Ring In The Dead Part 1

RING IN THE DEAD.

A J. P. BEAUMONT NOVELLA.

J. A. JANCE.

DEDICATION.

To John Douglas for taking a chance on a guy named J.P. Beaumont all those years ago.

RING IN THE DEAD.

IT WAS NEW YEAR'S EVE. Back when I was drinking, New Year's Eve was always a good excuse to tie one on, but now those bad old days were far in the past. Mel was out getting a late-breaking mani-pedi in advance of our surprise (to her) date to walk three blocks up First Avenue for an intimate dinner for two at El Gaucho. Our penthouse condo allows a great view of the s.p.a.ce Needle, three blocks away. That means, at midnight, we'd have ringside seats from the shelter of our bedroom balcony for the Needle's New Year's fireworks display. The weather still hadn't made up its mind if midnight revelers would be greeted by a light sprinkle or pouring rain. It was certain, however, that at least it wouldn't be snowing.

My wife, Mel Soames, and I both work for the Attorney General's Special Homicide Investigation Team, affectionately dubbed S.H.I.T. Yes, I know. The name is a running joke and has been for a very long time, but we've grown to like it over the years. In the brave new world of no-overtime, we both had plenty of comp time available to us, and we had chosen to take it over the holidays, including before and after Christmas. Use it or lose it, as they say.

So I was sitting in my den in solitary splendor, reviewing my life and times and considering a possible list of New Year's resolutions, when the phone rang-the landline, not my cell. Not only do we have a landline, we still have a listed number for it, although it's not one that comes readily to mind since that phone isn't the one I use on a daily basis.

The idea behind keeping a listed number is simple. Being in the directory makes it possible for the people I want to find me-fellow Beaver alums from Ballard High School, for example-to find me. As for the people I don't want finding me? For those-for the ones who want to sell me aluminum siding for my high-rise condo, I answer the phone with an icy, salesman-repelling voice that works equally as well on them and on others, like people making political robo-dials for their favorite candidates and the guys trying to convince me to sign up for the policemen's ball-which is a scam, by the way. For the most part, the spam-type calls come through with the originating number blocked. Those always go unanswered, and if they leave a message, those don't get picked up, either.

This particular call came with a caller ID name: Richard Nolan, and a 503 phone number that meant it was from somewhere in Oregon. Even so, I answered using my p.i.s.sed-off, ditch-the-sales-pitch voice.

"Detective Beaumont?" a woman's voice asked.

I haven't been Detective Beaumont for years now-ever since I left Seattle PD. It doesn't mean, however, that I'm no longer that other person.

"I used to be," I said. "Who's asking?"

"My name's Anne Marie Nolan," she said. "I live in Portland, Oregon. Milton Gurkey was my father."

That took my breath away, and it also took me back. When I got promoted to Homicide from Patrol, Milton Gurkey, aka Pickles, was my first partner. We worked together for five years, starting in the spring of 1973. In fact, only months earlier, I had spent time dealing with our first case, which, prior to that, had gone unresolved for almost four decades. Pickles died in 1978. I had long since lost track of his widow, Anna.

"Pickles's daughter?" I replied. "Great to hear from you."

There was a distinct pause on the phone. "No matter how many times I hear it, I can never get used to the idea that that's what you guys all called my dad-Pickles. It seems disrespectful, somehow."

"Sorry," I mumbled. "I didn't mean any disrespect. For the guys who called him that, it was almost a term of endearment. How's your mother, by the way?"

Anne Marie sighed. "Mother pa.s.sed away a month ago. She was in hospice up here in Seattle when news about that old Wellington case was in the papers. I read the articles to her. She was glad to know that somebody finally solved it. She said that was a case that haunted Daddy until the day he died."

"I'm sorry to hear about your mother," I said. "I wish I had known."

