J. Jance - Fire and Ice

“A drug-smuggling operation, maybe?” Joanna asked.

“Maybe,” Jaime said. “We’ll know more once we see the tape.”

Without much more to discuss on the homicide situation, the detectives went on their way, leaving Joanna and Tom Hadlock to go over more routine matters. They had finished and were about to leave the conference room when Tom added one parting comment.

“When we were on the phone, Marliss Shackleford asked about Frank’s party tonight,” he said. “I told her no comment.”

“That’s correct,” Joanna said. “It’s a private party. No comment is the right answer.”

It was close to midnight before we finally got back home after our side trip to Black Diamond and our late-night dinner. Mel fell into bed and was out like a light. I love the woman dearly, but the truth is, she snores. Most of the time it doesn’t bother me, but it did that night, mostly because Tom Wojeck’s hairy-chested coffee, combined with indigestion from our late-night dinner, left me tossing and turning. Finally I gave up on sleeping altogether. I climbed out of bed and went into the room that’s now our combination family room/office.

I spend a lot of time there now that my recliner has been permanently banished from the living room. I don’t blame Mel for insisting that if I refused to opt for a new one, the old one would have to disappear from the living room. The furniture she bought for the living room is stylish and surprisingly comfortable. And, much as I hate to admit it, the recliner no longer measures up.

For one thing, the poor old thing lists badly to one side these days. I had it recovered with leather a long time ago, but even good leather doesn’t last forever. It’s developed a certain sway to the cushions. And the last time the kids were here, I caught Kayla jumping on it. By the time the grandkids went back home, the recliner had lost the benefit of full motion. It no longer goes all the way up or all the way down. In other words, the recliner is a bit like me-a little butt-sprung and with a hitch in its get-along.

I sat there for a while looking at the city lights playing off the low-lying clouds and thinking about Mama Rose. Finally I picked up my laptop and logged onto the Internet, put in my LexisNexis password, and went looking for Rose Marie Brotsky. And found plenty. Her recent history wasn’t nearly as colorful as her earlier history, but as the owner of the Silver Pines Mobile Home Park, she was in the news. A lot.

Somewhere along the way, Mama Rose had missed the memo about not fighting city hall. Just as she had told us earlier that evening, she and her lawyers had taken on the local city council and city manager and had won one round after another. The city had tried to shut down Silver Pines based on the fact that the place harbored registered sex offenders-although, for the most part, former hookers are sex offenders in only the broadest sense of the word. The city next claimed that the mobile home park was too close to a local elementary school, even though the school had been built long before Mama Rose became the owner of the property. But that hadn’t worked either. A new survey, conducted at Mama Rose’s expense and using modern GPS technology, had determined her property was 2.3 inches to the good. After that, the city had tried to condemn the trailer park under eminent domain so they could sell it to a developer. Her lawyers had succeeded in stopping that one in its tracks as well. In the process, Mama Rose had become something of an idol to property-rights-minded people everywhere.

But if articles about Mama Rose were in abundance, I found no mention of Tom Wojeck, Thomas Wojeck, or even Tommy Wojeck. It seemed he had left Seattle PD and fallen into a hole of utter obscurity. If he had taken up with Mama Rose, a lady of ill repute, it was possible there was more to his quiet exit from the force than anyone had ever let on, and that left me with one option.

When you work partners with a guy, you pretty much have to know everything about him-good, bad, and indifferent. It’s the only way you can be sure that when push comes to shove, he’ll have your back covered. Or not. And if not turns out to be the case, your very life may be at risk. It seemed reasonable to me that if Tommy Wojeck had left the department with some kind of blemish on his record, Big Al Lindstrom would know all about it. He’d also know where the bodies, if any, were buried.

In order to find out for sure, I’d have to go see Big Al in person and ask him. The big question in my mind that morning was whether or not I’d have nerve enough to do it.

Al Lindstrom had turned in his badge, pulled the plug, and retired from Seattle PD shortly after being shot in the gut while trying to protect an endangered homicide witness, a little five-year-old boy named Benjamin Harrison Weston. Ben Weston Senior, little Ben’s daddy, had also worked for the department. Senior had been about to unmask a whole gang of crooked cops when someone had broken into the family home in Rainier Valley and slaughtered the whole family-every one of them except for little Benjamin. He had fallen asleep in a closet during a long-drawn-out game of hide-and-seek. That was the only reason he was still alive-the only reason little Benjy hadn’t died that night along with the rest of his family.

Big Al Lindstrom and Ben Senior had been friends, and Big Al took those senseless murders very personally. In trying to protect Ben Junior, he had also taken a bullet. He had recovered from his wounds enough to come back to work for a while, but something had changed for him. His heart was no longer in the job. He told me he had put in his time and now he needed to spend some time with his family. I have to confess that, once he was gone, I more or less forgot about him. Out of sight; out of mind.

I suspect I’m not alone there. Women seem to hang on to their friends with real tenacity. Men don’t. I’ve heard it claimed that’s due to our being so egotistical that we don’t care about anyone but ourselves. I still keep up with Ron Peters and Ralph Ames on a regular basis, but other than those two, most of my male friendships, which were usually job-related, have fallen by the wayside.

When it came to Big Al Lindstrom, I didn’t even know if he was still around. It was possible that he and his wife, Molly, might well have sold out and turned into snowbirds. I doubted he had corked off. If that had happened, I’m sure someone from Seattle PD would have let me know. I remembered hearing that he’d gone in for quadruple bypass surgery a while earlier-was it a year or so ago, or maybe longer? — and I’d even sent a get-well card, but I had been too caught up with my own life-with my new job and my new relationship with Mel-to pay much attention to anyone else. Now I felt guilty because I hadn’t made time to go see him-not while he was in the hospital and not later, after he got out.

Wrestling with the question of whether or not I was a worthy friend, I finally drifted off to sleep-with the laptop on my lap. I awakened to find Mel standing over me, shaking her head in disgust. She was up, dressed, ready to go to work, and holding a cup of coffee in her hand.

“You spent the whole night in that chair?” she demanded, passing me the cup. “Are you nuts? Just you wait. By tonight your back will be killing you.”

The truth was, now that I was awake, my back was already killing me, but I wasn’t about to admit it, not to her.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

She rolled her eyes and then held up her cell phone. “I just got off the phone with Harry,” she said. “I told him what we learned last night. He wants all hands on deck and in Federal Way ASAP. Everyone else will be canvassing Silver Pines. I’m supposed to start with Denny’s, since that’s where Marina was supposedly working at the time of her disappearance. Care to join me?”