Rainy City

by Earl Emerson

  “Does somebody still have the letter?”

  “Nobody in the family has ever seen it, as far as Ed knows. At least, he’s never seen it.”

  “How old was Mary Dawn when all this happened?”

  “Oh, she was only a baby. Eight years old. She didn’t have anything to do with it all. As a matter of fact, with her father dead and her mother long since passed away, she went to live with the pastor’s family. I do know this about Mary Dawn, though. She was seeing a shrink.” Clarice said it the way she would have said Mary Dawn had syphilis.

  “Are you certain?”

  “Ed found some papers and bills and whatnot when we were going through her apartment. I wrote down the name. He’s right here in Seattle. He used to be in Bellingham but he moved. Muriel knew all about him. She was a physical therapist. Still got some friends in the medical community. She is one strong woman. I’ve seen her pick up a couch all by herself.”

  She fished a Dentyne wrapper out of her purse and handed it to me. The psychiatrist’s name was scrawled on the back in tiny script. Dr. Elliot Courtland. The address was in a plush district on the other side of the Arboretum near Lake Washington.

  I went to the phone, looked up his number in the white pages and dialed.

  Clarice spoke musically. “I guess she’d been seeing this head doctor for years and years. That’s what Ed thought…from the papers he found.”

  When the doctor came on the line, I fudged the truth a bit and told him I was a detective working on the Mary Dawn Crowell case. On the assumption that I was a cop, he made an appointment to see me at his office in thirty minutes.

  Grabbing a jacket, I rushed out the back door. Clarice puttered after me with tiny mincing steps. Women like her mocked femininity. She stood on the back porch and sang out, “Tom. Oh, Tom? Are we finished? Tom?”

  “Call a cab and lock up when you leave,” I said. As I started to step up into the Ford, I noticed a smattering of white crystals on the side of the pickup. I found more crystals on the ground beside the pickup door. Still more of the white stuff clung to the gasoline intake spout. Kneeling, I licked a finger, pressed it to the substance and tasted. Sugar. Damn.

  Somebody had poured sugar into my gas tank. If they hadn’t been so sloppy, I would have driven it and destroyed the engine. Up until two weeks ago, I’d had a locking gas cap, but I lost it and replaced it with a standard cap. Damn.

  I went back into the house, changed into cycling shoes, dug my .45 out of the closet, inserted a clip, checked the tire pressure on my Miyata and carried it to the back porch.

  Clarice Crowell still hadn’t given up hope. “Tom. Tom? I may have more information later. Can I call?”

  “Sure,” I said, making certain the .45 was well hidden under my windbreaker.

  “Ed’s real mad today. He found out from that Negro detective in Bellingham they’re going to let Burton out.”

  I looked up at her. “When did they decide this?”

  “Some stupid neighbor up there claims she saw him leaving almost an hour before Mary died. Some poops will say anything. And they seem to be having a problem trying to match the fingerprints they found to Burton. It’s all been bungled.”

  “Great,” I said, leaping onto the bicycle saddle and launching down the alley. “Call if you get more information. I’d appreciate it.”

  A block later, it became readily apparent that someone was following me. ?

  Chapter Twenty

  HE WAS IN A SHARK-GRAY DODGE, AND HE WAS GOOD. HE intentionally lagged far enough behind so that I wouldn’t recognize him.

  He followed and I let it ride. I let him tail me down Seventeenth Northeast right through the University of Washington campus and out the other side by the football stadium, although I could have foiled his plans at any point. I knew a dozen choice footpaths I could have detoured onto. By the time I crossed the Montlake Bridge, I knew who he was and I had a good idea what he wanted.

  When I zigzagged through some residential streets, I lost him momentarily, but he picked me up again after the industrial museum, just shy of the Arboretum. The Arboretum road was over a mile long, narrow and twisty. The area spawned a lot of crime. Pedestrians were rare and houses were nonexistent. Today, there was little traffic.

  Pedaling against a moist southerly wind, I wasn’t making very good time. The Dodge paced me. Twice, he crept closer, gunning the engine once, as if to make a move, but at each attempt, a car approached us from the other direction, putting a temporary halt to his plans.

