RALPH AMES WAS UP AND GONE WHEN I got back to the penthouse. I was restless, itchy, and frustrated. Maxwell Cole’s sniping column had cast a pall on the morning. Like a man who looks at his glass and sees it half empty rather than half full, I could no longer take any pleasure from the fact that Lorenzo Tabone was safely in custody in Illinois. All I could see was that I still hadn’t gotten to first base on finding Tadeo Kurobashi’s killer.
I was missing something. His death wasn’t an act of random violence committed by a total stranger. No, there had to be a pattern, a connection, one that still eluded me.
To give myself something to do, I tried calling Clay Woodruff in Port Angeles. The Port Angeles police had reluctantly verified that the number of the pay phone in the “lobby” of the Ritz Hotel did indeed match the one on Tadeo Kurobashi’s notepad. I wasn’t surprised when nobody answered. When I called Davey’s Locker and spoke to the bartender, he told me Clay had been called out of town. I already knew that, you jerk, I thought, as I slammed the phone back in its cradle.
Next I tried calling Andrew Halvorsen. He answered on the seventh ring.
“How’re you doing, Andy?” I asked.
“Okay,” he mumbled. He sounded groggy, half asleep. “What time is it?”
“Eight-thirty. Are you going to go on over to Spokane today?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Sure.”
“When?”
“Don’t rush me. As soon as I get work-wise. I had a bad night.”
“You’ve talked to Alvin Grant?”
“No, oh wait a minute. I guess maybe I did.”
“So you know they’ve got Tabone in custody?”
“I remember that now.”
Halvorsen was so rummy, I wanted to shake him, wake him up. Monica Halvorsen wasn’t worth being this screwed up over. “Get your ass out of bed and go to Spokane,” I ordered. “Are you going to lie around all morning and feel sorry for yourself, or are you going to go to work?”
“You’re an asshole, Beaumont,” Halvorsen said, banging the phone as he hung up.
Was he going to Spokane or not? I couldn’t tell, but at least he was awake. It was cold comfort. Next I tried calling Lieutenant Alvin Grant. The dispatcher in the Schaumburg Police Department told me that Grant had gone home, and when I called there, his wife said he was asleep.
“Al was up working a case all night,” she told me. “He just went to bed a few minutes ago. Can I take a message?”
“Tell him Detective Beaumont called from Seattle. Ask him to call me and let me know how things are going with Tabone.”
“I’ll do that,” she said. “But not until after he wakes up.”
Chafing at the bit, I tried pacing the floor only to discover that with the splints on my fingers it was impossible to shove my hands into my pockets. Quality pacing requires that both hands be shoved all the way down to the bottoms of pants pockets. I couldn’t do anything right, not even pacing.
But just when I thought I was losing it, the phone rang. Somebody was calling me for a change.
“Detective Boomont?” a woman asked. She stumbled over my name the way telephone solicitors do when they are blindly working their way down some charity’s sucker list.
“This is Detective Beaumont,” I said, withholding the snarl, waiting for the inevitable pitch before I blew her out of the water. The pitch never came.
“Sorry to call you at home, but this is the number you gave me.”
“It’s fine,” I said, trying to place the unfamiliar voice. “What can I do for you?”
She paused, and for a moment I wondered if she was going to hang up.
“It’s Chrissey,” she said finally, her voice dropping several levels so I had to strain to hear her. “Chrissey Morrison,” she added.
The woman from DataDump. Every object in the room suddenly shifted into sharper focus as my whole body jarred to attention.
“Yes, Chrissey. Is there something I can do for you?”
“Can you meet me?” she asked.
I wanted to ask her what had happened, to find out if anything was wrong, but I didn’t dare. Her connection to the telephone seemed so tenuous, so frail, that I was afraid any unexpected comment on my part might scare her away, frighten her into hanging up.
“Where?” I asked, keeping my voice low and reassuring. “Where would you like me to meet you?”
“At the locks, the Ballard Locks,” she said. “Over by the fish ladder.”
“When?”
“Would an hour be all right?”
I could have been there in ten minutes, five if traffic was light, but I didn’t say so. “Sure,” I said. “An hour will be fine. I’ll meet you there about a quarter after ten.”
“Come alone,” Chrissey Morrison cautioned, and hung up without saying good-bye. I stood there for some time with the phone in my hand and dial tone buzzing in my ear.
