Long Time Gone Part 11

"h.e.l.lo there, Beaumont," he said, sounding as obnoxiously official as ever. "Long time no see. Imagine meeting you here."

"Yes," I agreed. "Imagine that."

He meandered over to the counter and looked around for a piece of paper that might give him a clue as to why I was there. Fortunately, the clerk had taken my request with her when she had wandered off through the towering maze of sagging metal shelving. If Captain Kramer wanted to find out what I was doing in the evidence room, he was going to have to come straight out and ask-which he did with as much hail-fellow-well-met phoniness as he could muster.

"What brings you back to the old stamping ground?"

"Working a case," I said.

"Really," he said. "For s.h.i.t?"

"Yup," I told him. "That's where I hang my hat these days."

Kramer leaned back against the counter and folded his arms across his chest. "Your being here wouldn't have anything to do with what's going on with Ron Peters, would it?"

I could have answered the question straight out, but Kramer has always brought out the worst in me. This was no exception. "Since Ron and I are good friends, wouldn't that be a clear conflict of interest?" I asked.

Kramer made a sour face. "When has that ever stopped you?" he asked.

"It might not have stopped me, but I happen to work for the Washington State Attorney General's office. Ross Connors doesn't tolerate that kind of thing."

"That must mean you're working one of our old cases then? Did you clear it with anyone upstairs before you came down here?"

When he said "upstairs," he wasn't talking about the sleepy security guard up in the lobby. He meant upstairs upstairs-back on the top floors of the new building where the bra.s.s hang out.

"Paul," I told him patiently, "I have a badge, and I have an a.s.signment. Special Homicide means just exactly that-special. I don't have to clear what I'm doing with you or with anyone else."

"It seems to me that as a simple matter of interdepartmental courtesy, you would have stopped by..."

"Look, Kramer," I interrupted. "Can it. I don't work for you. I don't answer to you. If you have any questions about what I'm doing here, you're more than welcome to contact my boss and find out."

"And your boss would be?"

Before I could reply, the clerk returned to the counter carrying a doc.u.ment box. She looked from me to Kramer.

"Oh, Captain Kramer," she said. "I didn't hear you come in. Is there something I can do for you?"

"Sure," he said, staring pointedly at the box she was carrying. "I'll sign for that, Sandy. Mr. Beaumont and I can take it back to my office where we can go through it together."

In the bad old days, I probably would have punched him out, but I like to think I'm older and wiser now. Besides, there was no point. Eager to be of help, the clerk produced the proper form, which Kramer signed with all due ceremony. Then, picking up the box-my evidence box-he turned back to me. "Shall we?" he asked.

Kramer had the box in his hands-a box that contained all the surviving evidence as well as the musty case books to Madeline Marchbank's murder, a homicide that was more than fifty years old. Kramer had the box, but he didn't have access to the information I had recently unearthed-eyewitness accounts to that murder from both Bonnie Jean Dunleavy's and Sister Mary Katherine's separate points of view. Without those bits of the puzzle or the information I had managed to pull together, the box was just that-a useless thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle with all the critical pieces missing. Kramer could study whatever was in the box until h.e.l.l froze over. Without my help, he wouldn't learn a thing.

"No, thanks, Paul," I said after a moment. "That's all right. Be my guest. Go through it on your own." I reached into my pocket and pulled out one of my business cards. "Here's my number," I added, dropping the card on the dust-laden lid to the box. "Give me a call a little later. I'll be very interested to hear what you find out."

With that, I opened the door to the evidence room and stepped back into the cluttered bas.e.m.e.nt corridor. I left Paul Kramer standing there with his mouth open, holding on to the box and holding on to all his unanswered questions as well. It wasn't a very dramatic exit. It wasn't one of those high-testosterone departures where you go out in a blaze of gun-firing glory, but from my point of view, it still felt d.a.m.ned good.

Even if Harry I. Ball or Ross Connors ended up calling me on the carpet later, it was still worth doing. And given half a chance, I'd do it again.

CHAPTER 10.

I COULD HAVE BAILED RIGHT THEN. I could have called Harry and dropped the case along with the dust-covered evidence box right in Kramer's lap, but I wasn't ready to do that. I guess what I really wanted to know was where all this was going. Was the attorney general's office's involvement really as benign as I'd been told, or was there more to it than the simple fact that Ross Connors and Father Andrew had played football together back in high school? I wouldn't know what Paul Harvey and his much younger successor continue to call "the rest of the story" until I had followed the Marchbank murder trail all the way to the end.

