“That’s because someone gave us a grant,” Lucy said. “Paid for the physical plant on condition that we staff it with an M.E. and an assistant. So now there’s a big budget shortfall for everything else. I’ve been trying all week to get Gary off the dime, asking him to send this batch of evidence out to the state patrol crime lab for examination. He’s been dragging his feet, though. Doesn’t want to have his name on the request that will put our department that much more in the red.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You’ve got to be kidding me. He’s stalling on examining the evidence in a homicide investigation because he doesn’t want to sign off on a crime lab invoice? That’s ridiculous. There could be important evidence here.”
Lucy Caldwell nodded. “Yes,” she agreed. “There could be.”
Which meant that the bottom line here was…well, the bottom line. I understood that what looked like general ineptitude and stupidity was really a symptom of something else-that old bugaboo, interdepartmental fiscal warfare. I would guess that almost every big-city cop has a hopeless daydream of someday ending up working in a sleepy little hamlet somewhere-a magical place where everything is all sweetness and light and where dirty interdepartmental infighting or personality-based political agendas would be forever banished. Right. Sure they will. That’ll happen about the time pigs fly.
“So what are you saying?” I asked.
Lucy Caldwell gave me a scathing look as if I just wasn’t getting it. “You work for the AG’s office, right?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Doesn’t that mean you could get this stuff into the Washington State Patrol crime lab for analysis?”
“I’m reasonably sure I could do just that.”
Just then Gary sauntered back into the room, bringing with him a cloud of leftover cigarette smoke. Lucy’s reaction to his return was not only immediate, it was downright riveting.
“You have a hell of a lot of nerve, Beaumont!” she barked at me, slamming the palm of her hand hard on the surface of the desk. “So does your boss. What makes him think he can send his lackey over here to demand we turn over our evidence to him? That sucks, and you can tell your boss I said so.”
Her performance amounted to a remarkable imitation of Dr. Jekyll turning into Mr. Hyde. And since I’d made no such demands regarding their evidence, I was pretty much left staring at her in openmouthed amazement. I wasn’t sure why Detective Caldwell had suddenly decided to make me the bad guy here. For the sake of argument, however, I decided to play along, dropping names as I went.
“As I told you earlier, Attorney General Ross Connors is very interested in your case and its possible connection to several other cases we’ve been investigating. And I have an idea, when it comes to storing, examining, and identifying trace evidence on this kind of material…” I waved vaguely at the collection of sacks. “In instances like this, we have far more assets at our disposal than you have here.”
This was pure BS, of course. Lucy had already told me that they had no assets-as in zero, but Gary was enjoying hell out of the performance. He looked from Lucy to me and then back to Lucy with a slow grin spreading across his face.
“What’s all this about?” he wanted to know. “And what’s all this about Ross Connors?”
“Mr. Beaumont here is a hotshot who works for the Attorney General’s Office,” Lucy said. She spoke calmly enough, but she looked like she was still ready to tear people apart. “He came here today expecting to lord it over us and make a grab for our Lake Kachess Jane Doe evidence. I told him no way. This is our case, Gary. We’re primary. They’ve got no right to interfere.”
Gary’s grin widened. He was so thrilled to have a chance to rub his underling’s nose in it that he didn’t realize he was being suckered by the tired old good cop /bad cop ruse.
“Now, listen here, Lucy,” Gary interrupted. “If the attorney general says jump, we’d by God better jump.”
His tone was so patronizing I was surprised Lucy didn’t haul off and slap him upside the head. I would have, but she didn’t. She let him get away with it.
“But, Gary…” she began earnestly.
Detective Fields dismissed her objection with a wave of his hand. “Let’s just be sure that when we check things out to him, we do it the right way. We’ll sign off on all the paperwork, preserve the chain of evidence, and all that. As long as we cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s, it won’t come back and bite us in the butt. So go get me the damned forms.”
After giving Gary one final look that should have turned him into a pillar of salt, Lucy marched out of the cubicle.
“Just ignore her,” Gary advised me with a grin. “She’s a little more emotional than usual. It’s probably that time of month.”
In the world of Seattle PD, where political correctness is the name of the game, a sexist comment like that would probably have been enough for Detective Fields to find himself brought up on charges of creating a hostile work environment. The social culture here was evidently a little different.
Lucy returned, bringing with her a set of forms that would release the evidence to my care and keeping. She slapped it down on the table.
“You fill it out then,” she told Gary. “I’m not going to.”
She left again. Gary turned his hand to the paperwork with an amazingly cheerful attitude. “There you go,” he said at last, signing off on the bottom of the last form with a considerable flourish. “It’s all yours,” he said. “Let us know what you find out, as I’m sure you will.”
“Yes, I will,” I agreed. “Absolutely.”
Of course, Fields hadn’t mentioned the budget problem to me or that his department was operating in a world of hurt. How could he? I’m a fellow officer and a guy. And of course he signed off on the request. It was his way of throwing his weight around and showing me that he was the big bad boss and poor little Detective Caldwell had to do things his way. Right. Of course she did.
I took charge of both the paperwork and the evidence box. As I emerged from the cubicle, Lucy Caldwell was waiting just outside. She stood with her arms crossed, her eyes shooting daggers at me and at her partner as well. She didn’t crack a smile, and neither did I, but we both knew she’d won.
Detective Fields had been screwed-without a kiss-and he didn’t even know it; didn’t have a clue.
Which, if you ask me, was exactly what he deserved.
Leaving the crime scene, Joanna headed back to the department. Her mind was still grappling with the apparent murder of Lester Attwood when her phone rang.
“Hey, Joey,” Butch said. “How’s it going?”
This is the kind of question spouses ask each other all the time. It’s usually on a par with “How’s the weather?” and doesn’t generally require a complicated answer. Unless what you’re doing right then is driving away from the scene of a homicide.
When Joanna was first elected sheriff, she was still a relatively new widow, a single mother of a single child. She had not anticipated remarrying, but that was before Butch Dixon appeared in her life and refused to take no for an answer. Now, sometime later, she was still sheriff. She was also the married mother of a usually cooperative teenager, fourteen-year-old Jenny, who would turn fifteen in a little over a week, and an almost never cooperative son, Dennis, who was just a little beyond his first birthday and more than slightly opinionated for his age, something his dot-ing grandmother chalked up to his bright red hair.
“Fine,” Joanna said, editing out any number of things she might have said. “How’s it going for you?”
“I’m still home.”
Joanna knew that Butch had been planning a quick trip to Tucson that day to pick up steaks for the Texas Hold’Em bachelor party they would be hosting for Frank Montoya on Thursday night.
“I thought you were leaving a lot earlier than this,” Joanna said.
Butch sighed. “So did I, but the appliance repairman who was supposed to be here bright and early this morning didn’t come until just a few minutes ago.”
Their relatively new front-loading, water-saving washer had come to grief a week earlier, and it had taken almost that long to get worked into the repair schedule. Joanna was worried the machine had died for good. She envisioned being told that the washer, now minutes beyond the expiration of its warranty, would have to be hauled off to the junkyard.
