Second Watch (14 page)

“That’s right.”

“When you’re hopped up on them, it’s easy to slip back onto the hard stuff,” Lars observed. “You need me, you call me, anytime, day or night. I’ll grab a taxi and be there.”

I knew he would be.

“Thanks, Lars,” I said.

“Ya got yourself a good life now, Beau,” he said. “Wouldn’t want ya to screw it up, that’s for sure.”

I agreed with him there. “I promise, if the urge comes over me again, I’ll call.”

“Gotta go,” I told him when call waiting buzzed. “I’ve got another call.” I could tell by the number on the screen that it was coming from Joanna Brady’s direct line.

“I think I found what you needed,” Sheriff Brady said when I answered. “Doug’s death was big news here in town when it happened, and there was quite a spread. Listed among his survivors was his fiancée, Bonnie MacLean, of Coconut Grove, Florida. That’s all it says about her. No additional information was given.”

“What about other relatives there in town?”

“The obituary said Doug had two brothers. I knew the one who died about ten years ago, a decade or so after Doug’s mother, but I have no idea what’s become of the second one.”

“The information on the virtual wall said Doug Davis was a Roman Catholic,” I offered. “Is it possible a local priest would be able to provide more information?”

“Hardly,” Joanna replied. “Father Rowan has only been at St. Benedict’s a couple of years. I doubt he’d have any connections going back that far. I can keep asking if you’d like,” she added, “but you didn’t really tell me what this is about.”

It took a while for me to answer. It was time to be straight with someone about my search for Lennie D.’s fiancée, and I decided Joanna Brady was it.

“Doug and I served together,” I admitted at last. “In Vietnam. He was my commanding officer, my platoon leader, and he saved my life. I’m hoping to track down his fiancée and tell her thank you.”

“So you’re what earned Doug that Silver Star?” she asked.

“Not exactly,” I said. “Those were two other guys. What he did for me was loan me a book. When we got caught in that firefight, the piece of metal that should have killed me outright got buried in the pages of the book instead of in the wall of my chest. If he hadn’t given me the book to read, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“Under the circumstances, I can see why you’d want to reach out to his fiancée,” Joanna said. “I’ll keep making inquiries around town. If I come up with anything more, I’ll let you know.”

“Great,” I told her. “Thanks.”

There was a pause. “Are you all right?” she asked. “You sound funny.”

I didn’t know how to answer her on that. After all, Lennie D. died more than four decades ago. But she was correct. I was anything but all right. Why was it so difficult for me to talk about this now? What was wrong with me? And why was that damned lump back in my throat?

“I’m fine,” I said.

When she hung up, I tried shaking off this latest mood swing by picking up my iPad and googling Bonnie MacLean. Not surprisingly, I found nothing. Not one thing. It was likely that she had married in the intervening years and moved on. That’s what people do.

By then it was time for afternoon PT. When that was over, I wanted to talk to Mel, but I didn’t call her. I knew she was busy working, and I didn’t want to disturb her. She’d get around to calling when she could, but I was beyond bored. I was delighted when my phone rang.

“You son of a bitch!” It took a while for me to recognize Mac MacPherson’s voice.

“Top of the day to you, too,” I responded mildly.

“What do you mean opening up this can of worms all these years later?” he raged. “Couldn’t you just let things be? Is this the thanks I get?”

“Thanks for what?” I asked.

“For keeping my mouth shut all this time,” Mac replied. “For making it possible for you to get that early move up to Homicide. But no, instead of letting it rest—instead of letting a closed case stay closed—you had to send that woman out here to nose around.”

“Like it or not,” I told him, “the Monica Wellington homicide case has been officially reopened. If both of our promotions back then came about because of something related to that, because of some information you withheld at the time? Too bad. Now’s the time to come forward, especially if it’s some detail that would help us close the case.”

“I don’t know anything about the Girl in the Barrel,” he insisted, “not a damned thing! As for you? Do me a favor and go straight to hell! And the next time either you or that babe with the boobs stops by for a chat, I’m going to have an attorney present!”

I started to ask him why he was so upset, but before I could, he slammed the phone down in my ear. Having a landline phone crammed into a receiver is a lot more of a statement than ending a call on a cell phone.

