"Any witnesses?"
"None so far, and I'm not too hopeful about that, although we're starting to check out the neighbors right now. The house sits off by itself in a swale down near the water, so there aren't clear sight lines from any of the nearby houses."
By the time Jacek had told me that much, I was able to guess the rest, especially in view of the Rocky Washington connection. Jacek's investigation and mine had to be linked in some way. The fire on Camano Island had something to do with the earlier fire at Fishermen's Terminal. Using my shoulder to hold the telephone receiver to my ear, I fumbled clumsily in my notebook, trying to locate Alan Torvoldsen's scrap of paper-the piece of paper on which he had penciled the Camano Island address of Gunter Gebhardt's cute little side dish.
Once I had the address in my hand, I still didn't want to blurt out the information to Stan Jacek. Homicide cops are generally cautious folks who believe in playing their cards close to their chests. We don't willingly share information with others, and that's possibly one of the things that accounts for the high divorce rate among members of homicide squads. We especially don't like sharing information with someone we don't know who is clearly a member of an opposing team.
I wanted Stan Jacek to have to talk before I did, and that may sound childish. It's probably a holdover from some long-ago game of darers-go-first.
"What makes Rocky Washington think I'd have any interest in a beach house out on Camano Island?" I asked guardedly.
As soon as I heard Detective Jacek sigh, I knew I had won the first round.
"I saw the victim," he admitted. "It's pretty rough. You don't happen to have a queasy stomach, do you, Detective Beaumont?"
The careful way he asked the question, his tone of voice. It all fit.
"Let me take a wild guess," I said. "Was the corpse mutilated, by any chance? Did this arsonist of yours take the time to whack off all the victim's fingers and toes?"
"All of them," Jacek answered at once. Then, when his brain caught up with his mouth, when he realized exactly what I'd said, there was a long pause. "How in the hell did you know about that?" he demanded. "Did Rocky already call and tell you?"
"No," I answered. "He didn't."
"But how…?"
"That means either I'm some kind of mind reader," I interrupted, "or else we're both working the same case."
"The same case?" he echoed. "How could that be?"
"We had a fatality fire here in Seattle earlier today-a boat fire down at Fishermen's Terminal first thing this morning. One dead male, burned to a crisp with all of his missing fingers and toes toasted to potato chips in a pie plate that was left sitting on his chest."
The phone line went silent for a moment, then Jacek said, "You're absolutely right. If it's not the same guy, we've got a helluva trend starting."
I was already slipping on my shoes. "Where are you right now?" I asked.
"I'm out on Camano, but I told Rocky I'd meet him over in Stanwood. Have you ever been here?"
"Once, years ago. For a Memorial Day picnic."
"Rocky Washington hasn't even done that. The roads and lanes can turn into an impossible maze if you don't know exactly where you're going. I figured it would be easier for me to meet Rocky in Stanwood and lead him out here than it would to try giving him directions over the phone."
"How long ago did he leave?"
"Not very long ago. He was just heading down to get the van when I called you."
"Good," I said. "If you're meeting him, you can meet me, too. I'll be there as soon as I can, and it won't take long. I'm far enough north of the Public Safety Building that I may actually beat him there. Where will you be?"
"As you come into Stanwood, you'll see a blinking red light with a grocery store and shopping center on the far right-hand corner. I'll be waiting there, in the parking lot. What'll you be driving?" he asked. "That way I'll know what to look for."
"A Porsche 928," I said. "Guard red."
"Right," he said, "and I'll be in my Rolls." He paused for a moment, then said, "You're kidding about the Porsche, aren't you?"
"No, I really will be driving a 928."
"What the hell kind of cop are you?" he demanded. "Narcotics? Vice?"
I figured Detective Stan Jacek didn't need to know that this was a special-order 928-one I had purchased to replace another one that had been blown to bits months earlier in a propane explosion down in Ashland, Oregon. So I didn't tell Jacek any of that.
"I'm nothing but a plain old detective," I answered. "Same as you."
10
Dead on my feet, I finally crawled into bed at four in the morning and set the alarm for seven. The alarm woke me. As soon as I managed to shake the cobwebs out of my head well enough to be able to talk, I called Sue Danielson at home.
She sounded disgustingly chipper and wide awake. "I hope you had a good night's sleep last night," I told her.
"As a matter of fact, I did. Why?"
"Because the ball's in your court this morning," I said. "There's a whole lot to be handled, and unless I catch an hour or two of sleep before I come into the office, I'm not going to be worth diddly-squat."
"I take it you and Alan Torvoldsen tied one on last night?" she returned.
It's funny, but when a dedicated drinker lays off the sauce, it's invisible to most people. Once you've established a reputation as a boozer, the reputation sticks, regardless. That was something Champagne Al Torvoldsen and J. P. Beaumont shared in common.
"Actually, I spent most of the night alternately sweating like a pig or freezing my ass off, prowling around the scene of a house fire up on Camano Island. It was still hot in places."
"A house fire on Camano Island?" Sue asked. "Why would you want to do something like that?"
"Because Detective Stan Jacek of the Island County Sheriff's Department asked me to. By the time he called me, he already knew it was a fatality fire, and he was hoping I could help him figure out who the victim is. We did pick up a letter from the scene-actually from a singed white Cadillac parked in the driveway outside the house. One of Jacek's deputies found it.
"It was addressed to somebody named Denise Whitney, and the address was the same as the burned house. The letter was signed ‘Mom,' and the envelope had an Anchorage, Alaska, return address. By now I'm sure Detective Jacek's followed up on that, trying to locate next of kin."
"Wait just a minute," Sue interrupted. "How come this Island County detective is pulling you in to investigate his case?"
"Because," I said, "we think it may be the same perpetrator as whoever killed Gunter Gebhardt."
As briefly as possible, I brought Sue up to speed, telling her everything I could remember, starting with the phone call from Detective Jacek at 11:00 P. M. I told her about the grisly copycat connections between the Camano Island homicide and our own. I explained, however, that there were some notable differences between the two separate blazes.
For instance, the one on Camano had been started by setting fire to piles of newspaper scattered in separate rooms throughout the house. Unlike the blaze on the Isolde, there were no apparent signs of a liquid accelerant in most of the house, but that was a long way from conclusive. It was possible that subsequent arson investigation would reveal the use of accelerant in that part of the house that had still been too hot to handle by the time I left the scene to return to the city.
Attempting to be thorough, I became so caught up in telling the story that I never saw it coming. When I finally finished my recitation and shut up, I was dumbfounded to find that Sue Danielson was steamed-at me.
"How come you didn't call me right away?" she demanded angrily. "You should have let me know the minute all this came up."
"Detective Jacek's call didn't come in until after eleven. I figured you were sound asleep in bed by then. Besides, you've got kids at home to worry about. You can't spend half the night traipsing around all over the countryside with them there by themselves."