“You get all that?” Marty asked.
“Yes, I did. Thanks. But you were wrong.”
Marty frowned. “About what?”
“You said you were too old to learn new tricks. Obviously you have.”
The frown disappeared. Marty gave the top of his CRT an affectionate pat. “Modern science is a miracle, isn’t it? Without her I’d be just plain useless.”
I had to agree with him there. Modern science was a miracle. “You’re right,” I said. “It’s downright amazing, but you might think about giving that cane of yours a try, too.”
“Why?” he asked. “So I can walk in front of a bus?”
“Never mind,” I said.
When I left, Marty walked me as far as the door. “I don’t know what kind of a case you’re working,” he said, “but don’t be too hard on poor old Wink. He did all right when he first left the department-had a lot of helpful connections and made some good investments, but then things started falling apart. Drank too much, gambled too much, his marriage broke up. You know the drill.”
I nodded. It was an end-of-career path for far too many of the cops I knew.
“He and his son wound up owning a place called Emerald City Security, a moderately successful rent-a-cop company,” Marty continued. “That went on until a few years ago. I’m not sure of all the details, but when the dust settled, the kid had the company and Wink ended up with next to nothing.”
“I’ll bear all that in mind,” I said.
As I rode down in the elevator, I realized that the very existence of Marty Woodman’s computer setup was one of those things where what goes around comes around. For a change it had happened the right way. After all the years Marty had spent making sure Footprinters weren’t forgotten, it was nice to know that they had returned the favor.
People who live in Seattle have two constant sources of complaint. We’re forever whining about either the weather or the traffic, or both. It seems to me that people who don’t like the weather should leave. That by itself would probably go a long way toward fixing the traffic woes. And then, the next time our elected officials ask for money to fix the roads, the complainers who stay on should all belly up to the bar and offer to pay their fair share.
All this is to say that the drive to West Seattle, which should have taken about twenty minutes in the middle of the day, ended up taking an hour and twenty minutes. I hadn’t called ahead to say I was dropping by because I didn’t want to give Wink Winkler an opportunity to tell me not to. Besides, I didn’t want to give him too much time in advance to wonder about why I was paying him a visit.
Even from the street, Home Sweet Home Retirement Center looked depressing. Someone had carved a steep wheelchair ramp up the bank between the street and a tiny front yard that was a sea of melting snow and mud and punctuated with cigarette butts. A second ramp, a makeshift plywood travesty covered with frayed indoor-outdoor carpeting, went from yard level to a rickety front porch. A hand-stenciled sign on the door casing announced “All Visitors Check with Front Desk,” but of course there was no one manning the dingy front desk. The place smelled of mold and mildew and years of bad cooking, but a current health inspection certificate was prominently displayed behind the desk as if defying anyone to question the center’s good reputation.
Home Sweet Home made Marty Woodman’s digs at Wall Street Tower and Lars and Beverly Jenssen’s cozy apartment at the Queen Anne Gardens seem downright palatial.
There was a bell on the desk. I rang it three times before anyone appeared, then a door opened and a tiny Asian woman stepped through a swinging door. She looked old enough and frail enough to be one of the residents, but she was wearing a baggy flowered uniform and carried a broom with a handle that was a foot taller than she was.
“Yes?” she asked.
“I’d like to see William Winkler.”
“One moment,” she said and disappeared.
I cooled my heels for the better part of five minutes before the door opened again. This time a heavyset, bulldog-faced black woman stepped into the office alcove. “What do you want?” she demanded.
“I’m here to see William Winkler.”
“Is Mr. Winkler expecting you?”
“No,” I said. “It’s a surprise.”
“Our guests don’t like no surprises,” she said. “Can I tell him what this is about?”
I have a problem with gatekeepers. I’ve
“It’s a private matter,” I said, handing her one of my cards. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather discuss it with Mr. Winkler directly.”
The woman held the card at arm’s length to read it. “All right,” she said with a sigh as she stuffed the card into her pocket. “This way.”
I followed her down a narrow corridor to the back of the house. Along the way we went past a series of rooms, all of them with their doors propped open. A television game show blared from one. In others I caught sad glimpses of aged residents sitting quietly in chairs positioned next to grimy windows. There were no bars on the windows, but the inmates of Home Sweet Home were as much prisoners in their individual rooms as if they were incarcerated felons sentenced to solitary confinement. And William Winkler’s existence was no different from that of any of his fellows.
Because his room was at the very back of the house, he had two dirty windows instead of the usual one. His view consisted of a dilapidated garage and a moss-encrusted block wall, so having those two windows didn’t offer much of a benefit. And since his chair was positioned with its back to both windows, I doubt Wink spent much time savoring the view. He sat dozing in a vinyl-covered recliner that resembled the leather one back home in my condo, but stuffing poking through holes on the arms testified to years of very hard use. A walker with traction-enhancing tennis balls on the feet was parked within easy reach next to his chair.
“Mr. Winkler,” my escort said. “Someone’s here to see you.”
Startled awake, he gave me a sour look. “Who are you?” he demanded querulously. “I suppose you’re some lawyer that jerk of a son of mine has sent around to hassle me some more, right? He can’t wait for me to die. Cheated me out of my own company. Now he wants to declare me incompetent so he can have control of whatever pittance I have left. How’s that for gratitude?”
Having been warned that Wink was somewhat cantankerous, I wasn’t surprised by his initial tirade. “My name’s Beaumont,” I said. “J. P. Beaumont. Marty Woodman said I could find you here.”
“Oh,” Wink said, softening a little. “Marty sent you? That’s different then. Have a chair.”
The black woman had lingered in the room during this exchange. Now, evidently satisfied that I was an approved visitor, she left Wink and me alone. Next to the bed sat a single chair. I picked it up and dragged it over closer to Wink’s.
“What do you want?” he asked once I was seated.
“I work for the Washington State Attorney General’s office with the Special Homicide Investigation Team. I’m looking into one of your cold cases from years ago.”
Wink’s countenance brightened with a hint of interest. “One of mine,” he muttered. “Which one?”
“From May of 1950,” I said. “Madeline Marchbank. Her friends called her Mimi.”
That brief flicker of interest went away, not because it burned itself out but because Wink Winkler slammed the door shut on it. “Don’t recall it at all,” he said firmly.
There’s a new technology out these days, a new kind of lie detector-or rather truth detector. It measures the way a subject’s brain waves react to familiar information. Lie detectors measure respiration, blood pressure, and galvanic skin responses when the interviewee gives untruthful answers to questions. The problem with that is that experienced lie-detector subjects can sometimes train themselves to outwit the old machines. With this new equipment measuring involuntary brain waves, it’s impossible to trick the brain into reacting to familiar information as though it were unfamiliar.
I may not be new technology, but I operate on a similar system. I could see from that initial involuntary reaction that Wink Winkler remembered exactly who Madeline Marchbank was as well as what had happened to her. If he was prepared to lie about it more than fifty years later, I wondered why.
