I’m not sure who called everyone together, but when I walked up to the door in the hallway, I could tell by the murmur of voices coming from inside, that there were several people waiting for me. Ralph’s girlfriend, Mary Greengo, heard my key in the lock and met me at the door. She’s a lithe blonde with a perpetual upbeat way about her. She drew me inside with a hug. “Thank heaven you’re here,” she said. “Did you have something to eat?”
I nodded. “Well, come on in then,” she added, “I think almost everyone is here.”
And they were. Ron’s girls, Heather and Tracie, were sacked out on the floor in the den, sound asleep in front of a silenced television set. Ron’s chair was parked at the far end of the room where he and Ralph Ames appeared to be deep in conversation. On the long upholstered benches of the window seat sat both my grandmother, Beverly Piedmont, and Lars Jenssen, my AA sponsor.
Even if all the people involved are friends, it’s still a bit disconcerting to walk into your own living room and find it seems to have developed a life of its own by declaring a party in your absence. I was too tired to be gracious about it. “Don’t let me stand in your way,” I groused, “but if you folks don’t mind, I believe I’ll go straight to bed.”
“Don’t do that, Jonas,” my grandmother said. “We’ve all been worried about you. Ron told us you had left the department earlier. When you didn’t come right home, we didn’t know what to think.”
“Left the department as in coming home for the night?” I asked. “Or as in I quit?”
“Both,” Ron admitted. “Chuck Grayson called and told me what was up. I’m the one who called everybody else. You didn’t mean it, did you?”
“Yes, I meant it,” I said.
That pronouncement was met with a period of silence. “Well, good for you,” Lars said finally, hobbling across the room and giving me a spine-cracking whack on the back. “Congradulations,” he told me. “Been sayin’ for years that you work too dad-gummed hard for your own good. It’s ’bout time you stopped to smell them roses.”
“You had a phone call a few minutes ago,” Ralph interjected, handing me a note. “You may want to return this as soon as possible.”
The name on the note was Bridget Hargrave along with a telephone number. The moment I saw it, I felt sick. I had been so tied up with everything else I had completely forgotten about Jimmy Greenjeans. Seeing his girlfriend’s name in Ralph’s neat printing gave me a nudge of awful premonition. “If you’ll excuse me,” I said. “I believe I’ll return this from the phone in the bedroom.”
Dialing the number I tried to prepare myself for news that would be, in its own way, just as awful as the doctor saying Sue was dead. No doubt Jimmy Greenjeans was dead, too. There had simply been some kind of delay in finding his body.
“Bridget?” I said when she answered. “Detective Beaumont here.” Old habits do die hard.
“Thanks for calling. I had to talk to you.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
“Jimmy called me about an hour ago from somewhere out on the coast…”
I closed my eyes and said a silent prayer of thanksgiving. Jimmy wasn’t dead after all. Somehow he had managed to outwit David Half Moon’s curse.
“That’s great,” I said. “I’m delighted to hear it.”
“You may be, but I’m not,” Bridget said. “He gave me some bullshit story about having to go out there with some woman—Carla Something. Jimmy had some lame excuse about having to meet with Carla’s father.”
“Her name’s Darla,” I corrected. “Darla Cunningham.”
“That’s right. So you do know her then,” Bridget said.
“Yes.”
“And is it true that Jimmy had to go see this man, or is it just a way of avoiding meeting my mother?”
“What did Jimmy say?”
“He says he had to go, that it was a matter of life and death, but that he made a promise—a sacred promise—never to tell anyone what went on. I don’t know what to think. Should I believe him or not? What if he and Carla…Darla…have something going and Jimmy just doesn’t have guts enough to tell me?”
I could see now what had happened. Jimmy had called Darla and she had immediately packed him off to Taholah for a purification ceremony. And, since Jimmy was still alive, I had to believe that Henry Leaping Deer’s promised cure had worked.