  It was Holder, Julius Caesar Holder, and I would have bet my life that his game was bump and run. He knew if he sabotaged the truck I’d eventually ride the bike. And he also knew how vulnerable a man on a bicycle was. He figured he could bounce me into the ditch and motor away, nobody the wiser. It was a neat ploy.

  He made his move in front of the Japanese tea gardens, and strangely enough, he missed on his first pass. He wasn’t trying to kill me. He could have easily run right over me. Instead, he tried to sideswipe my bicycle and knock me for a loop. He must have figured that wouldn’t be murder. He was in trouble now. He wasn’t just one motorist trying something funny. He was the culmination of hundreds of sloppy, thoughtless motorists that I had run up against in the last few years. It was rare that you caught one. It was even rarer to have a gun on you when you did. My temper got the better of me.

  Suddenly, I felt the cold metal of his car brushing my hip. I had been waiting for it. I slammed the caliper brakes on. The Dodge catapulted in front of me as I decelerated.

  Slowing down so that he could attempt it a second time was his big blunder.

  Instead of pedaling by on the passenger side the way he expected, I swung behind the Dodge and pulled around into the oncoming lane. Sitting up and steering with one hand, I dragged the .45 out from under my windbreaker.

  I took careful aim, placing a slug through his side window, as close to his face as I could manage without actually hitting him.

  Tires screeched like dying animals, brakes squealed, and the Dodge veered right, bounding up over the high curb and scraping the underbelly with shrill metallic yowls.

  I didn’t even get off the bicycle. Riding up to the glassless window, I rammed the muzzle of the .45 into Holder’s face.

  I spoke evenly. “Say your prayers, bastard.”

  Holder was frantically trying to rub particles of glass out of his face. When he cleared -his eyes well enough to see, he gaped at me. “What the…”

  I noticed two of his fingers were bandaged and splinted. That explained a lot. He’d gone to retrieve the transmitter, met my foul play, and decided to seek revenge. First the sugar in the gas tank. Now this.

  A BMW whooshed past from the other direction without slowing or seeming to notice what we were up to.

  “Come on now. You know dere’s no cause for dat. Iffen ah’d wanted to kill you I would have done it.”

  “How about iffen you’d wanted to tie up my friend Kathy. How about iffen you’d wanted to trash my place and you got interrupted by a cute little button you thought could provide some sport: How about that?”

  “I don’ know what you’re talkin’ ‘bout, man.”

  “You followed me. You had a bug under my rear bumper.”

  “I cain’t deny that.” He looked at me squarely, flecks of blood on his cheeks where the flying glass had punctured him.

  “You broke into my house.”

  “No.”

  “You tied up my friend, and you killed my dog.”

  It was almost impossible to read his face. Deadpan was his specialty and he was playing his specialty to the hilt.

  “I know nothin’ ‘bout no dog. And I ‘specially know nothin’ ‘bout dis bitch you talkin’ about.”

  “There’s no need to lie,” I said. “I’m going to kill you anyway. I just want to know why you did it.”

  “Kill me! Man, yo’ is crazy!” He scooted across the seat until his back was wedged up against the passenger door on the other si
de of the car. I had no intention of actually killing him, but I liked the look it put on his face.

  “Listen, you bastard,” I said as another car whirred past without stopping. “You killed my dog. You terrorized my friend. You followed me, and who knows what else you did. For all I know, you bashed Mary Dawn Crowell.”

  “Who’s dat?”

  “The lady in Bellingham.”

  “Her? I din’t have nothin’ to do wid dat.” His voice was evolving into a high whine “Man, I’m jus’ tailin’ you.”

  “And you’re working for Angus Crowell, aren’t you?”

  He mulled that over. If I could come after him with a gun, I could go after Crowell with a gun. The repercussions might be devastating.

  “I work for who I work for. Ain’t nobody’s business but mine.”

