Lying in wait

21

I understand that there are lots of people in the work force today who are into telecommuting. They work at home. I'm not one of them. I'm used to working at work. There's something about the workaday, slightly grubby ambience of the fifth floor that helps me think and focus. Since focusing was what I needed to do, I headed straight for my cubicle in the Public Safety Building.

It only took a moment to retrieve Stan Jacek's fax containing the Jane Doe autopsy findings. It took a hell of a lot longer than that to digest same.

Because the Camano Island victim's body had burned so completely, there was virtually no soft tissue remaining on the bones. Even so, many of the circumstances were similar to the ones we'd found in the Fishermen's Terminal incident. The victim's fingers and toes had all been removed and left to time-bake in a charred pie tin on top of the body. However, because of the condition of the tissue, it was impossible to discover whether the mutilations had occurred before or after the victim's death.

From my point of view, however, the biggest problem with the autopsy was that it dealt with the wrong person. If the dead woman wasn't Denise Whitney, who was she? And, for that matter, if Denise wasn't dead, where the hell was she? One more time, she had put her family through an emotional ordeal not unlike being tossed in a Waring blender. Had she done this to them herself, willingly? Or was she also among the killer's victims-a missing corpse, rotting and waiting to be discovered?

And then, of course, there was my other problem-the guys who might or might not be Simon Wiesenthal operatives. I hadn't a doubt in my mind that the two men who had paid their timely visit to Else Gebhardt, the two wheeler-dealers who had aced me out of Gunter's soldiers, were the same ones who had called on Kari and Michael up in Bellingham. So-were these characters really on the trail of Hans Gebhardt, or were they actually on the trail of the gold? Both, or neither?

The mire was so deep now that I didn't know what to think. Maybe Hans Gebhardt was still alive, and the Wiesenthal agents were doing exactly what they claimed-tracking him to ground. But there were other possibilities. What were the chances that Gunter Gebhardt's long-missing father was, in fact, long dead, and the story about searching for him was nothing more than an elaborate cover?

The Simon Wiesenthal organization. How do you go about contacting them? I wondered. After a few moments of reflection, I tried my old standby-I dialed Information-and came up winners, twice over. Within minutes I had numbers for the Simon Wiesenthal Foundation in both New York and Los Angeles. But neither office was open at five-something o'clock Pacific Standard Time on a November Saturday afternoon. And what I had to say wasn't something that could be trusted to the impersonal discretion of a taped voice-messaging system.

I could hear myself saying, "I'm a detective up here in Seattle, and I've got these two guys who may or may not be yours and who may or may not be wandering around the state of Washington killing people. Would you mind having somebody get back to me on this?"

Like hell they would!

So the question was, how to find out more about Moise and Avram without tipping my hand? If they were true-blue, then it might not hurt anything to check them out in a straightforward, official-channel fashion. But if they had gone bad-if they were renegades using their official credentials as free tickets to get away with murder-then any kind of official inquiry might be enough to send them dodging for cover.

Someone once told me that true creativity is 50 percent saturation, 49 percent perspiration, and I percent inspiration. After sitting there in the silence of my cubicle in a near-catatonic state for more than an hour and a half, after doing the hard work of turning the same questions over and over in my mind, inspiration finally struck at five minutes to six.

That's it, I thought. Picking up the phone, I dialed my old partner, Ron Peters.

As soon as he answered the phone and I heard voices and laughter and dishes clattering in the background, I remembered it was Amy's birthday. It sounded as though I had called right in the middle of a party.

"I hope I'm not interrupting anything."

"It's just family," Ron answered. "We're just setting the table."

"This won't take long, then. Do you happen to have Tony Freeman's home telephone number?"

Captain Anthony Freeman is the head of the Internal Investigations Section of Seattle P.D. He's a well-respected straight-shooter. He was also the one supervisor in the whole department who had been able to see beyond Ron Peters' wheelchair to the fact that a trained detective's abilities were being vastly underutilized in a permanent assignment to the Media Affairs section. Ron was now working full-time as an I.I.S. investigator.

I also happened to know that, despite the fact that he bore a Gentile-sounding name, Tony Freeman was Jewish. As a matter of fact, he once gave me a memorable ass-chewing that had to do with my using a Yiddish word that he personally found offensive. What he said wasn't at all mean-spirited, but it wasn't the kind of thing you forgot, either. Ever since that rebuke, the word schmuck has been excised from my spoken vocabulary.

"I have his number," Ron answered, "but it's unlisted, and I'm not supposed to give it out. Why do you need it? What's up?"

I was off on such a wild-goose chase that I wasn't eager to discuss it with anyone right then-not even Ron Peters. "It's about the boat fire at Fishermen's Terminal," I said.

"You don't think a police officer is involved, do you?" Ron asked.

"No, nothing like that. But I do need to talk to Tony. Could you maybe call him and see if you can get him to call me here?"

"Where's here?" Ron asked.

"I'm in the office," I answered. "At my desk."

"On Saturday?"

"Don't hassle me about it. Someday maybe I'll get a life."

Ron laughed. "Okay," he said. "I'll see what I can do. And if for some reason I'm not able to raise him by phone, I'll give you a call back right away."

