WHEN I GOT TO THE MEDICAL EXAMINER’S office, three people were grouped and talking in low voices in the small reception area outside Doc Baker’s door. Two were women, one about my age and the other much younger, no more than twenty-five. All three looked up at me questioningly as I came through the door.
“Detective Beaumont,” I announced.
As soon as I said that, the younger woman leaped from her chair and hurled herself toward me. She was a tiny woman, only about five feet, but when she crashed into me, I almost lost my balance. I grabbed at a chair to keep from sprawling on the floor.
“Detective Beaumont, thank God you’ve come.” She threw her arms around me and buried her head in my chest as though I were some long-lost relation. “I told them you were coming,” she sobbed, clinging to me like a burr.
The man stepped forward with a puzzled frown on his face. “I’m Detective Hal Forbes,” he said, “and this is my partner, JoAnne Reece. We’re with the King County Police. Miss Lions here was telling us that you’re already involved in this case. Is that true?”
I nodded. “Sort of. I’m working the Tadeo Kurobashi case,” I said as I pried Dana Lions’ arms loose from around my waist, walked her over to a chair, and helped her sit back down.
For the first time, I got a good look at her. She was wearing a bright orange jumpsuit with the words ST. HELEN’S FLYING SERVICE emblazoned in blue embroidery on the breast pocket. Her hair, so red that it almost matched her uniform, was short and curly. Her vivid green eyes were swollen from weeping.
I took one of her small hands in mine. “Is it your father?”
She swallowed hard, nodded, and said nothing.
“Wait a minute,” Forbes said. “Isn’t Kurobashi the man who was found dead in his office on Fourth Avenue South sometime this week?”
“That’s the one,” I replied.
“I remember now,” Forbes continued. “And there was something later on about his wife and daughter being attacked over in eastern Washington?”
“You got it.” I glanced down at Dana before I spoke again. She wasn’t going to like hearing what I had to say, but I went ahead with it anyway.
“I’ve been working with Detective Halvorsen from the Whitman County Sheriff’s Department over in Colfax. He’s in charge of the assault case. We believe that Mr. Lions’ aircraft was used to create a diversion to cover up the attack on the Kurobashi women.”
“No!” Dana exclaimed. She pulled her hands free from mine and covered her face. “My father wouldn’t do that. It isn’t true. This is all a mistake.”
“There’s no mistake, Dana,” I said gently. “He may not have had a choice, he may have been forced into participating, but he was there, and so was the helicopter.”
“Didn’t have a choice?” Dana asked. “What do you mean?”
Detective Forbes looked at Dana, but he spoke to me. “Sounds like we’re all over the map on this one. Somebody dead here, somebody attacked in Colfax, the body found by Lake Kachess.”
I didn’t bother to tell him that I had just come back from Port Angeles, where Clay Woodruff had left me in the dust. Why make things more complicated than they already were?
Dana’s eyes, bright as emeralds, pierced into mine. “You still haven’t said what you meant.”
“Just a minute, Dana. We’ll come back to that.” I turned to the other detectives. “Who found the body?” I asked.
JoAnne Reece opened her notebook and paged through it. “A Cub Scout named Ryan Jacobsen,” she said. “He was on a father-and-son hike and camp out. Fortunately the father is an attorney. He made sure nobody disturbed anything.”
“Physical evidence?” I asked.
With a meaningful look in Dana Lions’ direction JoAnne Reece said, “Maybe.”
That led me to believe that some physical evidence did exist, but the King County detectives didn’t want to discuss it in front of the victim’s daughter. I’d have to ask them about it later. Meanwhile, I sat down next to Dana and pulled my chair close to hers.
“I’m going to ask you some questions, Dana, questions that may possibly be painful for you to answer.”
She seemed to have gotten a grip on herself. “It’s all right. Ask me anything. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”
“Did your father ever have any dealings with the Mafia?”
“The Mafia!” Forbes exclaimed involuntarily, then he fell silent, watching me warily.
“Just answer the question, Dana. Did he?”
She shook her head. “Not that I know of. He had some friends that weren’t such nice people, but I never thought any of them were connected to the Mafia. Why?”
“That Charles Smith, your cash-paying customer, had he ever chartered with you before?”
“No. At least I don’t remember the name.”
“Wasn’t it unusual for someone to call for a charter from Seattle? Why didn’t he use a company that was closer to him?”
“I don’t know,” Dana replied. “I’ve asked myself the same question over and over all week long.”
“What about the name Tabone, Lorenzo Tabone? Does that one ring any bells?”
Dana Lions frowned. “It sounds familiar, but…” She shook her head. “No, I just can’t place it.”
“He’s from Chicago,” I said, trying to jog her memory.
“Wait a minute,” JoAnne Reece interrupted. “What’s going on here? I don’t understand what we’re talking about.”
