Old Chaos (9781564747136) (37 page)

The mystery of Inger’s “suicide note” began to unravel that morning.

Rob reached his office before ten to find the courthouse under press siege. Beth had drawn up a fact sheet for them that was not only clear and well-worded but properly punctuated. Her husband had had an unaccountable fondness for random commas. After she directed Sgt. Howell to hand the sheet out and promise them a two o’clock press conference, the reporters took themselves off for breakfast at Mona’s.

Rob called Meg at the library to give her the good news about Lars.

“I hope you thanked Jack.”

“Good God, Meg.” What did she think he was?

“I’m going to ring Charlie. His first class let out at nine-thirty”

“Why?”

“It may have escaped your attention,” she said with elaborate patience, “but your cousin feels some responsibility here. When you leave him out of the loop he’s hurt.” She was, too. She didn’t have to say that.

“Give him my best,” Rob said crossly. He knew he was going to have to build bridges and didn’t look forward to the prospect.

He had time for a short phone conversation with Larry Swets and a longer one with Karl Tergeson before Ed Prentiss showed up.

Rob shoved copies of Inger’s papers at Prentiss. No way was he going to let the originals out of his hands. No way was he going to say anything about Prentiss’s disastrous conduct of the high-speed chase.

“What’s this?” Prentiss sounded glum but not hostile.

Rob explained.

“Your cousin—”

“My cousin went to Meg’s assistance. Larry gave him the papers. Charlie read them, decided they were personal, and waited to talk them over with Larry.”

“Personal!”

“I got them late last night. There they are. I gave them to you as soon as I could.”

“Yeah, okay, I didn’t mean to criticize.” He cleared his throat. “I hear you found the old man this morning. Congratulations.”

“Jack Redfern found him.”

“Oh, yeah, the chief’s husband.”

Rob wondered whether Jack minded being known as somebody’s husband. Probably not. He waited while Prentiss deciphered Inger’s scrawls.

At last he shook his head. “What are they?”

“Rough drafts?” The papers involved a lot of repetition.

Prentiss stared.

“Larry said he found them in Inger’s wastebasket. In her home office. That note in Inger’s track suit—”

“The suicide note.”

It
would
have been like Inger to write several drafts even of a suicide note. She was not wonderfully spontaneous.

Rob said, “I don’t think it was a suicide note. It was a letter to Cate Bjork that Inger never delivered. Cate killed her and overlooked the letter when she dragged Inger’s body to the river.”

“You’re making a lot of assumptions.”

“Yes. I think Inger was dead when she went into the water.”

“That’s what they tell me. Not much water in the lungs.” There would have been other, subtler signs that Inger did not die by drowning.

Rob waited.

Prentiss heaved a sigh. He did not want to give up his suicide theory. “And the note was zipped into a pants pocket, not in the jacket.” Easy for Cate to overlook in the heat of the moment.

“Have the techs been able to read it?”

Prentiss reached into an inner pocket of his uniform jacket. “See what you make of it.” He, too, had a photocopy.

The note had been written by hand, fortunately with a ballpoint pen. It was blotched and blurred, pieces of it were missing entirely, and there was no salutation. Rob could see why Prentiss had imagined it was a suicide note. It was clear that Inger felt anger and an enormous sense of betrayal. “After all we had together,” it said. That phrase had been repeated in all three pages of the rough drafts. “…did it to please you.” Another repeated phrase.

“How long did Inger Swets know the commissioner?” Prentiss didn’t say Cate’s name. Couldn’t, probably. Cate was
his
victim.

“They were introduced more than five years ago, right after the Bjorks moved to Latouche County. I called Larry this morning. He said he and Inger had been asked to parties at the Bjork mansion. He went with her the first time. He was pretty sure Inger spent time with the Bjorks when he was out of town, especially in the first year or so after they moved here. He knew she was bored, glad she had interesting new friends.”

“But the friendship cooled down?”

“Apparently. Drinkwater hung out with the Bjorks, too. Lars was an investor.”

