Solis gave me a wry look. “I did not ignore the rest of the statement; I merely found the one sentence very odd. It should be telling, but what does it tell? I agree that the writer seems upset and confused. He almost seems to imply that the storm was caused by the lady in question. . . .”
“Which one of the three?” I asked, not wanting to think about the question Solis was really raising.
Solis made his half shrug. “Who knows?”
“What’s the statute of limitation on rape in Washington?” I asked.
“Ten years, but if a death results, none.”
“What if the rape victim survived the wreck?”
“Why would you imagine she did or that she would not reveal herself?”
“I’m just thinking . . . someone had to bring the boat back to port, someone who knew where it had been and what had happened on board, or they would have come forward. If the victim did it, maybe it’s because she knows her rapist also survived. But it’s been too long for her to file a legal complaint so . . . she plays dead and waits to see if the reappearance of Seawitch will bring her rapist—now apparently her murderer—to light.”
Solis shook his head. “It seems woefully complicated.”
I frowned. “Possibly, but regardless, the writer—probably Gary Fielding, since the handwriting looks about the same as the entry we know he wrote, even though it’s deteriorating here—says he’s taking the boat somewhere. If he made it, the odds are good the boat stayed there all this time.”
“The whole twenty-seven years?”
“You saw its condition. That boat didn’t move from the time it docked after whatever happened on board until the day it turned up at Shilshole. Nothing had been disturbed enough for the boat to have moved under its own power. No one’s started those engines in years.
“Maybe, if we can find the place where it’s been sitting all this time, we may be able to find a witness to say who brought it and kept it there, at least. They might even have information about what happened aboard, who survived, and who died. Because I’m still betting that whoever brought the boat back to Seattle was aboard it when it was lost.”
Solis looked thoughtful and started to say something but was interrupted by the bleating of his cell phone. He answered it and listened for a moment, then killed the connection with a bitter expression on his face. “John Reeve is dead and it may be a homicide.”
THIRTEEN
Reeve had died at Highline Hospital, which made his death a Seattle PD matter, but not Solis’s case. He wasn’t “on deck” when the call came in and the connection to the Seawitch investigation was tenuous, so it had been assigned to someone else. Still, the circumstances were strange enough that the detective on the case wanted to talk to Solis and me once he’d heard we’d been on the scene when Reeve had the heart attack that brought him to the hospital in the first place. We drove down separately and I found myself annoyed at the lost opportunity to pursue the discussions we’d begun at Solis’s house.
My disgruntlement took a backseat when we arrived at the hospital. Crime scenes at hospitals aren’t managed in quite the same way as they are anywhere else, since the place is always busy and space is generally at a premium and you don’t usually get to leave the body in situ for long. Reeve had already been removed from his cubicle in cardiac ICU and the area was screened off for privacy while a pair of technicians finished picking up what they could in the way of forensic evidence. Other patients had been rearranged to optimize the isolation of the scene, and we met with Detective Julian Plant in the cafeteria downstairs—it was empty since the regular meal service had already closed and no one seemed to be raiding the vending machines at the moment, though we could hear the patient nutritional services crew clattering away in the kitchen behind the metal curtain barrier.
I’d met Plant before. He was one of those tall, pale, lanky guys who always looks like he’s in desperate need of some sun, sandwiches, and sleep. Competent enough, but I’d never been overly impressed. He didn’t seem to go any further than he had to with anything and I had the impression he was marking time until he could retire. He wasn’t sloppy or a bad cop, but he was one of those aging, old-school detectives who’d gone the route of no longer caring rather than care too much. He gave us both a basset-eyed stare as we came and sat at his table.
“You two want some coffee?” he asked. “They’ve still got some in the patient services hatch round the corner if you don’t like the vending machine kind.”
We both shook our heads and sat, facing Plant at the awkward round table.
“Well,” Plant started, curving his hands around his dented paper coffee cup on the table. “So. Here’s the thing: seawater.”
I made the “Huh?” face at him, and Solis said, “Clarify, please. Seawater?”
Plant nodded. “Yeah. Mr. Reeve was either smothered with a wet something or he died of drowning. In seawater. In his bed. Now, they would have said pneumonia—which I guess they considered—except the bed was wet. Not that they aren’t wet a lot of the time when folks die, ’cause you know what happens. And there was the dog. So we’re waiting for confirmation from the coroner, but the attending medical team is saying Mr. Reeve was attacked by a dog that smothered him with a wet pillow. What do you think? Any connection to your case?”
Solis and I exchanged incredulous glances. “A . . . dog?” I asked.
“Yeah. Big dog, they said. Brown with a white stripe on its back. Mr. Reeve was resting and they’d pulled his curtains closed for privacy when the monitors started going crazy, and the first nurse through the curtain sees this big, wet, brown dog wrestling with a pillow on Reeve’s chest. The nurse said there was a stink in the room like”—he flipped open his notebook and paged around a bit—“like rotten vegetables. And the dog was sitting on Reeve’s chest, shaking the crap outta this wet pillow that was covering Reeve’s face. So the medical team can’t get near the guy and they call security to come shoot the dog, but Reeve’s already dead and the dog takes off. They couldn’t revive him and the attending physician called it at”—he looked at his book again—“six forty-one. Well, technically they’re saying cardiac arrest due to animal assault, but the amount of water in his mouth and on the bed is making the ME want a deeper look. So, what do you two think?”
“Are they sure it was a dog?” I asked again.
“Yeah, though they can’t decide on what breed. One guy said it was a German shepherd. Another said it was an otter hound. Another said it was . . . umm . . . a Portuguese water spaniel—you know, like the president’s dog. And one said it was a pit bull. A fat pit bull.”
“Fat chance.”
Solis smirked—there was nothing else to call it.
Plant made a sour face at me.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “No one can seriously believe a dog was trained to run in here, find Reeve, jump on his bed, and smother him with a wet pillow. When we saw Reeve he was afraid of something, and we saw something or someone moving at the back of the property. But if anyone did kill him—”
“Someone did,” Plant said, cutting me off. “He sure didn’t die of smothering himself or inducing his own heart attack.” He looked at both of us, then focused on Solis. “What do you think, Rey?”
Solis lowered his gaze to the tabletop, his brow creasing, then drew a slow breath before he looked back at Plant. “I think Mr. Reeve may have been frightened by a stray dog that got into the hospital. Or he may have been smothered by an attacker who was frightened off by a service dog, but that’s all I can imagine, if Reeve didn’t die of a simple heart attack, which seems far more likely. Doesn’t it, Plant?”
Plant sat back, closing his basset-hound eyes. “Yeah. And I hope that’s how the coroner will rule when he’s done. But if not . . . I guess I’m going to be looking for people who had it in for the old man and made a habit of carrying pillows soaked in seawater and training dogs to smother people with them.” He shook his head in disgust. “You two can go. I’m sorry I bothered you.”