But it wasn't there. The spot where Alan Torvoldsen's old scow had been berthed was empty. There was nothing there but cold black water reflecting back the sickly yellowish glow of the overhead lights.
"Damn!" I raged.
Sick at heart, I turned and fled back down the dock through what was fast becoming a cold, steady downpour. I barely felt the rain that instantly soaked into my clothing.
"Damn!" was all I could say. "Damn! Damn! Damn!"
I was the one who had gone looking for Alan Torvoldsen earlier that afternoon. I alone had asked him-no, almost begged him-to go over to Blue Ridge and look after Else Gebhardt. Asked him to look after her! Jesus Christ. I had invited the damn fox right into the henhouse, handed him a napkin to tie around his neck, passed him a knife and fork, and told him to help himself. Which he had.
Back in the Porsche, I rammed it into gear and skidded my way out of the fire lane and back toward the parking lot. Heading back out of the terminal, I spotted the Rollins truck parked discreetly between net sheds three and four.
I stopped the car, got out, and examined the truck without touching it. The vehicle was parked and locked with the keys still in the ignition. Whoever had rented that truck had no intention of returning for it. If he had, he would have taken the single set of keys with him.
Quickly jotting down the license number, I phoned it in. "Run a check on this one," I told the Records clerk who answered the phone. "Wake up whoever you have to wake up to do it, but I want to know the name of the person who rented that vehicle. In the meantime, I want it impounded ASAP!"
There was always a chance I was wrong and had just impounded some innocent bystander's vehicle. Under the circumstances, however, it was a risk I was willing to take.
I have no idea why the Ballard Bridge was open at that hour of the night. They were most likely testing the drawspan, because there wasn't a boat of any kind in sight. Naturally, I got stuck in the traffic backup while the bridge went up and slowly, ever so slowly, came back down.
The unavoidable stop gave me enough time to call Sue Danielson, break into yet another one of Jared's endless phone calls, and bring her up-to-speed. She said she would get dressed again and meet me at Else's house as soon as she could. I was just ending the call to her when the drawbridge finally returned to its original position, and traffic began to move once more.
Much as I complain about advanced technology, computers do have something to offer, especially in the world of law enforcement. The call on the truck from Records came back long before I ever made it to Culpeper Court.
Records had tracked down and spoken to the manager from the truck-leasing company, who said he didn't have to go into his office to check the name on the rental agreement. He remembered the woman all too well because she had given him and his people a hell of a hard time in the course of making the transaction. She was a foreigner who had rented the truck with an International as well as a German driver's license.
And her name was Erika Weber Schmidt.
Damn! And double damn.
24
As I drove down Greenbrier to Culpeper Court, the entire neighborhood was lit up by the pulsing blue lights of three different blue-and-white squad cars.
Dreading what might be waiting to be discovered inside the house, I parked the Porsche across the street at June and John Miller's house. As I hurried up Else Gebhardt's driveway, a young uniformed patrol officer hustled out of the house to meet me.
"I'm Detective Beaumont," I told her, flashing my badge. "What did you find?"
"Absolutely nothing," she answered. "Nobody's home, but there's no sign of trouble, either. What did you think we'd find?"
Prepared for the worst possible carnage, I now felt weak with relief. "No sign of a struggle?" I repeated lamely.
"None. Captain Riley's on the radio and mad as hell. He wants to know what you think is going on."
I'll just bet he did. And if my fears proved groundless, he was going to be a whole lot madder than he was right then.
"Just let me take a look for myself," I told her. "As soon as I figure out what's gone down, I'll let you know, so you can pass the word. In the meantime, ask him to put a car on an abandoned Rollins truck parked between net sheds three and four down at Fishermen's Terminal. I don't want anyone near that vehicle until the crime lab has a chance to give it a good going-over." I handed over the scribbled license-plate number.
While the officer hurried off to report to her captain, I walked into Else Gebhardt's house. From the moment I had realized One Day at a Time was gone, I had been overwhelmed with the weight of my own culpability. But Else's clean and orderly house added something more to the mix.
I don't happen to be one of those gullible people who believes in self-bending forks or miraculously mended watches, and I'm certainly not well versed in the intricacies of ESP. But a sense of hopeless dread filled me as I wandered from room to room. It grew infinitely worse when I stepped into the bedroom that evidently belonged to Else Gebhardt's mother. Inge Didricksen's walker was there, parked beside the bed. But the old lady was nowhere in sight.
As soon as I saw the walker and knew that Inge was gone, too, I realized that all three of them-the old woman, her daughter, and her granddaughter-were missing, even though, in the world of law enforcement, no one enters the ranks of officially missing persons until after a full twenty-four hours have elapsed.
The last part of the house to search was the basement. Not only was the outside door unlocked, it was open. When I started down the dimly lit stairs, I almost broke my neck. The two railroad ties that had once been out of the way on either side of the staircase now had been moved into the center part of the risers. I slipped and would have fallen if I hadn't managed to catch myself on the banister.
Looking back up the stairway, I saw a twelve-volt battery tucked into the space behind the door. It was connected to an electric winch. It resembled the kind of setup they sometimes mount on the front bumpers of off-road vehicles.
As soon as I saw the winch, I finally understood the railroad ties as well. They were all part of a simple hoist system Gunter Gebhardt must have used to raise and lower equipment into and out of the basement.
The lights were already on. I descended the stairs and stood still for a moment, getting my bearings. I realized almost at once that something about that long, narrow room was different than it had been when I visited it the first time. At first I couldn't tell exactly what it was, but the room seemed larger somehow, more spacious, emptier. But then it's always easier to see what's there in front of your eyes than it is to remember something that was there once but isn't any longer.
One thing that made the room seem bigger was the missing soldiers. That was no surprise. Else had told me about selling them. The lights glared off the bare shelves in the bank of curio cases. The bright fluorescent glow on stark white walls gave the place an abandoned, sterile look. But it was more than just the soldiers. Something else was missing as well.
And that's when I realized what it was. The tools were gone from the shelves at the opposite end of the room. All of them. Every last one. Had Else sold them, too?
And then I understood. Of course. How could I have been so stupid? The tools. Lorenzo had said something about tools, about how they'd brought tools and supplies home with them on board the fishing boat. Tools they'd picked up from Gunter's joint-venture partner.
A wave of gooseflesh swept up my legs when I finally realized the awful truth about all those neatly organized tools that had once been stacked, row upon row, in Gunter Gebhardt's impossibly clean basement.