Lying in wait

12

Before Stan and I finally left Deanna Meadows' driveway in Fairwood, Detective Jacek made arrangements to come back later in the afternoon to talk to her parents, John and Ellen Whitney, and to pick up Denise Whitney's dental records.

After putting in an all-nighter, both Stan and I were running out of steam. We didn't talk much as we drove back down off the plateau. When he suggested a lunch stop in Renton, it sounded like a good idea to me.

The place he chose was one of those cutesy-pie named-but-faceless joints that nowadays seem to litter freeway off-ramps everywhere. They're part of what I call the continuing Dennyfication of America.

Going from one of those standardized chains to another, it's impossible to tell them apart. Only the overhead signs outside are different. Inside they're all laid out in exactly the same manner. All the interiors look as though they were designed by the same silk-flower-crazed, California-based interior designer. The restaurants come complete with identical wood-grain Formica booths, colorful see-and-eat picture menus, and limp, half-cooked hash-brown potatoes.

One bite of my leathery hamburger threw me into a fit of nostalgia for the Doghouse. Chewing on that tough, overdone, and tasteless chunk of mystery meat made me long for one of my old eat-at-all-hours standbys-a chili dog or a grilled tuna with potato chips and pickles on the side. And remembering that reminded me of something else from the Doghouse-a guy by the name of Dirty Dick.

He was one of the old band of Doghouse regulars. To the outside world, that group constituted an oddball collection from all walks of life, but inside the darkened bar and gathered around the organ, they formed an informal, tightly knit choral society.

Dirty Dick was one of the sing-along songfest directors. Each person had his or her own signature song; his own particular number. Dirty Dick's perennial favorite was a bawdy, fun tune called "Aunt Clara."

It had been months since I last heard it, but with a little mental prodding, the words gradually surfaced. "Aunt Clara" is the story of one of those old-time "fallen women." When caught in the act, Aunt Clara is driven out of town in disgrace. While everyone back home predicts a sorrowful, shameful end, Clara heads off for France, where she lives happily ever after and marries far above her station, not once but several times. Four dukes and a baron and maybe even an earl. I'm not absolutely sure about the earl part because I'm not all that good on lyrics. Near as I recall, the chorus goes something like this:

We never mention Aunt Clara, her picture is turned to the wall.

She lives on the French Riviera.

Mother says she is dead to us all.

It wasn't much of a stretch for me to make the mental leap from good old Aunt Clara to Denise Whitney. I wondered if a grieving John and Ellen Whitney had turned their younger daughter's picture to the wall. More likely, they still thought of her the same way Deanna did-as a beautiful, bright child who had nonetheless turned out badly and for no discernible reason.

A silent Stan Jacek was also lost in thought as he systematically forked his way through a slab of particle-board ground beef. He had ordered meat loaf, but the food on his plate bore little resemblance to that displayed on the colorfully illustrated menu.

"Denise Whitney reminds me of ‘Aunt Clara,'" I said between bites. Not privy to my meandering stream of consciousness, Stan Jacek assumed I was talking about a real person.

"Too bad," he said. "I guess everybody has a kook or two hiding in the family closet. My first cousin Jim is undergoing sex-change therapy. As far as my aunt and uncle are concerned, he could just as well be dead."

"Dead's permanent," I said.

"According to Jimmy-that's what he/she wants us to call him now-so's the operation. But don't tell me, tell my uncle. What's this about your aunt?"

Stan Jacek was talking real stuff. I felt foolish admitting to him that I didn't have an Aunt Clara at all, and that I was really referring to the heroine of a barroom ditty. When I finished telling him the whole story, though, Stan Jacek agreed with me.

"I can see why you thought of it," he said. "Clara and Denise do seem to have a lot in common. Except it sounds as though the song has a much happier ending."

"That's right," I said. "I doubt Denise Whitney ever made it as far as the French Riviera."

"Not even close."

Jacek didn't need me hanging around while he picked up the dental records. Truth be known, I wasn't eager to talk to or meet Denise Whitney's bereaved parents. Talking to relatives of murder victims is one of the parts of this job that never gets any easier no matter how many times you do it. Parents are especially tough, no matter how old or screwed-up the children are.

