perpetrators in that case-”
“One of the alleged perpetrators,” Kramer corrected.
“And Winkler was the lead investigating officer,” I continued. “Both of them died within hours of learning about Sister Mary Katherine’s potentially damaging allegations. Doesn’t that tell you something?”
“It tells me people are messing around where they shouldn’t be messing,” Kramer replied. “Wink Winkler blew his brains out. Lots of ex-cops do that. Would he have done it if Sister Mary Katherine hadn’t been stirring up those old pots? Who knows? We’ll be investigating that, of course, and trying to find out what else was going on in his life that might have pushed him over the edge. As for Elvira Marchbank? I suspect her death will end up being ruled accidental. There was a stack of magazines near the top of the stairs where she took that fall. One of them- one that was found near her body at the bottom of the stairs-showed evidence of a partial shoe print. I’m guessing she stepped on it and went flying-sort of like stepping on a banana peel.”
Earlier in the day Kramer had referred to Elvira’s death as being unexpected. He hadn’t said a word about it being a possible homicide. Now that previous statement made sense. The good captain was playing the closure game. Ruling a homicide an accidental death and conveniently labeling something suicide when it maybe wasn’t suicide at all helps skew the statistics. It keeps those pesky unsolved cases from showing up on your squad’s track record.
Captain Paul Kramer was definitely a bottom-line kind of guy. If he couldn’t solve a particular case-or if he didn’t want to be bothered-he simply made it disappear. As for Mimi Marchbank? Her death hadn’t happened on his watch, so he could afford to reopen that one and leave it open indefinitely. Regardless of whether or not the case was solved, it wouldn’t count against Kramer’s closure stats.
I put the phone down and found Sister Mary Katherine staring at me. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “You look upset.”
“I’ll take you back to Whidbey,” I said. “It turns out I was wrong. We won’t be paying another visit to Homicide after all.”
“Why not? Because the captain thinks I made the whole thing up?”
I simply nodded. Explaining the reality of Seattle PD internal politics was beyond my ability right then.
“I’ll call Sister Therese and have her meet us in Mount Vernon,” Sister Mary Katherine offered. “There’s no sense in your having to drive me all the way home.”
Dealing with Kramer had taken the edge off my ability to argue. “All right,” I agreed, and handed her my cell phone so she could make the call.
We started north on I-5 in rush-hour traffic. Sister Mary Katherine was quiet for a long time. Finally she sighed. “There’s something else I should tell you,” she said. “I should have mentioned it right away.”
“What’s that?” I asked, assuming it was some other fragment of memory she had dredged up about Mimi Marchbank’s murder.
“The people from the memorial service, Ron and Amy, they’re good friends of yours, aren’t they?”
“Yes, why?”
“None of this is any of my business, but I couldn’t help overhearing the unpleasantness after the service. The daughter they were talking about, the girl…”
“Heather?” I asked.
Sister Mary Katherine nodded. “How old is she?”
“Fifteen. Why?”
“I was just sitting there near the entryway door when the boy from the funeral home…”
“Dillon Middleton,” I supplied.
“Yes, if that’s his name. He came to the front door and rang the bell. Heather came down from upstairs. Neither one of them realized I was right there, but I heard what they were saying. Dillon asked Heather to come away with him, and she went straight upstairs to pack a bag.”
I pulled out my phone and dialed Ron and Amy’s number. Tracy answered. “Trace,” I said, using a pet name I alone am allowed. “Do me a favor. Put your sister on the phone.”
The receiver clattered onto some hard surface. That sound was followed by a very long silence. Finally Tracy came back on the line. “I can’t find her. She’s not here.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” I said. “You’d better let me talk to your father.”
CHAPTER 15
I didn’t want to be the one to tell Ron Peters that Heather had run away, but I did. Once he heard what I had to say, Ron was every bit as upset as I thought he’d be. “Running away makes it look pretty bad,” he said glumly.
“Depends on how far she ran,” I said. “And which direction. Tell me about the guy she’s with.”
“Until today I thought Heather had broken up with that little creep,” he growled. “He’s from Vancouver. His parents are divorced. His father still lives in Canada along with his second wife. His mother went to college with Molly, and they’ve been great pals ever since. The mother is a complete ditz who has married and divorced several times. One of her husbands lived here in Seattle, and she brought Dillon along for the ride. When she left that guy and moved to greener pastures in San Francisco, she more or less abandoned the kid. Rather than sending him home to his father where he belonged, she set him up with an apartment of his own. The idea was that he would stay here and go to school, but school doesn’t seem to be very high on his list of priorities. He was lonesome and needing company, so Molly took pity on him. She invited him over for dinner. That’s how Heather first met him.”
“So Dillon is Molly’s doing?” I asked.
“He is as far as I’m concerned.”
That went a long way toward explaining what had gone on at the end of the memorial service.
“Mel Soames was supposed to interview Heather tomorrow morning. Are you going to tell her about Heather taking off, or am I?”
“Maybe she’s just over at Dillon’s place,” Ron said. “I’m sure Molly knows where he lives. Let me try to find her. If I can’t…”
“Okay,” I said. “I’m on my way to Mount Vernon right now. I’ll give you until I get back to see if you can find her. If you haven’t located her by then…”
“All right,” Ron said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Timing was everything, and I probably shouldn’t have given Ron that much leeway. At the very least, Heather was a person of interest in her mother’s homicide. At worst, she was a prime suspect. Her boyfriend was from Canada, which, depending on traffic, is only two and a half hours north of Seattle-about the same amount of time it would take me to drive to Mount Vernon and back.
If Canada was where Heather and Dillon were heading, Ron was right. It always looks bad if you attempt to flee across an international border. With Canada in particular, bringing homicide suspects back across the U.S.- Canadian border to face charges is never a slam dunk. I tried looking on the bright side. Maybe Ron and Amy would go to Dillon’s apartment and find their fifteen-year-old daughter in bed with her boyfriend. The fact that such an eventuality would be good news left me feeling sick to my stomach.
“I should have kept quiet,” Sister Mary Katherine said in response to my long, brooding silence. “I should have minded my own business, but I just didn’t think that a girl that young should be running off with a boy like that.”
“No,” I said. “You did exactly the right thing.”
“You really care about this girl, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve known her since she was tiny.”
“Is she in trouble?” Sister Mary Katherine asked.
I didn’t know if she meant “in trouble” in the way it was used in our day, when “in trouble” and “pregnant” were used interchangeably. Or if Sister Mary Katherine meant something else entirely.
“It’s possible Heather shot her own mother,” I answered at last. “Which sounds like trouble to me.”
“Yes,” Sister Mary Katherine breathed. “I suppose it is. As soon as I get back to the convent, I’ll put her
