“Madeline was a young woman who was supposedly murdered by an intruder in her home with her mother confined to a bed in a nearby room,” I explained smoothly, going along with the program that Wink remembered nothing. “But now a new witness has surfaced,” I added. “An eyewitness who saw the whole thing and says the initial attack occurred outside the house, near the back porch. It’s possible the victim was still alive when she was carried into the house, where she died.”
“You say all this happened way back in 1950?” Wink asked, still playing dumb. “Where’s the supposed eyewitness been all this time? If she knew about this, why didn’t she come forward years ago?”
She! I caught the slip almost as soon as it was out of Wink’s mouth. I had made no mention that the newly discovered witness was female, but Winkler already knew that. That meant that regardless of whether or not he had questioned Bonnie Jean Dunleavy, he had known about her existence all along. Not wanting to reveal that he had tipped his hand, I glossed it over as well as I could.
“Let’s just say she’s been out of touch,” I said.
He stared at me for some time without speaking. “Well, like I said, I don’t remember anything about it, so you’re barking up the wrong tree asking me.”
“You had a pretty good closure rate back in those days, didn’t you?” I asked.
“So what if I did?”
“It just seems odd to me that you don’t remember one you didn’t close.”
“Are you calling me a liar?” he demanded.
“No,” I returned. “Just surprisingly forgetful.”
“Wait till you’re my age,” he said. “See how much you remember.”
I took my leave then. There was no sense arguing with the man. No matter how much I didn’t want to, it looked as though I was going to have to go back to Paul Kramer with my hat in my hand and beg him for a look at the Mimi Marchbank evidence box. And since there’s no sense in putting off the inevitable, I headed straight for police headquarters. Once again I went through the whole check-in procedure. This time, though, rather than stopping off at Records, I went on up to Homicide on the seventh floor.
And was astonished. This was my first visit to Homicide since the move to the new building. And it wasn’t just the building that was new. No wonder all the old broken-down furniture had been abandoned in the basement of the Public Safety Building. All the furniture here was new. Somewhere a high-tech company had disappeared and some City of Seattle budget genius had used the resulting bankruptcy proceedings to furnish the new building-in cherry. Cherry cubicle dividers! Cherry desks! Cherry shelves! I felt like I’d landed in a cabinetry warehouse instead of a homicide squad.
I wandered through a sea of unfamiliar faces before someone called my name. “Hey, Beau,” Clarence Holly said, coming forward to shake my hand. “I thought you gave this stuff up.”
Clarence, who had been coming into Homicide from Patrol just as I was leaving, seemed happy to see me.
“Stopped by for old times’ sake,” I said. “Which way is Kramer’s office?”
“That way,” he said, pointing toward a wall of windows. “A room with a view. Don’t be such a stranger. Stop by later to visit.”
“I will,” I said.
Following Clarence’s nod, I headed toward the windows, ones that looked out on the wet expanse of Fifth Avenue, seven stories below. Kramer’s old office, the one we had called the Fishbowl, had been a glass enclosure that looked out on Homicide. This one, with Captain Kramer’s name on a nameplate beside it, had its back to the unit and its face-including a door and another interior window-looking toward the view. Kramer himself was nowhere to be seen, but the Marchbank evidence box was sitting in plain sight on the desk. So much for maintaining the chain of evidence.
I was standing outside the office, cooling my heels and looking down at the rain pelting the melting snow on Fifth Avenue, when my phone rang. It was Ralph.
“What’s up?” I asked. “You sound upset.”
“I
“He what?”
“Fired me. He told me he wants to plead guilty at the preliminary hearing, for God’s sake! When I told him that was a perfectly stupid idea, he told me to hit the road. You’ve got to talk to him, Beau. See if you can pound some sense into his head.”
I could barely believe my ears. “Ron is going to plead guilty? How can he do that?”
“Beats me. The only thing that makes sense is that he’s protecting someone,” Ralph said. “Or trying to.”
“Who?”
“I think maybe it’s Heather. I gather she’s been quite the handful lately-boy troubles, playing hooky from school, really, really didn’t want to be dragged down to Tacoma to live with her mother.”
Ralph didn’t say anything about possible drug use, and neither did I.
“So much so that she’d shoot her own mother to keep from going?”
“It’s the only thing I can think of,” Ralph continued. “By copping a plea, Ron probably hopes to forestall a more thorough investigation, one that would point suspicion in Heather’s direction. You’ve got to talk him out of this, Beau. Heather’s a juvenile. The worst she would end up with is a couple of years in Juvie. If Ron goes down for Rosemary’s murder, he’ll go away for good. A plea deal might take the death penalty off the table, but for an officer-related domestic-violence homicide, life without parole would be the next most likely possibility.”
The thought of Jared Peters growing up without his father made a hole in the pit of my stomach.
“I’ll go see him right away,” I said.
I started for the elevators only to run headfirst into Kramer. “You wanted to see me?” he asked.
“I did,” I replied. “Can’t now.”
But he followed me through the squad room and out into the elevator lobby. “I’ve been doing some checking,” he said. “Everyone I’ve talked to says they think reopening the Marchbank case is a very bad idea.”
I rounded on him. “Bad, why?” I demanded. “Bad because the Marchbank name still carries a whole lot of weight in this town? Has it occurred to anyone that maybe that’s precisely why the case was never solved in the first place?”
Kramer’s face darkened. His promotion didn’t seem to be agreeing with him. I suspected the man’s blood pressure had gone through the roof about the same time he put on his captain’s uniform.
“We’re not reopening this case on your say-so alone,” he muttered. “I’ve gone through the box. Whoever broke into Madeline Marchbank’s house and murdered her in her bed is long gone.”
“I think you’re wrong about that,” I said. “And I think Ross Connors will most likely have the final word on whether or not the case is reopened. In the meantime, I’d be mighty careful about how you handle that evidence box. If anything that should be in it turns up missing, I’ll make sure that the AG has your ears.”
Kramer bristled. “Are you threatening me?” he demanded.
“You can take it however you want, but I think the answer is probably yes. No, it’s definitely a yes. And believe me, Captain Kramer, it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”
CHAPTER 11
I drove straight from Kramer’s office to Amy and Ron’s place on Queen Anne Hill. I did not pass Go. I did not collect two hundred dollars. What Ralph Ames had surmised made perfect sense. Ron Peters was going to sacrifice himself in an effort to save his daughter.
And had Heather done it? Not the Heather I had known-not the sweet little girl who had sold me Girl Scout cookies and wrapped my heart around her little finger. But the Heather I had seen the other night? That teenager with all her piercings and her bare midriff, with her hennaed hair and pouty lips covered with black lipstick had been another Heather entirely-a stranger. And with the possibility of drug use involved? There was no way for me to fathom what she might do or how far she might have gone in order to have her own way.
There were two clearly marked media vehicles parked on the street outside Ron and Amy’s house. A bright
