Ring In the Dead

by J. A. Jance

  “Maybe you’d like to put down that pitchfork and give us a statement,” I suggested.

  For a long moment, nobody moved while Fred Junior stood there and considered what he would do. It was quiet enough in the barn that you could have heard a pin drop. Somewhere within hearing distance a fly buzzed.

  Finally Fred spoke again. “Can you get me a deal?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “I can’t promise any deals,” I said, “but if you’ll help us, I’ll do what I can to help you.”

  It was lame, but it was the best I could do under the circumstances, and it probably wouldn’t have worked if Fred Beman hadn’t been ready to turn himself in. He didn’t need a deal. All you had to do was look at him to see that his conscience was eating him alive. He had run home to Daddy after what happened at the Doghouse. He was half dead from a combination of too much booze and too little sleep. I could tell from the haunted look in his eyes that wherever he went and no matter how much he tried to drink himself into oblivion, Fred could find no escape. Lulu McCaffey in her black uniform and little white apron was still lying there on the hot, dirty pavement, as dead as could be.

  “Put down the pitchfork, please,” I said quietly. “Place your hands on your head.”

  There was another long pause. I hadn’t drawn my weapon, but I had heard the subtle snap of leather as both Larry and Watty drew theirs. As I said, it was deathly quiet in that barn. I think we were all holding our breaths. When Fred finally moved, it was only to lean over and carefully lower the pitchfork to the floor. Without a word, Watty stepped forward and cuffed him. I read him his rights. By then, Fred was crying his eyes out.

  “I couldn’t believe it when it happened,” he sobbed. “It was just supposed to be fun. He shot her down like she was an animal or something.”

  We were cops from out of town and were a long way outside our jurisdiction. We also hadn’t reported our arrival to any of the local authorities. As a consequence, we needed to get out of Dodge. And since Fred seemed willing enough to talk, we wanted that to happen before he got all lawyered up. Fortunately, Larry Powell had planned ahead. He had brought a battery-­powered cassette tape recorder with him. Once the four of us were settled in the car with me riding in back with Fred, we turned on Larry’s recorder, read Fred Beman his rights again, and announced into the tape who all was present in the vehicle. Then we began the long drive back to Seattle, listening to his story as we went.

  It turned out that skipping out on checks in restaurants was Benjamin Smith’s hobby. He did it all the time, whether he had money in his pocket to pay for his dinner or not. He traveled around town on bus passes. That’s why he often timed his dine-­and-­dash events to happen during rush hour when there were plenty of ­people out and about and lots of buses on the streets. That’s how he managed to disappear so readily—­by blending in with the crowd.

  Gradually, when Fred got a grip on himself, we had him go over the story again, and recount exactly what had happened in the Doghouse parking lot. His story matched Pickles’s in every detail, including the fact that none of the three of them—­Lulu, Benjamin, or Fred—­had seen Pickles Gurkey in the parking lot prior to the moment when he had attempted to intervene in the fight between Lulu and Benjamin. They had stopped their altercation long enough to see him standing there, holding a drawn weapon, and announcing he was a cop. Then he had simply dropped the gun, staggered backward, and fallen against the building.

  “I don’t know if the guy was drunk or what,” Fred continued. “Benjy reached down and picked up the gun. The woman had stopped yelling by then because she was all worried about the guy who had just fallen over. I think she realized at the last moment that Benjy had a gun, but by then it was too late for her to get away. As soon as Benjy shot her, he wiped the gun off with his shirt, put it in the guy’s hand, and then dropped it in his lap. The guy on the ground was so out of it, I doubt he had any idea what had just happened. After that, we took off, ran like hell over to Denny, and hopped a bus up to Capitol Hill. Benjy said not to worry, that he was sure both the woman and the cop were dead. Benjy was convinced ­people would think the cop had done it and that no one would ever find us, but you have,” he finished. “You did.”

