“Stay there,” the keeper bellowed over his shoulder. “Don’t move until I have her in the barn.”
He didn’t have to say it twice. I glanced at Daisy. She was slumped against the wall, fainted dead away.
Once the four elephants were locked in the barn, the handler came back and helped me carry the unconscious woman into the keepers’ office outside the enclosure.
“How the hell did she get in there?” he demanded. “She must have slipped through the bars when I wasn’t looking.”
We dialed 911 to get an aid car. She was coming around by then, but I wanted her checked out by a medic.
“You need one, too,” the keeper said to me. “Your foot.”
Up until he said that, I didn’t know I was hurt, but once he pointed it out, my foot hurt like hell. It also stunk.
“What made the elephant stop?” I asked, still puzzling over the fact that the animal wasn’t moving when I had scrambled to my feet.
“Elephants are dominant animals,” he explained. “Man can’t dominate them physically, so we do it mentally. You said one of the few words she happens to know, and you said it like you meant it. That’s what stopped her.”
“I’ll be a son of a bitch,” I muttered.
“A lucky son of a bitch,“ he added.
Daisy was fully conscious by then. “You shouldn’t have,” she said, averting her face. “I didn’t want to be saved.”
I moved over to where she was lying wrapped in a blanket on the floor.
“I saw you outside the barn. I knew then that you must have found out about me. Dorothy’s still my little sister, you know. Fred shouldn’t have done that. But I didn’t want to go home and face her.”
“There are worse things than that,” I told her, although right that minute I was hard-pressed to think of any.
We sat there in silence, waiting for Medic One. It was over, I’d found the killer and she’d confessed. Why the hell did I feel so rotten? And then it dawned on me. I started to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” the keeper asked. He must have thought I was going into shock.
By then I was laughing so hard, I could barely talk. “I forgot-” I managed, gasping for breath. “I forgot to read her her rights.”
“That’s funny?” he asked.
“Take my word for it,” I said finally, pulling myself together. “It’s a scream.”
Unfortunately, the aid car came with full sirens blaring. It brought the curious flocking out of the tents and away from the volunteer potluck in the family farm. It also brought the news media-not the usual crime-scene slugs, but the ones who write for Seattle“ s society pages. There weren’t that many faces I knew. The society page isn’t my customary territory.
I didn’t know them, and they didn’t know me, either.
The medics checked Daisy, then one of them came over to me. “The lady’s all right,” he said. “What do you want us to do with her?”
“Take her up to Harborview,” I said.
“The psycho ward?” he asked.
“You got it.”
“There’s another lady outside who claims to be her sister. Should we bring her along?”
I nodded.
“What about you?” he asked. “Somebody should X-ray that foot.”
By the time I limped out to get in the ambulance, the mayor and his wife were standing right next to it. There was no way of getting in without walking directly past them.
“I understand you’re a Seattle police officer?” the mayor asked.
I nodded wearily. “That’s right,” I said.
“What’s your name?”
The jig was up. “Detective Beaumont,” I said, wishing I could have thought of someone else’s name. “Detective J. P. Beaumont.”
“Nice going, Detective Beaumont,” the mayor said. “I’ll see that you get a commendation for this.”
I wonder what he would have done if I had used the gun.
CHAPTER 24
I was still waiting for word on my X rays when Sergeant Watkins came striding into the emergency room. “You must like this place, Beaumont. Seems like you spend half your life here.”
“Don’t give me any crap, Watty. I’m not up to it.”
“And another psychiatric observation case? What do you think, the department wants to fund a complete mental hospital?”
“Please.”
“All right, all right,” he relented. “But what have you got? Captain Powell dragged me out of bed and told me to get down here on the double.”
Wordlessly, I handed him a letter Rachel had brought in to me. She had found it in Daisy’s jacket pocket. It was a signed suicide note that admitted the murder of Dr. Frederick Nielsen. It said that when she tried to talk to him, he was passed out. Drunk, she thought. She had attacked him without realizing what she was doing. The note went on to talk about wanting to dance with the elephants once before she died.
Watty read it over and handed it back to me with a shrug. “Maybe you’re right. She sounds crazy to me.”
“Incidentally,” he added. “His Honor the Mayor called the chief and told him what you’d done. He says there’s a movie company coming to town in the next few weeks to do some location filming on a murder thriller. He wants you to work with them as a special technical advisor.”
“Jesus Christ, Watty! That’s the last thing I want to do.”
“The mayor thinks it’s a reward. You’ll do it and like it, Beau. That’s an order.“
We dropped the subject. “What about Larry Martin?” I asked.
“Richard Damm refuses to press charges. He says it was his own damn fault. With this letter, I suppose I’d better see about getting Martin released.”
“Good,” I said.
Just then the doctor came in carrying my Xrays. “I’ve got some good news for you, Detective Beaumont,” he said. “Nothing’s broken, but did you know you’ve got a bone spur?”
“A what?”
“A bone spur. It’s an old injury that you’ve hurt again. Those things happen as we get older.”
He was maybe thirty-five years old, and he said it with an engaging grin, but I wanted to punch his lights out all the same.
“Here’s something that should help you get some sleep tonight, and an anti-inflammatory prescription for later. You’ll have to take these for a month or so. At least until the pain goes away.”
“Fan-goddamn-tastic,” I told him.
“The car’s right outside, Beau,” Watty said. “I’ll give you a ride home.”
Rachel’s suitor, George, was just pulling up in the Buick as I hobbled out the emergency room door.
“Where is she?” he asked, hurrying up to me.
“Upstairs, with Daisy.”
“Is Daisy all right?”
I nodded.
“And what about Rachel?”
“She’s all right, too, but she’s going to need all the help she can get,” I said.
“What’s going to happen to Daisy?” he asked.
I shrugged. “It’s hard to say. Years ago, she would have gone to prison, no question. These days, things are different. It depends on premeditation, frame of mind, any number of things. It’s up to the judge and jury.”
“I see,” he said. “Well, I’ll go tell Rachel. I know she’s worried about it.”
When George walked away, Watty and I got into his car, the sergeant’s own private car. “Dammit, Beau! Roll down your window, will you? Your shoes stink like hell!”
“You’d stink too if you’d been rolling around in elephant shit,” I told him.
He dropped me in front of Belltown Terrace. It seemed like days had passed, maybe whole weeks, since Big Al Lindstrom had picked me up there that morning.
My idea was to slink into the building, sneak upstairs, and dive into my shower. Unfortunately, the elevator stopped on the eighteenth floor and the door opened. The first person I saw was Peters, sitting in a wheelchair.
“You girls shouldn’t push both buttons at the same time,” he was scolding. Just then he looked up and recognized me. “Hey, Beau, you missed the party. It was great, but now we’ve got to get back to the hospital before they send out a search party.”
Laughing and joking, everybody piled into the elevator-Amy, pushing the wheelchair, Trade, and Heather.