Breach of Duty (9780061739637)

by Jance, Judith A.

  “So,” I said, “were you the only one?”

  “The only one what?” Malcolm asked.

  “The only randy neighbor who was messing around with Agnes Ferman?”

  “Detective Beaumont,” he objected, “I resent your saying any such thing. I’ll have you know Aggie Ferman was a real lady. She might have had herself a boyfriend or two, but she was no two-timer.”

  There were several descriptions that I thought might well have applied to Agnes Ferman. “Lady” wasn’t one of them. And two-timing was exactly what she had done when she had her husband at home all the while she was messing around with Forrest Considine at work. If that wasn’t two-timing, what was?

  “What if there were others?” I insisted. “What if one of your rivals heard about you and he was the jealous sort?”

  “We were very careful,” Malcolm said. “I’m sure no one else knew.”

  “What about your wife?” I asked. “Did she know?”

  “Of course not. Becky has no idea…” Stopping abruptly, he paled. “You wouldn’t tell her, would you?”

  “I might,” I said.

  “Please,” he begged. “You don’t understand. She really is jealous, and I’ve been walking on eggshells with that woman for the last month. If she found out about Aggie, she’d blow sky-high. Even with Aggie dead, she’d probably throw me out of the house. What would I do then? End up sleeping down at the Union Gospel Mission? Don’t tell her, Detective Beaumont. Please.”

  “But what if she already knows?”

  In asking the question, I posed it to Malcolm Lawrence and to myself at the same time. He looked stunned. “She couldn’t!” he exclaimed.

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “Just how jealous is she?”

  He shook his head. “You’re not sayin’ that Becky would’ve…No, you can’t mean that.”

  With that, he jerked on the leashes. He and the dogs set off for home at a surprisingly swift pace. I climbed back into the Town Car and followed, passing them eventually, and then parallel-parking in front of the Lawrences’ house. Getting out of the Town Car I noticed that Agnes Ferman’s yard across the street was still sealed off with crime-scene tape.

  By the time Lawrence and the dogs arrived, I was standing waiting for them at the end of the sidewalk. “Please don’t say nothin’ to her,” Lawrence said again. “If you need me to, I’ll be glad to testify that the other guy was here that night, the guy in the Lincoln. I can also tell you about the fight he and Agnes had. It was a doozy. Maybe he’s the one who come back later and set fire to the place.”

  “Maybe,” I agreed. “Did you happen to hear what they were arguing about?” I asked.

  Malcolm nodded. “Couldn’t help but,” he said. “The man called her all kinds of ugly names and a blackmailer besides. He was wrong about that, I’m sure. Aggie was a fine person. A lovin’, kind person. She wouldn’t ever in a million years do someone that way.”

  You’d be surprised, I thought. I said, “Look, Mr. Lawrence, I’ve talked to several people in the course of this investigation all of whom knew Agnes Ferman. You happen to be the only one who holds her in high regard. Unless I’m mistaken, your own wife is included in the camp of Agnes Ferman detractors.”

  “Becky didn’t know Aggie the way I did.”

  “I suppose not.”

  “You know what I mean. She was nice to me.”

  “How nice?” I asked. “What if she had threatened to tell your wife everything that was going on between you? What would have happened then?”

  “She never did,” Malcolm insisted. “And she wouldn’t have.”

  “But what if she had? What would you have done then? Wouldn’t you have had to take measures to protect yourself?”

  “You mean would I have hurt her? Me? Please, Detective Beaumont. You’ve got to believe me. Aggie Ferman meant the world to me. I never would have done the least thing to harm her.”

  “And your position is that she was fine when you left her home later that night?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “What time was that? Really, now, Mr. Lawrence. No more lies about being too old to stay up for the eleven o’clock news.”

  “Midnight,” he said. “It was midnight when I left.”

  “What about vehicles?”

  “There was a big Lincoln. A silver Lincoln. The one that guy came and left in.”

  “And after he stumbled over your dog…”

  “Dogs,” he corrected. “He got tangled with both dogs, but Tuffy’s the one he stepped on.”