Dana Lions, her brows furrowed, was still thinking. “Lorenzo Tabone from Chicago?” she murmured. “I wonder…”
“You wonder what?”
“If that isn’t the name of the guy Dad told me about. Only he didn’t call him Lorenzo. Bones, I think it was. No, that’s not right. Bony. Bony Tabone.”
Dana Lions’ recognition of Lorenzo Tabone’s name sent a shock through my system like a jolt of pure adrenaline or a shot of straight MacNaughton’s, take your pick. The other two detectives, deferring to that reaction, faded quietly into the woodwork. Suddenly it was as though there were only two of us in the room—Dana and me. I pulled my chair around in front of her and sat with our faces only inches apart. With every particle of my being, I willed her to remember.
“Who was he?” I demanded.
Dana’s lower lip trembled. “Dad flew helicopters for the army. He must have loved it while he was doing it, but he got a general discharge from the service.” Her voice was hardly a whisper. “Less than honorable.”
“So?” I asked. “What does that have to do with Tabone?”
“It was something that went on while they were over there, in Vietnam. They were in the same outfit, platoon, or whatever. My father didn’t talk about it very much, and he never told me exactly what caused all the trouble. I guess I didn’t really want to know. But this Tabone guy had something to do with it. Dad always blamed him.”
“Blamed who?”
“My father blamed Bony, he called him, for getting him thrown out of the service.”
“Was there any contact between them after that?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Did you ever see Tabone in person, or did your father show you any pictures?”
“No.”
“Would you recognize him if you saw him?”
“No,” she said again. “I don’t think so.”
“Too bad,” I said. “I just happen to have a composite drawing of Lorenzo Tabone on my desk down at the Public Safety Building.”
I turned to Reece and Forbes. “You two are in luck. Tabone’s your man. I’ll have prints and a mug shot for you as soon as Federal Express delivers them to me tomorrow morning.”
JoAnne Reece stood with her head cocked to one side with an incredulous look on her face. “Come on now, Detective Beaumont. What is all this? You expect us to believe you already know who the killer is? Somebody’s sending you prints and a mug shot in the morning mail, just like that?”
I tried not to sound too smug or too impatient. “We know that David Lions was in the Spokane Airport early Tuesday morning. He was there along with a man who matches the description of Lorenzo Tabone. The two of them rented a car together.”
“And who exactly is Lorenzo Tabone?”
“He’s tied in with a Chicago Mafioso named Aldo Pappinzino. Maybe Tabone didn’t kill David Lions, but if he didn’t, he’s one of the last people who saw him alive.”
“Can I go now?” Dana asked suddenly. I couldn’t blame her for wanting to leave. I’m sure our conversation was pretty rough going for her.
“Where are you staying?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I came straight here when I drove into town. I need to find a place to stay and I should call my mother. She still doesn’t know what’s happened.”
“Where is she, down in Kalama?”
“She lives in Anchorage. My parents were divorced years ago, Detective Beaumont. I didn’t want to call until I knew for sure.” She stood up. “I’ll be going then.”
Dana Lions seemed so small, so crushed, that I wanted to help her somehow, to take on some of the burden and carry it for her. I offered her a ride, but she declined.
“I have my own car,” she said. “I’ll be all right.”
She moved toward the door. I hated to see her go, but I made no effort to follow her. After all, she had told me what I needed to know. My job now was to talk to the King County detectives and exchange detailed information with them. I had to convince them I knew what the hell I was talking about and then make sure they were on the right track.
“Call my home number and leave word on my answering machine where you’re staying,” I said.
“Let us know too,” JoAnne Reece added.
Dana Lions nodded, but she walked out of the room without saying anything more.
I turned back to the others in time to catch Hal Forbes giving JoAnne Reece a questioning look, which she returned with an exaggerated shrug. It was as though they were silently debating whether or not J.P. Beaumont was on the level or if he was actually a stark raving loony.
I wanted to squelch that discussion once and for all. “When I first got here, you said something about physical evidence. What is it, fingerprints?”
“No,” JoAnne Reece replied. “Thread.”
“What kind of thread? Where from?”
“Wool thread, like from a man’s jacket. They found it stuck between his teeth on the left side of his mouth.”
“Who found it?”
“Mike Wilson. The assistant medical examiner. He happened to be here doing another autopsy when they first brought Lions in. One of the technicians who went out to pick up the body had noticed it when they were loading him up for transport.”
“So how did it get there?”
“Wilson said he’ll have to study the thread, but he said it looked to him like there was blood on it. He already sent the thread down to the crime lab. He thinks there was a struggle and Lions must have bitten his attacker.”
“Hard enough to draw blood?”
