Improbable cause

CHAPTER 20

Nobody called me Friday morning, so naturally I overslept. It was already five to eight when I opened my eyes. I called the department and left word with Margie for Big Al to call me as soon as he got in, then I jumped into the shower.

My phone was ringing by the time I turned off the water. “You’re late,” Big Al groused when I answered.

“I noticed. Pick up a car and come get me,” I said.

“What do you think I am, your personal chauffeur? Do you want I should bring the limo?”

“Come on, Al. Get off it. I overslept. Come get me so we don’t miss our chance to see the lady doctor.”

I went outside to wait for him and was surprised to find there had been a definite change in the weather. Summers in Seattle are like that-hot one day and chilly the next. What visitors don’t understand is that too many days without rain, too many hours of uninterrupted sunshine, cause Seattlites to get crabby. They welcome the return of cool cloudy days. Several passersby smiled and nodded cheerful hellos as they walked by, bending into the chill wind tunnel that swirled around the base of my building.

Big Al picked me up in front of Belltown Terrace at 8:23, giving us just under seven minutes to drive through traffic and make it to the top of Madison for our appointment with Dr. W. Leonard. As he threaded his way through traffic, Al glanced in my direction.

“I’m just going to drop you off, if that’s all right with you.”

“Why?” I asked. “What are you up to?”

“Olympia,” he answered. “The Department of Licensing has our printout ready. They’re waiting for someone to come pick it up. I’m volunteering for the job.”

I didn’t object. Al had first dibs. He was the one who had checked out the car. He dropped me in front of the Arnold Medical Pavilion a few minutes late, but when I stepped off the elevator, the door to Dr. Leonard’s office was still locked. I knocked. A latch clicked and the door opened.

A squat, stocky woman with short-cropped yellowish gray hair and a pugnacious nose opened the door. She looked to be in her late sixties or early seventies. She was vital and alert. “What can I do for you?” she asked curtly.

“I’m looking for Dr. Leonard.”

“What do you want her for?”

“I need to discuss one of her patients.” I had already gone over this ground with the air-headed receptionist and I resented having to do it again with someone who was probably a cleaning lady.

“Which one?” the woman asked.

“Look,” I said, “couldn’t I just speak with the doctor? It would save a lot of time.”

“I am the doctor,“ she answered sharply. ”Now, which one of my patients do you want to discuss?“

From the severity of her tone, I knew I’d been reprimanded. Dr. Leonard and I weren’t exactly getting off on the right foot.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Leonard,” I apologized. “The patient is a woman by the name of Dorothy Nielsen. Her only son was murdered last Saturday.”

“Really!” she exclaimed, her shaggy eyebrows arching in surprise. With that, Dr. Wilhelmina Leonard swept open the door and motioned me into a waiting room. “My receptionist isn’t here yet. Let’s go back to my office, shall we?”

I followed her through a small suite of examining rooms and into a cramped, untidy office. Unlike Dr. Nielsen’s compulsively clean quarters, this one looked as if it had been bombed. The desk was littered with a jumbled mound of papers, files, and open magazines. Had she sat behind the desk, I doubt she would have been able to see over the top of it. Several sweaters and jackets were strewn around the room, and on a hook behind the door hung at least three tired lab jackets.

Dr. Leonard walked in, cleared one side chair of clothing and general debris, and casually tossed the resulting armload into one corner of the room. “Won’t you sit down?” she suggested, offering me the chair.

I sat. She perched on the front of the desk, while I worried about whether or not she would start an avalanche.

“Adele mentioned you to me yesterday. I seem to recall that she said something about you’re being a police officer. Is that true?” she asked suspiciously.

I nodded and gave her my identification, which she examined with exaggerated care. When she finished, she handed it back to me with a flourish. Then she leaned back on the desk, folding her arms across an ample waist.

“All right, then,” she said. “Now that I know you’re a legitimate police officer, what can I do for you?”

“As I said, I’d like to talk with you about Dorothy Nielsen.”

“First, maybe you’d better tell me about what happened to her son.”

That seemed fair enough. “Dr. Frederick Nielsen was murdered in his downtown office on Saturday afternoon by person or persons unknown.”

Dr. Leonard had sharp hazel eyes and a face that betrayed nothing of what was going on behind it. “How was he murdered?” she asked.

