know.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Wicker Avenue Antiques Mall was a gritty warren of old, musty collectibles of debatable value. Customers entered the tight rows of vendor cubicles with their questionable arrays of Strawberry Shortcake lunchboxes, milk jugs from defunct Northwest dairies, or the occasional 1970s-era kitchen set and were immediately skeptical that they’d find anything there that they couldn’t get from the closeout section of the local Goodwill. In fact, the Port Angeles Goodwill had a better record for delivering the occasional treasure.
Patricia Stanford had snowy white hair that she wore down to her waist. She also had one more distinguishing feature. Pat-Stan was missing her right leg, having lost it in a meth lab shootout the year after she’d made it to the detective’s rank.
“Patricia Stanford?” Birdy asked, approaching Pat as she fanned out the items in a jewelry case around a handwritten sign that said BAKELITE SOMEONE HAPPY.
Pat turned on her good leg. “That’s me. Can I help you find something?”
“I’ve found what I’m looking for,” Birdy said. “That would be you.”
Pat appeared surprised. “Me?”
Birdy nodded and introduced herself, and the flicker of recognition-at least of her name-came over Pat-Stan in the most pleasant of ways. The woman, who leaned a little because she didn’t like the way the prosthetic leg felt on the stub of her thigh, managed a warm smile.
“You’re grown up,” she said. “You look the same in the eyes, but, well, well, you have grown up.”
Birdy returned the smile. “I remember how kind you were to me back then.”
“And you’ve come here to tell me that?” she asked.
“Not exactly,” Birdy said. “I came for help.”
Pat-Stan narrowed her focus, ignoring a couple of women haggling over a stack of vintage hankies. “What kind of help?”
“I came here for my cousin Tommy.”
Pat-Stan shifted her weight and winced. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Of course not,” Birdy said, explaining that Tommy was ill and she wanted to help clear his name before it was too late.
“Where’s he living?” she asked.
Birdy paused a beat. She wondered why Pat-Stan asked that. “Walla Walla. He never got out of prison.”
The shop manager looked genuinely surprised. “But that was more than twenty years ago. I thought he’d be out long ago,” she said.
“He won’t admit to something he didn’t do. And that’s the only way he could have been paroled.”
“I wish I could help you,” she said, stepping away to twist the small padlock on the jewelry case door.
Birdy touched her shoulder. “You can. You don’t have to wish.”
Patricia took a small step backward, both hips now resting against the cabinet. “I don’t remember anything,” she said. “I was a secretary studying to try to get the god-awful job that cost me my leg. The pension is good. But I’d rather have my leg.”
It was a joke, an attempt to defuse the tension between them.
“Actually, I’m a little surprised that you’re alive. I spent a half hour with Sheriff Derby and he told me that you were dead.”
“Interesting. He probably wishes I were dead. The man’s a complete ass. He was a terrible boss, he’s estranged from his only kid, his wife only comes out to pose for campaign photos. Messed up. I hate him.”
“You’re not one to hold back,” Birdy said, trying to keep the disclosures coming. “But why would he wish you were dead? I don’t get that.”
Again, nervousness took over and Pat-Stan called to the women fighting over the hankies that she’d be right over. She looked back at her visitor.
“I really don’t want to get into it,” she said.
Birdy pushed harder. “Does it have anything to do with Tommy’s case?”
Pat-Stan waited a long time. Uncomfortably long. It was one of those awkward pauses that usually invites an exit from an uncomfortable conversation.
“Probably,” she said. “No. Yes. I mean, I don’t know. Jim was not just a jerk yesterday. His jerkdom has been a long time coming.”
“What about Tommy?” Birdy asked.
Pat-Stan pretended to search her memory. “I can’t say. Really. I don’t exactly remember.”
“Please,” she said.
“I’ve said all I should. I really do wish you luck. Don’t know how it can help Tommy. He’s served more than his time, that’s for sure. Can’t give back all those years.”
“Do you think they should be given back?” Birdy asked.
Again, a long pause. Pat-Stan clearly wanted to spill her guts right over that tacky display case, but she held back the best she could.
“I will say this and it’s against my better judgment. I transcribed his tape and I can tell you this…. When I saw his statement at trial I noticed that it was slightly different. Some parts were omitted.”
“I have his statement here,” Birdy said, pulling out the file.
“I don’t have my glasses and I wouldn’t remember exactly. Just something kind of bugged me. I told Detective Derby about it, but he dismissed it as a clerical error. That really angered me because, well,
“What was different?” Birdy asked.
Pat-Stan shrugged. “Don’t remember. Check the tape.”
“Video?”
“No, audio. We taped all the interviews. Policy.”
This interested Birdy. The transcripts-no matter who did them-didn’t sound completely like Tommy. “Where are the tapes?” she asked.
“I’ve got some. When I left, I was so mad that I took a bunch of old case files. Don’t lecture me. You’ve never lost a leg and then had your boss tell you that it would be best if you sat at a desk for the rest of your life. I get off at five. House is a mess, but I do the best that I can. Come over.”
She wrote down an address on Hawthorne Avenue and went down the narrow aisle. No one would have known that she’d lost a leg. Pat-Stan had practiced her gait. She might have lost a limb, but she had never lost her sense of pride. As Birdy Waterman saw it, despite its place in the “sin” category of the Bible, pride could be a very good thing. Pat-Stan was angry about the contents of the report.
Anger, Birdy knew, could be a good ally.
CHAPTER NINE
With a little more than an hour to kill, Birdy found a coffee shop that made ginormous cinnamon rolls. Even though the time of day was so wrong for that kind of indulgence, the forensic pathologist with a sweet tooth ordered one.
“Heated with butter?” a pleasant young man behind the counter asked.
“If I’m going to die from sugar overload, might as well go all the way,” Birdy said.
As she drank her coffee and ate the gooey roll at the table in the back of the cafe, she reread her own statement and compared it against what Tommy told the detectives.
