“Is that where he’s from?” I asked innocently. “From Ballard?”
“From a reservation over on the peninsula someplace,” Max replied. “Port Madison, maybe. He was adopted out as a baby. His adoptive parents raised him here in Seattle.”
“You seem to know a lot about him.”
“It’s my business to know things, J.P.,” Max said defensively. “You of all people should understand that.”
I nodded. “So did you see him in here a lot?”
“Sure.”
“Did you ever see him copping drinks from the bar?”
“Never.”
“Did he ever talk like somebody with a drinking problem?”
“Not really,” Max said. “He wasn’t all there, know what I mean?” He tapped the side of his head.
“You’re saying he was crazy?”
“No, not crazy. Slow. Retarded-like.”
“But he was old enough to drink, so if he had wanted to order a drink in front of you, he could have.”
Max sipped his own drink. “I suppose he could have, but he never did. As a matter of fact, I never saw him take a drink of anything but iced tea. Never smelled booze on him or anything. But maybe he’d been through treatment or something and then just fell off the wagon. That happens, they tell me. Happens all the time.”
One of the blessings of being drunk is that you don’t ever hear yourself when you’re in that condition. You think you’re making perfect sense. You don’t hear the rambling, droning stupidity. The sad thing is, while you may be deaf and dumb to the problem, people around you aren’t. And once you sober up, you aren’t either. In the old days, while I was waxing eloquent on a booze-fueled soapbox, I wasn’t the least bit embarrassed by all the nonsense pouring out of my mouth. I wasn’t then, but I am now—in retrospect. I wondered just then if something similar would ever happen to Maxwell Cole.
“So who are Anthony Lawson’s parents?” I asked.
Max put down the cigarette, reached in his pocket, and carefully extracted a tattered notebook. It was the same color as the one I use. In fact, the two of them could have passed for twins. It was enough to make me want to become a devoted computer user on the spot.
Bleary-eyed, Max fumbled through a dozen pages before he finally settled on one. “Here it is,” he said. “Annie, Annie Engebretson. The father’s dead. Annie lives in one of those retirement homes—the high-rise one over on the east side of Greenlake.”
“If the mother’s name is Engebretson, where did Lawson come from?”
“Beats hell out of me. I wanted to talk to her, but I haven’t so far,” he replied. “Tried calling her earlier this afternoon. She was all tied up with the Renton cops when I was available. Then I had to spend the rest of the afternoon messing around with all this car rental stuff. By the time I finished up, I decided to let it go until tomorrow. My heart wasn’t in it. Must be awful, losing an only son like that. Even if Tony wasn’t right in the head. Even if he was…what’s the phrase they use nowadays? You know what I mean.”
“Developmentally disabled.”
Max nodded. “Right, that’s the one. But Tony was still a hell of a nice guy. Anybody around here will tell you so. At least he seemed like it. Right up ’til he stole my car. Even that wouldn’t’ve been so bad if he just hadn’t wrecked the damned thing!”
Max was rambling again. I tried to steer him back on course. “How long have you known Tony?”
“As long as he’s worked here, I guess,” Max said with a shrug. “Four months or so. That’s what someone said. I don’t know exactly, but I’m in here a lot. He’s worked the evening shift for the last several months.”
“And where did he live?”
“In a group home of some kind. Up off Aurora. Used to catch the bus coming and going.”
“The bus. You mean he didn’t drive?”
“Nobody thought he drove,” Cole said bitterly. “Right up until he stole my car.”
“You’re beginning to sound like a broken record, Max,” I said. “What I’m asking is, did he have a license or not?”
“I don’t think so. He had some kind of picture ID from the state so he could cash checks and things, but he didn’t drive. I don’t think he would have been able to pass the test. Chief told me once that he couldn’t read, but that he could watch television and that was all he needed.”
“Did he ever talk about his birth mother?” I asked.
“Not per se. He talked about being Indian. That’s what he called himself. None of this Native American bullshit. Indian and proud of it. Said his grandfather was somebody important out on the reservation. Must have been a chief.”
