Lying in wait

15

As I left Else's house on Culpeper Court and started back downtown, the words "wife of a former congressman" conjured up a certain picture in my mind. The image of the imagined June Miller that formed in my head was of someone as tough and cantankerous as Betty Friedan, only not nearly as pretty.

Sergeant Chuck Grayson was still on duty and fighting his way through a deskful of paperwork when I stopped in front of it.

"Where is she?" I asked, starting for my cubicle.

"Whoa, there," Grayson said. "You didn't think we'd stash somebody like her in your office, did you? That place is a wreck."

I ground to a halt and glanced pointedly at the tumbled mass of scattered papers on Sergeant Grayson's desk. "Pardon my saying so, Sarge, but when it comes to wrecks, you don't have much room to talk. Where did you stow her then?"

"Upstairs," he answered. "In that little conference room next door to the chief's office."

It figured. It wouldn't have surprised me if June Miller had been granted a personal interview with the chief of police while she was waiting for me to show up. "She didn't happen to say what all this is about, did she?"

Grayson shook his head. "Nope. Just what I told you on the phone. It has something to do with your deal up at Fishermen's Terminal. Whatever it is, it was important enough for her to show up here at six-twenty A. M. By the way, have you ever met this woman before?"

"Never."

Grayson grinned. "Lucky you," he said. "You're in for a real treat."

"Sure I am," I replied. "And no doubt the chief will give me the rest of the day off when she and I get finished."

"I wouldn't count on that," Grayson said.

I didn't break my neck going back to the elevators. The idea that police officers are "public servants" tends to go to some people's heads. Maybe that was the same reason John Miller was a former congressman instead of a current one. Maybe he resented the idea of being on call twenty-four hours a day.

Right that minute, I know I did. Public servant be damned! June Miller had stopped by the department, without benefit of an appointment, a full hour and a half before the beginning of my shift. Nonetheless, she still expected me to show up, Johnny-on-the-spot, at her beck and call. And since she was far too good to wait in my humble cubicle, she had been ushered up to the more plush surroundings of SPD's "executive" level to wait for me there.

Who the hell does she think she is? I grumbled irritably to myself as I stepped onto the Public Safety Building's crowded, slow-boat elevator. The goddamned queen of Sheba?

Fortunately, the elevator is very slow, and by the time I stepped off it almost a minute later, I had pretty much come to my senses. After all, if a citizen shows up to voluntarily help with an investigation, the least the detective involved can do is not act like a total jerk.

The chief's conference-room door comes complete with a single sliver of glass window in it that allows someone outside in the lobby area to peek inside. Presumably, that's so the person outside can tell exactly what's going on before entering the room and disrupting the proceedings.

The furnishings are Danish modern-cheap Danish modern. They consist of a credenza, a single oval-shaped oak table, and eight matching chairs. There is a ninth chair as well. The cloth and basic pattern of that one are the same as that on the other eight, but that ninth one is a captain's chair with armrests on it. Seattle's chief of police may be in favor of the common touch, but when he's involved in something that requires the use of this particular conference room, you can bet the captain's chair belongs to him and nobody else.

That Friday morning, when I paused outside the door and peeked in through the window, there was only one person in the room. Not surprisingly, June Miller had chosen the captain's chair as the one in which to sit.

To say the woman was striking would do June Miller a serious disservice. Even sitting down, I could tell she was a tall woman with chin-length white-blond hair, a lithe, slim body, a long, elegant neck, and the erect bearing of a West Point graduate. Her hands were gracefully draped over the ends of the armrests. Her long, slender fingers-one studded with a very impressive diamond-curled slightly around the wood as if she were half asleep. Yet, the moment I pushed open the door, she was on her feet and wide awake, hand outstretched. A pair of startling ice-blue eyes sought mine.

"Are you Detective Beaumont?" she asked.

"Yes. What can I do for you?"

"I came to tell you that he didn't do it."

Mrs. Reeder, my senior English teacher at Ballard High School thirty years ago, used to be a stickler for faulty pronoun reference. I remember the speech pretty much verbatim, even after all these years, because she delivered it often-on an average of once a week.

