A more perfect union

CHAPTER 2

Crime-scene investigation is an exact science, complicated by the countervailing demands of accepted protocol and a need for swift, definitive action. What may seem absolutely straightforward in an artificial laboratory situation or in a case study at the police academy becomes less clear-cut in the real world. At crime scenes, hard-and-fast rules of evidentiary procedure often fall victim to jurisdictional disputes and personality conflicts. After all, cops are people too.

In this particular instance, the infighting started immediately after the arrival of an investigator from the Medical Examiner's office. Her name was Audrey Cummings, and she turned up almost on the heels of Detectives Kramer and Davis. As soon as Paul Kramer noticed her, he took offense and attacked.

"Who called you in?" he demanded. The question and the way he asked it were both only one step under rude.

Officer Merrilee Jackson had followed Kramer down the dock. Now she stepped forward, ready to accept full responsibility. "I did, Detective Kramer. It seemed like a good idea."

"That decision is supposed to be left up to the detectives," Kramer snapped, irritation sharp in his tone.

"Sorry," she answered.

"Don't worry about it," Manny put in quickly to Officer Jackson. "You were right. We do need her, and it's a good thing she's here. It'll save time." He turned to Kramer. "Don't get your bowels in an uproar, Paul," he said.

The admonition came too late. Detective Kramer is one of those intense, territorial individuals who can't stand having other people set foot on his private turf. As far as I'm concerned, he's in the wrong business. Murders seldom come posted with "No Trespassing" signs. In fact, at that very moment, Seattle's media clan, alerted by the sudden surge of mid-afternoon activity, was beginning to gather in a disorderly knot just outside Kramer's line of vision. Woody Carroll was doing his best to keep them herded together behind a blockade of police vehicles.

The lady from the medical examiner's office, a mid-fifties dame who had been around more than the barn, remained cool and collected in the face of all the wrangling. Audrey Cummings' studied disinterest made it clear that professional squabbles were old hat to her.

Waiting until the fireworks died down, she finally tapped one foot impatiently. "Well, do I get a look or not?" she asked.

Manny grinned and made a low bow, stepping aside with a gallant sweep of his arm. "Please be our guest, milady," he declared.

Smiling at Manny's courtly gesture, Audrey Cummings marched past us in a suitably regal manner. In the world of homicide, where death and disaster are daily companions, we tend to take our laughs wherever we can find them.

Audrey good-naturedly joined in Manny's joke, but only up to a point. The fun ended the moment she reached the edge of the dock. There she knelt down on one knee and took a long, careful look at the body in the water below her. At last she stood up and walked back to where we waited.

"I'll have to have one of the assistant medical examiners come take a look at this," she said. "I think Mike Wilson is on call."

"Any obvious wounds?" I asked, as she started to walk away.

She shrugged. "Possible homicidal violence."

The words "homicidal violence" constitute a catchall phrase that can mean anything or nothing.

Paul Kramer frowned, jerking his head in my direction. "Wait just a damn minute here. How come he's asking questions, Manny? I thought this was our case."

Manny made little effort to conceal his growing annoyance. "Professional courtesy," he answered curtly. "Beau was here when they found the body."

"Oh," Kramer replied. He didn't sound convinced.

I tried my best to give Detective Kramer the benefit of the doubt. After all, being a novice on the fifth floor of Seattle's Public Safety Building isn't any bed of roses. I thought maybe having a seasoned homicide veteran like me peering over his shoulder was making him nervous. Whatever was bugging him, Paul Kramer was creating a bad first impression as far as I was concerned.

Not wanting to escalate the situation further, I changed the subject. "That's one good thing about being called out on a Saturday," I said jokingly. "At least you won't be stuck with Doc Baker."

Manny snorted. "You got that right, Beaumont. Compared to Baker, Mike Wilson's a piece of cake."

On several different occasions in the past it had been my personal misfortune to summon Dr. Howard Baker, King County's chief medical examiner, away from a social engagement of one kind or another. Irascible under the best of circumstances, Baker could be a real pisser late at night or on weekends. Around homicide, a place where consensus on anything is virtually impossible, there seemed to be almost total agreement that Mike Wilson, Baker's newly appointed assistant, was a big improvement.

Wilson had a pleasant, easygoing way about him that was a breath of fresh air compared to his hard-assed boss. A recent transplant to Seattle, Wilson was an energetic man in his mid-thirties. Rumor has it that one of his undergraduate degrees is in philosophy, although that's probably something he wouldn't want advertised around in the law-enforcement community.

