and gone to visit her folks in Ohio over the holidays, but I also knew that her sons were due back in school that morning.
'She's stuck in Cincinnati with chicken pox.'
'Traveling with kids is always so much fun,' I said sympathetically.
'It's not the kids who are sick,' Larry Powell told me. 'It's Sue.'
'Chicken pox? At her age?'
'Evidently,' Larry observed dryly.
When Jared Danielson had come down with chicken pox early in December, Sue had said she remembered being sick with the same thing back when she was a child. I mentioned that to Larry.
'Evidently, she was mistaken,' he replied. 'And from what I hear, right this minute she's one sick little lady. It'll be several days before she stops being contagious and can get on an airplane to come back home.'
'Tough break,' I said, 'but don't worry about me and Mr. John Doe. The two of us will get along fine without her.'
The captain nodded. 'I figured as much, but if you need help, let me know.'
'Sure thing,' I told him.
Larry's phone rang just then. He waved me out of his office, dismissing me. Before heading back to my cubicle, I took a little detour down to Missing Persons. There I found Detective Chip Raymond moving stacks of paper back and forth across his desk.
'Looks like a giant game of solitaire,' I said.
Chip glanced up at me balefully and shook his head. 'Don't I just wish. Where the hell do all these people go?'
'Away?' I offered.
Detective Raymond didn't appreciate my helpful suggestion. 'Cut the cute, Beaumont,' he said. 'Whaddya want?'
'Any of those MPs got a tattoo saying MOTHER on a right wrist?'
Chip Raymond left off sorting papers and turned to a computer. He typed a series of commands on the keyboard, and then sat frowning at the display, waiting for an answer. When it came, he shook his head. 'Not so far,' he said. 'One of yours?'
'Is now,' I nodded. 'He's a New Year's Day floater.'
'I'll keep a sharp lookout and let you know right away if anybody matching that description turns up. What else can you tell me about him?'
I gave him the same information Audrey Cummings had given me, then Detective Raymond went back to sorting his morass of paper. I stood in the doorway of his cubicle for a moment, watching. 'I seem to remember someone saying that the age of computers was the beginning of the end of paper; that we'd all be living in a paperless society by now.'
Raymond nodded. 'I remember people saying that, too,' he said, morosely surveying the stacks of paper littering his desk. 'I think I want my money back.'
Laughing, I went back to my own office. The amount of paper I had to contend with was downright modest compared to Chip's.
That day, the fifth floor where the Homicide Squad resides was in a state of relative bedlam if not downright siege. Everybody was milling around, trying to get organized as to how best to deal with the caseload generated by a flurry of year-end violence: two alcohol-related vehicular homicides; an apparently fatal domestic violence case; and two Rainier Valley drive-by shootings that, although not fatal, still fell into Homicide's jurisdiction. No wonder Captain Powell had asked me if I'd mind working the case alone.
The first order of business was to track down the lady jogger who had reported finding the floater's body to 911. I've learned that more often than not, the 'innocent' people who 'discover' the bodies aren't nearly as innocent as they ought to be. It's as though they get so antsy waiting for their crime to be discovered that they go ahead and report it themselves, just to get it over with. So I was somewhat skeptical when I tried calling Johnny Bickford's number a little later that morning.
When a man answered, I asked to speak to Johnny Bickford. He coughed, cleared his throat, and said, in a clearer and higher-pitched voice, 'Yes.'
'Are you Johnny Bickford?' I asked.
'I was last time I checked,' the voice returned. 'Who's this?'
Johnny Bickford had to be a die-hard smoker. 'Detective J. P. Beaumont, with the Seattle P.D.,' I answered.
'Oh, hi there,' she returned in an almost welcoming croon. 'This has to be about the man in the water. I expected a call yesterday.'
'I tried,' I said. 'Nobody was home. In my business, there's not much point in leaving messages.'
'I don't see why not,' Johnny said. 'I would have called you back right away.'
'Well,' I said, 'would it be possible for me to drop by today, maybe later this morning?'
'Certainly. How soon?'
'Say fifteen minutes?'
'That barely gives me time to get decent, but that'll be fine. Do you drink coffee, Detective-?'
'Beaumont,' I supplied. 'And yes, I do. A cup of coffee would be great.'
Johnny Bickford's address on West Mercer led me to the bottom floor of a small eight-unit condominium complex on the view side of Queen Anne Hill. In this case, the view wasn't all that great, unless you happen to be a fan of grain terminals, which I'm not.
I rang the bell. The blonde who answered the door was almost as tall as I am. She wore a white, long- sleeved robe edged with something soft and furry, along with a matching pair of high-heeled, backless slippers. The outfit looked as though it had been copied from a 1930s Bette Davis movie. So did the foot-long cigarette holder.
'You must be Detective Beaumont.'
I nodded, handing her one of my cards. After giving me a coy look, she immediately tucked the card into her bra. 'Won't you come in?'
I stepped into a black-and-white room: white leather couch, chair, and carpet; black lacquered furniture. Huge black-and-white oils of nothing recognizable covered the walls. A silver tray laden with a french-press coffeepot, coffee cups, saucers, and spoons as well as cream and sugar was waiting on the coffee table.
'Won't you sit down?' Johnny offered. 'And how do you take your coffee, black or with cream and sugar?'
'Black will be fine,' I said.
Johnny motioned me onto the couch and then took a seat on a nearby straight-backed chair. She sat primly erect, shoulders not touching the chair, knees close together, legs demurely crossed at the ankle. And that was part of what gave her away. Modern-day ordinary women seldom pay that much attention to the finer points of posture and deportment. Not only that, the hand that passed me my cup and saucer wasn't exactly fragile and feminine.
Robe and slippers be damned, Johnny Bickford wasn't a woman at all, or rather, wasn't all woman.
'I meant to go jogging first thing this morning,' he/she was saying. 'Here it is, only the second of January and I'm already breaking one of my New Year's resolutions, but I just couldn't bear to go back down the waterfront after what happened there yesterday. The problem is, I'm not in good enough shape to run up and down the hills in this neighborhood. Besides, I barely slept last night. Nightmares, you know. That poor man. Do you have any idea who he is?'
'Not yet. We're working on it. Tell me, Johnny, where were you when you first saw the body?'
'I had just come up through Myrtle Edwards Park, and I was more than a little winded.' Johnny laughed, the sound more of a donkey's bray than anything else. 'That's not entirely true. I'm fairly new to this jogging thing, and I went out on Pier Seventy to watch the water traffic and to catch my breath. I was coming back down the pier to head home when we saw him. He wasn't floating, really. He was sort of pushed up against one of those old dead- head logs down along the edge of the water. Then a tugboat or something came by, fairly close to shore. The wake was enough to jar him loose. He disappeared under the dock.'
'You said we. Was someone there with you?'
'There was a lady in a wheelchair on the dock with me. I mean, we were on the dock at the same time,
