“You mean I didn’t kill him?” she asked. Her voice shook with disbelief. “You mean I really didn’t do it?”
“No.”
“Who did, then?”
“Beats the hell out of me.”
“Why’s Larry locked up like this, then?”
“That’s a whole other problem. We’ll have to work on that one later. This is the best I could do on short notice.”
I turned to the attorney, who was standing, speechless, exactly where the guard had left her. “Any objections, Counselor?” I asked.
She shook her head and didn’t say a word.
“Good,” I told her, “because I’m going home. I’m off duty. It’s been one hell of a day.”
CHAPTER 16
I planned to go home. I meant to go home. I dropped the departmental vehicle off in the garage of the Public Safety Building, called upstairs to tell Margie I was gone for the day, and headed for Belltown Terrace with every intention of putting my feet up and settling down with a nice, cool drink.
There’s a free bus zone in downtown Seattle, an area where people can hop on and off Metro buses without having to pay a fare. It’s designed to help reduce automobile traffic in the downtown core, although I can’t see it’s made much difference. There still aren’t any parking places when you need one.
That particular summer, they could just as well have posted Under Construction signs on the outskirts of downtown Seattle. Massive construction projects were everywhere, from the convention center rising over the freeway to the transit tunnel burrowing under the city. It was a noisy, dusty, crowded mess. What had once been a pleasant, straight-shot stroll from work back to my condominium now meandered through a maze of wooden walkways past buildings going up and holes going down. Dump trucks, some empty, some full, rumbled past while the jarring racket of jack-hammers reverberated up and down the street.
With what I had been through that day, starting with Alice Fields and ending with Larry Martin, I didn’t need to fight my way through an earsplitting obstacle course to get home. Bearing that in mind, I left the department and dashed down the hill to First Avenue where I climbed on board one of the free buses. I’m not cheap. Old habits die hard.
It was rush hour, so of course the bus was jammed, but I didn’t mind standing for what should have been a seven- or eight-minute ride from James Street to Battery. Unfortunately the bus was not only free and crowded, it was also one of the kneeling ones, a vehicle that hydraulically lowers a wheelchair lift so disabled riders can board.
The bus stopped for someone in a wheelchair. Standing riders pressed farther back into the bus to make room for the chair. By the time the bus made two more stops, I was stuck between a reeling, reeking drunk who breathed noxious odors over my shoulder and a heavy-set lady who kept both her purse and shopping bag jammed firmly into my ribs.
That did it. Walking past construction sites was preferable. I got off the bus at First and Stewart.
Coming down Second Avenue“ s slight incline toward Belltown Terrace, I had to walk directly past Cedar Heights. I looked up at it, and my mind shifted out of neutral and back into high gear.
Statistics say that if a homicide isn’t solved within the first forty-eight hours, the chances of its ever being solved go down appreciably. Dr. Frederick Nielsen’s case was well beyond that forty-eight-hour limit. We were a hell of a long way from figuring out who had killed him. Not that I personally gave a shit, but the Seattle Police Department frowns on unsolved homicides. No matter what I had come to think of the late Dr. Nielsen, his case file had my name on it-my name and my reputation.
Instead of walking straight past Cedar Heights, I paused briefly in front of the building and gazed at the glass door to Dr. Nielsen’s office. There was a police padlock on the door with yellow crime scene no trespassing signs attached.
While I stood there staring, the earlier question I had been dealing with returned. If LeAnn Nielsen and Larry Martin hadn’t killed Dr. Frederick Nielsen, who had? Who else had opportunity? And motive.
My memory did a free-fall through all the information Big Al and I had gathered, coming to rest on what the building resident manager had said about Debi Rush, how he had seen her hurrying into Dr. Nielsen’s office at nine o’clock on Monday morning when she had told us she’d been there since eight.
It was a discrepancy we hadn’t had time to check out yet, one that had considerably more weight to it in view of what LeAnn had told us about Debi Rush and Dr. Nielsen.
Lost in concentration, I focused momentarily on Debi Rush-the obliging dental assistant, the lying dental assistant, all puns intended. On the lady who had been only too willing to offer Dr. Frederick Nielsen the cleaning and conjugal services his wife had declined to provide. On Debi Rush, the lady with the gangly, nervous, dental- student, dumb-shit husband.
The answer I had been looking for came to me in a sudden flash. Cuckolded husbands have plenty of motive. I know something about that from the injured-party side of the fence. If I’d ever had a fair crack at him, I cheerfully would have murdered Karen’s chicken ranching/egg conglomerate second husband. My heartbeat speeded up. Maybe I was on to something, but a voice interrupted my train of thought before the idea had a chance to jell.
“Hey, you can’t go in there.” It was the resident manager from Cedar Heights, still wearing his orange coveralls. He hurried out of the residential lobby next door, motioning for me to stay away. “The police told me not to let anyone go monkeying around here.”
“I am the police,“ I said. ”Detective Beaumont, remember?“ Reaching out to shake his hand, I tried to recall the man’s name, but it was gone, erased completely from my memory bank. Fortunately, he recognized me.
“Oh, I know you. You’re the detective, aren’t you? The one I talked to yesterday?”
“That’s right. Has anyone else been snooping around here?”
The man shrugged. “Some reporters, I guess, and a few television people. That’s about all.”
I was impatient to get away, to follow up on my latest brainstorm, but I delayed long enough to make polite conversation with the overeager manager. It’s called public relations.
“Have any of the tenants in your building reported anything unusual about last Saturday morning?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Not to me, they haven’t, but then, I go for weeks without seeing some of the people who live here. They’re in and out. Busy folks, you know.”
“I’m sure they are,” I agreed. “We need to talk to them, all the same. We should have done it today, but there was too much going on.”
“I heard all about that. In fact, you were on TV just a few minutes ago. That was something else, wasn’t it? They say the same guy’s a suspect in this case, too.”
I let it pass. Trying to explain otherwise about Larry Martin would have been too complicated, would have told too much.
“As I was saying, we should probably talk to the residents of the building and the commercial tenants as well. Would it be all right if my partner and I came around tomorrow morning to do that?”
The manager hedged a little. He was eager to help, but I could see he was torn. “I don’t know. I suppose it would be all right as long as I was with you. This is a security building. The residents don’t want a bunch of strangers wandering through the halls. They get real steamed up about that.”
I nodded. “I can understand that. I live in a secured building myself. Detective Lindstrom and I will be here sometime tomorrow morning ”
“Fine.” The manager nodded. “We’ll work it out. I’m on the reader-board in two places, under manager or under Calloway, either one. One of us will make the rounds with you, my wife or me.”
I was grateful he had finally supplied me with his name. “Thanks, Mr. Calloway,” I told him. “Is nine too early?” He shook his head.
As soon as Calloway walked away, I went back to Tom Rush. My mind lit on him like a vulture snagging a day-old road-kill. Why the hell hadn’t I thought about him before?