Mike Wilson arrived at Lake Union Drydock a few minutes later, still dressed in casual tennis togs. He went straight to Audrey Cummings. The two of them conferred briefly before going over to view the body, squatting together side by side on the edge of the dock. "How long do you think he's been in the water?" I heard Wilson ask.

Audrey cocked her head to one side as if giving the matter serious consideration. "A week, maybe?"

Wilson glanced up at the metallic blue sky above us and nodded in agreement. "Pretty good guess. Maybe longer than that, but in this kind of heat, a week is probably right on the money. That's about how long it would take for him to float to the surface."

Getting up, Wilson helped Audrey to her feet then ambled back to where the bunch of us still stood in a quiet circle-Manny Davis and Paul Kramer, Officers Baxter and Jackson, Derrick Parker and I. Mike glanced around the group, trying to figure who was in charge.

"We'll need a boat," he said finally to the whole group in general. "A boat and a body basket. Has anyone called Harbor Patrol?"

"They're supposedly on the way," Manny told him. He turned to Officer Jackson. "See what's holding them up, will you?" Merrilee Jackson nodded and left, slipping quickly through the assembled group of reporters, a few of whom had, despite Woody Carroll's best efforts, managed to work their way inside the perimeter of vehicles.

Meanwhile, Derrick Parker slipped away from us long enough to edge his way to the side of the dock and steal a curious glance at the body. He turned away, groaning. "I think I'll go check on Hannah and Cassie," he said, hurrying off without another word to anybody.

Manny watched him go. "Some hero, huh?" he said, shaking his head. "But my wife thinks he's the greatest thing since sliced bread."

"Come on, Manny," Kramer said shortly. "Quit stalling. Let's get this place cordoned off for a crime-scene search."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Crime scene? When a floater has been in the water as long as that one had, there's no way it would come to the surface the same place it went down. Not even someone as new to homicide as Kramer could be that stupid. It was a grandstand play, pure and simple, but I was in no position to call him on it. Mike Wilson did.

"Are you sure you want to bother, Detective Kramer? It looks to me as though the body's at least a week old. My guess is he died somewhere else and got carried here by the water. Not only that, we have no way of knowing whether or not it's homicide."

"But you can't say for sure one way or the other, can you?" Kramer insisted.

Wilson shrugged. "No," he agreed mildly. "I suppose not, but even if he went in the water on this very spot, look around. There's been a whole lot of activity on this dock. How can you expect to find any useful physical evidence in a place like this after that long a time?"

What Wilson was saying should have been clear to the most casual observer. Lake Union Drydock, already working overtime to get a series of naval minesweepers back in working order for duty in the Persian Gulf, was one busy place even before you factored in Goldfarb's moviemaking army. In fact, the naval repair contract schedule was so overloaded, they had been forced to cut back our on-site shooting from two weekends to one. During the previous week when I had stopped by the drydock with the location manager, the place where we were now standing had been a beehive of activity cloaked in a cloud of sandblasting dust.

Wilson was right, of course. No physical evidence could possibly have survived a week in that kind of turmoil, but Detective Paul Kramer wasn't buying any of it, and he was the one calling the shots.

"We're still going to look," he said shortly. He motioned to Officer Baxter. "Go get some tape," he ordered.

Baxter left, reluctantly, with Kramer right behind him.

I turned to Manny. "That's one arrogant asshole," I told him. "What Mike said made all kinds of sense."

Manny gave a long-suffering sigh. "Just because something makes sense to the rest of the world doesn't mean it will to Paul Kramer. He marches to a different drummer."

"But Goldfarb and his crew are going to need to go back to work here. They've only got today and tomorrow to finish filming this sequence."

Manny shrugged. "You're welcome to try to talk some sense into him, Beau, but don't hold your breath. Once Kramer gets a wild hair up his butt, you can't change his mind for nothing."

I started after Detective Kramer. Sam Goldfarb and Cassie Young intercepted me before I could catch up.

"What's happening?" Goldfarb wanted to know. "When are they going to clear out of here so we can get back to work?"

"I'm checking on that right now," I told them.

Kramer was removing a roll of Day-Glo crime-scene tape from the trunk of his unmarked patrol car when I caught up to him. He handed the tape to Baxter. "You and that partner of yours start roping off the area," Kramer directed. He pointed toward the minesweeper towering in the drydock. "Start from that boat over there and go all the way to the end of the dock."

