'I know what it looks like, but it wasn't there when we got there. Why would someone take it? Could they put the pieces back together and tell what was on it?
She shook her head. 'No way. It'd be like a million-piece jigsaw puzzle.
Chrissey Morrison watched us disinterestedly, with the air of someone too tired to care and too broken to lie. I decided to press the advantage.
'What did you husband get sent up for?
Her gaze became brittle. 'I already told you. Drugs. He got rehabilitated in jail. Been straight ever since he got out.
'Did he ever steal anything, Mrs. Morrison?
'No. Just as I expected, her answer was too quick, too definitive, too defensive.
Playing for time, leaving her to squirm, I ran my finger along the marred edge of her wooden desk for several long seconds. 'Would it be safe to assume that you and your husband don't make a lot of money in this business?
'We make enough to get by, she said. 'We pay our bills.
'But it's not easy, is it?
She studied me warily as if trying to sniff out whatever trap I might be setting for her. 'No, she answered finally. 'It ain't.
'What if your husband happened across something very valuable, an ancient sword that was just lying there free for the taking? Would he have picked it up?
'He didn't say nothin' about somethin' like that. Her voice was tight, verging on panic.
'A sword was found with the body, I said, 'so we know he didn't take it.
'Then why're you askin' me about it?
'What do you think would have happened if he had seen it, though? Would he have taken it?
'I don't understand…
'Would he? I insisted. 'If he had seen it, would he have picked it up?
She dropped her eyes. 'A fancy sword? Probably. Dean'd know how to fence somethin' like that. He got sent up for drugs because that's the only thing they charged him with.
I looked at Big Al. He was nodding.
She stood up, her face slack with despair. 'You better go now. I don't want to talk no more. If he calls me, maybe I can make him turn himself in.
When she said that, I realized that Chrissey Morrison still thought her husband was under suspicion.
'Chrissey, listen very carefully. As I told you, we know your husband didn't take the sword, and we're pretty sure he didn't kill anybody, either.
She stared at me blankly. I still wasn't getting through. Chrissey Morrison was a whole lot more loyal than she was smart.
'Are you listening to me? I demanded.
She frowned. 'If Dean didn't take nothin', and if he didn't kill nobody, then why're you hasslin' me like this?
'You're sure he didn't say anything at all about a sword being there with the body?
'No, goddamnit, an ashtray. Don't you listen to nothin'?
'But no sword.
'I already tol' you.
'Maybe you didn't understand me the first time. This sword we're talking about was with the body when we found it, so if your husband didn't see one, then the killer may still have been there at the same time your husband was. And that's why we have to talk to him the moment he shows up. He may have seen or heard something that would help us.
'You mean you don't think he did it?
She had finally gotten the message. 'No, but he may have seen whoever did. I handed her one of my cards with my home number scribbled on the back. 'Will you have him call us?
She crushed the card in her hand and nodded wordlessly. For the second time, tears welled in her eyes.
We got up to leave. I paused in the doorway. 'When you see your husband, you might tell him from me that he's damn lucky to be alive.
'I'll tell him, she whispered. 'I sure enough will.
CHAPTER 15
'Tell me just this one thing, Big Al said, as we climbed into the car for the return drive to the department. 'How the hell does someone who got sent up for drugs manage to get licensed and bonded to run a shredding company?
'Don't ask, I responded. 'You don't want to know and neither do I.
'Are you going to head on over to Port Angeles today? he asked.
Baseball teams have designated hitters. In Big Al's and my partnership, I'm the designated traveler. Allen Lindstrom lives to eat, and he's especially partial to his wife's brand of home cooking. He doesn't like to go anywhere if he can't be back in time for dinner. Other than Ralph Ames, I've seldom met a bachelor whose dinners were worth going home for. Mine certainly aren't, so if traveling is optional, I go and Big Al stays home.
'That's the plan, I said, except the plan didn't work according to schedule. Going to Port Angeles to see Clay Woodruff that Thursday afternoon got shoved aside by something else.
Before we made it all the way inside the garage at the Public Safety Building, we were dispatched back out and sent to one of the city's better-known crack houses over on East Yesler. There, sometime during the night, in a filthy apartment that reeked of urine and vomit and human feces, a young hotshot drug addict named Hubert Jones had OD'd on heroin. He had fallen onto a bare mattress on the floor in one corner of what passed for a living room-a dying room in this case-and had been left lying where he fell. It was morning before any of his drugged-up pals bothered to call in a report.
The dead man's driver's license revealed that he had turned twenty-one just two months earlier. When we started asking questions about him and about what had happened during the night, nobody in the house knew anything, heard anything, or saw anything.
These were people who had fried their brains on drugs but whose bodies hadn't yet given up the fight. From what we could ascertain, Hubert Jones had died alone in a room filled with at least two dozen partying zombies, none of whom had bothered to notice. With cretins like that for friends, Hubert Jones had no need of enemies.
It's hard for cops to get emotionally involved in cases like that. It's hard to care. We all get them, though, and far too often. With anti-drug hysteria running at a fever pitch, police jurisdictions all over the country, hounded by the press, are under tremendous pressure to do something. Exactly what, nobody's sure.
And so, when another case crops up, we go through the motions. We ask all the usual questions and write down the usual non-answers. We visit the grieving next-of-kin, usually and painfully the parents, and do what we can, with our questions and our forms, to make sense out of the tragedies of their children's amputated lives. Sometimes we find out who's at fault; more often, we don't. When we're finished, we go home or else we move on to the next case. After a while, all OD's look alike, and it's hard to give a rat's ass. You're just grateful as hell that it isn't your own kid being packed off to the morgue.
On that particular day, Hubert Jones' squalid death took precedence over Tadeo Kurobashi's murder, over my going to Port Angeles to talk with Clay Woodruff. More than the critical forty-eight hours had passed since Tadeo's death, and the odds against our actually finding his killer were going up exponentially.
By the time we finished the next-of-kin visit, it was quitting time, and quit we did. Hubert Jones' wretched life and meaningless death sure as hell weren't worthy of our working overtime. All I wanted to do was go home and put my feet up.
My emotional battery had just about run down. The days of almost round-the-clock work and concentration had drained me, and I found myself filled with a vague sense of uneasiness. It wasn't anything physical. Thanks to Dr. Blair, my hand was feeling much better. There was, however, on the periphery of my mind, the nagging
