Lying in wait

5

Sue Danielson wanted to go straight back to Fishermen's Terminal and see what was happening there, but I persuaded her otherwise. Until members of the crime-scene team finished up with their physical examination of the Isolde, there wasn't all that much for a couple of stray homicide detectives to do but to stand around with our hands in our pockets and look useless and/or pretty, depending on your point of view.

So we turned off Emerson onto Twenty-third, parked in a triangular chuck-holed mire that passed for a parking lot and did an impromptu but thorough shoe-leather tour of the neighborhood. The strip of land on the far side of the railroad tracks contained a collection of small, one- and two-man businesses. We must have dropped in on ten or twelve offices and shops in the area bordered by Emerson and West Elmore. Most of them faced southwest and overlooked the railroad cut that sliced across the northeastern slope of Magnolia Bluff.

Looking out each succeeding window, I was surprised to learn that the blue tarp that seemed so exposed from directly above it was really well concealed from observers on the other side of the cut. The sheltering berry bramble that served as a tent pole not only provided support, it also offered camouflage. Only twice did we catch glimpses of the bright blue plastic. Both of those flashes were seen from businesses due east of both the tent and the crosswalk on Gilman.

Most of the people we spoke to were startled to learn that the makeshift shelter existed at all, that it lay-just out of sight-in what was, to all appearances, a permanent no-man's-land along the Burlington Northern's railroad right-of-way. I had hoped to find some observant witness able to tell us something about the tent's occupant and where we might find him. No deal.

The people we spoke to either feigned astonishment or else seemed downright uncomfortable to learn someone actually lived in a cut where hobos have traditionally hung out since the bad old days of the thirties. The issue of homelessness tends to disappear if you don't see actual living evidence of it up close and personal each and every day. The last person I talked to was a young woman who, despite the chill weather, was bundled up and sitting next to a concrete picnic table on the very edge of the bank. She clutched an oversized plastic traveling mug from the Chevron Beverage Club in one hand and a smoldering cigarette in the other.

In Seattle in the nineties, smokers are generally considered personae non gratae. People who smoke are required to slink outside with their cigarettes so they don't pollute the breathing mechanisms of their nonsmoking colleagues with their pall of secondhand smoke.

From the rim of cigarette butts that surrounded the table, this woman wasn't the only tobacco addict in the neighborhood who'd recently come here to smoke. Even in this alternating cold, wet weather, she was still sitting outside. I wondered how many of those outdoor smokers were courting the same kind of exotic pneumonia that had killed my grandfather.

When the woman saw me approaching, she pulled her coffee mug closer into her down jacket and guiltily moved the cigarette so it was below the level of the tabletop as though I were one of Seattle's smoke police. When I showed her my Seattle Police Department I.D., she seemed relieved to see I was only a homicide detective rather than some radical secondhand-smoke prohibitionist. The cigarette reappeared from under the table.

"Whaddya want?" she asked vaguely.

"Did you happen to see anyone unusual around here this morning, someone who didn't seem to fit in the neighborhood?"

She shook her head, tossing her mall-bang hair. "It was real foggy," she answered.

"Have you noticed a derelict-a tramp or street person-any time recently? Or have you seen anyone down near that blue tent on the other side of the cut?"

"What blue tent?" she asked, blowing a white plume of smoke into the air.

I pointed. "See that patch of blue over there on the face of the cliff?"

"Where?"

"Just above the timbers of the retaining wall. The blue you see is actually a tarp. It looks as though someone may be living there. I was hoping someone from here in the neighborhood might know who that person is or where I might find him."

The woman frowned. She gave me a doubtful look-as though she thought I was some kind of nut-and then looked in the direction I was pointing. "You mean somebody actually lives over there?" she asked finally. "No kidding?"

"No kidding."

"Well," she said. "I wouldn't know anything about that. Besides, why would somebody want to live down there in that hole with all those trains going past? They'd have to be crazy. What a stupid idea!"

She was young and more than slightly arrogant. She had a warm coat, wore a small diamond engagement ring on her left hand, and had enough extra money to squander two bucks per pack on her daily ration of cigarettes. Her whole attitude irked me. I suspected that she believed the reality of homelessness would never touch her personally. For her sake, I hoped she was right.

"What do you want him for?"

"There was a fire this morning over at Fishermen's Terminal, and…"

"I heard about that. Somebody died in it, didn't they?"

