Justice Denied

CHAPTER 5

I left Etta Mae’s house about midafternoon. Before leaving I had been introduced to Etta Mae’s neighbor, Janie Griswold, who had eventually emerged from the kitchen and resumed her thankless task of trying to clean up the blood-spattered entryway.

Walking back to the car, I felt frustrated. What should have been an uncomplicated, straight-up interview had ended up being more of a prayer meeting, one in which I had been on the defensive far more than I should have been. I came away knowing that Etta Mae’s belief in her son’s miraculous transformation was utterly unshakable. I, on the other hand, had my doubts.

When I had first pulled up in front of the house on Church Street, I had turned off my cell phone. It would have been more than a little awkward if Mel had called and asked what I was doing when I was in the midst of interviewing an important witness in a supposedly nonexistent case. As soon as I turned the phone back on, it was bristling with a collection of messages and missed calls.

I dialed Mel immediately. “Where are you?” she wanted to know.

“Headed home,” I hedged. I was in fact driving back toward downtown Seattle at that very moment-just not from the direction she might have anticipated.

“How’s Lars?” she asked.

“Medium,” I said.

“Did you invite him to dinner?” she said.

“Did,” I said. “He turned me down.”

“He probably shouldn’t be alone right now,” Mel said. “He should have people with him.”

I thought about the gaggle of unattached Queen Anne Gardens dames Lars had claimed were hovering around him, all of them circling for a premature landing. “I doubt he’ll be all that alone,” I said.

“Still,” Mel said. “He should be with family at a time like this. Do you think I should call and ask him?” she wanted to know.

Mel probably could have talked Lars into coming out for dinner, but if she did, we might end up having a discussion of exactly when I had dropped him off and what I’d been doing in the meantime, et cetera, et cetera. What was it my mother always used to say? “Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”

“He seemed pretty tired,” I said. “Let’s leave well enough alone.”

I gave her the arrangement details for Beverly’s services so she could pass them along to Barbara Galvin and Harry. She extracted a promise that I’d order more flowers. She also told me that she’d made arrangements for the kids to stay at the Homewood Suites a few blocks away from Belltown Terrace at the bottom of Queen Anne Hill. Once again I appreciated Mel’s attention to detail. Making room reservations was something I probably wouldn’t have remembered-until it was too late.

“What are you going to do now?” Mel asked.

“Go home and put my feet up,” I said. “It was a pretty short night.”

On the way, I listened through a string of condolence calls-from Ron Peters, a former partner and a good friend; from Ralph Ames, my attorney; from Ross Connors along with several other members of the SHIT squad. In other words, Mel had put out the word.

When I got as far as downtown, I thought briefly about stopping by Seattle PD, but decided against it. It would create far less of a stir if I phoned Kendall Jackson than it would if I showed up on the premises in person asking questions. And since Ross seemed to want deniability, less of a stir would be far preferable to more of one.

Back at the condo I settled into the recliner, picked up the phone, and dialed that old familiar number that took me straight to the heart of Homicide. In the old days I couldn’t have made such a call without spending several minutes chewing the fat with Watty Watson, who was, for many years, the telephone-answering nerve center for Seattle PD’s homicide squad. But now Watty had moved on-either up or out. The phone was answered by someone whose name I neither caught nor recognized. I was put through to Detective Jackson with no chitchat and no questions asked.

“Hey, Beau-Beau,” Kendall boomed into the phone. “How’re you doing these days? Did they finally get all that glass out of your face?”

Jackson had been first on the scene after I went through the shattered wall of that greenhouse. The last time he had seen me I had been a bloody mess on my way to the ER.

“Pretty much,” I said. “Although I still find shards of it now and then.”

“You’re doing better than Captain Kramer,” he said. “You know he’s still out on disability? Everyone says he’s coming back soon now, though, probably sometime in the next couple of weeks.”

Mel and I might have saved Paul Kramer’s sorry butt, but that didn’t mean I liked him any better. “Glad to hear it,” I lied.

The words came to my lips almost effortlessly. Maybe I was starting to get the hang of it. After all, I had managed to lie to Mel. Now it looked as though I might be able to spin believable whoppers at the drop of a hat for anybody at all, no exceptions.

