Breach of Duty (9780061739637)

by Jance, Judith A.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Kramer’s looking for him with blood in his eye. Maxwell Cole called 911 about nine o’clock this morning to report his car was missing from the parking lot at the Hurricane Cafe. Somebody located it about an hour ago now sunk off the end of a public boat ramp down in Renton with a body inside it. Max told the detectives that all he knows is that J.P. Beaumont left a message on his machine late last night telling him that his car was in the restaurant parking lot. Do you know anything about this, Detective Beaumont?”

  The words “dead body” and “Hurricane Cafe” left a clutch in my gut. Mr. Greenjeans! I had gone there with Darla Cunningham’s warning and had left without ever delivering the message. Any warning issued now would be too late.

  In true partnerships just as in true marriages, there comes a time when words become unnecessary. I’m sure Sue took one look at my face and knew what I was thinking.

  “Do we have a description on that Lake Washington victim?” she asked into the mike.

  “Midtwenties. Dark hair. Brown eyes. Hundred and sixty pounds. ID found with the victim gives his name as Anthony Lawson. The people at the Hurricane Cafe have confirmed that they have a busboy by that name, but it’s still too early for a positive ID.”

  Relief washed over me. At least the dead man wasn’t Jimmy Greenjeans.

  “Now, where are you two again?” Watty continued. “And how soon can you be back here at the department?”

  “We’re just coming up on the freeway in Marysville,” Sue replied. “We’ll be back as soon as traffic will allow. Half an hour if we’re really lucky.” With that, she put the mike back in its holder. “For the time being,” she added, “it looks as though that trip to the Tulalip is on hold.”

  Eleven

  The rest of the way back in to Seattle, I told Sue everything I could remember about my visit to the Hurricane Cafe the night before, including my running into Maxwell Cole and the fact that I had threatened to turn him loose on Newsome and Atkins.

  “That would have served them right,” Sue observed.

  It was while we were talking though, that I remembered one almost-forgotten detail, something Jimmy Greenjeans had said when I first got there. “He said he didn’t want Newsome and Atkins seeing me talk to him or to Tony. He seemed really worried about it. What was the name of that victim again?”

  Sue checked her notebook. “Anthony Lawson. Why?”

  “See there?” I said. “Tony/Anthony. It could be the same person Jimmy Greenjeans was talking about. If it is, this may be related to the Seward Park case after all.”

  “Maybe,” she said finally, “but who do you suppose you’re going to have to walk that theory by? None other than Paul Kramer. Something tells me he isn’t going to have any more faith in medicine men than I do.”

  “You’re right,” I agreed, after a moment’s reflection. “It could be a pretty hard sell.”

  “That’s okay,” Sue said brightly. “You should be used to it. After all, you used to be a Fuller Brush salesman.”

  “A long time ago,” I said.

  When we arrived back at the Public Safety Building, Sue headed straight to our cubicle to see what she could do about finding Agnes Ferman’s former employers while I went to see Paul Kramer. Despite Sue’s warning, I told him pretty much the whole story, including my concern that if Anthony Lawson was actually Jimmy Greenjeans’ “Tony,” then the dead guy in Lake Washington might very well have some connection to the ghouls of Seward Park. In addition, I tried to convince Kramer that if “Tony” had been in danger from Newsome and Atkins, so might Jimmy Greenjeans. Kramer wasn’t buying.

  “Let me get this straight,” he said, when I finished. Regarding me with a sardonic, superior smile, he was leaning so far back in Larry Powell’s old leather chair that he was almost horizontal. I couldn’t help wishing he’d fall over and land on his head.

  “According to what the Renton detectives are telling me, if the guy in the Volvo hadn’t drowned, the only other danger he was in was the possibility of dying of cirrhosis of the liver. There must have been a dozen empty booze bottles floating in the car right along with him.”

  I thought about the condition Maxwell Cole had been in the night before. I had a strong suspicion as to who owned those empty booze bottles, but Kramer was on a roll and there wasn’t any point in interrupting him.

