Rainy City (17 page)

I had Hank Waterman’s insistence that he’d once seen Melissa and her biker friend in Tacoma on Pacific Avenue near a hotel. A week ago, Melissa had phoned her aunt from a pay phone on Pacific Avenue. I had the phone number and address of the booth.

With a little footwork, I was reasonably assured of finding her. If nothing else, I could stake out the phone booth. She had used it once. She would probably use it again.

I was sure the cops storming about Helen Gunther’s tiny apartment had heard of the killing in Bellingham, but I was just as sure that it would take them weeks to link Mary Dawn Crowell’s murder to Helen Gunther’s. On the other hand, blurting out a few well-chosen words, I could connect the two murders and become the center of attention, the bull’s-eye on a municipal dart board.

The plainclothesman who had let me in was named Gayden. After a few minutes on the phone, he came over, knelt in front of my chair and said, “You just met her, you say?”

“Twice. I saw her the other day for a few minutes and then this morning.”

“You date her, or what?”

“She was a friend of a friend.”

“You trying to be coy?”

I looked at him. “Am I a suspect?”

“At this point, everybody’s a suspect. When it comes to killing a woman; everybody’s a suspect.”

“I’m a private detective now. She’s a psychologist. One of her clients is missing. Ran away from her husband. That’s how I met her. I thought she might be able to point me in the right direction.”

“Did she?”

“Not a peep. I was going to give her one last try before I tracked down some other leads.”

Gayden nodded, then held up a plastic evidence bag, a pair of crushed tortoiseshell glasses suspended inside. “You ever see these before?”

“She was wearing them this morning.”

“We found them outside the door. It looks like she had quite a struggle. She’s a pretty big girl. He must have been a bruiser.”

“Or somebody with a lot of practice,” I said.

Gayden stared at me. “You ever miss the job?”

“I feel bad about it. I don’t miss it. But I feel bad about it. This stuff I’m doing now… it has its moments.”

“Why do you do it?”

“It’s what I know.” Gayden snorted. “Yeah, that’s how I feel a lot of the time. It’s what I know. Can you guess how we found out about this?” He gestured toward the dead woman on the bed.

“A neighbor upstairs heard a commotion about an hour and a half ago. He didn’t want to get involved in it, so he turned his stereo up. He heard screaming and doors slamming. He could have come down here and saved her.”

“So he called you?”

“After it was quiet for fifteen minutes he got curious. He found these outside.” Gayden displayed the bag with the glasses. “The door was partially open. He could see the body from where he stood. You can see where he tossed his cookies in the garden.”

“That’s your only lead?” I asked, debating whether or not to tell them about Mary Dawn.

“So far.”

I could always plead ignorance. After all, the Bellingham police had a suspect in custody. A reasonable man had no cause to assume the two murders were connected. No cause at all. Except that both women were going to hand over information on Melissa Nadisky. Both women lived alone. Both women had been brutally murdered, probably by the same person. Not Burton. Not likely. I had never figured him for the Bellingham killing and it would have been impossible for him to have done this from a jail cell eighty miles away.

“Want to tell me the name of this woman you’re looking for?”

Suddenly I was overflowing with information and good will. “A blonde. Name is Melissa Nadisky. Mid-twenties. Slender. Pretty.”

It did not mean beans to Gayden. He stood up and straightened his trousers. “You know who might have done this?”

“I haven’t the foggiest,” I said, truthfully.

Gayden speculated aloud. “A psychologist. She treats people off the street, I’ll bet. Who knows what sort of flakes she’s been involved with in the last six months?”

“Was she sexually assaulted?”

The room had cleared out except for two uniformed cops. Gayden paced as he replied.

“Can’t tell yet. Near as we can figure, somebody came to the door, forced it, argued with her for some time, then whacked her around. The guy upstairs said the yelling seemed to go on for a while. He thought for sure it was some sort of domestic dispute. Apparently she almost broke free once, because we found these outside.” Gayden dangled the plastic bag containing the shattered glasses. He shook his head, stared at the corpse and said, “Poor kid. She looked like a real nice one. Was she?”

I was wrapped up in my own thoughts. “Pardon?”

“Was she a nice one?”

“One of the nicest,” I said, recalling that she had been a bit of a dope.

