Family Values

by Ford, G. M.

  Detective Andrea Feeney was not amused. “They told me you thought you were a funny guy. A real card, they said.”

  “Always nice to be appreciated by the fan base.”

  “You still claiming you don’t know anything about this?”

  “I’m not claiming anything except that I want to speak to an attorney.”

  “Your playmate is giving you up, Waterman. Funicello’s in there singing the Mouseketeer theme song.” She slapped a hand down on the table. “First birdie sings gets a deal. The other gets to spend the rest of his days inside.”

  I laughed out loud. “Gabe wouldn’t give you the friggin’ time of day.”

  She went for the throat, pulling out an evidence bag and dropping it on the table. “And I suppose you’re going to tell me that you’ve never seen this before.”

  It was the spring-loaded sap I’d taken away from Willard Frost. From the look of the stains on it, this was the blunt object that somebody used to reduce Willard’s head to the consistency of refried beans.

  “I’m not going to tell you anything,” I said. “I want to call my lawyer.”

  Detective Feeney was in a quandary. They were sure as hell taping the interview—that’s what they did—and I’d now asked her twice for a lawyer. If she kept after me, I was going to have big-time grounds for an appeal. She knew it, and I knew it, and I knew she knew. ’Nuff said.

  “Your creepo lawyer’s waiting outside,” she sneered.

  Which was amazing because I hadn’t made any phone calls yet. Hadn’t had the chance. Not even to the Creepo Lawyer Line. They’d stuffed us into separate holding cells and let us cool our heels for an hour or so before moving us into separate interview rooms. I’d asked the jailers to let me make my phone call a couple of times, but they’d ignored me, and now, all of a sudden, I had a creepo lawyer I hadn’t even called. Do tell.

  “I’d like to speak to my attorney,” I repeated.

  Third time was the charm. Feeney disgustedly scooped up the photos and the brain-encrusted sap and bustled back out the door. Thirty seconds later the door opened again. In walked a guy I’d never seen before. Forty or so, bald, five-ten, and at that stage where guys begin to lose sight of their belt buckle. When he knew without being told that the chairs were bolted to the floor and simply slipped into the seat across the table from me, my confidence took wings.

  “You mind if I ask who in hell you are?” I said.

  He stuck out a hand; I gave it a shake or two. “Ricardo Dupuis,” he said. “I’m on permanent retainer from Entertainment Associates.”

  Entertainment Associates was Joey Ortega. The strip clubs, the dance clubs, the massage parlors, the casino—all of it was run under the innocuous umbrella of Entertainment Associates. The kind of entertainment businesses Joey ran had a tendency to require twenty-four-hour access to legal help. He probably had a couple dozen shysters on retainer at all times. Seemed a good bet that Gabe had managed a phone call and Joey had immediately sent the cavalry.

  “If you’ll excuse me for a moment,” Dupuis said.

  I watched as he got up and walked over to the door. It was locked. He pounded on it until somebody on the other side of the one-way panel pulled it open. “Just so we’re clear here,” the lawyer said. “I’m officially invoking attorney-client privilege. There will be no recording of any kind of my conversation with Mr. Waterman.” At which point, he slammed the door in somebody’s face and sat back down across from me.

  “So . . . what happened?”

  I told him the whole story. He interrupted only once.

  “Pet play?”

  I explained it to him the best I could. Left him shaking his head.

  “Willard Frost was sitting on the carpet trying to stop a nosebleed when I left,” I finished up.

  “And how did Mr. Frost come to have a nosebleed?”

  “I head-butted him.”

  “And Miss Funicello can attest to this?”

  “Miss Funicello was pretty much unconscious at the time,” I said. “You can check with Harborview as to the extent of Gabe’s injuries.”

  He took some notes. Read some note, and then looked up. “That’s consistent with Miss Funicello’s statement,” he announced. “And with the preliminary results of our own investigation.”

  “What investigation is that?”