  “That’s the assumption the Renton police are going on at the moment. Lawson was driving drunk and mistook the boat ramp for a freeway ramp or even a ferry dock ramp. It happens, you know. They’ll be checking blood-alcohol and all that jazz.”

  “They’re not treating it as a homicide?”

  “Beaumont, would you just can it?” Kramer returned impatiently. “Listen to yourself for a minute. Instead of going for the obvious—the drunk-driving scenario—you want me to call the chief down in Renton and try to convince him, solely on your sayso, that Anthony Lawson died as a result of some kind of mystical medicine-man bullshit? Are you looney or what?”

  He paused, but not long enough for me to say anything.

  “And all this is based on the fact that some broad whose father is a medicine…Wait, excuse me—a shaman—claims that the bones we found in Seward Park last week actually belong to some long-dead pal of his from over on the peninsula? Give me a break. For all we know, the two Indians got in some kind of a brawl, the one guy—Leaping Deer—killed the other one and now he’s trying to get the bones back in the ground in a hurry so we won’t take the time to investigate. What a deal! He kills somebody and then hides behind the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.”

  “The what?”

  “NAGPRA for short, Beaumont. I’ll bet you didn’t think I knew anything about this, but I do. As soon as I heard about the Seward Park bones, I started doing my homework because I was afraid something like this would happen. That we’d have a whole bunch of Indian activists parading up and down the streets and causing trouble. That’s why I got this promotion. Because I see things other people miss. But I got to tell you, I didn’t expect one of my detectives to be the one raising the issue. That’s one I didn’t see coming, and I’m disappointed. Really disappointed.”

  I was no stranger to the Fishbowl’s traditional hot seat. Over the years and due mainly to my unfailing knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, I’d ended up being grilled there time and again. The only difference between this session and the others was that previous coming-to-God sessions had been administered by Lawrence Powell. Larry had somehow perfected the art of telling his detectives exactly how wrongheaded they were without necessarily making them feel like dog turds. That was one facet of the captain’s job I doubted Paul Kramer would ever master.

  “So,” I concluded, “your position is that no one is to mention to the Renton officers that their case might actually be connected to the other one.”

  “That’s right,” Kramer replied. “It’s not necessary.”

  “But…”

  “No buts!” Kramer bellowed, slamming his fist on the desk. “End of discussion, Beaumont. Do you hear me? I know exactly what the hell you’re up to, and by God it’s not going to work!”

  His explosion of anger came so quickly that it surprised me, but I was packing around a little pent-up anger of my own.

  “What I’m up to?” I demanded in return. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You can talk about medicine men and little green-haired men until you’re blue in the face, Detective Beaumont, but I’m here to tell you, Paul Kramer wasn’t born yesterday.” He took a breath and attempted to haul his temper back under control. Templing his fingers under his chin, he continued in a somewhat calmer voice.

  “I’m not falling for this, you see. I’m not buying into this phony baloney that you actually believe any of this medicine man bullshit. I can spot a sucker punch a mile away.”

  “Sucker punch?” I returned. “What do you mean?”

  “Can the innocence.
I’m not falling for that, either. It’s a perfect setup. For one thing, with two jurisdictions involved, it’s a surefire way to turn me into an interdepartmental laughingstock. Pulling a stunt like this in the relative privacy of the squad room wouldn’t be good enough. You want to spread it around, don’t you? First day on the job and you drag me into a mess that sounds like it’s straight off the psychic network. And who comes out looking like a bozo? Me.”

  “You think that’s what this is all about? That it’s some kind of hazing?”

  “That’s right, hazing. You and your pal Maxwell Cole probably cut your teeth on this kind of thing back in the old days when you were fraternity rats together. Let me remind you, though, this isn’t a college campus, Detective Beaumont. This is the real world where reputations and jobs are on the line. That said, I’m pulling you off the case as of right now.”

  “You’re what?”

