“Nice car,” she said, climbing into the Porsche. “How is it a homicide cop can afford to drive one of these?”
“It’s a long story,” I replied.
“That’s right,” she said, settling in and fastening her seat belt. “I remember. Something about an heiress.”
“Something like that,” I agreed.
“Oil was it?” Audrey asked.
“Copper, not oil.”
Satisfied, Audrey opened her bag and brought out a sandwich. “It’s peanut butter and plum jelly,” she said. “Want to share?”
“No, thanks.”
Audrey took a bite. “So what’s going on?” she asked.
“First, tell me about Dirk Matthews,” I said.
She shook her head. “I’ve pretty much told you everything there is to tell. I’m worried about him, of course. But it turns out I’m glad to have him out of my hair, too. His parents are good friends of Doc Baker’s, so, although he’s a nice enough young man and even a fairly decent investigator, he has a bit of a wild streak. No, make that a goofy streak. When Dirk was a kid, he probably drove his parents and teachers round the bend. He pulls these outrageous stunts sometimes. In fact, the last time I saw him at work, I was chewing him out for that very thing. One day I bawl him out for some kind of stupid class-clown nonsense. The next thing I know, the poor guy’s in intensive care and practically on his deathbed.”
“What kind of nonsense?”
Audrey didn’t answer right away. When she did, it was to sidestep the issue. “It was just some backroom high jinks. No big thing. I don’t see what that has to do…”
“Humor me, Audrey,” I said. “I’m a homicide detective. The kind of black humor that gets bandied around the squad room would be enough to have normal people locked up. I’m sure the same kind of thing goes on in the ME’s office, as well.”
“But…”
“Please,” I begged. “Just tell me. Whatever it was, I’m not going to go blabbing it all over town.”
Audrey sighed. “Have you ever seen the Flying Karamazov Brothers?”
“The juggling troupe?”
Audrey nodded.
“I think so,” I said. “Years ago when my own kids were little, I think Karen and I took them to see that show somewhere. I seem to remember that in one part of their act, they invited people from the audience to bring up items for them to juggle. There were all kinds of things—a vacuum cleaner hose, bowling pins, bowling balls, knives, and car parts. I can’t remember what else. And they managed to juggle them all. It was pretty impressive.”
“Right,” Audrey said. “I wonder if Dirk didn’t see that same show. If so, it made a big impression on him. Some people work all day and dream of writing the great American novel at night, on weekends, and during their vacations. Dirk Matthews, on the other hand, is teaching himself to juggle. His greatest ambition in life is to be accepted into the Barnum & Bailey clown college so he can run away and join the circus.”
“So?”
“Two nights ago, I walked in on him and caught him practicing his juggling, only he wasn’t doing it with bowling pins. He was using bones, Beau, human bones. I gave him hell about it, of course. Told him that our job requires us to show respect for the dead no matter who they are. That we must always behave as though the bodies entrusted to our care are the bodies of our own loved ones. When I finished reaming him out, he was completely contrite, as usual. Promised it would never happen again and all that. At the time, he looked perfectly healthy. Less than twenty-four hours later, he was up in the burn unit with a raging case of SJ.”
Wanting to talk without having to think about driving at the same time, I swung the 928 into the drive-up window of a closed dry-cleaning shop. “Let me guess,” I said. “The bones he was juggling would have to be the ones from Seward Park. Right?”
“Right,” Audrey said, nodding. “How did you know that?”
I felt like I was walking into verbal quicksand. Paul Kramer hadn’t gone for the idea that there might be a possible link between a dead shaman’s curse and a very real murder. What made me think that Audrey Cummings, a scientist, would buy a similar connection between that same curse and the unseemly behavior of her desperately ill investigator, Dirk Matthews.
“Just a guess,” I said. “How many sets of bones can you have around there at one time?”
Audrey shot me a sidelong glance. “You’d be surprised,” she said.
“Anyway,” I continued, “Sue and I have stumbled across a possible ID on those bones.”
