Payment in kind

Chapter 20

It was done without sirens or fanfare. And without any reporters, either.

Two cars, one marked and one not, accompanied Maxwell Cole and me back up Queen Anne Hill to Max’s house. I had told him that under no circumstances would he be allowed to approach the house, but while I was busy strategically placing my six backup officers, Max slipped away from me and made a beeline for the front porch. He was opening the door before I realized what he was up to, and by then it was too late to stop him.

Leave it to Maxwell Cole to blow my cover. One way or another, Kelsey/Madsen now knew we were there. We had lost whatever small advantage might have been gained by the element of surprise. If he chose to make a stand, to force us to come in after him, Max’s huge old house stood there like an impenetrable fortress. And then there was always the possibility that Kelsey would take Max hostage and attempt to use him as a bargaining chip.

While I was still assessing the situation and trying to determine whether or not to summon the Emergency Response Team, the door opened and both Max and Kelsey stepped outside onto the wide front porch. Kelsey walked with both hands held high over his head.

Quickly I moved to intercept them, my whole body tense and alert for any sign of trouble. In one hand I gripped my new Beretta and fervently wished it was my trusty old Smith amp; Wesson.

“Step aside, Max,” I ordered, motioning him away with a sideways jerk of my head. He complied, but not without argument.

“Put the gun away, J. P. I told you there wouldn’t be any trouble. I told you Pete was ready to turn himself in.”

Kelsey/Madsen was looking me straight in the eye. “Will I be able to go to Marcia’s funeral?” he asked.

“I already told Max that we don’t make deals, Madsen. Now, up against the wall, feet apart and hands over your head. You’re under arrest.”

For a long moment Pete Kelsey didn’t move. He leveled his ice blue eyes at me in a steady, unblinking stare, but the working muscles across his jawline told me that my use of his real name had hit home. At last, when he dropped his eyes, his whole body seemed to sag. He started to lower his hands.

“Hands up, Madsen!” I barked again, putting real menace in it this time. “I said move it!”

He did move then, but slowly, as though he were in some kind of uncomprehending trance. As soon as he turned his back to me, I stepped behind him and propelled him toward the house with a swift shove to his shoulder. He had gotten away from me once, and I wasn’t going to allow him the slightest opportunity to do it again.

“I didn’t do it,” he said quietly, almost under his breath. Standing behind him, I was the only one who heard him speak. “No matter what you think, Detective Beaumont, I didn’t kill my wife.”

As soon as Max and Kelsey had appeared on the porch, my backup officers had abandoned their positions and converged behind me. Now two of them, their weapons drawn, sprinted up onto the porch, shoving Max aside as they did so. While one of them kept Kelsey covered, another did a quick pat-down search, finishing by cuffing Kelsey’s arms tightly behind him.

“He’s unarmed,” the pat-down officer reported.

Relieved, I nodded. “Good.”

“I told you,” Max said indignantly.

Holding Kelsey by the arm, one of the officers spun him around so the two of us stood facing each other. It’s a moment I’ve lived through a thousand times when hunter and hunted, captor and captive, come face-to-face. Maybe it’s due to the adrenaline pumping through my system at those times, but years later, although the names have long since disappeared, I can still recall those moments and those faces with absolute clarity.

Some murderers, especially repeat offenders, swagger when they’re caught, their faces haughty with contempt because they know there’s no such thing as life in prison and no such thing as life in prison and no such thing as the death penalty either, no matter what the lawbooks say. They know there are plenty of ways to slip through plea-bargaining cracks and plenty of attorneys who will help them do it. They’re sure they’ll walk away without doing any time at all, and usually they’re right.

The inadvertent ones, drivers in vehicular manslaughter cases, drunks who kill without meaning to in the course of a barroom brawl, don’t swagger and are usually scared shitless when we pick them up. The domestic violence types-people who kill their husbands and wives and kids-are often still angry when they’re arrested: angry at the victims for causing their own deaths and angry at the cops for catching them doing it.

A very few killers are grateful to have their crimes finally out in the open-a few but not most. Unlike the others, they make no protestations of their innocence because they want the nightmare to be over.

Despite his claim of innocence, what I saw on Kelsey/Madsen’s face was just that kind of relief. No fear, no bitterness, no animosity-just a profound resignation. I wondered if, after so many years of living a lie, he wasn’t grateful that the other shoe had finally dropped.

We stared at each other for some time. I was the one who spoke first, and then not to him but to the other officers.

“Read him his rights,” I said, “then take him downtown to the fifth floor so we can take his statement. Have someone call the Criminal Investigations Division down at Fort Lewis to find out what they want us to do with him. His ID will give his name as Kelsey, but his real name is Madsen, John David Madsen. For the moment the only charge against him is desertion.”

