A more perfect union

CHAPTER 18

When we left the Doghouse an hour and a half later, we had hammered out rough guidelines for an uneasy alliance. Kramer had called Watty, and Detective J. P. Beaumont was now officially part of the investigation into Logan Tyree's death. It was a big improvement over the other alternative of being flat-out fired.

We took Kramer's car and drove to the Northwest Center on Armory Way. The receptionist summoned Sandy Carson from the micrographics department. When she arrived, she was still blonde and still willowy, but she looked like hell. Her eyes were red. I'm sure she had been crying.

"I didn't want any visitors out in the shop today," she explained. "Everyone's still too upset about Jimmy. But Linda called and told me you'd be coming by. She said for me to give you this." She handed me a large brown interdepartmental envelope with its string fastener firmly tied.

"Who actually took the pictures?" I asked.

"Jimmy did. I supervised, of course."

"And do you have any idea what became of the originals?"

She shook her head. "I gave them to Logan when he came by and picked Jimmy up one day. He asked me to keep the copies here. He said he thought that would be safer."

"Do you remember when that was?"

"Several days before he died."

"And did you go to the police with it?"

"There wasn't any point. Everyone said it was an accident."

I glanced at Kramer, but I didn't say anything. There was no sense rubbing his nose in it.

"Any idea where we should go to take a look at these?" I asked.

Kramer nodded. "I know a place."

He drove us to the Seattle Times building on Fairview and pulled into the parking lot. "I know people here," he said. "They'll let us use their fiche reader. Not only that, maybe I can get a line on that Masters Plaza film."

One of my objections to the new breed of law enforcement officers is their total preoccupation with the media. These cops want to solve crimes, all right, but they also want the publicity. They want to be sure their names are spelled right in the papers, pronounced right on the eleven o'clock news. Old war-horses like Big Al Lindstrom and me don't give a damn what the media have to say one way or the other.

In this case, however, Detective Paul Kramer's cozy friendship with the Third Estate paid off. Kramer's buddy in the news department hooked us up with someone from photography. He said the picture of Angie Dixon had come to the paper through a local free-lance film editor. The guy at the Times wasn't sure exactly how that had transpired, and the person who had handled the transaction wasn't in, but he was able to tell us that the company actually doing the filming was a small outfit called Camera Craft in the Denny Regrade.

Kramer's buddy also let us use a microfiche reader. It didn't do us any good. The fiche showed nothing but accountant's tapes, some with barely legible notations on them. Without the accompanying journals, they were worthless.

Kramer leaned away from the viewer long enough to let me take a look. "None of this makes sense," he said. "These aren't something worth killing for. Are you sure this is what Linda Decker thought they were after?"

"Positive."

"So what now? Go down to Camera Craft?"

"Seems like."

We were told that the owner of Camera Craft was grabbing a late lunch at the Rendezvous, a small restaurant just up the block. We followed him there. Like other places in the Regrade, the Rendezvous has a checkered past. In the old days it was a private screening house where local movie distributors could get a sneak preview of Hollywood's latest offerings. For years now, it has been a blue-collar hangout. The private dining area still boasts a minuscule stage and a battered projection screen, holdovers from days gone by. Occasionally some shoestring drama company will stage a production there.

The owner of Camera Craft, Jim Hadley, wasn't in the Rendezvous' old screening room. He was hunched over a hamburger and fries at a small table in the back of the dimly lit main dining room. He was evidently a regular. When we asked, the cashier had no difficulty pointing him out to us.

Kramer approached Hadley's table, flashed his ID, and introduced us both. Busy chewing, Hadley nodded us into chairs and swallowed a mouthful of hamburger. "What's this all about?" he asked.

"The picture in the paper."

"Oh," he said. "That one. It was a fluke, an absolute fluke. The odds of the camera going off just as she fell…It's like that guy taking pictures of Mount Saint Helens just as it exploded."

"I understand your company is in charge of doing the filming for the Masters Plaza folks?"

"That's right. We unload and load the cameras every morning, refocus, and reset the timers. After that they run all day and all night on their own. We've got a free-lance editor who supervises the film-to-tape transfer and then edits out all the night scenes and rough stuff."

"What kind of transfer?"

"You know, from film to videotape. That's where we do all the fine-tuning."

"You said cameras. Does that mean there's more than one?"

