Palindrome

CHAPTER 29

Sergeant Lee Williams stood in the staff cafeteria at Piedmont Hospital and looked for Mary Alice Taylor. He found her alone at a table, eating what looked like a diet meal. "Hi, Mary Alice," he said, "Remember me? Lee Williams?"

"Oh, sure. Hi, Lee," she said, brightening. "Have a seat. What brings you to Piedmont? Visiting a friend?"

"No," he said, settling in with his cup of coffee. "Actually, I came to see you."

"Well, that's nice," she said, looking slightly confused. "How's Martin?"

"He's just great. It's hard to get him to take off Bake's jersey, even if it does come to his shinbones."

"I'm glad he came down and met Bake. Bake loves kids."

"Well, he was certainly nice to Martin."

"What brings you to see me?" Mary Alice asked. "And how on earth did you find me?"

"Well, to tell you the truth, Mary Alice, I came to see you before we met, but you weren't here that day. It was just a coincidence that we met at the game."

She cocked her head. "What sort of work do you do, Lee?"

"I'm a police officer," he replied quietly. She took in a little breath and paused before she spoke.

"I see, and why did you come looking for me?"

"I wanted to talk with you about Bake Ramsey. This was before I knew that you and he had been… seeing each other. As far as I knew, he was just a patient here at the time."

"You came to see me when Bake was having his knee surgery?"

"After that. But I wanted to talk with you about the night before he had the surgery. Do you remember that night?" She flushed just slightly. "Was that when you met Bake?"

"Yes. What is this about, really?"

"Mary Alice, can we talk in confidence? It's important that you don't tell anyone else about our conversation." She hesitated. She knew that he meant Ramsey, but she was curious.

"I guess so," she said finally. "You were on duty all that night, weren't you?"

"Eight till eight. I worked an extra half-shift for a friend."

"How many times did you see Bake during that night?"

"At least once an hour," she said. "It's procedure to check frequently on patients."

"Did anything happen that night that could have caused you to miss a round, miss checking on Bake, I mean?" She was cautious, now.

"No, I don't think so."

"You made a regular check on him at least every hour all night?"

"That's the procedure."

I'm not getting anywhere, he thought. She knew something that he wanted to know, and she wasn't going to tell him. He decided to try shaking her up a little. "Mary Alice, did you have sexual intercourse with Bake Ramsey that night?"

She was rattled, but she held on. "I don't see what a question like that could possibly have to do with the police," she said. She hadn't denied it, and that was enough for him.

"If you remember anything else about the night before Bake's surgery, or, if you just feel you need some help or advice, then please don't hesitate to call me. I mean that."

She picked up the card and tucked it into a pocket of her uniform. "Thank you," she said.

He gave her a little wave and left the cafeteria. She might call, he thought; she just might. Especially if Ramsey roughs her up again. Especially if he makes her mad.

Williams rapped on the glass door of his captain's office. Captain Ed Haynes waved him in. "How's it going, Lee?" Haynes asked, pointing to a chair.

"I've had it worse, Ed," Williams said, sitting down. Ed Haynes had been his partner twelve years before, for the first four months after he'd made detective, so they were on informal terms. "I got something sticky I wanted to talk to you about."

"Sticky?"

"Well, iffy."

"You mean you've got a hunch and no evidence."

Williams laughed. "You're right, Cap."

"You guys always forget that I used to do your job. Tell me about it. Is it the Ferguson case?"

"Partly; it's more complicated than that. A little while back I got a call from a woman who says she thinks her ex-husband killed both the Fergusons and Al Schaefer."

"Schaefer was an accidental drowning in LA," Hayes said.

"Right; in the swimming pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel. But it may not have been accidental." Williams crossed his legs. "I thought what she had to say sounded pretty wild, but I looked into it. Turns out her ex was in LA the night Schaefer was murdered; he was staying at another hotel five minutes away. What's more, he was checked into Piedmont Hospital the night of the Ferguson killings, and that's only a few minutes from their house, even on foot."

"Does he have alibis for those two occasions?"

"He's accounted for his whereabouts both nights, but I think there might be holes in his stories, if I can find them."

"Motive?"

"He knew the Fergusons through his ex-wife, says he got along fine with them. I haven't been able to turn up anything to the contrary, except from the ex-wife, who says he hates her so much he might have killed them just because they're her friends."

"Doesn't sound good. What about a motive for Schaefer?"

"That's a little better. Schaefer represented his ex-wife in the divorce. Every divorced man hates his ex-wife's lawyer."

