Breach of Duty (9780061739637) (15 page)

I nodded.

“Here because of the car or because of Tony?”

“Mostly Tony,” I said. “But I was also hoping to run into Jimmy.”

“Greenjeans?”

I nodded.

“Good luck,” he said.

Over time, cops become masters at decoding nuances of tone. This one sounded bad to me. “What do you mean?”

“Bridget called here a little while ago looking for him. She's really upset, although I don't know why. I mean, Jimmy probably just had a flat tire or something.”

“Who's Bridget?” I asked.

“Bridget Hargrave,” the bartender answered. “She's Jimmy's girlfriend. She came home expecting to find him there, except he wasn't. He left a note saying he was coming down here and that he'd be back in a little while. As far as I can tell, nobody here's seen him all day. I did my best to calm Bridget down, but she wasn't having any of it. She can be a real handful at times.”

Mr. Nose Ring shoved my change across the counter. I left him a decent tip then hurried out into the parking lot where I was relieved to see there was no sign of Maxwell Cole or his Enterprise car.

Walking across the parking lot, I switched on my cell phone and dialed directory assistance. Naturally, Bridget Hargrave's number was unlisted. Jimmy Greenjeans didn't have a listing at all.

Having struck out on that score, I unlocked my trunk and removed my notebook computer. As I mentioned before, that's where the detective division's handy-dandy computers spend most of their time—locked in trunks. After several mix-ups and one or two losses, we all wised up and learned to move them from city-owned vehicles to private ones at the end of our shifts. Had I used my equipment more often, I probably wouldn't have had quite such a struggle hooking up the Ricochet modem.

A Ricochet is a computer attachment that operates like a cell phone. The purpose is to help us keep in touch with the department's main-frame computer even when we're someplace without a hard-wired telephone jack.

It took several tries before I got the thing to work. When I finally tapped into the SPD computer system, I had to consult my faithful little notebook to come up with the proper case number—the one that had originally been given to the Seward Park case. Minutes later, armed with Bridget Hargrave and Jimmy Greenjeans' address, I headed up Denny toward Capitol Hill.

I expected the address on Boren to be something of a dump. It wasn't. Somebody in the Hargrave/Greenjeans twosome had money in his/her pocket. Since his name wasn't part of the telephone listing, I guessed that the person with the dough wasn't Jimmy. Parking around the corner, I walked up to the front door and rang the security phone.

“Who is it?” I recognized the same breathy-voiced young woman I had spoken to one day earlier.

“Miss Hargrave?” I asked, hoping she wouldn't hang up on me.

“Who is it?” she repeated.

“My name's Beaumont, Detective J. P. Beaumont with the Seattle PD.”

“Oh, my God!” she gasped. “He's dead, isn't he? Jimmy's dead!”

Over a keening wail of rising hysteria, I attempted to explain. “Miss Hargrave, really…” I heard a buzz as though she had broken the connection. I was still staring at the receiver when the security door clicked open. I let myself into the building, but that didn't do much good. There was no listing of names and apartment numbers inside, nothing to tell me where I might find Bridget Hargrave. I understand why buildings don't list apartment numbers. It's the same reason there are locks and telephones on the outside doors—security. Still, when you're supposed to see someone and haven't a clue as to their unit number, it can be a real pain in the ass.

Sighing, I went back to the door where I had to stand with one foot inside the door and the other out in order to call her once again.

“Miss Hargrave, I…”

She understood the problem. “Apartment 804,” she barked into the phone before I had a chance to explain.

When I stepped off the elevator, a frantic young woman was already waiting for me in the eighth-floor hallway. Tears streamed down her ashen cheeks. “Where is he?” she sobbed. “What's happened to Jimmy?”

She caught my jacket by the lapels in both hands and physically attempted to shake me with all the good effect of a tail wagging a dog. The poor tiny thing couldn't have been much more than twenty. Barefoot and wearing clothing that could have come straight from Goodwill, she looked more like a street waif than the monied resident of a high-rise luxury condo.

“Please, tell me what's happened,” she begged. “Please.”

“I don't have any idea,” I said.

She stopped. “But you're a detective, aren't you? You said on the phone…”

I fumbled my ID out of my pocket and handed it to her. “It's true,” I told her. “I am a detective. But I came here hoping to talk to Jimmy.”

“He isn't here!”

Letting go of my jacket, Bridget turned abruptly and headed toward an open door just down the hallway. I hurried after her and was halfway inside the unit before she had a chance to slam the door shut in my face. I made it far enough into the room to have a fairly good look at the interior. The matching Stiffel torchère lamps weren't something that had come from Goodwill. Neither had the all-leather sofa and matching chairs. Or the tasteful marble occasional tables that were scattered about here and there.

