Lying in wait

13

James Gleason, the author of that morning's New York Times Crossword Puzzle in the Seattle P.-I., must have been my blood brother. Or maybe he's a twin, and the two of us were separated at birth. Whatever the connection, we were on the same wavelength. I banged my way through the entire puzzle without a single hitch or hang-up. I finished it completely in twenty minutes flat-while I was eating breakfast.

Only when I was in the process of refolding the paper to leave it for the next guy did I see a copy of Bonnie Elgin's Identi-Kit sketch right at the top of the front page in the local news section. It was good positioning for that kind of piece. I know for a fact that people read that section of the paper more than any other.

It's easy to close our eyes and ignore what's going on in Washington, D.C., or to gloss over the latest episode of bloodthirsty carnage in Bosnia or the Middle East. It's a lot more difficult to blind yourself to what's going on in your own backyard. Readers tend to skip over the blaring headlines on the front page in favor of devouring in detail-down to the last sentence-what's happening at home. For some reason, news of murder and mayhem next door is almost always more compelling and more interesting than systematic genocide as it is practiced in other, more distant parts of the world.

Seeing the picture there in the P.-I. served notice to me that Sue Danielson had kept right on working throughout the afternoon. She had talked about visiting hospitals with our missing hit-and-run victim's picture, but she must have faxed copies to some of the media as well. I doubted she had actually stepped inside that heavily guarded, impregnable fortress-the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

I gave Sue credit for both initiative and hustle, especially considering the fact that her partner du jour had spent most of the afternoon and all of the evening literally lying down on the job. I allowed myself only the smallest twinge of guilt. After all, Sue hadn't spent the previous night poking around in the still-warm ashes of that house fire up on Camano Island.

Intrigued by the reproduction of the sketch, I broke my own protocol and actually read the accompanying article. In brief, it said that detectives were looking for the man depicted in the picture as a "person of interest" in the fatal fire at Fishermen's Terminal two days earlier. The reporter went on to say that there was some speculation about his possible link to another fatal arson fire as well, one that had occurred the following day on Camano Island.

The reporter stated that although the two fires were thought to be related, investigators had so far declined to comment on the possible connection between them. Gunter Gebhardt was mentioned by name. Denise Whitney was not.

I was relieved that the appalling details of the murders themselves had been left out of the article. As a police officer, I found it comforting to know that not every aspect of Stan Jacek's and my two separate investigations had become public knowledge. More important than not disrupting our work, the fact that some of the gory details were missing from the article also served to spare the victims' families considerable pain.

Now that I was buoyed by my decent night's sleep, the food, a successfully completed crossword puzzle, and a little camaraderie with an old friend, even reading a newspaper didn't get to me. I left the Five Point and sauntered back to Belltown Terrace feeling almost human.

Once in my apartment, I was impatient to get to work, but common sense prevailed. Four-forty-five was way too early to show up for my shift down at the Public Safety Building. The guys on night duty would have thought I'd lost my marbles. That hour was also still too early to begin returning phone calls, but I did settle down in my recliner to take the messages off my answering machine.

The collection of calls was about what you'd expect in a downtown high-rise. One enthusiastic telemarketer wanted to know if I wanted to subscribe to The Wall Street Journal? It could be delivered directly to my door. No, I did not. Someone else wanted to know if I'd like to subscribe to a credit-card protection program. I didn't bite on that one, either.

Heather Peters called from downstairs where she lives with her father, Ron Peters-one of my former partners-and her stepmother, Amy. Sounding like a very dignified and old-for-her-age eight-year-old, Heather informed me that she now had a weekend job that would pay ten dollars a day for four whole days, but that she would tell me more about it later when she saw me in person. Way to go, Heather!

The next call was from Maxwell Cole. Unlike voice mail, my old answering machine doesn't time-date the calls, but since this message came in after Heather's, Max must have called me back fairly late in the day-sometime after three o'clock or so.

"Hey, J.P.," Max said. "Long time no see. How's it going?" He spoke in one of those gratingly familiar, hail-fellow-well-met tones that comes across as phony as a three-dollar bill.