  “My firm sent several adjusters down to Mr. Frost’s building. Seems there’s an old woman who claims to have seen Mr. Frost in the hall after you and Miss Funicello left. Said he had a rag pressed to his face when she saw him. My associates are taking her deposition as we speak. She says he threatened her.” He made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “Of course, the police, as is their habit, discounted her version so they could clear the case as quickly as possible.”

  “Anybody check the CC camera?” I asked.

  “What CC camera?”

  “Up high in the corner, over Frost’s door.”

  He excused himself again, went over and stood in the corner of the interview room, whispering into his phone for a full five minutes before he broke the connection and sat back down. “No CC camera. My associate says he can see where it was ripped from the wall. No recorder or monitor in the apartment either.”

  “Somebody was careful.”

  “Apparently,” Dupuis agreed.

  He got up again, walked over to the one-way window. “I’ll need jumpsuits for both Mr. Waterman and Miss Funicello. I want their clothes tested for the presence of organic material.”

  “Orange is not my color,” I whined.

  He ignored me, collected his stuff, and got back to his feet. “I’ve seen the crime scene photos,” he said. “There was brain matter on an eleven-foot ceiling. Whoever killed Mr. Frost surely must have parts of him all over their clothes.”

  “I might have a little of his blood on me.”

  “The perpetrator of this crime must have breaded himself like a veal cutlet,” Dupuis said. “A little blood isn’t going to be enough.”

  “What now?” I asked.

  “Aggravated murder is not a bailable offense in this state, so you and Miss Funicello are going to have to hang tight until I can petition for a hearing in the morning. By that time we’ll have a formal deposition from the woman in the building and at least some preliminary results from the tests on your clothes.” He almost smiled. “I’m given to understand that you’ve had some previous experience with jails.”

  “More than I’d be willing to admit,” I said.

  The smile finally got the best of him. “Well . . . then I don’t have to tell you not to say anything to anybody, do I?”

  Took three days. Three days of plastic coveralls, mystery meat, powdered eggs, and cherry Kool-Aid. Just like Jesus in the desert. Except, in this case, the Devil was a bunch of pathetic souls who really should have been in a psychiatric ward somewhere, getting help with their problems. But, since that costs a whole bunch of money, nowadays we just lock their crazy asses up in jail, with the real criminals. Cheaper that way.

  Holding cells are segregated. Not by the jailers, but by the inmates. First thing I do when they put me in a holding cell is join the Caucasian section. I don’t give a shit whether they’re Aryan Nation skinheads, slackers, skaters. Don’t care if they’re inside for murder, mopery, or a bad mullet, just as long as they’re white. Whatever progress our society has made in race relations goes right down the toilet in jail. There’s a white-guy section, a black-guy section, and a Hispanic-guy section. That’s just the way it is. If you’ve got half a brain, you find like-looking creatures and make some friends. I’m pretty sure Charlie Darwin would tell you it’s a matter of survival.

  The plan worked for about a day and a half. The holding cell crowd had thinned a bit by then, so I had a bench to myself. I had my feet pulled up and was dozing when somebody kicked my feet off the bench.

  “Move your ass, cracker.”

  New arrival. Big black man with a red do-rag covering the top of his bald head. Und
er normal circumstances, I would have made a serious effort to defuse the situation. Tried to reason with the guy or something. Made a joke. Who knows? But I’d been in jail eating roadkill for thirty hours or so: a situation more or less guaranteed to make me a bit testy. And then there was the matter of the splint on my left arm.

  This was a big ol’ boy hassling me here. I like to think I’m as fanciful as the next guy, but even in my most vivid imaginations, I couldn’t see myself whipping this monster with one hand. Wasn’t gonna happen. Definitely time for plan B.

  “You gonna move your cracker ass, or am I gonna kick it for you?” he yelled again. Over his shoulder, I could see several of his homeboys from the ghetto section milling around, waiting for the show to start.