"Yes…"

She stood up, ground out her cigarette in the hard-packed earth beneath her feet, then pulled her coat more tightly around her. "My boyfriend will have a fit when he hears about the fire," she said. "He's from Bellevue. He keeps telling me I should find another job, someplace over on the East Side. He thinks my working in the city is too dangerous and stuff, know what I mean?"

I could have explained to her that every neighborhood has its own peculiar dangers, even ones on the East Side of Lake Washington, but her cigarette/coffee break must have been over. She headed across the street toward a tiny insurance office without giving me so much as a backward glance. No doubt there was a desk inside where she toiled away feeding letters and numbers into the keyboard and memory of some computer.

I found Sue already in the car when I showed up back at the Mustang, shaking my head in frustration. "Nothing?" she asked.

"Less than."

"Are you ready to give up and call it quits?"

"I guess," I admitted. "For the time being. We sure as hell aren't getting anywhere doing this."

By the time we got back to the Isolde, the crime-scene perimeter had been narrowed. The official off-limits area was now small enough to allow people access to other boats along the dock. While crime-scene investigation is important, it wasn't the only business that needed to be conducted on Dock 3 of Fishermen's Terminal that cold November morning.

We returned to the scene of the crime and learned that Audrey Cummings had already loaded Gunter Gebhardt's body into her gray van and had taken him back to the Medical Examiner's Office up at Harborview Hospital to await an autopsy. Janice Morraine was busy lifting prints from the guardrail of the boat. With her glasses pushed up into her hair and with her brows furrowed in concentration, Janice was making her way along the rail of the boat, examining what she saw there under a beam of light from the wand of an Alternative Light Source box.

An ALS, as it's called in the trade, is an expensive but handy crime-fighting tool that allows crime-scene technicians to locate and lift prints from places and materials-tire irons, for example-where previously they would have been impossible to detect. Everything Janice did was under the watchful eye of the arson investigator, Lieutenant Marian Rockwell.

Janice didn't seem at all happy with that arrangement. I guess it goes with the territory. I suspect she's like a lot of people I know who spend their lives peeling back progressively worse layers of humanity's dark side. Most of us are loners who don't do well when it comes to working under the scrutiny of a closely observing audience, not even an admiring one. And I knew from personal experience that Janice loses all patience with anyone or anything that gets in the way of crime-scene progress.

When Janice glanced up and caught sight of Sue and me standing together on the dock next to the Isolde, she scowled. "Now what do you two want?" she demanded irritably.

I knew better than to take her exasperation personally. "Just looking for a progress report," I returned lightly.

Janice Morraine was not amused. Without stopping what she was doing, she motioned curtly with her head in Lieutenant Rockwell's direction. "Why don't you ask her?" Janice suggested. "She seems to be standing around with nothing to do but watch me."

With a number of people working on one homicide team, it stands to reason there'll be fireworks sooner or later, but this was much sooner than I would have expected. Marian Rockwell raised one eyebrow at Janice's surly comment, but she didn't rise to the bait.

"I've already collected my samples," Marian said reasonably. "It'll take lab verification, of course, but I'd say this was a communicating fire with two points of ignition. One of them was in the lower bunk on the starboard side. The other was on the victim's clothing itself. My first guess is that the accelerant was charcoal lighter, but it's too soon to tell about that for sure."

"What two places?" Sue Danielson asked with a puzzled frown.

"The mattress was lit first and allowed to get a good blaze going. That's the main source of ignition. The man was poured down with flammable liquid, probably about the same time the mattress was lit, but the victim didn't catch fire until sometime later, until after the other fire got going good. Eventually, because of the fumes, flames flashed over from the bunk area to his clothing. When that happened, that poor bastard was history. It looks to me as though terrifying him was as important as killing him. And if whoever did it was hoping to use the fire to cover up the murder, they didn't do a very good job of it."

Isolde was riding low in the water. We were talking over the rumble of supplementary bilge pumps that had been pressed into service. They were hard at work purging the fish hole and engine room of all the excess water that had landed there as a result of the fire hoses.

Their ominous rumble was almost as dark as the thought that entered my head. "You said terrify. Do you think the victim was conscious when the first fire was set?" I asked.

Sue Danielson shot me a quizzical look. "Does that matter?"

I shrugged. "It seems like if he was, he could have called out for help. Isn't there a chance someone might have heard him?"

Janice Morraine and Marian Rockwell exchanged meaningful looks. "I'm sure he was unconscious part of the time," Janice said. "At least I hope he was. But even if he had been wide awake when the fire was set, he wouldn't have been able to say a word."

