“Wouldn’t you? He was carrying a gun.”
“It wasn’t a gun. He was carrying a carpet kicker extender, one of his tools. That secretary’s blind as a bat. She couldn’t tell the difference. Where’s Damm? Ask him.”
“Medic One packed him off to Group Health in an ambulance. He was complaining of chest pains.” Logan started to walk away from me, then he turned back, looking annoyed.
“Now, see here, Beaumont,” he said. “Are you suggesting that after this joker threatened to burn down a building, after he held his boss hostage for an hour and a half and tied up the entire western half of Seattle in a gigantic traffic jam, after all that, are you trying to tell me I should let him walk away scot-free?”
“He’s not a killer,” I argued. “He even saved the damn goldfish in there.”
Logan snorted. “Big fucking deal. I’ve got probable cause to arrest him on assault with a deadly weapon, minimum, and maybe kidnapping as well. You do what you want with the murder charge you’re working on, but this one is mine. I’m locking him up. Understand?”
“How about taking him down to Harbor-view for psychiatric observation?”
Dick Logan shook his head. “What’s the matter with you? Has everyone on the fifth floor gone soft on crime these days?”
“I’m telling you, Dick, that murder charge isn’t going to stick, and the assault one won’t, either. Cover your butt. Send him to Harbor-view. Don’t put him in jail.”
For a long time Captain Logan stood there staring at me. Right up until he opened his mouth, I couldn’t tell which way it was going to fall.
Perez came up to us a moment later. “We’re ready to take him downtown,” he said.
Logan answered Perez without taking his eyes off me. “Take him down to Harborview,” he said. “Put a guard on him. Tell ”em he’s there for psychiatric observation.“
Perez’s mouth dropped. He started to object, but Logan stifled him.
“That’s an order,” he snapped.
Perez beat a hasty retreat. I backed away, too. “I’ll take my car and go there too.”
“You do that,” Logan said. “I think you’re going to have some tall explaining to do if Sergeant Watkins ever catches up with you.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” I answered.
Logan swung away from me, once more speaking into his mike. “Okay, you guys, let’s see what we can do to get traffic moving again. It’ll be rush hour before long.”
I was in no hurry to run into Watty. I beat it up the hill to Fulton, grabbed my car, and headed for Harborview without bothering to tell anyone else where I was going.
Logan hadn’t been kidding about the traffic. It was a mess. As I threaded my way through it, I had plenty of time for thinking, but only one question to work on.
If Larry Martin and LeAnn Nielsen hadn’t killed Dr. Frederick Nielsen, who the hell had?
One question. Zero answers.
By the time I got to Harborview and found a parking place, Martin had already been admitted and placed in the psychiatric ward under a police guard. I was his first visitor. He was lying flat on the bed staring up at the ceiling when I walked into the room. He looked over at me.
“It’s a hell of a lot better than jail,” he said. “I thought that’s where they were taking me.”
“I talked them out of it for the moment.”
He managed a small, grotesque grin as the lines of stitches wrinkled into a nightmare mask. “Thanks,” he said. “I owe you.”
“How about answering some questions about Saturday? You don’t have to, of course, not without an attorney present.”
“You believe me, don’t you?”
I nodded.
“I don’t need an attorney. I’ll tell you whatever you need to know.”
“Is there a chance LeAnn Nielsen went back to her husband’s office alone, after you left her?”
Martin studied me for a long moment. I thought maybe he had changed his mind about answering. “I didn’t leave her,” he said finally.
“You didn’t what?”
“We spent the weekend together. The first time we weren’t together was this morning when she borrowed my car to come talk to you. I suppose that’s going to look bad, isn’t it?” he added.
“It could,” I said.
“We didn’t plan it like that. Things just worked out that way. She took me right from the office to the emergency room here at Harborview. She was so flustered that she ran the side of the van into a fire hydrant when she was trying to park. After they finished sewing me up, we went back to Cedar Heights for my tools, but we couldn’t get in. I already told you that.”
“What time was that?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Three or three-thirty. I don’t remember exactly. By then we were both hungry, so we stopped to have something to eat.”
“Where?”
“Dag’s Drive-In up on Aurora. We were on our way to the store to drop off the van. We were in no condition to go inside anywhere. And she was like, in shock, or something.”
“Shock? What do you mean?”
“Like it was all too much for her. She was walking and talking and eating, but later she didn’t remember anything about it. We dropped off the van and picked up my car. She was going to catch a bus, but I told her if she’d wait while I changed clothes, I’d give her a ride.”
“And that’s what happened?”
“Yes. On the way, she told me about her husband. He was a regular son of a bitch, wasn’t he?”
“Exceptional, not regular,” I corrected.
“Anyway,” Larry continued. “She told me about going to see him to get the money for her apartment. She said she had to move out of the shelter that weekend, because they only let them stay for a month. Her time was up yesterday. She’s a nice lady. I offered to help her move. She doesn’t have a car.”
“And she invited you to spend the night?”
“It didn’t hurt anything. Her kids were still at the shelter that night. Besides, she needed the help. The shelter has a mini-warehouse with donated furniture and dishes and pots and pans. She rented a trailer and I helped her get her stuff moved.”
“Where to?”
“A little apartment down in Tukwila. She got it pretty cheap. It’s around the same area where the Green River Killer is supposed to be, that’s probably why she got such a deal, but it’s close to her job. I think she was scared to be there alone. The landlord told her she could put up wallpaper in the kids’ rooms, so Sunday I helped her with that.”
“I thought you were too cut up to work. That’s what Richard Damm told me.“
“I knew he’d give me all kinds of grief over the van and the tools. I just didn’t want to have to put up with his comments about how I’d gotten scratched up. I didn’t think he’d fire me over it, though.”
“Tell me about what went on in Nielsen’s office, from the beginning.”
“It must have been about twelve when I got there. I was late. The first job that morning really held me up. There wasn’t that much left to be done, though, just finish stretching the carpet in the one room, lay the carpet in the other, and put the molding back in place. Nielsen pitched a fit when I got there, but after he finished yelling at me, I went into the back and got started.
“I heard a funny bell a little later-you know, a sort of ding-dong.
That must have been when LeAnn came in, but I didn’t see her then. I was in the back with the door shut. When I heard her scream, that’s the first I knew she was there.“
“She screamed?”
“Yes. I thought it was an accident out on the street, somebody hit by a car or something. I came running out of the back room to see if I could help. That’s when she screamed again. By then I could tell it was coming from inside his little office. I was about to open the door when she came out with him right behind her. She looked scared to death. He’d already hit her once. I swear to God, I think he would have raped her if I hadn’t been there.”