Payment in kind

Chapter 23

As it turned out, the mayor wasn’t home after all. Todd Farraday himself-a bespectacled, pimply-faced, sallow-skinned, long-legged kid-answered the door. He opened it only a cautious crack and peered outside.

“Who are you?” he asked.

One look at this nerdy wimp, standing there in his ratty T-shirt and jeans and his equally ratty and untied high-tops, told me that he wasn’t exactly what his mother had in mind when she brought her supposed bundle of joy home from the hospital fifteen years earlier.

“We’re police officers. Are you Todd Farraday?” I asked, holding out my card.

“Yeah. Whaddya want?”

“I’m with Homicide, Todd. I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes.”

“Homicide. What do you want to talk to me about?”

“A case I’m working on.”

He backed away from the door, and a breeze pushed it open in front of us. “Wait a minute, I don’t know anything at all about that.”

My statement had been innocuously general, but his immediate denial was damagingly specific. I was instantly on the alert. “You don’t know anything about what?” I demanded.

Realizing too late that he had inadvertently let something slip and trying to hedge his bets, Todd Farraday shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know,” he said miserably in an unconvincing whimper. “I mean, I wasn’t even there.”

“You weren’t where?”

“At the school district; that’s what you’re talking about, isn’t it? You think I’m connected to those school district murders because of what happened last fall, but I’m not. I swear to God. My mother doesn’t let me out of the house at night now, and I don’t sneak out anymore, either.”

“Is your mother home?” I asked.

Todd Farraday shook his head. “No. She’s at a meeting down in Olympia. She won’t be home until tomorrow afternoon. But don’t talk to her about this, please. She’ll kill me. She really will. She said that if I got into any more trouble of any kind, she’d send me to a military school in New Mexico. In Roswell. I was in New Mexico once,” he added mournfully. “I hated it.”

We were still standing on the porch. Todd had backed away from us across the polished hard-wood floor of the vestibule.

“I think we need to talk about this,” Ron Peters asserted quietly. “Can we come in?”

Todd looked at Ron Peters, and his eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute, haven’t I seen you on TV?”

Peters nodded. “Probably. I work in Media Relations.”

“You’re not going to put this in the paper or on the news or something, are you? My mom would die, she’d just die, and so would I!”

“Todd, we just want to get to the bottom of this,” Peters said reassuringly. “Could we come in please? It’s cold out here, and we’re letting all the warm air outside.”

“I guess,” Todd answered warily. “Come on in.”

He stood there watching as we made our way inside and closed the door behind us. I looked at him hard. “I didn’t tell you what case we were working on, Todd, but you guessed which one right away without having to be told. How come?”

He shrugged his shoulders again and turned sullen. “I dunno.”

“You do know,” I insisted, “and you’re going to tell us.”

“Wait a minute. You can’t make me tell you anything. I know my rights.”

I turned to Peters. “I guess we could just as well go then. We’ll come back later on after his mother has time to make arrangements for an attorney to be present.”

Todd Farraday’s stricken face paled visibly. “Aw shit! Don’t do that, please. I already told you. I didn’t do anything. I wasn’t even out of the house that night, and the guy who was…”

“What guy?”

“Just a guy, that’s all. A friend of mine. He’s the one who told me about it, after it came out in the papers. He wanted to know what he should do. I mean, like he thought I had some kind of experience, you know?”

“What did he tell you, Todd?”

“He was skiing, late at night, and he wasn’t supposed to. Jason got these new skis for Christmas, see, and he wanted to try them out. But his mother said later. They’re going up to Whistler sometime this month, but the snow was here that night, and Jason didn’t think it would hurt anything.”

I remembered then, the ski trails imprinted in the snow in front of the school district’s office the morning after the murders. Criminals working under the cover of night sometimes make the mistake of assuming it’s still the old days, when kids used to go to bed and stay there once their parents turned out the lights and locked the doors. Nowadays, the lights go out-and so do the kids, without their parents’ knowledge or consent.

More often than not, the kids themselves are up to no good, but having extra eyes on the nightime streets when they aren’t expected has worked in my favor on more than one occasion. A surge of excitement went through my body when I realized this was going to be another.

“Your friend Jason saw something?” Peters prodded gently.

Todd Farraday nodded. “And he asked me what to do about it, but he got in trouble the same time I did for sneaking out, and I told him to forget it.”

“Did he tell you what he saw?”

Todd shook his head. “I wouldn’t let him. I didn’t want to know.”

“What’s Jason’s last name?” I asked.

“Don’t you understand? If I tell you, he’s going to get in trouble again too. His mother probably won’t even take him to Whistler. She’ll end up telling mine, and I’ll be in trouble anyway.”

“Where does he live?” Ron Peters asked. “Around here someplace?”

Todd nodded. “A few blocks away. It’s not far.”

“Supposing you call him and tell him we’re here. Tell him we want to talk to him. We need his help, but we don’t want to get him in any more hot water. Tell him we’ll do our best to keep it a secret from his mother. You two can make up a story that you need to get an assignment from him or something, can’t you?”