  “Pulling you off the Seward Park case. Both you and Danielson.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “The hell I can’t. I’ve had enough of your fruitcake notions, Beaumont. I believe I’ll turn it over to a couple of real detectives—Wayne Haller and Sam Nguyen, for example. That way you and Sue can concentrate on that North-End arson case that’s already a week old and isn’t going anywhere at all as far as I can tell.”

  It would have been easy to blow up at him. God knows I wanted to, but I was concerned that other lives might be at stake in addition to Anthony Lawson’s. “We’re working on it,” I said doggedly. “In fact, we were on our way to interview someone when you called.”

  “I suggest you get back to it then, ASAP.”

  I’ve never been any good at playing the role of sweet reason, but I gave it one more try. “Look, Kramer,” I said, “obviously something isn’t getting through here. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that Anthony Lawson really was murdered. When I talked to Jimmy Greenjeans at the Hurricane Cafe last night, he was scared to be seen talking to me. If Atkins and Newsome targeted Lawson, what are the chances that Jimmy Greenjeans is also in danger?”

  “Zero,” Kramer replied. “But speaking of Newsome and Atkins reminds me. We’ve gone so far afield that I almost forgot the reason I called you in here in the first place. I’ve had a call from a guy named Troy Cochran. You know him?”

  “Not personally. I’ve heard the name.”

  “He’s an attorney who represents Mr. Atkins and Mr. Newsome. He says his clients are considering filing a police harassment charge against you. He also mentioned that if anything derogatory about them appears in print, they’ll be looking into filing a libel suit against you. Which brings me back to your friend, Mr. Cole.”

  “What about him?”

  “Until the dust settles around here, there’s to be no further fraternizing between you and the press.”

  “Fraternizing? With Max? Kramer, you’ve got to be kidding. All I did was give a poor drunk a ride home. Kept him off the streets. Probably kept him from running down some innocent pedestrian.”

  “The report I read said you were out barhopping with Maxwell Cole…”

  “We were in one bar. The Hurricane Cafe.”

  “Boozing it up.”

  “Drinking lattes.”

  “If all Cole was drinking was lattes, how come he forgot where he left his car?”

  I didn’t bother answering. Kramer’s mind was made up. No amount of factual information was going to change it. Instead, I sat back in my chair and tried to let his diatribe roll off me.

  “The point is, Detective Beaumont, regardless of what you personally were drinking, you were drinking it with him, with a guy who happens to be a reporter. Furthermore, you know chumminess with members of the media is officially frowned on by the folks upstairs even when no bodies show up in said reporter’s parked car. Can’t you see how all this is going to play in the P.-I. tomorrow morning?”

  So much for good intentions. So much for staying calm in the eye of the storm. “I’ll tell you what, Mr. Kramer,” I snapped back at him. “I, for one, don’t give a flying fig how any of this plays in the morning paper. Worrying about what the media will and will not do isn’t my job. My responsibility is solving homicides with whatever help happens to be available.”

  Kramer’s no dummy. I’m sure he didn’t miss the snide reference to Henry Leaping Deer, but he ignored the jibe. “Like I said earlier, the Ferman homicide, the one you’re currently supposed to be solving, isn’t going away. Now that you and Danielson will be able to focus totally on that one, maybe you’ll actually make some progress.”

  “Right,” I said sarcastically, standing up. “Is that all?”

  “For the time being, but remember—when you hand off your Seward Park files to Haller and Nguyen, there’d better not be a word said about medicine men. You got that?”

  “I’ve got it, all right!”

  With that, I stormed out of his office. Watty, seated at his desk just outside the open door, raised a single eyebrow as I flew past. He seemed more amused than sympathetic, and that pissed me off that much more.

  Out in the hallway I paused long enough to lower my blood pressure by counting to ten. Once in control, I could have taken a direct route back to the cubicle. Instead, I took a long, thoughtful detour through the rest room on the way. I needed time to get over Kramer’s pompous, self-serving reprimand. I also needed time to think out a course of action.