“Someone stabbed him with a dental pick. He bled to death.”

She nodded. “I see,” she said impassively. “If you’re here because you think his mother may have had something to do with it, you’d better think again. I can tell you that she was in the hospital for four solid weeks before I dismissed her on Tuesday. It would have been impossible for her to have been involved.”

“Dorothy Nielsen isn’t under suspicion,” I said quietly. “Actually, I’m a little surprised to hear you say she might be.”

Dr. Leonard bristled at that. “I said no such thing! Why are you here, then? Why did you want to talk to me?”

“How did Dorothy Nielsen break her hip?” I asked.

Dr. Leonard didn’t reply immediately. When she did, her answer was subdued, controlled. “She said she fell down some stairs.”

“Do you believe that?” I asked Dr. Leonard gave me a long appraising glance. “Tell me once again: Mrs. Nielsen is in no way under suspicion?”

“No, she’s not.”

“In that case, I suppose I could go ahead and tell you what I think without betraying my doctor /patient relationship. Remember, this is only speculation on my part. I’m convinced she was pushed. She claimed she fell, of course, but I don’t believe it. Her other injuries weren’t consistent with a fall.”

“What other injuries?”

“Bruises on her arms and shoulders. A cut on her face just below her eye. I asked her about it, but she denied it. She’s always denied it.”

“What do you mean, ”always“?”

Dr. Leonard smiled. “Dorothy Nielsen has been my patient for almost forty years now, Detective Beaumont, since before Freddy was born. In fact, she came to me with that first broken wrist while she was pregnant with him.”

“She broke her wrist? How?”

The doctor shook her head. “I don’t remember now exactly what she said, it’s such a long time ago, but she’s always claimed to be accident prone. It wasn’t until much later that I began to have some inkling of what was really going on.”

Slowly an important piece of Dr. Frederick Nielsen’s background shifted into place. They say physical abuse runs in families, passed on from generation to generation like some genetically linked disease. “You mean her husband was abusive? He beat her?”

“From the very beginning, I would imagine, and probably Freddie too,” Dr. Leonard replied. “I could never understand why a woman like Dorothy would stay with a man like that. It’s possible that she felt she had married above her station, and she wanted to stay there-nice house, nice clothes, all the usual amenities. She often talked about how grateful she was to be married to a professional man. That’s what she called him.”

“Her husband?”

Dr. Leonard nodded. “She said the same thing about Freddie eventually, about how proud she was that he had followed in his father’s footsteps and become a dentist, too.”

“How many times did you treat her over the years?”

“For injuries? I don’t remember. Numerous times. I could look up her records. I haven’t seen very much of her in the last few years, though, not since Fred Senior died. I was surprised when she showed up in the emergency room a few weeks ago.

“Of course, awareness about this kind of abuse is much higher now. It’s much more out in the open nowadays than it used to be,” Dr. Leonard continued. “Even so, some women get mixed up with the same type of man over and over. I asked her that night in the emergency room if she had remarried, but she said no, that she lived with her son and daughter-in-law.”

“Did she tell you that the daughter-in-law had just taken the two grandchildren and run away to a shelter, a domestic violence shelter?”

The bushy eyebrows waggled again. “No. Dorothy didn’t tell me that, but one of her sisters did. We finally had managed to get Dorothy over a serious bladder infection, and I was trying to arrange for her release. I wanted her to go to a nursing home for a while rather than back into the same abusive environment with her son, but Dorothy was adamant. She wanted to return to her own home.”

“Did you see her son while she was here in the hospital?”

“Freddie? Of course,” Dr. Leonard answered. “He was very solicitous and accommodating the whole time his mother was hospitalized. He kept saying all the right words, that we should do whatever his mother needed to get well, that we should spare no expense. As far as he was concerned, money was no object. He’d pay the bill, no questions asked. He brought her flowers constantly and insisted that she have a private room. That kind of thing is standard, by the way.”

“Private rooms?”

“No, no, no. That kind of behavior. Abusers do that, trying to get back in the victim’s good graces. It usually works.”

“You said you talked to Mrs. Nielsen’s sister?”

“Both of them. When Dorothy absolutely refused to let me put her in a nursing home, I had to do something. I couldn’t send her back home with her son. Another episode like that last one could very well kill her. This was bad enough.”