Besides, I had the legitimate excuse of needing to go back to the office and put together a paper trail. I suppose reports do serve some useful purpose. When it's time to go to court, they help reconstruct who said what to whom, and when. But most of the time, they feel like a necessary evil that makes the departmental brass feel as though their grunts are actually working.

Sue Danielson was at her own desk when I walked by. "How'd it go?" I asked.

For an answer, she handed me a copy of an Identi-Kit sketch. I studied it for some time and then started to give it back.

"Keep it," she said. "That's your copy." I folded up the piece of paper and put it in my pocket.

"Bonnie Elgin did a good job," Sue continued. "We were through with the whole deal, prints and sketch both, by eleven o'clock. After we finished up, I went down to the Millionair Club to have lunch with a guy named Edward G. Jessup."

The Millionair Club is a Seattle social service agency that provides meals, medical care, and temporary job placement to the homeless. I've eaten there on occasion as my part of the new police chief's policy of community outreach. Plain meals, made of donated food, and served cafeteria-style, don't make for a trendy luncheon-dining experience. But then, having just come from my boardlike burger in Renton, who was I to talk?

"Sounds like you're dining out in style," I said. "So who's Edward G. Jessup? A new boyfriend? Does your son Jared know about this?"

Sue smiled slightly in response to my teasing, but her answer was serious. "Jessup is a former Magnolia Bluff resident who used to live on a box spring under a blue tarp."

"Good work! How did you find him?"

"He found me. Or rather, his job-placement counselor did. The guy was there last night when the evidence van picked up his box spring. The crime lab tech told him it had something to do with a homicide investigation. He went into the Millionair Club for a job call this morning and talked to his job-placement counselor about it. The counselor went through channels and tracked me down.

"The counselor was downright belligerent with me-said he was tired of Seattle P.D. picking on his clients just because they're homeless. He was ripped because we'd ‘illegally confiscated' Jessup's property. Not only that, he said Jessup was prepared to take a blood test, if necessary, to prove the blood wasn't his."

"Did you schedule a blood test then?" I asked.

"Naw," Sue Danielson said with a casual shrug. "I decided not to bother."

That sounded like sloppy police work to me. "Why not?" I demanded.

"Because Edward G. Jessup wasn't home when Gunter Gebhardt's boat caught fire. The man has an airtight alibi."

"And what would that be?"

Sue grinned. "He was in the King County Jail overnight," she said smugly. "Drunk and disorderly. He was booked at twelve-oh-three A. M."

You win some; you lose some. "That's airtight all right," I agreed. "So what's next on your agenda?"

"I plan on spending the afternoon checking emergency rooms around town to see if anyone remembers treating Bonnie Elgin's hit-and-run victim. What about you?"

I gave her the Cliff's Notes summary of my morning with Detective Stan Jacek and Deanna Meadows, then I settled down at my desk and went to work. I checked voice mail for messages. There weren't any. I dialed Maxwell Cole's number at the P.-I.

"Leave your message at the sound of the tone," Max's cheerful recording told me in his own voice. "I'll get right back to you."

Like hell he would. He hadn't so far. I didn't bother leaving another message. I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing I'd called back.

As far as writing reports is concerned, my intentions were good. What was it my mother used to say? Something about the spirit being willing but the body weak. My body was weak, all right.

I started off like gangbusters, but the greasy lunch combined with serious sleep deprivation zapped me before long. By two-thirty, I had nodded off at my desk with my pen trailing aimlessly across and off the edge of the paper. I was dead to the world when Sergeant Watkins stopped by and woke me up.

"Maybe you ought to go home and grab some shut-eye," he suggested. "I wouldn't mind, but you're snoring so loud no one else can concentrate."

"Snoring? Was it really that bad?" I asked.

Watty shook his head and grinned. "Naw," he said. "No louder than a buzz saw. How are you coming on your paper, by the way? Captain Powell wants a status report ASAP, particularly on the Maxwell Cole leak."