I spent more than twenty years at Seattle PD, most of it in Homicide. I've forgotten the details of most of the killers we caught and sent to prison, but every day of my life I carry around a complete catalog of the ones who got away. I can tell you the names and ages of the victims along with where, when, and how they died. Those ugly memories sit lodged in my heart, but unlike grains of sand trapped inside oyster sh.e.l.ls, my remembered victims don't turn into iridescent pearls. Instead, they show up in the middle of the night, waking or sleeping, as an ugly Greek chorus of accusatory ghosts demanding to know why I allowed their unnatural deaths to pa.s.s into oblivion and their killers to go free.

I can also list by name all the grieving relatives-parents, sisters, brothers, and occasionally even children-who called me each year, usually on or near the anniversary of their loved ones' deaths. The family members called looking for closure. They called wondering if anything new had turned up. They called asking if anyone was still looking for their loved one's killer and seeking rea.s.surance that someone else-anyone else-still cared.

Yes, William Winkler may have run off the rails when he got moved upstairs in Seattle PD, and yes, he may have been drummed out of the corps along with a lot of other dirty cops back in the mid-to late fifties, but once a homicide detective, always a homicide detective. Mimi Marchbank's murder had happened on his watch, and her killer was one of Wink's loose ends. I didn't know whether or not the man was still alive, but if he was-and if he was still in possession of his faculties-I guessed he'd remember everything that was in Paul Kramer's dusty evidence box-everything to be found in the box and possibly more besides.

While I stood in the garage lobby waiting for the attendant to return the 928, I called directory a.s.sistance. There were five Winklers listed. Two of them were listed as William and one was initial W only. Rather than dialing the three at random, I tried a different tack.

The International Order of Footprinters is a service organization made up of some still active but mostly retired law enforcement folks. The Seattle area chapter includes people who once served and protected in King, Pierce, Snohomish, and Thurston counties, and in various munic.i.p.al jurisdictions as well-Seattle, Renton, Tacoma, Bellevue, and Everett. Some of the retired officers served in local branches of the FBI, the DEA, and the INS or in local port-policing agencies. There may be some ongoing compet.i.tion and sibling rivalry among those branches, but once you graduate into Footprinters, it's time to get over it and let bygones be bygones.

Martin Woodman, a long-retired FBI special-agent-in-charge, is the grand old man of the Seattle area chapter. Widowed for at least twenty years now, he lives alone in the Wall Street Tower, which used to be called the Grosvenor House, and spends his long afternoons and relatively short evenings hanging out at the Five-Spot Cafe. Marty is too old and arthritic to carry on as part of the Keystone Kops anymore, and he's served in all the organization's various elective offices, both local and national, on numerous occasions. Now that he's slowing down, he limits his Footprinters involvement to that of self-appointed goodwill amba.s.sador.

Whenever former or retired cops from this side of the mountains run into difficulties, Marty is on hand to look out for them regardless of where or when they served. He makes it a point to visit and collect get-well cards for whoever ends up in a hospital, and when somebody dies, Marty is on hand to make sure the deceased officer is laid to rest with all due ceremony and respect. It's his personal mission in life to make sure those old cops and their families aren't forgotten. You have to respect a guy like that. Marty Wood was the one man in Seattle who would know for sure whether or not Wink Winkler was still alive. He'd also probably know where I could find him.

I called Wall Street Tower. When no one answered the phone in Marty's room, I drove straight to the Five-Spot and parked on the street at a parking meter that had an astonishing thirty-nine minutes still left on it. Darting inside out of the rain, I spotted Marty sitting alone in a booth at the far end of the room, absently stirring a cup of coffee while staring down at the black-and-white-tiled floor.

"Hey, Marty," I said. "How's it going?"

"Who is it?" he asked, holding out a tremulous hand. "Can't see the way I used to, you know. This d.a.m.ned macular degeneration."

"Beaumont," I said. "J. P. Beaumont."

Martin Woodman's hand may have trembled when he offered it to me, but his grip was as bone-crushingly firm as ever.

"Oh, yes," he said. "I remember you. From Seattle PD. You're with that new outfit now, aren't you, the one from the AG's office? What's its name again?"

"Special Homicide Investigation Team."

He nodded sagely. "That's right. s.h.i.t. h.e.l.l of a name, if you ask me. Wouldn't have gotten away with calling it that back in the old days, never in a million years. Have a seat, J.P. What can I do for you?"

Marty's vision may have been going, but his mental faculties were as sharp as ever.

"I'm looking for William Winkler," I said without preamble. "I was wondering if he's still around."