But the person who returned my call barely two minutes later was Captain Tony Freeman himself. "Hey, Beau," he said. "I understand you wanted to talk to me. What's going on?"

"What do you know about the Simon Wiesenthal Foundation?" I asked.

It was an unexpected question, one that caught Tony Freeman slightly off guard, but there was only a brief pause. "Some," he answered. "That's the organization devoted to tracking down Nazi war criminals and bringing them to justice. What about them?"

"I think we may have a couple of them wandering around loose in Seattle at the moment," I told him. "And from what I've found out so far, they may be up to no good."

"Maybe you'd better bring me up to speed," Captain Freeman said.

And so I did, in as orderly a fashion as I could. When I finished, Captain Freeman was silent for a long moment. I could almost hear the wheels grinding through the telephone wires.

"If those two guys have turned, for one reason or another," he said gravely, "then they'll have gone to ground, and you'll never find them. If they're playing it straight, you won't have any trouble."

"Meaning?"

"Call the name-brand hotels and find out if they're registered guests under their own names, or at least under the names they gave those two kids up in Bellingham," Freeman answered. "If they are registered, most likely they'll be eating kosher meals, and that takes special arrangements. One of the local caterers that keeps a kosher kitchen would be providing the meals and delivering them, ready-to-eat, to the hotel. I could probably get you a list of the possible caterers if you like, but at this hour on a Saturday, that might be tough.

"So, if I were you, I'd start by calling area hotels. Call, ask for them by name, and see if the hotel operator puts you through to a room."

"Good idea," I said. "I don't know why I didn't think of that myself. I'll see what I can do."

"One more thing," Tony Freeman added. "I don't think the Wiesenthal group operates under any strict budgetary considerations, so I'd start at the top. Don't bother checking with Motel Six. Their expense account would do much better than that."

If you ask for advice, my position is you'd better be prepared to take it. So I started at the top, both in terms of quality and alphabet-with the Alexis. I figured I'd end up at the Westin when I hit the bottom of the list, but it turned out I didn't have to go that far. I hit pay dirt in the S 's when I got as far as the Sorrento.

As soon as the phone started ringing in a room, I slammed down the receiver. They were there, in a local hotel, and checked in under their own names-or at least under their most recent aliases. That meant Captain Freeman was right. Had Moise and Avram been crooked, they wouldn't have been nearly that easy to find. Now what?

I sat there for several minutes, pondering my next move. Should I hie myself up to the Sorrento, call from the lobby, invite them down for a drink in the bar? No, that didn't seem wise. After all, although these two men weren't really police officers, I had to believe they were trained professionals. They might take a very dim view of being tracked down in a strange city by a lone local cop who shouldn't have had any idea who they were or what they were up to. And if they decided to get physical about my interfering in their lives, no doubt they would both be fully capable of handling themselves in a crisis.

Once upon a time, I wouldn't have thought twice about waltzing up to the Sorrento all by myself, but age and wisdom and scars all go hand in hand. In this line of work, you either get smarter or you die, so after a few moments of consideration, I looked up Sue Danielson's home number and dialed it.

"'lo," a surly young male voice answered.

"Hello," I said. "Is your mother there?"

"I'm on the other line," Jared Danielson said. "Could you call back later, after I'm done?"

"No," I said. "I can't call back later."

I have very little patience with the self-appointed gatekeepers of the world, whether they be officially sanctioned receptionist types or simply self-centered teenagers who don't want to relinquish the phone to anyone else, especially to someone so undeserving as a mere bill-paying parent.

"This is business," I answered abruptly. "And it's important. I need to speak to your mother right away."

"Okay," he said. "Just a minute."

It was actually quite a bit more than a minute. It was more than two minutes, but I'll be damned if I was going to give up.

Eventually, Sue's voice came on the phone. "Hello. Is this call for me?"

"Yes, it's for you, dammit!"

"Beau?"

"Yes. I'm calling from down at the department. Tell Jared the next time he doesn't put me through to you right away, I'm going to come over and personally ream his ass."

"What a good idea." Sue laughed. "I'll pass the word. Now, what's happening?"

"Have you had dinner yet?"

"No. We spent the afternoon painting the kids' bathroom. I told the boys we'd order a pizza later on, but I haven't quite gotten around to that yet. We're still cleaning up."

"Go ahead and order pizza, but just enough for the boys."

"What about me?" she objected. "I'm starved."

"Put on your glad rags. We have to pay a call on yet another joint, but don't wear your salsa-dancing costume. I don't think the folks who hang out in the Hunt Club at the Sorrento speak salsa dancing. How long will it take for you to meet me there?"

"An hour maybe. I'll have to jump in the shower."

"I'll see you there, but tell that son of yours for me that this isn't a date, either."

When Sue hung up, I thumbed through my notebook until I found Michael Morris' telephone number at his parents' home on Mercer Island. A woman answered my ring. When I asked for Michael, I could hear the curiosity in her voice as she handed him the phone.

"Hello, Michael," I said. "Detective Beaumont. Are you busy?"