  I unwound myself slowly. Putting both feet on the floor, then surreptitiously slipping my right foot down under the bench until it came into contact with the wall. I levered myself off the seat in slow motion. About halfway up, I jammed my foot against the wall for traction, made like I was losing my balance, scoped out a spot on his solar plexus, put all my weight behind my right fist, and tried to punch my way through to his backbone. Damn near made it too.

  The air burst out of him in a single groaning blast. He staggered backward, wide eyed, hiccuping, gasping for breath, and sat down on the filthy floor. Several of his buddies started shuffling my way. Cautious, now that their champeen couldn’t get his lungs to work. That’s when the guy with the Charlie Manson swastikas tattooed on his cheeks came off the far end of the white-guy bench like a missile.

  “Fuckin’ niggers,” he bellowed as he hurled himself into the fray.

  Not very PC, but an effective rallying cry, nonetheless. Both benches emptied in a flash, and a full-scale melee began. All assholes and elbows. Took a dozen jailers nearly ten minutes to get things under control.

  That’s how come I was in an isolation cell the next morning when Ricardo Dupuis showed up with my release papers. I could tell the news was positive when the jailer left the door open and walked away.

  “Nice to see you’ve been making friends and influencing people,” Dupuis said.

  “Tell me you’re gonna get me out of here,” I said.

  “We got lucky,” he said. “There wasn’t enough forensic material on either you or Miss Funicello to prove gerbil battering. And, about the time you and Miss Funicello were going into the water, the guy running the coffee shop across the street from Mr. Frost’s apartment building came outside to see what all the yelling was about. Swears he saw two guys in hoodies going into Frost’s building. Signed a deposition to that effect.” He lifted a disgusted hand. “They wanted to stick you with an aggravated assault rap for the jail fight, but even they’re not dumb enough to think that was going to float, so they’ll drag their feet for a few more hours, long enough that the state will have to reimburse them for another day of your incarceration. Soon as they get paid, you’ll be out of here.”

  “Thank Joey for me,” I said.

  As usual, the docs were right. The elbow hurt like hell. I’d thrown the splint in the garbage about five minutes after I got home from jail but still couldn’t use the arm worth a damn. Had to use the good hand to lift the bad one up, but at least I could cut my own meat, which, unlike King County jail food, was readily identifiable as to species.

  Usually you have to pick up a ringing phone to find out who’s on the other end. I didn’t have that problem with my landline. I don’t know how my old man managed it, but the house had what he’d referred to as a secure line. A phantom phone line. Not in all the years I’d lived in the house since his death had I ever received a bill. I’d inquired once, years ago, and discovered that, as far as the phone company was concerned, the number didn’t exist. One of those rare instances where I decided to let well enough alone.

  In the nearly fifteen years since he’d popped a heart valve, nearly all his old cronies had joined him, leaving only three people with the phantom phone number. George had it, Rebecca had it, and Carl had it. That was it. The damn thing didn’t even get computer-generated sales calls, so when it started to ring, I had a pretty good idea who was on the other end.

  Carl wasn’t much for pleasantries. “Where the fuck have you been?” he immediately demanded.

  “Eating powdered eggs on the county,” I said.

  “Our friend Mr. Frost?” He waited. “I saw it in the papers.”

  “So . . . to what do I owe the honor?”

  “Charity got those juvie records for you.”

  I winced. Driving had turned out to be tough. No place to put my damaged elbow, except to keep it pressed to my chest, which, I gotta tell you, is a real awkward way to drive a car. “I’m a little under the weather,” I said. “Howsabout I send an Uber car over to your place, and you seal up the info and have him bring it back here to me.”

  “Oh . . . Mr. Valet Parking,” Carl mocked.

  “Gimme a break, asshole. Just send the stuff over.”

  “Aye aye, Captain Commerce,” he said, and hung up.

  “They’ve all been arrested since,” Rebecca said. “Multiple times. Except for Charles Harrington, and we know where he’s been.”

  “Then we should be able to get DNA profiles on the rest of them.”

  “Yes . . . we should.”

  “But we don’t have a profile for Charlie,” I said.

  “Nope.”

  “And you’ve still got the Tracy Harrington crime scene material?”

