focus. We were shooting blind.
My instinctive choice for primary target was Gunter. That's probably nothing more than prejudice on my part. The reading we'd been getting on him was a mixed bag. Yes, he had done good things-including rescuing his financially failing in-laws, but there were plenty of other things that weren't nearly so commendable.
And that's when I started thinking about Gunter's twenty-two-year-old daughter, Kari. Naturally, Else had categorically dismissed her daughter's self-incriminating admission of guilt. And why not? Mothers are almost universally like that. Else had attributed Kari's emotional distress to the fact that Gunter had died without ever resolving the quarrel between them.
And that was possible. But I wondered if that was all of it. Exactly how long had Kari Gebhardt and her father been at war? I asked myself. How long and why?
I happened to know there were things about Gunter Gebhardt that his wife and widow didn't yet suspect. What about Kari? Had she somehow learned her father's ugly secret? What if she had discovered not only the existence of Denise Whitney, but also of the concealed financial assets that allowed her mother's rival to live in isolated splendor in the house on Camano Island.
As the father of a more-or-less unpredictable daughter, I'd like to think that torture patricide isn't something well-brought-up girls do-not even when they learn awful truths about their daddies screwing around behind their mommies' backs. Still, irate daughters have committed murder on occasion. Had that happened here? Or if Kari Gebhardt wasn't tough enough to do the dirty deed herself, might she not-in defense of her mother's honor-have found someone else to do it for her?
After years in Homicide, I have more than a nodding acquaintance with killers. Some of the most disturbing perpetrators-the ones I consider to be the scum of the earth-are the contract-killer types, the ones who murder for hire and see their job as nothing more or less than a business transaction. Some of them are willing to do anything for money-anything at all. And a scary few take inordinate pride in a job well done-the bloodier the better.
I left my apartment at a quarter to six and drove through Seattle's third day of unremitting morning fog. When I got to the top of Greenbrier, I had to dodge out of the way of a fire-engine-red Jeep Cherokee that came surging up the rise and almost ran me off the road. I would have had a few choice words about drivers of bright red cars, but I didn't. After all, I happen to be the driver of a bright red car myself.
I arrived at Else Gebhardt's Blue Ridge house at exactly the same time as the delivery boy for the Post- Intelligencer.
I picked up the paper from where he had tossed it in the driveway and carried it into the house. It seemed to me it was probably fortunate that the paper and I arrived at the Gebhardt house at precisely the same time. At least it gave Else someone familiar to lean on as the tawdry details of her dead marriage began to unravel in public.
Maybe I was kidding myself, but I wanted to believe that my being there would help.
14
I had a single, overriding reason for not wanting to be the one who gave Else Gebhardt the damning news about her husband-I knew how much it would hurt.
Faced with this kind of after-the-fact revelation of betrayal, people are always quick to trot out that useless old saw 'The truth will set you free.' Use of that particular quote always causes me to respond in kind with a line of my own, with the title of a song from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess — to wit, 'It Ain't Necessarily So.'
I know from personal experience that a painful truth learned about a departed loved one-news that arrives after that person's death-is more than merely hurtful. It can be paralyzing. I'm not hypothesizing, either. I know that pain personally because I've been there, and years later, it still hurts.
I've wondered sometimes, in the years since Anne Corley died, how would I have reacted if things had been different. For instance, if I had been given a clear-cut choice to go either way-to know the truth about her or to spend the remainder of my life in blissful ignorance-which would I have chosen? Would I have opted for truth or would I have clung blindly to those few precious moments and memories? Yes, having to come to terms with the 'real' Anne Corley inalterably changed me. Grieving over her loss forced me to grow up. Was loving and losing worth it? I don't know.
Some days-like the day I first held Kayla, my granddaughter, in my arms-I can say unequivocally that life since Anne was well worth the pain. But other times, I'm not so sure. The jury's still out.
On occasion I give myself little pep talks and try to convince J. P. Beaumont that of course he loved Anne Corley unconditionally. That's a hell of a lot easier to say or contemplate as long as she's dead and safely buried up in Mount Pleasant Cemetery. I'm afraid the reality of living out our lives would have been a whole lot tougher. For one thing, we would never have been able to live together as man and wife, not with me working homicide year after year and with her locked away, either in a prison or else in a facility for the criminally insane.
So Anne Corley was on my mind that morning when I sat in Else Gebhardt's cheerfully decorated kitchen, telling her what I suspected to be the sad truth about Gunter, her philandering and now-dead husband. Else's sallow, haggard features became even more so as I related what I knew of her husband's illicit connection to Denise Whitney and of the still-smoldering love-nest hideaway on Camano Island.
The problem for Else Gebhardt was entirely understandable. I believe that while Gunter was alive, Else gave him his husbandly due in the form of willing and unconditional love. Now she was finding out too late that rather than treasuring her devotion, he had hurled it back in her teeth. I told her as diplomatically and gently as I could, yet she seemed to shrink under the hurtful impact of my words.
'How long did you say she's lived there?' Else asked listlessly when I finished my series of revelations. Her face was strained and pale. There didn't seem to be any spunk or fight left in her. Two days earlier, when she was arguing with Officer Tamaguchi on the Fishermen's Terminal dock, her features had been alive with anger, outrage, and exasperation. Now she seemed to have simply given up. My sense was that the fire of life in Else Gebhardt was about to sputter and go out.
We were seated at the small oak table in the well-lit kitchen of her house on Culpeper Court NW. Two coffee cups sat on the table before us. By then mine was empty. Else's, still completely full, had grown cold without her ever having touched it.
'Two years,' I answered.
'How can you be sure Gunter bought it?'
'The purchaser was a corporation named Isolde International. What do you think?'
'Who's Isolde International?' she asked. 'I've never heard of them.'
'It's the company that purchased the Camano Island house,' I told her. 'The corporation commission lists your husband as president. Denise Whitney is on the books as vice president.'
'Oh.' Else frowned, absorbing the information.
'But where did he get the money to buy an extra house?' she asked. 'I remember two years ago. It was a real tough season. We were all right, but only because we weren't carrying a whole lot of debt. I…'
'Is it possible Gunter came into an inheritance of some kind?' I interrupted. 'Did he sell off some equipment, maybe?'
'No.' Else looked at me, her eyes narrowing. 'You think he was involved in some kind of illegal activity, don't you?' she said accusingly. The spark inside her lit up a little, gave off some heat. 'Smuggling, drug-trafficking, is that what you mean?'
'I suppose it could be something like that,' I conceded reluctantly, not wanting to plant unsubstantiated ideas in her head. 'What I can tell you is that some of the rooms of the house on Camano Island were left pretty much intact. Our investigation of those has turned up evidence that those rooms for sure, and most likely the others as well, were thoroughly searched before the house was torched.
'At this point, it's impossible for us to tell whether or not the killer found what he was looking for. We don't know what, if anything, is missing, since we have no idea what was there in the first place.'
Else shook her head several times, more determinedly with each successive shake. 'I can't believe Gunter would have been mixed up in anything like illegal drugs, but then…' She paused and backed off. The glowing ember inside her dimmed once more.