  “It turns out Medic 1 showed up in time, and Detective Gurkey didn’t die,” I told him. “In fact, he’s the whole reason we’re here today. He’s being charged with murder in the death of Lulu McCaffey. He’s about to go down for what you did. Our job is to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  “You still don’t understand,” Fred insisted. “I’m telling you, I didn’t do it. I’m not the one who shot her. Benjy did.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then I had to get out of Seattle. I called my dad and asked if I could come home. Again. He said he’d give me a place to stay and food to eat, but I had to work for it, just like his other hands. And that’s what I did.”

  I looked at my watch. Watty glanced in the rearview mirror and caught me doing it. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll be there in time.”

  We drove straight back to Seattle. We dropped by Seattle PD long enough to put Fred Beman in an interrogation room, and then we headed for the Hargrove Hotel. In case Benjamin Smith made a run for it, we stationed two uniformed officers at First and Madison. Watty was parked in a car facing northbound at First and Columbia. Larry Powell and I waited inside the scuzzy lobby of the Hargrave, seated on a pair of swaybacked, cracked leather chairs. The clerk seemed distinctly unhappy to see us. As the moments ticked by, I worried that he might have spilled the beans and Benjamin Smith had already skipped town.

  Instead, Benjy—­I liked thinking of him that way—­showed up right on time, at twenty minutes to three, sauntering along, swinging his lunch pail like he didn’t have a care in the world. It was Wednesday. There was no telling if he’d stopped at Bakeman’s on his way home. As soon as he pushed open the brass and glass door and started for the elevator, I stood up to head him off.

  “Mr. Smith,” I said, barring his way and holding my badge up to his face. “Detective Beaumont with Seattle PD. If you don’t mind, I’d like to have a word.”

  I was deliberately in his face, and the man did exactly what I hoped he’d do. He took a swing at me with the lunch pail. Since that’s what I was expecting, I blocked it easily. When you need an excuse to take someone into custody, there’s nothing like resisting in front of a collection of witnesses to give you a warrantless reason to lock some guy up in a jail cell for the next few hours. On the way to Benjy’s interrogation room, I made sure he got a look at Fred, anxious and despairing, sitting in his.

  “What’s he doing here?” Benjy asked, nodding in Fred’s direction.

  “What do you think he’s doing?” I said. “Mr. Beman is singing like a bird. How do you think we found you?”

  MEL CAME IN about then, smiling and waving her freshly manicured, scarlet nails in my face as she kissed me hello. “What were you reading?” she asked, looking down at the scatter of yellowing onionskin paper I had dropped onto the carpet in front of the window seat. I had let the pages fall as I read them. After I had finished reading, I had simply let them be as I sat there recalling that long-­ago history.

  “It’s something Pickles Gurkey wrote before he died,” I explained.

  “Your old partner?”

  I nodded. “His widow, Anna, died a few weeks ago. His daughter, Anne Marie, was cleaning out her mother’s house and found this. She dropped it off because she thought I’d want to read it.”

  “Did you?” Mel asked. “Read it, I mean.”

  I nodded again.

  “May I?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Help yourself.”

  So Mel gathered up the pages, settled comfortably on the window seat next to me, and started to read. The storm had long since ended. The clouds had rolled eastward. Outside the sky was a fragile blue, and so was the wate
r out in the sound, but it was getting on toward evening.

  I waited quietly until Mel finished reading. Fortunately she’s a very fast reader.

  “So what happened?” she asked, straightening the sheets of paper and handing them back to me in a neat stack.

  “We found the bad guys eventually,” I said. “The one who turned state’s evidence got off with two years for involuntary manslaughter. The shooter, Benjamin Smith, got fifteen years at Monroe for second-­degree homicide, which ended up turning into a life sentence.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “Benjy was an arrogant asshole. That’s why he thought it was great fun to dodge out of restaurants without paying his bills. As far as he was concerned, the whole thing was nothing but a lark. Unfortunately for him, prison has a way of cutting arrogance down to size. Another inmate stuck a shiv into him. He died ten months into his fifteen-­year sentence.”

