Improbable cause

CHAPTER 19

I didn’t sleep. I spent the whole night, tossing and turning. I remembered when, over spring break, I had dragged Karen home from school to meet my mother. Karen had been from San Diego. My mother’s comment was that I should look in my own backyard, try for the girl next door.

With our high rises just up the street from each other, Darlene Girvan was literally the girl next door, but hardly the kind my mother would have had in mind. She was bright, assertive, interesting, and available. So why the hell had I turned down her offer? What was the matter with me? Was I really getting that old? Or was I just plain old-fashioned?

I spent a long time chewing on the possibilities. I didn’t much care for any of the answers that bubbled to the surface. Before I left the subject alone, however, I finally made one decision-that I’d spend some time hanging around Darlene’s bar doing some in-depth research to see what, if anything, might come up-Having disposed of the personal as best I could, I turned to the other part of the problem-Darlene Girvan’s hit-and-run driver and what implications her story might hold for Dr. Frederick Nielsen’s murder investigation.

Garage doors are implacable. You can’t argue your way through one. They simply will not open for people without properly keyed openers. So whoever had almost run down Darlene Girvan had to be someone who belonged in Cedar Heights, someone who had a legitimate reason for being there, someone who had access to a garage door opener.

That boiled down to exactly two possibilities. Either the driver of the foreign car had something to do with Dr. Nielsen’s murder or he didn’t. That’s my job, figuring out which is which.

I spent the rest of the night working the problem, but no answers were forthcoming. It was almost four in the morning the last time I rolled over and looked at the clock.

The phone rang at seven. “Rise and shine,” Peters ordered cheerfully.

“Couldn’t you let me sleep late for once?” I grumbled.

Peters was undeterred. “Nope, I called to ask for some advice.”

“What kind of advice?”

“Romantic.”

“Jesus Christ! What now?”

“I’m going to pop the question.”

“To Amy?”

“Who else, asshole?”

“So why do you need advice from me?”

“I’m going to ask her tomorrow night, and I want to do it right. Where should I take her? Is there any place right around there close? If she says yes, I want to be able to come over and tell the girls, so they can feel like they’re part of it.”

Fortunately I had a ready answer to his question. “There’s a place at First and Cedar,” I said. “Girvan’s. I was in there just the other night. They have a nice dining room overlooking the harbor.”

“Candles?” Peters asked. “Atmosphere?”

“Affirmative,” I answered.

“Good food?”

“I haven’t had that much of it,” I told him, “but what I had was good.”

“What about wheelchair access?” he asked. “I can get a cab with a lift, but are there any stairs?”

“No stairs at all. There’s an elevator. The restaurant’s up on the fifth floor. Remember? We were there once on the bum-bashing case.”

I could almost hear Peters nodding into the phone. “That’s right. Now I remember. It was a nice place.”

“It still is,“ I told him. ”And I happen to know the owner. Want me to make a reservation for you?“

“Thanks, Beau. That would help. I want it to be a surprise, but that’s not easy when Amy pops in and out of my room without any warning. So far I’ve managed to smuggle the ring in without her seeing it, but I don’t want her to catch me calling a restaurant.“

“What time?”

“Make it early, seven-thirty or so. The doctor says he’ll give me a pass, but not to stay out too late.”

“I’ll take care of it,” I said. “And by the way, congratulations. Amy’s terrific.”

“I think so, too,” he said.

On that bright note, I got up and took a long, hot shower. By the time I’d chased the shower with a couple of cups of coffee, I was beginning to feel halfway human. After I was dressed and had put on my. 38, I reached out to scoop my change off the dresser.

That was when I noticed Dorothy Nielsen’s hospital identification bracelet. I had put it in my pocket the day before when I clipped it off her arm, then I had forgotten all about it. Completely. I hadn’t even noticed it when I emptied it out of my pocket along with my usual fistful of change and miscellaneous crap.

I held the bracelet up to the light. The logo said it was from Swedish Hospital up on First Hill, Pill Hill as the locals call the hospital district. In addition to the hospital’s name, the bracelet contained a few other relevant bits of information: Dorothy Nielsen’s name, her patient ID number, her blood type, and another name, a Dr. W. Leonard.

