'Now look here, Beau. Let's don't hit panic buttons. You know as well as I do how long it's been since Peters' wife took off. And you know, too, that he's had his hands full with those two kids of his. In other words, he hasn't been getting any. Give the guy a break.'
'But Watty…'
'But Watty nothing. We don't accept missing persons reports for at least twenty-four hours. You told me yourself that Andy Taylor saw him at nine o'clock last night. Nine o'clock is still a good five hours away. If you go ahead and file a report, he'll probably show up and be pissed as hell that you're advertising his love life all over the department.'
'But…' I tried again.
'No, and that's final.'
Watty hung up and so did I.
'I take it he didn't think much of the idea,' Ames observed mildly.
'Right.'
I paced over to the window and stared down at the street below. It was Saturday and the area of the city around my building was like a deserted village. No cars moved on the street. No pedestrians wandered the sidewalks. Only a live bum kept company with the bronze one in the tiny park at the base of what I call the Darth Vader Building at Fourth and Lenora.
'So what are you going to do?' Ames asked. 'Are we just going to sit around here and do nothing?'
'No, we're not,' I replied. 'I'm going to go to Candace Wynn's place, pry that worthless bastard out of the sack, and knock some sense into him. After that, I'll hold a gun to his head and make him call his kids.'
Ames nodded. 'Sounds reasonable to me,' he said.
'Are you coming along, or not?' I asked.
Ames shook his head. 'I think you'd better take me over to Kirkland and drop me off at Peters' house. You've got a bad feeling about it, and so do I. Somebody should be there with his kids, just in case.'
One look at Ames ' set expression told me his mind was made up. I shoved the paper with Andi Wynn's address into my pocket. 'Good thinking,' I agreed. 'Let's get going.' After I jotted down Candace Wynn's address from the file, Ames and I took off.
I didn't let any grass grow under my steel-belted radials as we raced across the Evergreen Point Bridge toward Kirkland. For a change there was hardly any traffic. The needle on the Porsche's speedometer hovered around seventy-five most of the way there. I screeched off the Seventieth Street exit on 405 and slid to a stop in front of Peters' modest suburban rambler.
I glanced at Ames. His ashen color told me we had made the trip in record time.
Heather and Tracie were out in the front yard tossing a frisbee back and forth. They dashed over to the car, pleased to see me and thrilled to see Ames. Ralph was the person who had bailed them out of their mother's religious commune in Broken Springs, Oregon. He is also one of the world's softest touches as far as little girls are concerned. They look on him as one step under Santa Claus and several cuts above the Tooth Fairy.
The two of them smothered him with hugs and kisses while he scrambled out of the Porsche.
'Call as soon as you can,' he said, leaning back inside the car to speak to me. 'I'll hold the fort here.'
As I turned the car around in the driveway, he was walking up the sidewalk into the house with a brown-haired child dangling from each arm. Ames is my attorney, but he's also one hell of a good friend. He somehow manages to be in the right place at the right time, just when I need the help. No matter what was going on with Peters, Heather and Tracie couldn't have been in better hands.
Relieved, I flew back across the bridge. My mind was going a mile a minute, rehearsing my speech, the scathing words which would tell Detective Ron Peters in no uncertain terms that I thought he was an unmitigated asshole. In my mind's ear, I made a tub-thumping oration, covering the territory with pointed comments about rutting season and bitches in heat. In my practice run, Andi Wynn didn't get off scot-free, either. Not by a long shot!
The area west of the Fremont Bridge and north of the Ship Canal is a part of Seattle that hasn't quite come to grips with what it wants to be when it grows up. There's a dog food factory, a dry cleaning equipment repair shop, and a brand-new movie studio soundstage. Added into the mix are Mom-and-Pop businesses and residential units in various stages of flux, from outright decay to unpretentious upscale.
Andi Wynn's address was actually on an alley between Leary and North Thirty-fifth, a few blocks north of the dog food factory. The fishy stench in the air told me what they were using for base material in the dog food that particular day.
I remembered Andi had told us that she lived in the watchman's quarters of an old building. The place turned out to be an old, ramshackle two-story job with a shiny metal exterior stairway and handrail leading up to a door on the second floor. An oil slick near the bottom of the stairs testified as to where Andi Wynn usually parked her pickup truck. Right then, though, the Chevy Luv was nowhere in sight.
I parked the Porsche in the pickup's parking place and bounded up the stairs. Halfway to the top, I tripped over my own feet and had to grab hold of the handrail to keep from falling. I caught my balance, barely. When I let go of the rail, my hand came away sticky.
The paint on the handrail wasn't wet, but it was fresh enough to be really tacky. The palm of my hand had silver paint stuck all over it.
'Shit!' I muttered, looking around for somewhere besides my clothes or the wall to wipe the mess off my hand. I turned and went back down the stairs. Partway down the alley, an open trash can sat with its cover missing. Whoever had painted the rail had used that particular can to dispose of painting debris, from old rags to newspapers. I grabbed one of the rags, mudded off my hand, and started back up the stairs.
Pausing where I had tripped, I examined the damage l'd done to the fresh paint. There, clearly visible beneath the fresh silver paint, was a scar. A deep blue scar.
I'm not sure how long I stood there like a dummy, gazing at the smudge in the paint. My eyes recorded the information accurately enough, but my mind refused to grasp what it meant.
Blue paint. What was it about blue paint?
When it finally hit me, it almost took my breath away. Flakes of paint, blue metal paint, had been found in Darwin Ridley's hair! And around the top end of the noose that had killed him.
'Jesus H. Christ!' I dashed on up the stairs and pounded on the door. 'Police,' I shouted. 'Open up!'
There was no answer. I'd be damned if I was going to ass around looking for some judge to sign a search warrant, or call for a backup, either.
The first time I hit the door with my foot, it shuddered but didn't give way. The second time, the lock shattered under my shoe. With my drawn.38 in hand, I charged into the tiny apartment.
Nobody was home.
J. P. Beaumont rides to the rescue, and nobody's there. It's the story of my life.
CHAPTER 25
Cautiously, and without holstering my.38, I gave the place a thorough once-over. By the time I finished, I was beginning to worry about kicking down the door.
As nearly as I could tell, nothing seemed amiss in the apartment. There was no sign of any struggle. It looked like the bed had been slept in on both sides. I found nothing to indicate a hurried leave-taking. The closet was still full of clothes, and the dresser drawers contained neat stacks of female underwear.
Finally, I put my gun away, picked up the phone, and dialed Sergeant Watkins. At home. I figured I was going to get my ass chewed, and I wanted to get it over with as soon as possible.
Watty was particularly out of sorts when he came on the phone. It sounded like he was out of breath. I had a pretty fair idea what Saturday evening activity my phone call might have interrupted.
'I just broke into Candace Wynn's apartment,' I told him without preamble. 'Nobody's here.'
'You what?' he demanded.
'You heard me. I broke into her apartment, hoping to find Peters. They're not here. Now I need some help.'