  “The other guy at the restaurant shooting?” Mel asked.

  “Fred Beman served his sentence, straightened out his life, and now he’s back home in Walla Walla helping his father run his horse farm.”

  “What about Pickles?”

  “I was there in the courtroom the day the prosecutor dropped all charges against him. He turned around, grabbed my hand, shook it like crazy, and said, ‘Thanks, Beau. Thanks a lot.’ ”

  “What about the Jonas bit. Did he ever call you that again?” Mel asked.

  “Never. Not once. We worked together for the next five years, and he never called me anything but Beau.”

  Mel frowned, looking at the papers in her hand.

  “Isn’t Pickles the guy who ended up dying of another heart attack?” Mel asked.

  “Right,” I said. “That was Pickles. The second one was five years later.”

  “So if you saved him from a murder charge, I don’t get why his family blamed you when he died of a second heart attack that long after the first.”

  “They thought he was working to make it up to me—­that he owed me somehow—­for keeping him out of jail, but it turns out, that wasn’t it at all. It was the case.”

  “What case?”

  “The Woodfield case, the one we got called out on that day.”

  “The old guy who killed his wife and then turned the gun on himself?”

  “That’s the one. From that day on, I remember whenever we’d go somewhere for lunch or dinner, Pickles would spend most of the time sitting there doing arithmetic on paper napkins or in his notebook, trying to figure out if Anna would be better off if he died while he was still on the job so she’d get a lump sum payment or if she’d end up with more money if she was the joint survivor on his pension.”

  “Which one would have been better?” Mel asked.

  “Pickles opted to work,” I said with a shrug. “Anna probably got a little more money when he died, twenty or thirty thousand more is all. The problem is, she spent the rest of her life mad at him for choosing to work instead of choosing to stay home with her. To her dying day she was convinced that was all my fault.”

  “Sounds like they both got the short end of the stick,” Mel observed.

  I looked at her. Mel was beautiful. She loved me, and I loved her. Yes, Pickles Gurkey may have thought he owed me something for saving his bacon on that murder charge, but it turned out that, as of today, I owed him for something even more important.

  “Let’s not make the same mistake Pickles did,” I said. “Whatever time we have,, let’s not miss it. Let’s spend it together.”

  Mel smiled back at me and held out her hand. “Deal,” she said.

  We shook on it.

  “So what are we doing for New Year’s Eve?” she asked. “Are we going out or staying home?”

  I glanced at my watch. The afternoon had disappeared on me. It was almost five o’clock.

  “Going out,” I said. “Let’s go put on our Sunday-­go-­to-­meeting clothes and see what El Gaucho is serving for their blue plate special.”

  “They don’t have a blue plate special,” Mel pointed out. “They never have.”

  “Right,” I said. “And it doesn’t matter if they do or don’t because if there’s one lesson Pickles Gurkey taught me today, it’s this: Don’t worry about the money. Spend the time.”

  Hours later, when it came time for midnight, we were standing on the balcony of our penthouse when the first volley of fireworks went off from the top of the Space Needle. Mel was holding her flute of real champagne. I had my glass of faux.

  On the balcony below ours, someone had turned up their sound system, and “Auld Lang Syne” was blasting out of their speakers at full volume, loud enough to cover the rock and roll coming at us from Seattle Center.

  Mel reached over and clinked her glass gently into mine. “Happy New Year,” she said.

  I nodded. “Thank you,” I said. “And to you, and to time spent together.”

  The fireworks were still blasting skyward when the song from the unit below ended in the familiar refrain, “We’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet, for auld lang syne.”

  Maybe I’m just getting sentimental, but a lump caught in my throat. I wiped a stray tear from my eye.

  Mel shot me a concerned look. “What?” she asked. “What’s going on?”