"You and my dad were partners a long time ago," Anne Marie said. "Mom remarried twice after Daddy died. The first guy was a loser who didn't hang around long. The second one, Dan, was great. He died two years ago. Mom took his name, Lawson, when they married, so it's not surprising that you wouldn't have gotten word about her death."

Anne Marie had given me a graceful out. Still, I couldn't help feeling remiss, as if I had been deliberately neglectful. A part of me was glad Anna Gurkey-clearly Anne Marie was her mother's namesake-had known about our finally solving the long cold Monica Wellington case before she died. That case was a loose end left hanging that Pickles and I had dragged around between us the whole time we worked together. Obviously, in the intervening years since Pickles's funeral, Anna Gurkey's life had continued just as mine had, with some good and some bad. Hers was over now, and I regretted that I hadn't made any effort to see her before she died.

"Anyway," Anne Marie continued, resuming her story, "I was here for several weeks while Mom was in hospice. Once she was gone, I had to go home and get caught up on things in Portland. That's where we . . ." She paused, seemed to catch herself, before going on with the story. "That's where I live now," she corrected. "I just left everything in Mother's house as is because I was at the end of my rope. I had expended every bit of energy I could muster, and I simply couldn't face sorting through all that c.r.a.p by myself. I'm an only child, you see. At the time she died, Mom was still living in the house she and Daddy bought when they first got married, the one I was raised in.

"My mother wasn't a h.o.a.rder by any means," Anne Marie said, rushing on, "but she didn't throw much away. So I've spent all of Christmas vacation up here sorting through the house, getting ready for an estate sale that I'm planning on holding when the weather clears up in the spring. I'm on my way back to Portland now. I want to be back home before all the drunks. .h.i.t the streets. The thing is, I found something down in the bas.e.m.e.nt in a cedar chest that I thought you might want to see. I don't know where you are in the city, but I'd be happy to drop it off on my way south."

Pickles and Anna had lived at the north end of Ballard in an area called Blue Ridge. Depending on which route Anne Marie was going to take, she'd be within blocks of my Belltown Terrace condo on her way to I-5 and back out of town.

"I'm at Second and Broad," I said. "In downtown Seattle. You're welcome to stop by to visit."

"I was going to head out right away," she said. "I really don't have much time."

"How about at least stopping long enough for a cup of coffee, then?" I suggested.

"You're sure it's no trouble?"

"We have a machine. It's just a matter of pushing the b.u.t.ton."

"All right then," she agreed.

"The building has a doorman," I told her. "Just pull up out front in the pa.s.senger loading zone. I'll come down, meet you, guide you into the parking garage, and let you into the elevator. You can't get into it from the garage without a key."

Once I put down the phone, I stood up and looked around. In the old days the room would have been awash in newspapers, including at least one section folded open to the crossword puzzle page. These days I do the crosswords on my iPad. I closed it up and put it away. Then, leaving the den and my comfortable recliner behind, I went out into the living room, closing the French doors behind me.

Since all the kids had been home for the holidays, the living room and dining room were still decorated for Christmas,. My daughter, Kelly, and son-in-law, Jeremy, had come up from southern Oregon with their two kids. My son, Scott, and his wife, Cherisse, had recently moved back to Seattle from the Bay Area, so we'd had an over-the-top Christmas celebration. Because we'd hired a friend, an interior designer, to come in and do the holiday decorating, the place looked spectacular. I hoped when it came time to put the decorations away, we'd manage to fit all of them back into our storeroom down in the building's bas.e.m.e.nt.

On my way through the kitchen, I made sure the coffee machine was freshly supplied with water and beans. Then I went downstairs to the lobby to wait. I was sitting there, chatting with Bob, the doorman, when a woman in an aging Honda pulled up outside and honked. I went out through the front entrance to meet her. With the wind blowing and a driving rain falling, I was glad to have the building's protective canopy overhead as I hurried over to the car. She opened the pa.s.senger-side window.

"I'm Beau," I told her. "If you don't mind, I'll ride along and show you where to park."

