"Step aside," someone was saying urgently. "Coming through. Coming through."
A young uniformed cop appeared at my elbow and bodily shoved me aside. "Is he dead?" the cop asked as he, too, began searching for a pulse.
"I think so," I told him. "But be careful of the knife. It's sharp as hell. I already cut myself on it."
"What knife?" the young officer demanded shortly. "I thought this was…" And then he saw it, too. "I'll be damned!" he exclaimed. "There is a knife here."
Gingerly, avoiding the blade, the cop checked the man's throat and shook his head. "He's a goner all right," he said. "Hell of a way to go!" Then he added, more to himself than to me, "But what did it, the knife or the car?"
That was the $64,000 question. I didn't answer because it wasn't my place to. After all, I was on vacation. It seemed like a good idea for me to find myself an EMT and see if my wrist needed stitches. I started to walk away, but the young officer stopped me.
"Wait a minute, sir," he said. "Maybe you'd better tell me exactly how it is that your arm got cut like that."
Vacation or not, I knew it was the beginning of another long, long night.
CHAPTER 5
No doubt things would have gone more smoothly if the dead man hadn't turned out to be someone else I knew from Seattle. It seemed as though the whole goddamned city had jumped in their cars and followed me down 1–5 to Ashland. I half expected my old hometown nemesis, Maxwell Cole-the intrepid, walrus-mustached columnist from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer-to turn up any minute for an impromptu interview. I was surprised he didn't.
An hour and a half later, after the emergency-room doctor finished stitching my wrist back together, I found myself closeted in a small conference room in Ashland's Community Hospital while Gordon Fraymore, Ashland's sole police detective, swallowed Tums by the fistful and gave me a going-over.
Fraymore was older than I by a good five years, which meant he had been a cop that much longer as well. Since we were both long-term police officers, it seems reasonable that we would see eye-to-eye. We didn't. Not at all. He took an instant dislike to me. Just because cops are sworn to uphold the peace doesn't mean some of them won't be assholes. That's how Gordon Fraymore struck me-a born asshole.
"Tell me again how it is you happen to know this Martin Shore character," Fraymore said, drumming his fingertips impatiently on the smooth Formica tabletop.
The murder victim's identification had been accomplished through picture I.D. discovered on the body. As soon as Detective Fraymore mentioned Martin Shore's name aloud, I realized I knew him.
"I already told you."
"Tell me again."
"Shore had his own private-investigation firm up in Seattle. Specialized in criminal-defense-type work and some insurance claims. We ran into each other now and again, usually at the court-house. I knew him, but just in passing. We weren't friends by any means."
I neglected to mention the degree to which Martin Shore and I weren't friends. His offices were in a run-down part of Georgetown, a neighborhood in Seattle's South End. Scuttlebutt had it that Shore was an ex-cop who had been drummed off the force in Yakima, Washington, where he was alleged to have been moonlighting as a porno distributor. He weaseled out of the charges without even having to cop a plea. Given that kind of history, I don't know how he managed to come up with a P.I. license, but then, I don't work for the Department of Licensing.
I'm not fond of private investigators, so Martin Shore started out with one strike against him. In my book, porn dealers are the scum of the earth. Strike two. Since this was a murder investigation, it seemed best to keep those very personal opinions well under wraps. Rat or not, Martin Shore was dead, and Gordon Fraymore was the detective charged with finding his killer. Fraymore was casting his net in every direction, and I didn't want to wind up in it. Actually, Fraymore already had himself one convenient scapegoat-Derek Chambers, the unfortunate driver of the Duster, who was still waiting and agonizing somewhere in the hospital.
From a few things he said, I suspected Fraymore was somewhat confused, that he had inadvertently mixed up exactly who had been driving what. He was off on a wild tangent, thinking the woman had been driving the Duster and Derek Chambers the Cutlass. And while Fraymore blundered around in total ignorance, Derek and his worried parents were isolated in a hospital room down the hallway with a uniformed cop standing guard outside the door.
I wish I could say those kinds of mistakes never happen. I can't. I've made a few of them myself. In the heat of a new investigation, when a cop is working under incredible pressure, one piece of a puzzle unaccountably gets shifted to the wrong side of the board. With any kind of luck, the detective realizes where he went wrong and corrects his mistake, straightening out both his mind and his paper before any harm is done.
As an impartial observer of events in Ashland, I found it easy to see what was happening. I wondered how long it would take for Gordon Fraymore to wise up. It sure as hell wasn't my job to point out the error of his ways. Cop or not, Fraymore struck me as a heavy-handed jerk. The longer the mix-up was allowed to continue, the more harm it would do to Derek Chambers and the more embarrassing it would be for Detective Fraymore. In fact, if it hadn't been for what Fraymore's stupidity was doing to Derek and his anguished parents, I could have cared less.
"Let me ask you this," Fraymore was saying. "Did you have any idea Martin Shore was going to be in Ashland this weekend?"
"None whatsoever. As a matter of fact, I didn't know I would be until just yesterday morning."
Fraymore frowned. "I thought you said your daughter was getting married, that you came here for a wedding."
"I didn't know about the wedding until yesterday, either," I snapped. Gordon Fraymore could go ahead and draw his own conclusions on that score. "I may have been late getting my invitation," I added, "but the wedding is scheduled for two-thirty Monday afternoon, if you want to check it out."
"Oh, I'll do that," Gordon Fraymore assured me. "Most definitely. I'll be checking everything. Twice if necessary. Tell me again what you were doing just prior to your being found at the crime scene?"
I took a deep breath and told him again. "I left the donor party in the Bowmer. I told Alex I wanted to get some air."
"I take it Alex is Alexis Downey, the lady waiting for you out in the lobby?"
I nodded.
"She your wife?"
"We're just good friends," I answered.
"I see. Where exactly did you go when you went out to get some air?"
"Out into that little brick courtyard between the theaters and the ticket office. I was standing near the telephone booths looking up at the stars when I first heard the crash. As soon as I heard it, I knew what it was. I ran down the stairs between the buildings to see if I could help."
"Commendable," Gordon Fraymore said. "Did you see anybody else on the stairs or in the courtyard?"
"No."
"Hear anything?"
"Other than the crash and breaking glass? No."
"I understand you work Homicide in Seattle?"
I didn't remember telling him that. "That's right."
"You're sure there isn't a chance that Martin Shore screwed up one of your cases and you decided to get even?"
"There's no chance." It was time for a little cop-to-cop courtesy. "Look, I'm tired. My arm hurts. Can't we finish this tomorrow?"
"Where are you staying?"
"One of the B and B's. Oak something."
"Oak Hill?"
"Probably. Sounds like it, but I don't remember for sure."
"Both you and Miss Downey are staying there?"
"Ms. Downey," I corrected. If I couldn't get away with calling Alexis "Miss," then neither could Gordon Fraymore. "That's right. We're both staying there."