  “Just remembering,” I said. Then I raised my glass again. “Here’s to Pickles Gurkey,” I said. “May he rest in peace.”

  Next from J. A. Jance:

  When memories of J. P. Beaumont’s past—

  from his early days on the force at Seattle PD

  and then, even earlier, to his days in Vietnam—

  bombard him, he is reminded of ­people and events

  he hasn’t thought of in years. But tugging on those long-­

  ago threads leads to present-­day murders,

  and soon Beau must face the fact that some bodies

  from the Second Watch just won’t stay buried.

  Here is a sneak preview of

  SECOND WATCH

  Coming soon in hardcover

  from William Morrow

  An Imprint of Harper­CollinsPublishers

  PROLOGUE

  WE LEFT THE P-­2 LEVEL of the parking lot at Belltown Terrace ten minutes later than we should have. With Mel Soames at the wheel of her Cayman and with me belted into the passenger seat, we roared out of the garage, down the alley between John and Cedar, and then up Cedar to Second Avenue.

  Second is one of those rare Seattle thoroughfares where, if you drive just at or even slightly below the speed limit, you can sail through one green light after another, from the Denny Regrade all the way to the International District. I love Mel dearly, but the problem with her is that she doesn’t believe in driving “just under” any speed limit, ever. That’s not her style, and certainly not on this cool September morning as we headed for the Swedish Orthopedic Institute, one of the many medical facilities located in a neighborhood Seattle natives routinely call Pill Hill.

  Mel was uncharacteristically silent as she drove hell-­bent for election through downtown Seattle, zipping through intersections just as the lights changed from yellow to red. I checked to be sure my seat belt was securely fastened and kept my backseat-­ driving tendencies securely in check. Mel does not respond well to backseat driving.

  “Are you okay?” she asked when the red light at Cherry finally brought her to a stop.

  The truth is, I wasn’t okay. I’ve been a cop all my adult life. I’ve been in gunfights and knife fights and even the occasional fistfight. There have been numerous times over the years when I’ve had my butt hauled off to an ER to be stitched up or worse. What all those inadvertent, spur-­of-­the-­moment ER trips had in common, however, was a total lack of anticipation. Whatever happened happened, and I was on the gurney and on my way. Since I had no way of knowing what was coming, I didn’t hav
e any time to be scared to death and filled with dread before the fact. After, maybe, but not before.

  This time was different, because this time I had a very good idea of what was coming. Mel was driving me to a scheduled check-­in appointment at the Swedish Orthopedic Institute surgical unit Mel and I have come to refer to as the “bone squad.” This morning at eight A.M. I was due to meet up with my orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Merritt Auld, and undergo dual knee-­replacement surgery. Yes, dual—­as in two knees at the same time.

  I had been assured over and over that this so-­called elective surgery was “no big deal,” but the truth is, I had seen the videos. Mel and I had watched them together. I had the distinct impression that Dr. Auld would be more or less amputating both my legs and then bolting them back together with some spare metal parts in between. Let’s just say I was petrified.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “You are not fine,” Mel muttered, “and neither am I.” Then she slammed her foot on the gas, swung us into a whiplash left turn, and we charged up Cherry. Given her mood, I didn’t comment on her speed or the layer of rubber she had left on the pavement behind us.

  I had gimped along for a very long time without admitting to anyone, most of all myself, that my knees were giving me hell. And once I had finally confessed the reality of the situation, Mel had set about moving heaven and earth to see that I did something about it. This morning we were both faced with a heaping helping of “watch out what you ask for.”

  “You could opt to just do one, you know,” she said.

  But I knew better, and so did she. When the doctor had asked me which knee was my good knee, I had told him truthfully that they were both bad. The videos had stressed that the success of the surgery was entirely dependent on doing the required post­surgery physical therapy. Since neither of my knees would stand up to doing the necessary PT for the other, Dr. Auld had reluctantly agreed to give me a twofer.

  “We’ll get through this,” I said.