A more perfect union

CHAPTER 13

I have no idea how long I waited. A half hour? Longer? It seemed forever, sitting there in the dark. There was no sound in the house. I knew Linda Decker had driven away. I had heard the door slam and the engine of a car turn over. What about the cop? Had he left along with them?

If I was really alone, I knew I should crawl back down the stairs and try to find some kind of tool that might help me break out of my prison, but I was understandably reluctant to search around in the dark. My knee still hurt. So did my nose.

I had started picking my way down the steps when I heard the distant wail of a siren. It was coming closer.

Cops don't believe in coincidences. They can't afford to. If there was a siren outside the house, it was because of me, because I was locked up in Linda Decker's basement.

The siren came almost to the house and then wound down to silence as I listened. Several car doors slammed shut and I heard a series of shouted commands. I should have felt relief. Here were the reinforcements I had wanted riding to the rescue, but now that they were outside, I didn't feel better. And I didn't call out to them. Some instinctive warning system told me that although they were cops and I was a cop, this time we weren't on the same side.

Heavy footsteps mounted the outside steps and entered the kitchen, accompanied by a series of barked commands. "She's got him locked up in the basement," someone said. "That's his car out there in the driveway. The red Porsche."

Whoever had come to the door hadn't left when Linda did, but he was cautious. He had called for a backup and then waited outside until they showed.

"Stay clear of that door," another voice ordered. It was a much deeper voice than the first one, that of an older man, someone in authority. "Is he armed?"

The first voice answered. "I don't think so. She said she took his gun away. It's right here."

Linda must have given him my Smith and Wesson. I listened as heavy footsteps creaked across the kitchen floor. There was a short silence, then the second voice, the older one, said:

"Beaumont?" The way he said it made my name sound ominous, threatening. "We've got this place surrounded. You can't get out."

"Surrounded?" I yelped the word. "Of course I can't get out. She locked the door. Who the hell do you think I am? I'm not armed. She took my gun."

"We know who you are, Beaumont. On the count of three, we're opening this door. I want to see you with both hands up behind your head or we'll shoot first and ask questions later. One. Two. Three."

Hands behind my head? What was going on? I sat down as the door flew open. There was no one there, only a doorway full of brilliant daylight from the kitchen window shining down the stairs, hurting my eyes, and casting long shadows of bars down the stairway. Then a lone man stepped into the light. He was a big sucker. His burly silhouette filled the entire doorway.

"Where the hell's the light switch?" he demanded. "I can't see a damn thing."

There was a quick shuffling of feet as someone searched for and found the switch to the basement light. It came on, leaving me exposed in all my bloody, nearly naked glory. The silence was so thick you could have cut it with a knife.

The heavyset man shook his head as though he couldn't quite believe his eyes. "I'll be damned," he said. "I been to three barn dances, a county fair, and a goat ropin', and I ain't never seen nothin' like this before. This what off-duty Seattle cops are wearing these days? On your feet, Beaumont. Come on up the stairs. Easy-like. No sudden moves."

I got to my feet and padded barefoot up the stairs with my hands behind my head.

"Stop right there," the man said, when I was almost at the top of the stairs. "Who has the key to this damn thing? Louis, did she give it to you?"

"Yessir."

A much younger, shorter man came into view and handed something over. A key. The big man fumbled with it briefly before inserting it into the lock and shoving the gate open. I had to dodge backward to keep from being pushed back down the stairs.

"Watch it, Beaumont. I said no sudden moves." He wasn't holding a weapon, but he spoke with the unquestioned authority of someone who doesn't think he needs one.

"What am I supposed to do, stand here while you knock me down the steps?"

I was close enough to see the badge on his khaki uniform, but there was no name tag.

"I'd keep a civil tongue in my mouth if I were you," he replied. Beyond him someone else in a uniform was sifting through my pile of belongings. He came up holding my car keys.

"Got 'em," he said. "They're right here. Want me to go search the car?"

"Right. Know what to look for?"

The younger man nodded.

"Hey, wait a minute. You can't search my car. You've gotta have a warrant."

"We've got one," the older man said, patting his breast pocket. He opened his jacket and drew out a long, slim envelope. "We've got ourselves one of those little hummers right here. It's all in order. Come on up here now. All the way into the kitchen. Keep your hands on your head."

I walked through the kitchen doorway into a crowded room. All told, there probably weren't that many people in the room-not more than six, me included-but it seemed like more. They were all cops, much younger ones except for the old guy who was in charge, all wearing versions of the same khaki uniform, all of them packing guns. If I'd made a break for it right then, they probably would have blown each other away, but I was in no mood for running.

And they were in no mood for laughing, either. Despite my lack of clothing, nobody cracked a smile. This was serious stuff. Dead serious.

Everyone waited on the older guy for direction. As soon as he spat out orders, they jumped to carry them out.

"What the hell is this all about?" I demanded. The older man didn't answer me. Instead, he turned to one of the younger ones.

"Cuff him, Jamie. Make sure there isn't a weapon concealed in his shorts. Shut up, Beaumont. You'll have plenty of time to talk later."

Jamie was a little shit with lifts in his shoes and a pencil-thin mustache. His search was enthusiastically thorough. "He's clean, Sheriff Harding," he reported.

I wanted to punch Jamie's lights out, but I didn't. He had given me one important bit of information, told me I was dealing with W. Reed Harding, Sheriff of Lewis County. Reed Harding wasn't a totally unknown quantity.