Delilah had given me her number, and I dialed it. “What the hell did you say to Mac MacPherson?”

I was about to say something about Mac’s being on the warpath, but I caught myself.

“I told him we were reopening the Wellington homicide. He claimed to have no knowledge of the case; said that he’d forgotten it completely after all these years. Which was obviously a lie.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because as the interview went on, I noticed that he seemed to become more and more agitated. Eventually he invited me to leave.”

“He threw you out?”

“Yes, and none too politely, either.”

“Did you give him my number?”

“I gave him both our numbers in case anything occurred to him after I left. Why are you asking?”

“Because he just called here and read me the riot act for bringing the case up and for siccing you on him. He also said that the next time either of us talks to him, he wants to have a lawyer present.”

“That’s what he told me, too, but why would he lawyer up unless he has something to hide?” Delilah asked. “Is it possible we should be treating him as a suspect in Monica’s murder?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t see how he could have done it. We were riding patrol together that day when the call came in. If he had been involved in it, I would have noticed that something was wrong.”

“So maybe he has something to do with the missing evidence,” Delilah suggested.

“Maybe,” I said. “But from what he said to me, I suspect whatever he’s hiding has something to do with our promotions.”

“From all the way back in 1973?” She sounded skeptical.

“Where are you now?” I asked.

“On my way back to the department. Why?”

“Do me a favor. Go up to HR and see if you can find the records from back then. I want to see who signed off on the paperwork for those two promotions.”

“I wouldn’t get my hopes up,” Delilah observed. “What makes you think they’ll still have a paper trail after all this time?”

“I’m sure the paper itself is long gone,” I agreed. “But if the records haven’t yet been digitized, they’ll still have them on microfiche.”

“How quaint,” she said. “That’s just how I don’t want to spend the rest of this lovely fall afternoon, scrolling through microfiche records.”

“Somebody has to do it,” I said.

“All right,” she allowed grudgingly, “but you owe me.”

Call waiting buzzed. I could see that Mel was on the line. “Gotta go,” I told Delilah. “I’ve missed you,” I said to Mel when I switched over to her call. “I was afraid you had forgotten me completely.”

“Not completely,” Mel agreed. “But close. We’ve got a suspect in the death of that supposedly peaceful protester, Mr. Abernathy—Reginald Abernathy—Reggie for short.”

“A cop?” I asked.

“Luckily for me and for the rest of Bellingham’s law enforcement community, the POI isn’t a cop,” Mel answered. “Her name is Aspen Leonard, and she happens to be Reggie’s girlfriend. Was Reggie’s girlfriend,” Mel corrected.

“That would be the same girlfriend who went to ground?”

“The very one,” Mel said. “We’ve already put out a BOLO on her, but I’m thinking of changing it to an all points.”

It made perfect sense to me that Mel and I would talk business first and whisper sweet nothings later.

“What makes you think the girlfriend is responsible?” I asked.

“Thanks to Ross Connors, the tox report came back weeks earlier than it would have otherwise,” Mel replied. “It turns out Reggie died of an overdose all right, but it’s an overdose of something that isn’t one of your usual recreational drugs.”

“Which one?” I asked.

“Pentobarbital,” Mel answered. “It’s currently the big drug of choice for vets doing pet euthanasia. And guess who happens to work in a vet’s office, or at least who used to work in a vet’s office?”

“The girlfriend?”

“Right you are, and, strangely enough, two vials of the stuff—enough to do in two eighty- to one-hundred-pound dogs—have evidently gone missing from the veterinarian’s locked drug storage. Unfortunately for the late Mr. Abernathy, he was a bit of a lightweight in that department. He tipped the scales at one sixty-two.

“So that’s what’s going on with me,” Mel added. “How about you?”

“Not much,” I said, “other than the fact that I was just bitched out on the phone by Mac MacPherson.”

“The guy you rode with on Patrol years ago?”

“The very one, and the same guy who was with me when we found Monica Wellington’s body.”

“What was his beef?”

“I’m not sure. He’s all bent out of shape because Delilah Ainsworth and I have reopened that case. I’m worried that there might be more to it.”

