Injustice for All (12 page)

“So where do we go from here?”

“Damned if I know.” Hal settled on a bench near the door. “Not a chance of getting fingerprints now, either,” he lamented. Ernie, back under the hood, peered over his shoulder at Hal, grinning. “Only half as many as there could have been,” he said.

Hal didn’t bother to acknowledge Ernie’s black humor. “Two homicides,” he muttered.

“Two goddamned homicides in as many days. Do you know how long we usually go up here without a homicide?”

“Did you tell anybody on the way over?”

“Hell, no. I tried to raise Pomeroy to come down to the dock and pick me up. I couldn’t find that lard-ass anywhere. Luckily, somebody gave me a ride.”

My mind was working. “Then the only people who know are you, Ernie, me, and the murderer.”

“That’s right. So what?”

“Let’s keep it that way.”

“What good will that do?” Hal asked.

“It’ll give us a chance to investigate without the media breathing down our necks.”

Hal nodded, slowly. “That does have some appeal.” For a time we sat in silence. “How far could it have been driven like that, Ernie?” Hal asked finally.

Ernie answered without looking up from his work. “A couple hundred feet if the front end was aligned and it was on a straight stretch. ” “What gear was it in?”

“Neutral when I got it, but I’m sure the tow-trick driver shifted it so he wouldn’t tear up the transmission. “

“Can you check with him?”

“Sure. “

“And not a word of this to anyone,” Hal admonished. “It’s important. ” Ernie straightened and favored Hal with a sly grin. “Had a feeling it was, or you wouldn’t have been here in twentyfive minutes fiat. Last time I seen you move that fast was at the Fireman’s Picnic when a wasp was after you.”

Hal laughed. “I set all-time world records with that sucker on my butt.” The camaraderie was small-town stuff, foreign in a nice way. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep it quiet.” Ernie resumed working on the car, as though we were no longer there.

“What about Wilson?” I asked. “Any sign of him?” Huggins shook his head. “We’re looking, still keeping his house under surveillance, but so far nothing. “

We rose and started toward the door; Ernie called after me, “By the way, Mr. Beaumont, maybe it won’t cost you the whole seven grand after all. ” Hal’s eyes widened. “Seven grand?”

“Maybe six and a half.” Ernie’s head disappeared, dismissing us. Hal looked at me, stunned.

“Six and a half thousand? To fix the car?”

“It’s a Porsche,” I said. It seemed to me that no further explanation was necessary.

“How much they paying you these days? When I worked Seattle P.D., I was lucky to afford a lube and oil. Matter of fact, I still am. You into graft and corruption?”

“I happened into some money, Hal, that’s all.”

Hal glowered at me. “Some people have all the luck,” he sniffed, walking outside.

I followed.

“Where you going?” I asked.

“I’m looking for Pomeroy. He was supposed to come pick me up. I can’t drive the goddamned police launch all over the goddamned island.” “Where do you want to go?”

“The duck pond, you asshole. Where else?”

That’s how two homicide detectives, one legal and one not, returned to the scene of the crime in a bartender’s borrowed pickup. It wasn’t much, but it was a whole lot better than walking.

The place where the Porsche had laid down the layer of rubber made better sense now.

The car had leaped forward from a dead stop. Even piecing that together didn’t give us everything we needed to know. We gave up about mid-afternoon. I took Hal back to his boat.

“What are you going to do now?” he asked.

“Go home, I guess. Hanging around here won’t do any good.” He sat in Barney’s idling pickup, one hand on the door handle. “We’ll get him, Beau. I promise.” It was as close as Hal Huggins ever came to making an apology.

“Are you going to warn the rest of the parole board? What if he goes after the whole board, one by one.”

Hal looked stricken. “I’ll check it out,” he agreed. “He could go through them like a dose of salts.” He climbed from the pickup and headed for the dock.

Back at Rosario, I packed and checked out of my room. I had the desk clerk call for a float plane. I could have taken the ferry to Anacortes, but without a car, I’d still be a long way from Seattle. A charter pilot could drop me on Lake Union a mile or so from my apartment. I dragged a newspaper along in the noisy little plane. I suffer from a fear of flying. There’s nothing like reading a newspaper to make me forget that I’m scared. Newspapers always piss me off. The editor opined that the tragic deaths of two members of the Washington State Parole Board over the weekend-one an apparent homicide and the other in a motor vehicle accident-pointed out the high cost of public service. He went on to say that Darrell Watkins was showing great personal courage in continuing to campaign in the face of the loss of his beloved wife.

