quiet and seemingly unruffled, but her usually ruddy complexion was unnaturally pale, her breathing sounded shallow, and she gave every appearance of being in physical pain. I worried about her.
“Don’t you think you should go ahead and call Gary now?” I asked.
She shook her head stubbornly. “Not until after I talk to the doctor and know what’s really going on.”
Sue Danielson showed up about one forty-five A.M., bringing with her two very welcome cups of reasonably fresh coffee.
“How’s it going?” she asked. We had stepped outside the waiting room into the hospital corridor where we could talk with some semblance of privacy.
“He’s still in surgery,” I said. “What are you doing here, besides bringing coffee?”
“Captain Powell wanted me to let you know that as soon as he called her, Janice Morraine came right back down to the Crime Lab and is personally taking charge of the briefcase you and the chief picked up earlier. That’s the good news. The bad news is that Ben Weston’s Day-Timer is nowhere to be found. Neither is his floppy. They never got logged into the evidence inventory.”
“But I saw the Day-Timer myself. Right there on the floor of Ben’s bedroom. It even had his initials on it. How could it disappear like that?”
“Somebody took it. That’s simple enough.”
“Who?”
“Somebody who was there that night along with all the rest of us-one of the investigators, someone from the Crime Lab, who knows?”
I shook my head. I knew most of those people personally, had worked with them for years. “But I don’t want it to be one of them,” I argued. “I don’t want it to be someone I’ve worked with and respected.”
“Too bad, buddy,” Sue Danielson said. “You lose.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“Me? I’m headed home for bed. Captain Freeman wants me back in his office by eight A.M. sharp with a complete report on everything I’ve managed to pick up along the way. Considering the commute, eight o’clock isn’t a helluva long time from now. What about you?”
“I’m here for the duration,” I said. “I brought Molly down, and I’m staying until she decides to go home or spend the night or until someone else comes to get her.”
Sue left. After I finished my coffee, I went back into the waiting room. Nothing had changed. I found a quiet corner and settled in to wait and think. What the hell had become of that missing Day-Timer? And where was the floppy disk with its backup files? They had both disappeared for good reason, I decided. Was it because of the computer access code, the one Ben Weston never should have written down at all? Or did the killer’s name appear damningly in one or the other? It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the missing information was vitally important, or it wouldn’t have become necessary to run the risk of making it disappear.
I had no idea where the disk might have been, but I knew for certain that the Day-Timer had been on the bedroom floor, and only a finite number of people had had access to Ben Weston’s bedroom on the night in question. Either the person or persons who had taken the calendar were involved in the murders or they were closely connected to the murderer. Police officers or not, I intended to find them.
With motive a given, who had opportunity? Of all the people on the scene the night Ben Weston died, the Crime Lab people themselves, the ones charged with protecting the chain of evidence, were the ones with the most latitude. After that came the Homicide detectives, followed, in descending order, by everybody from the police photographers right on down to the beat cops.
I was starting to make a mental list when the waiting room door swung open and a doctor walked into the room. He looked around. “Mrs. Lindstrom?” he asked, spying Molly sitting on a couch with her eyes closed and her head resting against the wall behind her.
Instantly she sat up, fully alert. “Yes,” she responded.
“We’re finished. He’s down in the recovery room right now.”
“How is he?”
“Lucky. Very lucky. We’ve repaired the damage as well as we can for the time being. The biggest danger now is that infection will set in. We’ll have to leave the incision open for several days to assure that doesn’t happen, but I think he’s going to be all right.”
“Really?” Molly asked.
“Really.”
Molly smiled weakly and shook her head while tears sprang to her eyes. “I think,” she said slowly, “that now I will cry.” And she did.
Molly stumbled back to the couch, leaving the doctor, who seemed to have something more to say, standing there in the middle of the room, waiting and looking uncomfortable.
Finally he said, “Excuse me, Mrs. Lindstrom, but do you happen to know someone named Beauford, Borland, something like that?”
“Beaumont?” I asked.
“That’s it,” the doctor announced, snapping his fingers. “Beaumont. I’m terrible with names.”
“I’m Detective Beaumont,” I said.
“I have a message for you. I couldn’t believe it. This guy is going to die if we don’t get started doing surgery, but he won’t let the anesthesiologist or anybody else touch him until we promise to take a message. I told him, ”I’m a doctor, not Western Union,“ but I don’t think he thought it was very funny.”
I didn’t either. “You have a message for me?”
“Sort of. I hope I have this name right. Sanders, Sanderlin? It’s close, but I didn’t have any way to write it down.”
“That’s all? Just a name?”
“No, there was something else too. The name, whatever it is, and the word garage. Does that make sense to you?”
“Not really.”
“Did he maybe leave his car at a garage someplace with someone by the name of Sanders? From the way he insisted on my taking the message, I thought for sure you’d know exactly what he was talking about. He acted like it was a matter of life and death.”
And then, just like in the comics, the lightbulb came on in my head. It was a matter of life and death. Big Al Lindstrom had recognized his assailant and was trying to get word to me as soon as possible. He hadn’t wanted to wait however many hours it would take for him to make it through surgery and out of the recovery room.
Meanwhile, with his message more or less successfully delivered, the doctor had returned to Molly. Gently, he took her by the arm. “If you’d like to come with me, Mrs. Lindstrom, you can see him for just a few minutes.”
They left and I stood there in that mean little waiting room trying to decode Big Al’s message. I couldn’t think of anybody named Sanders in any garage. Like me, Big Al often uses the bus so he doesn’t have to hassle with downtown parking. So it wasn’t a parking garage. And he usually serviced his own cars, so it probably wasn’t a mechanic either. It had to be the department’s garage, the motor pool, but who there was named Sanders?
My first instinct was to go roaring down the hill, crash into the garage, kick ass, and take names later, but that wouldn’t work in this case. And it didn’t make sense, besides. How could a grease monkey from Motor Pool be the mastermind behind a plot that had the entire street gang population of Seattle up in arms? No, I needed to consult with a cooler head on this one, most likely Captain Anthony Freeman himself.
But I was torn. Whatever I did, I couldn’t very well take off and leave Molly Lindstrom stranded there at the hospital. She was only gone for a few minutes. When she returned to the waiting room, she was alone but beaming.
“He’s going to be fine. I’ll call the kids now.”
“Do you want me to take you home?”
“No. I’ll stay here. They said they’ll be moving him out of recovery and into intensive care in a little while. It’s a different waiting room, but they said there are couches where I can sleep if I need to.”
“You’re sure?”
“Of course I’m sure,” she replied. “He might wake up and need me. Don’t tell him I told you so, but Allen’s really a big baby when he’s sick.”
“My lips are sealed,” I told her.