“What can I do for you?” Jackson asked.

“I understand you’re working the LaShawn Tompkins case.”

“Yup,” Jackson said. “Hank and I drew that one.”

Hank was Detective Henry Ramsdahl, Jackson’s partner.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“Is that an official ‘how’s it going’ or an unofficial?” he returned.

“Unofficial,” I replied. “After the state made that payout in the Tompkins case, Ross Connors wants to be sure everything is on the up-and-up, but he also doesn’t want to make a big fuss about it, if you know what I mean.”

“We’re not making much progress so far,” Jackson admitted. “From everything we’ve been able to learn, Tompkins had been keeping his nose clean. We’ve turned up no sign that he was involved in any illegal activities. According to what we’ve been told, LaShawn found God while he was in prison. Once he got out, he straightened up and flew right-right up until somebody shot him dead, which, if you ask me, sounds pretty iffy,” Jackson concluded. “Old bad guys mostly don’t go straight.”

We were on the same wavelength on that score.

“With the possible exception of the girlfriend angle, though,” he added, “we haven’t found anyone with a beef against him.”

“What girlfriend?” I asked. The fact that LaShawn might have a girlfriend was news to me, and it would no doubt be news to Etta Mae as well.

“Name’s Elaine-Elaine Manning. That would be Sister Elaine Manning.”

“Sister as in she’s black?” I asked.

“That, too, but mostly sister as in that was her title at King Street Mission. Also an ex-con. Spent five years at Purdy for armed robbery. From what I can tell, that’s pretty much the prerequisite for becoming a counselor at King Street-you’ve already done your crime and your time. It’s a cachet that gives you more credibility with the clients.”

“What about Elaine Manning?” I prompted.

“We’re hearing bits and rumors that she and Brother Mark may have had something going, but that was before Brother LaShawn turned up on the scene. Once that happened, Sister Elaine more or less spun out of Brother Mark’s orbit.”

“So we could be dealing with a simple love triangle?” I asked.

Of course, love triangles are hardly ever simple.

“Maybe,” Jackson agreed. “Problem is, so far we haven’t been able to locate Ms. Manning.”

“You’re saying she’s gone missing?”

“Yup. No one’s seen her since sometime Saturday morning. Took off right after breakfast. Since then, she hasn’t shown up at work and hasn’t called in, either. No one seems to know where she is or how to reach her. We consider her a person of interest.”

Someone close to a murder victim who goes missing about the same time as the murder is always a person of interest, especially if there are hints of a love affair gone bad. Jackson made it sound like it was no big deal, but I guessed that the full powers of Seattle PD were being brought to bear on locating Sister Elaine Manning. It was probably better if I just sat back and let them do the heavy lifting. There would be plenty of time for me to talk to her once she was found.

“Tell me about Pastor Mark,” I said. “What’s his deal?”

“That would be Brother Mark or Pastor Mark, depending on who you talk to,” Kendall said. “Last name’s Granger. Former druggie. Did a fifteen-year stretch for second-degree murder. Been out for the past five years. Another unlikely prospect for a Goody Two-shoes award, but we haven’t been able to find anything new on him, either. Everybody at King Street seems hell-bent on keeping their noses clean-no drugs, no booze, no illegal activities. They don’t even allow cigarettes.”

“They just aren’t making ex-cons the way they used to,” I said.

“I guess not,” Jackson agreed with a laugh.

I started to ask him if he had any details on the payout Tompkins had received from the state. I stopped myself just in time. If my cover was that Ross Connors was worried about it, I’d better have the details of that at my fingertips. And I jotted a note to myself to make inquiries about the settlement on my own.

“So there’s nothing on the street about who might have done this?” I asked.

“So far not a word,” Jackson replied, “and believe me, we’ve been asking.”

“What about forensics?” I asked.

“A thirty-eight,” Jackson said. “We ran the bullet through NIBIN. Nothing turned up.”

