by J. A. Jance
“It does raise a question or two, doesn’t it?”
Kramer glared at me. “More than one or two, if you ask me. Several in fact. I’ve got Sue Danielson checking for rap sheets on the other three names. I turned up Russell’s on my own.”
“What about the schools?”
“Schools?” Kramer asked. “What schools?”
“Don’t student loan applications indicate where the student is enrolling? Have you checked with the registrars to see whether or not those students are actually there?”
Kramer didn’t answer, an omission which was, by itself, an admission. No, he hadn’t checked.
“Shouldn’t you?” I prodded. “If the students on the applications are actually enrolled just the way the form says they are, then maybe there’s no fraud involved, after all.”
By then, I was parking the car in the Public Safety Building parking garage. Kramer shot me a withering look as he reached to open the car door. “Believe me,” he said, “they won’t be registered anywhere. This is the real world, Beaumont, not some kind of never-never land. Knuckles Russell is a two-bit thug with a rap sheet ten feet long. I’ll lay you odds the others won’t be any different. The only institution of higher learning these guys will ever land in is a federal pen.”
On that congenial and uplifting note, we headed upstairs. I think Kramer expected to lose me in the fifth floor maze, but I was determined to see copies of Ben Weston’s loan applications. I followed Kramer on down the hall. When we turned into his cubicle, the whole place was a shambles. Multiple boxes, some opened and some closed, were stacked against the wall. A half-emptied file cabinet with the top three drawers opened stood in the far corner. I waded through the boxes to a chair, removed a stack of folders, and made myself at home.
Kramer began shoving file folders into one box. “Looks like you’re moving,” I said.
He glanced up and seemed surprised to find me sitting there. “Down the hall,” he mumbled, “so I can be closer to Watty. We’ll be working together closely on this one, you know.”
“Right.”
He stared at me in what could only be described as a clear-cut invitation to leave, the old here’s-your-hat-what’s-your-hurry-type stare. I didn’t take the hint. “What do you want?” he asked finally. “Don’t you have work to do?”
“This is work. I want to see Ben Weston’s student loan applications.”
Grudgingly, he picked up a file folder from a stack on his desk, extracted a sheaf of papers, and shoved them across the desk in my direction, but before I had a chance to glance at them, Sue Danielson appeared in the doorway and looked at us across the disarray.
Sue, a single mother with two teenagers at home, is a recent transplant in Homicide. She started out years ago as a 911 dispatcher and has gradually worked her way up. Gravelly voiced, she along with Janice Morraine down in the Crime Lab are two of the Public Safety Building’s unrepentant smoking holdouts. They both go downstairs and stand outside in all kinds of weather to have a morning and afternoon smoke.
Sue nodded briefly in my direction, but her real message was for Detective Kramer. “You called that shot,” she said, “four for zip. Every last one of them has a sizable rap sheet, and they’re all BGD, or at least they were. They’ve all dropped out of sight in the last three to ten months.”
“You’re sure they’re not in jail someplace?” Kramer growled.
“Not that I can find so far.”
“Maybe they’re dead then. Maybe Weston had someone knock them off.”
“Maybe you should check with the schools,” I suggested.
Kramer glowered at me while Sue Danielson looked genuinely surprised. “What’s this about schools?”
“What if those students are actually enrolled there?” I continued. “Maybe the applications are just exactly what they say they are and these kids are all back in school.”
“Like hell they are!” Kramer said, exasperated.
But Sue Danielson had been paying attention to me, not to him. “That’s a good idea, Beau,” she said. “I’ll do some checking on that, if not tonight, then for sure in the morning. Bye.”
Waving, she backed away from the door before Kramer had a chance to say anything more. Pissed, he went on pitching file folders into boxes while I glanced through the set of loan applications.