"Come on, Kramer," I said. "Isn't this a little premature? Why rope off half of Lake Union when you still don't know whether or not you've got a homicide? You know as well as I do that you're not going to find anything. There've been dozens of people all over that dock today. There've been dozens of people on it all week long, and nobody saw anything."

I was stepping on toes, but Kramer needed to be taken down a notch.

"It's my case, Beaumont, and as far as I'm concerned, this is a crime scene," he insisted stubbornly. "If I say we do a search, we do a search." He slammed the trunk lid closed for emphasis.

"Are you aware they're trying to shoot a movie here this afternoon?"

"What of it?" he asked. "I'm a police officer."

"So am I, Detective Kramer. Like it or not, my current assignment is to help these folks get their movie finished."

He stared at me, his long look critical and appraising before he finally replied. "And my assignment is to find out how this dead bastard in the water got that way. That's just what I'm going to do. Get off my back, Beaumont. I'm not in the habit of taking advice from playboy cops."

With that, he stalked away. I stood there in a fury after he left, with explosions of light blurring my vision and blood pounding in my temples.

Playboy cop my ass! I was aware that there had been some idle comment around the department about my change in lifestyle. The red Porsche 928 and my penthouse condo in Belltown Terrace had been the subject of mostly congenial ribbing, especially on the fifth floor where some of the guys regularly asked me if I was still on the take. There may have been more serious gritching going on behind my back, but Kramer was the first one ever to tackle me about it head-on.

I wanted to wring his neck. Unfortunately, Kramer is built like a Marine, with a thick neck that goes straight from his chin to his broad shoulders with barely an indentation. Ripped as I was, though, I think I could have handled him.

Officer Jackson got out of the patrol car and came over to me while I was still fuming. "I've called Harbor Patrol," she said. "They say it'll be awhile. There's been an accident in the locks."

My legs still quivered as misdirected adrenaline burned off through my system. I had to really concentrate before Merrilee Jackson's spoken words penetrated the fog of anger and made any sense.

The Hiram Chittenden Locks form a narrow bottleneck between Lake Union and Shilshole Bay. The lake is freshwater and the bay is salt, a part of Puget Sound. The locks raise and lower boats to allow access between the two bodies of water. On sunny summer days, mobs of amateur water-jockeys and serious drinkers simultaneously attempt to maneuver their boats through the locks. It can be tricky under the best of circumstances, because currents in the locks behave far more like those in rivers than they do those in lakes. Which is how Seattle ends up with weekend watercraft traffic jams that can rival any freeway.

If that was what this was, we could be in for a long wait. "Great," I muttered. "That's just great."

As Officer Jackson headed toward the dock once more, Cassie Young came up to me in a blind panic. "Why's that guy fastening tape to our boom?" she asked. "What's going on?"

"We've got a hotshot detective here who thinks the sun rises and sets in his ass."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Cassie demanded.

"That he needs to be taken down a peg or two." I left her standing there fuming and went looking for Woody Carroll. I found him in the midst of the bunch of milling reporters.

"Where's the nearest phone?" I asked.

"That one I used, down on the wingwall." He pointed, but that phone was already well inside Paul Kramer's barricade of Day-Glo tape.

"That one won't work. Are they any others?"

Woody shrugged. "Go on into the administration building. The girl in there will let you use one."

As I walked toward the office I remembered Ralph Ames, my attorney in Arizona, complaining that what I really needed was a car telephone in the 928. Ames is a gadget nut, especially when it comes to telephones. For the first time, I thought maybe he might be right about a car phone.

The "girl" in the Lake Union Drydock office was probably pushing sixty-five. "It's not long distance, is it?" she asked in response to my request for a phone.

I shook my head and she pointed me toward a conference room where a high-tech pushbutton phone sat on a battered wooden desk. I went so far as to pick up the receiver and punch the first three digits of Sergeant Watkins' home phone number. Then, stopping in mid-dial, I stood there holding the phone.

The socialization of little boys includes very strong interdictions against carrying tales. My first lesson came when I was five. I've never forgotten it. My mother's alteration shop in Ballard was next door to a bakery owned by a friendly old man. One afternoon I overheard several older boys bragging about how a whole group of them would go into the store at once. One or two would occupy the baker's attention while others smuggled doughnuts out from under his nose.