  A semi-automatic pistol re-cocks itself each time it is fired, so the .45 only needed one thing. I squeezed the trigger and watched Holder’s body jump. He went high enough to smack his head on the roof. The roar inside the car was numbing. The opposite window cracked and shattered. I had deliberately missed his face by ten inches. We listened together, our ears ringing as the last few bits of broken glass fell out of the frame and clinked on the metal sill.

  Clearing his ears by jamming his index fingers in and screwing them around, he said, “Okay. What you want to know? I’ll tell you. Jus’ don’ shoot no more. Jus’ don’ fire dat thing at me noooo more.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “I been runnin’ errands for dis Crowell dude.”

  “Angus Crowell?”

  “Dat’s the one.”

  Squaring the muzzle up on his forehead, I said, “You burgled my house, didn’t you?”

  “Man, I swear I din’ have nothin’ to do wid dat. I swear. What’s your problem?”

  “Start from the beginning. What have you been doing for Crowell?”

  “You know I cain’t tell all dat.”

  I cut loose another .45 slug. It smashed the door frame to the right of his skull. Holder didn’t jump nearly as high this time. He cursed and flung his palms up in front of the gun as if to fend off more bullets. Then he shook his head, glanced sideways as if he were muttering to an invisible third party in the back seat, and said, “Crazy! Crazy!”

  “You bet your ass,” I said. “Whoever broke into my house was about six-three or-four and had brown eyes. Sound familiar?”

  “Lot a people my height got brown eyes. Streets full of ‘em. You ever play pickup basketball, man?”

  “You’re right,” I said, grudgingly. A Peugeot stopped behind me and a woman in a business suit leaned over, cranking down the passenger-side window.

  “You gentlemen have an accident?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said flopping my wrist with the pistol limply down below the inside lip of Holder’s car window. “But we’ve already got it taken care of. Thanks for stopping.”

  “Anybody hurt?”

  “Naw.” I turned back to Holder. She drove off and I raised the pistol back up. “Not yet,” I said.

  “You crazy.”

  “Nice to know people still care, eh?”

  “He wanted me to follow you,” Holder blurted. ‘Crowell wants me to tell him everythin’ you do.”

  “But he called you off this afternoon, didn’t he?”

  “Called me off? Hell, no. Ain’t nobody called me off.”

  “And what have you told him so far?”

  “I tailed you to Bellingham. Den I told him about that bitch you visited. The one works at da nut house.”

  “At the Hopewell?”

  “Yeah, dat’s the one.”

  “You follow me last night?”

  “I started to, but I lost you in the District. I thought my set was screwed up, and then I found the box under your neighbor’s car. It wasn’t my set at all. You moved da transmitter. Nice booby trap. You like to took this here finger off at the joint.”

  “So you poured sugar in my gas tank.”

  He held up his bandaged and splinted fingers. “I rigged your truck. Yeah, I rigged your truck. You’re lucky dat’s all I rigged.”

  “You threatening me?”

  “Take it any way you want.”

  “Takes some balls to threaten a man who’s aiming a gun at your guts.”

  He wadded up his cheek muscles in mock imitation of a terrified elf, then winced at the unexpected pain of his facial wounds.

  “When did you tell Crowell about my visit to Helen Gunther?”

  Holder didn’t know what I was talking about. I explained, “The woman who worked at the Hopewell Clinic? When did you tell Crowell about my visit?”

  “An hour later, maybe. You went home, den you got on your bicycle and I lost you. Man, them things are hard to tail.”

  “You ever try to follow a fast runner?” I asked. “I tailed a guy who ran five-minute miles once.”

  “Hell, I tried to track some dude in a canoe last year. I a’most drowned.” We stared at each other for a long moment.

  “What was Crowell’s reaction when you told him about me and the woman from the Hopewell Clinic?”

  ” ‘Get back on it.’ Des what he always says. ‘Get back on it.’ “

  “What’d you see last night?”

  “Dis a test or something? I tried to follow you, but I lost you in the District. So I went back and staked out your crib. You came back late with Crowell’s daughter and some other bitch.”

  “How did you know she was Crowell’s daughter?”

