six feet long and three feet wide—was clearly intended for one purpose only: to bury a body.

  Since the lights in the room behind me didn’t quite penetrate this gloomy corner, I switched on Mel’s flashlight and shone that into the hole. It wasn’t all that deep—only four feet or so—but what I saw lying at the bottom of it made me catch my breath. A heap of what appeared to be men’s attire—suit jacket, shoes, dress shirt, and tie—lay scattered on the ground.

  “Hey guys!” I called over my shoulder. “You’d better come take a look at this. I think we’ve just found Duc Nguyen’s missing clothing.”

  Moments later, with the whole crew gathered round, Mel was the first to speak. “Why do I get the feeling that this is where Lawrence Harden was supposed to end up?”

  I nodded. “I’m guessing Bian got Duc to dig the hole, willingly or not. At some point in the process, though, he may have started worrying that the grave would end up being his.”

  “And that’s when he took off,” Mel said.

  “That’s when he tried to take off,” I corrected. “The kid was running for his life, only he didn’t quite make it.”

  One of the CSIs stepped forward then and bodily shoved me out of the way. “Off you go now, folks,” he said, sounding far more chipper than he had earlier. “We have to go to work.”

  CHAPTER 34

  WE WENT HOME. FINALLY. IT HAD BEEN A LONG, COMPLEX, tiring day, one Mel and I had been lucky to survive. Even though I knew she’d have to be up at the crack of dawn in time to make it to work, I was glad Mel had decided to stay at the condo that night rather than driving back north. I wanted her nearby—needed her nearby.

  “You’re still limping,” Mel observed as we walked through the P-4 garage level toward the elevator. “Do you think the knee is permanently damaged?”

  “Just bruised, I think.”

  “When we get upstairs, take an Aleve and put some ice on it,” she said. “I’ll walk Lucy. Since she’s been locked up all day, I may take her around the block a couple of times just to get the kinks out.”

  On the surface, all of that seemed perfectly reasonable. Upstairs, while Mel changed back into her tracksuit and running shoes, I made a necessary pit stop—aging prostates are no joke. Once Mel finished leashing up the dog and the two of them left, I did as I’d been told—took my Aleve, two of them for good measure, and got an ice pack out of the freezer.

  I hit the easy chair in the family room. Then, with my foot resting on the hassock and with the ice pack on my swollen knee, I leaned back and closed my eyes. It wasn’t that late, only ten or so, but it really had been one hell of a day.

  I must have dozed off for a moment, because when our landline phone rang, it startled me awake. Yes, we still have landline phones—two of them—primarily because we still use them to let visitors in and out of the building on those occasions when the doorman is temporarily unavailable. One phone is located on my bedside table and the other is on the side table next to my chair in the family room.

  These are phones only—the old-fashioned kind. They ring and you answer them. There are no built-in cameras or Internet access. They do have caller ID, however, and I immediately recognized the number in the display as belonging to our doorman.

  “Mr. Beaumont?”

  The voice on the phone was that of our weekend relief doorman, Charles Little. Charlie is young, relatively new, and a bit unsure of himself. His stature pretty much mirrors his last name. He’s a little bit of a guy, five five or so and 130 pounds soaking wet.

  “Hope I didn’t wake you,” he said.

  “No,” I lied. “I’m up. What can I do for you?”

  “Something weird happened this evening. Some big old guy—a homeless guy—came by asking for you. You may have seen him hanging around the neighborhood—the black guy with the big dog. Anyway, he was looking for you and wanted to talk to you. When I saw that dog of yours dragging Ms. Soames past the door just now, it reminded me, and I thought I should mention it.”

  “I know them,” I said. “I don’t know the guy’s name, but the dog is named Billy Bob.”

  “The man didn’t know your name, either,” Charles continued, “and that’s kind of what worried me. He wanted to know if the guy with the big black dog was home. I tried calling on the phone. When no one answered, I asked if I could take a message. He said no, he’d stop by later.”

  “Okay,” I said. “We’re home now, but what did you just say about Mel?”

  “She came tearing past the front of the building a minute ago with that dog pulling so hard it looked like Ms. Soames was about to be turned into a human dogsled. That is one big dog!”

  Lucy was pulling on the leash? Lucy, who was an absolutely 100 percent graduate of the Academy of Canine Behavior, was pulling on the leash? Talk about JDLR or rather JDSR—sound right rather than look right.

  “Thanks for the heads-up, Charlie,” I said. “I’ll check it out.”

  I ended the landline call, reached for my cell, and dialed Mel’s phone. Because she uses the health app to keep track of her steps and her runs, the phone goes with her everywhere, zipped into the pocket of her tracksuit.

  When she answered, Mel sounded out of breath and out of sorts. “What?”

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Of course I’m okay, but I don’t know what’s gotten into this damned dog,” she complained. “We were doing fine, then all of a sudden she turned around and wanted to go racing off in the exact opposite direction.”

  “Did you try telling her ‘right here’?” I asked.

  “Yes, I told her that,” Mel snapped. “Don’t forget, we’ve been down in Myrtle Edwards Park a couple of times, and she’s never been like this. She even growled at me just now.”