Haynes grinned. "I can vouch for that. Schaefer could be easy to hate, too, if he was the opposition."

"Also, if the ex-wife's story is true, the guy has a history of violence. She says he put her in the hospital, nearly killed her."

"That would look good in court, but you gotta make a case, first."

Haynes put his feet up on the desk. "Who's the guy?"

"You don't want to know."

Haynes's eyebrows went up. "Oh, yes I do."

"Bake Ramsey."

"Oh, shit. I didn't want to know that."

"Don't say I didn't tell you."

"You talked to anybody else about this? I mean anybody?"

"No."

"Then for Christ's sake, don't! Now, tell me what you want; I know you want something I'm not going to want to give you."

"I want to go to LA. I've had some help from a buddy out there, but I can't ask him for much more. I need to punch through Ramsey's alibi."

"What about the alibi for the Ferguson killings? Why don't you punch through that instead?"

"I've already tried. My witness is stonewalling, but I hope she might come around later. In the meantime, Ramsey's a time bomb."

"A time bomb? You think he's going to kill somebody else?"

"The ex-wife says he's zonked out on steroids. I've done a little reading on the effects, and one of them is markedly increased aggression. To tell you the truth-and this is another hunch, of course-I think he might be capable of killing anybody who annoys him." He tossed a newspaper clipping onto the desk. Haynes read it all the way through, nodding.

"The ex-wife could be right, I guess. Is she in any danger?"

"I don't think so; he doesn't know where she is."

"Where is she?" Williams shook his head ruefully. "I don't know, either. She wouldn't tell me, and our new telephone equipment wouldn't give us her number when she was on the line. The tech people think she was talking from a car phone, and I can't find a current address for her in Atlanta."

"Okay," Haynes said, taking his feet down and putting his elbows on his desk, "let's sum up. You think you've got two murders, two thousand miles apart, one of which belongs to another police department; your initial break is from a very possibly disgruntled ex-wife; you've got a practically nonexistent motive in the Ferguson case, and a so-so motive in the Schaefer case; you've got geographic opportunity in both cases, but your suspect has alibis for both; you've got no witnesses or physical evidence in either case; and your suspect is one of the most famous men in Atlanta, and the media would go bonkers if even a whiff of this reaches them. Does that about cover it?"

"Pretty much." Haynes began to look uncomfortable.

"Lee, I didn't want to bring this up, but I think it bears on what we're talking about."

"Yeah?"

"On the child murders case awhile back, you made some bad guesses, didn't you?"

Williams's ears burned. It was patently true that he had guessed wrong; a man had been convicted. But it was the first time his captain had brought it up. "I guess you could say that," he replied finally.

"You pushed too hard on your hunches when everybody else knew we had our man. I'll tell you the truth, Lee, that's why you don't have a partner at the moment. The attitude around here-I think it's unjustified-but the attitude is that nobody wants to be made to look bad by a guy who depends too much on hunches. You understand that, don't you?"

"Yeah, Cap, I understand it." It killed him to admit it, though.

"And now you want to go to LA to poke around. I expect you know that would involve a fax from me to the LA chief of detectives, letting him know I've got a man on his turf, and, of course, a copy of that would have to go to our own beloved chief, one of whose personal bugaboos is unnecessary travel during investigations."

"I hadn't thought that far ahead."

"Well, I have to." Haynes stared at the ceiling. "Looking at it as a detective, which I no longer am, of course, I'd say you've got a pretty good hunch."

Williams leaned forward. "Thank you, Ed."

"Then again, looking at it as the commander of the homicide squad, which I currently am, and which I would like to stay, I'd say I want something more from you."

"Such as?"

"A single piece of evidence; a collapsed alibi; another murder of somebody else Ramsey knows, who was breathing the same air at the time of expiration."

"And what if he does kill somebody else, Cap? How're you going to feel then, after what I've told you?"

Haynes stood up, walked to the door, and opened it. "You haven't told me a thing, Lee. This was just an informal chat about a hypothetical case. Have a nice day."

Williams got up and walked out of the office.

"Lee?" Williams stopped and turned. "If there's room on some of your plastic for an airline ticket, and you want to take a couple of vacation days on the West Coast, well, who's to stop you? And then, if you can get a clean collar out of your little vacation, I might see my way clear to reimburse you out of discretionary funds."

Williams grinned from ear to ear. Now he had a chance-a slim one, maybe, but a chance-to pull himself out of this hole with his colleagues. He needed one heavy bust, and this could be it.