“I’m sure you’re right,” I said.
There was a knock on the door behind us. The uniformed guard poked his head inside. “Detective Beaumont?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“There’s somebody out here asking to see Martin. What do you want me to do?”
“Who is it?”
“She says her name’s LeAnn something. She says you know her. My orders are not to let in any unauthorized people, but if you’re willing to accept responsibility…”
“Have her wait,” I said. “I’m not finished yet.”
The guard disappeared with my message, but moments later LeAnn Nielsen bounded into the room. The guard was right behind her. “Hey, lady,” he was saying. “I told you, you can’t go in there.”
The guard was followed by a young woman in a gray pin-striped suit with a brunette, Dutchboy haircut and huge dark-rimmed glasses.
“Mrs. Nielsen,” the woman was saying,
“I must warn you-“
LeAnn’s face was desolate. She’d evidently cried until she couldn’t cry anymore. She glanced briefly at Larry Martin on the bed, but she walked straight up to me.
“You can’t do this,” she said, grabbing my jacket by the lapels and shaking me. “He was only trying to help. Larry didn’t hit Fred, I did. Don’t you understand that?”
The guard reached out and took LeAnn by the arm, attempting to lead her from the room. At that, the second woman sprang into action. She grabbed his wrist. “You let her loose, you son of a bitch!”
The guard swept her hand away, and she cut loose with an impressive stream of profanity.
“Who’s she?” I asked.
“She claims to be this one’s attorney.”
“Let them stay,” I said. “It’ll be all right.”
“If you say so,” the guard said doubtfully, but he seemed only too happy to leave the room. He beat a hasty retreat while the attorney, still cussing, turned on me.
“I don’t know who the hell you think you are. Are you trying to question my client without allowing me to be present?” She was a belligerent cat, puffed up and spitting and hissing.
“No, I’m not. Mrs. Nielsen came in here of her own accord,” I said. “And I haven’t asked her anything.”
“You damned well better not, either!”
During this heated little exchange, LeAnn decided to let the attorney and me duke it out while she walked over to Larry Martin. “Are you all right?” she asked, leaning over the bed.
He nodded, patting her hand when she placed it next to him. “I’m fine,” he said.
Satisfied, she came back to me. “You’ve got to let him go, Detective Beaumont. Don’t you see? Larry didn’t do anything. I’m the one who hit him. I just didn’t know I hit him that hard.”
LeAnn Nielsen had spent long enough thinking she was responsible for her husband’s death. Alice Fields had pulled her out of the Hi-Spot Cafe before I ever got a chance to tell her that Dr. Frederick Nielsen had died with a dental pick stuck through his throat, not from a crack over the head with a broken flowerpot. It was time to set her straight.
“You didn’t,” I said.
“What did you say?”
“You didn’t hit him that hard. The flowerpot isn’t what killed him.”
LeAnn stepped away from me, looking first from me, then to Larry, and then back to me. “What did then?” she asked.
“A dental pick. Somebody stabbed him with a dental pick while he was out cold in the chair.”
By then LeAnn had backed far enough away from me that she was leaning against the edge of Larry Martin’s bed. It’s a good thing. If she hadn’t been, she would have fallen flat on the floor.
“You mean I didn’t kill him?” she asked. Her voice shook with disbelief. “You mean I really didn’t do it?”
“No.”
“Who did, then?”
“Beats the hell out of me.”
“Why’s Larry locked up like this, then?”
“That’s a whole other problem. We’ll have to work on that one later. This is the best I could do on short notice.”
I turned to the attorney, who was standing, speechless, exactly where the guard had left her. “Any objections, Counselor?” I asked.
She shook her head and didn’t say a word.
“Good,” I told her, “because I’m going home. I’m off duty. It’s been one hell of a day.”
CHAPTER 16
I planned to go home. I meant to go home. I dropped the departmental vehicle off in the garage of the Public Safety Building, called upstairs to tell Margie I was gone for the day, and headed for Belltown Terrace with every intention of putting my feet up and settling down with a nice, cool drink.
There’s a free bus zone in downtown Seattle, an area where people can hop on and off Metro buses without having to pay a fare. It’s designed to help reduce automobile traffic in the downtown core, although I can’t see it’s made much difference. There still aren’t any parking places when you need one.
That particular summer, they could just as well have posted Under Construction signs on the outskirts of downtown Seattle. Massive construction projects were everywhere, from the convention center rising over the freeway to the transit tunnel burrowing under the city. It was a noisy, dusty, crowded mess. What had once been a pleasant, straight-shot stroll from work back to my condominium now meandered through a maze of wooden walkways past buildings going up and holes going down. Dump trucks, some empty, some full, rumbled past while the jarring racket of jack-hammers reverberated up and down the street.
With what I had been through that day, starting with Alice Fields and ending with Larry Martin, I didn’t need to fight my way through an earsplitting obstacle course to get home. Bearing that in mind, I left the department and dashed down the hill to First Avenue where I climbed on board one of the free buses. I’m not cheap. Old habits die hard.
It was rush hour, so of course the bus was jammed, but I didn’t mind standing for what should have been a seven- or eight-minute ride from James Street to Battery. Unfortunately the bus was not only free and crowded, it was also one of the kneeling ones, a vehicle that hydraulically lowers a wheelchair lift so disabled riders can board.
The bus stopped for someone in a wheelchair. Standing riders pressed farther back into the bus to make room for the chair. By the time the bus made two more stops, I was stuck between a reeling, reeking drunk who breathed noxious odors over my shoulder and a heavy-set lady who kept both her purse and shopping bag jammed firmly into my ribs.
That did it. Walking past construction sites was preferable. I got off the bus at First and Stewart.
Coming down Second Avenue“ s slight incline toward Belltown Terrace, I had to walk directly past Cedar Heights. I looked up at it, and my mind shifted out of neutral and back into high gear.
Statistics say that if a homicide isn’t solved within the first forty-eight hours, the chances of its ever being solved go down appreciably. Dr. Frederick Nielsen’s case was well beyond that forty-eight-hour limit. We were a hell of a long way from figuring out who had killed him. Not that I personally gave a shit, but the Seattle Police Department frowns on unsolved homicides. No matter what I had come to think of the late Dr. Nielsen, his case file had my name on it-my name and my reputation.
Instead of walking straight past Cedar Heights, I paused briefly in front of the building and gazed at the glass door to Dr. Nielsen’s office. There was a police padlock on the door with yellow crime scene no trespassing signs attached.
While I stood there staring, the earlier question I had been dealing with returned. If LeAnn Nielsen and Larry Martin hadn’t killed Dr. Frederick Nielsen, who had? Who else had opportunity? And motive.
My memory did a free-fall through all the information Big Al and I had gathered, coming to rest on what the building resident manager had said about Debi Rush, how he had seen her hurrying into Dr. Nielsen’s office at nine o’clock on Monday morning when she had told us she’d been there since eight.
It was a discrepancy we hadn’t had time to check out yet, one that had considerably more weight to it in view of what LeAnn had told us about Debi Rush and Dr. Nielsen.