I could think of only one reason Chrissey Morrison would call me. Actually there were two. One was if her husband Dean had decided to talk to me. The other was if I was wrong about Dean Morrison and he was Tadeo Kurobashi’s killer after all.
So what to do? Did I follow directions and go alone to meet Chrissey Morrison, or did I call Big Al or someone else from the department and drag them along as backup?
I tried calling Lindstrom’s house in Ballard, figuring I could pick him up on my way over, but there was no answer, and Big Al is far too stubborn a Norwegian to stoop to owning an answering machine.
Watching the clock, I took the time to clean and oil my Smith and Wesson. My gimpy hand made gun cleaning a slow and complicated process. When I finished, I tried Big Al again. Still no answer. I tried Watty as well. He wasn’t home either, and it didn’t seem urgent enough to go through channels and jangle his beeper on his day off.
Time passed incredibly slowly. I showered and changed clothes. My shoulder holster is right-handed, so I had to tuck the .38 in the back of the waistband of my pants, covering it with my jacket. I knew that if I was going to hit something left-handed, it would have to be at very close range. But I took the .38 along anyway, as a security blanket, my cop’s security blanket.
In the car and driving toward Ballard, I called again. Big Al still wasn’t home. So I drove to the locks by myself.
It was midmorning and sunny. The locks along with the accompanying fish ladder are a popular attraction in Seattle, particularly on sunny Saturday mornings. I’ve taken Heather and Tracie there a few times. Heather calls it the elevator for boats and the stairs for fish, both of which are pretty accurate descriptions.
There were any number of people on the walkways and footpaths, watching while a group of boats, including several pleasure craft and a heavily loaded barge, were lowered from Lake Union to Salmon Bay, a drop of six to twenty-six feet, depending on the tide.
I made my way across the series of zigzagging walkways until I reached the fish ladder area on the far side. There I looked around for Chrissey Morrison, but I didn’t see her. I had no desire to go inside the fish-ladder viewing tunnels to see the sockeye salmon and steelhead trout going home to spawn. At the beginning of the run they’re not nearly as tattered and battle-weary as they will be farther upstream, but they still remind me too much of my own mortality. If Chrissey Morrison was in there, she’d have to come back outside and find me.
I went over to where a concrete bench had been shoved against the bottom of the bluff. From that vantage point, I had a clear view of anyone stepping off the final walkway. Chrissey showed up, ten minutes later and fifteen minutes late, hurrying across the pedestrian drawbridge as soon as it reopened after the load of boats had gone through. She walked swiftly, as though afraid she might change her mind and turn back.
“Hello, Detective Beaumont,” she said when she saw me. This time she pronounced my name correctly.
I nodded in greeting. Chrissey Morrison looked even more haggard and worn than when I had seen her two days earlier at DataDump. She sat down on the bench a foot or two away from me staring intently at the people on the other side of the locks.
“Dean says there wasn’t no sword,” she said flatly.
“You’ve talked to him then?”
She nodded.
“Where is he?”
“He thinks it’s all a trick, that as soon as you see him, you’ll arrest him.”
“It’s no trick, Chrissey. We need his help.”
“I tol’ him that. He’s over there, the one walkin’ back and forth.” She nodded across the locks. I saw him then, a medium-built, blond-haired man, pacing nervously behind the group of people at the handrail who were avidly watching boats being loaded for the trip in the other direction.
“Will he talk to me?”
Chrissey Morrison turned and looked at me. “He’s here, ain’t he?” She waved her arm and motioned to him. Dean Morrison stopped his pacing, nodded, and then headed off for the footbridge. “You wait right here,” Chrissey said to me. “I’ll bring him.”
Nervous crooks make me nervous. Dean Morrison may have been straight as an arrow since he got out, but the fact that he was so obviously agitated by the prospect of talking to a cop made me grateful for the unfamiliar but solid bulge of a .38 grinding into the small of my back. I only wished my usual trigger finger was in reasonable working condition.
Chrissey met her husband at the end of the bridge. Together the two of them walked over to the bench where I was sitting.
“This is him,” Chrissey said to her husband. It wasn’t a very enthusiastic introduction. I didn’t get up, but I held out my left hand. Dean Morrison took it and we shook, guardedly sizing each other up as we did so.