That’s what they were-student loan applications. Despite the rap sheets, these kids were really that-kids, with the oldest barely twenty-two. The largest loan amount was for two thousand a semester for Washington State University over in Pullman. One applicant listed his school of choice as Central Washington with the required loan amount of a thousand dollars per quarter. The third, for the same dollar amount, listed Western Washington in Bellingham. The last one, for an Ezra Russell, was only partially completed. It didn’t list a school at all.
If his amount was similar to the others, that would bring the total indebtedness up to around twelve or thirteen grand a year. For a cop with a family of his own to support, thirteen thousand dollars a year would be one hell of a financial burden if one or more of Ben Weston’s cosigners defaulted on the loans, but in the drug-dealing world that these gang members formerly inhabited, thirteen thou was small potatoes, not even one night’s take-on a slow night. What the hell was going on?
I put the papers back down on Kramer’s desk. “Don’t you think these ought to be turned over to Internal Investigations?” I asked.
That got Kramer’s attention about the same way a red flag grabs a maddened bull. “I don’t think anything of the kind, and don’t you go leaking one word of it. Crimes have been committed, Detective Beaumont. Murders to be exact. That already takes this case well beyond the scope of the guys upstairs. I don’t want one word of this to go to the Double I’s,” he said. “This is first and foremost a homicide investigation. Understand?”
I understood all right. As per usual, Detective Kramer wanted to play with all the marbles again, and he didn’t want any interference and/or help from anyone else. Regardless of field of endeavor, that’s the way it is with fast-rising stars. They can’t afford to share the limelight. They’re also scarce as hens’ teeth when it comes time to take responsibility for something that goes wrong.
“You do whatever you want to, Kramer,” I told him, “but if I were you, I think I’d talk this over with Watty before making too many unilateral decisions. He’s the one who’s really in charge of the task force, you know. He should be consulted.”
Kramer stopped loading files into the cardboard box. “You do your job and I’ll do mine, Beaumont. Incidentally, I haven’t seen any reports on the Adam Jackson end of the investigation. If I were you, I wouldn’t show up at that meeting tomorrow morning empty-handed. That would be a real shame.”
So the battle lines were drawn. I headed for my own cubicle with my jaws clenched as well as my fists. Paul Kramer has the unerring capacity for bringing out the very worst in me.
Back at my desk, I dialed my voice-mail code and had a message to call Big Al, but when I returned the call Molly said he wasn’t home. Just the way she said it sounded funny, as though the words didn’t quite ring true.
“Tell him I called,” I told her. “I’m here at the office working on paper. I’m due to be home around six. If he misses me here, he can try there.”
I started in on the reports, but I kept nodding off. Twice I fell asleep with the pen on the paper and had to start over again to get rid of the stray line of ink that trailed cornerwise across the bottom half of the page. I was out like a light, drooling, with my chin resting on my chest and probably even snoring when the phone woke me up.
“The killer was wearing gloves, yellow rubber gloves,” Big Al announced without preamble. “Junior didn’t remember that until just a little while ago. I thought you should know. It’s got to be somebody in the AFIS files, somebody we could find for sure if we just had a set of prints. Otherwise, why screw around with gloves?”
The Automated Fingerprint Ident
ification System is a new, computerized system that can nail crooks to the wall as long as there’s enough money in the budget to feed the file prints as well as the requests for matchups into the system. Big Al almost got me. I was so struck by the presence of gloves on the killer’s hands that it took me a minute to wonder how he happened to be in possession of that stray bit of information.
“Hold on. You say Junior remembered that a little while ago? That means you’ve been over to his grandfather’s house talking to him?”
Big Al sounded offended. “Why shouldn’t I go there? I’m a friend of the family, remember? I can talk to Junior Weston any damned time I want to, and nobody’s going to tell me I can’t.”
“But how’d you get permission? I got the distinct impression this morning that Harmon Weston isn’t exactly wild about cops. Are you telling me he actually let you in to talk to the kid?”
