I pressed down the control button. “I’m placing you under arrest, Larry,” I said, loudly enough so Perez and Howell could hear. “Give me the bat.”
“Not for Nielsen’s murder? For this?”
“That’s right, Larry. For this. Give me your bat.”
He handed it to me. “It’s not mine,” he said.
“It’s not?”
“It’s Dick’s.”
I looked down at the bat in my hand and then back at Larry. “Where was it?”
“He pulled it out from under the couch when I came in the room. When I told him I wanted my money, he came after me with it. He said he’d burn the mother-fucking place down before he’d give me one thin dime. I wasn’t about to just stand there and let him knock the shit out of me.”
“If you didn’t have the bat, what were you carrying when you came in? Cindy said she thought you were packing a gun. That’s why she called 911.”
“It was part of the kicker extender. She said he wouldn’t let me have my check until I brought back all my tools. The extender’s all I had left. Everything else was still locked up in Nielsen’s office. See? It’s over there in the corner.”
I looked where he pointed. A yard-long, chrome-plated, steel tube lay in front of the kitchen sink.
“There’s one thing about it,” I told him. “You sure as hell know how to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
He nodded his head sadly. “It’s the story of my life,” he said.
I pressed down the button on the intercom. “All clear, guys,” I announced to Howell and Perez. “You can come on in now.”
CHAPTER 15
Howell and Perez were understandably wary as they entered the room, Uzis at the ready. With his eyes riveted on Larry Martin, Howell stumbled over a plastic garbage pail in the middle of the room. Water slopped over the top of it, splashing onto Howell’s foot. He jumped back as though he’d been shot.
“The fish from the aquarium,” Larry explained. “I saved as many of them as I could.”
The poor bastard. Anyone who’d try to rescue dying goldfish sure as hell wasn’t a candidate to shove a dental pick into somebody’s throat. I was convinced, but I didn’t bother to test the idea on Howell and Perez. They weren’t buying.
Perez whipped out a pair of handcuffs and put them on Martin, while Howell handed me my Smith and Wesson. “Thought you might want this back eventually,” he said.
I put my. 38 back in its holster and went to the door to retrieve my discarded jacket. By the time I came back, Perez was reading Larry Martin his rights.
“I’ll give Logan the all clear,” Howell said.
When we walked out the door of Damm Fine Carpets a few minutes later, the street outside was wall-to-wall people-relieved police officers, eager reporters and television crew members, and a whole slew of just plain folks-ell of them craning their necks to catch a glimpse of the crazed killer, Larry Martin- the guy who’d gone to the trouble of trying to save Richard Damm’s worthless goldfish.
Larry walked beside me with his head bowed, his hands handcuffed behind his back. My heart went out to him. I knew how that felt from firsthand experience. Since I had helped get him into the mess, I figured I’d better do what I could to get him out.
While Perez locked Larry in the back of a patrol car, I went to find Captain Logan. “Look,” I said. “I think we’re making one hell of a mistake. Martin told me Damm attacked him with a baseball bat as soon as he walked into the office.”
“Wouldn’t you? He was carrying a gun.”
“It wasn’t a gun. He was carrying a carpet kicker extender, one of his tools. That secretary’s blind as a bat. She couldn’t tell the difference. Where’s Damm? Ask him.”
“Medic One packed him off to Group Health in an ambulance. He was complaining of chest pains.” Logan started to walk away from me, then he turned back, looking annoyed.
“Now, see here, Beaumont,” he said. “Are you suggesting that after this joker threatened to burn down a building, after he held his boss hostage for an hour and a half and tied up the entire western half of Seattle in a gigantic traffic jam, after all that, are you trying to tell me I should let him walk away scot-free?”
“He’s not a killer,” I argued. “He even saved the damn goldfish in there.”
Logan snorted. “Big fucking deal. I’ve got probable cause to arrest him on assault with a deadly weapon, minimum, and maybe kidnapping as well. You do what you want with the murder charge you’re working on, but this one is mine. I’m locking him up. Understand?”
“How about taking him down to Harbor-view for psychiatric observation?”
Dick Logan shook his head. “What’s the matter with you? Has everyone on the fifth floor gone soft on crime these days?”
“I’m telling you, Dick, that murder charge isn’t going to stick, and the assault one won’t, either. Cover your butt. Send him to Harbor-view. Don’t put him in jail.”
For a long time Captain Logan stood there staring at me. Right up until he opened his mouth, I couldn’t tell which way it was going to fall.
Perez came up to us a moment later. “We’re ready to take him downtown,” he said.
Logan answered Perez without taking his eyes off me. “Take him down to Harborview,” he said. “Put a guard on him. Tell ”em he’s there for psychiatric observation.“
Perez’s mouth dropped. He started to object, but Logan stifled him.
“That’s an order,” he snapped.
Perez beat a hasty retreat. I backed away, too. “I’ll take my car and go there too.”
“You do that,” Logan said. “I think you’re going to have some tall explaining to do if Sergeant Watkins ever catches up with you.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” I answered.
Logan swung away from me, once more speaking into his mike. “Okay, you guys, let’s see what we can do to get traffic moving again. It’ll be rush hour before long.”
I was in no hurry to run into Watty. I beat it up the hill to Fulton, grabbed my car, and headed for Harborview without bothering to tell anyone else where I was going.
Logan hadn’t been kidding about the traffic. It was a mess. As I threaded my way through it, I had plenty of time for thinking, but only one question to work on.
If Larry Martin and LeAnn Nielsen hadn’t killed Dr. Frederick Nielsen, who the hell had?
One question. Zero answers.
By the time I got to Harborview and found a parking place, Martin had already been admitted and placed in the psychiatric ward under a police guard. I was his first visitor. He was lying flat on the bed staring up at the ceiling when I walked into the room. He looked over at me.
“It’s a hell of a lot better than jail,” he said. “I thought that’s where they were taking me.”
“I talked them out of it for the moment.”
He managed a small, grotesque grin as the lines of stitches wrinkled into a nightmare mask. “Thanks,” he said. “I owe you.”
“How about answering some questions about Saturday? You don’t have to, of course, not without an attorney present.”
“You believe me, don’t you?”
I nodded.
“I don’t need an attorney. I’ll tell you whatever you need to know.”
“Is there a chance LeAnn Nielsen went back to her husband’s office alone, after you left her?”
Martin studied me for a long moment. I thought maybe he had changed his mind about answering. “I didn’t
