Long Time Gone (12 page)

“Mr. Winkler,” my escort said. “Someone’s here to see you.”

Startled awake, he gave me a sour look. “Who are you?” he demanded querulously. “I suppose you’re some lawyer that jerk of a son of mine has sent around to hassle me some more, right? He can’t wait for me to die. Cheated me out of my own company. Now he wants to declare me incompetent so he can have control of whatever pittance I have left. How’s that for gratitude?”

Having been warned that Wink was somewhat cantankerous, I wasn’t surprised by his initial tirade. “My name’s Beaumont,” I said. “J. P. Beaumont. Marty Woodman said I could find you here.”

“Oh,” Wink said, softening a little. “Marty sent you? That’s different then. Have a chair.”

The black woman had lingered in the room during this exchange. Now, evidently satisfied that I was an approved visitor, she left Wink and me alone. Next to the bed sat a single chair. I picked it up and dragged it over closer to Wink’s.

“What do you want?” he asked once I was seated.

“I work for the Washington State Attorney General’s office with the Special Homicide Investigation Team. I’m looking into one of your cold cases from years ago.”

Wink’s countenance brightened with a hint of interest. “One of mine,” he muttered. “Which one?”

“From May of 1950,” I said. “Madeline Marchbank. Her friends called her Mimi.”

That brief flicker of interest went away, not because it burned itself out but because Wink Winkler slammed the door shut on it. “Don’t recall it at all,” he said firmly.

There’s a new technology out these days, a new kind of lie detector—or rather truth detector. It measures the way a subject’s brain waves react to familiar information. Lie detectors measure respiration, blood pressure, and galvanic skin responses when the interviewee gives untruthful answers to questions. The problem with that is that experienced lie-detector subjects can sometimes train themselves to outwit the old machines. With this new equipment measuring involuntary brain waves, it’s impossible to trick the brain into reacting to familiar information as though it were unfamiliar.

I may not be new technology, but I operate on a similar system. I could see from that initial involuntary reaction that Wink Winkler remembered exactly who Madeline Marchbank was as well as what had happened to her. If he was prepared to lie about it more than fifty years later, I wondered why.

“Madeline was a young woman who was supposedly murdered by an intruder in her home with her mother confined to a bed in a nearby room,” I explained smoothly, going along with the program that Wink remembered nothing. “But now a new witness has surfaced,” I added. “An eyewitness who saw the whole thing and says the initial attack occurred outside the house, near the back porch. It’s possible the victim was still alive when she was carried into the house, where she died.”

“You say all this happened way back in 1950?” Wink asked, still playing dumb. “Where’s the supposed eyewitness been all this time? If she knew about this, why didn’t she come forward years ago?”

She! I caught the slip almost as soon as it was out of Wink’s mouth. I had made no mention that the newly discovered witness was female, but Winkler already knew that. That meant that regardless of whether or not he had questioned Bonnie Jean Dunleavy, he had known about her existence all along. Not wanting to reveal that he had tipped his hand, I glossed it over as well as I could.

“Let’s just say she’s been out of touch,” I said.

He stared at me for some time without speaking. “Well, like I said, I don’t remember anything about it, so you’re barking up the wrong tree asking me.”

“You had a pretty good closure rate back in those days, didn’t you?” I asked.

“So what if I did?”

“It just seems odd to me that you don’t remember one you didn’t close.”

“Are you calling me a liar?” he demanded.

“No,” I returned. “Just surprisingly forgetful.”

“Wait till you’re my age,” he said. “See how much you remember.”

I took my leave then. There was no sense arguing with the man. No matter how much I didn’t want to, it looked as though I was going to have to go back to Paul Kramer with my hat in my hand and beg him for a look at the Mimi Marchbank evidence box. And since there’s no sense in putting off the inevitable, I headed straight for police headquarters. Once again I went through the whole check-in procedure. This time, though, rather than stopping off at Records, I went on up to Homicide on the seventh floor.

And was astonished. This was my first visit to Homicide since the move to the new building. And it wasn’t just the building that was new. No wonder all the old broken-down furniture had been abandoned in the basement of the Public Safety Building. All the furniture here was new. Somewhere a high-tech company had disappeared and some City of Seattle budget genius had used the resulting bankruptcy proceedings to furnish the new building—in cherry. Cherry cubicle dividers! Cherry desks! Cherry shelves! I felt like I’d landed in a cabinetry warehouse instead of a homicide squad.