“Here’s my advice,” I told Bridget. “If I were you, I’d take Jimmy’s word that he had to go out to the coast to see this man. And I’d also take his promise about not telling very seriously. If he swore not to divulge what went on, you’re better off not knowing.”
“I shouldn’t ask him ever?”
If nothing else, I had learned that a shaman’s curse could be tricky. And long-lasting. “Not ever,” I said.
“And you don’t think I have a right to be mad at him for standing me up and making us worry so much?”
“Whatever you do,” I counseled, “don’t be mad. As far as I can see, you’re lucky that Jimmy Greenjeans is still alive.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
I put down the phone. One for our side, I told Sue Danielson silently. You and I saved Jimmy Greenjeans’ life as surely as I lost yours.
Swallowing hard, I made my way back out to the living room where the others were still waiting.
“Any word on services?” Beverly Piedmont asked.
“Hank says they’re going to have only a memorial service here in Seattle the day after tomorrow, at a funeral home up in Lake City. It’ll be at two o’clock in the afternoon. The funeral and actual burial won’t happen until they take the body back home to Ohio.”
“What about a place to gather after the memorial service?” Mary Greengo asked. “If you wanted to invite people over here to the Regrade Room for a reception, I’d be glad to handle refreshments.”
“I don’t know. That’s very kind of you. I can check with Sue’s parents in the morning,” I said, trying to waffle. “And the common room may already be booked.”
“It isn’t,” Ron said. “I checked with the manager a little while ago before the girls and I came upstairs. Dick Mathers said that as far as he knew, the room was free for the next three days in a row. I asked him to put a tentative reserve on it until I tell him otherwise.”
“All right,” I said. I was thinking about the last funeral I had attended for a fallen police officer. That one, held at the enormous Mount Zion Baptist Church on Capitol Hill, had been standing room only. “The only problem is, I don’t know if the Regrade Room will be big enough.”
“It’s spring,” Ron said. “Any spillover can end up outside on the recreation deck.”
“How many do you think?” Mary Greengo asked.
I shrugged my shoulders. “I have no idea,” I said.
“Probably a bunch,” Ron told her.
“We were watching the news a few minutes ago,” Ralph said. “I just can’t get over the thing about the drugs.”
“Drugs?” I asked. “What drugs?”
“Haven’t you heard? The crime-scene investigators were going through Sue’s house today and they came upon two brand-new roll-aboard suitcases. They were gifts, evidently, and still had tags on them with both Chris and Jared’s names on them. The problem is, as soon as one of Janice Morraine’s investigators picked one up, he knew there was something wrong with it. The cases were way too heavy to be empty. So the investigator slit open the bottom. Guess what he found inside?”
“I give up.”
“Coke,” Ralph said. “Pure cocaine.”
“Are you kidding?”
Ron looked at me and frowned. “If that news is already on TV, how come you didn’t know about it?”
“I’m out of the loop,” I said. “That’s one of the reasons I quit. You mean you’ve heard about it, too?”
Ron nodded. “I thought everybody had. The way the boys from the DEA have it pegged, Richie Danielson was on a delivery trip with a set schedule and a set itin
erary. He was planning on using the boys for cover. As soon as Sue altered the plan ever so slightly, things fell apart. Richie must have realized that if he couldn’t make his connections at the appointed times, he’d lose big-time. No wonder he went off the deep end. The amount of coke involved would have brought a significant amount of change. It must have driven him crazy to have Sue screwing up the whole program for the simple and not-very-complicated reason that she didn’t want her sons having unexcused absences from school.”
I was still trying to come to grips with the reality of it. “That’s why he shot her, over drugs?”
“That’s the way it looks,” Ron said.
“And he was going to use the boys for mules?”
Ron nodded.
“That rotten son of a bitch!” I muttered. “Dying’s way too good for scum like that.”
“I agree,” Ron said. He had rolled his chair toward the den, most likely intent on waking the girls and taking them back downstairs. In the doorway, though, he stopped and turned back to me.
