CHAPTER 11
Todd Hatcher was hustling around and setting up shop when my phone rang. “Hey, you are there,” Detective Jackson said. “I tried calling your office and they said you were off.” Off wasn’t quite the same as out, but I let it pass. “How was the memorial service?”
“Pretty low-key. Naturally Manning didn’t show, but we’ve got a lead on her this morning. According to our sources, she’s staying in a shelter up on Aurora. Hank and I are on our way to interview her right now. I’ll let you know what we find out.”
“Maybe I should talk to her, too. Want me to ride along? Meet you there?”
“Considering your persona non grata status around here, maybe that’s not such a good idea,” he said. “I can give you a rundown of what we learn-”
“I want to talk to her myself,” I said. “What’s the address?”
“You’re not listening,” he said irritably. “I’ll give you a call when we finish up the interview and let you know where to find her. I don’t want you showing up while we’re still there.”
“No,” I agreed. “Of course you wouldn’t.”
“And remember,” Jackson added, “no matter what, you didn’t hear any of this from me.”
That I understood completely.
My next order of business was to see about tracking down Thomas Dortman, but before I got to square one on that, Jeremy called.
“Wanted to say thanks for everything,” my son-in-law told me. “We really appreciate the hospitality, but we’re headed back to Ashland as soon as Kelly gets out of the shower and we can get packed up.”
Once again Jeremy had been drafted into doing the dirty work and talking with Kelly’s ogre of a father. I assumed that meant I was still in the doghouse.
“But I thought you were staying until Sunday…” I began.
“Kyle was awake most of the night last night, and so was everybody else,” Jeremy said. “We’ve decided we’ll all be better off if we’re back in our own place. At least that way we’ll have a little privacy when the baby is crying or Kelly is yelling.”
In terms of needing privacy, I suspected that the former was less of a problem than the latter. “My daughter can be a handful at times,” I said.
Jeremy’s sigh of agreement was heartfelt. “Yes, sir,” he said. “She certainly can be that. I’m really sorry about not coming to dinner the other night. I don’t know why she was so upset about Mel.”
“Don’t worry about it, Jeremy,” I told him. “Mel can take it and so can I.”
“Thanks,” he said. “Oops, gotta go.”
Kelly’s shower had evidently ended and so did Jeremy’s phone call. I know I should have been sorry at the idea that they were taking off two days early, but I wasn’t. Call me an old curmudgeon, but I was losing patience with Kelly’s theatrics. And that’s all I thought it was-theatrics. Kelly’s mother had certainly been good at pitching a royal fit in her time, and Kelly seemed to have inherited the same tendency.
I went out to the kitchen, poured the last cup of coffee, and made a new pot. With Todd now ensconced at the bar, I took myself and my laptop to my recliner and went looking for Thomas Dortman. He turned out to be a freelance writer and sometime Fox News contributor whose Web site’s home page said he lived in the Seattle area, although his 728 phone prefix hinted at a downtown location. I called the number and left a message, telling him who I was and asking him to call. And then, because there was always a chance he was off gallivanting around somewhere, I shot him an e-mail as well.
Hoping for Kendall Jackson to call me back, I spent the remainder of the morning working side by side with Todd Hatcher. We finally decided that we’d both go through the documents and make our own separate notes, which Todd would then transcribe into the spreadsheet. That way Mel could come along later and do the same thing. The resulting document would contain all of our impressions of what we each had read, hopefully boiled down into one readily accessible document where, with any kind of luck, the most important points would somehow bubble to the surface.
I concentrated primarily on the file concerning Ed Chrisman, the genius who had been taking a leak when his own vehicle knocked him off a cliff and into the drink several hundred feet below. I learned Chrisman was anything but a Boy Scout, with several increasingly serious scrapes with the law before he’d finally been sentenced for sixteen years after brutally raping his ex-wife. He’d been released early-ten percent off for good behavior-and had been free for just over a year when he took his nosedive. It chilled me to glean from his file that for the past six months he had worked as an in-store security guard. (Doesn’t anyone bother checking resumes anymore?)
Much of the police report simply didn’t make sense. As Mel had pointed out the day before, most people aren’t stupid enough to relieve themselves while standing in front of a vehicle that is still in gear. I thought maybe this was a weird accident, one of those situations where a vehicle somehow takes on a mind of its own and slips itself into drive from neutral. But the vehicle had been examined in great detail once it had been hauled from the water, and there had been no sign of mechanical failure.
Some attempts had been made to follow up on Chrisman’s activities in the days before his death, but those efforts had come up short. The evening before, he had been seen drinking in a bar in Fairhaven in the company of a still-unidentified woman. All efforts to trace her had also come to nothing. Several people said they thought she was a hitchhiker Chrisman might have picked up the day before driving back from Seattle, but even with the help of a composite drawing they had been unable to come up with any kind of identification.
The passage about the unidentified and so far unreachable woman made my blood run cold. What were the chances that Chrisman had assaulted this unnamed woman and left her either dead or dying somewhere in a winter-bound forested landscape that might never yield up either her remains or her identity?
Reading an abstract has its shortcomings. It’s not nearly the same as reading an actual file. And reading about evidence isn’t the same as seeing it with your very own eyes. According to the record, Chrisman’s smashed vehicle remained in the Skagit County Sheriff ’s Department impound lot. After several weeks underwater, very little usable forensic evidence had remained in the vehicle. The keys had been found still in the ignition. Chrisman’s wallet had been stuffed under the seat, with money and credit cards intact. If anyone else had been involved in what happened to him, robbery had not been part of the program.
The file did reference a single scrap of dark material-not matching any of Chrisman’s clothing-that had been found caught in the front passenger door. Other than saying the cotton broadcloth was either blue or black, there was no way of telling if it had been lodged there on the day Chrisman had taken his last Sunday drive or if it somehow predated the day of his death. As I made my notes I realized that sometime soon someone in our group-Mel or me or even Todd-might have to travel north to Bellingham and see the evidence for ourselves.
I kept looking at the clock, hoping Mel would come home or that Kendall Jackson would call me in time for me to go see Elaine Manning prior to LaShawn Tompkins’s funeral. By noon, however, it became clear that neither of those things was going to happen. I gave Todd carte blanche to rummage through our two-day-old leftovers, but he was so absorbed in his work I doubted he’d notice I was gone-to say nothing of remembering to eat.
Weather in Seattle can turn on a dime. By the time I finally pulled out of the garage the morning rains were gone and the sky directly overhead was a brilliant blue. The sky was clearing, although the pavement was still wet. The sun glinting off it was blinding in spots. As I drove toward the I-90 bridge, even Mount Rainier was gradually emerging from its wintertime cocoon of low-lying clouds. I tried calling Mel as I drove, but her phone went straight to voice mail.
Down in the Rainier Valley I was early enough that I was able to park close to the church. I was so early, in fact, that the doors to the African Bible Baptist Church were not yet open, so I walked the length and breadth of Church Street and talked to any number of Etta Mae Tompkins’s neighbors.
Mostly I got nowhere fast. No one had seen anything, or, at least, no one would
