Sue Danielson had been quiet throughout the interview. She didn't keep still because she's some kind of shrinking violet or because I'm particularly brilliant. The truth is, interrogations can shatter like glass with too much handling or interference. Because Lorenzo focused on me and seemed so concerned with whether or not I believed him, Sue simply assumed it was better to leave well enough alone.
Now, though, she stirred. "How long had you known Gunter Gebhardt?" she asked.
"Five years."
"How did you first meet him?"
"Through my cousin, and one of my cousin's friends. They went to work for him, fishing, and they asked me to come along. We made good money."
"Was he hard to work for?" Sue asked.
"It was a job," Lorenzo answered. "He paid us, and the checks didn't bounce."
"You didn't have any trouble with him?"
"No," Lorenzo answered. "No trouble," but for the second time, that same involuntary tic I had seen before flitted across the man's tense jawline. He glanced reproachfully at June Miller as if to say that exactly what he had feared would now happen-that we would blame him for Gunter Gebhardt's murder.
Lorenzo stood up, as did his sister. "My leg hurts," he said. "I want to go home."
Sue looked at me questioningly, one eyebrow raised. I shook my head, indicating we should let him go. After all, we had come so far in the process that I didn't want to risk alienating him by pressing any further right then. Besides, the band was tuning up again. Sitting there right on top of the speakers, as soon as the music started, we wouldn't be able to hear a word.
As the first notes of the next number blasted out of the speakers, I got up and followed the Hurtados out into the night.
"Wait a minute," I called after them as they started down the streetlight-lit sidewalk.
Lorenzo swung around angrily. "What do you want now?" he demanded.
For an answer, I pulled out my copy of the Identi-Kit picture-the one with Lorenzo's own likeness staring out from the paper.
"Have you seen this?" I asked, handing it over to Lorenzo.
He glanced down and studied the picture for a moment. Then he nodded and handed it back. "Yes," he answered. "I've seen it."
"So has everyone else in this city," I told him. "Including the third party who was on the Isolde with you and Gunter Gebhardt the night he died."
Beside him, Maria inhaled sharply. Her hand rose reflexively to her throat. Lorenzo's eyes rose to meet mine. "What are you saying?" he asked.
"Two people are dead so far," I answered. "If the killer believes you saw him and can possibly help lead us to him, he may very well come looking for you. Thanks to this, we found you, and the killer may be able to do the same thing. Sometimes, in cases like this, we'll put a witness in protective custody, but I don't think that would work too well here. Do you?"
Lorenzo looked at me but said nothing.
I knew I was bending the rules, but it sure as hell wasn't the first time. "If I were you," I continued, "and if I had anywhere else to go, I would take my mother and sister and go there. At least for a while."
Lorenzo's questioning gaze held mine for a long moment. Finally, he nodded. "I have another cousin," he said. "His name is Sergio Hurtado, and he lives in Yakima. I can take my mother and go there. Maria can't miss work, but she can stay with friends."
"Does your cousin have a phone?" I asked. "Can I call you there if I need to?"
"Yes," Lorenzo answered. "Yes, you can."
"Is he listed in the telephone directory?"
Lorenzo nodded. And then he offered me his hand.
As we shook, I realized the entire process had been a test, from the moment the two of them stepped inside the door of the Ballard Fire House. It had been a life-and-death examination on the subject of trust, and although there were still many unanswered questions, I knew I must have passed.
20
By the time we left the Ballard Fire House, it was far too late for even the former BoBo Beaumont to pay a call on Else Gebhardt. Besides, I was beat. And the bone spur on my heel was kicking up again. I told myself it came from just watching all that salsa dancing, but it probably had a lot more to do with stumbling around in the dark out at the Camano Island fire two nights before.
In any event, I took off for home, where I dosed myself with prescription anti-inflammatories. The directions on the bottle said that the medication was to be taken with food. Since there wasn't much of that lying around loose in my bare-bones kitchen, I followed the pills with a chaser of peanut butter. A generously rounded tablespoonful. I figured since peanut butter seemed to be good enough for the other old dogs in my family, it was probably good enough for me.
And it worked, too. Soon after I crawled into bed, the throbbing in my foot lessened enough for me to fall asleep. During the night, I dreamt, not surprisingly, of salsa dancing.
Ralph Ames, who is often an overnight guest in my high-rise condo, has made a crusade of bringing me out of the technological Dark Ages. He had prevailed on one of his electronics/computer-whiz friends to design a dazzling system for my apartment that can do everything but bring me coffee in bed. If I carry a little electronic wafer in my pocket, I can set the thing to automatically adjust lights and music as I move from room to room.
The system also includes a wireless pagerlike controller and intercom that can, from any room in the apartment and without benefit of telephone, answer and open my apartment door as well as the door to Belltown Terrace's outside entrance. It's a great gimmick-if I'd just remember to wear it. Most of the time it stays parked on the counter in the bathroom, which is where I most often have need of it.
That was the case the next morning when the doorbell rang just as I stepped out of the shower. It was the bell to the apartment.
Belltown Terrace is a secured building. That means no one is supposed to enter without being buzzed in by either a resident or allowed in by the doorman. If the doorman lets a guest inside the building, he's supposed to call and check to see whether or not the arriving person is expected and should be allowed to proceed. In other words, whoever was standing at the door to my apartment should have been one of my fellow residents, a neighbor from inside the building.
And she was. "Hi, Uncle Beau," Heather Peters chirped through the pager. "Can we come in?"
Heather and Tracy Peters are the daughters of Ron Peters, a former partner of mine. After a disabling line-of-duty injury left him wheelchair-bound, he and the girls moved into a unit on one of the lower floors of Belltown Terrace along with Amy, the physical-therapy nurse who became his second wife. Never having had any nieces and nephews of my own, I appreciated being allowed to borrow the girls on occasion.
"Sure, Heather," I said, pressing the button. "I'll be out in a minute. Just let me get some clothes on."
Eight-year-old Heather had said "we." I assumed that meant she and her ten-year-old sister would both be waiting in my living room. I was wrong.
I came down the hallway a few minutes later to find both Heather Peters and an amazingly large Afghan hound-who was either Charley, the elevator dog, or Charley's twin-enthroned on my window seat. Heather's arm was around the dog's shoulder, and they both sat with their backs to the room, peering down through yet another morning of Puget Sound's late-autumn fog.
"Hey, what's he doing in here?" I demanded.
"Charley's a she," Heather corrected primly. "She's named after the perfume."