Maxwell Cole’s mouth dropped open a foot. I think he had missed it the first time I called Pete Kelsey by his real name.

“What’s this?” he demanded. “What’s going on?”

“This man is a deserter,” I said, “from the United States Army. We’re holding him for them.”

“Wait just a minute,” Max objected. “Pete’s never even been in the Army in his life. This is crazy.”

“Let it go, Max,” Kelsey said tersely, his voice almost a low growl. “Stay out of this.”

“But…”

“I said let it go,” Kelsey repeated.

Rebuffed and hurt, Maxwell Cole ducked back as though he’d been slapped. Meanwhile, Kelsey/Madsen turned to me. “How’d you find out, Detective Beaumont? Fingerprints?”

“Does it matter?”

He gave a short, harsh snort and shook his head. “No, I don’t suppose it matters at all.”

He looked back at Max, who stood to one side wringing his hands helplessly. “There is something you can do for me, Max. Go tell Erin, so she doesn’t find out about this from somebody else. Tell her I love her no matter what and not to worry.”

“Is that all you want me to do? Jesus Christ, man! Don’t you want me to get you a lawyer or something?”

“I don’t need a lawyer, Max. I don’t want a lawyer. Just go talk to Erin. Do that for me, please.”

By then the other officers were ready to lead him away, and Madsen went without protest. Max stood on the porch watching them go, shaking his head in stunned silence. He didn’t speak until the last of the three cars had disappeared around the curve in the street.

“How come you called Pete by another name?” he asked at last.

Considering the situation, I figured I owed Max at least a partial explanation.

“Because John David Madsen is his real name, Max. Pete Kelsey is a fraud, a phony. He’s lived under an assumed name for as long as you’ve known him.”

“No,” Max said, and then, a little later, “Why would he do a thing like that?”

“Who knows?”

“But he’s my best friend,” Max objected, as though he hadn’t heard me. “Why would he pretend to be someone he wasn’t?”

“I intend to find that out, Max, and when I do, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

“I guess I’d better do like he said and go tell Erin.”

“First I’m going to need a statement from you.”

“About what?”

“About last night. About what happened when he came here.”

Max nodded. “All right then, but let’s go inside before I catch pneumonia.”

We went into the house and he led the way into the furniture-crowded living room where we had sat the day before. I took out my notebook.

“What time did he get here?”

“I don’t know. Seven-thirty, eight. I don’t know for sure. I was reading and not paying any attention.”

“And how did he get here?”

Max shrugged his shoulders. “I thought he came by car, but I didn’t see it outside on the street anyplace this morning, and it’s not there now. All I can tell you is that it was dark when he turned up on the doorstep, and I let him in.”

“What did he say?”

“He asked if he could stay over. He said Erin was staying with her grandparents, but that the phone calls and the reporters were driving him crazy. He had to get away.”

“What did you do?”

“Got drunk. Sat around and talked and got drunk. Not roaring, just enough to dull the pain a little.”

Some pains take more dulling than others. I know that myself from firsthand experience. “What did you talk about?” I asked.

“Mostly Marcia,” Max answered. “Marcia and Erin. That’s all he wanted to talk about, his family, especially the old days when they first got married and they were so happy together. Pete talked. All I did was listen.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing really. Nothing and everything. I didn’t know until last night, though, that they must have been having lots worse troubles than either one of them let on. He said that before she died, he knew he was losing her. He had worried about what kind of effect a breakup would have had on Erin-he’s always been more concerned about Erin than himself.”

“Even though the parents were having their difficulties, you’d say he still had a good relationship with his daughter?”

Max nodded. “He’s always treated Erin like she was made of spun glass. Nothing’s too good for his Erin. That’s the way it’s always been. You’d think being raised like that, with two adoring parents, that Erin would be spoiled rotten, but she isn’t.

“Anyway, to go back to him and Marcia, he said that he wouldn’t have liked losing her, but that he could have accepted it eventually. He said he wished to God she were still alive.” Max broke off, sniffling into a fresh was of Kleenex he pulled from a box on a nearby table.

“It’s this damn cold,” he mumbled. “My nose just keeps running.”

I knew it wasn’t only his cold that was making Max’s nose run and eyes water. The Kelseys were Maxwell Cole’s good friends, his best friends, and slowly but surely they were being wrested from him. Max was just about at the end of his rope, but I had to press on anyway. Besides, I suspected that keeping him talking was actually doing him a favor. Answering my questions was the only thing preventing him from falling apart completely.

“So he said he knew he was losing his wife. Did he say how exactly?”

Max shook his head. “No, and I didn’t push him, and you wouldn’t have either. He was grieving, J.P. He was in pain, actual physical pain, I think. I listened to what he had to say, but I didn’t pry, although after what I read in the paper this morning, maybe…” Max’s voice drifted into a troubled silence without finishing the sentence.