“My wife here says you want to talk to me.”
“Yes,” I replied. “About the dead man you found the other night at MicroBridge.”
“What about him? He was alive when I started to work, and when I went back to give him the bill he was dead. What else is there to tell?”
“Did Chrissey ask you about a sword?”
“Yes, and I didn’t see one, neither.”
“It wasn’t lying there on the floor, next to the body?”
“No.”
“What time was it when you found him?”
Dean Morrison shrugged. “Ten or so.”
“And then what happened?”
“I got the hell out of there. Fast, man! I was scared shitless. I don’t want to get sent back up, no sir.”
“Where’d you go?”
“I just drove.”
“Where to?”
“I ended up in a place down in Tukwila, the Silver Dollar, and had me a couple of pitchers to calm down. But after a while, I got to thinkin’ that you cops might come lookin’ for me anyways, on account of the bill, and I went back to get it.”
“That’s when you found that the door to the loading dock had been locked?”
“Yes.”
“What happened then?”
“Well, as I was goin’ there, I was still scared, see. I figured if somebody had already found him, I didn’t want nobody to see me hangin’ around, so I parked the truck two buildings over and walked from there.” Dean Morrison paused and looked at his wife.
“Go on,” she said. “Tell him. This is what we come for.”
“So anyways, I’m almost there, walkin’ along the railroad track. All of a sudden, this car comes screamin’ away from the loadin’ dock and practically runs me down.”
“Who was it, do you know?”
“How the hell would I know? It was dark. I was just tryin’ to get the hell out of the way so the bastard wouldn’t hit me.”
“Could you tell what kind of car it was, or did you get the license number?”
Dean shook his head. “No way. He was drivin’ too damn fast.”
“So the driver was a man?”
“I think so.”
“What kind of car was it?”
“Small. Foreign. I don’t know what kind.”
“Was there anything about it that might help us identify it?”
“I didn’t see nothin’, except for one thing.”
“What was that?”
“The taillights. The car had funny little slanted taillights. Reminded me of one of them barber poles.”
“Could you tell what color the car was?”
“No way, man. It was dark back there. I couldn’t hardly see nothin’. So after he left, I went up on the dock and tried the door, but it was locked, so I give up and come on home.”
“What time was that?”
Dean shrugged. “Around midnight, I guess, maybe later. I didn’t check.”
The timing element in the story bothered me. If Kurobashi was already dead at ten o’clock, why was the killer still hanging around Industry Square at midnight, two hours later? There had to be some compelling reason for the murderer to risk being caught with the body.
I glanced at Dean Morrison. He was standing there, watching me apprehensively, waiting for my next question. “Did you see anyone else around the office during the course of the evening?”
“Only the woman. Chrissey already told you about her.”
“No one else?”
“Nobody.”
“How many bags of confetti were there when you finished?”
“Six. Five of paper and one with nothin’ in it but floppy disks.”
“Can you think of anything else?”
“Nope, that’s just about it.”
“That’s what I need then,” I said. “Thanks for your help.”
“You mean I can go?”
I nodded. He looked down at Chrissey, as though he couldn’t quite believe his ears. She returned the look with a smile of encouragement. They turned and started away.
“One more thing,” I said.
Dean Morrison’s shoulders sagged as he slowly turned back to face me. “What’s that?” he asked.
“Get your butt back to work,” I said. “You and your wife have a good little business going, but if you go AWOL in that truck very often, you’re going to screw it up.”
Gradually a grin spread over Morrison’s somber face. “You bet. We’ll be open again on Monday.” He gave a thumbs-up sign.
DataDump was back in business. Have shredder, will travel.
Dean Morrison reached over and put one arm across his wife’s shoulders. The two of them walked away. I watched while they crossed the series of footbridges and then went out toward the parking lot through the gardens. They were struggling, but maybe they’d make it. For all her shortcomings, Chrissey Morrison had a whole lot more going for her than Monica Halvorsen.
I sat on the bench for another ten minutes, giving them plenty of time to leave without worrying about being followed. I was lost in thought. A car with barber pole taillights and a handcart loaded with six bags of shredder confetti didn’t make for much of a lead, but it was more than we’d had before. Often it’s a whole slew of little things taken together that solve a case rather than one huge mind-boggling revelation.
