Lying in wait

24

As I drove down Greenbrier to Culpeper Court, the entire neighborhood was lit up by the pulsing blue lights of three different blue-and-white squad cars.

Dreading what might be waiting to be discovered inside the house, I parked the Porsche across the street at June and John Miller's house. As I hurried up Else Gebhardt's driveway, a young uniformed patrol officer hustled out of the house to meet me.

"I'm Detective Beaumont," I told her, flashing my badge. "What did you find?"

"Absolutely nothing," she answered. "Nobody's home, but there's no sign of trouble, either. What did you think we'd find?"

Prepared for the worst possible carnage, I now felt weak with relief. "No sign of a struggle?" I repeated lamely.

"None. Captain Riley's on the radio and mad as hell. He wants to know what you think is going on."

I'll just bet he did. And if my fears proved groundless, he was going to be a whole lot madder than he was right then.

"Just let me take a look for myself," I told her. "As soon as I figure out what's gone down, I'll let you know, so you can pass the word. In the meantime, ask him to put a car on an abandoned Rollins truck parked between net sheds three and four down at Fishermen's Terminal. I don't want anyone near that vehicle until the crime lab has a chance to give it a good going-over." I handed over the scribbled license-plate number.

While the officer hurried off to report to her captain, I walked into Else Gebhardt's house. From the moment I had realized One Day at a Time was gone, I had been overwhelmed with the weight of my own culpability. But Else's clean and orderly house added something more to the mix.

I don't happen to be one of those gullible people who believes in self-bending forks or miraculously mended watches, and I'm certainly not well versed in the intricacies of ESP. But a sense of hopeless dread filled me as I wandered from room to room. It grew infinitely worse when I stepped into the bedroom that evidently belonged to Else Gebhardt's mother. Inge Didricksen's walker was there, parked beside the bed. But the old lady was nowhere in sight.

As soon as I saw the walker and knew that Inge was gone, too, I realized that all three of them-the old woman, her daughter, and her granddaughter-were missing, even though, in the world of law enforcement, no one enters the ranks of officially missing persons until after a full twenty-four hours have elapsed.

The last part of the house to search was the basement. Not only was the outside door unlocked, it was open. When I started down the dimly lit stairs, I almost broke my neck. The two railroad ties that had once been out of the way on either side of the staircase now had been moved into the center part of the risers. I slipped and would have fallen if I hadn't managed to catch myself on the banister.

Looking back up the stairway, I saw a twelve-volt battery tucked into the space behind the door. It was connected to an electric winch. It resembled the kind of setup they sometimes mount on the front bumpers of off-road vehicles.

As soon as I saw the winch, I finally understood the railroad ties as well. They were all part of a simple hoist system Gunter Gebhardt must have used to raise and lower equipment into and out of the basement.

The lights were already on. I descended the stairs and stood still for a moment, getting my bearings. I realized almost at once that something about that long, narrow room was different than it had been when I visited it the first time. At first I couldn't tell exactly what it was, but the room seemed larger somehow, more spacious, emptier. But then it's always easier to see what's there in front of your eyes than it is to remember something that was there once but isn't any longer.

One thing that made the room seem bigger was the missing soldiers. That was no surprise. Else had told me about selling them. The lights glared off the bare shelves in the bank of curio cases. The bright fluorescent glow on stark white walls gave the place an abandoned, sterile look. But it was more than just the soldiers. Something else was missing as well.

And that's when I realized what it was. The tools were gone from the shelves at the opposite end of the room. All of them. Every last one. Had Else sold them, too?

And then I understood. Of course. How could I have been so stupid? The tools. Lorenzo had said something about tools, about how they'd brought tools and supplies home with them on board the fishing boat. Tools they'd picked up from Gunter's joint-venture partner.

A wave of gooseflesh swept up my legs when I finally realized the awful truth about all those neatly organized tools that had once been stacked, row upon row, in Gunter Gebhardt's impossibly clean basement.

How many gold teeth did it take to make a vise? I wondered, feeling almost sick to my stomach. Or a sledge hammer? Or a solid-gold wrench? And at a rate of five thousand people a day, how many murderous Sobibor days had it taken to accumulate all the gold hidden in Gunter's hoard of tools.