“Really. Who is it?” she asked.
“We think he’s a Suquamish shaman named David Half Moon.”
“From where?”
“Over on the Kitsap Peninsula,” I told her. “According to our source, Half Moon died several years ago from lung cancer.”
“A shaman,” Audrey said thoughtfully. “That might explain it.”
“Explain what?”
“What happened to Dirk,” she replied. “Once we started having to deal with Native American repatriation issues on a fairly regular basis, I made it a point to study the belief systems of various Puget Sound tribes. As I recall, among the Suquamish, disturbing the remains of a shaman is considered to be a very serious offense.”
“You’re saying Dirk somehow caught an infection from handling the bones?”
“Not directly. But Northwest Indians have their own ideas about what goes around comes around. In a way, it’s not unlike the Hindu and Buddhist concept of karma.”
“And one thing leads to another?” I asked.
Audrey nodded. “The truth is, Dirk shouldn’t have treated anybody’s bones that way, but juggling with an old shaman’s bones is just asking for trouble.”
I could hardly believe the words I was hearing come out of her mouth, and it certainly saved me a lot of time, effort, and explanation. “You wouldn’t happen to know a lady named Darla Cunningham, would you?” I asked.
“No. Who’s she?”
“She teaches physics at the U-Dub.”
“Should I know her?” Audrey asked.
“If you did,” I said, “I think you two might have a lot in common. She happens to be the daughter of a Quinault shaman, a guy named Henry Leaping Deer from over at Taholah.”
“A Quinault who teaches physics? She sounds interesting,” Audrey agreed, biting into an apple. “Now, is that all you came to tell me, the origin of those bones? Why did we have to be away from the office for that?”
“It’s actually a little more complicated than that,” I admitted. “You know the body the Renton police pulled out of Lake Washington this morning?”
“Anthony Lawson? I believe he’s also an Indian. Don’t tell me he’s a shaman, too.”
“No,” I said. “But the two cases may be connected, and that’s why I needed to talk to you. We’d like you to do a DNA comparison and see whether or not Anthony Lawson is related to the other man, presumably David Half Moon.”
“As you well know, those kinds of tests are prohibitively expensive,” Audrey objected. “As officers assigned to the two cases, you and Detective Danielson are welcome to request them, but I’m not making any promises…”
I decided it was time to be straight with her. “The truth is, Sue and I have been removed from the Seward Park case by our new fearless leader, Paul Kramer, because he thinks I’ve been bamboozled by all this shaman hocus-pocus, as he calls it. And, since Lawson died down in Renton, we’re not even involved in that one. But it turns out Lawson also was born somewhere over on the Kitsap Peninsula. He was adopted out as an infant, but he told some of his fellow workers that his grandfather was a big deal out on the reservation—presumably Port Madison. And if Lawson’s grandfather turns out to be David Half Moon, it’s true. He really was a big deal.”
“You said Half Moon died of cancer. That means he’s not a murder victim at all, so what’s the point of running the tests?” Audrey asked.
“It’ll prove the connection between the
two cases, one Kramer claims I’m just making up. Furthermore, if Half Moon clearly isn’t a homicide statistic, maybe we can expedite getting his bones out of the ME’s office and shipped back into the woods where they belong.”
“You mean, before they cause any more trouble?”
“Right,” I said.
Meticulous as usual, Audrey dropped her apple core into her empty sandwich bag. Then she zipped it shut, dropped that bag into the paper bag. After that she folded the paper until the resulting package was no bigger than a small envelope.
“I get the feeling you know more than you’re saying,” Audrey said thoughtfully.
“You’re right,” I admitted. “The woman I told you about earlier, Darla Cunningham, showed up in my office last night. She came to pass along a warning from her father, Henry Leaping Deer…”
“The Quinault from Taholah,” Audrey put in.
“Right…who’s had a series of disturbing dreams over the last week or so.”
“What’s his connection to Half Moon?”