"You hounds," Mrs. Reeder would shriek, striking terror in our hearts and rapping her knuckles on the chalkboard for emphasis. "You must not use a pronoun unless a noun clearly precedes it. Unless one naturally follows the other, what you write becomes so much babble. People can't make heads nor tails of it."

In this case, that same edict should have applied to speaking as well as writing. I had no idea what June Miller was trying to tell me. "Who didn't do what?" I asked.

"The man you're looking for," she returned with an exasperated furrowing of her smooth brow. "The one whose sketch is in the newspaper this morning. I'm telling you he didn't do it-didn't do any of the things the article hints he did."

I motioned June Miller back into the seat she had vacated and then settled into an adjoining one myself.

"You make that statement as if you know it for a fact," I said.

"Oh, yes," she agreed, nodding. "I do know it."

"How?" I asked.

"Because he told me," June Miller answered staunchly, as though the matter were already settled once and for all. "Because he said he didn't do it, and I believe him."

"Does this person have a name?" I asked.

June Miller nodded. "His name's Lorenzo," she said. "He happens to be a friend of mine."

"Lorenzo what?"

"Do I have to tell you that? His last name, I mean."

The truth is, she did. It's a felony to withhold information in a homicide case, but I sensed that this was no time to play scare tactics.

"It would be helpful," I said, leaning back in the chair. "What brought you here so early this morning, Mrs. Miller?"

She glanced at the floor, chewing on her lip. "Maxwell Cole gave me your name," she said. "John and I know him. I guess you know John is my husband?"

I nodded but didn't comment.

"We met Max years ago at a campaign function, and we've more or less stayed in touch. I called him last night to ask his advice. He told me you had some connection to all this-that you were the person I should talk to."

It was funny that June Miller could slice through the "special assignment" bullshit and reach Maxwell Cole in Olympia when J. P. Beaumont couldn't. Of course, I had a feeling that there were any number of bureaucratic, red-tape tangles that June Miller could cut her way through without ever having to resort to use of her husband's political prestige.

"And how does Maxwell Cole happen to know so damn much about my case assignments these days?" I asked, attempting to control my irritation. It wasn't right for me to allow fallout from his and my longstanding animosity to land on an innocent downwinder named June Miller.

"He said he was at a party given by Ron and Bonnie Elgin. Something about a charity auction. From the way he talked, I thought you were there, too."

Thanks to June Miller, I now had a name to attach to the leak Captain Powell wanted plugged. Unfortunately, the name was mine. And when the good captain came around looking to lop off heads, mine would be first to roll. The fact that the leak was inadvertent wouldn't help my cause in the least. Bonnie Elgin must have mentioned it to some of her party guests when she got off the phone from talking with me. It was my fault for not cautioning her to silence.

It was not yet eight o'clock in the morning, but already this was feeling like a very long day. "I wasn't at the party in person," I said, "but go on."

"Of course, I already knew about Gunter Gebhardt's murder," June Miller continued. "In fact, I more or less expected someone to come talk to me about it before now, but according to Max, I guess you've been too busy following other leads to get around to interviewing the neighbors."

"Neighbors?" I sat up straighter. "Wait just a minute. Where do you live?"

"On Culpeper Court. Right across from the Gebhardts' house. We just had our house remodeled."

"So you knew Gunter and Else Gebhardt?"

June Miller dropped her gaze and pursed her lips before replying. "We aren't exactly best friends," she said.

"What does that mean?"

Raising her chin, June Miller's eyes met and held mine without flinching. "Gunter Gebhardt was a…" She paused, searching for the right words, then shook her head. "He wasn't a very nice neighbor," she said lamely, leaving me with the impression that she had backed away from saying something much stronger.

"I'm not all that grief-stricken that he's dead, either. Of course, I'm sorry for Else and Kari."

"You know them fairly well then?"

June nodded. "Before she left home, Kari used to baby-sit for my son, Brett. I know this will be hard on Kari and her mother, but don't expect me to shed any tears for that unpleasant man. I won't, not at all."

Every time she mentioned Gunter, June spoke with such carefully controlled vehemence that it made me wonder what was behind it. "I take it you and Gunter had some difficulties?" I suggested.

