Trial by Fury (9780061754715) (2 page)

A
n army travels on its belly. J. P. Beaumont can go only so far on an empty stomach. On a good day. My endurance is reduced in direct proportion to the amount of MacNaughton's consumed the night before—in this case, far too much.

By noon we had worked our way through most of the businesses and several almost deserted apartment buildings on Lower Queen Anne. Famished, I called a halt.

“We'll come back later, after people get home from work. How about breakfast?”

Peters shrugged. “It's up to you.”

Leading the way to the Mecca Cafe, I ordered a full breakfast and conned a sympathetic waitress out of a pair of aspirin. Peters ordered herb tea. Tea, but no sympathy.

“You drink too much, Beau,” he said.

“Lay off,” I told him.

“I won't lay off. You were fine when you left the house. What happened?”

I had spent Sunday afternoon helping Peters reassemble a secondhand swing set for his daughters, Heather and Tracie. The girls had supervised from the sidelines. They're cute little kids, both of them. They were underfoot and in the way, but being around them made me realize once more exactly what I'd lost. I had finished the evening at the Dog House, my home-away-from-home hangout in downtown Seattle, crying over spilt milk and singing solos with the organist. Cold sober I don't sing. I know better.

“Guess I got to feeling sorry for myself,” I mumbled.

“Sorry!” Peters exclaimed. “What the hell for? You're set. You wouldn't have to work another day in your life if you weren't so goddamned stubborn.”

“Sure, I'm set. Now that it's too late.”

“Too late?” Peters echoed.

“Too late for me and my kids. Did I build the swing set for my own kids? No way. I was working nights as a security guard, trying to make ends meet. Karen had to ask a neighbor to help her put it up. No Little League games, no school programs. Now I've got both money and time, and where the hell are my kids? In California with Karen and their stepfather.”

I dunked a piece of toast in my egg yolk and waited to see if Peters would jump me for eating eggs, too. He was quiet for a moment, stirring his tea thoughtfully. “Maybe you should join a health club, play racketball, get involved in something besides work.”

“And maybe you should give up Homicide and go in for family counseling,” I retorted. On that relatively unfriendly note, we left the Mecca and went back to work.

After lunch we spent some time in the Seattle Center Administration Office and got the names of all the security people who had worked Friday's games. It was nice to have a list of phone numbers to work from for a change. They let us use a couple of empty desks and phones. We sat right there and worked our way through the list. For all the good it did us. None of the security guards could remember anything unusual, either.

When we left there, we finished our canvass of the neighborhood as much as possible considering the time of day, eventually returning to the car in the Bailey's Foods parking lot. A man wearing a faded red flannel shirt over khaki pants and topped by a dingy Mariners baseball cap was leaving a nasty note under the windshield wiper.

“This your car?” he asked.

“Belongs to the mayor,” Peters said, unlocking the driver's door.

“City cars park free on city streets,” the man continued plaintively. “Not on private property. Was gonna have you towed.”

“Look,” Peters explained, “we're with Homicide. We're working a case. Didn't the store manager tell you?”

“Got nothin' to do with the store. Parking's separate. Good for half an hour, while you shop. That's it. You gonna pay me or not?”

Peters glowered. “We're here on official business.”

“Me, too,” the man whined. “My boss says collect. I collect. From every car. You included.”

I reached into my pocket. “How much?”

“Two bucks.” The man glanced triumphantly at Peters, who climbed into the driver's seat, slamming the door behind him. I waited while the man counted out my change.

“You work over the weekend?” I asked.

“Me? I work every day. I've got four lots here on Queen Anne Hill that I check seven days a week, part-time. Keeps me in cigarettes and beer. Know what I mean?”

I nodded. “Did you tow any cars from here over the weekend?”

He lifted his grimy baseball cap and scratched his head. Peters had started the car. Impatiently, he rolled down the window. “Coming or not?” he demanded.

“In a minute,” I told him. I returned to the parking attendant. “Well?”