“By the way,” he added, “I thought you’d like to know that Amy and I finally managed to agree on a name. We wanted to name the baby after you, but Amy balked at Jonas. She said it would probably open the poor kid up to a lifetime of Jonas-and-the-whale jokes.”
“She’s not wrong there,” I told him. “That’s one of the reasons I switched to plain initials. What did you decide?”
“Jared,” Ron answered. “Jared Piedmont Peters. That way, we can call him J.P., too, for short. What do you think?”
I thought it was wonderful, but a simple “Thankyou,” was all I could manage.
“Speaking of Jared,” Ralph interjected, sensing that I was out on an emotional limb and in need of rescue. “What’s going to become of those boys?” he asked. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
That was vintage Ralph Ames. Give him a problem involving kids, and he’ll take the bit in his teeth to get it solved. His diversion gave me an opportunity to get my voice back under control.
“It sounds to me as though it’s all pretty well set,” I told the roomful of people. “Chris and Jared will go back home to Ohio with Sue’s folks. Hank Hinkle told me they had been thinking about selling the family home and moving into a condo. Now, he says, they’ll just stay put.”
“Good,” Ralph said. “Glad to hear it.”
Ron and the girls left about then, and everyone else followed suit a few minutes later. Ralph and Mary took my grandmother home. Lars Jenssen walked. And I went to bed. I slept for twelve hours straight. When I finally clambered out of bed at eleven the next morning, I had some coffee and toast. Someone—most likely Ralph—had restocked the larder. After breakfast, I went in to the department to close up shop.
Watty Watkins looked up and smiled when I showed up at his desk. “Hey, Beau,” he said. “Hope you’ve changed your mind about pulling the pin.”
“No,” I told him, handing over my departmental laptop. “I came to check this in and then I’m going to pack. You wouldn’t happen to have any more of those empty boxes, would you?”
He nodded and went to get me some from the supply room. Minutes later, I was in Sue’s and my cubicle packing up more than twenty years’ worth of accumulated junk. The phone rang several times while I was going through my desk. One caller was an agent for the IRS who had read about Agnes Ferman’s money in the paper and was hoping to get a shot at some of it.
“Good luck,” I said. “It looks to me as though the bulk of the cash came from well beyond the seven-year statute of limitations. And I’ll bet that what she’s been receiving in the annuity since 1993 has all been properly documented.”
The IRS agent was not so easily dissuaded. “How do I go about gaining access to your official records?” she asked.
“As of today, there should be another detective assigned to the case. You’ll have to check with him—or her.”
Audrey Cummings called. I told her about Jimmy Greenjeans, and she promised to be in touch with Darla Cunningham and with Henry Leaping Deer. “Don’t let it go,” I warned.
“I won’t,” she said. “I had already made plans to go down to the coast this weekend. And I’m still going. I was actually going to leave tonight, but now I won’t leave until tomorrow afternoon. After Sue’s services.”
“And what about that investigator?” I asked. “The one in Harborview. What’s his name again?”
“You mean Dirk, Dirk Matthews. It looks now as though he’s going to make it. But he’s lost several fingers and part of one hand. I suspect his juggling days are over. Maybe his investigator days as well.”
“Talk to him,” I said. “He may want to make his own pilgrimage down to Taholah.”
Eventually, all the boxes were pretty much packed and labeled. Mine sat in one corner of the cubicle and Sue’s in another. That done, I turned on the desktop computer one last time to finish up the necessary reports and to sign off on my cases. When those were done, I called up Sue’s case file. I had given a statement to both the officers on the scene and later to detectives. Now that I’d had a decent night’s rest, I wanted to check the reports to see if they were reasonably accurate.
They weren’t. I printed a hard copy of Sue’s file and then stormed down the hall to Kramer’s Fishbowl. “What the hell do you mean classifying Sue’s death as a DV? It should have been line of duty.”
“Richard Danielson was her ex-husband,” Kramer replied. “Of course it was domestic violence.”