“They were friends,” I answered. “Boyhood friends. They evidently went to boarding school together. In the first dream, Half Moon’s bones had been carted off to the city. In the next one, a group of children were playing field hockey with the same bones, using Half Moon’s skull as the ball.”
“We never found a skull,” Audrey said. “So maybe Leaping Deer was using his literary license. Still it isn’t all that far from what really went on.”
“When I saw her, Darla passed along her father’s warning that some innocent people were in danger of being affected by Half Moon’s bones.”
“Anyone specific?” Audrey asked.
I nodded. “A man with green hair and a white woman. The green-haired guy isn’t hard to figure out. Jimmy Greenjeans, the guy who reported the Seward Park bones in the first place, happens to have green hair. I just came from talking to his girlfriend. It turns out he’s missing at the moment.”
“Missing?” Audrey asked. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“It isn’t.”
“And the white woman? Who’s she?”
“I’m not sure,” I told her. “That’s a little harder to figure. She could be you or Sue Danielson, either one.”
Audrey thought about that for several long seconds. I waited, more than half expecting her to simply burst out laughing. If so, I would lose the one ally who might actually be able to help. When she spoke, however, there was no trace of laughter.
“I can see how come Kramer might be worried,” she said. “On the other hand, I can also see why you’re so concerned. Don’t worry about the DNA tests. I’ll handle the requests myself. Those tests take time, though. While I’m working on those, it might be faster for someone to talk to Anthony Lawson’s adoptive mother and see if she has any records that would indicate a relationship between him and Seward Park. Do you have the mother’s address? I could probably give it to you if…”
“Thanks for the offer. Maxwell Cole already gave me Annie Engebretson’s address. She lives in a retirement home over by Greenlake.”
Audrey glanced at her watch. “Fun’s over,” she said. “You’d better take me back so I can get started on my end of this.”
Nodding, I eased the idling engine back into gear and nosed out onto Broadway. For several blocks, neither of us spoke. Audrey broke the silence.
“Once we make the connection between Seward Park and David Half Moon, it will only take a matter of days for me to arrange repatriation. This isn’t the first time we’ve found Indian bones in King County, so I know the drill, but only as far as ordinary people are concerned. Dealing with a shaman may be somewhat more complicated. Is there any cure?”
For a few confusing seconds, I thought we had somehow switched back to Dirk Matthews and his flesh-eating infection. “Cure for what?” I asked.
“For the shaman’s curse,” Audrey replied impatiently.
“Oh, that,” I said. “I think so. I remember Darla mentioning some kind of purification ceremony and that her father would be willing to help.”
“That’s good,” Audrey said, as we pulled into the drive that goes around to the newly remodeled back of Harborview Hospital. “I’ll keep that in mind. Where is he again?”
“Taholah.”
“Where’s that?”
“Somewhere out along the coast. The Olympic Peninsula.”
“By Ocean Shores?”
“No,” I said. “Taholah’s quite a way north of there.”
“Too bad,” Audrey said. “I have a time share in Ocean Shores. If he were closer, maybe I could go there and have him come to the condo to do a house call.”
At that point I finally realized she was making fun of me. “I don’t think shamans make house calls,” I told her.
Up to then, we had been so engrossed in our conversation that I hadn’t seen the squall line, a fast moving layer of low, dark clouds, that was rolling in off the water, lowering in under high, overcast skies. In the process, they had obliterated what had promised to be a glorious sunset. Now, as Audrey prepared to exit the car and make a dash for the building, the clouds burst into a drenching downpour. Even though she had to travel a distance of only a few feet, I’m sure she was soaked to the skin by the time she made it inside.
Watch yourself, I told her silently as she disappeared into a corridor.Take off those wet clothes and stay out of the way of fast-moving bacteria.
As if to underscore that thought, a powerful lightning strike flashed off one of the downtown high-rises. The brilliant explosion of light was immediately followed by a deafening crack of thunder. I said a little prayer of thanks that Audrey had been safely inside when it hit.