I wandered through a sea of unfamiliar faces before someone called my name. “Hey, Beau,” Clarence Holly said, coming forward to shake my hand. “I thought you gave this stuff up.”

Clarence, who had been coming into Homicide from Patrol just as I was leaving, seemed happy to see me.

“Stopped by for old times’ sake,” I said. “Which way is Kramer’s office?”

“That way,” he said, pointing toward a wall of windows. “A room with a view. Don’t be such a stranger. Stop by later to visit.”

“I will,” I said.

Following Clarence’s nod, I headed toward the windows, ones that looked out on the wet expanse of Fifth Avenue, seven stories below. Kramer’s old office, the one we had called the Fishbowl, had been a glass enclosure that looked out on Homicide. This one, with Captain Kramer’s name on a nameplate beside it, had its back to the unit and its face—including a door and another interior window—looking toward the view. Kramer himself was nowhere to be seen, but the Marchbank evidence box was sitting in plain sight on the desk. So much for maintaining the chain of evidence.

I was standing outside the office, cooling my heels and looking down at the rain pelting the melting snow on Fifth Avenue, when my phone rang. It was Ralph.

“What’s up?” I asked. “You sound upset.”

“I
am
upset,” he growled back at me. “Ron just fired me.”

“He what?”

“Fired me. He told me he wants to plead guilty at the preliminary hearing, for God’s sake! When I told him that was a perfectly stupid idea, he told me to hit the road. You’ve got to talk to him, Beau. See if you can pound some sense into his head.”

I could barely believe my ears. “Ron is going to plead guilty? How can he do that?”

“Beats me. The only thing that makes sense is that he’s protecting someone,” Ralph said. “Or trying to.”

“Who?”

“I think maybe it’s Heather. I gather she’s been quite the handful lately—boy troubles, playing hooky from school, really, really didn’t want to be dragged down to Tacoma to live with her mother.”

Ralph didn’t say anything about possible drug use, and neither did I.

“So much so that she’d shoot her own mother to keep from going?”

“It’s the only thing I can think of,” Ralph continued. “By copping a plea, Ron probably hopes to forestall a more thorough investigation, one that would point suspicion in Heather’s direction. You’ve got to talk him out of this, Beau. Heather’s a juvenile. The worst she would end up with is a couple of years in Juvie. If Ron goes down for Rosemary’s murder, he’ll go away for good. A plea deal might take the death penalty off the table, but for an officer-related domestic-violence homicide, life without parole would be the next most likely possibility.”

The thought of Jared Peters growing up without his father made a hole in the pit of my stomach.

“I’ll go see him right away,” I said.

I started for the elevators only to run headfirst into Kramer. “You wanted to see me?” he asked.

“I did,” I replied. “Can’t now.”

But he followed me through the squad room and out into the elevator lobby. “I’ve been doing some checking,” he said. “Everyone I’ve talked to says they think reopening the Marchbank case is a very bad idea.”

I rounded on him. “Bad, why?” I demanded. “Bad because the Marchbank name still carries a whole lot of weight in this town? Has it occurred to anyone that maybe that’s precisely why the case was never solved in the first place?”

Kramer’s face darkened. His promotion didn’t seem to be agreeing with him. I suspected the man’s blood pressure had gone through the roof about the same time he put on his captain’s uniform.

“We’re not reopening this case on your say-so alone,” he muttered. “I’ve gone through the box. Whoever broke into Madeline Marchbank’s house and murdered her in her bed is long gone.”

“I think you’re wrong about that,” I said. “And I think Ross Connors will most likely have the final word on whether or not the case is reopened. In the meantime, I’d be mighty careful about how you handle that evidence box. If anything that should be in it turns up missing, I’ll make sure that the AG has your ears.”

Kramer bristled. “Are you threatening me?” he demanded.