“I just hope we nail this yo-yo,” said Gayden, staring at Helen Gunther’s awkward corpse.

“Did she have any papers?” I asked. “Some folders, notes?”

“We haven’t spotted anything.”

“There should be a folder around somewhere. As far as I know she was in the habit of taking it home with her.”

“Nothing here.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I just hope we nail this yo-yo.”

Kathy wasn’t in, but she had left a note for me on the kitchen table under a nutcracker:

Ward, honey,

Wally and I are shopping for a surprise for the Beav. Back around five.

June

She came in while I was fixing a snack, garbed in a long black coat and witch boots. Her eye shadow was dark and overdone and she wore a tall beryl-blue wool cap. Her hair was hidden, her face long and lean. Nobody in Tacoma would recognize her. She looked like a vamp from a D. W. Griffith flick.

“Let’s go,” I said. “I’ve got a hot lead on Melissa. In Tacoma.”

“Can’t I eat first?”

“Not this time, kiddo.”

“Do I have to come along?”

“I thought you liked this detective business.”

“I’ve got exams at the end of the week.”

“Remember Ms. Gunther?”

“At the Hopewell? How could I forget? I’m going to call her up and apologize for what we did. I don’t care what you say.”

“You won’t reach her.”

Kathy’s violet eyes fixed on mine for two long beats.

“Why not?”

“Somebody killed her about two hours ago.”

Kathy plunked down into one of my kitchen chairs so hard it shrieked in protest. “Do you think it has anything to do with…”

“I think it has everything to do with…”

“That’s why you want me to go with you?”

“I don’t want you here alone.”

“Oh, geez,” said Kathy, tears of sympathy and grief beading up in her eyes. ‘Could we have..?”

“There was nothing anyone could have done. Who could predict a thing like that? Besides, there’s a remote possibility it doesn’t have anything to do with Melissa.”

“Very remote,” said Kathy. “Of course it has something to do with Melissa. First Melissa’s aunt, who was going to talk to you. And now Melissa’s counselor. How did you find out?”

“I saw her this morning. I told her I was coming back. When I went back, the joint was buzzing with cops.”

Even as I spoke, I thought about the bug under nw rear bumper. Someone from Taltro’s security staff might have followed me that morning, the same way Holder had followed me to Bellingham. Sure, they had tailed me. It was probably Julius Caesar Holder himself. But Holder hadn’t done anything in Bellingham. He had showed up after the body had been discovered. Had he killed Mary Dawn Crowell, it was highly unlikely he would have loitered around in the parking lot afterwards rubbernecking with the old folks.

Certainly Holder and the Taltro security people were implicated, but I doubted if they were running around killing people. On the other hand, Holder was just the sort of guy to freelance a bit, wander off on his own and stir up trouble. Whoever had committed the two murders was more dangerous than anyone I had tangled with in quite a while.

Kathy climbed into the truck while I went around to the back and removed the bug from under the bumper. Fetching a large, sturdy rat trap from the garage, I wired the bug onto the spring mechanism of the trap, then vaulted my neighbor’s fence, and scooted down onto the wet pavement under the rear of his Buick. Horace would never know what happened.

Whoever had set the bug would follow Horace, realize their mistake and try to recover the tracking device when he parked. They were going to get a quick, hard lesson in retrieving things when they slid their fingers into the trigger of the rat trap. It took five minutes to tape it up and activate it satisfactorily. My jacket and trousers were wet when I jumped into the truck. I switched on the heater to dry them out.

“Whatever were you doing, Thomas?”

“Just a prank.”

“It didn’t look like a prank. That trap’ll break somebody’s fingers.”

“Think so?”

“If Horace ever finds out, he’ll go bananas.”

“Horace is already bananas. Besides, he won’t. That type of transmitter is expensive. Whoever set it will want it back. By the way, What’d you get the Beav?”

It took Kathy a few moments to figure out what I was talking about. “Oh, the Beav. Wally and I got him a Vivaldi album.”

Tacoma was as gray and smelly as I remembered it. The early winter darkness shrouded the city as we pulled onto Pacific Avenue, a main drag running along the underbelly of the burg. We bumbled through the rush-hour traffic until we found the approximate location Hank Waterman had described to me. We parked in a lot for two bucks.