She ran her hand over her already smooth hair, then took a deep breath before she answered. "He threatened to hurt Barney, to get rid of him."

I was sure she had just told me her son's name was Brett. "Who's Barney?" I asked.

"Our dog. A terrier. We named him Barney as a joke. You know, after the guy who used to be on TV-Barney Miller?"

"I see," I said.

"Threatening Barney would have been bad enough all by itself, but Brett and the dog were right there together. You see, Barney's batteries had run down…"

"His batteries?"

Had I missed something? At first I had thought we were discussing a real dog, but the only ones I know that require batteries are the little stuffed ones toy stores sometimes set to yapping in shopping malls.

"For his collar," June Miller explained. "We have one of those invisible fences. There's a battery on Barney's collar. If he crosses a certain line in the yard, the collar zaps him with a little shock. But it only works as long as the batteries are charged. We're supposed to replace them every four months, but every once in a while, I'll get a pair that runs down sooner than the four months.

"Barney's a smart dog. I don't know how he knows when the batteries are running low, but he does. As soon as they quit, he's out of there. Once I found him all the way up on top of Greenbrier, headed downtown.

"Anyway, this one time, Barney got away. Brett saw him go. He ran inside to get the leash. By the time he came back outside, Barney was across the street, leaving a doggy calling card in Gunter Gebhardt's precious front lawn. I came home a few minutes later. I had just run up to the store to pick up a couple of things for dinner. Brett's old enough to leave alone every once in a while, for a few minutes at a time, anyway. It never occurred to me that anyone here in the neighborhood would think of hurting the dog or deliberately scaring my child."

"What happened when you came home?"

"Brett and Barney were both inside. Brett was scared to death and crying. He told me Mr. Gebhardt told him that if he ever caught Barney in his yard again, he was going to get rid of him. My first thought was that Brett was making a big deal out of something that wasn't all that serious. My son has a very active imagination. But he wasn't making it up, Detective Beaumont. Not at all.

"After I put the groceries away, I left Brett where he was, and I went across the street to clean up the mess and see what I could do to straighten things out. The mess was already gone, of course. Gunter had evidently taken care of that himself. I rang the bell. When he came to the door, he yelled at me. Told me the same thing he'd said to Brett. That if Barney ever came in his yard again, he might just disappear."

"How long ago was this?" I asked.

"Right at the beginning of the summer. Just after school got out. It's almost six months ago now, because I marked it on the calendar. Now I'm replacing the batteries every three months, just to be on the safe side. I'm supposed to put in a new set next week."

"I can see this is all very troubling for you, Mrs. Miller," I said sympathetically. "But what you've told me so far is a long-standing problem. I don't think you've been here since six-twenty this morning waiting to tell me about Gunter Gebhardt threatening your dog."

"No," she agreed. "You're right. I came because of Lorenzo. I would have come anyway, but when I realized it was over that worthless man-over Gunter-I had to do something about it, something to help."

I'm the kind of person who doesn't sort through his pocket debris on a regular basis. Stuff I remove from pockets one night when I'm on my way to bed tends to be reloaded, as is, when I dress the next morning.

Reaching into my jacket pocket, I pulled out my copy of Bonnie Elgin's Identi-Kit sketch and placed it on the table in front of June Miller.

"Is this your friend Lorenzo?" I asked.

June nodded. "Not exactly, but close."

"You know why we're looking for him?"

"Not really."

"Because he was seen running through the neighborhood adjacent to Fishermen's Terminal a few minutes before the fire was discovered on Gunter Gebhardt's boat. He ran into the street and was hit by a passing vehicle."

"I know some of that. I read the newspaper while I was waiting. But I knew about it before then, too. I heard about it last night."

"How?"

"From Maria. Lorenzo's sister. She came to Beso del Sol looking for me. Lorenzo sent her to find me and to ask me to help."

I had seen Beso del Sol in the Wallingford district. It looked to me like an ordinary Mexican-food joint. My first thought was that maybe the Millers were Mexican-food junkies and went there often enough to be considered regulars, but June Miller soon disabused me of that notion.

"I go there once a week for the salsa dancing."