"We were about to sit down to dinner," he answered. "I'm not home all that often, and my mother invited friends over."

"What are the chances of your bailing out?"

"Maybe my mother wouldn't kill me if I told her it was urgent, but why? What's up?"

"I need you to come down to the Sorrento with me to help identify the two men who visited you and Kari up in Bellingham."

"You've found them?"

"I think so, but I need your help to be sure."

"How soon do you need me?"

"As soon as possible. Don't go to the hotel. I'm here in my office in the Public Safety Building. Come here first," I told him. "There's a guard downstairs. You can't come up to the fifth floor, but he'll call to let me know you're here. We'll ride over to the hotel together."

"Don't you want me to go get Kari so she could be there, too?"

"No," I said, "let's leave Kari out of this for the time being. She might have more of a conflict than you do when it comes to all this."

"Oh," Michael Morris said after a moment's thought. "I see what you mean," he added. "I'll be there just as soon as I can."

Michael and I arrived early, even after swinging by Belltown Terrace so I could put on something a little more appropriate for the rarefied atmosphere of the Sorrento. We commandeered a table in the well-appointed lobby-a table that allowed us an unobstructed view of both the front entrance and the elevator. We drank coffee, watched, and waited until Sue arrived.

Once again, she looked surprisingly good. After I ordered another coffee, one for Sue, I told her so.

She grinned. "Every woman looks good in a little black dress," she said. "But I came prepared." The matching evening bag that dangled by a string over one shoulder had a peculiar bulge and weight to it. I was glad to see she was carrying.

"Good," I said while Michael Morris' eyes bulged. I don't think the idea of real guns and real bullets had ever crossed his mind until that very moment.

The plan was simple. Sue and I took our positions-Sue in the wing-backed chair nearest the door that entered the lobby from the stairwell, and I at a point across from both the elevator and the main entrance. Michael's job was twofold. First he was to use the telephone and call to see if either Moise or Avram would answer the phone. If so, Michael was to tell them that he had important information to share with them. Hopefully, using that ruse, he could charm one or the other of the two men into coming down to the lobby for a conference.

That done, Michael was to position himself so he could see as much of the lobby area as possible and give us a prearranged signal as soon as either man appeared in the lobby. From that point on, Michael was ordered to leave everything else to Sue and me.

When Michael went over to use the phone, my heart started beating faster in my chest. The prospect of some kind of physical confrontation always gets the adrenaline flowing. I'm sure Sue was affected the same way. That's a conditioned response with cops-a way of life.

We couldn't hear exactly what Michael was saying while he was on the phone. When he finished the call, he retreated to his assigned chair and slumped down in it while Sue and I kept watch on the lights over the elevator door. Moments after Michael regained the chair, the elevator began rising from the ground floor in answer to a summons. It stopped on Four, and the down arrow came back on.

When the elevator door slid open, only one man stood revealed in the opening-a man of about my age, weight, and height. Glancing warily from side to side, he stepped into the lobby. Michael Morris rubbed his chin-the affirmative signal we'd been looking for.

As the man moved forward, so did I. "Mr. Steinman," I said, cutting off his access to the entrance and holding out my I.D. "I'm Detective J. P. Beaumont with the Seattle Police Department."

He stopped and glanced toward the door that opened from the stairwell where Sue Danielson-fetching, in her "little black dress"-was watching for Moise to make a not-unexpected appearance.

There is a tense life-and-death moment in every police officer/citizen contact-even the simplest traffic stop-when everything hangs in the balance. It must be similar to the way a tightrope walker feels suspended above a gasping crowd, frozen in the blinding glare of a spotlight. One misstep, one slight miscalculation, and disaster follows.

For a moment, we were all frozen in time and place, then the door to the stairwell swung open, and Moise appeared in the lobby. He stopped just inside the door and stood, reconnoitering. He reminded me of a lithe young cat-prepared to lunge forward but hanging back, waiting to see if it was necessary.

With his backup in position, the older man's shoulders relaxed, and he turned to me. "What can I do for you, Detective Beaumont?" he asked.

"You can tell me exactly who you are and what you're doing here."

"Would you like to see my identification?" he asked.

"Yes, but take it out very carefully."

He slid his hand into the inside breast pocket of his coat and brought out a slim leather holder. He flipped it open and handed me an embossed plastic card. One side I couldn't read at all-it was written in Hebrew. The other side said only, Avram Steinman, Simon Wiesenthal Associates. There was no address-only telephone and fax numbers with a prefix that belonged to neither New York City nor L.A.

I looked at the I.D. card for a moment, then handed it back. "What are you doing here?" I asked.

"I'm a hunter," Avram Steinman said. His speaking voice carried only the slightest hint of an accent. "I'm here investigating missing Nazi war criminals. How about you?"

"I'm with the Seattle Police Homicide Squad," I said. "I'm looking for a murderer."

Avram Steinman's eyes never stopped scanning the room. He was every bit as on guard as I was, maybe even more so, but his anxiety didn't carry over into his speaking voice.

"Maybe we should talk then, Detective Beaumont," he said, with a smile of wry amusement touching the corners of his mouth. "It sounds to me as though you and I are both in the same business."