“What's it worth to you?” he asked.

I had no intention of putting a parking attendant on the city payroll as an informant. “How about if I don't let my partner here run over your toes on the way out?”

Glancing at Peters, who sat there gunning the motor, the attendant mulled the idea, then reached into a pocket and retrieved a tattered notebook. He flipped through several pencil-smudged pages before stopping and holding the notebook at arm's length.

“Yup, three of them Friday night, four on Saturday, and one on Sunday. Sunday's real slow.”

“Where to?” I asked.

He stuffed the notebook back in his pocket. “Like I said. That'll cost you.”

It's a wonder some people are smart enough to get out of bed in the morning. He was standing directly in front of a green-and-white sign that said “Violators will be towed. At owner's risk and expense. Lincoln Towing.”

“That's okay,” I said. “We'll figure it out.”

“It's about time,” Peters grumbled when I finally got into the car. “Where to?”

“Lincoln Towing,” I told him. “Over on Fairview. They towed eight cars out of the lot over the weekend. Maybe one of them belongs to the victim.”

Peters put the car in gear, shaking his head in disbelief. “Come off it, Beau. Doc Baker said he was dumped here. After he died. Why would his car be left in the lot?”

“Humor me. Unless you've got a better idea.”

He didn't. We drove through what Seattlites jokingly refer to as the Mercer Mess, a city planner's worst nightmare of how to stall traffic getting off and on a freeway. It's a tangle of one-way streets that circle this way and that without any clear direction.

Lincoln Towing actually sits directly in front of traffic exiting Interstate 5 and coming into the city. At the Fairview stoplight, Lincoln Towing's Toe Truck, a tow truck fitted out as a gigantic foot complete with bright pink toes four feet tall, may very well be the first sight some visitors see as they drop off the freeway to enter Seattle.

Lincoln's Toe Truck lends a whimsical bit of humor. As long as you're not one of Lincoln Towing's unwilling customers. Then it's no laughing matter.

The man who got out of a taxi and stomped his way into the Lincoln Towing office directly ahead of us wasn't laughing. He was ready to knock heads.

“What the hell do you mean towing me from a church parking lot! It isn't Sunday. I was just having breakfast down the street.”

A girl with a wholesome, scrubbed appearance greeted his tirade with a sympathetic smile. “The lot is clearly marked, sir. It's private property. We've been directed to tow all unauthorized vehicles.”

He blustered and fumed, but he paid. By the time he got his keys back, it was probably one of the most expensive breakfasts of his life. He stormed out of the office. The clerk, who had continued to be perfectly polite and noncommittally sympathetic the whole time she was taking his money, turned to us. “May I help you?”

I opened my ID and placed it on the counter in front of her along with the list of license plate numbers from our surly parking lot attendant. “We understand you towed these cars over the weekend. They're all from the Bailey's Foods lot on Queen Anne Hill.”

She picked up the list and looked it over. “What about them?”

“Could you check them against your records. See if there was anything unusual about any of them?”

She went to a computer terminal and typed the license numbers into it. A few minutes later she returned to the counter, shaking her head. “Nothing out of the ordinary about any of them, except one.”

“Which one?”

“A Buick. It came in early Saturday morning.”

“What about it?”

“It's still here.”

“That's unusual?”

She smiled. “Sure. Most of them are like that guy who just left. They get here by taxi half an hour to an hour after the car. They can't wait to bail it out.”

“But the Buick's still here, and that's unusual?”

“Not that unusual,” she replied. “Sometimes you run into a drunk who takes a couple of days to sober up and figure out where he left the car. That's probably what happened here.”

“Which Buick?” I asked.

She pointed. “The blue one. The Century. Over in the corner.”

“Mind if we take a look?”

“I don't know why not.” She shrugged and called over the intercom for someone to escort us. A young fellow in green Lincoln Towing coveralls led us to the car. We peered in through the windows. An athletic bag sat on the floor of the backseat. An airline identification tag was still attached to the handle. It was turned in the wrong direction for us to read it.