“You can take it however you want, but I think the answer is probably yes. No, it’s definitely a yes. And believe me, Captain Kramer, it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”

I
DROVE STRAIGHT FROM KRAMER
’
S OFFICE
to Amy and Ron’s place on Queen Anne Hill. I did not pass Go. I did not collect two hundred dollars. What Ralph Ames had surmised made perfect sense. Ron Peters was going to sacrifice himself in an effort to save his daughter.

And had Heather done it? Not the Heather I had known—not the sweet little girl who had sold me Girl Scout cookies and wrapped my heart around her little finger. But the Heather I had seen the other night? That teenager with all her piercings and her bare midriff, with her hennaed hair and pouty lips covered with black lipstick had been another Heather entirely—a stranger. And with the possibility of drug use involved? There was no way for me to fathom what she might do or how far she might have gone in order to have her own way.

There were two clearly marked media vehicles parked on the street outside Ron and Amy’s house. A bright red two-year-old Cadillac Escalade was parked directly behind Amy’s Volvo wagon. Yes, Harry I. Ball had told me to stay the hell out of the Peters situation, but at that point in the proceedings his prohibition had fallen completely out of my head. I parked directly behind the Escalade, jumped out, hurried up to the front door, and rang the bell. I was relieved when Amy herself, rather than her grump of a sister, answered the door.

“Oh, Beau,” she said. “Thank God you’re here!”

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“In there.” She motioned toward a pair of French doors that opened into the living room. Through them, I heard Ron’s voice raised in anger.

“I don’t care if you’re the damned Second Coming himself!” Ron was saying. “The memorial service is for my girls, and I’m the one making the arrangements. As far as I’m concerned, Bread of Life Mission is having nothing to do with it!”

When I stopped in the doorway I saw that Ron was seated in his chair. A well-dressed but immense Hispanic man—six-six or six-seven at least and as broad as a wall—stood next to the fireplace.

“I don’t think you understand what a mainstay Rosemary was to our church and to the mission,” the man was saying.

“And I don’t
care
!” Ron retorted. “You’ve got a lot of nerve coming here, Mr. Lujan, a hell of a lot of nerve! None of this would have happened if you hadn’t started messing around in the child-custody situation. We were all doing fine until you stuck your nose into it. And now you think you should have a hand in the memorial service? Not on your life! Have your own memorial service if you want to, but the one we’re having tomorrow is strictly private. Now, I think it’s time you showed yourself out.”

When Michael Lujan made no move to leave, I decided it was time for me to interject the voice of sweet reason into the conversation.

“Hi, Ron,” I said. Approaching the man by the fireplace, I held out my hand. “How do you do. I’m Ron and Amy’s friend, J. P. Beaumont.”

Michael Lujan looked straight through me as though I didn’t exist. “Trying to regain custody of her children was no reason for Rosemary Peters to die,” he said tightly. “Being a mother and wanting to have your child with you isn’t a capital offense, Mr. Peters, but Rosemary is dead nonetheless. You and I both know that you deserve to be in jail awaiting trial right now instead of sitting here in the comfort of your own home. If you weren’t a cop, you would be.”

“Whether or not I’m in jail is up to the agency investigating the case,” Ron answered. “It isn’t up to me, Mr. Lujan, and it isn’t up to you, either.” His voice was tense. White knuckles showed in the fingers that held a death grip on the armrests of his chair. In all the years I had known him, I had never seen Ron Peters so angry. Fortunately, there were no pizza boxes within easy reach.

“Perhaps not,” Michael Lujan agreed. “But the investigating agency is answerable to the court of public opinion. Ross Connors may be the Washington State attorney general now, but he was a politician before that, and he’ll be a politician long after he leaves office.”

“Fine,” Ron said. “Do your worst. Now get the hell out of my house before I call the cops.”

Without another word, Lujan stalked from the room. Leaving the house, he slammed the front door hard enough to make the windows rattle. I should have realized what was coming, but I didn’t, not until it was too late. He fired up the Escalade and slammed it into reverse—directly into the front end of my poor little 928, which was parked behind him. I heard the crunch of sheet metal and the tinkling of falling glass and knew at once that my beloved Porsche, which had been totaled and rebuilt once before, would never be the same.

