“What is it?”
“A present from our Doghouse summit meeting. It needs to go down to the Crime Lab. You might ask Janice Morraine to take a look at it. She’s close enough to the case to know what’s going on. And one other thing. If you could, try to find out who on the task force if anybody is working on Ben Weston’s Day-Timer.”
“Day-Timer? I don’t remember anything about a Day-Timer,” Powell said with a frown. “Where is it?”
“It was on the floor of Ben Weston’s bedroom the last I saw it, but I don’t have any idea where it is now. I’d like to talk to whoever’s working on it, and I’d like to see it if it’s at all possible.”
Powell nodded and stepped away from the car while I climbed into my seat, fastened my own belt, and started the engine. “Can we stop long enough to get my Nintendo?” Junior asked. “I could show you how to play.”
“No,” I said. “Not tonight. We’d better get you home and into bed.” I didn’t want to voice my real reason for not wanting to stop-the need to limit the number of people who saw me with Junior Weston and who might guess where he’d been taken.
If Junior was disappointed about leaving the video game behind, he didn’t complain. On the drive into the city, he stayed mostly quiet. I wondered how this tough little kid was managing to cope with the chaos that had suddenly descended over his entire life, leaving him nothing to hold on to but a soon-to-be-scruffy brown teddy bear.
We had come up the I-5 corridor and were about to turn off on the Mercer/Fairview Exit when Junior sat up straight and peered out across me at the myriad lights that make up downtown’s nighttime skyline.
“You live in one of those tall buildings?” he asked tentatively.
“Yes.”
“Which one?”
“The tall one nearest the Space Needle.”
“Which floor?”
“The top one, the twenty-fifth.”
“Does your house have a basement?”
I knew at once why he was asking that question, and I didn’t blame him. “Yes,” I told him, “the building does, but you can’t get into it without either a garage door opener or a key to the building.”
“Oh,” he said, sounding relieved.
When we reached Belltown Terrace, I let Junior punch the button to open the garage door. Then, I let him work the numbered combination lock that controls the door into the elevator lobby on P-1. I thought it was important that Junior Weston know for sure that someone couldn’t just walk into the building anytime they pleased. On that particular night it was important for J. P. Beaumont to know that too.
On the way upstairs in the elevator, it dawned on me that maybe I should have called ahead to warn Ralph Ames that I was bringing home company. After all, he might have been entertaining guests of his own, but I needn’t have worried. When we walked into my condo, we found Ralph rousing himself out of a sound sleep, floundering to his feet from my rehabilitated but comfortable leather recliner.
“Junior, this is Ralph Ames,” I said, introducing them. “He’s a good friend of mine. Ralph, this is Junior Weston. I’m going to have to go back out again for a while, but the two of you will be all right here together.”
He may have been groggy, but Ralph Ames is always quick on his feet. He reached down and shook the boy’s hand. “I’m glad to meet you, Junior,” he said gravely, “but I’m very sorry to hear about what happened to your family.”
“You know about that?” Junior asked wonderingly.
“It’s been in all the newspapers,” Ralph replied. “I’ve been reading about it.”
“Junior’s going to stay with us for a day or two,” I interjected matter-of-factly. “I thought we’d fix up a bed for him on the window seat here in the living room.”
“Sure,” Ralph said. “I can handle that. What’s going on?”
“Big Al’s been hurt. I’ve got to go get Molly.”
“Hurt badly?” I nodded. “You go do whatever you need to do,” Ralph said. “Junior and I will be fine.”
He turned to Junior Weston with the kind of ease and rapport that only people without children of their own can possibly hope to maintain. “Do you like chocolate?”
Junior Weston nodded.
“I think there’s some double fudge chocolate ice cream in the fridge,” Ralph said, leading the child away by the hand. “Let’s go check. Does that teddy bear of yours have a name?”
I left the apartment knowing that Junior Weston was safe and sound and in truly capable hands.
CHAPTER 20
Police officers live with the possibility of death every singe shift of every single day. So do police officers’ wives. It goes with the territory.
Molly Lindstrom had been a police officer’s wife for more than eighteen years when I drove over to Ballard to get her and take her to Harborview Hospital. When she came to the door of their working-class-neighborhood home, she was wearing a long flannel nightie with a terry cloth robe thrown hastily over her shoulders. She turned on the porch light and peered out briefly before opening the door. A stricken look passed over her face as soon as she recognized me.
“It’s Allen, isn’t it!” she exclaimed. “Is he all right?”
“They’ve taken him to the hospital, Molly,” I said as gently as possible. “I’ve come to take you there.”
For a long time she stood staring at me uncomprehendingly, saying nothing. “Oh, well then,” she said finally. “Come in. Wait right here while I go get dressed.”
She hurried away, leaving me standing in the vestibule of their small two-story bungalow. The place showed the benefits of having a full-time Scandinavian housewife on the premises. For one thing, it was spotlessly clean, scrupulously so. The hardwood floor gleamed in the muted light of a small, cobweb-free, entryway chandelier. The gently enticing scent of a mouth-watering home-cooked meal lingered somewhere in the background.
Molly Lindstrom was a full-time housewife because that’s the path she and Big Al had chosen together long ago. Now, after years of scrimping to put their second son through college, Molly and Big Al were just beginning to indulge themselves a little. They had talked of shopping for a new couch and chair set for their living room, and Al had asked for my expert opinion on what Molly might think of a surprise Alaskan cruise on the occasion of their thirty-fifth anniversary late in the summer.
All that was in jeopardy now. Big Al, seriously wounded, lay on a hospital gurney when he should have been safe at home and in bed with his wife. He had been off duty, for God’s sake. I was the one who had called him up and put the bug in his ear about Junior Weston possibly being in danger. And I had been right, damnit, but I couldn’t help wishing our places had been reversed, that I had sent myself instead of my partner-my partner and my friend.
“I’m ready,” Molly announced, hurrying in from the bedroom, pulling on and buttoning a heavy hand-knit sweater. “Where is he?”
“Harborview,” I said.
We stepped out onto the porch, and I waited while she locked the dead bolt. “How bad is it?”
“Pretty bad, Molly. He was shot below his vest at very close range. They tell me there’s lots of internal damage.”
She took a deep breath and then straightened her shoulders. “Okay,” she said. “I’m all right now. I promise I’m not going to cry. Let’s go.”
I helped her into the car, helped her fasten the unfamiliar seat belt, wondering why she thought I’d think less of her if she shed tears. I felt like crying myself.
“Do you think I should call the boys, Beau?” she asked as I settled into the driver’s seat beside her.
Plucking the cellular phone out of its holder, I handed it over. “Do it,” I said.
“But shouldn’t I wait until I have some idea of his condition before I call them?”
I knew Gary Lindstrom was working for a truck-leasing company down in California, and Greg, after several months of waiting, had lucked into a job with a prestigious downtown Seattle architectural firm. Of the two, Gary had by far the greater distance to travel.