In the wintertime it’s dark in Seattle by four-thirty in the afternoon. By then it was clear to all concerned, including the chase-crazed members of the news media, that Pete Kelsey had successfully eluded our efforts to find him.
At that point, despite the fact that he had fled the house on Crockett rather than answer any questions, and despite our learning that he had lived his entire life in Seattle under an assumed identity, we still only wanted him for questioning. The presence of the gun in his bedroom was certainly a strong link, but it would take a laboratory analysis to tell us whether or not that gun was the missing. 25 from the murder scene. If the weapons proved to be one and the same, the web of evidence against Pete Kelsey would become a whole lot stronger.
I left the physical search for Pete Kelsey in the hands of a squad of patrol officers as well as a K-9 unit. They were all much younger than I, and they were all, including the dog, a whole lot better-dressed for the still icy weather.
Returning to the Public Safety Building, I set the necessary wheels in motion to obtain a search warrant for Pete Kelsey’s house on Crockett. Since the warrant wasn’t immediately forthcoming and since there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to speed up the process, I headed back to my cubicle to finish documenting exactly what had happened during the course of that day, and in what order, while it was all still relatively fresh in my mind.
I had completed the first page of the final installment and was almost finished with the second when an irate Detective Kramer materialized in my doorway. He was outraged. It’s a good thing I’d had time enough to cool down.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, grabbing that AFIS report from Tomi?” he demanded.
“My job, Kramer,” I responded. “I was just doing my job. I got word from Watty that you were being overworked, and I thought I’d help out by picking it up for you.”
But Kramer thundered on as though I hadn’t even opened my mouth. My wonderfully effective use of irony fell on totally deaf ears.
“I go by the fourth floor to pick it up on my way back from court,” Kramer continued, “and Tomi tells me you got it from her hours ago. You’ve been sitting on it all this time!”
I kept trying to stay cool and rational, to not get suckered into a confrontational mode, but Kramer was sorely tempting me.
“I haven’t exactly been sitting around on my duff,” I pointed out reasonably. “As a matter of fact, I’ve been dragging my freezing ass all over Capitol Hill looking for your friend and mine, Pete Kelsey.”
“Give me the damn report, Beau. I want to see it.”
“Wait a minute, aren’t you the very same guy who somehow neglected to tell me about the logbook sheets when you talked to me on the phone last night?”
“That was an oversight,” Kramer snapped.
“What the hell do you think this is? I’ve been busier than a one-legged man at an ass-kicking contest, Kramer. I barely got up here with that damned AFIS report of yours when George Riggs calls to ask me to come pick up the gun. What would you have done, ignore him? If you’re pissed that I didn’t take the time to ship you your mail before I went hightailing it out of here, that’s too damn bad, and as far as I’m concerned, you can stay pissed all day.”
Belligerently, Kramer held out his hand. “I don’t know anything about a gun. I want that report, Beaumont.”
“I haven’t had a chance to copy it yet,” I responded heatedly, because by then, my hackles were up too. “When I get around to it, believe me, you’ll be the first to know.”
Just then Sergeant Watkins appeared, drawn as inevitably to the sound of raised voices as iron filings to a powerful magnet. He paused in the doorway and peered at us both from over Detective Kramer’s burly shoulder. “What’s going on here, guys?” he asked.
“You could call it a slight procedural difference of opinion, Sergeant Watkins,” I replied. “It’s no biggie.”
I modified my tone slightly, answering the question as evenly as possible. Detective Kramer, still seething, said nothing.
“Anything I can do to help?” Watty asked, looking back and forth between us.
“Sure thing,” I told him. “We need all the help we can get.”
I shuffled through the impressive stack of papers that had collected throughout the day in the much-folded manila envelope Kramer had given me early that morning. The pile now contained not only the autopsy results, but also the duplicated logbook pages, the school district lists from Kendra Meadows, as well as the AFIS report. I separated out the last two sets of papers and handed them past Kramer, placing them directly in Watty’s hands.
“Give these to Margie to copy before she leaves, if you could. Detective Kramer here will need his copies, of course, but I’d like to have the originals back. Now, if you two will excuse me, I’ve got to finish up this report and head out of here. I’ve got a meeting at five-thirty.”
“Sounds reasonable to me,” Watty said. He dropped copies of my two earlier reports onto my desk. I’d left them on his as I came past. “Much better, by the way,” he said. He glanced down at what I was doing.
“Is that about the thing on Crockett?” I nodded. “Too bad Kelsey got away,” Watty continued, “but you handled it as well as anyone could under the circumstances. You can’t use deadly force in a room full of people.”
With that, Watty took the copying for Margie and left. As far as he was concerned, all was forgiven, at least for the moment, at least until the next time Kramer was able to sucker me. And if I was more careful, maybe that wouldn’t happen.
“I won’t forget that,” Kramer snarled. “Now, what the hell’s all this about Kelsey, and what went on up on Crockett?”
“I didn’t think you were interested, but we found a. 25 Auto Browning in Marcia Kelsey’s underwear drawer.”
“You did what?”
“I tried to tell you earlier, but you weren’t listening. Pete Kelsey’s mother-in-law found it in her daughter’s dresser drawer along with a whole bunch of Marcia Kelsey’s brand-new bras and panties.”
I had finally succeeded in getting Kramer’s undivided attention. “No shit?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Well, where is it?”
“Still back at Kelsey’s house, secured in the bottom of a shoe box, and sitting on the floor in Pete Kelsey’s bedroom.”
“Is it the same gun that killed Alvin Chambers?”
“It could be, but I don’t know yet, not for sure, because it still hasn’t come down here to the crime lab. My guess is that it’s the murder weapon, all right, at least one of them.”
“So you found the gun, then what happened?”
“While we were looking for a way to secure it, Kelsey himself showed up. As soon as he saw the gun, he took off like a shot.”
“And you let him get away?”
“You have a wonderful way with words, Kramer. Kelsey got away, but you heard Watty. I didn’t let him. You wouldn’t have had any better chance of catching him than I did.”
I shoved the first part of my report in his direction. “Since you haven’t gotten a look at your copy of the AFIS report yet, maybe you should start by reading this, and for your information, Pete Kelsey’s real name isn’t Pete Kelsey.”
“It’s not? Who is he then?”
“Shut up and read.”
While Kramer dropped heavily into a chair and started reading, I returned to working on the rest of the report. Before he had completed the first page of the one report, Margie came into the cubicle, bringing the others. Kramer read those as well with such absorbed concentration that I had completed the second and final page of my report, cleared the top of my desk, and was standing behind the desk with my coat on before he glanced up.
A deep frown scarred his broad forehead, but for the moment, his quarrel with me was entirely forgotten. I had to give the devil his due. Detective Kramer focused on the case almost to the exclusion of everything else,
