Injustice for All (11 page)

I came out of the shower wrapped in a towel and picked up the phone. I dialed Hal’s number. On the third ring I realized it was only six o’clock. Homicide is always much more urgent when someone near and dear is dead. “Guess what?” I asked when he finally answered. “I give up,” Hal mumbled groggily.

“I found Ginger’s calendar, the one that was lifted from her room the other night.”

“So big fucking deal. Do you know what time it is?” “It was in the trash, down near the Mansion. You want to come out and pick it up, or should I bring it over to Friday Harbor myself?” “Beau, give me a break, I didn’t get to bed until three.”

“Sorry, Hal, but I just found it. I thought you’d want to know.” “I’ll pick it up later,” he said grudgingly. “But it won’t make any difference.”

“What do you mean?”

He yawned, fully awake now. “Got the coroner’s report just before I went to bed.

Said her blood-alcohol reading was pointfifteen. She was dead drunk. Probably passed out cold when she hit the water.”

“That’s preposterous! It doesn’t make sense.”

“Of course it makes sense. Blood-alcohol counts don’t lie. I’m telling you what they told me. It was an accident, and that’s official. ” I wanted to argue, but he wasn’t having any. “The crime lab dusted for prints, enough to confirm that she was driving.”

“You mean you’re going to drop it just like that?” “Look, Beau, we’ve already got one homicide. We don’t need to change a DWI into homicide just for drill.”

“But she wasn’t drinking. She had nothing before she left here.”

“You don’t get a pointfifteen reading by osmosis. It was too much for her. The divorce, Sig Larson’s death. She was despon78

dent and slipped. It’s the classic recovering-alcoholic story. She didn’t live long enough to dry out a second time.”

Ginger’s words rang in my ears. “I won’t go through that again. Ever.” But I was the only one who had heard her make that categorical statement, the only one who knew that in twentyfour hours she had taken several giant steps beyond grief and found a reason for living. “What was the time of death? Did they say?- ‘Between eight-thirty and nine-thirty, give or take.”

“I tell you, Hal, she had nothing to drink before she left here at twenty minutes to eight. How could she get that drunk in such a short time?” He sighed. “You’ve been around boozers. With some of them, falling off the wagon is like stepping off a thirty-story building.” Hal Huggins didn’t budge. Neither did I.

“Do you want this calendar or not?” I demanded. “I already said I’d come by later this morning and pick it up, but I’m not making any promises.”

“Don’t patronize me, Hal, goddammit. Will you have it analyzed or not? Don’t pick it up just to humor me. “

“For cripe’s sake. I’ll have it analyzed. Good-bye!” The receiver banged in my ear.

I looked at the calendar skulking by the door, its pungent odor invading the room.

It made me wonder if I still wanted to be a cop when I grew up. I kept it in the room, odor and all. Considering the phone call, it didn’t make much sense to keep it. I might just as well have pitched it outside into the drizzle, but I didn’t.

I went to bed and tried to nap, without much luck.

Chapter 15

HAL Huggins was in a foul mood when he showed up an hour later. He called me from the lobby. “Bring that goddamned calendar down here and buy me breakfast, Beaumont.“

Huggins was seated at a table before a steaming coffee cup when I ventured into the dining room. Grudgingly, he pushed out a chair for me. “I’m not very good company when I don’t get my beauty sleep,” he growled. “Where the hell is that calendar?”

I handed it to him, wrapped in a Rosario pillowcase. “What do you expect to find in there?” he asked, nodding toward it. “Prints, I hope. Especially on last week’s pages.”

He leaned back in his chair and glowered at me. “Let me ask you this, Beau. Do you think this calendar has anything to do with Sig Larson’s death? The breakin occurred after he was already dead.”

“No, but-“

“But what?”

“The meeting was listed in there, the one Sig and Ginger planned to attend together.”

“Were you awake when you called me this morning?” “Sure I was awake.”

“I told you then and I’ll tell you now, Ginger Watkins’ death has been ruled accidental.

We are not treating it as a possible homicide. Do I make myself clear?”

“Very. So you won’t have the calendar analyzed?” “I’ll take it, just for old time’s sake, but that’s the only reason.” Huggins glared at me, his face implacable.

“What are you so pissed about, Hal?”