"Wink? Oh, sure. Lives at a retirement home over in West Seattle. It's not that good a place, but it's the best he could afford. Wink's cantankerous as h.e.l.l, but then he always has been. I'm guessing his son put him there when he and his wife couldn't take care of him anymore or when they couldn't stand being around him."

"Health's no good?" I asked.

"h.e.l.l," Marty replied. "At our age, if you're still alive, you shouldn't complain. Doesn't do any good, anyway. What do you want him for?"

"I'm following up on a case of his from a long time ago. I wanted to see if he could shed any light on it."

Marty Woodman frowned. "You know he left the department..."

"Under a cloud?" I supplied. "Yes, but all this went on quite a while before that. You wouldn't happen to have his address or telephone number, would you?"

"I do, but it's back at my apartment. If you wouldn't mind walking me over there. They keep trying to get me to use this." He picked up a white cane and tapped it impatiently on the floor. "But it's hard teaching an old dog new tricks. So usually, when I'm ready to go back home, I call the reception desk and they send someone over to walk me there."

As we walked through the rain across the plaza and into the lobby of Wall Street Tower, I wondered how someone as blind as Marty Woodman would be able to find and decipher an address or phone number, but I shouldn't have worried. Marty's one-bedroom apartment was tiny and immaculate. Most of the living room was occupied by an enormous dining-room table, the surface of which was almost completely covered with an array of complicated computer equipment and a snarl of cables.

Standing next to the CRT, Marty clapped his hands once and the familiar start-up screen appeared. "Works just like one of those clickers," Marty said with a grin. "One clap turns it on, two turn it off. When I told Footprinters I was going blind, some of them came over and jury-rigged this sound-and-voice-activated outfit together for me. They didn't want me to quit working, especially since n.o.body else wants to do what I do. Have a chair," he added. "This shouldn't take too long. I call her Joyce, by the way."

And it didn't take long at all. In order to access his database, he spoke into some unseen microphone. His voice-recognition software responded in the form of a computer-generated female voice. Marty's "Joyce" sounded just like the woman who has spent years annoying everyone unfortunate enough to venture into the phone company's version of voice-mail h.e.l.l. Before long Joyce was reeling off Wink Winkler's telephone number along with an address on Thirty-fifth in West Seattle. I jotted them down as she delivered them.

"You get all that?" Marty asked.

"Yes, I did. Thanks. But you were wrong."

Marty frowned. "About what?"

"You said you were too old to learn new tricks. Obviously you have."

The frown disappeared. Marty gave the top of his CRT an affectionate pat. "Modern science is a miracle, isn't it? Without her I'd be just plain useless."

I had to agree with him there. Modern science was a miracle. "You're right," I said. "It's downright amazing, but you might think about giving that cane of yours a try, too."

"Why?" he asked. "So I can walk in front of a bus?"

"Never mind," I said.

When I left, Marty walked me as far as the door. "I don't know what kind of a case you're working," he said, "but don't be too hard on poor old Wink. He did all right when he first left the department-had a lot of helpful connections and made some good investments, but then things started falling apart. Drank too much, gambled too much, his marriage broke up. You know the drill."

I nodded. It was an end-of-career path for far too many of the cops I knew.

"He and his son wound up owning a place called Emerald City Security, a moderately successful rent-a-cop company," Marty continued. "That went on until a few years ago. I'm not sure of all the details, but when the dust settled, the kid had the company and Wink ended up with next to nothing."

"I'll bear all that in mind," I said.

As I rode down in the elevator, I realized that the very existence of Marty Woodman's computer setup was one of those things where what goes around comes around. For a change it had happened the right way. After all the years Marty had spent making sure Footprinters weren't forgotten, it was nice to know that they had returned the favor.

People who live in Seattle have two constant sources of complaint. We're forever whining about either the weather or the traffic, or both. It seems to me that people who don't like the weather should leave. That by itself would probably go a long way toward fixing the traffic woes. And then, the next time our elected officials ask for money to fix the roads, the complainers who stay on should all belly up to the bar and offer to pay their fair share.

All this is to say that the drive to West Seattle, which should have taken about twenty minutes in the middle of the day, ended up taking an hour and twenty minutes. I hadn't called ahead to say I was dropping by because I didn't want to give Wink Winkler an opportunity to tell me not to. Besides, I didn't want to give him too much time in advance to wonder about why I was paying him a visit.

Even from the street, Home Sweet Home Retirement Center looked depressing. Someone had carved a steep wheelchair ramp up the bank between the street and a tiny front yard that was a sea of melting snow and mud and punctuated with cigarette b.u.t.ts. A second ramp, a makeshift plywood travesty covered with frayed indoor-outdoor carpeting, went from yard level to a rickety front porch. A hand-stenciled sign on the door casing announced "All Visitors Check with Front Desk," but of course there was no one manning the dingy front desk. The place smelled of mold and mildew and years of bad cooking, but a current health inspection certificate was prominently displayed behind the desk as if defying anyone to question the center's good reputation.

