Almost two months had gone by since the shootings at Renfrew Avenue. The news that Wayne Sullivan had confessed had created a sense of euphoria and relief that was as intense as it was short-lived. Seattleites liked to think of their city as a civilized haven, as temperate as its mild, cloudy climate, immune by its very nature to the epidemic of crime which had turned so many other urban centers into virtual war zones. At the same time, everyone knew that out-of-staters were moving there, partly because of the area’s reputation as peaceful and livable, and there was growing concern that they would bring their problems with them.
So when something like the Renton killing occurred, a houseful of people shot dead in broad daylight without any evident motive, everyone’s worst fears appeared to have been realized. Any outcome would have been a relief from the swirling, formless terrors of the community’s collective imagination, but Wayne Sullivan’s confession was the very best news anyone could have hoped for. People might be shocked by what Sullivan had done, but at least they could understand it. Hell, we’ve all been there at some moment or other, if we’re honest.
Above all, they were relieved to find that it posed no threat to them. Far from being the random slaughter it had at first appeared, this was a situation-specific killing. What had taken place was a private affair between Wayne Sullivan and his family. As for that poor Chinese kid, he’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Could’ve happened to anyone.
There was thus intense pressure on the police in general, and on Kristine Kjarstad in particular, to come up with evidence to corroborate Sullivan’s statement so that charges could be brought. This they had failed to do.
Kristine had known the attempt was doomed from the moment she and Steve Warren had interviewed Sullivan at the courthouse following his unexpected admission of guilt. Things had begun promisingly enough, with Wayne giving vent to obviously genuine feelings of hostility regarding his ex-wife.
“She tried to take the little ones away from me,” he explained in a voice filled with hurt. “She shouldn’t ought to’ve done that. I don’t care about her, but those were my children, the only thing I have in this world. She tried to take them away and form them in her image. No one has the right to do that. I told her. ‘My boys’d be better off dead than brung up by a slut like you,’ I said.”
Kristine waited for him to go on, but he seemed to have lost the thread.
“What happened then?” she prompted.
Sullivan’s eyes darted around the room, as if searching for inspiration.
“She started in at me, calling me a no-good, worthless loser who wasn’t fit to father a dog. I just lost it. I took out this pistol I’d brought with me and I blew her away. Then I got to thinking ’bout the kids, all alone in the world with no one to look after them. And them knowing their dad killed their mom and all. So I knew I had to kill them too. It was for the best. I didn’t know what else to do.”
Kristine Kjarstad nodded sympathetically. So far, so good, she thought. Everything Sullivan had said rang true. Now they just had to sort out the details and type up a statement for him to sign.
“Where did you get the gun?” she asked.
Wayne Sullivan hesitated.
“Guy in Seattle sold it to me. You can get anything you want there, you got the cash.”
“And where did you get the cash?”
Another hesitation.
“I’d saved it up. I was going to take the kids to Disneyland, but she wouldn’t let them go, the bitch. Said I was a bad influence.”
Kristine frowned slightly. She had the feeling she was listening to something which almost made sense, but didn’t quite. It was easy to imagine Wayne making extravagant promises to his children, particularly after a few drinks, and equally easy to imagine Dawn putting him down contemptuously. What wasn’t so easy to believe was the idea of him actually getting the money together. She’d seen how Sullivan had been living. He didn’t strike her as someone who was into delayed gratification for himself, never mind others.
“What kind of gun was it?” she asked.
Sullivan glanced at the uniformed man who had brought him over from the jail, and who was now chewing his nails at an adjoining desk. He shrugged.
“I don’t know. I just know it worked. Guy I bought it from took me down the alley, loosed off a few rounds. I knew it would do the job.”
“But it was an automatic?” Steve Warren put in.
Kristine glanced at her partner in surprise. Luckily Sullivan didn’t catch her expression. He nodded.
“Sure.”
“So how come there weren’t any ejected cartridges at the scene?” Warren demanded.
Sullivan looked around nervously.
“The, uh …? Oh, I guess I picked them up.”
“Why did you do that?”
There was no reply.
“And where is the weapon now?” asked Kristine Kjarstad.
This time, Wayne Sullivan had his answer ready.
“Bottom of Puget Sound. I rode the ferry over to Bremerton, dropped it over the side halfway across.”
“Let’s go back to the killing,” said Warren. “You said your old lady started badmouthing you so you shot her.”
Sullivan nodded.
“So you two were just sitting there …”
He broke off.
“Sitting? Standing?”
Sullivan shook his head.
“I don’t know. Standing, I guess.”
“You were standing there chatting, and she said something you didn’t like. It was an impulse thing, right?”
“Right.”
“You didn’t tie her up first, anything like that?”
“Why would I do that?” said Sullivan with a puzzled look.
“And the kids?” demanded Kristine, keeping up the pressure. “How did you kill them?”
Wayne Sullivan flinched visibly. He didn’t mind discussing his wife’s death, but his children were another matter.
“Same way,” he replied shortly.
“What about the Chinese boy? You said your own children would have had no one to look after them, but Ronnie Ho had a family. Why did he have to die too?”
Sullivan shrugged.
“I guess I kind of got carried away.”
“What time did all this happen?”
“Sometime in the afternoon.”
“When we first questioned you, you said you’d been painting an apartment in Bellevue all day.”
“That’s right!” Sullivan exclaimed indignantly.
Kristine Kjarstad nodded.
“We checked into that, and we found a witness who saw you at the apartment block shortly after two that afternoon, just after the bodies were discovered. That’s a twenty-minute drive from Renton. There’s no way you could have got back in time.”
She glanced quickly at Steve Warren, who seemed to be about to protest. Leading questions about the type of gun used were one thing, inventing nonexistent witnesses another. She gave her partner a hard look.
“I did it earlier,” Sullivan said at last.
Kristine Kjarstad nodded helpfully.
“How much earlier?”
“On my lunch break. I didn’t want the boss coming by and finding I wasn’t at work. It’s tough to get jobs these days.”
He looked up at Kristine, as though to confirm the clinching effect of this down-to-earth detail.
“So what time would that have been?” she asked.
Sullivan considered.
“Between twelve and one, maybe.”
“And you were back at work by one?”
Sullivan nodded.
“How do you know?”
“I was listening to the radio while I got the paint ready. Thought there might be something about it on the news.”