Improbable Cause

by J. A. Jance

  By this time, the ticket taker knew me by sight.

  "Any extra places?" I asked.

  "Sure," she answered. "Help yourself."

  Taking a blank check from my wallet, I filled it out and handed it to her. The amount was more than she expected.

  "Sit anywhere you like," she said. "Anywhere at all."

  Finding a table with one empty chair, I settled in.

  I probably wasn't a very pleasant dinner companion. Unlike the others at my table, I hadn't consumed several drinks. They were well oiled and fully primed for the auction. I was only there to eat.

  I must have been hungry. I gulped my salmon bisque, ignoring its close similarity to Rachel Miller's tomato soup. I mowed my way through a swordfish steak and a huge baked potato. I didn't bother to hang around for dessert, because by then the rain had stopped.

  It was eight-thirty when I returned to the elephant compound for the last time. It was approaching dusk. As I left the tent, people were setting out sand-filled paper sacks with candles in them, lighting the luminaria as they went. Seeing them, I noticed that there was no interior lighting in the zoo.

  As I neared the elephant barn, a large wooden gate next to it opened from the inside. A man I recognized as one of the keepers came out.

  "Hello," he said. "Can I help you?"

  "I'm looking for someone," I told him.

  "There's no one here. The last of the tours ended over an hour ago. I stayed around because the elephants were so upset by the storm."

  "You might know the person I'm looking for. She's one of the docents. Her name is Daisy."

  "Oh, you mean Daisy Carmichael? She was here earlier, on the last tour I believe, now that you mention it. I remember seeing her here, but I don't recall seeing her leave."

  "Jesus Christ!"

  "What's wrong?" he demanded.

  "What if she's still in there?"

  "I told you, I'm the only one here."

  I wheeled away from him and set off at a dead run, past the barn and around to the other side of the enclosure. I glanced in the window as I went past. Three of the elephants were still in the barn. I could see their dark separate bulks in the barn's shadowy interior.

  But one of them, the biggest one, wasn't there.

  When I came around the side of the barn, I saw a sight I'll never forget as long as I live. Even now, thinking about it brings an involuntary clutch of fear to my gut.

  Daisy Carmichael was there, cowering against the wall of the moat, transfixed like a mouse hypnotized by a stalking cat. And that's precisely what the elephant was doing. The big African female was stalking her, moving imperceptibly, tiptoeing forward, ears up, head raised. Periodically she would stop and stand absolutely still with one foot lifted like a bird dog on point.

  It was a moment frozen in time. I thought about Daisy. I thought about my Smith and Wesson. What good would a puny .38 do against a nine-thousand-pound elephant? And I thought about the mayor and his wife sitting at the head table in the banquet tent less than a hundred yards away.

  I ran around the side of the moat, stopping just above her. "Daisy!" I screamed down at her. "Get out of there! Give me your hand!"

  I bent over the side of the moat and reached out my hand. But she didn't move. Didn't seem to hear me or know I was there.

  "Daisy!" I commanded. "Come on!"

  She looked up at me then with sheer, uncomprehending terror written on her face. Still she didn't move.

  The elephant took another step. She was almost on top of Daisy now. One more step and it would be too late. The .38 was in my hand. I was conscious of a fleeting thought about what would happen to me if I shot one of the mayor's goddamned elephants. But I couldn't just stand there and let it happen.

  And that's when I jumped.

  "No!" I roared. The instinctive word blasted out of me like a cannon shot.

  My feet landed on something soft and mushy. I slipped in it and fell, but it broke the impact enough to keep me from smashing my ass. I struggled to my feet with the Smith and Wesson still clutched in my hand. Miraculously, the elephant had stopped moving.

  Behind her the keeper appeared with a yard-long elephant hook in hand. "No!" he was shouting. "Back!"

  And then, the elephant was moving back. One slow ponderous step at a time, but she was moving back.

  "Stay there," the keeper bellowed over his shoulder. "Don't move until I have her in the barn."

  He didn't have to say it twice. I glanced at Daisy. She was slumped against the wall, fainted dead away.

  Once the four elephants were locked in the barn, the handler came back and helped me carry the unconscious woman into the keepers' office outside the enclosure.

  "How the hell did she get in there?" he demanded. "She must have slipped through the bars when I wasn't looking."