"Tell him I'm working on it," I said.

I pushed the reports I had completed across my desk. Standing in the doorway to my cubicle, Watty pulled out a pair of reading glasses and then scanned through what I had written. When he finished, he took off the glasses and stowed them in his pocket.

"If I'm reading the time lines right, you must have spent most of the night up on Camano Island. I know for a fact you've been on the job since eight o'clock. You've had what, three hours of sleep?"

"Something like that, give or take."

"No wonder you look like hell. Go home. Get some sleep."

"But Sue and I were going to…"

My objection was strictly pro forma. Years ago, when I first came to work on the force, being up all night didn't faze me. Back then, a case would grab my attention and keep it. If I had to, I'd work round the clock, then sleep eight hours straight and be back on top of things again. I can't do that anymore. I'm like an aging rubber band that no longer bounces back to quite its original shape. I must be getting old, but come to think of it, I didn't recall ever seeing Watty use reading glasses before, either.

In any case, he cut me off in midsentence. "I said go home, and I meant it."

With no further discussion, I swiped the remaining papers off my desk and stuck them in a drawer. Then I stood up and pulled on my jacket. "Middle age is hell, isn't it?" I said.

Watty shook his head. "It beats the alternative," he replied. "Now get out of here before Captain Powell lays hold of you."

Usually, I'll toss off some kind of smart-ass comeback, but this time I was too brain-dead. And I'm glad I didn't. Watty was well within his supervisory rights to send me home. I was too damn tired to be out on my own recognizance.

After I retrieved my 928 from the parking garage on James, it was all I could do to stay awake long enough to drive home, park the car, and stagger from my parking place to the elevator. I was so tired, I think I might have welcomed some company in the elevator-even an unaccompanied dog. It would have given me something to lean on.

I didn't bother to stop for the mail, and I barely glanced at the blinking answering machine in the living room. I left it to its own devices without hitting the playback button. The messages would have to wait. I headed straight for the bedroom, where, after a moment's contemplation, I pulled the telephone jack out of the wall, stripped out of my clothes, and fell into bed. I slept for twelve hours straight. If I had any dreams-good or bad-I was sleeping too hard to remember them.

When I woke up, I was totally refreshed-bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as we used to say. I was also starved. The only problem was, it was three o'clock in the morning-not a good hour to discover that the cupboard is bare. A cursory inventory of the kitchen revealed that other than a bag of whole-bean coffee that I keep in my freezer, there wasn't a stick of edible food in the house.

When Karen and I split up, that was one of the first and hardest lessons I had to learn about living on my own. Food doesn't automatically transport itself from grocery-store shelves to refrigerator and cupboards or table. Someone has to go to the store and actually bring it home. And meals-especially balanced ones-don't appear on the table magically. They require advance planning and preparation. When it comes to cooking, I'm a complete flop.

Food considerations, odd hours, proximity, and loneliness were the several factors that had caused me to gravitate to the Doghouse. At three o'clock that morning, I missed it more than ever.

I glanced outside. It was foggy again-foggy and cold. I pulled on some clothes and walked out to the living room. I hadn't taken the messages off the machine earlier, and there was even less sense in doing so now. You can't call people back at three o'clock in the morning. Closing the front door on the blinking light, I headed downstairs.

I think Donnie, Belltown Terrace's graveyard-shift doorman, was most likely snoozing at his desk, but he lurched to his feet as soon as the elevator door opened.

"Mr. Beaumont," he said, a little too eagerly. "You're up and around early. Or is it late?"

"Early," I said. "Do you know a good place to get breakfast around here at this time of day?"

"Here in the Regrade?"

I nodded. "Someplace within walking distance."

"There's Caffe Minnie's," he suggested helpfully. "It's just down the street."

I've been in Caffe Minnie's a time or two. It's at the corner of First and Denny, one of those oddball spots where Seattle's various early-day surveyors couldn't come to any kind of sensible agreement. As a result, the corner lot is triangular, and so's the building that sits on it.