By the time I got outside, Michael Lujan was standing beside the wreckage, surveying the damage and cussing under his breath. When Lujan had hit the gas pedal, his Cadillac had simply run up and over my Porsche’s Guards’ Red hood, flattening the aluminum body as it went. The Escalade came to rest with the ball of a trailer hitch and much of its rear bumper protruding into the 928’s shattered wind-shield. The force of the collision had been enough to move the Porsche backward, and the vehicles had come to rest in the middle of the street.

“Where the hell did this piece of junk come from?” he demanded. “I didn’t even see it.”

Piece of junk? My 928’s connection to Anne Corley was a little like George Washington’s ax—a new head and three new handles, but George Washington’s ax in spirit. This wasn’t the exact same 928 Anne had given me originally, but it was one just like it, and in my mind the two were one and the same. Seeing the crumpled remains, I felt as though a final and mystical connection had been severed. Had Lujan been even a little apologetic, it might have been different, but having him blame me for his accident definitely rubbed me the wrong way. And it didn’t help that other than a smashed rear bumper, the Escalade was fine, while my poor Porsche looked like a squashed bug.

“And who the hell issued you a driver’s license?” I demanded in return. “It’s not my fault you’re obviously blind. Ever hear of using your rearview mirror?” So much for the voice of sweet reason.

Lujan was already reaching for his wallet. He was probably under the assumption that we’d simply exchange insurance information and settle the situation later. Even then, though, I knew from the amount of damage inflicted on the Porsche that a police report would be necessary. Besides, the media guys, bored silly with being parked outside Ron Peters’s house while nothing much seemed to be happening, had already called 911. Seconds later, a blue-and-white Seattle PD patrol car with two baby-faced uniformed officers in it—a man and a woman—appeared on the scene, along with a small crowd of neighborhood onlookers.

As the two uniforms approached, clipboards at the ready, I could already tell how this was going to play out with Harry I. Ball. To say nothing of Mel Soames. The next time I had nerve enough to appear in person at SHIT’s east side office I could expect the atmosphere to be more than a little frosty.

While the patrol officers began gathering necessary information, Jared somehow escaped his mother’s grasp. He shot out to where I was standing and wrapped himself around my leg. I picked him up and held him on one hip while I answered questions. I was focused on the questions—and on what I was sure would turn out to be my totaled Porsche. I wasn’t focused on the fact that the guys in the media vans were busy the whole time snapping photos and videos of Jared Peters and me. I didn’t notice the cameras at the time, but I’ve been around the news media long enough to know that I should have.

The rain let up for a while, but by the time the police reports had been taken and a tow truck had come to haul off the shattered remains of my Porsche, it was pouring again. Jared and I were both soaked when we finally went into the house. Amy took Jared off my hands and then handed me a towel. Ron sat with his chair parked in the entry into the living room, watching me dry off.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “I know how much that car means to you.”

“Meant,” I said. “I think it’s a goner now, but don’t apologize. It wasn’t your fault.”

“Oh? Seems to me everything is my fault these days,” Ron said in a ragged voice. He turned his chair and wheeled himself back into the living room, with me right behind him.

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Ron,” I ordered. “And get off your cross. A little while ago, when you were dealing with Mr. Lujan, you were all pissed off. Great. I can handle pissed off, but when you’re busy feeling sorry for yourself and drowning in self-pity, you can be downright pathetic. I have a hard time with pathetic.”

Ron swung his chair around and faced me from the far side of the room. “Screw you,” he said.

“Good,” I told him. “That’s more like it.”

“What are you doing here?” he demanded. “You work for SHIT. I should think you’d be giving me a wide berth about now.”

“I’m supposed to be giving you a wide berth, but at the moment maybe I’m a better friend than I am a cop. Why did you fire Ralph? What the hell got into you?”

Ron paused for a moment before he replied. “None of your business,” he snapped back finally. “And if Ralph told you that about me, he may have violated my attorney/client privilege. I should probably sue him.”

“Sure you should,” I retorted. “And maybe you’re dumb enough to represent yourself while you’re suing him just like you’re planning to represent yourself at that preliminary hearing. How come, Ron? Tell me.”

Ron shook his head. “No,” he said. “I don’t owe you an explanation.”

“Well, then, let me take a crack at explaining it myself,” I said. “I think you’re going to cop a plea in hopes of protecting Heather.”