“Would it be possible for you to open it up so we could see the name on that tag?”

“Well…” The young man hesitated.

“It could be important,” I urged. “Something may have happened to the driver.”

He glanced from me to the window of the office over my shoulder. “Okay by me,” he said.

He opened the front car door, reached in, and unlocked the back. Using a pen rather than a finger, and careful to touch only the smallest corner of the name tag, I flipped it over. The name Darwin Ridley was written in heavy felt-tipped pen along with an address and telephone number in Seattle's south end.

I read them to Peters, who jotted them down. Nothing in the car appeared to have been disturbed.

“Thanks,” I said to the Lincoln Towing guy and backed out of the car.

“No problem,” he said, then hurried away.

Peters scowled at the name and address. “So what now? Motor Vehicles?”

I nodded. “And check Missing Persons.”

Peters shook his head. “I still think you're way out in left field. Dead men don't drive. Remember? Why would the car turn up in the same parking place as the corpse? It doesn't make sense.”

“The car's been here since Saturday morning. Nobody's come to claim it. Something may have happened to the owner, even if it isn't our victim.”

“All right, all right. No use arguing.”

“Besides,” I said, “you've got nothing better to do this afternoon.”

We returned to Lincoln Towing's office and dropped off a card, asking the clerk to please notify us if anyone came to pick up the Buick. Then we headed for the Public Safety Building, where Peters went to check with Missing Persons while I dialed the S.P.D. communications center for a registration check from the Department of Motor Vehicles. I also put through an inquiry to the Department of Licensing on a driver's license issued to Darwin Ridley.

I've reluctantly come to appreciate the value of computers in police work. By the time Peters finished with Missing Persons, I knew via computer link that the Buick was registered to Darwin T. Ridley and his wife Joanna. The address on the name tag and the address on the vehicle registration were the same.

Peters, shaking his head, came to sit on the edge of my desk, his arms folded obstinately across his chest. “Missing Persons's got nothing. What a surprise!”

Margie, our clerk, appeared from nowhere. “Did you guys pick up your messages?”

She had us dead to rights. We shook our heads in silent, sheepish unison. “So what else is new? The medical examiner's office called and said they've finished the autopsy. You can
go by and pick up preliminary results if you want.”

“Or even if we don't want, right?” Peters asked.

“Right,” she answered.

We headed out for the medical examiner's office. It's located at the base of Harborview Medical Center, one of several medical facilities in the neighborhood that have caused Seattle locals to unofficially revise First Hill's name to Pill Hill.

Doc Baker's receptionist led us into his office. As usual, we found him tossing paper clips into his battered vase. He paused long enough to push a file across his desk.

Peters picked it up and thumbed through it. “Death by hanging?”

Baker nodded. “Rope burns around his wrists and ankles. I'd say somebody hog-tied that poor son of a bitch and lynched him. Hanged by the neck until dead.”

“You make it sound like an execution.”

Baker tossed another paper clip into the vase. “It was, with someone other than the state of Washington doing the job—judge, jury, and executioner.”

“Time of death?”

“Two o'clock Saturday morning, give or take.”

“Any identifying marks?”

He sent another paper clip flying. This one
bounced off the side of the vase and fell to the floor. “Shit!” Baker bent over to retrieve it. “Not so as you'd notice,” he continued. He tried again. This time it landed in the vase with a satisfying clink. “Surgical scar on his left knee that would be consistent with a sports injury of some kind.”

“Nothing else?”

“Nothing. Not even dental work. Didn't have a single filling in his head.”

“Got good checkups, right up until he died.”

Baker glowered at Peters. “That's pretty unusual for a man his age.”

“And what's that?” I asked.

“How old? Oh, thirty-nine, forty. Right around there.”

“Anything else?”

“Last meal must have been about noon. We're working on stomach contents.”

“Drugs?”