There was a pause with me standing in the rain while she heaved a stack of a.s.sorted junk from the front seat to the back. That's what happens when you spend most of your driving time in a car all by yourself. The pa.s.senger seat morphs into a traveling storage locker.

Once Anne Marie had cleared the seat, I climbed in. By then I was wet, not quite through, but close enough. I directed her around the building on John, into the garage, and over to where the valet parking attendant stood waiting.

"Just leave your keys with him," I instructed.

"Where do I pay?" she asked.

"Don't worry about it," I told her. "I'll have him put it on my tab. They automatically bill me for guest parking at the end of the month."

I used my building key first to enter the elevator lobby, next to call the elevator, and finally to make it work. Once I had done so and punched the PH b.u.t.ton, I caught the questioning look Anne Marie sent in my direction.

"Yes," I said in answer to her unasked question. "My wife, Mel, and I live in the penthouse."

It's a long elevator ride. About the time we pa.s.sed the sixth floor, Anne Marie said, "I always thought your name was Jonas."

When Pickles and I first started working together, he had insisted on calling me by my given name, even though I much preferred being called Beau or J. P. He had come around eventually, but his family must not have gotten the memo.

"I don't much like my given name," I said. "Never have."

After that we fell silent until the elevator door slid open. The penthouse floor of Belltown Terrace is made up of only two units. I showed her to ours, opening and holding the door to let her inside. The attention of first-time visitors is always drawn straight through the dining room to the expanse of windows at the far end of the living room. The gla.s.s goes from the upholstered window seat to the crown molding on the ceiling and offers an un.o.bstructed view of Puget Sound on the west and the grain terminal, Seattle Center, and Lower Queen Anne Hill on the north. In the middle of the north-facing windows sat our nine-foot Christmas tree glittering with its astonishing array of lights and decorations.

As I said, most of the time the views through those windows are spectacular with the generally snow-capped Olympic Mountains looming in the far distance. Today, however, in the lashing downpour, the view amounted to little more than variations on a theme of gray on gray. The point where pewter-colored clouds met the gunmetal gray water was somewhere beyond a heavy curtain of rain as a fast-moving storm cell came on sh.o.r.e.

"Sorry about the view," I said. "It's usually a little better than this."

I hoped the quip might help lighten my visitor's mood. It didn't. Her face had been set in a grim expression when I first climbed into her vehicle, and that didn't change. Instead, she stopped in the middle of the room and sent a second accusatory stare in my direction.

"If you were a cop, how did you get all this?"

I shrugged. "What can I say?" I quipped. "I married well."

That was the truth. Owning a penthouse suite in Belltown Terrace would never have been possible without the legacy left to me by my second wife, Anne Corley. But my offhand comment about that did nothing to lighten Anne Marie's mood or change her disapproving expression either. She simply turned away and made a beeline for the window seat.

Anne Marie was a relatively tall woman, five-ten or so, squarely built, somewhere in her early fifties. Her graying hair was pulled back in a severe bun, and there was a distinctive hardness about her features that I thought I recognized. Between the time when I'd seen her last-as a teenager at her father's funeral-and now, the woman had done some hard living, and there was nothing in her demeanor to suggest that this was some kind of cheerful holiday visit.

Once Anne Marie sat down, I noticed that instead of putting her purse on the cushion beside her, she kept it on her lap, clutched tightly in her arms like a shield. I wasn't sure if she was holding on to it because it contained something precious or if she was using it as a barrier to help me keep me at bay. I also noticed a light band of pale skin on her ring finger that intimated the relatively recent removal of a wedding ring.

If the poor woman's mother had just died and if her marriage was coming to an end at the same time, it was no wonder that Anne Marie Gurkey Nolan was a woman under emotional siege. I didn't comment on that deduction aloud, but I tried to take it into consideration as our conversation continued.

"What do you take in your coffee?" I asked.

"Nothing," she said. "Just black."