“Nice. Cozy. Were they having an affair?”

“Who?”

“Inger Swets and Fred Drinkwater,” Prentiss said impatiently, “or Inger and Fred and Mrs. Bjork. A threesome.”

Rob stood up and went to his window for a good look at the parking lot. Beth had a better view. “I don’t know what the relationships were. I think, whatever they were, that Inger had a lot more emotion invested than Cate Bjork did. Especially at first.”

“You think she was a dyke?”

Rob looked at him.

Prentiss made an impatient gesture. “A lesbian. Forgive me.”

“It’s possible, of course. It’s also possible that Inger hero-worshipped Cate. That’s a strong emotion, too.”

“Well, yeah.”

“Inger was a beautiful woman and used to the idea, but Cate was a lot of things Inger couldn’t be—classy, fashionable, used to moving among the rich and powerful. Cate was sophisticated. Inger was a frustrated small-town girl. True, she had a locally powerful job, but how many kids want to grow up to be county clerk?”

Prentiss snorted.

“I’ll tell you how I think it came down.”

“Do that.”

“I think Cate included Inger in her social circle, introduced her to out-of-town visitors here for the scenery or skiing or windsurfing. She and Inger ran together. Who knows, it may have been Inger who suggested that Cate stand for the vacant commissioner’s seat, though I’m guessing that was Cate’s idea. At any rate, all that attention probably went to Inger’s head. I think, and this is a guess, that Cate had a long-term, not very passionate relationship with Fred Drinkwater, with or without her husband’s knowledge, but that Fred and Lars were
cronies
. When the time came to put the Prune Hill development through the mill, to get approval from the Board of Commissioners, I think Lars asked Inger to substitute the favorable geological survey in place of the one the WSU team filed with the state.”

“Lars.”

“It was a couple of years ago. He was only diagnosed with Alzheimer’s last year.”

“Okay I guess.”

“Or it could have been Fred who asked. But it was not Cate Bjork.”

“But Inger thought that was what Cate wanted?”

“Yes.” Both of them sat silent, Rob thinking of Inger as she had appeared there in his office only a few days before, magnificently scornful.

Prentiss shook his head. “A damned waste.”

Rob nodded. “It wouldn’t have been easy for Inger to bring herself to switch the two surveys. I don’t think she would have gone against her father’s principles for money. Karl is all kinds of fool, but he’s an honest man, and he and Inger were close.”

“ ‘I did it to please you.’ ” Prentiss murmured Inger’s words half under his breath. “Yeah, okay. She did what she thought the woman wanted. It was a misunderstanding.”

“None of them expected that hill to slide.”

“Your cousin did.”

Charlie and his supervisor and the rest of the survey team. A fair number of exceptions. “You know how it is, Ed. People who build on scenic land or hazardous land think the regulations are there to inconvenience them. Even people who value the environment.”

“Depends on whose ox is being gored?”

“That’s right. Fred didn’t think Prune Hill would collapse onto his kitschy mansions. Lars…well, who knows what he thought? Even Inger probably thought it was unlikely. When it happened, though, it shocked her and Fred to the core. It shocked Cate, too. I think she only found out that the hazard warning had been suppressed when she got her husband’s power of attorney. At that point Fred probably confided in her.”

“A year ago.”

“Give or take.”

“So she held her breath and hoped it wouldn’t happen.”

“That’s my guess.”

Prentiss winced at the word
guess,
and Rob didn’t blame him.

“Think about the way she used the care-givers’ telephones.”

“She was protecting her ass.”

“Minimizing her connections with Fred and Inger. When Prune Hill did slide,” Rob went on, “she was furious with Fred and furious with Inger. They consulted, the three of them, because all three were smart enough to know they were going to be in deep trouble.”

“You know that because of the phone records.”

“Yes. Fred went out twice the day of the mudslide. We may be able to find out where they met.”

“Maybe.” Prentiss sounded doubtful.