“Wait a minute, Miss Hargrave…”

“You tricked me,” she said accusingly and with heartfelt fury. “You're a cop, and I don't talk to cops. If nothing's happened to Jimmy, why…”

“I don't know for sure that nothing's happened to Jimmy,” I said. “It may have.”

She spun back around. “So you
do
know something then.”

“Not really,” I said. “But I'm worried that he may be in some danger.”

“Why do you say that?” she demanded.

“You sound worried yourself. How come?”

She gave a little shudder before she answered. When she did, it was to ask yet another question. “Just tell me one thing. Was it an accident or not?”

“Was what an accident?”

“That guy down in Renton—the one they found dead in Lake Washington this morning.”

“You mean Tony Lawson?” She nodded. “What do you think?” I asked.

Bridget Hargrave sighed then. When she looked back up at me, there were tears in her eyes again. “One of the shift supervisors called to let Jimmy know. As soon as he heard about it, he just went wild. I've never seen him like that. He said, ‘If they got to Tony, they'll be coming after me next.' I told him he was being silly, but when I came home this afternoon and he wasn't here…I found a note.”

She paused and walked over to a marble entryway table. I felt a sudden void in my gut. It was the same way I had felt earlier in the day when I first heard about the case in Renton—Maxwell Cole's sunken car containing the body of someone from the Hurricane Cafe.

“You're sure that's exactly what Jimmy said?” I asked. “‘They'll be coming after me next?'”

Nodding, Bridget Hargrave handed me a scrap of paper.

“Gone to H.C.,” it said. “Back by four.”

“We were supposed to see my mother for dinner tonight,” Bridget continued. “She's coming in from out of town. We were going to meet her and her new boyfriend at the Four Seasons for dinner at 5:30. It's not like Jimmy…”

“Have you reported him missing?”

She blinked back tears. “I tried,” she said. “But when I called 911, the operator practically laughed me off the phone. She said if Jimmy's still missing, for me to call back tomorrow at the same time.”

Which will be exactly twenty-four hours too late
, I told myself grimly. Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out a business card and pressed it into Bridget Hargrave's tiny, ice-cold hands. “If you hear from him, have him call me. Right away.”

With that, I turned and charged back into the hallway. I had punched the button and was stepping inside the door when Bridget caught up with me.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“To look for him,” I told her.

Her already-ashen face turned a shade paler. “You think something bad has happened to him, too, don't you?”

“I certainly do,” I told her. “Just don't ask me why.”

A
side from Kramer's emphasis on establishing “goals and objectives,” the major thrust of his interminable briefing that morning had been teamwork—the importance of. His entire pep talk/monologue had been delivered with enough rah-rah football analogies to choke even the most ardent Seahawk fan. Teamwork was a problem for me, however. Having been summarily thrown off the team, I found it difficult to summon up any kind of warm and fuzzy attitude toward his particular concept of teamwork.

Consequently and despite my promise to Sue, I didn't even bother trying to get in touch with Detectives Haller or Nguyen. What good would that do? I was sure Kramer would already have given them the word that I was
persona non grata
on the Seward Park investigation. Instead, I picked up my cell phone and gave the medical examiner's office a call.

Once again, Audrey Cummings answered the phone. “So your guy is still out sick?” I asked.

“I suppose you mean Dirk Matthews?” she replied. “That's right. He's not just sick—he's really sick. He's here in Harborview in critical condition. They have him upstairs in the burn unit with a raging case of necrotizing fasciitis—Stevens-Johnson syndrome as we refer to it in the trade. SJ for short.”

“SJ,” I repeated. “What's that?”

“Your basic flesh-eating disease—a massive bacterial infection. These are your normal, ordinary bacteria, the kind that are around every day. Then, suddenly, for no known reason, they just go wild. I saw Dirk day before yesterday and he was fine, clowning around like usual. Today he's upstairs fighting for his life. SJ is massive, rapid, and very, very serious.”

The more she talked, the worse I felt, and the more I remembered Darla Cunningham's warning. That things might not seem connected, but that they would be. My impression was that Dirk Matthews was the person in the ME's office who had actually handled the Seward Park remains.

“You mean as in he may not make it?” I asked.

“That's what I mean.” After a pause, Audrey resumed her customary manner of businesslike efficiency. “All right, now, Beau, with Dirk out, we're really shorthanded. Let's not waste any more time jawing. What do you need?”

“Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

“I don't drink coffee,” she said. “It's bad for the rain forests. I am due for a lunch break, though. You can come on over if you like. We can go to the cafeteria.”

“No,” I said. “Not there. I'd like to speak to you in private.”

“This sounds serious.”

“It's either serious or crazy,” I told her. “You'll have to decide which.”

Audrey sighed. “All right, then,” she said. “You have a car, don't you?”

“I'm in it.”

“I brought along a sack lunch. Come pick me up outside the building. You drive; I'll eat.”