"Strong or not?" I asked. "My wife gave me a fancy coffee machine for Christmas. It makes individual cups of coffee, and we can adjust the strength for each one by turning the bean control lighter or darker."

"Strong, please," she said. "It's a long drive."

"I don't envy you making that drive in this weather," I commented as I walked away.

She nodded but said nothing.

I was aware of her watching me through the pa.s.s-through while I was in the kitchen, gathering coffee mugs; waiting for the beans to grind and the coffee to brew. I couldn't help wondering what this was all about. When I brought the coffee into the living room, she took the mug from the tray with one hand, but she still didn't relinquish her grip on the purse.

Since Anne Marie was clearly so ill at ease, I made no attempt to join her on the window seat. Instead, I sat in one of the armchairs facing her. Hoping to make things better for her, I b.u.mbled along, doing my best to carry on some semblance of polite conversation. In that regard, I was missing Mel in the worst way. She can always smooth out the kinds of difficult situations that turn me into a conversational train wreck.

"I'm so sorry to hear about your mother," I said regretfully. "I'm afraid I lost track of her after your father died."

"I'm not surprised," Anne Marie replied. "Once Daddy was gone, Mother didn't want to have anything to do with Seattle PD."

"Had she been ill long?"

Anne Marie took a tentative sip of coffee and shook her head. "She had a bout with breast cancer several years ago, but she responded well to the treatment. Her doctors said she was in remission. When she got sick again, we thought at first that the breast cancer had returned. It turns out it was a different kind of cancer altogether-pancreatic-and there was nothing anybody could do."

"Losing your mother is always tough," I said.

Anne Marie gave me a challenging look, as though she suspected I had no real understanding of her situation. I could have told her that I had lost my own mother to cancer when I was in my early twenties and much younger than she was now, but I didn't. Still hoping to be a good host, I tried changing the subject, only to land squarely on yet another painful topic.

"I guess the last time I saw you was at your father's funeral."

Anne Marie nodded. "I was only a soph.o.m.ore in college when Daddy died. I've always hated funerals," she added. "Mother did, too. She told me she wanted to be cremated, and she stated in writing that she didn't want any kind of service. She probably did that for my sake because she knew how much funerals bother me."

My bouncing unerringly from one loaded topic to another didn't do much for putting Anne Marie at ease. Still, it must have worked up to a point, because after a brief pause she pressed forward with the real purpose of her visit.

She straightened her shoulders and took a deep breath before saying, "Mother always blamed you for Daddy's death. So did I."

I was hard-pressed to summon a suitable response for that. I remembered the day Pickles Gurkey died like it was yesterday-in the middle of the afternoon on a rainy Monday. Pickles and I had just placed a homicide suspect under arrest. The guy had turned violent on us, and it had taken both Pickles and me to subdue him. The suspect was in cuffs and safely in the back of the car, when Pickles had suddenly staggered and fallen. At first I thought he'd been punched in the gut or something during the fight, but I soon realized the situation was far worse than that. He'd already had one heart attack by then, and here we were five years later with the same thing happening When I realized this was a second attack-and a ma.s.sive one at that-I immediately called for help. Seattle's Medic 1 was Johnny-on-the spot just as they had been the first time around. On this occasion, however, there was nothing they could do; nothing anybody could do.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I did everything I could . . ."

Anne Marie waved aside my attempted apology. "I'm not talking about what you did that day," she said brusquely. "Not when Daddy had his second heart attack. Mother and I blamed you because he went back to work after the first one."

What can you say to something like that? Pickles was a grown man, and grown men get to make their own decisions. We were partners, but I didn't make him come back to work. He wanted to. He insisted on it, in fact, but that was all ancient history. That first had happened back in 1973, almost forty years ago. Even if it had been my fault, what was the point in Anne Marie's bringing it up now? Since I had nothing more to say, I kept quiet. For the better part of a minute an uneasy silence filled the room.