Rob added, with more confidence than he felt, “The last meeting was at Fred’s house at Tyee Lake. I don’t know that Inger was even there. Probably, but if not, it wouldn’t have taken genius for her to figure out the next day that Cate had killed him. Inger probably even knew how she did it.”

“And felt threatened.”

“Threatened and conflicted. Inger loved her father, but she’d betrayed him.”

“Yeah, your Board of Commissioners is in deep shit.” The muscle by Prentiss’s left eye twitched. “I guess I don’t see a little woman like the commissioner taking out two big, aggressive victims.”

“Christ, Ed, she
taught
martial arts. The real question is not whether she could do it but why.”

Prentiss blinked. He’d been investigating Inger, but he must not have found her ties to the Bjorks interesting. He would have been looking at Drinkwater, not Cate.

Rob gave him a brief summary of Cate Bjork’s background.

“So she taught classes at UC Santa Barbara.”

“As an adjunct. The pay was lousy. After her first husband OD’d, she must have decided she’d be better off working as a personal trainer than struggling along as a grad student.” Rob felt a stab of shame. He hadn’t been kind to Charlie, who’d been in the same straits. Charlie hadn’t asked for help. Rob felt sure Cate hadn’t either. The experience had turned her in on herself. Charlie reached out, an important difference.

“So she taught martial arts.”

“Self-defense for women. Comes to the same thing.”

“She turned herself into a personal trainer, found this rich man, sank her hooks into him, and never looked back.”

“I think she gave him his money’s worth.”

“Until last night.”

“Last night she ran out of hope.”

They were staring at each other, remembering the bridge. Pren-tiss’s eyes dropped first.

S
HERIFF McCORMICK,” BETH said into the phone. She was sitting in Mack’s office looking out at the bit of river she could see and wondering whether she would survive her second press conference.

“What is this, some kind of joke? I asked to speak to the Latouche County sheriff.” A man’s voice, querulous.

“This is she.” Very like an English teacher.

There was a disconcerted pause. “Well, I’m Warren Bjork, and I want to know what the hell—”

Beth interrupted him. “Your father is at the county hospital, Mr. Bjork. I suggest that you call them at once. We’ve been trying to reach you since last night.”

Bjork spluttered something about Seattle.

“If you’re in Seattle, you should come back as soon as you can. There seems to be no serious injury, but he’s suffering from hypothermia. At his age that’s serious.”

“I heard…is it true that my stepmother is dead?”

“Yes.” Beth opened her mouth to explain the circumstances and decided she couldn’t do it twice in less than an hour. She checked her watch. “If that’s all, Mr. Bjork, I’m scheduled for a press conference in twenty minutes. My condolences on your stepmother’s death. Good-bye.” She hung up. What an unpleasant man. He’d probably sue the county.

She wondered what was going to happen to the Bjork estate and to Cate’s estate. When Beth had talked to Maddie that morning, Maddie had described the elaborate house. Was it Cate’s house, or had it been built with Bjork money? If the latter, then Warren Bjork would own it eventually. The thought was intolerable. Beth let her mind ramble around possible solutions.

The press conference went as well as could be expected. Ellen Koop kindly sat in on it with her, though the only prosecution in the works was the case against Matt Akers for soliciting grievous bodily harm. Rob, the victim, wanted to drop it, Ellen didn’t. Beth didn’t care, and neither, she suspected, did the press. It was good to let Akers sweat.

Beth supplied the reporters with facts that were relevant to all the investigations. She had no doubt the media would engage in wild theories about Inger’s conduct as well as her death. As for Cate Bjork’s death, the spectacular dive into the river would call for internal investigation on the part of the state patrol, at the very least. However, Prentiss had not been in pursuit when Cate went off the bridge. Beth hoped none of the blame would slop over onto Rob. He had been trying to prevent a chase across the bridge, after all.

Beth had allowed fifteen minutes for questions after her prepared statement, and she managed to respond to them without catastrophe. Maddie Thomas was in the audience. Strictly speaking, she was not press, but Beth took her question anyway.