There was a slight pause. “Well, maybe he didn’t,” Big Al admitted. “Not exactly. The old man was sound asleep, taking a nap. When I showed up at the door, Junior let me in. Why wouldn’t he? He knows me. Besides, I had a Nintendo along for him. I figured he’d be better off with one of those instead of a potful of flowers.”
“Wait a minute, you went over there while the grandfather was asleep, essentially broke into the house, gave Junior a game, talked to him, and the old man was never any wiser?”
“I didn’t break in. Junior let me in,” Big Al insisted. “I just wanted to visit with him for a little while to see if there was anything else he remembered. And there was. Like I told you, the gloves.”
A dozen alarm bells went off in my head. “Hell with the gloves, Al! Forget about them. Junior’s a witness for Christ’s sake. He actually saw Bonnie’s killer. If you got in and out that easily, so could somebody else!”
For a moment the phone was so quiet I was afraid it had gone dead. “Al, are you there?”
“I’m here,” he said, “and I get your drift. If the killer bothered to read this afternoon’s newspaper, he knows for sure that he screwed up and missed one kid who is also the only living eyewitness. Shit! They could get to him in a minute. What the hell are we going to do?”
Just as doctors don’t practice medicine on their own family members, police officers aren’t allowed to work on cases that come too close to them personally. They lose their professional detachment, take unnecessary risks.
“You stay out of it, Al. If Watty finds out you’ve been within a mile of Junior Weston, your tail will be in a gate for sure. Tell me, would the grandfather hold still for protective custody or a police guard?”
“Not likely. Old man Weston hates cops-all cops-his own son included.”
“Then I’d better come up with some better idea.”
“Like what? We’d best get on the stick. It’ll be dark soon.”
“Goddamnit, Lindstrom, you hardheaded lug. I told you we aren’t doing a thing. You stay the hell out of it, you hear?”
For an answer, he banged the receiver down in my ear. I hung up too and sat there staring at the phone trying to imagine a solution. Who could I call in to deal with Harmon Weston? From what Al Lindstrom had told me, I knew instinctively that I could haul the mayor or the police chief himself into the melee, and it wouldn’t do a damn bit of good.
What I needed was a higher authority, an ultimate authority. When the answer came to me, it was like a bolt out of the blue. It even made me smile. I grabbed the nearest phone book and looked up the number of the Mount Zion Baptist Church. Reverend Homer Walters himself didn’t answer the phone, but I was put through to him with only a minimal delay.
“This is Detective Beaumont,” I said. “We met briefly earlier this afternoon at Dr. Jackson’s place.”
“Yes, Detective Beaumont. I remember. What can I do for you? I hope you’re not calling to ask me to change the funeral time.”
“Oh no,” I said. “Nothing like that. I was actually calling to ask for your help. I’m concerned for the safety of Junior Weston, especially since he qualifies as an eyewitness.”
Briefly I went on to explain what had happened earlier that afternoon, how Big Al had come and gone from Harmon Weston’s place without the old man ever hearing a thing. If I expected my tattling to be news to Reverend Walters, I was wrong.
“That’s true,” Reverend Walters said when I finished. “Harmon Weston sleeps like a rock, and that includes sleeping in church. If I happen to run on too long of a Sunday morning, he turns off his hearing aid and doesn’t hear a thing. Sometimes one of the deacons has to go back and wake him up after the service is over. I can see we’re going to have to do something about this.”
“What do you suggest?”
“Bring Junior over to our house, of course,” Reverend Walters said decisively. “And we’ll bring that new Nintendo game along as well. Francine and I can look after him with no trouble, but he’ll need games and things to help occupy his time.”
When I finally came back home to Belltown Terrace at five forty-five, my tail feathers were dragging, but I was feeling a real sense of accomplishment. Through my intervention, Homer Walters had picked Junior up and taken him, along with his new teddy bear, to the Walterses’ gracious home on the back side of Beacon Hill. I stopped by briefly to check on the boy and found him deeply engrossed in a game called Super Mario Brothers, whatever that is. His Teddy Bear Patrol teddy bear sat on the couch nearby, well within safe touching distance.
