“What about fingerprints?”
Janice shrugged. “Naturally, we found those all over the house, but until we have a record of all the family members’ prints, there’s no way to tell which ones, if any, are strays.”
By then we were pulling into the garage at the Public Safety Building. “Thanks for the ride,” I said.
“No problem.”
“And no matter what I may have said before, for a criminalist, you’re not bad.”
She grinned back at me, and I knew I’d been forgiven. “You’re not bad either,” she returned lightly, “for a boy.”
Touche.
I went upstairs long enough to pick up my messages and to receive a hug from Margie, my clerk, who seemed delighted that I hadn’t been shot to pieces. Then I hurried back down to the garage, checked out a car, and went home.
It was only eight o’clock. I could smell the coffee and bacon as soon as the elevator door opened on the twenty-fifth floor. Obviously, Ralph Ames was making himself at home. I don’t know what kind of metabolism the man has, but he eats like a horse and never seems to have a problem with his weight. It probably has something to do with swimming daily laps at his pool there in Scottsdale.
“Hey, you’re just in time for breakfast. Want some?”
“No time. I came home to grab a shower and change clothes. Pour me a cup of coffee and let it cool. I’ll be out in a minute.”
By the time I got back out to the dining room, Ralph handed me a message from Carl Johnson. “Rough night?” Ames asked.
I knew from looking in the mirror that I had dark circles under my eyes. “Pretty rough, all right,” I said. “Five people dead and I ended up having someone take a potshot at me before the evening was over.”
“You’re in a tough line of work,” Ames said. “Sure you won’t try some eggs?”
The food smelled wonderful and I was famished. I allowed myself to be persuaded.
“Try some of the salsa on your eggs,” Ames suggested. “It’s the real McCoy, straight from Phoenix. I brought it up special.”
I tried a daub of the green salsa on my eggs and it instantly cleared every sinus cavity in my head. I bolted my food, toast and all, and pushed my chair away from the table.
“Where to this time?” Ames asked.
“I’ve got to do a next-of-kin notification. In feet, I should be on my way right this very minute.”
I was headed out the door when the phone rang. Expecting new marching orders from Watty or Captain Powell, I picked it up. Instead, it was Curtis Bell, a guy I knew vaguely from the department, who, now that he was moonlighting as a life insurance salesman, was renowned throughout Seattle PD as an A-number-one pest. He had been hounding me for an appointment for months.
Without allowing me a word in edgewise, he administered the usual appointment-getting canned speech about when could we get together to talk over some ideas that had proved helpful to other officers like myself. Personally, I liked it better back in the old days when moonlighting cops mostly worked as security guards. Security guards usually don’t try to sell products or services to their friends. And I remembered the prospecting lessons from my old Fuller Brush days-call everyone you know and ask for an appointment. But I also know what it’s like to be a young cop and not make enough money to cover all the bases. I understood what Curtis Bell was trying to do and why he was having to do it.
I tried to be polite. “Look, Curtis, I appreciate your thinking about me, but I’m working a case. I’m real busy right now. In fact, I was just on my way out the door.”
“That’s all right,” he said. “My schedule’s flexible. Are mornings or afternoons better for you, or how about early evening, right after work?”
“Really, none of the above.”
I kept saying no, and he kept not listening. After being up working around the clock, the very last thing I needed would be to spend the evening with some boring life insurance puke. I took one more stab at getting rid of him.
“Curtis,” I told him as nicely as I could manage. “I’m financially set. I’m divorced and my kids are grown. Why the hell do I need life insurance anyway?”
“That’s exactly what I wanted to talk to you about,” Curtis returned. “Would tomorrow night be better?”
He had worn me down. The customary ten no’s hadn’t worked. Sooner or later, he and I were going to talk insurance. “Tell you what, Curtis, I’ll get back to you on this. Right now, I’ve got to go.”
I put down the phone and turned around only to find Ralph Ames studying me with a puzzled expression on his face. “What was that all about?” he asked.
“One of the guys from the department who’s got a second job selling life insurance. I don’t know why, but he thinks I’m a likely prospect.”
“Maybe you are,” Ames said thoughtfully. “What company is he with?”
“Beats me. How the hell should I know? And anyway, I don’t need any life insurance.”
“Wait a minute,” Ralph said. “You’re thinking about leaving the department, and that means you’ll be walking away from a whole lot of fringe benefits. There may be some things about insurance that we’ll want to consider. My main worry would be about a rating.”
I took a moment to consider what he’d said. Evidently, the idea of my leaving the department was something Ralph Ames had been considering even if I hadn’t. But instead of thinking about giving up my life’s work, I focused in on the last word he’d mentioned.
“Rating? What’s a rating?”
“Remember, you’re fresh out of alcohol treatment,” Ames explained. “Of course, that would have to be disclosed in the medical part of any application. If the underwriters offer you insurance at all, most likely they’re going to charge you an extra premium added on to the regular one. They call it a rating.”
“That’s not fair.”
“What’s not fair?”
“You mean I have to give up MacNaughton’s and pay extra besides?”
“Beau,” Ames responded reasonably enough. “They have to charge you an extra premium to cover the extra risk.”
“Like hell they do. If Curtis Bell calls back, tell him to go piss up a rope. If I can’t have insurance at regular rates, I won’t have any at all.”
With that, and without bothering to thank Ralph Ames for cooking my breakfast, I slammed out of the apartment and went looking for Emma Jackson.
Extra premium my ass!
CHAPTER 7
Armed with Emma Jackson’s name and place of employment, I left Belltown Terrace and drove to University Hospital only to learn that she had already gone home for the day. Thanks to Carl Johnson’s phone call, I already had her home address in hand. I headed back downtown, to an address on the lower east side of Queen Anne Hill.
There are matches made in heaven and ones made in hell. My initial meeting with Dr. Emma Jackson was definitely one of the latter. Prejudice on both sides was the root cause of the trouble.
In this day and age, the word “prejudice” naturally conjures up racial difficulties, but between Dr. Emma Jackson and me, race was not necessarily the critical issue. My main bone of contention was the doctor part. Years ago, when my mother was in the hospital dying of cancer, I had a nasty run-in with a particularly arrogant young resident who knew, far better than the patient herself, exactly how much pain Mom could and should tolerate. Ever since then, I’ve had a bad taste in my mouth for all those not-quite-ready-for-prime-time doctors who are practicing to practice.
No doubt, some early and equally damaging experience had soured Emma Jackson on men in general and male cops in particular. The battle lines between us were drawn from the moment she answered my knock.
Emma lived in an aging, three-story Victorian, a formerly sizable single-family dwelling, that had been converted into a triplex. People from outside the downtown core assume that Queen Anne Hill is uniformly yuppified, gentrified, and scenic, but Emma Jackson’s daylight basement apartment at Sixth and Prospect would have given the lie to that notion. The only view from the yard of the Jackson place was of noisy traffic tooling up and down Aurora Avenue North. The place was ramshackle and run-down. The only door, an old-fashioned wooden one with a pane of clear glass at the top, was fast losing its cracked coat of oil-based paint, which was peeling off in long, narrow strips.