Caffe Minnie's has an eclectic crowd. Some are of the purple-haired, earringed sort, while others are of the vacationing schoolmarm variety as well as assorted types between the two extremes. Caffe Minnie's late-night customers tend to view anyone who looks like a police officer with suspicion verging on outright hostility. I wasn't up to that.

"No," I said. "Not my style."

"How about Steve's Broiler up on Virginia?"

I had tried Steve's as well. For some reason, I found it depressing. "I don't think so."

"What about the Five Point?" he asked. "It's over on Cedar at Fifth, just under the Monorail."

"The Five Point isn't open, is it? I thought they closed early-around eleven."

"Not anymore. After the Doghouse closed, they went twenty-four hours."

"Oh," I said.

It was amazingly quiet on the street. As I walked, the lateness of the hour combined with the muffling qualities of the fog gave me the sense of being the only person left alive in downtown Seattle. But when I reached Cedar, there were three empty Farwest Cabs lined up on the street.

The neon sign in the window of the restaurant, the one that says COOK ON DUTY, gave the fog outside a ghostly pink glow. The fog was so thick, in fact, that from the front door I couldn't see as far as Chief Sealth standing in his winter-dry fountain a few feet away in the middle of Tillicum Square.

Right inside the door, a wooden cigar-store Indian waited beside the cash register. Back in my drinking days, I didn't venture into the Five Point much. For one thing, the black-and-white tiles on the floor, counter front, and ceiling can be a little disorienting when you're operating under a full load of McNaughtons.

Furthermore, legend has it that back in the old days, a Five Point bartender once asked me to leave when I tried to strike up a serious conversation with the wooden Indian. I don't remember the incident, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Alexis Downey-my sometime girlfriend-didn't like the Doghouse; didn't approve of it. While the Doghouse was still open, I once offered to take her to the Five Point for a Sunday-morning breakfast. She refused to go. I could have handled it if her objection had been based on smoke or greasy food. I was thunderstruck when it turned out to be on the grounds of sexual discrimination.

I'm not sure how Alex heard about the men's rest room at the Five Point. Through the creative use of a periscope, users of the urinal-presumably all male-have an unobstructed view of the top of the Space Needle. Alex told me she wasn't setting foot inside the place until women could take advantage of the same view. I took this to be a new front in Seattle's potty-parity war between the sexes.

The sign on the front door of the Five Point made no mention of rest-room inequality. Instead, it announced SMOKERS WELCOME. NONSMOKERS BEWARE. That statement pretty much covered it.

Inside the small dining room, a predictable pall of cigarette smoke hung in the air. It may have been the middle of the night, but it was also the first of the month. The place was crowded with what seemed like a group of regulars. Four oversized cabdrivers-a crowd all by themselves-took up the better part of three tables.

There was only one empty seat left at the counter. I slipped into it. I had barely started looking around to get my bearings when someone slammed a full cup of coffee onto the counter in front of me. Some of the coffee slopped over the top onto the Formica.

"It's about time you got around to dropping in here. What'll you have-bacon and eggs, hash browns crisp, whole-wheat toast, and a small OJ?" The voice was familiar. So was the peroxide-blond beehive hairdo.

The waitress was Wanda, one of my old favorites from the Doghouse.

"Wanda!" I exclaimed. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Whaddya think? I'm just working to wear out the uniform." She grinned. "Besides, I'm way too young to retire. Now are you going to order or what? I don't have time to stand around here jawing all night."

"You're right," I said. "I'll have the usual."

"By the way," she returned. "For future reference, that's a number four."

Wanda hustled off. I'm not that good a judge of women's ages. Perpetually blond hair tends to throw me off, but if I were going to guess, I'd say Wanda was somewhere right around seventy.

When she came back with my orange juice, she slapped a slightly used, grease-stained newspaper on the counter in front of me.

"Sorry it's so messy," she apologized. "This is the only one I could find where somebody hadn't already worked the crossword puzzle. Do you need a pencil?"

"No, thanks," I said. "I've got one."

I opened the paper up to the right page. First I read "Mike Mailway," then I started working the puzzle.

For the first time in months, I felt as though I'd come home.