"Why not?"

Janice sighed. "Because somebody whacked off the poor bastard's family jewels and stuffed them in his mouth, that's why! Now will you two please get the hell out of here and let me concentrate on what I'm trying to do?"

"You bet," Sue breathed. "We'll be glad to." And she hustled off down the dock. I followed more slowly, with my hands stuffed deep in my pockets. If I could have crossed my legs, I would have.

"It's hard to imagine hating someone that much," I said to Sue, when I found her leaning against the Mustang. Marian Rockwell was there as well.

Sue nodded. "It sure as hell goes a step beyond the usual execution-style killing," she said.

"What it says to me," I added, "is that Gunter Gebhardt made himself an enemy. A serious, son of a bitch of an enemy. And someone with that kind of hard-assed grudge shouldn't be all that tough to find. People don't keep that kind of feud secret."

"All we have to do is ask the right questions, right?" Sue asked with just the smallest hint of sarcasm.

"Right," I answered.

I'm sure Sue Danielson had heard one version or another of this speech several times before. That's the big disadvantage of being the new man…person in Homicide-all the old-timers figure they have to take you to raise.

Marian Rockwell seemed to grasp the full import of our little Homicide Squad byplay. "My job's a lot easier than either of yours," she said.

"Oh? How's that?"

The arson investigator smiled without humor. "All I have to do is figure out what kind of accelerant this crazy asshole used," she said. "That's mostly a matter of simple chemistry. Spectrographic analysis. You two have to find whoever did it and why. When it comes down to why, I'm not so sure I want to know."

With that Marian Rockwell walked back up the dock where she once more took up a bird-dog position overlooking Janice Morraine's progress. Meanwhile, Sue stood gazing at the boat, as if just looking at the Isolde long enough would somehow reveal all the necessary answers.

"How about some lunch before we tackle all this?" I asked. "My treat."

Sue Danielson looked at me as though I were speaking some strange and incomprehensible foreign language. "Lunch?" she said blankly. "I don't think I'm particularly hungry at the moment."

"Maybe not," I told her, "but the way this case is going, we'd better grab something now while we can. It's likely to be a long day."

Sue glanced at her watch. "Oh, my God. You're right. It's after one. I told Jared I'd stop by and check on him during lunch. I wanted to make sure he's tending to business."

"Let's go do it then," I said, trying to sound more cheerful than I felt. Truth be known, I wanted to put Gunter Gebhardt out of my mind for the time being.

"In fact," I added, "if you'd like to, we could invite your son to come have lunch with us. How far away from here do you live?"

"Not that far," she told me. "Just on the other side of the Fremont Bridge."

A few minutes later, we pulled up in front of a bare-bones duplex on Dayton in the Fremont neighborhood. The place was a long way from lavish, but it was in a decent, settled part of the city. From the way the yards had been kept up and from the number of older, sedan-type cars visible on the street, I had an idea that some of those homes still housed the original owners-little old people who were just now making plans to sell off their bungalows in order to enter retirement or nursing homes.

"It's a long way from Belltown Terrace," Sue said defensively as she stopped the Mustang in the driveway in front of a minute garage.

"What do you mean?"

"Compared to where you live, this place must seem like almost as much of a dive as that bum's tent back there over the railroad tracks."

I felt a momentary flash of anger. I've never made a big deal of my money, one way or the other. All I want to do is to be left alone to do my job without having to justify where I live or how. I glanced at the house. It may have been a humble little place, but a big orange, black, and brown construction-paper turkey covered the entire lower half of the front door. A lot of time and effort and love had gone into that damn turkey. Sue Danielson didn't have anything to apologize for-certainly not to me.

"You pay the freight on this place all by yourself, don't you?" I asked.

She nodded. "Such as it is."

"With or without child support?"

"Mostly without," she admitted.

"So you earn this place, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Well, where I live is a goddamned accident, Detective Danielson. I'm living in the penthouse of Belltown Terrace because God reached out and struck my life with lightning once, not because I've earned the right to be there. So don't give me any crap about it. And while you're at it, don't give me any crap about where you live, either. Got it?"

After a moment, she smiled slightly and nodded. "The guys down at the department are right about you, aren't they? You can be a crotchety old bastard at times."

"Damn straight! Now, are you going to go get that kid of yours, or am I?"

"I'm going, I'm going," Sue Danielson said.

And she did.