“I’m pissed because I’ve got a homicide to work, and I’m shorthanded, and I didn’t get enough sleep, and my neck hurts. Any other questions?” “None that I can think of.”

The waiter brought Huggins his food and took my order. Halfway through breakfast, Hal’s savage beast seemed somewhat soothed. “You going back today?”

“Probably.” Rosario had lost its charm. I wanted to go home and lick my wounds.

“You need a ride?”

“Naw. I can take the shuttle bus.”

The waiter brought my coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice. “Find any trace of Wilson?”

Huggins shook his head. “Not yet. Looks like he stepped off the face of the earth once he got on the ferry.”

“Maybe he did,” I said. “Still no sign of him at his house?”

“Not a trace. King County has round-the-clock surveillance on the place. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Unless he’s dead, too,” I suggested.

Huggins’ flint-eyed scrutiny honed in on my face. “He might be, at that,” he said.

I didn’t like the tone, the inflection. “Is that an accusation?” I asked. “Could be,” he allowed, “if I thought vigilante mentality had caught you by the short hairs.”

“Look, Hal, I was only trying to help.”

He nodded. “I’d hate to think otherwise, Beau.”

It sounded like the end of a beautiful friendship. I tried to put the conversation on a less volatile track. “How’d she get the booze, then? It had to come from somewhere.

It wasn’t in the Porsche when she left here.” “When she left you,” he corrected.

“She might have gone back to her room and gotten it. She might have bought it on the way.”

I was shaking my head before he finished speaking. Huggins’ face clouded. “You’re sure you never met Ginger Watkins before last Friday?” “I’m sure,” I answered, trying to keep anger out of my voice. From one moment to the next, Huggins and I shifted back and forth to opposite sides, like two kids who can’t decide if they’re best friends or hate each other’s guts.

“Why’s it so goddamned important to you that she wasn’t drunk?” he demanded.

How does a man answer a question like that without his ego getting in the way? If she was drunk, then I’m not the man I thought I was. A psychiatrist would have a ball with that one. I know she was coming back. She and I had a date to screw our brains out after dinner. That one had a good macho ring to it. I had given her a reason for living. She wouldn’t have thrown it all away. That dripped with true missionary fervor. I said, “It’s important to me, that’s all.”

“My mind’s made up; don’t confuse me with the facts, right?” “Something like that.”

“Beau-“

“Will you have the calendar analyzed?”

“I told you I will, but-“

“And you’ll let me know what you find?”

There was a momentary pause. “I guess.” He stirred his coffee uneasily, looking at me over the cup. “It’s probably a good thing you’re going home today. We might end up stepping on each other’s toes.”

“I take it that means you’re firing me as a San Juan County deputy?” He nodded. “Yup.”

He gave me a lopsided grin. “If it’s possible to fire someone who’s working for free.”

The tension between us evaporated. Huggins rose, taking his check and the calendar.

I snagged the check away from him. “It’s on me, Hal, remember? Your beauty sleep?”

We shook hands. “No hard feelings?” he asked. “None. “

“All right then. I’ll be in touch. If I were a betting man, I’d say there won’t be a goddamned thing in this sonofabitch.” He strode out of the dining room.

It’s too bad I didn’t take that bet, but hindsight is always twenty/twenty.

I went into the bar because I didn’t want to go back to my room. Without Ginger, my room seemed empty. Barney was industriously polishing the mirror.

“Morning,” he said to my reflection. “Want a drink?” “Just coffee,” I replied. “I need to think.”

He brought a mug and set it in front of me. “On the house,” he said, refusing my money. Barney had a sense of when to leave people alone. He said nothing about my making an ass of myself. Instead he returned to his mirror and his Windex.

The question I had asked Hal was far more than rhetorical. He was right, of course.

Blood-alcohol readings don’t lie. No matter how much I wanted to deny it, Ginger Watkins had been drunk when she ploughed into the water. So where had she gotten the booze? From her room? A liquor store? Where? “Hey, Barney,” I said, “does Oreas Island have a liquor store?” He grinned. “Hell, no. We’re too small. We’ve got Old Man Baxter, though. He’s the official agent. Lives up above Eastsound, about a half-mile beyond Emie’s. “

“Did Huggins leave one of Don Wilson’s pictures with you?” “Are you kidding?” He reached under the bar and pulled out a whole handful. “Why, you want some?”

“One,” I said. “I only need one.” He handed me a picture.