Todd looked back and forth between us indecisively. “Prob’ly,” he said. “At least I could try. Wanna come on into the living room and sit down?”

Obligingly, Ron Peters wheeled himself toward the arched entrance to the living room. The unthinking words were barely out of Todd’s mouth when he realized what he’d said. Todd Farraday may have been a spoiled young punk, but he still had some vestiges of good manners left. His face flushed beet red.

“Sorry,” he said, hurrying out of the room. “I’ll go call Jason.”

A full-length oil portrait of Natalie Farraday hung over the marble-manteled fireplace. She was a handsome woman, rather than a beautiful one, posing against a tree trunk. I was standing there admiring the painting when Todd came into the room and stopped beside me.

“Jason’ll be here in a few minutes. He told his mom he has to return my Axis and Allies game.”

“This is your mother?” I asked, knowing the answer but asking anyway.

Todd Farraday nodded.

“Did you want to hurt her? Is that why you did it?”

“I already told you, I had nothing to do with…”

“I’m not talking about the murders, Todd, I’m asking about the bomb threats. Why’d you make those calls? Why’d you throw those rocks through the windows?”

“But aren’t I supposed to have my attorney…”

I turned on him savagely. “Don’t give me that shit. You already know you’ve beaten the system. You know good and well I won’t be able to touch you for that, but I deserve an answer, and, by God, I’m going to get it.”

Suddenly Todd Farraday’s eyes filled with tears. He sidled away from me and sank down sobbing on a nearby ottoman. “You don’t know what it’s like having a mother like my mom, a mother who always wants you to be perfect, who always says you have to set an example. The other kids, except for Jason, were all the time making fun of me. I just wanted to be one of the guys, you know what I mean? I just wanted to be treated like everybody else.”

“But you weren’t treated like everybody else,” I countered roughly, wanting to rub his nose in it. “Your mother got you off!”

“I know,” Todd Farraday responded bleakly, staring down at his empty hands. “And that wasn’t fair, either. I wanted to be treated like any other kid, but she said I’d better keep my mouth shut because having that on my record would wreck my life.”

Todd paused and looked up at me for the first time since he’d dropped onto the ottoman. “It all backfired,” he added, “and the other kids still make fun of me.”

The doorbell rang, and Todd got up to answer it, walking with his shoulders slouched. God help me, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him, too. Maybe quitting drinking was turning me into some kind of sentimental slob.

Jason Ragsdale was another scrawny kid, an overgrown pup whose body had yet to grow into his feet. He too was wearing the same teenage uniform of ragged clothes and untied, ratty high-tops. These kids didn’t live on the pricey side of Queen Anne because they were poor, but you sure couldn’t tell that by looking.

“This is them,” Todd said unenthusiastically. “I told ‘em you’d tell them what you saw.”

Jason Ragsdale shuffled uncomfortably from foot to foot. “I didn’t see all that much, really. I mean, I could have been mistaken.”

“What did you see, Jason?” I asked, handing him my card. “This could be very important.”

He nodded and bit his lower lip. “If I hadn’t almost run into her, I wouldn’t have seen it. That’s why my mother said no skiing in the city. She was afraid I’d hit somebody, and I almost did. It scared me to death.”

“Tell us exactly what you saw,” Peters urged. “Try not to leave anything out.”

Jason shrugged and shook his shoulder-length locks. “I had been going up and down Fourth because there wasn’t much traffic there, and I almost ran into her. She came out of the parking lot and was walking up the hill. I didn’t know anyone was there. I flew past when she was right by the school district office, and I think, no, I’m sure, she had a gun in her hand.”

“A woman?” I asked.

“No. Not a woman really. She wasn’t very old, I mean not much older than me. She was wearing one of those knit caps, so I couldn’t see her hair, but she was young, I know that much. I saw the gun, just in a flash, you know, as I went by. I told myself I was mistaken, but then, a few minutes later…”

He stopped dead in the middle of his story, swallowing hard, unable to continue.

“A few minutes later what?”

“I heard it go off, the gun, I mean. I pretended at first that it was just a backfire and that it didn’t mean anything, but I was scared and I went right back home. Then in the morning, when I saw all the cop cars…”

“Why didn’t you come forward before this?” I asked.

“Dunno. I was scared, I guess. More of my mother than anything else.”

“Would you be able to recognize her if you saw her again?” Ron Peters asked.

Jason Ragsdale ducked his head and drew a line across the rug with the toe of his leather high-tops. “That’s just it,” he whispered. “I think I have.”

“What do you mean?”

He reached into his hip pocket and pulled out a wadded piece of newspaper, which he straightened across the knee of his jeans before he handed it to me. “This was in the paper today,” he said, pointing. “That’s her. At least I think it is.”

I looked down at the clipping from the P.-I. Staring back at me was a poor reproduction of Erin Kelsey’s senior high school picture.

“You’re going to have to tell your parents, Jason,” I said at once. “If it turns out that you’re an actual eyewitness, there’ll be depositions to take, court appearances. Your parents will have to know.”

He nodded. “It’s all right,” he said gruffly, his changing voice cracking under the strain. “I mean, I get mad at my parents all the time too, but I could never shoot ‘em.”