I said I'm not psychic, and I'm not claustrophobic, either, but suddenly it seemed as though the walls of the basement were closing in on me. Fighting back nausea, I spun around and headed back toward the stairs. And that's when I realized what else was missing.

The engine. The one at the bottom of the stairs-the one I had stumbled over when Else had brought Sue and me down to show us the soldiers. At the time, I had thought it to be some kind of auxiliary power generator. No doubt it was made of gold as well.

Appalled, I rumbled up the stairs and out the back door into the cool comfort of the cold, wet air. I was standing there with my chest heaving when Michael Morris and June Miller found me. Michael hadn't been wearing a jacket when I last saw him, but he was now. It must have belonged to John Miller, because it came almost to the young man's knees.

"What's happened in there?" Michael asked me, his face stark with alarm and worry. "Nobody will tell me anything."

"Nothing," I said.

"What do you mean, nothing?"

There was no sense in making things worse for him. "There's no sign of struggle in there, Michael. It's as though all three of them simply decided to go away for a while. They seem to have left in a very orderly manner. It's like they just stepped outside and locked the door."

"But they didn't do that," Michael objected. "I know Kari wouldn't leave voluntarily, not without calling me or leaving a message."

I turned to June. "When the truck was being loaded, did you see any sign of coercion?" I asked. "Anything to indicate that the people you saw were being forced to do something against their will?"

June Miller shook her head. "No," she said. "Not at all."

Of course not, I thought bitterly. Because Alan Damn Torvoldsen was in it up to his Norwegian eyebrows the whole time he was feeding me his line of pathetic bullshit about how Else Didriksen broke his heart by marrying someone else.

Sue Danielson's Escort showed up on the street, then pulled into the Millers' driveway directly behind the 928. She popped out wearing jeans and a bright yellow slicker. "You look like hell, Beau," she said as soon as she was close enough to catch a glimpse of my face. "What's going on?"

"The tools," I told her, leading her a little away from the others so we could speak privately. "Gunter Gebhardt's tools are gone from the basement."

"So?"

"The soldiers weren't made out of the missing Sobibor gold," I answered. "The tools were."

"Oh," Sue said.

"It looks like Erika Weber Schmidt found herself an accomplice," I added. "Unfortunately his name is Alan Torvoldsen. They're out on his boat right this minute. I'm afraid Else and Kari Gebhardt and Inge Didriksen are out there with them."

Sue frowned. "What makes you think that?"

"Because earlier this afternoon I asked Alan to come over here and look after Else for me. After that fiasco with Moise and Avram walking away with the soldiers, I was worried someone else might try to pull a fast one. I asked Alan not to let any strangers into the house. I don't know how he kept from laughing in my face."

"How do you know for sure he's in on whatever's going on?" Sue asked.

"Because June Miller saw him loading the truck."

Sue Danielson glanced briefly in June Miller's direction and then back at me. "You know, none of this is your fault," she said.

It irked me that I was that transparent, that she could so easily grasp exactly what was going on with me. "The hell it isn't," I responded. "If I had just let things alone…" I gave up. There was no point in saying anything more.

By then two of the three squad cars had already left the Gebhardt place. Only two officers were left, one of whom was the young woman I'd spoken to earlier. I was less than eager to chat with either her or with her partner. I knew they were both destined to spend most of the rest of their shift filling out a mountain of paper.

Not that it would do any good. They had broken into Else's Gebhardt's house without a warrant, based on my suspicion that something was amiss, but they had discovered no solid evidence to back up my claim. Consequently, no amount of explaining to Captain Riley would ever square what they had done. He would blame them. They would pass the buck and blame me.

I would live or die depending on whether or not Else Gebhardt took exception to their relatively harmless act of breaking and entering. If she filed a complaint, then there'd be the devil to pay down at Seattle P.D. And the responsibility would fall squarely where it belonged-on me.

A man came walking up to us. He was tall, stoop-shouldered, wearing glasses and a trench coat. "I'm John Miller," he said, offering his hand. "June's taken that poor young man and gone inside to make cocoa. She wanted me to ask you inside. It's cold and wet out here."

My mother reserved her highest criticism for those she considered too stupid to live. They were always the ones who were "too dumb to come in out of the rain." Which is exactly how stupid her middle-aged son was being right then.