I pulled out a pen to write on the back. “Tell me again how to get there.” “Where?”

“Mr. Baxter’s.”

“Now wait a minute. You come in here, and I give you free coffee. Next thing I know, you want to go see our agent so you can mix your own drinks? No way! I’d lose one of my best customers. “

“I promise I won’t buy anything,” I protested. “I just want to show him this picture.”

“Well, in that case c. Go past Ernie’s. It’s the fourth mailbox on the left.”

“Thanks, have the desk call me a cab, would you?” .Why?”

“So I don’t have to walk.”

“No, I mean why do you want to see Baxter?” “I want to know if either Ginger Watkins or this man bought something from him Friday or Saturday. Make the call, would you?, .

Instead, Barney reached into his pants pocket and extracted a ring of keys. He tossed them across the bar, and I caught them in midair. “What’s this?”

“It’s the key to an old Chevy pickup parked over by the moorage. You’re welcome to use it if you like.”

It was a small-town gesture, one that caught me by surprise. When I thought about it, though, there’s no such thing as auto theft on Orcas Island. I pocketed the keys.

“Thanks, Barney. Appreciate it.” The pickup looked old and decrepit; but ugliness, like beauty, is only skin-deep. The engine ran like a top beneath a rusty hood. I drove into Eastsound, past Ernie’s and stopped at the fourth mailbox on the left.

The house was a picturesque gray-and-white bungalow that might have been lifted straight off Cape Cod. I knocked on the door. Mr. Baxter himself opened it. He was a small man with a belly much too large for the rest of him. The living room of the house had been converted into a mini-display room, with a stack of hand-held shopping baskets sitting beside the door. The house had the smell and look of an aging bachelor pad-not much cooking and not enough cleaning. “Help yourself,” he said, motioning me inside.

I pulled Don Wilson’s picture out of my pocket. “I didn’t come to buy anything,”

I said. “I was wondering if you’d ever seen this man before.” He peered at the picture, then looked up at me. “You a cop?” he asked. His face was truculent, arms crossed, chin jutting. Mr. Baxter was a short man embattled by a tall world.

Huggins had pulled the plug on my unofficial deputy status. “No,” I said. “The woman who died the other night was a friend of mine. I’m trying to find out what happened to her.”

“Not from me you won’t.”

“I’m only asking if you recognize him.”

“You ever hear of the confidentiality statute of nineteen and thirty-three?”

“Not that I remember.”

“It says no liquor-store clerk tells nobody nothing, excepting of course federal agents checking revenue stamps. We can talk to them.” “All I’m asking is, Did you see him?”

“And if I give out information, they stick me with a high misdemeanor. Nosiree. I’m not talking to nobody.”

I could see right off I wasn’t going to change his mind. I left. Something made me stop at Ernie’s. The doors of the Porsche were wide open, and the insides of the car were scattered all over the garage in a seemingly hopeless jumble. Ernie glanced up as I walked in. He was bent over the engine, a grimy crutch propped under his good arm. “How’do, Mr. Beaumont. I was just gonna call you.”

I figured it was time to jack up the price, now that the car was in pieces and I was a captive audience.

“Why?” I asked.

“You ever have any work done on the linkage?” I shrugged. “No. Not that I know of.”

He hopped away from the car to a nearby tool bench, picked up something in his gripper, and handed it to me. I looked down at two pieces of metal, slightly smaller in diameter than a pencil.

“What’s this?”

“That’s the throttle linkage cable. Looks to me like it’s been cut. ” “What does that mean?”

“With that thing cut, Mr. Beaumont, all you have to do is put that baby in motion and you’ve got a one-way ride.”

I looked down at the shiny crimped ends of metal. “It couldn’t have broken in the accident?”

He shook his head. “No way.”

“Mind if I use your phone?” I asked, keeping my voice calm. It was time for Hal Huggins to eat a little crow.

Chapter 16

HAL marched into Ernie’s Garage looking thunderous. “What do you mean the linkage was cut?” he stormed.

Ernie pointed him in the direction of the tool bench where the two pieces of cable were once more lying in state. Silently Hal examined them, then he straightened.

“How the hell could those crime-lab jokers miss something like this?”

“They were investigating an accident, remember?” I reminded him. “A DWI. Maybe even a suicide.”

He glared at me. “That’s no excuse.”