  “After he stepped on Tuffy and left, did he come back?”

  “No,” Malcolm said. “Not that I noticed.”

  “And when you got back home to your own house, was your wife asleep?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know? Wasn’t she in bed when you got there?”

  “We don’t sleep in the same bedroom,” Malcolm admitted in a small voice. “We haven’t for years. When I retired, she told me she was retirin’, too. Said she’d still cook and clean for me, but there were some things she wasn’t doing anymore. Ever. That’s when she moved into the other bedroom.”

  “Was that the difference between your wife and Agnes Ferman?” I asked. “Aggie would put out and Becky wouldn’t?”

  Surprisingly enough, Malcolm Lawrence burst into tears then. Dragging his two dogs with him, he walked over to my rented Town Car and stood leaning against the door, sobbing into his arms. There was nothing for me to do but stand and wait.

  “Just because you get old don’t mean you dry up,” he said eventually. “Everybody acts like sex is somethin’ that just goes away with time, but it don’t. Leastwise, it didn’t for me. I still wanted it. I begged Becky to see her doctor and find out if there wasn’t somethin’ she could take, some of them hormones or somethin’, that would give her back her sex drive. She told me the only thing wrong with her sex drive was me. Like it was all my fault hers was gone. I did without for a long time, Detective Beaumont. Until just a year or so ago. That’s when I hooked up with Aggie.

  “I knew it could never be more than what it was, just a quick little squeeze and such after dark when everyone else was asleep. But I have to tell you, Aggie Ferman made me feel like a man again. She made me feel like I counted for somethin’ more than just my pension and my social security check.”

  “What about Becky?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” a voice from behind me said. “What about me?”

  Malcolm and I both turned. A few feet away, Becky Lawrence, her hair once again in curlers, stood on the Lawrences’ front porch. She was a fairly small woman holding a very large gun—a shotgun.

  “Becky,” Lawrence croaked. “What are you doing with that thing? Somebody might get hurt.”

  “Somebody’s already been hurt,” she said furiously. “And it’s me. All I asked of you was a little self-control.”

  “But twenty years,” Malcolm argued. “Isn’t that asking a lot?”

  “You promised to love, honor, and obey,” she said. “I don’t remember hearing anything that said you could go running around dropping your dipstick into the nearest honey pot just because you weren’t getting any at home. So I fixed it,” Becky added. “Fixed her, anyway. But it seems to me I should have fixed you, too. Put you out of your misery. Ever since Agnes Ferman died you’ve been moping around here like your best friend was gone and your whole life was over. I aim to see to it that it is.”

  As she raised the gun to fire, I had only a split second in which to react. I grabbed Malcolm Lawrence by the arm and pulled him down with me, slamming him facefirst into the gravel. “Crawl!” I commanded. “Go.”

  Dragging the dogs along with him, he scrambled under the car. With my nose and face scraping the dirt, I did the same. The explosion came a mere fraction of a second after we both hit the ground.

  I know a little about guns and recoil. I expected that first shot to go wild—both high and wide—but it didn’t. I
heard the potentially lethal spray of buckshot spatter into the side of the car. Heard the windows shatter. With terrified yips, the two dogs scrambled forward, passing Malcolm in the process, until they were pulling him by the leash, rather than the other way around.

  Emerging on the far side of the car, I saw Malcolm sitting with his back against the car, holding one hand against his chest and gasping for breath. He had let go of the leashes, and the two dogs were long gone.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “My heart…” he managed. His face had gone gray. He could barely talk. “Pills…” he added. “…in my pocket.” He patted his shirt.

  I fumbled the little prescription bottle out of his shirt pocket, fought my way past the childproof lid, and passed him one of the tiny, lifesaving nitro pills. He put it in his mouth and then closed both eyes.

  “Malcolm,” I said. “Listen to me. Is that your gun she has?”

  He nodded.

  “Do you think she fired both barrels at once?”

  “No,” he said. “Just one.”

  Damn!