NIBIN is the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network, which keeps track of bullets the same way AFIS (the Automated Fingerprint Identification System) keeps track of fingerprints. The fact that the bullet used to kill LaShawn Tompkins hadn’t shown up in the database meant that the weapon was clean-that it hadn’t been used in any other crime prior to his murder. Now that it had been entered into the system, however, if it was used again, it would be noticed. When or if that happened, it would make the killer easier to trace. Right now, though, it didn’t do us any good.

“So you’ll keep me in the loop on this one?” I suggested.

Jackson laughed. “Unofficially in the loop, that is.”

“Yes.”

“Only if you do the same,” he returned. “Quid quo pro, whatever. If you dredge something up, I want to hear about it, too.”

“Fair enough,” I said.

I put down the phone, leaned back in the recliner, and closed my eyes. I may even have drifted off for a second or two before the phone rang, startling me awake if not to full consciousness.

“How come we have to stay in a hotel?” my daughter demanded. “Why can’t we stay with you? Is it because of her?”

And there, in a nutshell, is why men find women so baffling-daughters included. Or perhaps, daughters especially.

I’ll be the first to admit that I wasn’t always the best of fathers when Scott and Kelly were kids, but in the years since I stopped drinking I’ve gone to great lengths to undo as much of that damage as possible. Maybe I’ve made more progress with Scott than I have with Kelly. Still, I’ve done my level best, and I thought we were doing fine. The previous weekend, when Mel and I had been down in Ashland, she and Kelly seemed to get along fine-at least fine as far as I could see. I remembered Kelly even teasing Mel about whether or not we were going to get married. Now Kelly uttered the word her in regard to Mel with such vivid contempt that it caught me by surprise. Between Sunday morning and Tuesday afternoon, what could possibly have changed?

“I just talked to Mel,” Kelly continued. “She told me we’ll be staying at Homewood Suites and gave me the confirmation number.”

I still didn’t get it. My first thought was that since Kelly and Jeremy live on a very tight budget, maybe she was worried about having to pay a hotel bill.

“I’m paying for the room,” I said, trying to fight my way out of a mess not of my own making. “You don’t have to be concerned about that.”

“This has nothing to do with money!” Kelly exclaimed, her voice trembling with outrage. She seemed on the verge of tears. “It’s bad enough that we have to come all the way from Ashland to Seattle with a month-old baby in the car. Is it asking too much to expect that we’d get to spend some time with you instead of being carted off to a hotel like a bunch of strangers?”

Let it be said that Mel and I had just finished squandering the better part of three reasonably pleasant days in my daughter’s company. On the face of it, her sudden antipathy made very little sense.

“Scott and Cherisse will be staying there, too,” I offered lamely. “And it’s only a couple of blocks from here.”

From Kelly’s point of view the hotel could have been on Pluto. “It’s all about Mel, isn’t it,” she raved on. “Mel this and Mel that. She’s shacked up with you there and has you completely under her thumb. Mel’s doing this because she doesn’t want to share you with anyone, not even with your granddaughter, who’s crazy about you, by the way!”

By now this amounted to the most bizarre conversation I’d ever had with my daughter-in terms of turning tables, that is. Because the truth of the matter was, having my children come stay at Belltown Terrace with Mel and me when we were obviously living in sin was a big deal-in my book, anyway. And I suspected it was in Mel’s, too. Of course I could have pointed out that Kelly and Jeremy hadn’t exactly tied the knot in a timely fashion. In actual fact, Kayla’s birthday predates her parents’ wedding anniversary by several months.

People say that there’s nothing worse than a reformed drunk, and the situation here was probably similar. Maybe now that Kelly had finished sowing her wild oats, she wanted her father to shape up and do the same. It occurred to me that Kelly’s great-grandmother, Beverly Jenssen, had been of the same opinion. DNA will out.

On the other hand, I wasn’t about to send Mel packing back to her apartment in Bellevue for the duration of the kids’ visit, either.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I said soothingly. “I won’t be going in to work. We’ll be able to spend plenty of time together.”

“We will not!” Kelly insisted. With that, she hung up on me. I didn’t call her back. There wasn’t much point.

Mel came home a little while later. She whipped out of her work clothes, put on a jogging suit and sneakers, and dragged me with her down to the running track.