The color drained from Ron’s face. I might as well have slapped him. Instead of answering, he turned his chair away so he was facing the empty fireplace instead of me.

“If Heather did this and you let her get away with it,” I continued, “you’re going against everything you’ve ever stood for, worked for, or believed in.”

“Nobody gave you the right to judge me,” he said.

“No,” I agreed. “But I think I’ve earned the right to be your friend.”

We were silent for a long time. Finally, his shoulders heaved. “If you repeat any of this, I’ll say you’re lying, that it’s my word against yours.”

“Repeat what?”

Ron turned to face me at last. His eyes were red-rimmed and desolate. “The ballistics tests came back this morning, Beau,” he said quietly. “That’s why I fired Ralph. Rosemary was shot to death with one of my weapons—with my very own Glock. I let your friends from SHIT, Mel Soames and Brad Norton, think I kept the Glock in my car, but I didn’t. The last I knew, it was locked in my desk in the den. Somebody had to have access to both the desk and my Camry. Rosemary’s missing shoe was found in the trunk, and so was her blood.”

“But why would Heather do such a thing?” I asked.

Ron shook his head. “She’s been a handful lately,” Ron admitted. “Missing school, hanging out with the wrong crowd. In a way—if I could have been rational about the whole thing—it might have been easier for Amy and me if she had gone to Tacoma to live with her mother. But after everything Rosemary had done, I couldn’t stomach it, and Heather hated the idea. She must be the one who did it,” he added bleakly after a pause. “Who else would there be?”

Had I been dealing with anyone else, it would have been natural to bring up the possibility of Heather’s being involved in drugs, but friendship trumped my being a cop right then, and so I didn’t mention it. The burden on Ron Peters already seemed to be more than his wide shoulders could bear. Still, I didn’t fold entirely.

“Look, Ron,” I argued, “you can’t just let her off the hook. If she did this—if she committed a murder—she has to pay for it. Admittedly, Heather’s your daughter and not mine, but I love her, too. No matter what, you and I both have to make her accountable for her actions.”

“But she’s just a kid,” Ron returned. “She has her whole life in front of her.”

“Yes,” I said. “Precisely. What’s the worst that can happen to her—Juvie until she turns twenty-one? If you take the rap for this, you’re probably looking at nothing less than life in prison.”

“I’m already serving life in prison,” he said bitterly. “I’m in prison every damned day I’m stuck in this chair. What’s the point? What difference does it make if I’m in a cell or out of it?”

“It’ll make a hell of a difference to Amy and Tracy,” I said. “And what about Jared?”

I had told Ron I could handle anger, but what he delivered surprised me.

“What about Jared?” he demanded in return. “He’s a little boy. Who’s going to take him on his father-son camp-out when it comes time for Cub Scouts? Who’s going to teach him to swim or ski or hit a baseball or even drive a car, for that matter? Oh, sure, I can do what I’ve done with the girls and teach him to drive whatever handicapped conversion vehicle I happen to be driving at the moment, but what about a regular car or one with a stick shift? That’ll all be up to Amy, won’t it. Just like everything else is up to Amy. When does she get a break?”

“When did I ever ask for a break?” Amy Peters asked.

Ron and I had been so locked in our nose-to-nose confrontation that neither of us had heard her enter the room. I have no idea how long she had been standing there or how much she had overheard. For the longest time after Amy asked her question, no one moved or even breathed. In the aftermath of the Escalade’s crashing into the 928, I had distinctly heard the tinkle of shattering glass. Now, in the stark silence that followed, I was convinced I could hear the shattering of broken hearts.

“Amy,” Ron began. “I didn’t mean…”

But it was too late. Amy didn’t hang around long enough to listen. Instead, she fled back the way she had come. Her departure left me with absolutely nothing to say. I hadn’t walked a mile in Amy’s moccasins—or in Ron’s, either, for that matter.

“Just go,” Ron said at last. “That’s enough damage for one day.”

I stopped in the doorway. “What about the memorial service?” I asked.

“What about it?”

“You told Lujan it was private. Is it family only or am I invited?”

“Of course you’re invited,” Ron said. “Whatever made you think you weren’t? Two o’clock tomorrow afternoon. The Bleitz Funeral Chapel over by the Fremont Bridge.”