  We dialed 911 to get an aid car. She was coming around by then, but I wanted her checked out by a medic.

  "You need one, too," the keeper said to me. "Your foot."

  Up until he said that, I didn't know I was hurt, but once he pointed it out, my foot hurt like hell. It also stunk.

  "What made the elephant stop?" I asked, still puzzling over the fact that the animal wasn't moving when I had scrambled to my feet.

  "Elephants are dominant animals," he explained. "Man can't dominate them physically, so we do it mentally. You said one of the few words she happens to know, and you said it like you meant it. That's what stopped her."

  "I'll be a son of a bitch," I muttered.

  "A lucky son of a bitch," he added.

  Daisy was fully conscious by then. "You shouldn't have," she said, averting her face. "I didn't want to be saved."

  I moved over to where she was lying wrapped in a blanket on the floor.

  "I saw you outside the barn. I knew then that you must have found out about me. Dorothy's still my little sister, you know. Fred shouldn't have done that. But I didn't want to go home and face her."

  "There are worse things than that," I told her, although right that minute I was hard-pressed to think of any.

  We sat there in silence, waiting for Medic One. It was over, I'd found the killer and she'd confessed. Why the hell did I feel so rotten? And then it dawned on me. I started to laugh.

  "What's so funny?" the keeper asked. He must have thought I was going into shock.

  By then I was laughing so hard, I could barely talk. "I forgot—" I managed, gasping for breath. "I forgot to read her her rights."

  "That's funny?" he asked.

  "Take my word for it," I said finally, pulling myself together. "It's a scream."

  Unfortunately, the aid car came with full sirens blaring. It brought the curious flocking out of the tents and away from the volunteer potluck in the family farm. It also brought the news media—not the usual crime-scene slugs, but the ones who write for Seattle's society pages. There weren't that many faces I knew. The society page isn't my customary territory.

  I didn't know them, and they didn't know me, either.

  The medics checked Daisy, then one of them came over to me. "The lady's all right," he said. "What do you want us to do with her?"

  "Take her up to Harborview," I said.

  "The psycho ward?" he asked.

  "You got it."

  "There's another lady outside who claims to be her sister. Should we bring her along?"

  I nodded.

  "What about you?" he asked. "Somebody should X-ray that foot."

  By the time I limped out to get in the ambulance, the mayor and his wife were standing right next to it. There was no way of getting in without walking directly past them.

  "I understand you're a Seattle police officer?" the mayor asked.

  I nodded wearily. "That's right," I said.

  "What's your name?"

  The jig was up. "Detective Beaumont," I said, wishing I could have thought of someone else's name. "Detective J. P. Beaumont."

  "Nice going, Detective Beaumont," the mayor said. "I'll see that you
get a commendation for this."

  I wonder what he would have done if I had used the gun.

  CHAPTER 24

  I was still waiting for word on my X rays when Sergeant Watkins came striding into the emergency room. "You must like this place, Beaumont. Seems like you spend half your life here."

  "Don't give me any crap, Watty. I'm not up to it."

  "And another psychiatric observation case? What do you think, the department wants to fund a complete mental hospital?"

  "Please."

  "All right, all right," he relented. "But what have you got? Captain Powell dragged me out of bed and told me to get down here on the double."

  Wordlessly, I handed him a letter Rachel had brought in to me. She had found it in Daisy's jacket pocket. It was a signed suicide note that admitted the murder of Dr. Frederick Nielsen. It said that when she tried to talk to him, he was passed out. Drunk, she thought. She had attacked him without realizing what she was doing. The note went on to talk about wanting to dance with the elephants once before she died.

  Watty read it over and handed it back to me with a shrug. "Maybe you're right. She sounds crazy to me."

  "Incidentally," he added. "His Honor the Mayor called the chief and told him what you'd done. He says there's a movie company coming to town in the next few weeks to do some location filming on a murder thriller. He wants you to work with them as a special technical advisor."

  "Jesus Christ, Watty! That's the last thing I want to do."

  "The mayor thinks it's a reward. You'll do it and like it, Beau. That's an order."

  We dropped the subject. "What about Larry Martin?" I asked.

  "Richard Damm refuses to press charges. He says it was his own damn fault. With this letter, I suppose I'd better see about getting Martin released."