  “She growled? Hold on. I’ll come down and give you a hand.”

  “Don’t bother. I’m completely over the idea of taking her for a walk around the block. We’ll go pee and crap and call it a job.”

  I got the message. Mel had just given me the human equivalent of “sit and stay.” The problem is, I’ve never been especially good at taking orders. By then I was already limping toward the entryway closet to collect my jacket. “I’ll meet you there,” I said into the phone, but she had already hung up.

  The elevator was evidently on a nearby floor, because the doors opened mere seconds after I pressed the button. I had exited into the garage on P-1 and was starting toward the outside gate when I heard a muffled cry of alarm followed immediately by a bark—a ferocious bark.

  Worried that Lucy had somehow turned on Mel, I sprinted toward the gate, pressed the button, and then stood there waiting impatiently, dancing on first one foot and then the other, while the gate took its own sweet time in rising far enough for me to duck underneath.

  When I burst out onto the sidewalk, I saw some kind of melee happening over in the dog-walking area on the far side of Clay. Several people seemed to be caught up in a scuffle. Fearing Mel was somehow involved, I sprinted toward the fight with my heart in my throat. Since I was entering the fray alone and unarmed, at the very least I needed to sound threatening.

  “Break i
t up!” I shouted. “Knock it off!”

  My cop-speak voice had the desired effect. There was the slightest pause in the action, then one of the struggling figures staggered away from the fight and collapsed soundlessly on the ground. A moment later I heard a roar of human outrage—a man’s roar of outrage—which was immediately followed by both a whine and a whimper. At that point another figure—a dog this time—dropped away from the fight.

  That left only one figure standing—a man, who swung around to face me. As he did so, the glimmer of a nearby streetlight caught on the blade of a knife. He was still grasping the knife in his right hand, but I could tell from the way he was cradling his wrist that the guy was hurt—maybe even badly hurt. That fact, however, was of little comfort. I know the statistics and the grim realities because even badly wounded assailants can prove to be downright deadly, especially if they’re packing knives and their opponents aren’t.

  I had been running pell-mell toward the fight. Now, with the armed man’s eyes fully on me, I skidded to a stop. Lucy was on the ground, and so was Mel. That meant I was totally on my own. To my surprise I was close enough to recognize the guy from his mug shot. It was none other than Ken Purcell, the domestic violence creep someone had thoughtfully bailed out of jail. What the hell was he doing here? How had he found us?

  “Drop it!” I shouted at him. “Drop the damned knife!”

  “Make me,” he said.

  Lucy whimpered and tried to struggle to her feet. And then, because Ken Purcell was, is, and always will be an asshole and a bully, he aimed a vicious kick in the dog’s direction. It never landed.

  From somewhere behind me, someone shouted the welcome words “Get him, Billy Bob! Go get him!”

  And Billy Bob did just that. I barely glimpsed the brown and white streak as it shot past me. Because Purcell had one foot in the air, he was already off balance when the dog slammed into him. Both of them tumbled and rolled, and the knife went flying. I went after the knife while Billy Bob went after Purcell, tearing into him, biting and snarling. By the time I had the knife in hand, Purcell had had enough and was howling like a banshee. “Get him off me! Call him off! Please!”

  Billy Bob’s owner strode forward and stood looming over the fight, but he didn’t immediately leap to Purcell’s rescue. In fact, he let the thrashing continue for several beats before putting a stop to it.

  “Enough, Billy Bob,” he ordered finally. The dog immediately backed away and went to stand at his master’s feet. “As for you, asshole,” Billy Bob’s owner continued through clenched teeth, “if you move so much as a muscle, I’ll set him on you again.”

  Obviously Billy Bob had turned Purcell into a believer. With the assailant under control, I turned my attention and my dread in Mel’s direction. Sure she’d been stabbed, I was surprised to find her on her hands and knees, crawling toward Lucy.

  “I’m okay,” she gasped. “He sucker-punched me in the gut with his elbow. He was after the dog. Oh my God! Lucy’s bleeding. We’ve got to get her to a vet.”

  She was right, of course. Lucy was bleeding from a deep cut on her right shoulder, but the only vet I knew personally was eighty miles away in Bellingham. While Mel leaned down to apply pressure to the wound, I looked around for help, and there was plenty to choose from. In a matter of moments, the street had filled up with curious onlookers, most of them equipped with cell phones. One of them used his flashlight app to focus light on Purcell. The man was bleeding profusely. There were bites on his hands, arms, face, and neck. One guy made a move to help him.

  “Don’t you dare,” Billy Bob’s owner warned. “Let the cops take care of him when they get here.”

  As for Billy Bob? Having done his job, he lay down on the grass, closed his eyes, and went to sleep, looking as harmless as the day is long.

  “I called the cops,” someone else said. “They’re on their way and so is an ambulance.”

  By then Mel was sitting on the ground with Lucy’s head cradled in her lap. “We need an ambulance for this dog!” she exclaimed. “Otherwise she’s going to bleed to death.”

  “No, she won’t,” another helpful stranger chimed in. “There’s a good emergency vet on the far side of Lake Union. If someone can help get the dog into my car, I’ll take her there. And you, too, lady,” he added belatedly, looking in Mel’s direction. “I’ll take you both.”