“You said you didn’t know we were looking for him until this morning?”

“That’s right. As soon as he got here last night, he asked me to turn off the radio and leave it off. He also asked me not to answer the phone. He said he was afraid people might track him down here, and he didn’t want to talk to anyone else.”

“Tell me what happened when he saw the paper this morning.”

“Now, that was scary,” Max declared. “In all the years I’ve known him, I’ve never heard Pete Kelsey say a cross word, never heard him raise his voice in anger, but when he read that article, the libelous things that security guard’s wife said, I thought he was going to lose it completely. He picked up that brass poker over there by the fireplace. I was afraid he was going to rip the place apart.”

“What stopped him?” I asked.

Maxwell Cole, flabby and perpetually out of shape, would have been no match for the work-hardened muscles of Pete Kelsey.

“I talked him out of it,” Max said gravely. “I told him to think about Erin instead of himself. And that’s when he agreed to turn himself in. Just like that. He put down the poker and sat down and told me to go find you. He was very specific about that. He said he’d talk to you and nobody else.”

“Why? There are two detectives on the case. Why not Detective Kramer?”

“Pete didn’t say. Maybe he liked you better, thought he could trust you or something. There’s no accounting for taste, you know.” Max gave me a feeble grin.

“While you were talking, did he mention anything about going to the school district office Sunday night looking for Marcia?”

“No.”

“Or looking for her anywhere else?”

“No.”

“Did he say anything at all about that night?”

“No. Nothing.”

“Did he ever mention Vietnam to you?”

“No. Why should he? He was a Canadian citizen. My mother sponsored him when he applied to become a citizen. Why would he have had anything to do with Vietnam?”

“What was his first wife’s name?”

“His first wife? Why do you want to know that?”

“It might be helpful.”

“I don’t remember,” Max said. “That’s a long time ago, you know. I’m not sure I ever knew her name. I don’t think he ever told me. It was such a tragedy that he didn’t talk about it. I think it hurt him too much to think about it.”

“Or else it never happened,” I suggested grimly.

“You mean you think that was a lie as well?”

Gradually the full extent of Pete Kelsey’s betrayal was beginning to sink into Maxwell Cole’s consciousness. A friendship of twenty years’ standing was tumbling down around his ears like a house of cards.

“Why not?” I returned. “Since everything else was, why not that, too?”

“I can’t take it all in,” Max said. “I can’t understand it. ”I don’t want to understand it.“ Abruptly Max stood up. ”I hope that’s all the questions for now, because I need to hurry over to see Erin.“ He started out of the room and then paused and looked at me. ”Do you suppose she’s still at the Riggs’ place? That’s right here on Queen Anne.“

“You can check,” I said. “My guess is that no matter what Kelsey said, Erin stayed where she was last night. At home. And the grandparents probably stayed with her.”

With a sigh and a shake of his head, Max continued on into the kitchen to use the phone. I followed behind. Without having to look it up in the book, he punched in the Riggs’ phone number. He let it ring and ring, but there was no answer. He dialed another number, again from memory.

“Hello, George,” he said at once. Suspicions confirmed. The grandparents were indeed still at the house on Crockett. “Is Erin there?” Max asked, and after George responded, Max added quickly, “No, no. Don’t get her. This is Max. Maxwell Cole. I’m coming over to see her. Tell her to wait for me.” He paused and then added fiercely, “Don’t let her listen to the radio or watch television while she’s waiting.”

There was another pause while George Riggs asked a question. “Yes, there’s something wrong,” Max acknowledged reluctantly, “but I don’t want to talk about it over the phone. Just have Erin wait there. It’s very important.”

I followed Max out the door and down the walk to his waiting Volvo. He moved with a wooden, stiff-legged gait, like an aging, over-weight toy soldier. I didn’t envy him his errand. He was going to have to deliver the news that the last bastion of Erin Kelsey’s world was collapsing.

Not only was her mother dead and her father in jail, her father wasn’t who he had always claimed to be. That meant Erin wasn’t who she thought she was, either.

Both Max and Erin had been betrayed by Pete Kelsey’s web of lies and deceit. Both would be wounded by it.

Watching Maxwell Cole drive dejectedly away through the gray and suddenly overcast day, I wouldn’t have bet money either way about which one was going to be more hurt.

It was a moment after Max had driven out of sight before I realized I was standing there aching for him, and even while it was happening, I couldn’t quite believe it.

If, two days earlier, any one of a dozen people had tried to tell me that before the week was out, I’d be standing on Maxwell Cole’s doorstep feeling sorry for that poor, miserable bastard, I would have laughed in their faces and called them outright liars. Or crazy.

But they weren’t, because I was.