  “Sure do.”

  “How long will it take to get the profiles?”

  “A week, maybe. Terrence Poole is in prison down in Salem, Oregon. That one may take an extra day or two. The others have all been tested in Washington. They should be easy. These kinds of requests are very much business as usual.”

  She flicked her fingers at the pile of papers Carl had sent over. “Funny thing is with our friend Mr. Frost, I don’t see anything in here that deserved to be sealed. It’s all the same petty criminal stuff he’d been arrested for before . . . and since. Theft, burglary, breaking and entering, trespassing, simple assault, theft of services, arson on abandoned houses . . . nineteen kinds of drug charges.” She looked up at me. “Nothing that needed to be sealed. Nothing sensitive or sexual.”

  “What the Harringtons want, the Harringtons get, and I’m betting they wanted Lakeside Charlie’s record cleaned up and figured the best way to make that happen was to expunge the whole crew so nobody had any reason to drop a dime on anybody else.”

  “Except, from what you tell me, the late Mr. Frost saw an opportunity to extort some money from the Harringtons.”

  “Twice. Said they paid him the first time but that everything came apart when he went back and tried to sell them the info about the mix-up with the jailhouse DNA samples.”

  She thought it over.

  “I’ll request the DNA profiles first thing in the morning.”

  “This is gonna get interesting,” I said.

  “How so?”

  “What if none of the profiles matches the genetic material you’ve got stored from the Tracy Harrington rape kit?”

  “Then we’re back where we started.”

  “Or it’s Charlie.”

  “Or an unknown perpetrator. Process of elimination isn’t going to work here. At the time, I ran the rape kit profile through CODIS and came up empty, but who knows? CODIS is up over ten million profiles now. I’ll run it again and see what happens.”

  “And what if this new evidence isn’t a match for Lamar Hudson? What if whoever put this together didn’t know which profile belonged to which guy either, and was just trying to match what the SPD had on file as his profile? If that’s the case, then there’s no telling who did what to who.”

  “Whom.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Then Mr. Hudson goes home.”

  “Which, of course, automatically reopens the Tracy Harrington case.”

  Neither of us said anything for a good while.

  “First
thing I did when I got back in the office was to check that I had Tracy Harrington’s evidence file. As soon as I got the notice from the Innocence Project, I did what I always do with capital cases. I pulled it and put it in a storage area that I’m the only one with access to. My seal is still on it. It hasn’t been tampered with.”

  My turn to ponder. “All I can think of is that whoever bribed Ibrahim must know who really killed Tracy Harrington and doesn’t want that to come to light.”

  “Who would know that, other than someone who was there?”

  “No one.”

  She folded her arms across her chest and leaned back in the chair. “So . . . we wait.”

  I’m not a good waiter. Never have been. Put me on hold and this voice starts to whisper in my ear that I’m never gonna see these minutes again, which probably explains why, a day and a half later, I was sitting in Seattle U’s Garmen Hall, waiting for Jessica Harrington to finish up with her office hours. Sitting around was killing me. I just had to do something.

  It was ten to four when her office door opened and she stepped outside, wearing a white silk blouse and a coral-colored pencil skirt. Looked a whole lot more like a fashion model than a political scientist. Not that I was complaining. I’m still gonna be a sucker for a pencil skirt when they put me under the sod.

  “Ah . . . Mr. Waterman,” she said. She checked her watch. “I have an administrative meeting in forty minutes.”

  I stood up. “Shouldn’t take that long,” I said.

  She gestured me inside with a long, bare arm. For an academic, her office was neat. Usually they have to move a pile of something so visitors can sit down, but her office was as orderly as could be. Lots of books, couple of plaster busts of people I didn’t recognize, and an enormous jade plant filling up the two-story window.

  “Mother said you’d come to see her about Tracy.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Your sister was—”

  “Stepsister. Tracy and Charlie are Sidney’s children. Charlie by . . . I think his third marriage. Tracy by his second.”

  “Ah . . .” was the best I could do.