J. Jance - Name Witheld

I dialed the first number. After two rings, the distinctive disconnect sound came through the receiver, followed by a recorded message. "The number you have reached is no longer in service. Please check the number and dial again. If you feel you have reached this number in error, please hang up and dial the operator."

My first thought was that maybe the company had just moved, but a check with the operator came up empty. Mentally, I crossed Downlink off the list. I tried the number listed for Bio-Dart. This time, a little kid answered. Figuring I had somehow misdialed and rather than trying to explain, I hung up and redialed with the same result. This time, though, the phone was wrested away from the child by a woman.

"Who is this?" she demanded.

"I'm looking for a company named Bio-Dart," I told her, and then read off the number Deanna Compton had given me. "They probably do some kind of bioengineering."

"That's my number, mister," the woman responded. "But there's nobody here but my son and me. The only kind of bioengineering we do here is an occasional batch of chocolate chip cookies."

"There must be some mistake," I said. "Please excuse the ring."

The number for Holman-Smith turned out to be a disconnect as well. In other words, as near as I could tell, not one of those three companies existed at the moment. I was beginning to wonder if they ever had. Most likely, the Harvard MBA would turn out to be equally bogus, but checking on that would have to wait until morning.

When an investigation runs into an unexpected blank wall, that's the time for partners. Sometimes, all it takes is a brainstorming session over a cup or two of coffee to figure out a way to get back on track, but Sue Danielson was stuck in Cincinnati with a bad case of chicken pox. That meant brainstorming with her was out, and I sure as hell wasn't going to try mulling things over with Paul Kramer. When it comes to the free-flowing exchange of ideas, Detective Kramer is definitely not my type.

What I did do finally was pick up the phone and call Audrey Cummings at the medical examiner's office up in Harborview Hospital. "Make this quick, Beaumont," she said. "I was supposed to start Don Wolf's autopsy half an hour ago."

"Did you print him?"

"No. We could, but don't usually do that unless there's a question of identification."

"There might be in this case."

"Are you trying to tell me that Bill Whitten misidentified the body?" Audrey asked. "It would be nice to know exactly who's dead and who isn't."

"What I'm saying is that the person Bill Whitten thinks of as Don Wolf may have been someone else all along." As briefly as possible, I went on to explain the difficulties I'd encountered in trying to locate possible next of kin. Then I enumerated the phony employment and educational references I had blundered into along the way. I must have made a fairly good case of it. When I finished, Audrey capitulated.

"All right, all right," she agreed. "We'll print him, then. But you won't have either prints or autopsy results before noon tomorrow at the earliest. If you have something for me on the woman by then, maybe we can make a trade-prints on him in exchange for a positive I.D. on her?"

"It's a deal," I told her, although it didn't seem very likely that I would meet that noontime deadline, not at the rate I was going.

It was long after five when I finally gave up on the first item of my TO DO list and took an initial crack at number two. If you believe what passes for homicide cops on television, this job entails nothing more than car chases and pitched gun battles. On a day-to-day basis, I spend far more time with a telephone glued to my ear than with a weapon in my hand.

My first call on that score was to Alpha-Cyte, the La Jolla biotechnology company Deanna Compton had told me had employed Lizbeth Wolf. And because I was calling so late in the afternoon, my efforts met with exactly what they deserved-an unguided trip through a voice-mail jungle.

"Alpha-Cyte's office hours are nine to five, Monday through Friday," the recorded voice told me. "If you know the extension of the person to whom you wish to speak, please dial that number now; otherwise, stay on the line for more options."

Voice-mail options never include quite what you want, especially if you don't know exactly who it is you need to speak to or what his or her extension number might be. The last choice was to leave a message and someone would get back to me.

"I don't think so," I said, and hung up. "It's time to send out for reinforcements."

With the help of a directory assistance operator, thirty seconds later I was on the phone with Captain Wayne Kilpatrick, a homicide supervisor down in La Jolla, California.

"What can I do for you, Detective Beaumont?" he asked, once I had identified myself.

"I'm working on a case up here in Seattle," I told him. "Two of them, actually. It's possible both victims may be former residents of La Jolla. I'm trying to verify I.D. s and do next-of-kin notifications, and I'm running into walls."

"Maybe you'd better fill me in on the details."

That didn't take long, because it turned out I didn't know much. "I'll get someone on it right away," Kilpatrick said when I finished. "I'll check with Dispatch to see if there's an emergency number on record for Alpha-Cyte. And we'll check out that home address you gave me as well. I'll have one of my officers get back to you ASAP. Give me your number."

Instead of one number, I gave him the full set-home, office, and cell phone. "Thanks for the help," I said.

"Whaddya expect?" Captain Kilpatrick returned. "It's our job."

"One more thing," I added. "Do you have access to any old telephone books?"

"How old?" he asked.

"Last year's," I said. "Maybe even the year prior to that. I'm looking for the last place Don Wolf listed as a place of employment before taking the job in Seattle."

"You're in luck there," Kilpatrick told me. "Last year's phone book is the only one I have. Somebody stole my new one."

"Look up a company called Downlink," I told him.

"It's not here," Kilpatrick said a few moments later. "How could he give it as a place of employment if it doesn't exist? Sort of makes you wonder what he was up to, doesn't it."

"It does," I muttered, putting down the phone. "Indeed it does."

Returning to my TO DO list, I placed a check mark beside number two before turning my attention to number three: Find Latty.

In that regard, the greatest possibility of success lay with the cab driver. In the best of all possible worlds, Don Wolf would have called Farwest Cab instead of Yellow. Years ago, I was involved in a case where a Farwest cabby was murdered. What initially looked like a straightforward robbery gone awry actually turned out to be a complicated insurance plot staged by the man's estranged wife and her boyfriend. I was the one who cracked the case and sent both the wife and boyfriend to the slammer. Whenever I need Farwest info, I can always get it-fast and without any hassle.

Back in my Fuller Brush days when I was working my way through school, I learned the value of third-party referrals. It was always easier to sell brushes to someone if a neighbor up the street called ahead to say I was coming. Naturally, I called Farwest first.

"Hey, J.P.," said Wally, one of Farwest's old-hand dispatchers. "Long time no see, especially now that you don't need your butt hauled out of bars on a regular basis. How long you been off the sauce?"

"Two years and a little bit."

"Good for you. I just passed five. Still going to meetings?"

"Some," I said, although the correct answer probably should have been "hardly any."

"What can I do you for?" Wally asked.

"I need some help with a Yellow."

"Either you need your vision checked or you're screwing up the alphabet. Farwest is in the F's, not the Y's," Wally told me. "And our cabs are green, not yellow."