"Sorry about playing what you call telephone tag, but I'm down here in Olympia on special assignment, paying a visit to Ulcer Gulch. I think I may be on the trail of a little graft and corruption."

Ulcer Gulch is a snide in-crowd code name for the crowded hallway in the State Capitol down in Olympia where lobbyists can hang out and rest up between sessions of heavy-duty legislative arm-twisting. Legislators and their Olympia-based peccadillos are a little outside Max's normal "City Beat" investigative-journalism territory, but I didn't question it. After all, Camano Island is outside my usual jurisdiction boundaries as well.

"There's no way for me to receive a phone call here at the moment," Max continued, "and it's hard as hell to make outgoing calls. I had to lie like a son of a bitch for permission to make this one. I'll have to get back to you tomorrow or the next day, J. P. Hope that's soon enough." Click.

"No, it isn't soon enough, thank you very much," I said irritably, talking back to the machine since I couldn't talk back to Maxwell Cole himself. Shaking my head, I ground my finger into the Erase button and sent Max's voice whirling into the great beyond. It was easy for him to put off talking to me until it happened to be convenient for him — tomorrow or the next day or even the day after that. Max didn't have to face a pissed-off Captain Lawrence Powell when he reached his office later that morning. I did.

The next voice on the machine I recognized at once. It was my grandmother, Beverly Piedmont.

"Hello, Jonas," she said, keeping her now-familiar tone brisk and businesslike. "It's late Thursday afternoon, right around five, I think. I don't want to make a pest of myself, but it's so quiet around the house here today that I'm driving myself crazy. Not that your grandfather talked all that much, mind you. He was a man of few words even before his stroke. I'm sure you know what I mean.

"I guess I must be feeling lonely. Anyway, if you're not already busy, maybe the two of us could have dinner together tonight. My treat. We could go to the King's Table." Her voice faltered unmistakably. "Your grandfather and I didn't go out to eat often, you see, but King's Table was one of his favorite places. It was easy to get his chair in and out, and it's not terribly expensive."

Beverly Piedmont took a sharp breath. "Oh, dear," she said. "I'm afraid I'm sounding like a big crybaby. As I said, if you're too busy, just ignore this. It's not as though there isn't any food in the house. I can always open a can of soup or something, and we'll have dinner together some other time. Bye."

Awash in guilt, I looked at my watch as if I could make it run backward. I hadn't ignored Beverly Piedmont's plaintive message, but she had no way of knowing that. The message was a good twelve hours late, and dinnertime was long gone.

Damn! That's the story of my life. It seems as though when someone I care about needs something, I always fall short of the mark. I'm never quite where I'm supposed to be when I'm needed. I never quite make the grade.

I saved that message for later and went on to the next one.

"BoBo," said Else Gebhardt. "You probably won't get this until morning. It's sometime after midnight. I apologize for calling so late, but this is the first time I've been able to get to the phone.

"I really appreciate your giving me a card with your home number on it. I need to talk to you as soon as possible-in person. And alone, please, if you don't mind. It'll be hard enough to discuss this with you. I don't think I can discuss it at all in front of a stranger or even over the phone."

There was a pause. Else Gebhardt took a ragged breath that was just one choke short of a sob.

"I've had three reporters show up here at the house earlier today. This afternoon. They were all asking me what the connection is between Gunter's death and some fire that happened up on Camano Island last night. Night before last, now. I told them I hadn't heard about any fire and that I had no idea what they were talking about. Do you?"

I nodded silently to myself.

"BoBo," she continued, "if you can shed any light on all this, I'd really appreciate it if you'd stop by and let me know. I feel so…so confused.

"And then there's Kari. She and Michael finally drove down from Bellingham earlier tonight. She went to bed just a few minutes ago. I'm thankful to have her here, but that's another reason I waited so long to call.

"Kari was in terrible shape when they first got here. Hysterical. Couldn't stop crying. She kept saying it was all her fault-that somehow she was the cause of what happened to her father-almost as though she killed him herself.

"Of course, I told her that was ridiculous, but she didn't seem to pay any attention. I think it's hitting her so hard because they were…well, you know…she and Gunter were…estranged."