I had forgotten all about Ralph Ames and his plans for the evening until I walked up to the door of my apartment and smelled the garlic. Ralph Ames is one of those people who never met a garlic clove he didn’t like. He claims that the real secret behind every successful barbecue is layering it on-ground, minced, pressed, or chopped, it doesn’t matter. That initial savory whiff was followed by the sound of female laughter coming from behind the still-closed door.
She was there all right. The lunchtime lady had returned for a dinnertime engagement when all I wanted to do was eat a square meal, hit the sack, and let them do the same. I stuck an idiotic grin on my face and opened the door.
Ralph Ames is never so happy as when he’s busy demolishing my kitchen. The edible results are always masterful, but the kitchen usually resembles a war zone afterward. This particular meal was no exception.
While Ralph held sway over a smoking Jenn-Air grill with a pasta pot bubbling near his elbow, a woman with a dish towel tied around her waist stood at the far end of the counter breaking up handfuls of romaine.
“Why, Beau,” Ralph said heartily. “You’re just in time. Let me introduce you to Alexis Downey, Alex for short. Alex, this is my friend J. P. Beaumont. Everyone calls him Beau.”
I held out my hand. She dried one hand on the towel and then shook mine. She was in her mid-to-late thirties probably, medium tall with short, auburn hair, a bit of gray around the temples, and a pair of amazingly blue eyes.
She smiled. “Glad to meet you, Beau. Ralph has told me so much about you.”
“Alex is the director of development for the Seattle Repertory Theater,” Ralph announced, flopping the steaks over on the grill.
“Glad to make your acquaintance, Alex,” I returned politely, but secretly I was wondering how much of a donation she had hit him up for. Which only goes to show how naive I still am.
I mistakenly thought Ralph Ames was the target.
CHAPTER 11
I made it through dinner without falling asleep in my food, but only just barely. Alexis Downey went out of her way to be cordial and include me in the general conversation, but it was all I could do to concentrate on what she and Ralph were saying.
For some reason, Alex was inordinately interested in Belltown Terrace’s Bentley which I, along with the rest of my partners, regard as a royal pain in the ass. Intended to be one of the condominium’s distinctive amenities, the limo actually had spent far more time in the shop than it had on the street. Finally, sick of repairs and complaints from periodically stranded riders/residents, we le
ased a new Cadillac for the building and left the aging Bentley covered and more or less permanently parked on the P-1 level of the garage.
“Is it running now?” Alex Downey asked.
“Hard to say,” I told her. “It has what mechanics call an intermittent ignition problem. That means sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.”
“Would I be able to go for a ride in it? I’ve never ridden in a Bentley, and I’ve always wanted to.”
“Call down to the concierge,” I told her. “If the driver isn’t all booked up, and if he can get it started, maybe he can take you and Ralph for a spin later on tonight after dinner.”
“Wouldn’t you like to come along?” Alex Downey enthused. “We could ride over to West Seattle and watch the city lights from Alki Point.”
“No thanks. I’m on my way to bed. I was up working all last night.”
“Oh really? What do you do?”
Obviously in the “so much” Ralph had told her about me, he had neglected to include anything so basic as information about my work. “I’m a cop,” I told her. “A detective down at Seattle PD.”
“How exciting.”
“It’s a job,” I returned.
Alex glanced meaningfully around my penthouse apartment, suddenly seeing it with new eyes. “Yours must pay better than most,” she said.
“Not that much better,” I told her gruffly.
I didn’t feel like going into any detailed personal explanations about how I managed to live in Belltown Terrace’s penthouse on an ordinary cop’s salary. It was none of Alex Downey’s business.
During all this repartee, Ralph sat at the far end of the table, grinning from ear to ear. His eyes shifted between Alex and me as though watching a conversational tennis ball being lobbed back and forth. He was up to something, but I couldn’t quite figure out what, and I didn’t want to.
