sightseeing,” I said. “But maybe we can have dinner together tomorrow night.”
Mel caught my eye. “We’re booked tomorrow evening, remember?” she said. Then she added, “Although, if you want to spend time with your kids, I can go alone.”
Then I remembered-the fund-raising auction and the tux.
I also knew that the day had gone as well as it had due, in no small measure, to Melissa Soames’s efforts. I owed her.
“How long are you staying in town?” I asked.
Scott grinned. “The desk clerk said our bill is paid until Sunday, so we aren’t going home before then. Really, though, Sunday is when our plane leaves, and that’s when Kelly and Jeremy plan to head back, too.”
“Saturday, then,” I said. “We’ll make a day of it and have dinner together on Saturday.”
By six everybody was gone. Lars had returned home. The floral arrangements had been dispersed-some to Queen Anne Gardens, some to the front lobby of Belltown Terrace, and some to our living room. I was in the recliner with my feet up. Mel had just kicked off her shoes and curled up on the window seat to browse through Beverly Jenssen’s scrapbooks when her cell phone rang. She had to get up and track down her purse in order to answer.
I listened in on her part of the conversation, but her noncommittal yeses and uh-huhs didn’t tell me much. By the time she ended the call, though, she was visibly upset.
“Who was that?” I asked.
“Lenny Kessleman,” she said. “Head of CSI for King County.”
“What’s the matter?”
“The bullet from the Kates homicide scene is missing.”
“Maybe one of the detectives who was there yesterday picked it up and failed to put it in the log.”
“It’s missing from the wall,” Mel clarified firmly. “We all saw the hole in the wood paneling inside the camper. Since it didn’t penetrate the outside of the camper shell, we assumed it was lodged between the paneling and the shell and was probably stuck somewhere in the insulation. We decided to leave the paneling as is until after the CSIs had finished up with the other evidence.”
When a bullet exits a human skull, there’s always plenty of biological evidence-blood, bone chips, and brain matter-left behind. I understood why detectives on the scene would have left the bullet undisturbed until after all that evidence, including blood spatter and possible shoe prints, had been properly photographed, collected, and cataloged.
“So today they cut out that chunk of paneling and dug through the insulation, but the bullet wasn’t there,” Mel continued. “And from what Kessleman just told me, when they took the piece of paneling in for processing, they found evidence that would be consistent with the bullet having been removed from there at the time of the shooting.”
I’ve done plenty of head-shot crime scene investigations in my time. Encountering the physical evidence of one of those can be a soul-shattering experience-even long after the fact. If Allen Kates’s killer had been tough enough to wade through fresh blood and gore in order to retrieve damning evidence of his crime, it was likely we were dealing with someone who was appallingly cold-blooded. Most murderers don’t come equipped with the presence of mind to clean up after themselves. Most of them aren’t that smart.
“What about shoe prints?” I asked.
“What I saw would be consistent with a killer who wore booties.”
That meant the guy was definitely crime-scene savvy.
“Sounds like you’re dealing with somebody who’s watched way too many CSI programs on TV.”
“There is one more possibility,” Mel ventured after a pause. “Maybe our killer is a cop.”
Unfortunately, given the circumstances, that conclusion wasn’t at all outside the realm of possibility.
“That would certainly explain why Ross Connors is involved.”
“Wouldn’t it just,” Mel agreed. With that, she once more reached for her phone.
CHAPTER 9
Ross Connors’s SHIT squad is the first place I’ve ever worked that isn’t all hung up on everybody going through channels and across desks. I find that very refreshing. Yes, Harry I. Ball runs our unit, but Ross values the handpicked people he’s chosen as his investigators and he trusts them. He’s made it abundantly clear that we all have direct access to him whenever and wherever we deem it necessary. So it didn’t surprise me that the call Mel placed was to the attorney general. Nor did it surprise me when he called her back five minutes after she left him a message.
She gave him a brief rundown of what Kessleman had told her, then she started hedging. “I suppose I could meet you at the office or else my place in Bellevue in about twenty minutes.”
Mel paused while he said something in return. After a glance in my direction, she replied, “Ten minutes? Sure. That’ll be fine. One of us will be downstairs to let you in.”
To my astonishment she was blushing as she closed her phone. “So who told Ross we were living together?”
“I sure as hell didn’t!” I exclaimed.
“Well, somebody did,” she said. “He’s at a meeting at the Fairmont. He’ll be here in ten minutes.”
“He’s coming here?” That did surprise me. The mountain usually doesn’t go to Muhammad, and the fact that he was coming to Belltown Terrace for a late-evening personal visit meant something was up-something that couldn’t wait until regular business hours.
With only ten minutes’ worth of warning there wasn’t time to stand around speculating about it. I’m on the wagon. Have been for years. Washington State attorney general Ross Connors is definitely not on the wagon. Anything but.
In the old days-the pre-Melissa Soames days-an unexpected evening visit from him would have necessitated my knocking on my neighbors’ doors in search of a borrowed cup of spirits. Now that Mel was living here, however, we had a moderately decent wine cellar. The best I could do was offer Ross a glass of wine from a twenty-dollar bottle of imported French Bordeaux purchased from Mel’s wine merchant of choice-Costco.
While Mel went downstairs to collect our visitor I opened the bottle, set out some glasses, and poured myself a tonic and tonic over ice.
When Ross showed up, he looked surprisingly distressed and I could tell he’d already had a drink or two. “This is ostensibly a condolence call,” he said brusquely as Mel led him into the room. “Other than that, no meeting has taken place. Got it?”
So Beverly Jenssen was still providing cover-this time for the A.G. himself.
“Got it,” I said. I poured him a glass of wine. He took a long sip without really tasting it.
“So let’s go over this Kates thing again,” he said to Mel. “From the top.”
He listened without comment as Mel recounted the story. “Any ideas?” he asked when she finished.
“Beau and I were speculating just before you got here,” Mel replied. “We’re wondering if maybe Kates’s killer could be a cop, or at the very least someone with a law enforcement background.”
Ross shifted uneasily in his chair, and since he had appropriated my recliner, I knew it wasn’t that uncomfortable. “Could be,” he said. Then he sighed and continued. “Our killer could be a cop or an ex-cop or maybe even a correctional officer who’s systematically targeting ex-cons who did their time in Washington State. We need to know if this is an inside job. That’s why I put both of you on the two separate cases-with Mel running the sexual-offender roundup and you on the LaShawn Tompkins incident. That way, if the two cases do link up, I’m hoping to localize the problem.”
Mel gave me a look. Hers said clearly, “Who the hell is LaShawn Tompkins?” which meant that whatever more Ross might say in that regard was going to put me in deeper-in the other kind of shit-with Melissa Soames.
Hoping to divert her attention, I spoke up. “Are you saying you think we’re dealing with two separate issues, or one?”
Ross nodded. “I’m not sure,” he said, “but it’s possible they’re not separate at all.”