  "Good," I said.

  Just then the doctor came in carrying my Xrays. "I've got some good news for you, Detective Beaumont," he said. "Nothing's broken, but did you know you've got a bone spur?"

  "A what?"

  "A bone spur. It's an old injury that you've hurt again. Those things happen as we get older."

  He was maybe thirty-five years old, and he said it with an engaging grin, but I wanted to punch his lights out all the same.

  "Here's something that should help you get some sleep tonight, and an anti-inflammatory prescription for later. You'll have to take these for a month or so. At least until the pain goes away."

  "Fan-goddamn-tastic," I told him.

  "The car's right outside, Beau," Watty said. "I'll give you a ride home."

  Rachel's suitor, George, was just pulling up in the Buick as I hobbled out the emergency room door.

  "Where is she?" he asked, hurrying up to me.

  "Upstairs, with Daisy."

  "Is Daisy all right?"

  I nodded.

  "And what about Rachel?"

  "She's all right, too, but she's going to need all the help she can get," I said.

  "What's going to happen to Daisy?" he asked.

  I shrugged. "It's hard to say. Years ago, she would have gone to prison, no question. These days, things are different. It depends on premeditation, frame of mind, any number of things. It's up to the judge and jury."

  "I see," he said. "Well, I'll go tell Rachel. I know she's worried about it."

  When George walked away, Watty and I got into his car, the sergeant's own private car. "Dammit, Beau! Roll down your window, will you? Your shoes stink like hell!"

  "You'd stink too if you'd been rolling around in elephant shit," I told him.

  He dropped me in front of Belltown Terrace. It seemed like days had passed, maybe whole weeks, since Big Al Lindstrom had picked me up there that morning.

  My idea was to slink into the building, sneak upstairs, and dive into my shower. Unfortunately, the elevator stopped on the eighteenth floor and the door opened. The first person I saw was Peters, sitting in a wheelchair.

  "You girls shouldn't push both buttons at the same time," he was scolding. Just then he looked up and recognized me. "Hey, Beau, you missed the party. It was great, but now we've got to get back to the hospital before they send out a search party."

  Laughing and joking, everybody piled into the elevator—Amy, pushing the wheelchair, Trade, and Heather.

  "Guess what, Unca Beau," Heather lisped, tugging at my shirt sleeve. "Trade and I are going to get another mommie, and she's it." Heather pointed at Amy, who smiled and nodded in return.

  "And we get to be in the wedding," Trade added excitedly. "Amy says we can both have long dresses. Won't that be neat?"

  "It'll be neat, all right," I said wearily.

  The elevator door closed and we continued going up, all of us.

  "How come you stink so bad?" Heather demanded wrinkling her nose.

  "It's a long story," I said.

  They all got off at my floor. Amy showed me her ring, and I gave the bride-to-be a careful peck on the cheek, making sure that neither my clothes nor shoes made physical contact.

  "How was dinner?" I asked as I stepped away.

  "Terrific," Amy said.

  "Yeah," Peters added. "Tom even sent over a complimentary bottle of wine. Columbia White Zinfadel."

  "Tom? Who's Tom?"

  "Tom Girvan, the owner. I thought you said you knew him."

  "The person I know is Darlene."

  "She's his wife," Peters said. "We met her too. She's a real kick, isn't she? And did you know they're moving down to the waterfront? Better location, I guess." He turned back to his daughters. "Well, we'd better be going. The kids were just riding down to the lobby with us. Mrs. Edwards will be worried. Go ahead and press the button, Heather."

  In a moment they were gone and I was alone in the elevator lobby. "His wife," I said to myself, repeating aloud the words Peters had spoken. "Tom Girvan's wife. I'm a son of a bitch."

  Once in my apartment, I didn't bother to turn on any lights. Instead, I went straight to the deck, stripped off my smelly clothes, and left them outside in a heap. Then I went into the bathroom for a long hot shower followed by a longer, hotter Jacuzzi.

  So Darlene, the purveyor of pork chop sandwiches, was actually a married lady.

  Funny, she never mentioned that. On the other hand, to be fair, I had to admit that I had never asked.

  It was probably just as well they were moving to the waterfront. It would help keep me out of trouble.