  For the second time in as many days, I used my cell phone to dial 911. “Nine-one-one,” the operator said. “What are you reporting?”

  I raised my head far enough to peer through the driver’s-side back window. Becky Lawrence was no longer standing on the front porch. She had taken the shotgun and disappeared into the interior of the house.

  “We’ve got an armed woman barricaded in a house on Wingard Court North,” I told her. “The six-hundred block of Wingard Court North.”

  “Sir, that incident has already been reported. Units are on their way…”

  “Tell them to send an ambulance as well as patrol cars,” I barked. “I’ve got a man here suffering chest pains and shortness of breath.”

  “And you are?”

  I told her who I was.

  “And what is your position?” the operator asked.

  “We’re behind a car that’s parked in front of the house,” I told her. “We’re pinned down behind a blue Lincoln Town Car with rental plates.”

  Just as I said those words, I had a clear vision of the rental agreement. I remembered the line I had initialed, refusing the Loss Damage Waiver. I remembered thinking, I’m a safe driver. Why would I need that? Why would I need that indeed! A rental car thoroughly sprayed with shotgun pellets was going to be damned difficult to explain when it came time to return it.

  “And the shooter’s position?” the operator asked.

  “She’s gone into the house,” I said. “We can’t see her now. She could be anywhere inside.”

  By then I could hear sirens. Medic One arrived first but the aid car stopped out on 137th. They waited there for assistance without ever venturing onto Wingard. Behind the aid car came a pair of blue-and-whites. The patrol cars pulled up close behind us and a pair of uniformed officers scrambled out.

  “Is anyone hurt?” one of the uniforms asked as he reached us.

  “Mr. Lawrence here is having chest pains,” I told the patrolman. “If you can, help him over to the ambulance. Then, when you come back, if you happen to have an extra Kevlar vest just lying around, I’d really appreciate being able to borrow it.”

  The two cops exchanged disparaging looks. “Detectives,” one of them muttered with a shake of his head. “I’ll radio back to the lieutenant and see what we can do.”

  As they headed away, hustling Lawrence into the patrol car, I was dismayed to see the Lawrences’ front door come open. I don’t remember taking my 9mm out of its holster, but by the time the screen door burst open, the weapon was in my hand. I raised the gun, expecting that I’d have to lay down a fusillade of protective fire to cover the retreat of the uniformed officers who were moving Malcolm Lawrence to safety. To my surprise, when Becky Lawrence appeared on the porch, the shotgun was nowhere in sight. One hand was empty. The other held something that looked like an ordinary overnight bag.

  “Drop it, Mrs. Lawrence,” I ordered. “Put your hands up in the air so I can see them!”

  Becky complied at once. She dropped the bag. It landed on the clasp, breaking it open, and sending a cascade of metal hair curlers rolling across the porch, down the steps, and onto the sidewalk. While Malcolm and I had been huddled behind the Town Car fumbling for his nitroglycerin pill, his wife had been inside the house, calmly taking the curlers out of her hair. She had combed out the curls and even put on some lipstick.

  Holding my gun in one hand and fumbling out flexicuffs with the other, I went forward to meet her. “As soon as I saw you drive up,” she said. “I knew it was over. As long as you and that lady detective didn’t come back, I figured I was all right.”

  Becky and I rode into the department in one of the patrol cars, with me in front and with her locked behind the screen in the backseat. Once in the Public Safety Building, I took her into an interview room. Because she waived her right to an attorney, we went at it right away. She was more than happy, proud almost, to confess to Agnes Ferman’s murder.

  “Why?” I asked her when she admitted she had set fire to the couch. “Why did you do it?”

  “I may not have wanted Malcolm anymore,” she told me, “but I sure as hell didn’t want anyone else to have him.”

  Kramer, showing his face for the first time since the Bellevue crime scene, took it upon himself to observe the entire questioning process although he did have brains enough to keep quiet most of the time.

  “A real nut case,” he said to me, once a pair of officers were dispatched to take Becky Lawrence down to the King County Jail and book her on an open charge of murder. “Sounds to me as though she was more upset about Agnes Ferman borrowing the lawn mower than she was about the woman screwing her husband.”