Spending my Saturday afternoon going from auto dealership to auto dealership trying to spot late-model foreign cars with striped and slanted taillights didn’t sound like my idea of a good time, and I didn’t much want to hike along a railroad track looking for confetti, either, but I knew I’d do both if I had to, if there was no other way.
The phone in the car was ringing as I turned the key in the ignition. “Hello, Ralph,” I said.
“How did you know it was me? Am I the only person who calls you on your cellular phone?”
“Damn near. What’s up?”
“I just dropped Machiko off at the Four Seasons and wondered if you’d like to have lunch. I’ll buy, and not at the Doghouse, either.”
Ames is a good sport about going to the Doghouse with me, but I don’t think he’d nominate it for inclusion in the local dining guide, Seattle’s Best Places. Seattle Cheap Eats is more like it.
“Where do you want to go?”
“Meet me at Triples. I’m in the mood for Dijon chicken.”
Triples is built right on the water at Lake Union. It’s a place where you can park your car or your boat with equal facility. It was almost two, but the Saturday lunchtime crowd lingered over coffee and drinks. We had to wait a few minutes to get a window table.
“So how did the meeting go with George?” I asked.
Ames seemed distant, preoccupied. “Oh, that was fine. No problem. From the way it sounded, I think the two of them may get around to burying the hatchet eventually. Machiko told Dr. Yamamoto the same story she told us.”
“About her first husband? How’d he take it?”
Ames frowned. “Relieved I’d say. Like he finally had the answer to a question that had been plaguing him for a long time.”
“Forty years is a long time to be asking the same damn question,” I said. “But he did give Machiko the sword?”
“He didn’t give it to her; he lent it to her.”
“Lent it! What the hell does that mean?”
“He said they got the results back from the lab. The only prints on it belong to Tadeo Kurobashi. George still needs to have the sword available for possible court room proceedings, but Machiko convinced him to let her have it for the afternoon, complete with the rosewood box. Sentimental reasons I guess.”
So George Yamamoto hadn’t entirely knuckled under. Somehow he and Machiko had reached an agreement. “Isn’t George worried that she’ll take off with it?”
Ames shook his head. “He isn’t. She gave her word. The two of them evidently came to some kind of understanding. They were speaking in Japanese, so I’m not entirely sure what was said. I offered to post a security bond, but George said that wouldn’t be necessary.”
“Surely your friend Winter could translate for you.”
“He wasn’t there. Archie got called to Vancouver, B.C., this morning two hours before our first appointment. He had to go up right away to check out something that’s coming on the market. The sword business could be delayed indefinitely.”
“What about the other appointment, the one with Davenport?”
Ames frowned. “Not so good. That’s the one that’s bothering me.”
“Why? What happened?”
“Davenport is pushing too hard. It’s like he wants all of this completed overnight. It’s far too complicated for that. I advised Machiko to take her time and not be pushed into anything, particularly considering what’s happening with Winter and the sword. Archie may be able to come up with a program that will give them enough capital to pay off the judgment.”
“If that flake of a Clay Woodruff would shape up and agree to testify…”
“Who’s Woodruff?” Ralph Ames was suddenly on point and sitting a full three inches taller in his chair.
“Woodruff. Clay Woodruff, the guy who ditched me over in Port Angeles last night.”
“Who is he?”
“He was supposedly Tadeo Kurobashi’s friend, a key witness in the patent infringement trial, but he didn’t show up when he was supposed to testify, and Kurobashi lost the case. I talked to the judge, Chip Kelley, who’s a friend of mine. He said that if Woodruff would actually testify, there was a good chance Kimiko could countersue Blakeslee and void the judgment against her father. But like I said, Woodruff’s flake. When I tried to talk to him last night, he ditched me and disappeared.”
“He’s here,” Ralph Ames said quietly.
“He’s what?” I demanded.
“He’s here. In Seattle. When I dropped Machiko off at the Four Seasons on my way to meet you, Woodruff was waiting for her in the lobby.”
“Jesus Christ, Ames! Why didn’t you tell me that in the first place?”
“You never asked,” Ames replied. “You never told me his name.”
I was already standing up, pushing aside my chair.
“Wait a minute,” Ames said. “Where are you going?”
“To find them, goddamnit. I still don’t know which side that slippery son of a bitch is on.”