  “What you mean, how’d I know? Crowell’s had the whole staff at Penworthy after her two weeks. We all got pictures of her. It was her. Wasn’t it?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Sure it was. You run into that little dude she was with? I seen him once ‘bout four or five days ago. I missed her but I seen him. You ask me, he’s the one iced her aunt. I bet Crowell’s daughter wanted to leave him and go with the aunt. I bet dat’s why he killed her. Wouldn’t be surprised if he killed dis other bitch, either.”

  “Helen Gunther?”

  “Dat’s da one. I wouldn’t be surprised iffen he killed her, too.”

  I scanned his face for a few seconds, trying to decide the best way to ride off into the sunset without taking a slug in my spine.

  “What kind of orders did Crowell give you when you went to take the little girl list Sunday?”

  “Orders? He din’ give me no orders. He jus’ said, come on.”

  “Who told you to slap Burton around like that?”

  “Burton the little girl’s father?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I warned him. He was mouthing off. Said he was gonna kill Crowell.”

  “You sure?”

  “I was dere. He said he was gonna kill the old man,” Holder knew what I was thinking about. Talk of killing had brought us around in a full circle.

  “Come on,” he said, watching my eyes apprehensively. “You and me’s both pros. Dis ain’t nothin’ to be killin’ over. You leave me alone an I’ll leave you alone. Word of honor.”

  “What about your money? What about your boss?”

  “I’ll give him some jive an’ keep right on cashing his checks. He won’t know no difference. I done it before.”

  I might set him loose, but it would be his style to come right back after me, and the next ambush might be more lethal than this one. I could shoot him and endure sleepless nights and bad dreams for another five or ten years. No, that Wasn’t worthy of me. I could wing him, but that was assault and battery. I would end up in the stammer for that. This business, I could probably get away with. I doubted if Holder would prefer charges.

  Letting down the hammer of the .45, I snubbed the safety catch on and tucked the pistol into my belt. The air of relief inside the car was almost palpable.

  “I wouldn’t’a blamed ya iffen you’d wasted me,” said Holder, as I slid onto the bike saddle and began pumping. I could tell from the way he said it, that he was resigned to the fact that I was meane
r than he was. Maybe that was a good thing. It might keep him in line the next time.

  It took sixty seconds before I was certain he wasn’t going to renege on our deal and put a bullet in my spine. It was funny, but after that sixty seconds, I trusted the guy implicitly.

  Dr. Elliot Courtland’s office was in a one-story stucco building he shared with two dentists and an optometrist. Courtland’s entranceway led through a covered patio festooned with lush ivy.

  He saw me in his office. He had to boot out a patient to do it, but he sat me down and hunkered on the edge of an enormous desk, kicking one short leg nervously. He had long, gray hair, wore thick glasses and sported a neatly trimmed beard. He was trying his best to look the part of a doctor of psychiatry. You wondered about someone who had to try that hard.

  “So you’re working on Mary Crowell’s murder case?” he said, stroking his beard with a pudgy hand and swinging his leg. I didn’t know how much of the leg business I could stomach. He discovered a pipe in his blazer pocket and began tamping tobacco into the bowl.

  “I’m working on it,” I said. “And also on the Helen Gunther case. I have reason to think they may be connected.”

  “Oh, God,” he said, but his voice was still mellow and smooth. He was good with his eyes, too, as good as anyone I’d ever seen. Even when he wasn’t thinking grandiose thoughts, his eyes behaved as if he were. He stared at me, squinted at the wall, and then raised his dim gray eyes toward the ceiling. I was willing to bet his patients thought he was God.

  “Helen Gunther was one of my students. I knew her only marginally, however. In what way could the two murders conceivably be connected?”

  “It’s a rather long story, Dr. Courtland. What I need to know is what you were treating Mary Dawn Crowell for.”

  “You’ll have to let me see some identification before I answer that.”

  The jig was up. I had had a suspicion I wasn’t going to get very far here. ?

  Chapter Twenty-one

  AT TIMES, I CARRIED PHONY I.D., BUT I FIGURED DR. Courtland would never get sucked in by a ruse that blatant. I dug out my wallet and flipped it open, revealing my driver’s license.