  “Becky’s not nearly as crazy as she’d like you to believe,” I said. “I think if we do a little digging, we’ll be able to show premeditation. You heard what she said. She knew about Malcolm’s affair with Agnes for at least six months before she did anything about it. The thing that put her over the edge was hearing Frederick Considine’s argument with Agnes Ferman. The only reason she did the murder then was because she expected we’d blame the whole thing on him.”

  “Well,” Kramer said grudgingly. “You didn’t. Good job. I’m glad to have that case cleared, but this Lone Rangering stuff has to cease.”

  Lone Rangering is something I had been accused of before on occasion, but considering all the mitigating circumstances this time it made me see red, even if the man did have a point.

  There comes a time in every man’s life when he realizes that his childhood dreams are never going to come true. No matter what, he’s never going to be president; never going to play second base for the Yankees; never going to walk on the moon. And if you’re reasonably squared away when that realization hits you, you’re all right with it. Your life is your life and that’s okay.

  That day on Lake Chelan, I had tried to explain all that to my grandmother. Now, listening to Kramer, I tried explaining it to myself. It wasn’t working. My one ambition in life had always been to be a good cop. There were several underlying and accompanying assumptions. One was that being a good cop matters. That police officers save people’s lives and make this country a better place.

  Maybe those assumptions sound stupidly idealistic, but they were mine nonetheless. I had done my best for twenty-odd years with the expectation that when it came time to leave, I’d do it under exemplary circumstances, with a boring retirement dinner complete with typically boring law-enforcement high jinks, with rubber chicken, plenty of rotten jokes, and even worse speeches. I had never once expected to be run out on a rail by a supposed superior who was less of a police officer than I was in every way.

  “You’ve got to stop running all over the place acting like you’re a one-man crime fighting unit, Beaumont.” Kramer continued. “We’ve got procedures for that. And partners. You’re not supposed to be out on your own like you have been the past two days. If it doesn’t stop
, I’ll have you up before a board of inquiry on breach-of-duty charges.”

  “Like hell you will!”

  “Detective Beaumont, I—”

  “You’ll do nothing of the kind, Kramer, you jackass! I’m not going up before a board of inquiry for anything. I’m pulling the pin,” I told him. “I quit!”

  The words were out of my mouth before I knew it and before I realized how much I meant them. “In the last twenty-four hours, my Lone Rangering, as you call it, has saved the lives of at least three people. So you can stick your bloody procedures where the sun don’t shine, buster, and leave me the hell alone!”

  With that, I turned and stalked away. I didn’t stop to check out that one last time. I didn’t have to. Sergeant Chuck Grayson, the night-shift desk sergeant, had heard every word.

  It was almost nine as I headed up 3rd Avenue. I walked as far as University. Then, on a whim, I turned up the hill. Sue’s folks and kids were still at the Four Seasons. If I was no longer going to be answering my own phone at the department, I needed to stop by and tell them what was going on in person.

  Hank Hinkle came downstairs as soon as I rang their room. The two of us sat in the Garden Court and talked. “I hope your quitting doesn’t have anything to do with what happened to Sue,” he said. “She wouldn’t have wanted that.”

  “No,” I said, “the two aren’t related.” But even as I said it, I could see that wasn’t the case. It had everything to do with Sue and almost nothing at all to do with Paul Kramer. I didn’t need some half-baked squad commander to point out my failures. I could do an admirable job of that on my own. Sue Danielson was dead. My partner was dead and for one reason only—because I hadn’t saved her.

  Twenty-One

  While I was talking with Hank Hinkle, I realized I’d had nothing to eat all day and stopped long enough for a bowl of soup. After I left the Four Seasons, I considered tracking down an AA meeting on my way home, not because I needed a drink, but because I needed a place to talk. In the end, I decided I was too tired and went straight on home. It’s a good thing, too. If I hadn’t, I would have missed the impromptu meeting that was going on at my condo.