  The car in question was an older-model Dodge Caravan. The Good Samaritan put the center seats into the floorboard. Then with two men helping to carry Lucy, they eased her into the van. A bloodstained Mel crawled in behind her. My last glimpse of them as the side panel door slid shut was of Mel kneeling on the floor next to the dog, still applying pressure and probably praying, too.

  I know I sure as hell was.

  CHAPTER 35

  FOR MY SECOND KNIFE FIGHT OF THE DAY, THINGS DIDN’T go quite as well as the first time around. For one thing, with Mel off at the animal ER, we didn’t have her valid cop-shop chops or her badge to help smooth things over. It took some serious convincing on my part to persuade the two young uniforms who turned up on the scene that things weren’t as they seemed, as in a) the bloody guy on the ground was the aggressor; b) the guy holding the knife—namely me—was not the problem; and c) the “vicious animal” who had torn the hell out of the guy doing all the bleeding shouldn’t be summarily handed over to animal control.

  Fortunately, Sam Shelton (that was the homeless guy’s name, by the way) was a seasoned street person—a Vietnam War vet with PTSD and a terminal case of fear when it came to being shut up in enclosed spaces. I was impressed by the quiet dignity with which he dealt with the young cops. Their natural arrogance ran off Sam’s weathered hide like water off a duck. He shuffled off across the street and retrieved his heavily laden grocery cart, which had been squirreled away somewhere near the KIRO building. After sorting through numerous plastic bags, he was able to produce not only Billy Bob’s valid license and tags but also a current shot record, courtesy of a vet who volunteers his services by holding periodic pet clinics for homeless pet owners at the Union Gospel Mission, which, it turned out, just happened to be the address listed on the paperwork as Billy Bob’s place of residence.

  The cops were not happy that Mel and Lucy, the purported victims of what they called an “alleged” attack, were not available to be interviewed, but Sam was able to fill them in on the details. Earlier in the day, word on the street had spread about someone going around offering to pay various homeless people for information about a new dog somewhere in the neighborhood, a big black dog. That evening, after Sam and Billy Bob had settled into their little fire escape hidey-hole, that same guy had turned up and offered Sam a hundred bucks for them to clear out.

  Sam had been happy to take the money. He had packed up and moved his camp to another location, one directly across the street that just happened to afford him a view of the dog-walking area. He had also stopped by Belltown Terrace, trying to warn me. Unable to reach me, and worried that something wasn’t right, he had kept watch. As soon as Purcell went after Mel and Lucy, Sam and Billy Bob went after him.

  “Thank you for being their guardian angels,” I said gratefully, when he finished telling his story.

  “Turnabout’s fair play,” he said. “Thank you for the kibble.”

  “Billy Bob is one hell of a dog!”

  “He is that,” Sam agreed. “Out here on the streets, he’s got my back, and I’ve got his.”

  About then, the sergeant—a guy I happened to know—showed up and took his young hotshots in hand. By the time he finished with them, they had a) apologized to Sam and b) allowed as how it would be fine for Mel to come down to the department at her convenience to give her statement. In the meantime, Purcell had been hauled off to Harborview. The sergeant assured me that the information I had provided about his being out on bail on the domestic would be enough to ensure his being placed under arrest on that until other charges could be brought against him.

  “Sir?” I turne
d around to find the minivan driver standing behind me. “Do you want me to show you where I took your wife and dog?”

  “Yes, please,” I said. “I’ll need to go get my license and car, then I can follow you there.”

  I hurried into the building to gather my goods. Knowing Mel, while I was at it, I stuffed a clean tracksuit for her in a grocery bag and brought it along.

  Urgent Pet Care was a little over a mile away on Eastlake. It turns out an emergency room for pets is . . . well . . . an emergency room, one filled with sick and worried dogs and cats along with their sick and worried owners. I found Mel off in a corner by herself.

  “How are things?” I asked.

  She looked up at me with unexpected tears in her eyes. “She’s still in surgery,” Mel said.

  I sat down beside Mel and took her hand in mine. “Lucy must have known Purcell was there,” Mel continued. “That’s why she was acting up. She must have smelled him. And when he came after us, I don’t know if he was after her or after me, but Lucy was right there, fighting him off. I’m pretty sure she nailed him a couple of times before he . . . you know . . .” Unable to complete the sentence, Mel fell silent.

  “Which means that, however much this emergency surgery costs, her bill is paid in full.” I handed Mel the grocery bag. “You might want to change out of those bloody clothes,” I added. “You’re scaring people who already look scared enough.”

  With the bag in hand, Mel stood up and disappeared into a nearby restroom. While she was gone I sat there worrying about Lucy and remembering that other Irish wolfhound, the one in that heartbreaking poem. Gelert had died after saving that child. With a clutch in my gut, I feared Lucy might be lost as well.

  Mel returned from the restroom looking a little less wan, but not by much. Had I really been on my toes, I would have grabbed her purse and hence her pouch of touch-up makeup as well. Let’s face it. Nobody’s perfect.