“So you asked Dorothy’s sisters if she could stay with them.”

“That’s right. I called and had them both come down to my office Saturday morning. I wanted to discuss my concerns with them.

That’s when they told me about the wife. I’m sure that’s what sparked the attack on Dorothy-anger and frustration that his wife had somehow managed to slip out of his clutches, that she was no longer under his complete control.“

“Did you tell them what you thought had happened?” I asked.

“I certainly did.”

“How did they take it?” I asked.

“They were shocked, of course,” Dr. Leonard replied. “Very upset, both of them.”

“How upset were they? What did they say?” I asked.

Dr. Leonard paused, her face caught in the startled expression of someone who has just remembered something they had forgotten. “Why, forevermore!” she exclaimed. “I blanked it out completely until just this minute when you asked.”

“Blanked out what?”

“One of them swore about it. I was shocked. I’d never heard that kind of talk from any of them. She said he should be taken care of once and for all.”

“Could what she said possibly be construed as a threat? Tell me what she said,” I urged.

“You want me to repeat it exactly?” Dr. Leonard asked.

I nodded. “Word for word.”

Dr. Leonard sighed. “Let me think a minute. I believe she said, ”Somebody should kill that mother-fucking son of a bitch!“ ”

Even as she spoke the words, Dr. Leonard seemed as surprised to hear them coming from her own lips as she had been when Rachel or Daisy had used them the first time. From the looks and sound of Dr. Leonard, I doubted she personally allowed herself anything stronger than an occasional darn.

“Which one of them said it?” I asked. “Rachel or Daisy?”

She shrugged. “I’m not sure. They look so much alike that I can never keep them straight. The one said it. The other one said, ”Don’t be ridiculous.“”

“What happened next?”

“We talked for a while longer. They told me they’d see to it that Dorothy was taken care of, that they wouldn’t let any more harm come to her. I told them I’d release her on Tuesday morning, if they could pick her up then. They needed that much time to build a wheelchair ramp, rent a bed, and get Dorothy’s things moved into their house. After we finished making arrangements, they left.”

“Were they still upset?”

Dr. Leonard nodded. “Yes indeed. I heard them arguing in the hallway outside my door while they waited for the elevator, but I didn’t place any importance on it at the time.”

She was quiet for a moment. “That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it,” she added with a shrewd glance in my direction. “You think one of them may be…?” She left the remainder of the question unspoken.

I nodded. “Or both.”

“Oh, dear no. That would be dreadful. What in the world would happen to Dorothy?”

“Unfortunately, Dr. Leonard, that’s not my concern,” I said.

“It ought to be,” she replied stiffly.

When I left Dr. Leonard’s cluttered office a few minutes later, there were several patients waiting outside, waiting for their scheduled appointments.

Only when I stepped out of the Arnold Medical Pavilion into a gentle rain and the cool breeze did I remember that I was on foot. Big Al had taken the car to Olympia. I hopped across Madison and caught a Metro bus down the hill. On the way, I jotted down some notes on my meeting with Dr. Leonard.

Writing it down helped clarify my own thinking. Supposing Rachel and Daisy hadn’t suspected the real source of Dorothy’s broken hip until they learned about it from Dr. Leonard on Saturday morning. What if one or both of them had decided to take the law into their own hands and do something about it?

That sounded like motive to me.

The bus moved at a snail’s pace, and I was suddenly in a tremendous hurry. I finally jumped ship at Fourth and Madison, with my mind running at full throttle. Big Al might very well bring back official confirmation from the Department of Licensing, but I had a better idea. In order to do it, I planned to dash into the departmental garage, grab a car without ever showing my face in the Public Safety Building, and go straight to the Edinburgh Arms.

Nice try, but no time. Captain Powell and Sergeant Watkins were also in the garage lobby waiting for a car.

“Hey, Beau, what’s the hurry?” Sergeant Watkins asked as I rushed past them. “What’s happening? I hear Detective Lindstrom’s on his way to Olympia to pick up a partial license printout.”

“Right,” I answered.

“You seem to be in quite a hurry, Detective Beaumont,” Captain Powell observed. “Are you two on to something?”

“Maybe,” I said. “I just talked to Dorothy Nielsen’s doctor.”

“What for?”

“Look, Captain, I’m in a hurry. I need to check out a car. Can’t we talk about this later?”