It seemed as though everyone in downtown Seattle must have gone home to dinner. The place was a deserted village. From the far end of the Denny Regrade, I made it to Harborview Hospital in seven minutes flat. Audrey was waiting outside the building when I drove into the back driveway.

“Nice car,” she said, climbing into the Porsche. “How is it a homicide cop can afford to drive one of these?”

“It's a long story,” I replied.

“That's right,” she said, settling in and fastening her seat belt. “I remember. Something about an heiress.”

“Something like that,” I agreed.

“Oil was it?” Audrey asked.

“Copper, not oil.”

Satisfied, Audrey opened her bag and brought out a sandwich. “It's peanut butter and plum jelly,” she said. “Want to share?”

“No, thanks.”

Audrey took a bite. “So what's going on?” she asked.

“First, tell me about Dirk Matthews,” I said.

She shook her head. “I've pretty much told you everything there is to tell. I'm worried about him, of course. But it turns out I'm glad to have him out of my hair, too. His parents are good friends of Doc Baker's, so, although he's a nice enough young man and even a fairly decent investigator, he has a bit of a wild streak. No, make that a goofy streak. When Dirk was a kid, he probably drove his parents and teachers round the bend. He pulls these outrageous stunts sometimes. In fact, the last time I saw him at work, I was chewing him out for that very thing. One day I bawl him out for some kind of stupid class-clown nonsense. The next thing I know, the poor guy's in intensive care and practically on his deathbed.”

“What kind of nonsense?”

Audrey didn't answer right away. When she did, it was to sidestep the issue. “It was just some backroom high jinks. No big thing. I don't see what that has to do…”

“Humor me, Audrey,” I said. “I'm a homicide detective. The kind of black humor that gets bandied around the squad room would be enough to have normal people locked up. I'm sure the same kind of thing goes on in the ME's office, as well.”

“But…”

“Please,” I begged. “Just tell me. Whatever it was, I'm not going to go blabbing it all over town.”

Audrey sighed. “Have you ever seen the Flying Karamazov Brothers?”

“The juggling troupe?”

Audrey nodded.

“I think so,” I said. “Years ago when my own kids were little, I think Karen and I took them to see that show somewhere. I seem to remember that in one part of their act, they invited people from the audience to bring up items for them to juggle. There were all kinds of things—a vacuum cleaner hose, bowling pins, bowling balls, knives, and car parts. I can't remember what else. And they managed to juggle them all. It was pretty impressive.”

“Right,” Audrey said. “I wonder if Dirk didn't see that same show. If so, it made a big impression on him. Some people work all day and dream of writing the great American novel at night, on weekends, and during their vacations. Dirk Matthews, on the other hand, is teaching himself to juggle. His greatest ambition in life is to be accepted into the Barnum & Bailey clown college so he can run away and join the circus.”

“So?”

“Two nights ago, I walked in on him and caught him practicing his juggling, only he wasn't doing it with bowling pins. He was using bones, Beau, human bones. I gave him hell about it, of course. Told him that our job requires us to show respect for the dead no matter who they are. That we must always behave as though the bodies entrusted to our care are the bodies of our own loved ones. When I finished reaming him out, he was completely contrite, as usual. Promised it would never happen again and all that. At the time, he looked perfectly healthy. Less than twenty-four hours later, he was up in the burn unit with a raging case of SJ.”

Wanting to talk without having to think about driving at the same time, I swung the 928 into the drive-up window of a closed dry-cleaning shop. “Let me guess,” I said. “The bones he was juggling would have to be the ones from Seward Park. Right?”

“Right,” Audrey said, nodding. “How did you know that?”

I felt like I was walking into verbal quicksand. Paul Kramer hadn't gone for the idea that there might be a possible link between a dead shaman's curse and a very real murder. What made me think that Audrey Cummings, a scientist, would buy a similar connection between that same curse and the unseemly behavior of her desperately ill investigator, Dirk Matthews.

“Just a guess,” I said. “How many sets of bones can you have around there at one time?”

Audrey shot me a sidelong glance. “You'd be surprised,” she said.

“Anyway,” I continued, “Sue and I have stumbled across a possible ID on those bones.”

“Really. Who is it?” she asked.

“We think he's a Suquamish shaman named David Half Moon.”

“From where?”

“Over on the Kitsap Peninsula,” I told her. “According to our source, Half Moon died several years ago from lung cancer.”

“A shaman,” Audrey said thoughtfully. “That might explain it.”

“Explain what?”

“What happened to Dirk,” she replied. “Once we started having to deal with Native American repatriation issues on a fairly regular basis, I made it a point to study the belief systems of various Puget Sound tribes. As I recall, among the Suquamish, disturbing the remains of a shaman is considered to be a very serious offense.”

