'Come alone, Chrissey Morrison cautioned, and hung up without saying good-bye. I stood there for some time with the phone in my hand and dial tone buzzing in my ear.
I could think of only one reason Chrissey Morrison would call me. Actually there were two. One was if her husband Dean had decided to talk to me. The other was if I was wrong about Dean Morrison and he was Tadeo Kurobashi's killer after all.
So what to do? Did I follow directions and go alone to meet Chrissey Morrison, or did I call Big Al or someone else from the department and drag them along as backup?
I tried calling Lindstrom's house in Ballard, figuring I could pick him up on my way over, but there was no answer, and Big Al is far too stubborn a Norwegian to stoop to owning an answering machine.
Watching the clock, I took the time to clean and oil my Smith and Wesson. My gimpy hand made gun cleaning a slow and complicated process. When I finished, I tried Big Al again. Still no answer. I tried Watty as well. He wasn't home either, and it didn't seem urgent enough to go through channels and jangle his beeper on his day off.
Time passed incredibly slowly. I showered and changed clothes. My shoulder holster is right-handed, so I had to tuck the. 38 in the back of the waistband of my pants, covering it with my jacket. I knew that if I was going to hit something left-handed, it would have to be at very close range. But I took the. 38 along anyway, as a security blanket, my cop's security blanket.
In the car and driving toward Ballard, I called again. Big Al still wasn't home. So I drove to the locks by myself.
It was midmorning and sunny. The locks along with the accompanying fish ladder are a popular attraction in Seattle, particularly on sunny Saturday mornings. I've taken Heather and Tracie there a few times. Heather calls it the elevator for boats and the stairs for fish, both of which are pretty accurate descriptions.
There were any number of people on the walkways and footpaths, watching while a group of boats, including several pleasure craft and a heavily loaded barge, were lowered from Lake Union to Salmon Bay, a drop of six to twenty-six feet, depending on the tide.
I made my way across the series of zigzagging walkways until I reached the fish ladder area on the far side. There I looked around for Chrissey Morrison, but I didn't see her. I had no desire to go inside the fish-ladder viewing tunnels to see the sockeye salmon and steelhead trout going home to spawn. At the beginning of the run they're not nearly as tattered and battle-weary as they will be farther upstream, but they still remind me too much of my own mortality. If Chrissey Morrison was in there, she'd have to come back outside and find me.
I went over to where a concrete bench had been shoved against the bottom of the bluff. From that vantage point, I had a clear view of anyone stepping off the final walkway. Chrissey showed up, ten minutes later and fifteen minutes late, hurrying across the pedestrian drawbridge as soon as it reopened after the load of boats had gone through. She walked swiftly, as though afraid she might change her mind and turn back.
'Hello, Detective Beaumont, she said when she saw me. This time she pronounced my name correctly.
I nodded in greeting. Chrissey Morrison looked even more haggard and worn than when I had seen her two days earlier at DataDump. She sat down on the bench a foot or two away from me staring intently at the people on the other side of the locks.
'Dean says there wasn't no sword, she said flatly.
'You've talked to him then?
She nodded.
'Where is he?
'He thinks it's all a trick, that as soon as you see him, you'll arrest him.
'It's no trick, Chrissey. We need his help.
'I tol' him that. He's over there, the one walkin' back and forth. She nodded across the locks. I saw him then, a medium-built, blond-haired man, pacing nervously behind the group of people at the handrail who were avidly watching boats being loaded for the trip in the other direction.
'Will he talk to me?
Chrissey Morrison turned and looked at me. 'He's here, ain't he? She waved her arm and motioned to him. Dean Morrison stopped his pacing, nodded, and then headed off for the footbridge. 'You wait right here, Chrissey said to me. 'I'll bring him.
Nervous crooks make me nervous. Dean Morrison may have been straight as an arrow since he got out, but the fact that he was so obviously agitated by the prospect of talking to a cop made me grateful for the unfamiliar but solid bulge of a. 38 grinding into the small of my back. I only wished my usual trigger finger was in reasonable working condition.
Chrissey met her husband at the end of the bridge. Together the two of them walked over to the bench where I was sitting.
'This is him, Chrissey said to her husband. It wasn't a very enthusiastic introduction. I didn't get up, but I held out my left hand. Dean Morrison took it and we shook, guardedly sizing each other up as we did so.
'My wife here says you want to talk to me.
'Yes, I replied. 'About the dead man you found the other night at MicroBridge.
'What about him? He was alive when I started to work, and when I went back to give him the bill he was dead. What else is there to tell?
'Did Chrissey ask you about a sword?
'Yes, and I didn't see one, neither.
'It wasn't lying there on the floor, next to the body?
'No.
'What time was it when you found him?
Dean Morrison shrugged. 'Ten or so.
'And then what happened?
'I got the hell out of there. Fast, man! I was scared shitless. I don't want to get sent back up, no sir.
'Where'd you go?
'I just drove.
'Where to?
'I ended up in a place down in Tukwila, the Silver Dollar, and had me a couple of pitchers to calm down. But after a while, I got to thinkin' that you cops might come lookin' for me anyways, on account of the bill, and I went back to get it.
'That's when you found that the door to the loading dock had been locked?
'Yes.
'What happened then?
'Well, as I was goin' there, I was still scared, see. I figured if somebody had already found him, I didn't want nobody to see me hangin' around, so I parked the truck two buildings over and walked from there. Dean Morrison paused and looked at his wife.
'Go on, she said. 'Tell him. This is what we come for.
'So anyways, I'm almost there, walkin' along the railroad track. All of a sudden, this car comes screamin' away from the loadin' dock and practically runs me down.
'Who was it, do you know?
'How the hell would I know? It was dark. I was just tryin' to get the hell out of the way so the bastard wouldn't hit me.
'Could you tell what kind of car it was, or did you get the license number?
Dean shook his head. 'No way. He was drivin' too damn fast.
'So the driver was a man?
'I think so.
'What kind of car was it?
'Small. Foreign. I don't know what kind.
'Was there anything about it that might help us identify it?
'I didn't see nothin', except for one thing.
'What was that?
'The taillights. The car had funny little slanted taillights. Reminded me of one of them barber poles.