“And put a hole in his jacket,” JoAnne Reece replied. “So if you’re right about the Chicago Police picking up that Tabone character, if he’s our man, he should have a bite mark on him somewhere. What I still don’t understand, though, is what all this has to do with the case you’re working on.”
“Believe me,” I told her. “Neither do I.”
I spent the next two hours with Detectives Forbes and Reece. By the time I left them, we were all working on the same team and pulling in the same direction. I went home and crawled into my own little bed. Onto is more like it. I fell asleep crosswise on the bed without bothering to take off my jacket or pull down the covers.
It seemed as though my eyes had barely closed when the phone rang. I was sleeping the wrong way on the bed, so it took a while to figure out where the phone was. By the time I found it and picked it up, the answering machine was already playing. I had to wait through the entire long-winded recording before I could find out who was calling.
“Who is this?” I asked, vowing mentally that I’d shorten the damn message before the day was out.
“Lieutenant Grant. From Schaumburg. I wanted you to be the first to know. We’ve got him. Caught him coming home this morning with a girl on each arm. I don’t think the evening ended quite the way any of them expected it would.”
“Hot damn! Congratulations.” It was good news, stunningly good news. Even on less than three hours of sleep, I didn’t stay groggy. I was wide awake, ready to work. “Did you see him?”
“You’d better believe I saw him,” Grant replied. “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”
“Listen,” I said. “This is important. He doesn’t happen to have a bite on his arm or his hand, does he?”
Now it was Alvin Grant’s turn to be stunned. “On his wrist. How the hell did you know about that?” he demanded. “That’s why he hasn’t been home, that and a bruised kidney. He went to an emergency room to have the bite treated, and they put him in the hospital because he was pissing blood. I guess the bite’s pretty bad, too. Did you know human bites can be really dangerous?”
“With any kind of luck,” I said, “this one will be fatal.”
We talked on the phone for a long time. I told Alvin Grant as much as I knew and gave him instructions on how to reach Detectives Forbes and Reece. Grant would need to work closely with them since that was the case with an obvious connection to Lorenzo Tabone, and one with a good chance at extradition.
“But what about your case?” Grant asked. “Where do you fit in?”
“Beats me. As a matter of fact, if you have a chance to question that bastard, you might just ask Tabone what the hell was going on between him and Tadeo Kurobashi.”
“I don’t think it’s very likely that he’ll tell me,” Lieutenant Grant said with a laugh. “But it doesn’t hurt to ask.”
I was up by then, totally up and awake and hungry. All was quiet in the guest room. I took off my wrinkled, slept-in clothes, put on a pair of comfortable sweats, and left the apartment where Ames was still sleeping to go in search of food. The deli downstairs is closed on Saturdays, so I walked over to the Doghouse. Wanda was surprised to see me.
“What are you doing here so early, and on a Saturday yet?”
“Feed me,” I said.
She grinned and slid a cup of coffee in front of me. “Let me guess. Two eggs, over easy, bacon, hash browns, whole wheat toast, and a crossword puzzle.”
“Right on all counts,” I said.
She brought me the section of paper with the crossword puzzle in it. Unfortunately, it was also the section that contained Maxwell Cole’s column on Hattie Marie Jones, mother of Hubert.
Hubert would have been fine, his mother said, if the cops hadn’t harrassed her son and forced him to fall in with a bad crowd. It was during a stint in Juvie that he had gotten involved with drugs, specifically cocaine, more specifically crack. All of that was in the first four paragraphs. I didn’t bother to read any further.
I turned instead to the puzzle. The theme was biblical, both passages and characters. For somebody whose days in Sunday school ended a long time ago, I surprised myself by doing all right. Very well, in fact. I knew most of the answers, but writing them down proved difficult.
When I had gone to have my fingers drilled, I had forgotten to ask Dr. Blair how long I’d be stuck in the splints. We had been too busy hassling about my enlarged liver. And I sure as hell didn’t want to call him back to ask about it now. He’d climb all over me about not seeing Dr. Wang.
Lost in thought, I didn’t notice Wanda standing beside me with my plate in her hand watching as I struggled to write down twenty-three across, Jacob.
“You’re sure good at that. I never have been able to work crossword puzzles.”
“I’m good at it, Wanda, because my mind is brimming over with useless facts and information.”
She looked at me sympathetically and shook her head. “You just eat your breakfast now, and don’t you go paying any attention to what that Maxwell Cole writes. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and you shouldn’t take it to heart, you hear?”
She put down my plate and walked away. I did as I was told. I ate my breakfast. I did not read the end of Maxwell Cole’s column. I didn’t want to, didn’t dare. I was afraid that if I did, I’d go out and find that rotten little son of a bitch and shoot him.
Whoever said, “Sticks and stones will break my bones/But words will never hurt me,” didn’t know Maxwell Cole.
So much for everything I ever learned in Sunday School.