Like so many small-town sheriffs, he had cut his law-enforcement teeth in the big city, in this case Tacoma, and then moved into small-town police work when he tired of the rat race. I had never met Harding personally, but I knew officers who had worked with him and for him. Word of mouth said he was both tough and fair. I could have done a hell of a lot worse.

"Do you mind if I put my pants on?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Those them over there?" He pointed toward my pile of belongings still on the kitchen floor.

I nodded.

"Check 'em out, Jamie. If they're clean, let him put his pants back on. Then we'll find out what he's doing half-naked in this nice lady's basement in the middle of the afternoon."

Nice lady my ass! Linda Decker wasn't a nice lady in my book, but I didn't contradict him. Harding had gone to the door of the kitchen with his deputies, and the whole group was conferring with someone outside when Jamie brought my pants.

With my hands cuffed behind my back, there was no way I could manage them myself. Jamie held them out for me to step in. I knew the little bastard was suckering me, but I wanted clothes on so badly that I fell for it. As I raised my leg to step in, he brought the pants up and caught my foot, knocking me off balance.

I toppled over backwards. I knew what the metal handcuffs would do to my body if I rammed them into the small of my back. Twisting to one side in midair, I managed to land on one shoulder with a heavy, bone-jarring thud that knocked the wind out of my lungs. I almost blacked out.

Harding whirled and came back into the room, angrily looming over me. "What the hell happened?" he demanded of Jamie who was still standing there innocently holding my pants.

"I was helping him get these on. He tried to kick me," Jamie complained.

"Is that right!" Harding said. "Leave the son of a bitch naked, then." He glared down at me. "You try anything funny again, Beaumont, and you'll be wearing a straitjacket next, understand?"

I still hadn't gotten my breath back. "I understand," I croaked.

When Harding turned away, I caught Jamie's narrow-lipped smile of amusement. The asshole. He was probably five-six and a hundred and thirty pounds soaking wet-a little guy with a big chip on his shoulder. Sneaky, weasely, true to type. He wouldn't have lasted ten minutes at Seattle P.D., wouldn't have made it past the first physical, so he had to content himself with throwing his weight around in Lewis County.

I filed his face away in my memory banks. I'm no good with names, but I do remember faces. Maybe someday little Jamie would end up in Seattle and our paths would manage to cross. He'd best be looking over his shoulder if that ever happens.

Reed Harding returned to the outside door. "Come on, Jamie. Hustle on out there. They say the car's clean. He probably stashed the stuff somewhere nearby. Davis is organizing a search. You go help with that. I can handle this character. He won't give me any trouble."

"Yes, sir."

Jamie hotfooted it out of the house and Harding came back over to me. "Okay, Beaumont. On your feet."

He grabbed me under my arms and lifted me like I was a ten-pound-bag of potatoes. W. Reed Harding was strong as an ox. He dumped me unceremoniously on the kitchen stool where Linda Decker had sat earlier to drink her coffee. I didn't object. There wasn't an ounce of fight left in me.

"Is anybody ever going to tell me what the hell is going on?" I asked wearily.

"You bet, Beaumont," Harding answered. "I'll be glad to tell you. We're going to find where you stowed the stuff and then we're going to take you off the streets for awhile, lock you up, and throw away the key. I don't like it when cops take walks on the wrong side of the law. It gives all of us a bad name."

"Wrong side of the law? What are you talking about? What stuff?"

Harding bent down, holding his face only inches from mine. "The stuff you were going to use to burn down this house."

I was so dumbfounded I almost fell off the chair. "Burn the house down? You've got to be kidding. What makes you think that, for Christ's sake?"

"Because you already did it once."

"Did what?"

"Burned down a house," he answered grimly.

"Whose house?" I asked.

W. Reed Harding didn't answer me right away. His unblinking eyes bored into mine. I know how to do that too. It's a look calculated to make creeps squirm in their seats, to get them to spill their guts.

"Whose house?" I repeated.

"Linda Decker's mother's house," he said slowly. "Her mother's dead, and her brother isn't expected to make it."

His words hit me with the weight of a sledgehammer blow. Linda Decker's mother and her brother? Jimmy Rising? The enthusiastic little guy with his stainless-steel thermos and Kmart lunch pail?

"No," I said.

Harding nodded. "And Bellevue P.D.'s got witnesses who say they saw you prowling around the house yesterday afternoon. Would you care to tell me where you were at midnight last night, Detective Beaumont? And you'd better make sure it's something that will hold up in a court of law, because you're going to need it."

Suddenly the snippet of news I had heard on the car radio, the one about the fatal eastside fire, resurfaced in my brain. Leona and Jimmy Rising. A cold chill passed over me. It had nothing whatever to do with the weather or my lack of clothes.

Somewhere outside myself I heard the words to the Miranda warning. Reed Harding was reading me my rights, as if I didn't know them already.

"So?" he asked when he finished. "Where were you?"

And that's when I remembered Marilyn Sykes. At midnight the night before, she and I had been getting it on in her Mercer Island bedroom. Dragging her into this for the sake of an alibi was out of the question.

"I want to talk to my attorney," I said. "His name's Ralph Ames. He lives in Phoenix."

Reed Harding looked at me gravely and shook his head. He seemed disappointed. "So that's the way you're going to play it?"

"Believe me," I answered, "I don't have any other choice."