An old theater had been renovated and converted into a savings-and-loan. Two doors away stood the entrance to a sleazy hotel, a pair of aging drunks in baggy plaid trousers panhandling outside.

A rheumy-eyed news vendor wearing fingerless work gloves confirmed that the savings-and-loan had once been a theater. We showed him the photo of Melissa, but he drew a blank. Across the street beside the hotel stood a plant store which looked as if it might have been a tavern at one time. The vendor confirmed that too. It had been called Joe’s. Now the section of street matched Waterman’s description to a tee.

We found the phone booth up the street. Some wino had relieved himself on the floor recently. The number was the one Smithers had obtained from the phone company for me. Melissa had telephoned her aunt from that booth last Tuesday night. I was as close to her as I had ever been. Kathy and I looked around the street as if we might spot Melissa after only a cursory search. Not a chance.

The hotel was called The Last Inn and it reeked. It was the sort of broken-down hovel pensioners and welfare drunks resided in, and transients died in so they could be discovered days later and their mattresses fumigated with a can of Lysol.

“Is this where you think she is?” Kathy asked.

“Waterman thinks he saw her coming out of this place a few years back. The phone she used last Tuesday night is right down the street. I can’t think of a better place to start looking.”

In the lobby, two obese Indian women were hunched on a pair of dingy davenports watching a flickery black-and-white Magnavox. Reruns of I Love Lucy that were almost as old as I was mesmerized the Indians.

A dried-up gentleman with along, sepia face leaned on the counter, perusing a Reader’s Digest.

“You ever see this woman?” I asked, pushing the photo of Melissa Crowell Nadisky under his nose.

He took his time turning away from the Reader’s Digest. It was a back issue from 1942. He scrutinized the tiny photo for a few moments, then gave me a bleary look.

“You a copper?”

“Private,” I said.

“Gettin’ paid pretty good, are ya?”

I slapped a five-dollar bill down and watched it disappear into his liver-spotted fist. “Sure, I seen somebody sorts looks like her. They call her the Blue Diamond.”

“You’re kidding.”

“That’s what they call her.”

“She been around long?”

“A week maybe.”

“Know where I can find her?”

He raised his eyes toward the ceiling. “Up there. 301. But she ain’t in.”

“Know where I can get hold of her? Right now?” He picked up the photo and examined it again. “‘Course, she don’t look exactly like this. The Diamond is all gussied up, you know. This looks like maybe her younger sister.”

“You sure it’s the same one?”

“Not really,” he said, clicking his dentures. “But it looks like her.”

Kathy had moved to the other side of the lounge, chunked a quarter into a newspaper vending machine and was scanning the front page.

“What’s she like?” I asked.

“Ain’t never had a date with her.” He was patronizing me now. He had the bone and I was the slobbering puppy.

“When was the last time you saw her?”

Slowly, he glanced up over the doorway at a clock that had a broken cover. “’Bout two hours ago.”

“Here?”

“I ain’t left the place all day.”

“She live upstairs?”

He nodded toward the two Indian women on the sofas.

“They live here. The Blue Diamond just works here.”

“She hooking?”

“She don’t do no work, but she makes plenty of dough.”

“She hooks.”

He nodded.

“She have a boyfriend?”

“You might call him that.”

“Name?”

“Couldn’t tell you that. He’s a mean one. I could get my head knocked off talking ‘bout him.”

I sandpapered a ten-dollar bill across the counter. It disappeared into his wrinkled fist with the five. “Name’s Solomon. Least that’s What he calls himself. He’ll stick ya if you let him.”

“He carries a knife?”

“Nobody’s gonna stick ya with a wad of gum, mister.” He had me on that.

“She come in every night?”

“Some nights. Some days.”

“Think she’ll be back tonight?”

“I ain’t no mind reader. She comes in when she’s a mind to, or when she’s got a John.”

“If I wanted to find her right now, where might I try?”

Rubbing his whiskered chin with his dirty fingers, he said, “Braverman’s, up the hill ‘bout two blocks.” We stood looking at each other for a moment, the impatient private eye and the old codger. Finally he said, “He’s short and he’s got snake eyes. Real mean. He kinda likes to see people hurt. His trick is he sticks without any warning. Once he gets his ire up he’ll stick ya anytime. In the back. In the brain. I seen him stick a woman in the cheek once.”