J. Jance - Fire and Ice

North Bend has a bucolic sound to it, but it’s a burg that seems more than a little schizophrenic. There’s the “new” North Bend, which is essentially a cluster of outlet stores and fast-food joints, and the “old” North Bend, which is…well…old. Ken Leggett lived on a potholed excuse for a street in a neighborhood of mostly down-at-the-heels bungalows that had probably been built in the twenties or thirties-back in the old days when logging was king. Between then and now, no one had done much about routine maintenance.

Leggett’s place was far and away the worst of the lot. It looked as though someone had painted it white with a cheery kind of red trim once, but most of the paint had either peeled or faded away, take your pick. The roof had far more moss showing than shingles. A tiny covered front porch sagged to one side, suggesting that it wouldn’t take much to knock it down. At the end of a rutted drive, an older-model Toyota Tundra sat huddled under the roof of a carport, which, like the porch, didn’t look like it was long for this world.

There were no lights or signs of movement showing from inside the place, but I parked out front and started up the short walkway, getting drenched in the process. As I stepped onto the crumbling front porch, the planking groaned beneath my feet, but it didn’t give way.

As I raised my hand to knock, someone spoke to me. “He’s not home.”

The male voice came from the house next door, one on the far side of Leggett’s driveway. There, under a similarly decrepit carport, stood another equally dilapidated pickup truck-an old Dodge Ram. The hood was open and a guy with a single Trouble Light dangling over his shoulder was actually working on it. Shade-tree mechanics may be a thing of the past in downtown Seattle, but not at the low-priced end of North Bend. Just looking at the scene I understood that the man wasn’t working on his aging truck because he was spiffing it up for some antique car show. The vehicle was what he counted on for wheels, and he was keeping it running with do-it-yourself know-how and probably, given the truck’s age, mostly junkyard parts.

“Any idea where I could find Mr. Leggett?” I asked.

The man straightened up, pushed a pair of reading glasses up onto the top of his head, and stared at me. “It’s early,” the man advised, wiping his hands on a pair of grimy coveralls. “If I was you, I’d try his home away from home.”

“Where would that be?” I asked.

The man jerked his head, gesturing back the way I had come. “Back thataway,” he said. “Two blocks over and two blocks up. The Beaver Bar. You can walk it, but I’d advise driving. These here are what we call ‘long blocks.’”

I took his advice. I went back to the Mercedes and drove. The Beaver Bar didn’t look promising. The neon sign over the door had evidently burned out. In the window was another neon sign that said OPEN, along with a single blue neon cocktail glass complete with a green neon olive.

I had never set foot in the Beaver Bar. Even so, it was entirely familiar. I spent far too much of my life with my butt planted on bar stools in similarly seedy places. The place smelled of too much beer and not enough cleaning. Washington’s bars have been “smoke-free” for years now, but not long enough for the smoke to have leached out of the wallboard and the torn and worn red-and-black faux-leather banquettes that lined the walls.

As I said, I’d never been inside the place, but the bartender made me for a cop the moment I stepped through the door. He gave me a careful once-over and probably decided I was liquor control.

“Evening, Officer,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m looking for Kenneth Leggett.”

“Over there,” he said. “In the booth on the far side of the pool table. He’s been eighty-sixed, by the way. He’s had nothing but coffee for the last hour or so. We’re waiting for him to sober up enough that he can get himself home.”

Yes, I thought. The barkeep definitely thinks I’m liquor control.

The guys playing pool kept a close eye on me as I walked around them and stopped next to a booth where a big balding man sat staring down into a mostly empty coffee cup.

“Mr. Leggett?” I said.

He looked up at me, bleary-eyed and belligerent. “Who the hell are you?”

“My name’s Beaumont,” I said. “I’m with the Attorney General’s Special Homicide Investigation Team. Mind if I sit down?”

I expected a fight. I expected an argument. You never can tell with drunks. They can go one way or the other. Instead, Ken Leggett pushed his empty coffee cup aside, buried his head in his hands, and bawled like a baby. I thought maybe I was going to come away with an impromptu confession. And I did, but not the one I was looking for.

“I didn’t mean to do it,” he said.

“You didn’t mean to do what, kill her?” I asked.

He looked up at me with tears still streaming down his face. “I didn’t mean to piss on her head,” he said. “Nobody deserves that.”

I’ve detected plenty of lies over the years, but this wasn’t one of them. Detective Caldwell was right. Ken Leggett wasn’t our killer by any stretch of the imagination.

“Come on, fella,” I said to him. “It’s raining outside. How about I give you a lift home.”

Having spent the better part of the day dealing with murder and mayhem in Ellensburg, it was difficult to remember that I had started the day in, as they like to say in Disneyland, “the happiest place on earth.” I’ve always been under the impression that jet lag happens when you fly east or west across time zones rather than north and south. I also think I read somewhere that men are less likely to be affected by jet lag than women are. It turns out I was wrong-on both counts.

When I got home to Seattle that night, I was bushed, and I chose to blame it on jet lag rather than anything else. I barely managed to finish telling Mel about my adventures east of the mountains when I conked out, sound asleep in my recliner. Sometime after the news and Jay Leno, Mel woke me up long enough to herd me into bed.

When I woke up the next morning and stumbled out of the shower and into the kitchen for coffee, I could tell from the clock that I had overslept and most likely would be late getting into the office. “Why didn’t you wake me up?” I asked.

Mel was up and her usual perky, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed self. To my surprise, however, she wasn’t dressed for work.

“Good morning to you, too, Mr. Grumbly Bear,” she told me, reaching out to hand me a computer printout. “Maybe you should go back into hibernation.”

Of course she said it with a smile. The robe and gown she was wearing made a very fetching concoction-enough to make me wish that I hadn’t gotten dressed quite so fast. When I made a tentative suggestion in that direction, she shook her head and returned her attention to the laptop on her lap. With my coffee cup in one hand and the paper in the other, I squinted at the impossibly vague printing on the page. Finding my arms far too short, I wondered where the hell I’d left my reading glasses.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“A missing persons report,” she said. “From November twelfth of last year. I think she’s your victim.”

One of the tasks Ross Connors had handed over to his Special Homicide Investigation Team was keeping track of missing persons investigations from all over the state. Someone reported missing in Vancouver, for example, wasn’t likely to be noticed if he or she turned up in Bellingham either living or dead. By focusing on those cases and compiling all the information from various jurisdictions and agencies together in one spot, including dental records wherever possible, S.H.I.T. had already managed to solve several previously unsolvable cases. Among those were cases from several different people who, for one reason or another, had gone missing deliberately and wanted to stay that way. Mel’s fine eye for detail made her a natural as point man, if you’ll pardon the expression, on the AG’s missing persons effort.