"I'm in a twelve-step program," she explained finally. "Narcotics Anonymous. Do you know anything about them?"

I smiled at that. "Unfortunately I have more than a pa.s.sing acquaintance as far as twelve steps go," I said. "I'm more into AA than NA, if you know the drill."

Anne Marie nodded. "So I suppose this is what you'd call an eighth step call."

The eighth step in AA and NA is all about making amends to the people we may have harmed. At that moment, I couldn't imagine any reason why Anne Marie Gurkey Nolan would possibly need to make amends to me, but then she continued.

"I did the same thing," she said. "Like Mom, I blamed you. As far as we were concerned, you were the reason Daddy died because you were also the reason he stayed on the job. This week, I found this and discovered we were wrong."

She opened her purse and pulled out a manila envelope. When she handed it over, I could tell from the heft of it that the envelope contained several sheets of paper.

"What is it?" I asked.

"These are some of Daddy's papers. He always said that after he retired, he was going to write a book. Since he never retired, he never completed the book, either, but on his days off, he was always down in the bas.e.m.e.nt, pounding away on an old Smith Corona typewriter. This is the chapter he wrote about you. I thought you might want to see it.

"It was while I was reading this that I finally realized you weren't the reason Daddy kept working. He did it because he was worried about money and about what would happen to Mother if he died. It turns out he had been working a case where some old guy murdered his ailing wife and then took his own life for the same reason-because he didn't think there would be enough money to take care of his widow after he was gone. Daddy wanted to work as long as he could so he could be sure Mother and I wouldn't be left stranded."

I vaguely remembered the case Anne Marie had mentioned, but at that very moment I couldn't recall the exact details or even the names of either victim. What I did remember was that case was the first combination murder-suicide I ever worked. Unfortunately it wasn't the last.

A few minutes later, Anne Marie finished her coffee and abruptly took her leave. After showing her out, I returned to the window seat in the living room, with a brand-new cup of coffee in hand. That's when I finally opened the envelope and removed the yellowing stack of onionskin paper. The keys on the typewriter Pickles had used had been worn and/or broken. Some of the letters in the old-fashioned font had empty spots in them. The ribbon had most likely been far beyond its recommended usage limits as well. The result was something so faded and blurry that it was almost impossible to read.

I expected the piece would focus on the murder-suicide Anne Marie had mentioned earlier. To my surprise, it began with the day Pickles and I first became partners.

IT WAS A big shock to my system to come back from my wife's family reunion in Wisconsin to find out that a new partner had been dropped in my lap. As soon as I clocked in, Captain Tompkins dragged me into the Fishbowl, the gla.s.s-plated Public Safety Building's fifth-floor office from which he rules his fiefdom, Seattle PD's Homicide Unit, with a bull-nosed att.i.tude and an iron fist. The powers-that-be are trying to discourage smoking inside the building, but Tommy isn't taking that edict lying down. He smokes thick, evil-smelling cigars that stink to the high heavens. For my money, pipe smoke isn't nearly as bad, but Tommy says pipes are too d.a.m.ned prissy. Prissy is one thing Captain Tompkins is not.

Because he smokes constantly and usually keeps the door to the Fishbowl tightly closed, stepping inside his office is like walking into the kind of smoke-filled room where political wheeling and dealing supposedly gets done. Come to think of it, as far as his office is concerned, that's not as far off the beam as you might think.

As soon as I took a seat in front of Tommy's desk, he slid a file folder across the surface in my direction. There was enough force behind his shove that the file spun off the edge of the desk, spilling the contents and sending loose papers flying six ways to Sunday.

"What's this?" I asked, leaning down to retrieve the scattered bits and pieces. I didn't look at the file folder itself again until I straightened up and had stuffed everything back inside. That's when I saw the name on the outside: Beaumont, Jonas Piedmont.

"Your new partner," Tommy said, leaning back in his chair and blowing a series of smoke rings into the air.