Belltown Terrace is one of the few buildings in Seattle actually constructed under an interesting, short-lived, and amazingly complicated set of residential/mixed-use zoning rules. The bottom five stories are office building. The sixth floor-including the rooftop of the office building-is a common recreation area for the taller residential structure. It includes a party room, a swimming pool and hot tub, an exercise room, as well as a sport court. Much of the outdoor rooftop area is devoted to gardens, which Mel tells me include an award-winning collection of hydrangeas. (Since I know zero about flowers and/or gardens, I more or less have to take her word for this.)

A rubber-mat-covered running track runs the full perimeter of the sixth floor-about a quarter of a mile in all. When the building was first built, this running track was supposed to be a big selling point, and maybe it still is, but what looks and sounds good on paper sometimes misses the mark when it comes to actual delivery.

What the architects and planners had failed to take into consideration was the wind-tunnel effect from nearby high-rise buildings. Even in the dead of summer you can be out on the Belltown Terrace running track with a chill gale blowing into your teeth. Since this was March and a long way from the dead of summer, it was downright frigid out there.

I’ve often said that my major form of exercise is jumping to conclusions. Mel had set out to change that. At least three times a week she dragged me, usually kicking and screaming, down to the running track, where she literally ran circles around me while I walked. (All knees are not created equal.)

Afterward, sitting in the hot tub, she leveled a blue-eyed stare in my direction.

“What’s wrong?” she said. “You’re a million miles away. Are you thinking about Beverly?”

I was sad about losing Beverly, but what was really bothering me right then was the fact that Mel’s good deed of making hotel reservations for Kelly and Scott was about to blow up in both our faces. I knew I’d have to tell Mel about the situation with Kelly eventually, but not right then. I nodded and sighed as convincingly as I could manage.

“It is sad,” Mel agreed. “Especially for Lars. Widowers often don’t fare too well when they’re left on their own.”

Which gave me something else to worry about entirely.

“How was your afternoon?” I asked in an attempt to change the subject.

Mel frowned. “More interesting than it should have been,” she said. “I started tracking down locations on those released sex offenders. I just barely scratched the surface, but already two of them are dead.”

“Dead?” I asked.

Mel nodded. “One suicide and one accident. It’s too bad I didn’t know about this over the weekend. We could have stopped off in Roseburg on the way coming or going and made some inquiries. Feet on the ground instead of phoners.”

“What’s in Roseburg?”

“Outside of Roseburg, actually,” she said. “A guy named Les Fordham got sent to prison for molesting his girlfriend’s twelve-year-old daughter. When he got out he went to live in southern Oregon. That’s where he was from originally. Got a job working in a sawmill there and seemed to be doing all right. Then, last summer, for no apparent reason he turned on the gas on his stove and ended up blowing himself to kingdom come. Started a mini forest fire in the process. Fortunately it rained like hell the next day, and the fire didn’t turn into a major one.”

“And the accident?” I asked.

“You may remember it,” Mel said. “The guy’s name was Ed Chrisman. He was living up in Bellingham. Got all drunked-up on a Sunday afternoon last December. The investigators theorized that he stopped off at one of the rest areas on Chuckanut Drive to take a leak. It was cold, so he left the car running while he got out to do his business…”

“I remember,” I said. “He also left his car in gear. It hit him from behind while he was standing there with his fly unzipped. Knocked him off the edge of a cliff into the water. The car went into the drink right along with him-on top of him, as I recall. Smashed him flat.”

Mel nodded. “That’s the one. Nobody bothered to report him missing until several days later. With the weather the way it was, his vehicle wasn’t found at the foot of the cliff until almost a week after it happened. The transmission was still in gear when they fished it out of the water.”

“Sounds like he was still in gear, too,” I said.

I admit, it was a tasteless joke-but dying with your pants unzipped is a tasteless joke. Mel glared at me. “Not funny,” she said.

“No,” I agreed. “I suppose not. But if those two guys were already dead, how come they’re still on Ross’s sex-offender list?”

“I believe that’s why Ross has me updating the list.”

“Right,” I said. “Makes sense to me. Sounds like me and missing persons. Now let’s go see about dinner.”