'The very one,' Captain Larry Powell muttered. 'However did you guess!'
Darrell Foster-Red Foster-was one of the good old boys who retired as the head of the Washington State Patrol years ago, sometime back in the mid-fifties, while I was still in grade school. Now in his eighties, he sometimes shows up at Police Guild events. For the last two years, he had tossed the coin for the Bacon Bowl, an annual fund-raising football game played by rival teams made up of police officers from Tacoma-and Seattle-area agencies.
'How did Red Foster get mixed up in all this?' I asked.
'Good question,' Powell said. 'Maybe you boys could get going and try to find out the answer, especially now that there's a possible connection to yet a third case. Where are you again?'
'In the garage of a place called the Grove on Twelfth at the corner of Northeast Twelfth and Bellevue Way in downtown Bellevue.'
'Before we do anything else, we'd better get to the bottom of this gun stuff. What kind of transportation do you have?' Powell asked.
'My own,' I said. 'The nine twenty-eight.'
'Detective Kramer, how about if you check out a car and go pick up Detective Beaumont. You and he can go pay a call on Grace Highsmith over there in Kirkland while Detective Arnold here tracks down Red Foster. I think he lives downtown here in one of the retirement homes.'
'Ask him about the tapes,' I heard Kramer say from the background.
'Oh, that's right. I understand from Detective Kramer that you've been given access to a security videotape that could show a clear motive for Don Wolf's murder on the part of Grace Highsmith's niece. Is that true?'
'The tape catches Don Wolf in the act of raping Latty Gibson,' I answered.
'So you've actually seen it?' Powell asked.
'I have a copy of it,' I answered.
'Where?'
'It's at home, still plugged into my VCR. I took the D.G.I. tapes there so I could watch them on a bigger screen, on a television set with better resolution than the one in the conference room.'
'I'll just bet,' I heard Kramer mutter in the background.
'But you haven't shared this material with either one of your fellow investigators on this case, with either Detective Kramer or Detective Arnold,' Powell continued.
'No,' I began. 'There wasn't enough time to-'
Powell cut me off in midexcuse. 'May I suggest, Detective Beaumont, that if there isn't enough time to share important evidence with your fellow detectives, then you'd better make it. Homicide detection is a team sport,' he added. 'You'd better either get on the team or off it. There is no middle ground.'
Sixteen
I knew it would take a minimum of fifteen minutes to half an hour for Phil Kramer to show up in Bellevue, so I used the time to make some of the calls I should have made the night before. The first one was to the house in Rancho Cucamonga. When no one answered, I was more relieved than anything else. For a change, I was more than happy to wimp out and leave a message.
'This is Beau, returning your call. Sorry I couldn't get back to you last night. I was out on a case.' I swallowed a little after that last sentence. It wasn't exactly a lie, but it was certainly less than honest. 'Thanks for letting me know what's happening. I'll keep trying.'
After ending that call, I looked around the garage. There was no sign of either of the two detectives. The only officer visible was that same uniformed cop-an officer named Ryland-still standing guard at the garage entrance. With no potential interference on the horizon, I dialed in Lars Jenssen's number. Calling my AA sponsor then was a little late-like locking the barn door and all that crap-but it was better than not calling him at all.
The phone rang eight or nine times. I knew better than to hang up too soon. Lars is pushing eighty. If he doesn't rush to answer his phone, he has the perfect excuse.
'Hello,' he bellowed into the mouthpiece when he finally lifted the receiver off the hook.
'Hello, Lars,' I said. 'It's Beau.'
'What's that? You gotta speak up. I can't quite make you out.'
I could hear him fumbling with buttons, most likely turning up the volume control on his telephone. 'It's Beau,' I repeated. 'Is that better?'
'You bet. What can I do you for? Haven't seen you at too many meetings lately.'
One of the things I've always liked about Lars Jenssen is his straightforward manner, the way he always comes right to the point.
'As a matter of fact,' I returned sheepishly, 'that's one of the reasons I'm calling right now. I had a little problem last night.'
'How big a little problem?' Lars asked. 'You in jail?'
'No, nothing like that…'
'Been in a meeting yet today?'
'Not yet. I'm at work right now, and-'
'Work?' Lars Jenssen sputtered. 'Did you say work? If you know what's good for you, you'll haul your sorry ass off to a meeting and you'll do it now. Where are you?'
'I'm over here in Bellevue, and-'
'Bellevue? You hang on a minute. I'll be right back.'
Lars slammed the phone down in my ear. I could hear him rummaging through papers, pulling drawers open and then shoving them shut, the whole while muttering under his breath. He's a widower who lives alone in a downtown high-rise retirement complex. His only son died in Vietnam, and his wife's been dead now for many years. When I first came back from treatment in Arizona and ventured into a neighborhood AA meeting down in the Denny Regrade, Lars Jenssen was the first person to come over to me and tell me how glad he was that I had come to the meeting.
'You keep coming back, now,' he had told me as I headed for the door. 'Just keep coming back.'
In the last few months, I hadn't been back very often. I had let being busy get in the way of following that one very important piece of advice.
'Here it is,' he said. 'I knew I'd find it eventually. Hang on, let me find my damn magnifying glass. I swear, they make this gol-durned type smaller all the time. There it is. Okay, where are you?'
'Bellevue, but-'
'Hang on, hang on. Don't get your sweat hot. Now, what day is it again?'
'Thursday, I think. January fourth.'
'Okay. Thursday. Let me see. It says here, there's a noontime meeting over there on Thursdays at a place called Angelo's. On a street called One hundred thirtieth. Think you can find it?'
'Lars, I swear, it was just a little slip,' I began. 'A one-time thing. I only called to talk for a couple of minutes. Like I said, I'm right in the middle of a case, and-'
'A case?' Lars repeated. 'Baloney. And don't say it was a little slip. There's no such thing, and you know it. You let one of those go, and it'll turn into a whole damned train wreck right before your eyes. You get yourself to that meeting, Beau. Here's the address.'
He was so insistent that I wrote down the restaurant's address when he gave it to me, but to be perfectly honest, I was just going through the motions. I was busy. I had my hands full with not one, not two, but three separate homicides. Detective Kramer was on his way to pick me up. I didn't really have any intention of taking off at noon to go wandering off to an AA meeting.
'You get that address all right?' Lars asked.
'Right, but-'
'No buts, and no time to talk,' he interrupted. 'I'll see you there.'
'What do you mean, you'll see me there?' I asked.
'At the meeting. I'll be there, too. I haven't been to a meeting so far today. It'll do me good.'