Home Sweet Home made Marty Woodman's digs at Wall Street Tower and Lars and Beverly Jenssen's cozy apartment at the Queen Anne Gardens seem downright palatial.

There was a bell on the desk. I rang it three times before anyone appeared, then a door opened and a tiny Asian woman stepped through a swinging door. She looked old enough and frail enough to be one of the residents, but she was wearing a baggy flowered uniform and carried a broom with a handle that was a foot taller than she was.

"Yes?" she asked.

"I'd like to see William Winkler."

"One moment," she said and disappeared.

I cooled my heels for the better part of five minutes before the door opened again. This time a heavyset, bulldog-faced black woman stepped into the office alcove. "What do you want?" she demanded.

"I'm here to see William Winkler."

"Is Mr. Winkler expecting you?"

"No," I said. "It's a surprise."

"Our guests don't like no surprises," she said. "Can I tell him what this is about?"

I have a problem with gatekeepers. I've always had a problem with gatekeepers. If and when I get to heaven, I'll probably end up arguing with Saint Peter himself.

"It's a private matter," I said, handing her one of my cards. "If you don't mind, I'd rather discuss it with Mr. Winkler directly."

The woman held the card at arm's length to read it. "All right," she said with a sigh as she stuffed the card into her pocket. "This way."

I followed her down a narrow corridor to the back of the house. Along the way we went past a series of rooms, all of them with their doors propped open. A television game show blared from one. In others I caught sad glimpses of aged residents sitting quietly in chairs positioned next to grimy windows. There were no bars on the windows, but the inmates of Home Sweet Home were as much prisoners in their individual rooms as if they were incarcerated felons sentenced to solitary confinement. And William Winkler's existence was no different from that of any of his fellows.

Because his room was at the very back of the house, he had two dirty windows instead of the usual one. His view consisted of a dilapidated garage and a moss-encrusted block wall, so having those two windows didn't offer much of a benefit. And since his chair was positioned with its back to both windows, I doubt Wink spent much time savoring the view. He sat dozing in a vinyl-covered recliner that resembled the leather one back home in my condo, but stuffing poking through holes on the arms testified to years of very hard use. A walker with traction-enhancing tennis b.a.l.l.s on the feet was parked within easy reach next to his chair.

"Mr. Winkler," my escort said. "Someone's here to see you."

Startled awake, he gave me a sour look. "Who are you?" he demanded querulously. "I suppose you're some lawyer that jerk of a son of mine has sent around to ha.s.sle me some more, right? He can't wait for me to die. Cheated me out of my own company. Now he wants to declare me incompetent so he can have control of whatever pittance I have left. How's that for grat.i.tude?"

Having been warned that Wink was somewhat cantankerous, I wasn't surprised by his initial tirade. "My name's Beaumont," I said. "J. P. Beaumont. Marty Woodman said I could find you here."

"Oh," Wink said, softening a little. "Marty sent you? That's different then. Have a chair."

The black woman had lingered in the room during this exchange. Now, evidently satisfied that I was an approved visitor, she left Wink and me alone. Next to the bed sat a single chair. I picked it up and dragged it over closer to Wink's.

"What do you want?" he asked once I was seated.

"I work for the Washington State Attorney General's office with the Special Homicide Investigation Team. I'm looking into one of your cold cases from years ago."

Wink's countenance brightened with a hint of interest. "One of mine," he muttered. "Which one?"

"From May of 1950," I said. "Madeline Marchbank. Her friends called her Mimi."

That brief flicker of interest went away, not because it burned itself out but because Wink Winkler slammed the door shut on it. "Don't recall it at all," he said firmly.

There's a new technology out these days, a new kind of lie detector-or rather truth detector. It measures the way a subject's brain waves react to familiar information. Lie detectors measure respiration, blood pressure, and galvanic skin responses when the interviewee gives untruthful answers to questions. The problem with that is that experienced lie-detector subjects can sometimes train themselves to outwit the old machines. With this new equipment measuring involuntary brain waves, it's impossible to trick the brain into reacting to familiar information as though it were unfamiliar.

I may not be new technology, but I operate on a similar system. I could see from that initial involuntary reaction that Wink Winkler remembered exactly who Madeline Marchbank was as well as what had happened to her. If he was prepared to lie about it more than fifty years later, I wondered why.