"Salsa dancing?" I asked, still wondering if this had something to do with food. "What's that?"

For the first time since we'd started talking, the woman actually smiled-a dazzling, white-toothed smile.

"It's a hobby of mine," she said. "I walk around Green Lake in the morning, and I salsa dance three or four nights a week. Some people jog. I dance."

"You and your husband both?"

She shook her head. Her hair, free of any noticeable layers of spray or goo, shimmered and then settled softly back around her face without a single strand out of place. "John doesn't go," she said. "At least not often. He stays home with Brett."

Typical male, I couldn't help wondering if former Congressman Miller wasn't riding for a fall. My face must have given my dirty mind away.

"It's not like that," June Miller said quickly. "People really do go there to dance, nothing else. It's not a pickup joint."

"You go dancing at Beso del Sol three or four nights a week, and that's where you met this Lorenzo person?"

"I don't go there every night," June Miller corrected. "The dancing moves from place to place. Sometimes it's at the New World. Sometimes Latitude Forty-seven. Sometimes at the Ballard Fire House. And yes, Beso is where I first met Lorenzo. He's a very good dancer."

"What else can you tell me about him?"

"He's scared, Detective Beaumont. Maria told me he's scared to death. I'm sure he ought to have his leg sewn up, but he refuses to go to the doctor."

"If he didn't do anything, why's he scared?" I asked. "What's he scared of?"

"The police."

"Why?"

"He's from Guatemala."

"So?"

"Do you know anything about human-rights violations? Amnesty International?"

I'm always so caught up in that home-grown variety of human-rights violation known as murder that I don't have to go looking for it beyond our borders.

"It's not top on my list of interests," I admitted.

"When it comes to police brutality-to police operating out of control-Guatemala used to take the prize. That's why Lorenzo's family came here in the first place. His older brother was killed by two policemen. Lorenzo was in the room when it happened. He's scared the same thing will happen to him here."

"This is Seattle," I said.

"I know," she agreed. "I went to see him last night. Maria took me to their apartment. I talked to him and tried to explain all that. But he was so upset by what he had seen and heard that he could barely talk. Even to me. It really shook him up."

"What did?"

June Miller took a deep breath. "Lorenzo's brother was tortured to death," she said softly. "By two police officers. Lorenzo works two jobs these days-one as a gardener. But he's also a trained mechanic. He was helping Gunter Gebhardt do some work on his boat. On the side. For cash. But when he came to work that morning…"

She paused, then stopped altogether.

"What?" I urged impatiently.

June Miller took yet another deep breath. "I don't know what he heard or saw because he won't tell me. But it must have been awful."

As far as I knew, no mention of Gunter Gebhardt's mutilation had appeared in any of the local media. This wasn't something June Miller had heard from Bonnie Elgin or from Maxwell Cole, either. The room grew silent.

"You're telling me Lorenzo saw Gunter Gebhardt being tortured?"

"He didn't say that to me," June Miller answered. "But he must have seen something."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because of what Maria told me. She says that ever since, whenever he falls asleep, even for a few minutes, the nightmares start up again. The same nightmares that kept him awake for years after his brother died."

"You have to take me to see him," I said softly.

"Yes," June Miller agreed. "I know I do. But you can see why I don't want to."

And indeed I could.

"When can I talk to him?"

"Tonight. Maria said she'll try to bring him to the Ballard Fire House. That's where the salsa dancing is tonight. I told her I'd try to make arrangements to bring you there as well."

Salsa dancing in Ballard? Not the Ballard I knew-or used to know. "What do I do?" I asked.

"Just show up around ten o'clock or so. Pay the cover charge. I'll meet you inside. There's a band. The dancing doesn't really get under way until around eleven."

"What do I wear?"

"What you have on is fine."

"I have a partner, you know. Her name's Sue Danielson. Is it all right if she comes along?"

I knew I'd be in a whole lot of trouble if she couldn't.

"Do you dance?" June Miller asked.

"Not me."

"How about your partner?"

"We work the Homicide Squad," I said. "The subject of dancing has never come up."

"You can bring her along," June agreed. "But it'll be better if she knows how to dance."