More Perfect Union (9780061760228) (14 page)

T
hat gossipy store clerk in Doty had been right. Linda Decker's house with its barred windows and doors looked a whole lot more like a jail than the new one did in Chehalis. Except for the discreet lockup and secured-entry system at one corner, the building we entered didn't remotely resemble a county courthouse.

Before they stuffed me in a patrol car somebody other than Jamie had finally helped me into my pants and put my shirt over my shoulders. Once inside the courthouse, Sheriff Harding told a deputy to take me into an unoccupied office to make my one phone call. That and removing my handcuffs were his only grudging concessions to professional courtesy. If I hadn't been a cop, I'd have been stuck out in the lobby using a pay phone along with all the rest of the scum. My escort removed the handcuffs but made sure I understood that an armed
guard would be posted outside the door.

The advantage of having a high-priced attorney like Ralph Ames on retainer is that he cuts through both bullshit and red tape with equal dispatch. As soon as I got him on the phone and told him what was going on, he let me have it with both barrels.

“Wake up, Beau. Get out from under your rock. That kind of chivalry went out with the Middle Ages. You tell that sheriff, Harwin…”

“Harding,” I corrected.

“Whatever his name is, you tell him to get on the horn to Marilyn Sykes and straighten this mess out before it goes any further. Is there anyone else besides her who can say for certain you were there all night?”

Sheepishly I remembered the security guard and his all-knowing clipboard. “There was somebody else,” I admitted reluctantly.

“Who for Chrissakes?” Ames demanded. He wanted this fixed, and he wanted it fixed now. He wasn't about to let me hide out under a blanket of genteel niceties.

“A security guard at her condominium complex. They keep track of all cars coming and going.”

“Great. Have the sheriff talk to the guard as well. In the meantime, I'll catch the next plane out of Sky Harbor and be in Seattle sometime tonight. You take the cake, Beau. If it isn't one thing, it's three others. Try to get word to Peters if you still need me to come down to Chehalis.
Otherwise, I'll meet you at your apartment.”

“Do you think you need to come up?”

“Of course I'm coming up. If I leave right now I can catch the six-fifty. It's a direct flight.”

There may be take-two-aspirin-get-plenty-of-rest type attorneys in this world, but Ralph Ames isn't one of them.

“How come they picked you up, anyway?” he asked. “Didn't you tell them you're a cop?”

“I told them,” I said, “but this woman was so totally convinced I was there to kill her, that she made the Lewis County Sheriff's Department believe it too.”

“If she could convince them of that, she ought to be in sales,” Ames suggested dryly. “Timeshare rowboats maybe, right here in Phoenix.” With that, he hung up.

For several minutes, I sat alone in the office thinking about Linda Decker. I had been thinking about her all the while I was locked in the back of Reed Harding's patrol car with my hands cuffed firmly behind me. There hadn't been anything else to do
but
think.

I was sure now that I wasn't alone in thinking Logan Tyree's death was no accident. Linda Decker thought so too. Not only that, she was so sure she was the next target that she had barricaded her home and gone to some fairly dangerous lengths to entrap whoever might come looking for her.

Linda Decker was gutsy, I had to give her that, but she was also stupid. Her plan had
worked, but only because I had come alone. If there had been anyone with me…

My old pal Jamie peered through the glass in the door and saw that I was off the phone. He entered without knocking. “Get going,” he ordered curtly.

“I want to talk to Harding,” I said.

“You already had your chance with Harding. You blew it.”

“Look, you little jerk, my lawyer told me to confess, and I'm ready. Go get Harding and let's get this over with.”

As soon as I saw the look on his face, I knew I had him by the short hairs. Jamie wanted to be a hero every bit as much as I had wanted my pants on earlier. He swallowed the bait whole. “I'll be right back,” he said.

He took off at a dead run and was back in three minutes with Sheriff W. Reed Harding rumbling along behind him.

“Jamie here tells me you're ready to confess,” Harding said to me. “Is that true?”

