If I had encountered Deanna Compton and her unruly mane of red hair on the street, I would have taken her for either a real estate maven or a well-to-do matron. She was dressed in a flawless, navy-colored, double-breasted pantsuit. She wore spike heels that barely peeked out from beneath the hem of her pants. With all the gold on her body-rings on nearly every finger, earrings, and several gold chains-I'm surprised she didn't clank like a knight in armor.
'Is your coffee genetically engineered?' I asked.
Deanna smiled again, this time with somewhat strained tolerance, as though mine was an old and not entirely welcome joke.
'I wouldn't know about that,' she said. 'We use Starbucks. You'll have to ask them.'
Chip passed on the offer of coffee; I accepted. While she went to fetch same, I examined our surroundings. The mostly glass-walled conference room was sumptuously appointed. The windowed wall to the west looked out almost eyeball to eyeball with the huge globe that sits atop the Seattle Post-Intelligencer building on Elliott. Beyond that was the slate expanse of Elliott Bay edged by Bainbridge Island in the distance.
The furnishings in the conference room-oblong table, ten chairs, and an enormous credenza-were made of some kind of light-colored wood, polished to a high gloss. Like everything else in the D.G.I. building, the furniture spoke of quality, of designers working for someone with both an eye for class and a bottomless checkbook.
Chip and I both took chairs along the far side of the table. When Deanna Compton returned, bearing a cup of coffee, she opened a drawer in the credenza and pulled out a brass, felt-bottomed coaster. Examination of the coaster revealed an engraved version of the Designer Genes International company logo-the letters D, G, and I artfully entwined to mimic a credible modern rendering of an ancient coat of arms.
'First class all the way,' I muttered to Detective Raymond, passing him the coaster.
He glanced down at it with an 'I'll say,' and handed it back.
'Sorry to keep you waiting,' a portly, balding man announced from the open doorway of the conference room. Compared to the way the secretary was dressed, this guy looked like your basic rumpled bed. His khaki-colored double-breasted suit could have used a good pressing. 'I see Deanna brought you coffee,' he said.
Chip and I both rose in greeting. 'Mr. Whitten?' Chip asked.
'Yes.'
'I'm Detective Raymond with Missing Persons. I talked to you on the phone earlier. This is Detective Beaumont.'
Whitten moved briskly into the room and shook our hands with a broad-handed, surprisingly strong grip. Then he took a seat at the end of the table. 'I don't know why you guys are bothering to hang around here,' he grumbled irritably. 'If Don Wolf had shown up for work this morning, I wouldn't have called you, now would I?'
'It's possible we may have already found him,' I suggested quietly.
Whitten looked at me sharply. 'Really. Where?'
Without a word, I extracted one of my business cards from my wallet and slid it down the table where it stopped directly in front of him. Whitten picked it up, held it out at the far end of his arm, and squinted at it.
'This says Homicide,' he objected, looking questioningly from the card back to me. 'I thought you were from Missing Persons.'
'Chip here is from Missing Persons,' I said. 'I'm Homicide.'
There was a long pause during which Bill Whitten's eyes sought mine. It's a moment that happens in every investigation when the people closest to the victim first become aware that the unthinkable has happened. Homicide cops are trained to observe the survivor's reactions, to gauge whether or not the response is typical, and if not, why not.
Whitten leaned back in his chair and steepled his thick fingers under his chin. 'I see,' he said. 'You're saying you think Don Wolf is dead? When did this happen?'
His was a measured, emotionless reaction, the response of someone to expected, rather than unexpected, news, and one that fully justified Chip Raymond's reluctance to approach the D.G.I. interview without having someone from Homicide along for the ride.
'At this juncture, we're not one-hundred-percent sure,' I told him. 'An unidentified body washed up in the water off Pier Seventy early yesterday morning. As you know, that's only a matter of a few blocks from here. From the sound of the description you gave Detective Raymond, I'd have to say the dead man could very well be your missing Don Wolf. We'll need someone to come over to the morgue at Harborview to verify our tentative identification.'
'He was in the water? What happened, did he drown?'
I shook my head. 'It's too soon to say. There'll have to be an autopsy report. That'll take a few days, and a toxicology report will take a few weeks beyond that. My suspicion, however, is that death came instantly in the form of a wound from a single bullet.'
Bill Whitten blanched visibly. 'Don was murdered then?'
'We're investigating the case as a homicide,' I corrected. 'Whether or not the victim turns out to be Don Wolf remains to be seen. That's why we're here. We need someone who knew Don Wolf to come along down to the morgue and try to give us a positive I.D.'
'You want me to do that?' Whitten asked.
I nodded. 'That would be the first step. Actually, the third. Before we leave the building, I'd like to take a look at Mr. Wolf's office for a moment, and also at his car, if I may. I understand it's still parked in the garage.'
'Certainly, but-'
'Furthermore, until we have ascertained whether or not the dead man is Mr. Wolf, it would probably be better if you didn't mention any of this to anybody, just in case the victim turns out to be someone else.'
'Not even to Deanna…to Mrs. Compton, my secretary?' he asked.
'No,' I responded. 'Not even to her.'
Whitten led us out of the conference room and diagonally across the reception area to an office located in the southeast corner of the building. The door was closed, but unlocked. 'Here it is,' he said, opening the door into an airy, windowed room.
Don Wolf's office was as compulsively clean and carefully organized as the furniture in a model home. Nothing at all appeared to have been disturbed. A bank of carefully framed diplomas graced one of the two nonwindowed walls. The other was covered with bookshelves. On the credenza behind the desk was a framed, eight-by-ten photo-a head shot of a smiling, glasses-wearing brunette.
'That's his wife,' Whitten told me when he saw me looking at the picture. 'Her name's Lizbeth. She's still down in La Jolla, waiting for the house to sell.'
'That's enough for now,' I said. 'We can come back here later. Please ask that no one go in or out of this room until we do, would you?'
Whitten nodded. 'Mrs. Compton will see to it,' he said. As we left Don Wolf's office, we stopped in front of his assistant's desk. 'Please cancel my appointments for this morning, Deanna, and for lunch as well. This may take some time. Also, please lock up Don's office and don't allow anyone in it until further notice.'
'Certainly,' Deanna Compton said, frowning up at him. 'Is anything wrong?'
'I don't know,' he returned. 'It's too soon to tell.'
Detective Raymond and I had arrived at the building in separate cars. If this was going to be a homicide investigation, there was no further reason for Raymond to stay involved. Down in the parking garage, he took his vehicle and headed back to the Public Safety Building while I drove Bill Whitten to the medical examiner's office in the basement of Harborview Hospital.
Those kinds of victim identification trips, often made in the company of a grieving relative or a close personal friend of the deceased, can be emotionally devastating at times. Some survivors chatter incessantly as a device to hold back the looming reality as well as the pain. Others endure the awful ordeal in stoic silence. Moments into the ride I realized Bill Whitten was no close personal friend.
We had just turned into traffic on Western when he leaned back in his seat, loosening the seat belt around his considerable girth, and heaved a gloomy sigh. 'I might just as well tell you this right up front,' he said.
'Tell me what?'
'Don Wolf and I didn't get along. In fact, I hated the son of a bitch. I'll probably end up being what you cops call the prime suspect.'
'You hated him?' I asked. 'How come?'