He nodded and swallowed another bite of his hamburger. "Two actually. Each of them is set to take one picture every four minutes-not at the same time, of course. One is set up right across the street in the Arcade building. The other's a block or so away. Now that they're up to the forty-second floor, the Arcade building isn't tall enough to show the whole building. The developer wants it for a corporate dog and pony production, a video to show what a hell of a good job they do."

"Which camera took the picture that was in the newspaper?" I asked.

"The one on the Arcade building. We keep that one focused on the raising gang. Putting up those beams is a lot more spectacular than most of the rest of it. It's certainly the most visual."

"And the most dangerous," I added.

Hadley shrugged. "That too, although it all looks pretty damn dangerous if you ask me."

Kramer shifted impatiently in his seat. "So how did the picture end up in the newspaper?"

"Our editor pulled a workprint that night. She's the one who noticed. She said she had some friends down at the Times, and she wondered if whether Darren Gibson would mind if she passed that one picture along. Of course he didn't mind. Publicity's publicity, especially if it's free."

"Who's Darren Gibson?"

"The local project manager for Masters Plaza. He said fine. Do it. Kath was way ahead of him."

"Kath?"

"Kath Naguchi. The editor I told you about. She figured he'd say yes. She was all set to pass it along to the Times as soon as he gave her the go-ahead. She was on her way down there within minutes. It was in the paper the next day."

"What about the rest of the film?"

Hadley shrugged. "Beats me. I suppose it's back at the shop where it belongs, along with the rest of the project."

"Could we see it?" I asked.

He shook his head. "Not without permission. The Masters and Rogers folks are paying us real good money to do this job. I'm not going to screw it up by showing you something I'm not supposed to."

"Has anyone else asked to see it?"

"No. Why would they?"

"So, the editor made a print of that one picture?"

Hadley shook his head. "She provided the film. I think the guys down at the paper did the actual blowup."

"Did anyone make prints of any of the other frames, either before or after the one in the paper?"

Hadley shook his head. "No. Not so far as I know. Like I said, she saw that one when she was doing the dailies."

"Dailies?" Kramer asked.

"It's a one-light print," I explained. "It tells what's on the previous day's shoot."

Kramer glowered at me. "Movie talk?" he asked disgustedly.

"You asked," I replied.

He turned back to Hadley. "We're helping the Department of Labor and Industries on this case. How do we get a look at that film?"

"I already told you. You've got to get permission from Masters and Rogers. They're the guys who write my checks. I wouldn't step on their toes on a bet."

"And Darren Gibson is the person we'd need to talk to?"

"Yes, but right now he's out of town. He was supposed to be in Toronto today. Back tomorrow most likely. I don't know if you'll be able to get hold of him or not."

"Do you have a phone number?"

Hadley leaned back in his chair and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. "Back in the office," he answered.

He paid for his lunch. We followed him out the door of the Rendezvous and back down Second Avenue to his shop where he thumbed through a gigantic Rolodex on his receptionist's desk and read off two telephone numbers-one local and the other in Toronto.

Leaving Camera Craft we drove to the department. In our cubicle I found Big Al Lindstrom sitting in my chair with his feet on my desk. He was eating an apple and reading a newspaper.

"I didn't expect you in today," he said, scrambling out of my chair.

"That's obvious," I growled, sweeping stray bits of apple off the chair before I sat down.

"I thought you were on vacation until Tuesday." Big Al quieted suddenly when Paul Kramer appeared over my shoulder.

"I'll try reaching Gibson," Kramer announced, barely pausing on the way to his and Manny's cubicle. "You check with Missing Persons."

Big Al eyed me quizzically. "You taking orders from Kramer now? What's going on?"

"I am on vacation," I replied, dialing the number for Missing Persons. "Doesn't it look like it? I'm taking a busman's holiday."

Big Al shook his head in disbelief. "To work with Kramer? No way."

"Hide and watch," I said.

"What happened to your face?"

"Walked into a post," I told him.

Big Al shook his head. He was unconvinced. "Like hell you did," he said. With that he picked up his cup and went in search of coffee.

That's the wonderful thing about telling the truth. People believe what they want to believe. It's a hell of a lot simpler than lying. There isn't the ever-present danger of getting caught.

It felt good to sit down at my desk again, to pick up my phone and dial a familiar number. It felt like I had been away from work, real work, for a long, long time. Naturally, Missing Persons put me on hold. While I waited, Margie popped her head in the door.