“What?” Mel asked.

“That there might have been something irregular in the way Mac and I got our promotions back then. At least that’s what he hinted at on the phone.”

Mel knew better than anyone how much of me is and always has been wrapped up in the job. “That’s a biggie,” she said. “And how you got the promotion isn’t really the point. What’s important is what you did for all those years once you got there.”

“Yes, but—”

“What do you propose to do about it?”

“For right now I’ve asked Delilah to look into it. She’s on her way to HR at the department to do that very thing right now. I’ll let you know how it turns out.”

“All right,” Mel said. “So turning to another topic. What does the doctor say?”

What Dr. Auld had actually said was that I could probably go home early if I had someone there to look after me, but I wasn’t about to tell Mel that and summon her back home, not when she was involved in running such a high-profile case.

“Same old, same old,” I said offhandedly. “He says I’m doing all right in the rehab department and with my range of motion and all that, but he’s not ready to cut me loose today. They’re taking great care of me here, so don’t worry. You concentrate on catching your bad girl, and I’ll concentrate on getting out of here.”

“Okay,” Mel said with a relieved laugh. “That sounds fair.”

After Mel hung up, I lay there with the phone on my chest, wondering exactly what Mac had meant. Of course I would have made it to Homicide eventually, but if there had been something crooked about the timing of it . . .

Dinner came. I ate it. I watched TV without a whole lot of interest. It was almost nine when the phone rang again. It was Delilah Ainsworth.

“We’ve got a problem,” she said. “I think it’s time to call in Internal Affairs.”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Somebody’s screwed around with the microfiche records, too. The ones from April 3, 1973, don’t exist. They skip from Monday, April 2, to Wednesday, April 4.”

“You’re kidding. Who would do that?”

“Like we both said before, someone with something to hide,” Delilah said. “And someone with a whole lot of pull. I’m betting money your friend and mine, Mr. Rory MacPherson, knows exactly who that person is. I’m going to go back out there right now to talk to him. From the way he smelled this morning, he’ll probably be in the bag by now. I’m great at getting information from drunks.”

“You’re going there tonight? I don’t think that’s a good idea. He sounded like he had gone off the rails.”

“I’m going,” Delilah said. “You don’t think I can just sit on this, do you?”

Delilah Ainsworth was a detective, after all. I couldn’t very well expect her to wait around until I could drag my butt out of bed and go with her. But I also remembered how Mac had sounded on the phone—pissed as hell. And if you added booze into the equation . . .

“Take someone with you,” I cautioned. “Don’t go alone.”

“I’m a big girl,” Delilah said. “I can take care of myself. I’ll call you when I’m finished.”

Except she didn’t call. My iPad told me that, with traffic, it was an hour’s drive from downtown Seattle to Sammamish. I gave her an hour to get there. I gave her another hour to do the interview. And then I gave her another forty-five minutes after that before I tried calling her cell phone. No answer. The phone rang and then went to voice mail.

“You said you’d call,” I snarled into the phone. “I’m waiting.”

By one o’clock in the morning, I was seriously concerned, and that’s when I finally decided to do something about it. Since I needed someone with some pull of his own, I called Assistant Chief Ron Peters.

“What’s up?” he mumbled when he finally figured out who had awoken him out of what must have been a sound sleep.

“I’m worried about Detective Ainsworth,” I said. “She left at about nine o’clock or so and was on her way to Sammamish to do an interview with Rory MacPherson. She was supposed to call me as soon as she finished. It’s hours later now, and she still hasn’t checked in.”

“What kind of interview?” I could hear the rustle of bedclothes as he came to attention.

I filled him in as best I could.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll get someone on this right away.”

After that there was nothing for me to do but wait and worry. I was still awake and more than a little frantic when Ron called again at three in the morning. “Bad news, Beau,” he said. “It’s a murder/suicide. Mac MacPherson is dead, and so is Detective Ainsworth. I’m on my way to meet up with the chief of police out in Sammamish, then we’ll be going together to notify Detective Ainsworth’s family.”

I was stunned speechless. I remember thinking,
Her family? Does he mean her parents?
Then I remembered that she had worn a simple gold band, no diamond.