As I stood there studying the bracelet, I couldn’t help wondering. I recalled the ugly purple bruise on LeAnn Nielsen’s face and remembered the determined way her mother-in-law had brushed aside my question about the origin of her injury. I still didn’t know how Dorothy Nielsen had broken her hip.

I suppose it was mostly idle curiosity on my part, but a homicide detective needs to learn all he can about the people involved in any given case. That includes the deceased. And now I wanted to know, once and for all, whether or not the late Dr. Frederick Nielsen was responsible for his mother’s injury. I knew for sure he was a wife beater. Was he also a mommy basher?

I picked up the phone book and located Dr. W. Leonard’s office number in the Arnold Medical Pavilion on Madison. It was only 7:30 a.m., but on a whim I dialed the office number. A tinny answering machine told me that the doctor’s office was open 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. Unless it was an emergency, they requested that I call back during office hours.

This was no emergency. Dr. Nielsen was dead, and his mother had been released from the hospital. I put the bracelet back in my pocket along with a piece of paper on which I jotted Dr. W. Leonard’s office number. Then I called Margie at the department, told her I had to stop off someplace on my way into the office, and set off for Cedar Heights to pay a call on Henry Calloway.

I found him outside, watering the parched street trees that were planted in the sidewalk around his building.

“They were looking a little sick to me,” he said of the trees when I walked up. “They’re not used to having to go this long without rain. I thought I’d help them along. What can I do for you, Detective Beaumont?”

“Darlene Girvan paid me a call last night. I wanted to thank you for putting her in touch with me.”

“Happy to do it. You said to report anything unusual. That seemed pretty unusual to me.”

“To me, too,” I said. “From her description of the car, do you recognize it? Does it belong to someone in the building?”

“It may, but there’s no way for me to tell. We’ve got more than a hundred cars in all, and it’s hard to keep track of them. It seems like I’d remember one with its bumper all smashed in the way she said.”

“What about the license number? Do you keep any kind of listing of those?”

“Nope. Too much trouble. People buy and sell cars all the time. We just keep track of the number of beepers we pass out to each tenant. They can move ”em around among cars to their heart’s content.“

It figured. It would have simplified my life too much if they had done it any other way.

“Have any openers been reported stolen lately?”

Henry Calloway shook his head. “Nope,” he replied.

“Them’s the breaks,” I said, “but thanks just the same, Mr. Calloway.”

“My pleasure,” he said.

I left him to his hose and hurried on down to the department. Sergeant Watkins was waiting for me when I got to my desk.

“I understand from Al here that the other suspect you were telling us about yesterday didn’t pan out, is that right?”

“That’s correct.”

“So where does that leave you?”

“Behind the eight ball,” I told him.

Watty frowned. “Listen, Beau, the guys upstairs are getting antsy on this one. They want progress, real progress, and they want it now!”

“We’re doing the best we can. I picked up another lead last night. We’ll be checking that one out today.”

“Get on with it, then. By the way, I never got a report from yesterday.”

“I’ll take care of it,” I said. “What’s the word on Martin?”

“Nothing that I know of,” Watty replied.

“How long can they keep him up at Harborview?” I asked.

“Seventy-two hours is the maximum on an involuntary commitment. You can bet they won’t cut him loose a minute before that.”

“What about Damm? Has anybody talked to him yet?”

“Powell’s assigning two other guys to handle that end of the investigation.”

“How come? So he can squeeze us out of it?”

Watty shrugged in a way that told me my assumption was correct. Captain Powell didn’t like my answers, so he was pulling rank, sending in reinforcements in hopes of finding answers he liked better. You can do that when you’re the captain.

“Get out of here and let us go to work,” I griped at Watty. “We’re not accomplishing anything with you standing around here jawing.”

As soon as Sergeant Watkins was out of the room, Big Al asked, “What’s the lead?”

“One turned up on my doorstep last night at eleven: a lady who almost got run down by a car in the Cedar Heights commercial garage Saturday afternoon at one-thirty.”

“No shit!”

“No shit,” I repeated.

“So what are we doing about it?”