Bullshit! There was no hint that the beloved wife, now deceased, would have filed for a divorce had she lived to Monday morning. In the editorial, Ginger’s and Darrell’s life had been a Cinderella story, poor girl marries rich boy and lives happily ever after. As far as Ginger was concerned, the fairy tale had suffered in translation.

Somehow I had an idea that Maxwell Cole’s interview would never see the light of the day. It wasn’t just spiked, it was buried. For good.

The article on Ginger made no mention of drinking. The accident was described as a one-car accident on a narrow road. Darrell Watkins was quoted at some length. “I am going on with the race because I believe Ginger would want me to. “

The unmitigated ass! Ginger had been wrong. Darrell Watkins had developed hypocrisy into an art form.

The float plane dropped me at a dock on Lake Union. Without luggage, I could have walked. With luggage, I called a cab. It was early evening when I got home-the city boy glad to be back in familiar territory, with the comforting wail of sirens and the noise of traffic. My apartment is in the Royal Crest, a condo at Third and Lenora.

Condo conjures images of swinging singles. There are singles here, all right, mostly retired, who do very little swinging. It’s a vertical neighborhood where people bring soup when you’re sick and know who comes and goes at all hours. I moved in five years ago on a temporary basis, hoping Karen and I would get back together. We didn’t.

Five years later, my escape hatch has become home.

In the elevator two people welcomed me back, and on the mat in front of my door I found a stack of crossword puzzles culled from various newspapers and left for me by my next-door neighbor and crony, Ida Newell. Yes, it was very good to be home.

I put my suitcases in the bedroom and looked around the tiny apartment with satisfaction.

One of my first concessions to having money was to hire a housekeeper who comes in once every two weeks whether I need it or not. The house smelled of furniture polish and toilet-bowl cleaner. It was a big improvement over the old days when it smelled like a billygoat pen and I needed two hours’ notice before I could invite someone up to visit. The mail was mostly of the bill/occupant variety, although I noticed that some of the occupant stuff was a lot more upscale than occupant mail I used to receive. Somewhere there’s a massmailing company that knows when you move from one income bracket to another. The whole idea makes me paranoid.

I thumped into my favorite leather chair, a brown monstrosity that gives people with “taste” indigestion. I examined the bill from Rosario with its detail of all calls made from my room. I recognized most of them. Two of the numbers were unfamiliar.

One had to be Homer’s and the other Darrell’s. I chose one at random.

Homer answered on the second ring. I didn’t identify myself. “I’m a friend of Ginger’s.

I was calling to find out about her services. ” “In keeping with Darrell’s wishes, the services will be private.” “But I wanted-“

“I’m sorry. This is a very difficult time. Darrell wants to maintain a sense of dignity by keeping Ginger’s funeral simple. Only family members and close personal friends.

I’m sure you understand.” He hung up without giving me an opportunity to explain why I thought I qualified as a close personal friend.

Remembering Ginger’s description of how Darrell’s campaign would handle news of the divorce, I understood all too well. A steering committee had decreed that Ginger’s funeral should be handled with classic understatement and simplicity. Not too splashy.

That would attract the sympathy vote. I wanted to gag. Ginger had known news of the divorce wouldn’t cost Darrell the election, but she had hoped to sting him with it.

Instead, her death would provide the impetus for a comefrom-behind victory. I wanted to protest to someone, but I didn’t know who.

Restless, I walked two blocks to Avis and rented a car for the next morning. If I was going to make it to a funeral in Welton by two o’clock in the afternoon, I’d have to get an early start. My garage door opener was still with the Porsche on Orcasprobably wrecked, now that it had been wet. I parked the rented Rabbit on the street and went upstairs to get some sleep.

In a dream, Anne Corley and Ginger Watkins were together someplace. It seemed to be some kind of spa. They were both wrapped in thick white towels, with their hair hanging loose and wet. I came into the room. They waved at me and motioned for me to join them, but they were across a large room and between us lay a huge swimming pool. They motioned to me again, and I dove in, clothes and all. I tried to swim toward them, but the current was too swift. It caught me and carried me away, changing from a pool to a river. The dream ended with the sound of both of them laughing.