Or a shaman, I thought.
“As a matter of fact,” Max continued, “I didn’t find out about any of this adoption stuff until today. For all I knew, he’d been living on the reservation right up until he came to work here. I thought maybe they’d had some program out there that had turned him into a busboy. You know, one of those job training kinds of things.”
Max caught the bartender’s eye and tapped his empty glass. Wiping the counter as he came, Mr. Nose Ring worked his way down the bar. “What is it, Mr. Cole?”
“Fill’er up.”
“Sorry.”
“Sorry!” Max exclaimed. “Whaddya do, run out of vermouth or cherries? I can see how this place might be plumb out of cherries.” He laughed uproariously. The bartender did not.
“I believe you’ve had enough, Mr. Cole,” Mr. Nose Ring said carefully. “You might want to consider going on over to the restaurant side and having something to eat. I can send your bar bill along over there if you like.”
“Do you mean to tell me I’m eighty-sixed?” Max demanded.
Peering past his nose ring, the diminutive bartender didn’t blink, and he didn’t back off either. “All I’m saying is that cocktails are over. It’s time to eat or go home.”
“The hell it is!” Max exclaimed. “See there, Beaumont? That’s what happens when a guy drinks with cops. Everybody starts getting so nervous about rules that nobody has any fun.”
He flung himself off his stool and made for the door. The bartender had picked up the bill and was about to raise an alarm for a manager when I caught his eye.
“Never mind,” I said. “I’ll take care of it. Mr. Cole seems to be having a run of bad luck today.”
“Thanks,” the bartender returned, taking the money. “I heard all about his car, and I’m sorry it happened. Still I appreciate your paying the bill. Getting money from somebody after you’ve cut ’em off is always a pain in the butt.” He studied my face. “Is it true what he just said, that you’re a cop?”
I nodded.
“Here because of the car or because of Tony?”
“Mostly Tony,” I said. “But I was also hoping to run into Jimmy.”
“Greenjeans?”
I nodded.
“Good luck,” he said.
Over time, cops become masters at decoding nuances of tone. This one sounded bad to me. “What do you mean?”
“Bridget called here a little while ago looking for him. She’s really upset, although I don’t know why. I mean, Jimmy probably just had a flat tire or something.”
“Who’s Bridget?” I asked.
“Bridget Hargrave,” the bartender answered. “She’s Jimmy’s girlfriend. She came home expecting to find him there, except he wasn’t. He left a note saying he was coming down here and that he’d be back in a little while. As far as I can tell, nobody here’s seen him all day. I did my best to calm Bridget down, but she wasn’t having any of it. She can be a real handful at times.”
Mr. Nose Ring shoved my change across the counter. I left him a decent tip then hurried out into the parking lot where I was relieved to see there was no sign of Maxwell Cole or his Enterprise car.
Walking across the parking lot, I switched on my cell phone and dialed directory assistance. Naturally, Bridget Hargrave’s number was unlisted. Jimmy Greenjeans didn’t have
a listing at all.
Having struck out on that score, I unlocked my trunk and removed my notebook computer. As I mentioned before, that’s where the detective division’s handy-dandy computers spend most of their time—locked in trunks. After several mix-ups and one or two losses, we all wised up and learned to move them from city-owned vehicles to private ones at the end of our shifts. Had I used my equipment more often, I probably wouldn’t have had quite such a struggle hooking up the Ricochet modem.
A Ricochet is a computer attachment that operates like a cell phone. The purpose is to help us keep in touch with the department’s main-frame computer even when we’re someplace without a hard-wired telephone jack.
It took several tries before I got the thing to work. When I finally tapped into the SPD computer system, I had to consult my faithful little notebook to come up with the proper case number—the one that had originally been given to the Seward Park case. Minutes later, armed with Bridget Hargrave and Jimmy Greenjeans’ address, I headed up Denny toward Capitol Hill.