“It may have been one, but it was also the other,” I insisted. “Richie Danielson was a drug dealer. Sue was doing her job when she kept him from making those deliveries, when she kept him from using his own children to transport drugs. Sue may have been off duty at the time of her death, but the real reason Richie killed her was because she had fouled up his chance to make a big score.”
“She didn’t know about that,” Kramer argued. “The drugs weren’t found until much later. I’m calling it a domestic and that’s how it’s going to stay.”
“No,” I said, “it isn’t. Detective Danielson was my partner. By the time I reached her, she was hurt so bad she could barely hold my Glock, but the last thing she did is what partners are supposed to do for one another. When I went down the hall after Richie, Sue was my backup, Kramer, off duty or not. She told me that if Richie made it past me, she’d make sure he didn’t make it past her.”
“Beaumont,” Kramer said, “you’re way too emotional about all this…If you’ll just calm down…”
“Emotional?” I demanded, hearing my voice rising. “You damn well better bet I’m emotional. In fact, I’m more than emotional. Sue was my partner and a hero. So help me God, she and her kids are going to get every honor she deserves or I’m going to know the reason why. Either you change this DV label, Kramer, or I’ll go up and down the chain of command until I find someone who will. And when I’m finished, if you’re still squad commander, I’ll eat my fucking shoe.”
With that, I sailed the paper across the desk at him and I left. Sergeant Watkins was sitting at his desk when I stormed out.
“Way to go, Beau,” he muttered after me under his breath. “Way to go!”
Twenty-Two
Funerals and memorial services are something that have to be gotten through. They honor the dead, but they’re for the living. On Friday, we all did the best we could. The funeral home was packed, wall to wall. As expected, police officers came from all over the region to honor Detective Sue Danielson. The picture of her, on an easel at the front of the room, was the official portrait taken when she graduated from the academy. All I could think of as I sat there looking at it was how very young she was and what a waste it was that she was dead.
The reception in the Regrade Room at Belltown Terrace was also jammed with people spilling out onto the Pickleball court and running track. Mary and her staff did an excellent job, but still when they ran out of dishes and glasses, they had to ask for help. I wasn’t surprised to find my grandmoth
er in the party room kitchen busily washing plates, glasses, and silverware. What did surprise me was seeing Lars Jenssen in there with her, armed with a dish towel and playing wiper to my grandmother’s capable washer. At the time I noticed that her face was beet red, but I chalked it up to having her hands in warm dishwater.
I had heard that Richie Danielson’s remains were being shipped back to Alaska for burial. I asked both Jared and Chris if they wanted to go. If they had wanted to, and if Sue’s parents hadn’t been able to spring for the airfare, I would have, but neither one of them said yes. I didn’t blame them.
I’m not entirely sure how I made it through the next two weeks. I was at loose ends and in a funk. Not working for the first time in my adult life, I had no idea what to do with myself or with my life. Ralph suggested I go with him to a driving range and try my hand at hitting golf balls, but that didn’t grab me. Once we did go out for an evening cruise on Cassandra Wolcott’s forty-two-foot Chris-Craft, but I’m afraid I was pretty much a wet blanket. Cassie Wolcott may be great, but she’s not for me. I mostly did crossword puzzles, went to a lot of AA meetings and tried to stay out of bars.
A week after the funeral my phone rang early on a Monday morning. “Beaumont?” a voice asked.
I was still trying to get used to that missing “Detective.” “Yes,” I said.
“Chief Rankin here. How are you doing?”
“All right,” I said.
“Good. Glad to hear it. The reason I’m calling is, we’re getting ready for the Police Officers Memorial Service at Police Plaza. Sue’s name is going on the wall. We asked her parents if either one or both of the boys could come back out for the service, but Mr. Hinkle said they just couldn’t swing it. So I was wondering if you’d be willing to come to the service in their stead.”
Years ago, a fraternal organization called International Footprinters—made up of retired and active police officers as well as interested citizens—started sponsoring nationwide memorial services in honor of fallen police officers. In recent years the City of Seattle has assumed sponsorship of the local service.
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