To: Detective J. P. Beaumont
From: Deanna Compton
Enclosed please find copies of the tapes you requested. I have cued them all to what I believe are the pertinent spots so you won't have to go scrolling through the whole thing.
If I can be of any further assistance, please be sure to let me know.
Deanna Compton, for Bill Whitten
For a moment, I considered calling Designer Genes International and letting Bill Whitten know what was going on, that Don Wolf's wife was most likely dead right along with her husband. But I decided against it. Just because Audrey Cummings didn't think Bill Whitten was capable of shooting someone didn't mean I had to agree. As far as I was concerned, Whitten was still a suspect.
With the tapes and note still in hand, I bypassed my own office in favor of one of the small conference rooms at the end of the hall. There, I plugged the first tape into the slot of the VCR. I had a one-in-three chance of picking the right tape first time up to bat, and I won big.
True to her word, Deanna Compton had cued the tape to the right place. When the tape came on the screen, Latty and Don Wolf were standing in the elevator. Wolf was standing next to the controls, and Latty was pressed into the far corner, with as much distance between the two of them as was humanly possible in that confined space.
I watched the whole sequence. The whole time they were in the elevator they maintained an absolute silence. 'One down, two to go,' I said, pulling the useless tape out of the VCR and inserting another.
The second tape was the one with the rape on it. There was no need to watch that one again. I ejected it, and inserted the third. This time, the screen held two separate, side-by-side images. Both cameras were mounted from much the same position over the front entryway door of D.G.I., but they were aimed in opposite directions. One looked out on the driveway and the busy street beyond. The other focused on the front door of the building. The readout in the corner of the screen said: DECEMBER 28, 12:06:32 A.M. That meant this was from Thursday morning, less than ten minutes after Don Wolf's assault on the girl named Latty.
Seconds later, the elevator door opened. Latty and Don Wolf came across the lighted lobby toward the door. Wolf was still dressed in his shirt sleeves; Latty still clutched his oversized jacket around her ruined clothing.
As they came toward the lobby door, a sudden movement from the other part of the screen caught my eye. Glancing there, I expected to see the arrival of a cab. Instead, the driveway area where the cab would naturally have stopped was empty. Puzzled about the unidentified movement, I flipped the remote control to rewind.
Because I don't watch television all that much, I'm not nearly as handy with what Heather calls clickers as Ron's two girls are. Naturally, I overshot the mark and came to a stop with the readout showing DECEMBER 27, 11:45:50 P.M. I had rewound beyond the place where I wanted to stop by almost twenty-five minutes.
'Damn!' I muttered aloud. 'Too far.'
I was about to fast-forward the tape when a car slid into the camera's viewfinder and stopped in front of the building. The headlights went off, but no one got out. From everything Bill Whitten had said, I had assumed Don Wolf and Latty had been alone in the building, but here, only a few minutes before the two of them had appeared on the screen in Don Wolf's office, someone else had made a midnight call on the headquarters of Designer Genes International.
Because the screen was separated into two simultaneous images, the picture on the department's twenty- one-inch viewing screen was very small. I leaned closer, trying to ascertain what I was seeing. And when I did, I could barely believe my eyes.
The car was an older-model Crown Victoria, vintage 1988 or so. In the distorted mercury vapor lighting, the vehicle appeared to be lavender. A car that old-what used-car salesmen always call 'reliable transportation'-is the kind of vehicle that blends. It's old enough not to be out of place in some neighborhoods and new enough to fit into others. What set this one apart, however, was the distinctive, clam-shaped attachment that had been fitted to the vehicle's roof. I recognized it at once, because, except for the color, it was almost a carbon copy of the one on Ron Peters' Buick.
If it weren't for Ron, I wouldn't have known anything at all about Braun Chair Toppers. These units, resembling old-fashioned, top-of-car luggage carriers, are specially designed for carrying wheelchairs. They come complete with motorized lifts that raise or lower chairs as needed.
I know for a fact there aren't all that many Brauns around Seattle these days, because people who need wheelchair capability tend to go after one of those newer-model minivans-ones that come with either lifts or ramps. Ron Peters had bought the Braun after a single look at prices on the vans had thrown him into an almost terminal case of sticker shock. The Chair Topper had provided him with a relatively inexpensive way of converting his old sedan into a wheelchair-carrying mode of transportation. It had worked so well, in fact, that when his Reliant died an awful death as a result of a car chase through the Sea-Tac Airport parking garage, he was able to move the Chair Topper from the dead Reliant to its secondhand Buick replacement within a matter of days.
Seconds and minutes ticked away in real time while I continued to watch the video of the Crown Victoria parked in front of D.G.I. I desperately wanted to catch a glimpse of the person driving the wheelchair-equipped car. After all, Maribeth George had just told me that a woman in a wheelchair seemed to know a good deal about this case.
Get out, I found myself silently urging the unseen driver. Get out of the car and let me take a look at you.
But no such luck. Nobody moved. Occasionally, cars and headlights slid past on Western, but the parked car didn't move, the doors didn't open. Then, at exactly 12:07:00, and with no discernible warning, the headlights flashed on. The Crown Victoria pulled away from the curb, paused for several seconds, and disappeared onto Western. On the other half of the screen, Don Wolf and Latty were just emerging from the elevator. So the movement that had caught my eye had been the Crown Victoria leaving, not a cab arriving.
Moments later, two people came out through the building's front door. They stepped out to the edge of the driveway, almost to the same spot where the Crown Victoria had been parked earlier. Latty was crying again, but as far as I could tell, no words were exchanged during the next eight minutes while they waited for the cab. They were both underdressed for the weather. Looking at the shivering, weeping girl pictured on the screen, the father part of me couldn't help wondering where the hell she had left her damn coat.
Finally, a Yellow Cab pulled up to the curb. Naturally, Wolf darted out and opened the door. Ignoring him, Latty walked around to the other side of the cab and let herself into the car.
As I switched the tape to rewind, I felt a surge of relief. Latty had gotten into a cab that had taken her somewhere-to an address. And with an address and a description, I'd be able to learn Latty's last name.
Now we're getting somewhere, I told myself gleefully. Now we're finally getting somewhere.
Eight
For several minutes after I clicked off the VCR, I sat without moving in the darkened fifth-floor conference room. I had replayed the front-entrance sequence several times. I had even played the beginning of the rape tape to double-check the exact time Don Wolf and Latty had arrived at his office.
There was no doubt in my mind that those several occurrences were somehow interrelated. The Crown Victoria had parked in front of the building about two minutes prior to Don Wolf and Latty's appearance in his office. Assuming they had parked in the garage under the building and maybe necked a little on the way inside, then it was conceivable that whoever was at the wheel of the Victoria had followed them to the building. And the fact that the unseen driver had gunned away from the curb just as the elevator door opened meant that whoever it was hadn't wanted to be spotted.
Now, after switching on the light, I pulled out my notebook and began to assemble a TO DO list.
1. 1. Locate and notify Wolf next of kin.
2. 2. Locate proper I.D. on Lizbeth Wolf.
3. 3. Find Latty.
4. 4. Find Wheelchair Lady.