I expected the address on Boren to be something of a dump. It wasn’t. Somebody in the Hargrave/Greenjeans twosome had money in his/her pocket. Since his name wasn’t part of the telephone listing, I guessed that the person with the dough wasn’t Jimmy. Parking around the corner, I walked up to the front door and rang the security phone.
“Who is it?” I recognized the same breathy-voiced young woman I had spoken to one day earlier.
“Miss Hargrave?” I asked, hoping she wouldn’t hang up on me.
“Who is it?” she repeated.
“My name’s Beaumont, Detective J. P. Beaumont with the Seattle PD.”
“Oh, my God!” she gasped. “He’s dead, isn’t he? Jimmy’s dead!”
Over a keening wail of rising hysteria, I attempted to explain. “Miss Hargrave, really…” I heard a buzz as though she had broken the connection. I was still staring at the receiver when the security door clicked open. I let myself into the building, but that didn’t do much good. There was no listing of names and apartment numbers inside, nothing to tell me where I might find Bridget Hargrave. I understand why buildings don’t list apartment numbers. It’s the same reason there are locks and telephones on the outside doors—security. Still, when you’re supposed to see someone and haven’t a clue as to their unit number, it can be a real pain in the ass.
Sighing, I went back to the door where I had to stand with one foot inside the door and the other out in order to call her once again.
“Miss Hargrave, I…”
She understood the problem. “Apartment 804,” she barked into the phone before I had a chance to explain.
When I stepped off the elevator, a frantic young woman was already waiting for me in the eighth-floor hallway. Tears streamed down her ashen cheeks. “Where is he?” she sobbed. “What’s happened to Jimmy?”
She caught my jacket by the lapels in both hands and physically attempted to shake me with all the good effect of a tail wagging a dog. The poor tiny thing couldn’t have been much more than twenty. Barefoot and wearing clothing that could have come straight from Goodwill, she looked more like a street waif than the monied resident of a high-rise luxury condo.
“Please, tell me what’s happened,” she begged. “Please.”
“I don’t have any idea,” I said.
She stopped. “But you’re a detective, aren’t you? You said on the phone…”
I fumbled my ID out of my pocket and handed it to her. “It’s true,” I told her. “I am a detective. But I came here hoping to talk to Jimmy.”
“He isn’t here!”
Letting go of my jacket, Bridget turned abruptly and headed toward an open door just down the hallway. I hurried after her and was halfway inside the unit before she had a chance to slam the door shut in my face. I made it far enough into the room to have a fairly good look at the interior. The matching Stiffel torchère lamps weren’t something that had come from Goodwill. Neither had the all-leather sofa and matching chairs. Or the tasteful marble occasional tables that were scattered about here and there.
“Wait a minute, Miss Hargrave…”
“You tricked me,” she said accusingly and with heartfelt fury. “You’re a cop, and I don’t talk to cops. If nothing’s happened to Jimmy, why…”
“I don’t know for sure that nothing’s happened to Jimmy,” I said. “It may have.”
She spun back around. “So you do know something then.”
“Not really,” I said. “But I’m worried that he may be in some danger.”
“Why do you say that?” she demanded.
“You sound worried yourself. How come?”
She gave a little shudder before she answered. When she did, it was to ask yet another question. “Just tell me one thing. Was it an accident or not?”
“Was what an accident?”
“That guy down in Renton—the one they found dead in Lake Washington this morning.”
“You mean Tony Lawson?” She nodded. “What do you think?” I asked.
Bridget Hargrave sighed then. When she looked back up at me, there were tears in her eyes again. “One of the shift supervisors called to let Jimmy know. As soon as he heard about it, he just went wild. I’ve never seen him like that. He said, ‘If they got to Tony, they’ll be coming after me next.’ I told him he was being silly, but when I came home this afternoon and he wasn’t here…I found a note.”
She paused and walked over to a marble entryway table. I felt a sudden void in my gut. It was the same way I had felt earlier in the day when I first heard about the case in Renton—Maxwell Cole’s sunken car containing the body of someone from the Hurricane Cafe.
