It’s actually Stanley amp; Seaforts, but I didn’t correct her. By then Mel and I were running on empty on both food and sleep. We had planned to go back to Belltown Terrace and call it a day. Instead we left the airport, hit I-5, and headed south smack in the middle of rush-hour traffic.
“Can’t we stop somewhere and get a sandwich?” Mel complained. She was hungry enough to be downright whiny.
“Wait,” I told her. “You’ll thank me later.”
“I doubt that,” Mel said. Sulking, she folded her arms across her chest, settled into the far corner of the passenger seat, and soon nodded off, leaving me alone to do both the driving and the thinking.
The problem with tying the three cases together was that, an unidentified nun aside, they were still very different. Juan Carlos Escobar had been guilty and punished some, if not enough to satisfy some of his victim’s survivors. Richard Matthews had been guilty and punished not at all-unless the bullet in his chest was some kind of latter-day payback for molesting his daughter. Fair enough. But LaShawn Tompkins hadn’t been guilty at all, although now he was just as dead as the other two. There again, like it or not, another unidentified nun had been seen in the vicinity of the crime. And what about the black cloth they had found in the door of the vehicle they had dredged out of the water up by Chuckanut Drive? Surely these weren’t all connected. That couldn’t be.
By the time we finally exited the freeway and made our way up the hill to the restaurant, the rain had stopped and an afternoon sun break had burned through the gloom. Inside, they had started serving dinner and the early dining crowd was lining up for the cheap eats. I guided Mel into the bar, hoping that from there we’d be able to spot Ross on his way into the restaurant. As we mowed our way through two orders of crab cakes, a side of pea salad, and several cups of coffee, Mel was almost civilized again. She was also puzzling over the same question that was bothering me.
“Okay,” she said. “Matthews clearly got away with something. To a lesser degree, so did Escobar, since the punishment didn’t exactly suit the crime. It makes sense that we’re dealing with a vigilante action of some kind. Other than the involvement of a nun, the only other connection between those two cases is that Destry and I are both involved in SASAC.”
I had already come to that same conclusion, and I was glad to hear Mel arrive there on her own. Under the circumstances it seemed wise to nod and say nothing more.
“But LaShawn Tompkins was exonerated,” Mel continued.
“Of that particular crime,” I said. “What if there’s another crime we don’t know about? What if he got away with that one?”
“The problem with that is, if we don’t know about it, how would anyone else?”
Just then a chauffeur-driven limo stopped at the front entrance. Ross Connors emerged and entered the lobby. Three stylishly dressed, power-suited women greeted him there and were about to lead him off toward a meeting room when I managed to snag him away from them.
The ladies weren’t pleased to let him go, but he excused himself. On his way to join us he ordered a single-malt from the bar.
“I saw that you called,” he said. “What’s up?”
We told him what was going on. All of it, from Donnie Cosgrove and Thomas Dortman right through to our unexpected but possible linking of those three very disparate cases. When we got to the part about LaShawn Tompkins, he stood up abruptly, walked over to the bar, and ordered another drink. By the time he returned to the table he seemed to have made up his mind about something.
By then one of the ladies had returned to retrieve Ross and was standing impatiently at his shoulder. Taking the paper cocktail napkin from under his drink, he jotted a name onto it and then dropped it on the table in front of me. Two words were written there: Analise Kim.
“She works at the Crime Lab in south Seattle,” Connors said. “We may have an evidence-handling problem there. Go talk to her.”
“Mel and I were actually talking about going on down to Olympia to see Destry-”
“No,” Connors barked, cutting me off. “Not at this time.” With that he turned and gave his hostess a bland smile and allowed himself to be led away.
“Whoa,” Mel observed. “Who pushed his button?”
“We did, evidently.”
Mel picked up the napkin. “Who’s this?”
“I’m not sure. I think she’s an evidence clerk.”
“I guess we’d better go see her.”
Which we did. Once again, I drove while Mel ran the phone. We were headed for the crime lab, but fortunately she called ahead and learned that Analise Kim was currently off on leave. Nobody said what kind of leave, but the answer Mel was given raised enough red flags that she didn’t hang up until she had Analise’s home phone number and address. When Mel phoned there, she spoke to a Mr. Kim, who told us that his wife volunteered at the Burien Public Library Branch on Monday evenings. So we went there instead.
Walking into the library, we went straight to the lady stationed at the reference desk. It was just past seven o’clock.
“I’m looking for Mrs. Kim,” I said.
The woman smiled and nodded in the direction of one of the book stacks. “She’s over there,” the woman said. “The woman with the cart who’s shelving books.”
Partway across the room a small woman with iron-gray hair and decidedly Asian features was pushing a heavily laden wooden book cart that was nearly as tall as she was. As we approached her she pulled a Rubbermaid footstool from the bottom shelf of the cart and climbed up to return a book to a spot that was far beyond her normal reach. She was still on the stool and at my eye level when we reached her.
“Mrs. Kim?” I asked, pulling out my ID. “I’m J. P. Beaumont with the Special Homicide Investigation Team. This is my partner, Mel Soames. Ross Connors suggested we get in touch with you.”
“That didn’t take long.” She climbed off her perch, returned the stool to her cart, and shelved the next several books without needing the stool’s extra elevation. Not only did she shelve returning books, Analise straightened the spines of all the other books as she went along. Clearly the woman was a perfectionist.
“Didn’t take long?” I asked. “Sorry, I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I’ve been complaining about this for months, but as soon as I send an attorney around, well, that gets a reaction, doesn’t it.”
“Complaining about…?” Mel said.
Analise Kim moved to the next section of shelves, retrieved the stool, and once again clambered up high enough to reach the topmost shelf. She returned two books and then sorted and reshelved several that must have been put away in the wrong order.
“About the hostile work environment at the crime lab,” she said in answer to Mel’s unfinished question.
“Mrs. Kim,” Mel said, “we seem to be coming in in the middle of something. If you wouldn’t mind bringing us up to speed…”
“I like order,” Analise declared. “I like order at work, at home, and here. That’s why I come here once a week to do what I’m doing now-putting books away. I like to know that every book is where it belongs. If I don’t put a book away properly, then the next person who needs it won’t be able to find it. If books are just put away anywhere, what you have is chaos.”
I couldn’t tell if Analise Kim was giving us a glimpse into her basic philosophy of life or if this was something else.
“Some people aren’t interested in keeping things in order,” she continued. “Or in doing them in a timely fashion.” Pausing to straighten the spines of books that were less than properly aligned, she muttered, “LIFO,” almost under her breath. “That’s the way we used to do it, before…”
I glanced at Mel, who seemed to be as mystified about all this as I was. “Excuse me?” she said.
“LIFO,” Analise said impatiently, as though we were dim beyond bearing. “As in Last In First Out, as opposed to FIFO-First In First Out. LIFO is how we do things here, too. When I come in, the returned books are stacked right there under the counter. The last ones to come in go back on the shelves first. And when I get to the last stack, the one in the back, I know I’m catching up. I like that. It makes me feel as though I’m accomplishing something. Not only that, the last books that come in are often the newest and the most popular-the ones with the biggest demand-so it’s important to get them back out first thing.”