"I just wanted you to know that I never breathed a word about Gloria and the phone number."

"Thanks," I told her. "I owe you."

If Watty had heard about my tracking down Linda Decker's phone number under false pretenses, he would have fired my ass before I knew what hit me.

"What's this about a phone number?" Big Al asked, coming back with a cup of coffee.

"Never mind," I said.

The clerk in Missing Persons finally came back on the line. "This is Beaumont in homicide," I explained. "Do you have anything going on a guy by the name of Wayne Martinson?"

"Let me check." She put me on hold a second time, giving Big Al another crack at me.

"So what's it like to be in the movie business?" he demanded. "Are you ready to get yourself an agent and take the plunge?"

"Get off my back. The movie business sucks."

The clerk in Missing Persons returned once more, and I spent the next few minutes explaining that I hadn't said what she thought I said and that I certainly hadn't said it to her. Once her ruffled feathers were smoothed, she connected me with Detective Janie Jacobs who had Wayne Martinson's file in hand when she picked up the phone.

"Are you actively working the case?" I asked.

"Not so as you'd notice," Janie answered. "We took the report. His wife called it in, but since Martinson disappeared from a fishing resort in Alaska, it's outside our jurisdiction. The detectives there tell me they've got nothing to indicate foul play. He went fishing by himself in the morning and didn't come back. Most of his clothing was left in his room."

"Most?"

"That's right. Most but not all. Some of them weren't there. That's what makes the detectives at the scene think maybe he took a walk, a powder. He and his wife were evidently having problems. They think he decided to take off rather than hold still for a divorce."

"Sometimes running away has a whole lot of appeal," I said.

"It makes my life a hell of a lot tougher," Janie responded, adding with a half laugh, "but then, a job's a job I guess. Anything else, Detective Beaumont? You want the wife's name and number? Let me give it to you. It's unlisted." I wrote down Gail Martinson's phone number.

"Thanks."

"So why's homicide interested in Wayne Martinson?" Janie asked.

"There may be a connection to a case we're working."

"Let me know if you put anything together. It would be nice if there were a connection for a change. Most of the time I feel like I'm working in a vacuum."

I hung up. "Who's Martinson?" Big Al asked.

"An accountant. The former bookkeeper for the ironworkers' local here in town."

"He's missing and you think there's some connection between him and that ironworker who got blown up down on Lake Union?"

"It's beginning to look that way."

"And that's why you're here working with Paul Kramer instead of taking vacation?" Big Al was incredulous. "You don't need a vacation, Beau. You should be on medical leave to have your head examined."

Big Al Lindstrom always says exactly what he's thinking. "You're not the first one to tell me that," I said just as Paul Kramer came back to the door of our cubicle.

"Tell you what?" Kramer asked, pausing there.

"That I'm a couple of bubbles out of plumb," I answered.

Kramer let it drop. "Gibson already left company headquarters in Toronto. He's catching the red-eye back to Vancouver tonight. We'll have to try to locate him in the morning if we want a look at that film. What did you find out from Missing Persons?"

I told him briefly what I had learned from Detective Jacobs. Paul Kramer shook his massive head. "It still doesn't make sense. If Martinson ran off, I'd lay odds it's got more to do with the ironworkers and those goddamned tapes than it does with his wife."

It hurt like hell to admit Kramer might be right, but his supposition certainly tallied with mine.

"Whoever the lady was on the phone in Toronto," Kramer continued, "she said Gibson is due back at work here in Seattle tomorrow morning by seven. Either at the job site or in their temporary headquarters in the Arcade Building. Want to meet there about seven-fifteen?"

"In the office?"

Kramer shook his head. "Let's meet outside first. By the fountain at Second and Union."

"All right, but I'll have to be back home by ten-thirty. I've got a date for lunch."

I'm not sure why I said it that way instead of coming right out and telling him that taking Tracie and Heather to Bumbershoot was a prior commitment. By then we had been working together for several hours with no recurrence of our ongoing feud.

A look of barely concealed contempt washed over Kramer's face. "By all means, don't let this case screw up your social life." With that, he turned on his heel and stalked away.

Good riddance, I thought. If he's still looking for playboy cop symptoms, I'll give him one every now and then. Just for drill.