  I had no quarrel with Wayne Haller and Sam Nguyen. Without a doubt, they’re both good cops. I was certain that, if the links between Anthony Lawson and ghouls existed, Haller and Nguyen would ferret them out eventually. The only question in my mind was how long would it take, especially if Lawson’s death was being handled as a routine traffic death? Kramer assumed that the call from Cochran would warn me off when, in fact, it was more like waving a red flag.

  By the time I finished washing my hands, I’d made up my mind. Darla Cunningham had brought me her father’s warning in good faith and with some degree of risk to her own reputation as a physics professor at the university. She must have worried about whether or not I would listen or simply laugh her out of my office. The fact that I paid attention had far more to do with the way my mother raised me than it did with a natural proclivity toward things mystical.

  To say my mother came from an intolerant background is understating the case. Seventeen years old, pregnant, and unmarried, she might have chosen what must have seemed like the line of least resistance and put me up for adoption. Instead, she had insisted on keeping me and raising me on her own, thereby setting the stage for a lifelong estrangement from her hard-nosed Bible-thumping father.

  Even as a child, I remember being puzzled by the fact that she never had anything bad to say about her parents. “They have their beliefs and I have mine,” she told me. “I have to respect that.” Her tolerance of her parents had translated into tolerance for others as well, for people of other races, customs, and religions. The lessons my mother taught me had served me well once I left behind the de facto segregation of my old white-bread Ballard neighborhood, and I had no doubt they had come into play once more when I found Darla Cunningham asleep in my office.

  Kramer was welcome to his opinion. He could call Henry Leaping Deer’s warning crap if he wanted to. I, on the other hand, found it impossible to dismiss. Those Native American beliefs might differ from my own, but they came with an obligation of respect and also one of action. I had left the Hurricane Cafe the night before without fulfilling my charge, without passing along the warning that should have gone to Jimmy Greenjeans. If the green-haired bartender was still alive, then I had another chance. I may have been pulled off the case, but Paul Kramer be damned, I wasn’t going to blow it a second time.

  Having made up my mind to go see Greenjeans after all, it did cross my mind that I wasn’t being entirely fair to Sue Danielson. She had been ordered off the case just as much as I was. The only difference was, I knew it and she didn’t. I rationalized my way around that one by convin
cing myself that if she didn’t know about it, no one could hold her responsible.

  Sitting on hold with the phone stuck to her ear, she looked up questioningly when I came back to the cubicle. “That took long enough,” she said.

  “Kramer was being Kramer,” I told her. “What’s happening here?”

  She held up a finger to silence me when someone must have come back on the line. “Good,” she said. “And what did you say is Mr. Considine’s ETA?”

  She scratched a hurried note onto a piece of paper and passed it over to me. “King County Airport,” the note said. “At 3:00 P.M.”

  “Okay,” she added. “We’ll probably meet him there.”

  “What’s up?” I asked when she put down the phone.

  “I managed to locate Freddy Considine. Frederick, actually. He evidently made a killing in the stock market and was smart enough to hang on to his money. Now he’s joined forces with a David Ambrose who’s supposedly a hotshot golf-course developer. Considine is jetting into Boeing Field this afternoon, fresh from some end-of-season skiing in Sun Valley. Like it says in the note, his estimated time of arrival is 3:00 P.M.”

  “Boeing Field?” I repeated. “You mean as in a private jet?” I asked.

  Sue nodded. “That’s right. A Citation. The guy must be loaded or else his partner is.”

  “What about our trip to the casino? I thought…”

  “Can’t that wait until tomorrow?” Sue interrupted, glancing at her watch. “I hate to play the mother card on you again, Beau, but it’s already close to two. If we head back up to Marysville now and get stuck in rush-hour traffic on our way back into the city, there’s a good chance we won’t get back until late. The problem is, Richie’s plane is due in at Sea-Tac late this afternoon. I really do want to be at the house before he gets there.”

  I could see why she did. I also didn’t have any great desire to spend any more time stuck in late afternoon I-5 traffic. “Great idea,” I said with unfeigned enthusiasm. “How about grabbing some lunch between now and the time to be at Boeing Field? If memory serves, it’s my turn to buy.”