I grinned at Jamie. “I told him I wanted to talk to you, but he's blowing smoke about the rest of it. I don't know where he got the idea that I wanted to confess.” My mother taught me not to lie. It's taken me a lifetime to overcome that training, but I'm learning.

Jamie flushed. I had gotten a little of my own back. Not enough, but it was a start. Harding bristled and turned away. “In that case, I'm going home to dinner. Lock this creep up.”

Jamie started forward, but my next words caught Harding just as his hand closed on the doorknob. “Does the name Marilyn Sykes mean anything to you?”

Harding stopped and so did Jamie. The sheriff swung back around to face me. “I know Marilyn,” he replied deliberately. “She's vice president of our state association. She's good people. Why? What about her?”

“Call her,” I said. “Ask her what she was doing last night between midnight and one o'clock.”

The sheriff's eyes narrowed. “Is this some kind of joke?”

“Believe me, it's no joke. I'm only following my attorney's orders.”

“It's too late to call her,” he objected. “She wouldn't still be at the office, and I doubt she'd have a listed number.”

“I have the number,” I said. “It's in my wallet. You've got that, don't you?”

Harding stood for a moment, looking at me, pondering, then he nodded to Jamie. “Go out and get me the envelope with his stuff in it. And don't open it.” Once Jamie was outside, Harding closed the door, walked slowly back to the desk, and eased his heavy frame down into the chair behind it. “What's this all about, Beaumont? What are you up to?”

“Just call Marilyn and ask her what she was doing last night between midnight and one o'clock,” I said again.

Jamie returned and handed over the envelope. While Harding fumbled with the flap, I was aware of Jamie's cold eyes drilling into me. Talking to Ames had buoyed my confidence. Now, for the first time, I wondered what would happen if Marilyn Sykes weren't home, or if for some reason she couldn't or wouldn't corroborate my alibi. After this latest set-to with Jamie, if Harding left me alone again with that squirrelly little shit, I was in big, big trouble.

Marilyn, Marilyn, answer the phone.

Harding was still searching for the number. “It's on the back of one of her cards,” I said helpfully. “Behind the money.”

Harding located the card, turned it over, picked up the phone, and dialed. She must have answered on the first or second ring. I felt myself breathe a huge sigh of relief.

“Howdy there, Marilyn,” he drawled. “This is Reed Harding, down in Chehalis. Oh sure, I'm fine. How's it going with you?”

I wondered if Reed Harding had always talked that way, or if he had affected the backwoods, good-old-boy style as a vote-getting technique. The accent wouldn't have played worth a damn in Tacoma or Seattle either one, but it sounded perfectly at home in Chehalis.

There was a short exchange of pleasantries, while Jamie and I stared at each other. I was gloating. There wasn't a goddamned thing he could do to me now, but suddenly I wanted him out of that room in the very worst way. What
ever Marilyn Sykes told Reed Harding was fine, but I'll be damned if I wanted Jamie to be privy to it.

“Well,” Harding was explaining to Marilyn, “it's like this. We've got ourselves a sticky little situation down here. I hate to put you on the spot, Marilyn, but I need to know exactly what you were doing last night around midnight or so.”

Jamie was bright enough to know that the tables had somehow turned, but he still hadn't figured out what to do about it. I stood up and stretched. Harding was so deeply embroiled in his conversation with Marilyn that he didn't pay the least bit of attention to me. With an armed deputy in the room and another stationed just outside the door, he didn't really need to worry.

I ambled over to the door where Jamie was still standing. “You'd better get out of here, you cocksucking little son of a bitch,” I whispered, “before I crush your balls with a nutcracker and use 'em for chicken feed.”

Jamie stiffened, paled, and left without a word. No guts. I turned back to Harding. He was still on the phone and shaking his head.

“So there was no way he could have gotten away between say midnight and one o'clock this morning without your noticing.” There was a pause, and Harding chuckled. “No, I suppose not.”

Chivalry be damned, Marilyn Sykes was coming through like a champ.

“And you say the security guard there keeps track of all vehicles after ten
P.M
.? Could you give me that number?” He jotted something on a sheet of paper. “Well thanks, Marilyn. You've been a big help. You want to talk to him? Sure. Hang on.”