This time Else was unable to suppress a series of sobs that rose in her throat and temporarily choked off her ability to speak. Her audible anguish, captured in all its misery on the recording, flashed through the machine and into me-emotions transformed to electrical shocks.

Bad as Else Gebhardt's suffering was right then, I knew it would only grow worse once she learned about the existence of Denise Whitney and the young woman's relationship to Gunter.

Eventually, Else's voice came back on the recording. A little stronger and steadier, more under control.

"Sorry," she managed. "I didn't mean to fall apart like that. Anyway, I'll be up early in the morning. If I go to sleep at all, that is. So call me any time after six or else stop by. I really do need to talk to you."

I erased that message. Alan Torvoldsen had dodged the bullet, that damned lucky stiff. I was the one who would be stuck with the thankless task of revealing the fact that Gunter Gebhardt had made a mockery of his marriage vows.

The next hour seemed to take forever. My coffee dipstick wasn't registering quite full, so I made another pot and then sat in my recliner, sipping coffee and considering what I had learned about the people I so far knew to be part of Gunter Gebhardt's life. More often than not, murderers are found within the realm of the victim's circle of acquaintance.

In other words, Gunter was a whole lot more likely to have been bumped off by someone he knew than by someone he didn't. And by someone who knew him well. The savagery of the crime didn't point to random violence perpetrated by a passing stranger. The killer was someone twisted who reveled in human suffering-someone with an appalling grudge against Gunter and Denise both. Which of those two was the primary target? I wondered. Was it one or the other or both? That was the basic starting point. Until we understood that, the investigation had no focus. We were shooting blind.

My instinctive choice for primary target was Gunter. That's probably nothing more than prejudice on my part. The reading we'd been getting on him was a mixed bag. Yes, he had done good things-including rescuing his financially failing in-laws, but there were plenty of other things that weren't nearly so commendable.

And that's when I started thinking about Gunter's twenty-two-year-old daughter, Kari. Naturally, Else had categorically dismissed her daughter's self-incriminating admission of guilt. And why not? Mothers are almost universally like that. Else had attributed Kari's emotional distress to the fact that Gunter had died without ever resolving the quarrel between them.

And that was possible. But I wondered if that was all of it. Exactly how long had Kari Gebhardt and her father been at war? I asked myself. How long and why?

I happened to know there were things about Gunter Gebhardt that his wife and widow didn't yet suspect. What about Kari? Had she somehow learned her father's ugly secret? What if she had discovered not only the existence of Denise Whitney, but also of the concealed financial assets that allowed her mother's rival to live in isolated splendor in the house on Camano Island.

As the father of a more-or-less unpredictable daughter, I'd like to think that torture patricide isn't something well-brought-up girls do-not even when they learn awful truths about their daddies screwing around behind their mommies' backs. Still, irate daughters have committed murder on occasion. Had that happened here? Or if Kari Gebhardt wasn't tough enough to do the dirty deed herself, might she not-in defense of her mother's honor-have found someone else to do it for her?

After years in Homicide, I have more than a nodding acquaintance with killers. Some of the most disturbing perpetrators-the ones I consider to be the scum of the earth-are the contract-killer types, the ones who murder for hire and see their job as nothing more or less than a business transaction. Some of them are willing to do anything for money-anything at all. And a scary few take inordinate pride in a job well done-the bloodier the better.

I left my apartment at a quarter to six and drove through Seattle's third day of unremitting morning fog. When I got to the top of Greenbrier, I had to dodge out of the way of a fire-engine-red Jeep Cherokee that came surging up the rise and almost ran me off the road. I would have had a few choice words about drivers of bright red cars, but I didn't. After all, I happen to be the driver of a bright red car myself.

I arrived at Else Gebhardt's Blue Ridge house at exactly the same time as the delivery boy for the Post-Intelligencer.

I picked up the paper from where he had tossed it in the driveway and carried it into the house. It seemed to me it was probably fortunate that the paper and I arrived at the Gebhardt house at precisely the same time. At least it gave Else someone familiar to lean on as the tawdry details of her dead marriage began to unravel in public.

Maybe I was kidding myself, but I wanted to believe that my being there would help.