The words John Miller used-"cold and wet"-amounted to gross understatement. A gusting wind drove splinters of icy raindrops into our faces and clothing. And there I stood in the Gebhardts' driveway on Culpeper Court with nothing at all on over my soaking sports jacket. I had failed to notice that I was wet to the skin and shivering.

With John Miller leading the way, we migrated across the street to a house with evidence of recent construction and relandscaping. We entered by walking past what architects are fond of calling a "water feature." The babble of running water burbling noisily over river rocks may sound wonderful on a hot summer's afternoon, but on a cold, wet winter's evening, it only made me that much colder.

Inside the house, John introduced Sue and me to a grizzled, lop-eared black-and-white terrier named Barney. The dog eased over against Sue to demand some attention and petting while John offered me a stack of towels and led me to a bathroom that was fully stocked with a six-year-old's complement of rubber toys.

After toweling myself as dry as possible, I returned to the living room to find John sitting beside the gas-burning fireplace and quizzing Sue about what it was like to be a single parent as well as a police officer. I found it intriguing that he was more interested in that than he was in the details of whatever untoward events had occurred across the street. Meantime, June had taken Michael Morris into the kitchen, where she was busily making a pot of cocoa and administering a dose of TLC to a young man very much in need of both.

I heard her telling him in a calm, soothing voice that he shouldn't worry, that everything was going to be fine. Even though I didn't agree with her-everything wasn't going to be fine-I still gave the woman credit for trying. Michael Morris was almost frantic with worry.

Like somebody else I knew, he was dealing with his own damning set of "if onlys." If only he had insisted that his mother invite Kari over to dinner; if only he had come to Blue Ridge earlier in the evening; if only; if only; if only. Ad infinitum.

I felt like telling him he didn't have a corner on the guilt market. Deeply mired in my own storm of self-recrimination, I almost missed Sue Danielson's shrewd suggestion when she broke off her polite conversation with John Miller and abruptly changed the subject back to the case at hand.

"How long ago did they clear the locks?" she asked.

"Why the hell didn't I think of that?" I demanded.

Lake Washington is big, but not big enough to hide a commercial fishing boat loaded with gold bullion disguised as a handyman's garageful of tools. Shilshole Bay, backed first by Puget Sound and by the open ocean far beyond that, is less than two miles from Fishermen's Terminal. Two miles northwest and, at low tide, twenty-seven feet lower.

To get to one from the other, boats have to pass through Salmon Bay and the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks. As Heather Peters told me once in an elegantly simple but apt description, locks are nothing but elevators for boats. And that's true. When heading out to sea, boats come into the lock area from Salmon Bay and then tie up at a pier. When the lock attendants let the water out, the effect is similar to pulling the plug in a bathtub. The water level goes down, and so do any boats inside the lock. When the operation is over, the boats are lower than they were when they started.

In the summer or during peak fishing and boating seasons when hundreds of boats come and go through the locks each day, it would be virtually impossible to learn whether or not a particular boat had cleared the locks. But this was late fall, and traffic was down. Most boaters, recreational and commercial alike, were content to spend the winter months landlocked and couch-bound in front of their glowing television sets.

Not only was it winter, it was night as well. Nighttime traffic on the locks would be even lighter than during the day. In addition, Alan Torvoldsen's One Day at a Time was one disreputable-looking tub. Old T-class army lighters, born again and refitted as longliners, aren't all that common in the halibut fishery. If a vessel like that had passed through the locks sometime between 9:00 P. M. and midnight, someone-most likely one of the dockside attendants-was bound to remember.

I borrowed the Millers' nearest phone and placed a call to the Lockmaster. It rang for a long time with no answer. Finally, when I was almost ready to give up, someone came on the line. "Locks," he said.

"This is Detective J. P. Beaumont," I said. "Seattle P.D. We've got an emergency here. I want you to hold all traffic until we get there. It should only take ten minutes or so."

"No problem," the man returned. "We've got almost a half-hour wait right now. What's your name again?"

"Beaumont. Detective J. P. Beaumont."

"You come ahead on down. I'll have someone go over and unlock the gate."

As Sue and I stood up and headed for the door, June Miller walked into the living room carrying a tray loaded with cups full of steaming cocoa. She looked disappointed. "Don't you want to drink some of this before you go?" she asked.

