“What’s the light being off or on got to do with anything?” Kramer asked impatiently.
“People hardly ever kill themselves in the dark,” I replied.
“Wait a minute. Are you trying to tell me that some poor son of a bitch who isn’t worried about blowing his brains out would be scared of doing it in the dark? Get off it. Once they’re dead, what does it matter?”
Paul Kramer had walked me right up to the very edge of my patience. “Let’s leave interpretation up to the shrinks, shall we, Detective Kramer?”
Before Kramer could reply, Baker broke in. “Thanks for pointing out the light thing, Beau. It’ll keep us on our toes when we do the autopsies.”
“And when will that be?”
“This afternoon, probably. With the lousy weather, business is a little slow for us right now. Except for this, it’s been too damned cold for people to be running around killing each other. For a change we don’t have cases lined up and waiting. Even if we did, though, this would be a priority. After all, these people are supposedly fine, upstanding members of the community. There’s going to be a whole lot of heat from the public and the media wanting to see results fast. This one isn’t going to be any picnic for us, or for you either.”
Baker wasn’t saying something I hadn’t already figured out for myself. Bums can get murdered every day of the week and nobody gives a damn, but let the victim be an ordinary bill-paying, tax-paying citizen, and people get a whole lot more interested. Throw in a dash of infidelity and you have a case that’s going to be conducted in a white-hot spotlight of public scrutiny. Believe me, those kinds of cases are difficult for everybody concerned. They have minimal opportunity for glory and unlimited potential for disaster.
“Any idea when this happened?” Kramer asked.
“I can’t say right now. We’ll know better after the autopsies.”
“And the gun?” I asked.
“A. 38 Special. Probably belonged to Chambers or maybe the security guard company. He’s wearing a holster, but it’s empty.”
“Why would a security guard in a school district need to be packing a piece?” Kramer asked.
Baker shook his head. “Beats me.”
“We’d better stop by and ask the Superintendent of Schools about that,” I said. “We’ll ask him about the logbook as well.”
“Logbook?” Baker asked quickly.
“According to Jennifer Lafflyn, the security guards were required to log everyone who came through the building after hours. She said the book itself is safely put away in the bottom drawer of the receptionist’s desk. She took care of that before she had any idea something was wrong.”
“No doubt we’ll need to take a look at it,” Baker said.
The crime-scene investigators showed up right about then with their little bags of tricks. Crime-scene specialists sift through everything, dust for prints, preserve evidence, and do all the fine detail work made possible and necessary by advanced technology. Their work, combined with what happens later at the crime lab, is absolutely essential in successfully bringing cases both to court and conviction.
That’s fine for them, but not for me. I’m glad those guys can analyze the hell out of threads found in carpets and traces of blood found on shoes, but I’d much rather be out on the streets talking to people-asking questions and getting answers-than being locked up in a lab someplace examining DNA fingerprints under a microscope.
We were almost finished when Doris Walker reappeared at my elbow.
“Here’s the number you asked for,” Doris said, handing me another slip of yellow paper. Post-its are evidently very popular at the school district office, and this one was larger than any I’d seen before. “Mrs. Chambers said she’s at home and will wait for a call back.”
“Good,” I said. “Thank you.”
“When I told him I was bringing this down to you, Dr. Savage asked if you could stop by his office and talk to him for a few minutes before you leave. If it’s not too much trouble, that is.”
“Certainly,” I said. “No trouble at all. We’ll be glad to. We need to see him anyway.”
Doris nodded and returned the way she had come.
“Who was that?” Kramer asked, watching her walk away.
“Doris Walker, the superintendent’s secretary. She came down a few minutes ago and told me that Alvin Chambers’ wife was on the phone wondering why he was so late coming home for breakfast. I told her to take a message about where we could reach the wife later and that we’d be in touch.”
“Who’s this doctor who wants to talk to us?”
“Dr. Savage. The superintendent of schools.”
“Oh,” Kramer said.
While the crime-scene team began work on the closet, we were taken upstairs and shown Marcia Louise Kelsey’s office. It wasn’t a plush executive-suite kind of place. The place was messy and cluttered, but there was no sign that it had been ransacked, and there was no indication that a struggle had taken place there. A pencil lay at an angle on a blue-lined tablet, looking as though the writer had stopped working for only a moment to do something else.
Offices usually have a certain amount of personal junk in them-family photographs, children’s scrawled crayon Mother’s Day greetings, personalized cups. Marcia Kelsey’s office had a curiously impersonal air about it. Neither the cluttered desk nor the faded yellow walls held any artwork or family photographs, only a collection of framed diplomas. Several unfaded oblong spots showed where pictures might have been once, but they weren’t there any longer.
A sagging brown couch stood against the far wall under a window, its cushions piled high with computer printouts and other work-in-progress-type debris. For the first time I felt like I was being given some valuable insight into the dead woman’s personality. I have a hard time relating to people who have to work in perfectly orderly offices.
There was plenty of physical evidence that Marcia Kelsey had left the room with every intention of returning. An open briefcase lay on the floor behind the desk, along with a shoulder-strap purse, a pair of panty hose, two heavy orange and gray woolen socks, and a pair of much-used snow boots.
Kramer pointed meaningfully at the panty hose. “If she started undressing here, how come they ended up in the closet downstairs? Why not clean all that crap off the couch and use that?”
Why not indeed?
When we finished with Marcia Kelsey’s office and sealed it with crime-scene tape, Kramer was anxious to hit the road. “We ought to do like Baker said and get cracking on the notifications right away.”
“First we go see Dr. Savage. I told Doris Walker we would, and that’s what we’re going to do.” I started off down the hall, and Kramer followed reluctantly, complaining all the way.
“I don’t know why we have to do this. Wait a minute, Beaumont. This Dr. Savage doesn’t happen to be one of your high-toned cronies from outside the department, does he?”
Ever since I came into a fair amount of money and moved into Belltown Terrace, a high-rise downtown condo, there’s been a certain sourgrapes element at work among some of my cohorts at Seattle P.D. A few of those folks can’t seem to let go of what they presume to be my rarified social status. Mostly that so-called status is nothing more than a figment of overly active imaginations, but it doesn’t make the ongoing antagonism any less real or any less annoying.
“I’ve never met the man before,” I answered stiffly. “I assume he’s interested in being apprised of what’s going on here. After all, he is the school district’s head honcho. We’re here working on his turf, remember. It can’t hurt for us to show him a little common courtesy.”
“It’ll be a waste of time,” Kramer grumbled.
“Courtesy is never a waste of time,” I assured him.
If she had only lived long enough, hearing that comment coming from her diamond-in-the-rough son would have made my mother proud. Astonished and proud.