"You mean you don't think he did it?
She had finally gotten the message. "No, but he may have seen whoever did. I handed her one of my cards with my home number scribbled on the back. "Will you have him call us?
She crushed the card in her hand and nodded wordlessly. For the second time, tears welled in her eyes.
We got up to leave. I paused in the doorway. "When you see your husband, you might tell him from me that he's damn lucky to be alive.
"I'll tell him, she whispered. "I sure enough will.
CHAPTER 15
"Tell me just this one thing, Big Al said, as we climbed into the car for the return drive to the department. "How the hell does someone who got sent up for drugs manage to get licensed and bonded to run a shredding company?
"Don't ask, I responded. "You don't want to know and neither do I.
"Are you going to head on over to Port Angeles today? he asked.
Baseball teams have designated hitters. In Big Al's and my partnership, I'm the designated traveler. Allen Lindstrom lives to eat, and he's especially partial to his wife's brand of home cooking. He doesn't like to go anywhere if he can't be back in time for dinner. Other than Ralph Ames, I've seldom met a bachelor whose dinners were worth going home for. Mine certainly aren't, so if traveling is optional, I go and Big Al stays home.
"That's the plan, I said, except the plan didn't work according to schedule. Going to Port Angeles to see Clay Woodruff that Thursday afternoon got shoved aside by something else.
Before we made it all the way inside the garage at the Public Safety Building, we were dispatched back out and sent to one of the city's better-known crack houses over on East Yesler. There, sometime during the night, in a filthy apartment that reeked of urine and vomit and human feces, a young hotshot drug addict named Hubert Jones had OD'd on heroin. He had fallen onto a bare mattress on the floor in one corner of what passed for a living room-a dying room in this case-and had been left lying where he fell. It was morning before any of his drugged-up pals bothered to call in a report.
The dead man's driver's license revealed that he had turned twenty-one just two months earlier. When we started asking questions about him and about what had happened during the night, nobody in the house knew anything, heard anything, or saw anything.
These were people who had fried their brains on drugs but whose bodies hadn't yet given up the fight. From what we could ascertain, Hubert Jones had died alone in a room filled with at least two dozen partying zombies, none of whom had bothered to notice. With cretins like that for friends, Hubert Jones had no need of enemies.
It's hard for cops to get emotionally involved in cases like that. It's hard to care. We all get them, though, and far too often. With anti-drug hysteria running at a fever pitch, police jurisdictions all over the country, hounded by the press, are under tremendous pressure to do something. Exactly what, nobody's sure.
And so, when another case crops up, we go through the motions. We ask all the usual questions and write down the usual non-answers. We visit the grieving next-of-kin, usually and painfully the parents, and do what we can, with our questions and our forms, to make sense out of the tragedies of their children's amputated lives. Sometimes we find out who's at fault; more often, we don't. When we're finished, we go home or else we move on to the next case. After a while, all OD's look alike, and it's hard to give a rat's ass. You're just grateful as hell that it isn't your own kid being packed off to the morgue.
On that particular day, Hubert Jones' squalid death took precedence over Tadeo Kurobashi's murder, over my going to Port Angeles to talk with Clay Woodruff. More than the critical forty-eight hours had passed since Tadeo's death, and the odds against our actually finding his killer were going up exponentially.
By the time we finished the next-of-kin visit, it was quitting time, and quit we did. Hubert Jones' wretched life and meaningless death sure as hell weren't worthy of our working overtime. All I wanted to do was go home and put my feet up.
My emotional battery had just about run down. The days of almost round-the-clock work and concentration had drained me, and I found myself filled with a vague sense of uneasiness. It wasn't anything physical. Thanks to Dr. Blair, my hand was feeling much better. There was, however, on the periphery of my mind, the nagging knowledge that I hadn't done as I'd been told and gone to see Dr. Wang.
Sitting in the recliner, I noticed how quiet the apartment was. Far too quiet. Ames had left a message on the answering machine saying that he and Winter were driving over to eastern Washington to visit with Machiko Kurobashi at Honeydale Farm. I missed the kind of creative uproar that seems to accompany Ralph Ames wherever he goes. And I missed having Peters' kids popping in and out unannounced in hopes of snagging some forbidden treat. And I missed having someone there to talk to. And I was restless as hell.
About six, I picked up the phone, dialed the Mercer Island Police Department, and asked to be put through to the chief. The words police chief didn't used to make me think of sex. Ever. But that was before I got to know Marilyn Sykes. Before I really got to know her.
Mercer Island is one of Seattle's suburban neighbors, an independent bedroom community in the middle of Lake Washington with its own city government. Marilyn Sykes, the Mercer Island police chief, and I have a sometime thing going. Like me, she works too much and plays too little. She answered the phone in her office on the second ring.
"It's six o'clock. Why are you still working?
"Do you have any better ideas?
"Actually I do. What are you having for dinner?
She laughed. "Lean Cuisine. Again. As usual.
"How about leftover linguini primavera?
"At your house? If you've got leftovers, that must mean Ralph Ames is still in town.
"In Washington, but not in town.
"Is that a hint?
"An invitation, I corrected.
"Are you sure you're up to it? How are the fingers?
The damn fingers again! "Now that they've stopped hurting, they're fine, I answered. "Believe me, I never felt better.
"So I don't need to bring over a pot of chicken soup?
"No. Your toothbrush.
"I'll be there in twenty minutes, she said.
And she was. That's one of the reasons I like Marilyn Sykes. She doesn't require engraved invitations or lots of advance notice.
We never did get around to the linguini. When I woke up at six o'clock on Friday morning, Marilyn was plastered against my back, one hand wrapped around my middle, snoring softly. I felt the soft swell of breast against the skin of my shoulder blade and the arousing tickle of her pubic hair against my butt.
We've been around one another enough now that I no longer wake up in a blind panic, trying desperately to figure out who's in bed next to me. I know upon waking and without looking that it's Marilyn, and I'm grateful to have her there. We've never discussed the fact that she snores. I probably do too.
I lay there for a while, delighted to notice that my fingers weren't throbbing. Between Marilyn's capable ministrations and Dr. Blair's red-hot paper clip, I was feeling a whole lot better. A gentle euphoria slipped over me as I relived the previous evening's activities. Neither Marilyn nor I had anything to apologize for in the screwing department. On that score alone, I felt downright terrific. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I thought Dr. Blair must have had his wires crossed. It wasn't possible for someone who felt this good to be sick. Enlarged liver, my ass! Enlarged something else.
Marilyn stirred in her sleep. A hand grazed my chest.
"Awake? I asked, turning to face her.