Offended by their blatant dishonesty, I told my mother who in turn told the baker. He caught them in the act the very next day. Two days later, the older kids waylaid me in the alley behind the shops. I don't know how they found out, but they accused me of being a tattletale and a sissy. They dumped me out of my Radio Flyer wagon and proceeded to beat the holy crap out of me. When it was over, my shirt was so badly torn it had to be thrown away before my mother saw it. I cleaned myself up as best I could, and when my mother asked what happened, I told her I tipped over in the wagon.

But I had learned my lesson. Permanently. And some forty years later, that lesson was still there, its taste as strong and bitter in my mouth as the dirt and blood from that long-ago alley.

I put down the phone without ever finishing dialing Watty's number. I'd take care of Paul Kramer myself, one way or the other.

"Nobody home?" the receptionist asked as I came back past her desk.

I shook my head. "Nope. I'll try again later," I said.

The aid car was just leaving as I walked back outside. I waved them down. "The lady's all right?" I asked.

The driver nodded. "Like you said, she just fainted. No big deal."

His partner leaned forward and grinned. "Yeah, we'll be happy to come back and administer first aid to her anytime."

Maybe Derrick Parker didn't like her much, but Hannah Boyer was obviously a hit with Seattle's Medic One.

By the time I collared Manny, my temper was fairly well back under control. "If that asshole Kramer wants a search, let's give him one, but let's get it over with now while we wait for Harbor Patrol to show up."

So for the next forty-five minutes, while we waited the arrival of the police boat, we diligently combed every inch of the area Kramer had cordoned off. It didn't take long, and it wasn't tough, either. The creosoted wooden planks yielded nothing useful. The whole dock was clean as a whistle. By the time Harbor Patrol got there, even Kramer was ready to admit defeat.

Harbor Patrol Three arrived along with two Seattle P.D. old-timers, Jim Harrison and Ken Lee, both of whom are contemporaries of mine. They brought their thirty-eight-foot Modu-Tech alongside the dock and gently eased in close enough to reach the corpse with a body hook.

That particular piece of police equipment is very much like a ten-foot-long question mark. The long handle has foam floats to help keep it on the surface of the water. Despite its name, the implement is neither pointed nor sharp. The curve at the end, formed by one continuous U-shaped piece of tubing, is about the size of a basketball hoop.

Harrison gently maneuvered the metal half-circle around the midsection of the corpse and pulled it toward the boat while Ken Lee untied the body basket from where it was stowed on top of the cabin. The basket, a man-sized frame of galvanized tubing lined with small-mesh chicken wire, was dropped into the water and positioned under the corpse. Once the body was tied in place, they hefted it into the boat.

All this was done with absolutely no discussion. Lee and Harrison worked together quickly and efficiently, the way good partners are supposed to.

Only when they were finished and had covered the body with a disposable paper blanket did Harrison look up. "Sorry it took so long for us to get here, Manny," he said. "We were stuck in the locks. Do you want him here on the dock, or should we take him back to Harbor Station?"

Kramer answered before Manny had a chance. "Here," he said.

That's when I hit the end of my rope and bounced into the fray. "Wait a minute," I said, turning to Wilson. "Is it going to make any difference to you if you look at him here or there?"

"None whatsoever," Wilson replied. "Either place is fine with me, although I think the dock over at Harbor Station is a little easier to work from."

"Then how about doing it there?" I suggested. "That way these people can get back to work."

Kramer started to object, but for a change Manny beat him to the punch and backed me up. "Good deal," he said to Harrison. "Take him down to Harbor Station and off-load him onto your dock. We'll meet you there in a couple of minutes."

"Okay." Harrison nodded. "You're the boss."

Kramer's face turned beet-red. With a little help from his friends, J. P. Beaumont had won that round fair and square. I motioned for Officer Jackson. "Do you see those two people standing there with Derrick Parker?" Derrick was standing in a tight little threesome with Sam Goldfarb and Cassie Young.

Officer Jackson looked where I pointed and nodded. "I see them," she said.

"Go tell them to start getting their people lined up. Now that the body's leaving, we'll be able to get back to work."

Merrilee Jackson flashed me a smile. "I'll be more than happy to do that," she said.

Jim Harrison finished securing the body to the deck and straightened up. Catching sight of me, he gave me a half-assed salute. Naturally, he was wearing surgical gloves.

In the good old days at homicide, we wore gloves only when dealing with bloated and decaying flesh, bodies like this one. We wear them more often now. They're considered essential equipment, right along with our badges and our guns.

I wondered suddenly if the good old days really had been that good, or if I was just an antique.

The real answer was probably a little of both.