“You're saying Dirk somehow caught an infection from handling the bones?”

“Not directly. But Northwest Indians have their own ideas about what goes around comes around. In a way, it's not unlike the Hindu and Buddhist concept of karma.”

“And one thing leads to another?” I asked.

Audrey nodded. “The truth is, Dirk shouldn't have treated anybody's bones that way, but juggling with an old shaman's bones is just asking for trouble.”

I could hardly believe the words I was hearing come out of her mouth, and it certainly saved me a lot of time, effort, and explanation. “You wouldn't happen to know a lady named Darla Cunningham, would you?” I asked.

“No. Who's she?”

“She teaches physics at the U-Dub.”

“Should I know her?” Audrey asked.

“If you did,” I said, “I think you two might have a lot in common. She happens to be the daughter of a Quinault shaman, a guy named Henry Leaping Deer from over at Taholah.”

“A Quinault who teaches physics? She sounds interesting,” Audrey agreed, biting into an apple. “Now, is that all you came to tell me, the origin of those bones? Why did we have to be away from the office for that?”

“It's actually a little more complicated than that,” I admitted. “You know the body the Renton police pulled out of Lake Washington this morning?”

“Anthony Lawson? I believe he's also an Indian. Don't tell me he's a shaman, too.”

“No,” I said. “But the two cases may be connected, and that's why I needed to talk to you. We'd like you to do a DNA comparison and see whether or not Anthony Lawson is related to the other man, presumably David Half Moon.”

“As you well know, those kinds of tests are prohibitively expensive,” Audrey objected. “As officers assigned to the two cases, you and Detective Danielson are welcome to request them, but I'm not making any promises…”

I decided it was time to be straight with her. “The truth is, Sue and I have been removed from the Seward Park case by our new fearless leader, Paul Kramer, because he thinks I've been bamboozled by all this shaman hocus-pocus, as he calls it. And, since Lawson died down in Renton, we're not even involved in that one. But it turns out Lawson also was born somewhere over on the Kitsap Peninsula. He was adopted out as an infant, but he told some of his fellow workers that his grandfather was a big deal out on the reservation—presumably Port Madison. And if Lawson's grandfather turns out to be David Half Moon, it's true. He really was a big deal.”

“You said Half Moon died of cancer. That means he's not a murder victim at all, so what's the point of running the tests?” Audrey asked.

“It'll prove the connection between the two cases, one Kramer claims I'm just making up. Furthermore, if Half Moon clearly isn't a homicide statistic, maybe we can expedite getting his bones out of the ME's office and shipped back into the woods where they belong.”

“You mean, before they cause any more trouble?”

“Right,” I said.

Meticulous as usual, Audrey dropped her apple core into her empty sandwich bag. Then she zipped it shut, dropped that bag into the paper bag. After that she folded the paper until the resulting package was no bigger than a small envelope.

“I get the feeling you know more than you're saying,” Audrey said thoughtfully.

“You're right,” I admitted. “The woman I told you about earlier, Darla Cunningham, showed up in my office last night. She came to pass along a warning from her father, Henry Leaping Deer…”

“The Quinault from Taholah,” Audrey put in.

“Right…who's had a series of disturbing dreams over the last week or so.”

“What's his connection to Half Moon?”

“They were friends,” I answered. “Boyhood friends. They evidently went to boarding school together. In the first dream, Half Moon's bones had been carted off to the city. In the next one, a group of children were playing field hockey with the same bones, using Half Moon's skull as the ball.”

“We never found a skull,” Audrey said. “So maybe Leaping Deer was using his literary license. Still it isn't all that far from what really went on.”

“When I saw her, Darla passed along her father's warning that some innocent people were in danger of being affected by Half Moon's bones.”

“Anyone specific?” Audrey asked.

I nodded. “A man with green hair and a white woman. The green-haired guy isn't hard to figure out. Jimmy Greenjeans, the guy who reported the Seward Park bones in the first place, happens to have green hair. I just came from talking to his girlfriend. It turns out he's missing at the moment.”

“Missing?” Audrey asked. “That doesn't sound good.”

“It isn't.”

“And the white woman? Who's she?”

“I'm not sure,” I told her. “That's a little harder to figure. She could be you or Sue Danielson, either one.”

Audrey thought about that for several long seconds. I waited, more than half expecting her to simply burst out laughing. If so, I would lose the one ally who might actually be able to help. When she spoke, however, there was no trace of laughter.

“I can see how come Kramer might be worried,” she said. “On the other hand, I can also see why you're so concerned. Don't worry about the DNA tests. I'll handle the requests myself. Those tests take time, though. While I'm working on those, it might be faster for someone to talk to Anthony Lawson's adoptive mother and see if she has any records that would indicate a relationship between him and Seward Park. Do you have the mother's address? I could probably give it to you if…”