I awoke drenched with sweat. It was almost four o’clock in the morning. For a while I tried going back to sleep, but it didn’t work. Remembering them both together haunted me. At last I got up and made coffee. The city was silent around me-not as silent as Orcas, but silent for the city. As I drank my coffee, I made up my mind that nothing would keep me from showing up at Ginger’s funeral to offer my respects.

I consulted the map. I would go east on Interstate 90; but after Sig Larson’s funeral, when I came back to Seattle, I would detour south to Centralia and find myself a Union 76 station. Ginger’s father lived in Centralia. I was sure he would give me an invitation to the funeral if I explained to him that I was one of Ginger’s old friends. I filled a Thermos with the last of the coffee and headed out. I figured I’d have breakfast somewhere along the way.

Chapter 17

THE State of Washington is divided into two parts, east of the mountains and west of the mountains. They could just as well be separate countries. West of the mountains is a fast-track megalopolis that is gradually encroaching on every inch of open space.

East of the mountains seems like a chunk of the Midwest that has been transported and reassembled between the Cascades and the Rockies. It contains small towns, large farms, and the kind of vast horizons that brings to mind Robert Goulet’s old song, “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.”

Welton is definitely east of the mountains. It’s a tiny burg nestled in a hilly curve of the Touchet River, where two Walla Walla County roads meet in a casual Y that doesn’t merit so much as a Yield sign, to say nothing of a blinking amber light.

Welton boasts a general store, a Grange Hall, a deserted schoolhouse, five or six dilapidated frame houses, and a doublewide mobile home perched on cement blocks behind the store. The Lutheran church burned down six years ago and has not been replaced.

A sign on the light post next to the gas pump announced the schedule for the Walla Walla County Bookmobile. Next to it, another handbill posted notice of Sig Larson’s funeral. The gas jockey at the Texaco Station/General Store, a toothless old geezer named Gus, informed me that Lewis and Clark’s party had once camped overnight on the river, supposedly somewhere near where the Grange Hall now stood. As far as he knew, Sig Larson’s funeral was the biggest event to hit town since then.

“It isn’t ever’ day we have this kinda excitement around here,” he commented as he scrubbed the rented Rabbit’s windshield and checked the oil. “We’re gonna shut ‘er down and go over to the Hall for the funeral. Least we can so for old Sig, that’s for sure.”

“He lived around here?”

“Not anymore. Sold out a couple years back when that there wife of his decided Welton warn’t good enough. Talked him into one of them highfalutin condanubians over to Lake Chelan. T’was a shame, a dadgummed shame, if you ask me.”

“But he’ll be buried here?”

“First wife’s buried here, you know. Think the kids had something to do with bringing him back. Son John’s a bigwig lawyer down to California. He’s the one took it on hisself to see things got done right.”

“So Mona’s Sig Larson’s second wife?”

Gus snorted and spat a brown stream of tobacco juice over his shoulder. “She was already hanging round while Elke-that was Sig ‘s first wife-was dyin’ in the hospital over to Spokane.”

“I take it you don’t like Mona much.”

He nodded sagely. “That’s for sure,” he said. “You can say that again.” Gus wore the logger trademark of mid-calf Levi’s held up by a pair of bright red suspenders.

Finished with my car, he stood with both thumbs stuck through his suspenders and surveyed the scatter of cars parked haphazardly around the Grange Hall. “Heard the governor hisself is coming. Wonder if of Mona’ll get herself all gussied up or if she’ll show up on that there motorcycle of heir.”

Motorcycle! That hardly tallied with the white-haired, dis-placed-homemaker farm wife I had imagined Sig Larson’s widow to be-someone wearing an apron who baked her own bread and canned her own tomatoes. A mobile television unit bearing a Spokane station’s call letters and logo lumbered past us and parked under a tree near the Grange Hall. “Don’t that just beat all?” Gus asked. “All them television cameras and ever’thin’, just for Old Sig’s funeral.” He spat again in disbelief. As we watched, a helicopter dropped noisily from the sky and landed on the weedy playfield of the abandoned schoolhouse next door. Governor Reynolds stepped out, ducking under the blades, accompanied by none other than Homer Watkins himself.