“We don’t have that much to go on, first three letters on the license, dark, foreign make, bashed in rear bumper, that’s it.”

“It’s a start. All we need to do is get Olympia to supply all one thousand registrations on a printout and start looking.”

“Right,” I agreed, “but first we’re going to go talk to a doctor.”

“What about? You feeling sick?”

“No, I’m not sick. About Dorothy Nielsen.”

I picked up the phone and dialed Dr. Leonard’s number. “Doctor’s office,” the receptionist said.

“I’d like to talk to Dr. Leonard, please.”

“The doctor is busy seeing patients at the moment. May I say who’s calling?”

“My name’s Beaumont. Detective J. P. Beaumont.”

“Are you already a patient of Dr. Leonard’s, Mr. Beaumont?”

“No, I’m not.”

“The doctor isn’t taking any new patients at this time.”

“I don’t want to become a patient. I’m a detective with the Seattle Police Department. I need to speak to the doctor regarding a case I’m working on.”

“We’ll have to schedule you for an appointment. The doctor doesn’t see people without appointments. I could work you in on Monday. Would two-thirty be all right?”

The woman’s voice was bright and cheerful enough, but I had a feeling I hadn’t connected to her brain. If she had one.

“I don’t believe you understand,” I said. “I need to talk to the doctor for a few minutes regarding one of his patients.”

“Her,” the woman said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“One of her patients,“ the receptionist answered. ”Dr. Leonard is a woman.“

“Right,” I said. “Fine.” I was beginning to lose my cool. It was draining out the heels of my shoes. “As I said, I’m working a homicide case, and it’s vital that I speak to Dr. Leonard regarding one of her patients.“

“Well, she’s leaving here in about ten minutes. I doubt you can catch her. She’s scheduled for surgery in a little while. You can come by this afternoon and wait if you want to. Maybe I can work you in. She’ll be back here by three at the latest.”

“We’ll be there at three,” I said.

I put down the phone, shaking my head.

“We’re not going to see the doctor, then?” Al asked.

“Not until three o’clock,” I said.

Al picked up the phone and made the call to the Department of Licensing while I wrote up my report. People think that in this world of computers, the information police jurisdictions need is readily and instantly available. We should be able to feed minimal details into a machine and have the information back in a flash, right? Wrong.

The nature of bureaucracy is that things can only happen on schedule, and partial plate inquiries are printed only at night and mailed out the next day. Big Al finally made a deal so someone could at least come down to Olympia and pick the list up when it was ready. Then we’d be able to do the fun part, the physical labor of going through the list one at a time, by hand. Don’t tell me about computers being labor saving devices. I’m not convinced.

We sorted our way through the maze of bureaucratic bullshit and afterward, on our way to lunch, took a side trip through the crime lab, where we picked up a facsimile of the shoe print Bill Foster had gotten from the crime scene. By two-thirty we were on our way to the Arnold Medical Pavilion. For a change, traffic was light. We walked into the good doctor’s office right at three o’clock.

We were there. Dr. Leonard wasn’t. As soon as I gave the receptionist my name, she started apologizing.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t have a number, so I couldn’t get back to you. There’s been an accident. Dr. Leonard is back in surgery. We canceled all her appointments for the afternoon, and I didn’t know how to get ahold of you.”

“What about tomorrow morning?” I asked.

“Tomorrow looks good,” she said. “If you could be here by eight-thirty, I’ll try to get you in before the first patient.”

It was the best of a bad bargain.

We went back to the department and scrounged through what information we had, but nothing new turned up. After work, I went home and called the restaurant to make dinner reservations for Amy and Peters. I didn’t ask to speak to Darlene-I wasn’t up to that kind of mental sparring.

Once I was off the phone, I felt lonely, at loose ends. I finally went downstairs to see the girls. Trade and Heather were already tucked in bed, but they weren’t asleep. Mrs. Edwards was reading to them. She handed me the book, and I took over.

The book was

Little House on the Prairie.

The trials and tribulations of the Ingalls family were tame, pristine almost, when stacked up against the Nielsens and the Rushes of this world. Reading the story made me homesick for a saner, less sordid planet-one I’ve never lived on.

And never will.