Shaking his head, he looked over at me and held out the phone. “She wants to speak to you,” he said.

I can't say that I wanted to speak to her right then, but I took the phone anyway.

“I thought you told me you weren't the type to kiss and tell,” Marilyn Sykes said accusingly.

“Marilyn, I'm sorry. It's just that…”

She laughed. “Don't apologize and don't give me any excuses, Beau. From what Reed tells me, it's a damn good thing we were at my place instead of yours. Your doorman goes off duty at midnight. You need to live in a class-act place, Detective Beaumont, one with twenty-four-hour security.”

Marilyn was sticking it to me and to Belltown Terrace as well, but I was in no position to object. I kept quiet.

“Anything else I can do to help?” she asked brightly.

“Not at the moment.” I didn't want to say more, not with Reed Harding sitting there in the room. Marilyn was perceptive enough to figure it out.

“Call me when you get back home and let me know what's going on. It must be serious.”

“It is that,” I said. “I'll be in touch.” I handed the phone back to Harding. He took it from me and sat there unmoving for several seconds with the receiver cupped in his hands. Finally, he tapped the phone on the desk a time or two.

“You'll bear with me while I go by the book and check out one more thing, won't you?”

I shrugged. “Be my guest.”

He looked down at the notes he had taken during his call with Marilyn and punched a number into the phone. “Who am I speaking to?” he asked when somebody answered.

“My name's Harding, Sheriff W. Reed Harding down here in Chehalis. We've had a tip that one of our stolen vehicles was sighted in your complex last night. I understand that you keep track of license numbers of all vehicles entering and leaving the property, is that true?”

There was a pause. “I see, but you don't have last night's list there with you? Do you know where we could locate it? Yes, it is important. Fine, I'll hold.”

Harding held his hand over the mouthpiece. “He's transferring me to the security company's main office in Seattle,” he said. “What's the license number on that Porsche of yours? I've got it in the file in my office, but I need it now.”

I gave it to him. Harding went back to the phone. “Sure, just read me the whole list. That'll be fine.” It took several minutes. Finally the list was completed. “Okay,” Harding said. “Thanks for all your help. What's your name again?” He
scribbled a name and number on the sheet of paper. “Sounds to me like we must have been mistaken.”

He put down the phone and looked over at me. “In more ways than one, Beaumont,” he added. “Just like you said. The number's there. In at eleven and out again this morning. I owe you an apology.”

“It happens,” I said. “We all make mistakes.” I could afford to be magnanimous with Harding. He wasn't the one who had knocked me on my ass.

“But what the hell were you doing out there in Pe Ell anyway? And what's Linda Decker so scared of? It's a miracle she didn't shoot you on sight. She said you claimed to be working on her boyfriend's case, on his homicide, but that when she called to check, Seattle P.D. said no.”

In less than a minute, Harding and I had gone from adversaries to allies. The shift was so sudden, it almost made me dizzy.

“There are two other detectives who are actually assigned to the case,” I told him. “I've been working it anyway. I felt like it.”

“Oh,” Harding replied with a nod. “I got that much from Watkins.”

“Watkins?” I asked.

“You know, Watkins, your sergeant up there in Seattle. I talked to him just a little while ago while we were still trying to check you out.”

If Harding had talked to Sergeant Watkins, then my tail was already in a gate but good.

“Wonderful,” I said. Watty would be ripped, ready to chew me to pieces. So would Detective Paul Kramer.

I changed the subject. “Is that when she called you for help, then, after they told her I wasn't assigned to the case?”

“She never called.”

“She didn't? But what about the deputy who showed up at the house? How'd he get there?”

“We sent him out to notify her about what had happened to her mother and her brother. Someone from the brother's job had called us and asked us to let her know. As soon as she found out, she told the deputy about you. He radioed here for help while she loaded up her kids and headed for Seattle.”

“To the hospital?” I asked.

Harding nodded. “Harborview. The burn unit.” He cocked his head to one side and studied me. “I wonder what she would have done to you if my deputy hadn't turned up right then.”