For several minutes, I sat in the drive, watching the rain and considering my next move. I was off the clock and working a self-assigned case. No one was waiting for me at home, so my dinner certainly wouldn’t be getting cold. Taken all together, there didn’t seem to be much point in calling it a day and going home. Instead, I drove straight over to Greenlake and parked in a visitors’ spot outside the Hearthstone. Naturally a gatekeeper was posted at the reception desk. “May I help you?”
Most of the time my homicide squad ID can ease me past even the most reluctant of receptionists although why they’re not called repulsionists, I don’t know. This one may have been young, but she certainly lived up to the latter name. And, considering the circumstances, I can’t say I blame her.
“Mrs. Engebretson isn’t receiving visitors at the moment,” the young woman said. “As you can well imagine, she’s had a very rough day.”
Since I wasn’t officially assigned to the case, flashing my Seattle PD badge might have opened the door, but in the long run I was sure it would be more of a handicap than a help. “I’m a friend of Tony’s,” I said as sincerely as I could manage. “I would really like to see his mother if it’s at all possible, just to express my condolences.”
The young woman sighed. “What’s your name, please.”
“Jonas,” I said at once.
“One moment, Mr. Jonas,” she said curtly. “We’ll have to check.”
I did nothing to disabuse her of the mistaken impression that Jonas was my last name. It occurred to me that if somebody from Seattle PD—Kramer, for example—came around asking questions, they might not be astute enough to connect a Mr. Jonas with a troublesome detective named J. P. Beaumont. There are very few people in the department who are aware that the J in my name actually stands for Jonas.
The receptionist turned and indulged in a behind-the-desk sotto voce conference with one of her coworkers. The coworker gave me a meaningful up-and-down examination before she flounced away from the desk. She returned several minutes later. “All right, Mr. Jonas. Annie’s willing to see you, after all. She’s in the chapel at the moment. Please follow me.”
I was expecting an LOL, a little old lady, as we sometimes call them. Annie Engebretson may have been old, but she was anything but little. The stately and formidable
woman who rose to greet me when I entered the tastefully lit chapel was every bit as tall as I am. She came walking toward me, holding out her hand. Her icy blue eyes were red-rimmed while a thin cloud of snow-white hair haloed her face.
“Mr. Jonas,” she said cordially, taking my hand and shaking it with a firm, unyielding grip. “I understand you were a friend of my son’s.”
Feeling like a reprehensible heel, I nodded.
“Won’t you sit down. I’m delighted to meet you. I’m glad to know my son had friends, you see. Friends that were normal, that is, and not developmentally disabled. Anthony had his friends at the home, of course, his roommates, but it’s nice to know there were others, too.”
You incredible jerk, I railed at myself. What the hell do you think you’re doing? I said, “We weren’t all that close. I only knew him at work.”
She nodded. Behind thick bifocals her eyes filled with tears. “That’s all right,” she said. “He loved that job. It was his first, you see, and he was very proud of it—proud of making a contribution and doing something in the real world. You know?”
I nodded again. “I’m sad about this, but in a way, I’m glad, too,” she continued. “That was always one of Einer’s and my big worries. Einer was my husband. He died several years ago. We both worried about Anthony outliving us, especially after Einer got so sick. We couldn’t imagine what would become of him after both of us were gone. Now I don’t have to worry about that anymore. It sounds like such a terribly cold-hearted thing for a mother to say, but still I do feel as though an awful weight, a burden, has been lifted from my shoulders. Does that make any sense, Mr. Jonas?”
Feeling worse by the minute, I nodded. “Of course it does,” I said.
“But now, what is it you wanted? They said at the desk that you especially wanted to see me tonight. That it couldn’t wait until tomorrow.”
“Well,” I said, scrambling. “I was wondering if there was anything I could do to help. With regard to arrangements, that is.”
Breach of Duty (9780061739637) Page 18