“You’re sure that’s exactly what Jimmy said?” I asked. “‘They’ll be coming after me next?’”
Nodding, Bridget Hargrave handed me a scrap of paper.
“Gone to H.C.,” it said. “Back by four.”
“We were supposed to see my mother for dinner tonight,” Bridget continued. “She’s coming in from out of town. We were going to meet her and her new boyfriend at the Four Seasons for dinner at 5:30. It’s not like Jimmy…”
“Have you reported him missing?”
She blinked back tears. “I tried,” she said. “But when I called 911, the operator practically laughed me off the phone. She said if Jimmy’s still missing, for me to call back tomorrow at the same time.”
Which will be exactly twenty-four hours too late, I told myself grimly. Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out a business card and pressed it into Bridget Hargrave’s tiny, ice-cold hands. “If you hear from him, have him call me. Right away.”
With that, I turned and charged back into the hallway. I had punched the button and was stepping inside the door when Bridget caught up with me.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“To look for him,” I told her.
Her already-ashen face turned a shade paler. “You think something bad has happened to him, too, don’t you?”
“I certainly do,” I told her. “Just don’t ask me why.”
Fourteen
A side from Kramer’s emphasis on establishing “goals and objectives,” the major thrust of his interminable briefing that morning had been teamwork—the importance of. His entire pep talk/monologue had been delivered with enough rah-rah football analogies to choke even the most ardent Seahawk fan. Teamwork was a problem for me, however. Having been summarily thrown off the team, I found it difficult to summon up any kind of warm and fuzzy attitude toward his particular concept of teamwork.
Consequently and despite my promise to Sue, I didn’t even bother trying to get in touch with Detectives Haller or Nguyen. What good would that do? I was sure Kramer would already have given them the word that I was persona non grata on the Seward Park investigation. Instead, I picked up my cell phone and gave the medical examiner’s office a call.
Once again, Audrey Cummings answered the phone. “So your guy is still out sick?” I asked.
&nbs
p; “I suppose you mean Dirk Matthews?” she replied. “That’s right. He’s not just sick—he’s really sick. He’s here in Harborview in critical condition. They have him upstairs in the burn unit with a raging case of necrotizing fasciitis—Stevens-Johnson syndrome as we refer to it in the trade. SJ for short.”
“SJ,” I repeated. “What’s that?”
“Your basic flesh-eating disease—a massive bacterial infection. These are your normal, ordinary bacteria, the kind that are around every day. Then, suddenly, for no known reason, they just go wild. I saw Dirk day before yesterday and he was fine, clowning around like usual. Today he’s upstairs fighting for his life. SJ is massive, rapid, and very, very serious.”
The more she talked, the worse I felt, and the more I remembered Darla Cunningham’s warning. That things might not seem connected, but that they would be. My impression was that Dirk Matthews was the person in the ME’s office who had actually handled the Seward Park remains.
“You mean as in he may not make it?” I asked.
“That’s what I mean.” After a pause, Audrey resumed her customary manner of businesslike efficiency. “All right, now, Beau, with Dirk out, we’re really shorthanded. Let’s not waste any more time jawing. What do you need?”
“Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”
“I don’t drink coffee,” she said. “It’s bad for the rain forests. I am due for a lunch break, though. You can come on over if you like. We can go to the cafeteria.”
“No,” I said. “Not there. I’d like to speak to you in private.”
“This sounds serious.”
“It’s either serious or crazy,” I told her. “You’ll have to decide which.”
Audrey sighed. “All right, then,” she said. “You have a car, don’t you?”
“I’m in it.”
“I brought along a sack lunch. Come pick me up outside the building. You drive; I’ll eat.”
It seemed as though everyone in downtown Seattle must have gone home to dinner. The place was a deserted village. From the far end of the Denny Regrade, I made it to Harborview Hospital in seven minutes flat. Audrey was waiting outside the building when I drove into the back driveway.
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