I was grateful when Sue answered for us both. "I'm sorry, we just realized there's something we need to check right away."

But June Miller wasn't about to take no for an answer. "I'll pour it into paper cups for you," she said. "That way you can take it with you. And wouldn't you like to borrow one of John's jackets?" she said to me. "Your clothes are still wet."

At Sue's insistence, I accepted the traveling cup of cocoa with good grace, but I turned down the use of a borrowed coat. After all, wimps wear coats. Cool macho dudes don't.

"No thanks," I said, "I'll be fine."

Famous last words, of course, but I was too intent on noodling out where Alan Torvoldsen might be going to bother with the mundane issue of whether or not to wear a coat. At the time, it didn't seem all that important.

Out in the driveway, Sue and I settled on using one vehicle-mine. We had to back her Escort out of the way in order to get to the 928, but minutes later, properly belted into the Porsche, we were racing back down Fifteenth from Blue Ridge toward the locks. I drove, while Sue sipped quietly on her cocoa for the better part of a mile.

"When you come out of the locks into Shilshole Bay, you only have two choices," she said thoughtfully. "You either have to go north or south, right or left. Which do you think he'd take?"

"It depends on what he wants to accomplish," I answered. "If he wants to head for the open sea, then he has to head north along the shipping lanes and out through the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Every ship out there has an American pilot who comes on board at Port Angeles, and all those ships are in constant radio contact with Marine Traffic Control. Someone would be bound to see them."

"What about south of here?" Sue Danielson asked.

"There's lots less shipping traffic," I answered. "If they wanted to hide out until the heat let up a little or to dock somewhere long enough to refit the One Day so she wasn't quite so readily recognizable, they might head south. There must be hundreds of places tucked away in among the islands between here and Olympia at the south end of Puget Sound where a boat could duck in and disappear. Most of those sheltered bays and coves have summer cabins built near them, but in the winter they're pretty much deserted."

By then we were at the locks. We parked in an almost deserted lot. As promised, the gate was closed but unlocked. We made our way into the office, where we found the two on-duty attendants sipping coffee, complaining about the weather, and huddling next to a wall heater to stay warm.

"What can we do for you?" one asked.

The speaker's disembodied voice came through the kind of synthesizer they use on people who've lost a larynx to throat cancer. That must not have made much of an impression on him, however, since he and his colleague were both still smoking. Not only did that defy the rules of good sense, but it was most likely against the law as well. Smoking in the workplace is very much against the rules in Seattle, a place that prides itself on being the secondhand-smoke conscience of the world.

We showed the two men our badges, but they seemed singularly unimpressed. "You could help us by letting us know whether or not a fishing vessel named One Day at a Time came through the locks earlier tonight," I said.

The man with the tinny voice shrugged his shoulders. "Don't bother asking me," he said. "How about it, Hank? You were taking lines tonight. Do you remember a boat by that name or not?"

"Not many boats through here tonight," Hank answered, sucking on his smoke. "What's it look like?"

"It's an old T-class freighter."

Hank nodded sagely. "Oh, yeah," he said. "That one. Ugly as sin. Came through long about ten or so."

"Who was on it?" I asked. "Did you see anybody?"

"One guy. Red hair. Going a little bald. He was handling all the lines himself. Really had to scramble."

"Did you see anyone else on board?"

Hank shook his head. "Nope," he said. "Not a soul. Should I have?"

"No," I answered. "I was hoping is all."

"So you're cops," Voice Box said, now mulling the significance of our badges, which had long since been put away. "What's this guy done? Killed somebody or something? How come you're looking for him?"

"Stolen goods," Sue answered quickly, speaking up before I made a botch of it.

Hank laughed outright at that, ending with a rattly, cigarette-induced cough. "Dumb bastard," he said. "Pro'ly stole that godawful boat itself, come to think of it. While he was tying up, I tried to tell him there's a front blowing in from across Vancouver Island. Small-craft advisories. Gale-force winds. But you know those stubborn damn fishermen. ‘Been out in lots worse than this,' he tells me."

The hell he has, I thought angrily. Alan Torvoldsen might have been out in some pretty rough seas in his time, but I doubted he'd been in this much hot water.