“We’ll talk about it now,” Captain Powell said. “I want to know what’s going on.”

“I’ve got one detail to verify, but I’m checking into his aunts.”

Captain Powell shook his head in shocked disbelief. “His aunts? Those two nice ladies? Come now, Beaumont. I’ve had several dealings with Dr. Nielsen’s aunts in the past few days. In fact, one of them called me just this morning about the memorial service on Saturday. She sounded reasonable enough to me. They both did. Neither one of them strikes me as a cold-blooded killer, someone capable of using a dental pick as a hole punch on somebody else’s throat.”

“Perfectly reasonable or not,” I replied, “we’re within a hair of having probable cause to arrest them.”

“Improbable cause is a hell of a lot more like it,“ Powell returned derisively. ”We’ve got a perfectly good ex-con in custody, but you’d rather pin the murder on a couple of sweet little old ladies. You’re slipping, Beaumont. You are really slipping.“

Their car arrived just then. The two of them got in and drove away, leaving me standing there in the garage with smoke pouring out both my ears. So far the evidence I had may have been strictly circumstantial, but I knew in my bones we were finally on the right track.

My car came eventually, and I drove straight to the Edinburgh Arms. Instead of entering the driveway, I went around to the back of the complex and parked on the street near the long row of neat, brick garages. The doors all had a thick coat of fresh cream-colored paint, and the windows at the top of each door were uniformly clean and polished.

There were no numbers on the garages, no identification of any kind to tell which garage belonged to which unit, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to go ask.

I started at one end of the building and worked my way to the other, stopping at each door and standing on tiptoe to peer through the glass. I was about two-thirds down the row when I hit pay dirt.

Parked inside one of the garage stalls was an older model black BMW with a mangled rear bumper. The first two letters, the K and the R, were plainly visible, but the rest of the license plate was obscured by twisted chrome. No wonder Darlene could only remember the first three letters on the plate. That was all she could see.

I raced back to my car and headed downtown. As I drove, pieces of the puzzle swooped around and around in my head like airplanes waiting to land. The BMW had to be one of Dr. Nielsen’s cars. Whoever was driving it would have had the garage door opener for sure and possibly access to the office as well. Office keys and car keys often share the same key ring. That would explain how the killer had unlocked the dead bolt to get inside.

But Darlene had said the driver of the foreign car was a man. What about that? Suddenly I remembered how Daisy and Rachel had looked once they donned their khaki Woodland Park Zoo docent uniforms. The matching pith helmets had totally concealed their hair. From a distance, especially if they had been seated in a fast-moving car, either one of them could have been mistaken for a man. For that matter, in the dim light of the garage, a pith helmet could have passed for a Washington State Patrol trooper’s campaign hat.

After all, when the car had sped past her, Darlene Girvan was damn lucky just to be alive. I could hardly fault her powers of observation at a time like that.

I parked in the Public Safety Building garage and pushed my way into an already crowded elevator. I was headed for my cubicle, but Margie stopped me as I sprinted past her desk.

“Hey, have you heard the news?”

“What news?”

“Detective Lindstrom called in from Olympia. He was all excited. One of the license numbers belongs to Dr. Nielsen. He had stopped for coffee and spotted the name on the list while he was waiting for his food.”

“I know,” I said.

Margie’s face fell. “Somebody already told you? I thought I’d get to you first.”

I shook my head. “You did, but I’m a detective, remember? How long ago did you talk to him? Where is he now?”

“Only about fifteen minutes ago. I’m sure he’s on his way back.”

“All right. Get somebody to patch you back through to him. Tell him to get here on the double. I’ll have the search warrant ready by the time he gets here.”

The search warrant was signed and sitting on my desk long before Big Al showed his face. As I sat there waiting for him, I had some time to think. They weren’t good thoughts.

Detectives usually get a real rush when they close a case. It’s like an addictive drug, a high that we live for. But the rush was missing this time.

Every scrap of information we had gathered showed Dr. Frederick Nielsen to be something less than your basic, all-around nice guy. In fact, our victim was a wholesale son of a bitch who had learned what he knew about life at his father’s knee. He had damaged and abused all those whose lives had touched his.

And now someone was going to have to track down his two LOL aunties, arrest them, and charge them with homicide.

It wasn’t a task I relished.