“Fortunately for society, most people can’t,” I said. “Most people come up with other, more civilized, ways of dealing with their problems.”

For the next half hour, I went over in detail everything Jason Ragsdale could remember about the night of the murders. He was good on everything but the times, because he wasn’t sure what time he had left the house. It was close to eleven by the time I finished the interview and he headed for the door.

“I’d better get going,” he said. “I got school tomorrow.”

“Will you tell your parents?” I asked. “It would probably be better if they heard it from you first.”

He nodded. “I will.”

“As soon as you do, I’ll want to talk to them as well.”

“How come? They didn’t see anything.”

“No, but you did, and the woman you saw may come back to this neighborhood looking for you. After all, you can link her to the scene of the crime at the time the murders took place. Your parents may want to take some precautions for your own protection.”

“You mean she might come back looking for me?” Jason’s eyes grew wide.

“That’s right.”

“Shit, man. I never thought of that. I’ll tell ‘em. First thing in the morning.”

Jason Ragsdale got up and started toward the door but stood there before it indecisively for a moment, shifting back and forth. He seemed suddenly very young and unsure of himself, a kid thrust out into a world where bogeymen, or women, as the case may be, were free to roam the earth.

“Would you like a ride home?” I offered.

He was too damn macho to admit to wanting a ride. “No. I’ll be all right.” With that, Jason Ragsdale hustled out into the night, pausing long enough to peer around cautiously before stepping off the porch.

As I watched him go, I was grateful that, for this one time at least, Jason Ragsdale had been where he wasn’t supposed to be when he wasn’t supposed to be there. And I was also thankful that despite all that, and even despite the bomb threats, Jason and Todd probably weren’t such bad kids after all. Maybe in the long run there was some cause for hope.

And then I remembered Erin Kelsey, and I wasn’t so sure.

“Are you psychic, or just plain lucky, or what?” Peters asked with a dubious shake of his head when he was once more seated in the 928 and I had finished loading his chair into the back. “I don’t understand how you did that.”

“How I did what?”

“Managed to figure out there was a connection between the bomb threats and the murders when no reasonable connection existed. How did you tie them together?”

“Pure dumb luck,” I laughed, “because it wasn’t exactly scientific, and it certainly wasn’t the kind of connection I expected. Just you wait. In a couple of years, Tracie and Heather will be sneaking out in the middle of the night too.”

“Like hell they will,” Peters muttered determinedly. “Not my kids.”

“I believe those come under the heading of famous last words,” I told him. I’m equally sure those weren’t words he wanted to hear.

A thoughtful silence followed. “You never suspected the daughter, did you?” Peters commented finally.

It was true. The idea that Erin Kelsey might be our killer still rocked me.

“No,” I replied. “Never. That one came as a bolt out of the blue, although…” Suddenly a portion of Andrea Stovall’s message came back to me.

“Although what?” Peters asked impatiently. “Don’t leave me hanging in midsentence like that.”

“Andrea Stovall. When she called down this morning and talked to Kramer to tell him she was leaving town.”

“What about it?”

“She told him Erin Kelsey had called to warn her that her father was on the loose and might come looking for her.”

“Nice kid,” Peters said. “Sounds like she’s trying to pin the rap on her daddy and buy him a one-way ticket to Walla Walla.”

“That’s the thing. She sure doesn’t look the part.”

“Looks can be deceiving, Beau. Where was she late Sunday night?”

“According to what her father told us, Erin had left for school in Eugene much earlier in the day. Sometime during the early afternoon, I think.”

“That may be what she told him,” Peters reasoned, “but since we have an eyewitness who puts her at the scene of the crime much later in the evening, she must have lied to her dear old dad. It’s that simple. Did anyone say whether or not she and her mother quarreled while she was home for vacation?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Have you gotten any other readings that things weren’t okay between mother and child?”

“Not a glimmer,” I answered. “Not from Pete Kelsey, Maxwell Cole, or the grandparents, either. The only thing I can figure is that Erin somehow must have learned the truth about what was going on between her parents and decided to get involved.”

“And what exactly is the truth about her parents?” Peters asked. “Try to look at it through her eyes. First she finds out that for years her sainted mother has been messing around with other women on the side. Next she learns that her father isn’t who or what he always said he was. I mean to tell you, this kid’s world is flying into a million pieces, and where the hell does that leave her? Think about it.”

“Up shit creek?” I suggested. “Lost? Angry?”

“All of the above,” Peters responded. “Every damn one of them.”

By now we were back in the parking garage at Belltown Terrace. I followed Peters as he deftly maneuvered his chair into the small confines of the P-3 elevator lobby and pushed the UP button.

“You want to stop by the apartment for a few minutes? Amy says there’s just enough leftover New Year’s eggnog to divide three ways. I’m talking straight eggnog here,” Peters added with a smile.

I shook my head. “Thanks but no thanks. I think I’ll pass. It’s been a helluva long day.”

Peters got off on seventeen, and I rode on up to the penthouse thinking that at last I would be able to crawl into bed and get a good night’s sleep. That was not to be.

When you’re up to your eyeballs in a case, it hardly ever is.