J. Jance - Name Witheld

Once I was in the car and headed back into Seattle, I remembered the previous day's hassle with Sergeant Watkins about my not using the beeper. Just to be on the safe side, I checked the display. As soon as I saw the number on the readout-Watty's, of course-I felt like one of those fork-bending psychics.

I called him on my cellular phone. "Detective Beaumont," he grumbled. "Where the devil have you been? I've been looking everywhere. I even checked with motor pool, but they told me you hadn't signed out a car."

"I've been busy," I said. "What's up?"

"I'll tell you what's up. The Media Relations folks have been climbing all over me for the last hour and a half. Phil Grimes is fit to be tied."

"Media Relations? How come?"

"The jail commander is calling every other minute, complaining because the street outside their sally port is blocked almost solid with wall-to-wall television trucks, cameras, and reporters."

"What's going on at the jail?" I asked. "Have I missed something important?"

"Don't try running that phony innocence crap past me, Detective Beaumont," Watty growled into the phone. "This time, I'm not falling for it."

Phony innocence? For once, it wasn't a matter of feigning innocence, because I didn't have the foggiest idea of why Watty was so steamed. One thing was painfully clear, however. It had something to do with me.

"What's going on?" Watty continued. "I'll tell you what's going on. Right around eleven-thirty, somebody supposedly in the know faxed every damn newspaper and television and radio station in town and told them that early this afternoon, Seattle Homicide Detective J. P. Beaumont would be arresting Grace Highsmith and charging her with the murder of Don Wolf. The accompanying confession to Don Wolf's murder appears to be handwritten on Grace Highsmith's personal stationery and over her signature."

"But I didn't even meet up with her until…Suddenly feeling half sick, I remembered how long it had taken Grace Highsmith to come back out of the back room. She hadn't tried to skip out on me. She had simply outfoxed me at every turn.

"She sent out a signed confession? And an advance announcement of her impending arrest?"

"That's right," Watty returned glumly.

I tried making light of it. "Come on, Watty. You know how this stuff goes. There isn't a major case on the books where we don't end up with at least one or two phony confessions. This one's no different."

"Believe me, Detective Beaumont, it is different. Now where is she, Beau? Did you arrest her or not?"

"No, I didn't arrest her. Her confession was so full of holes it was a joke-a put-up deal. The last time I saw Grace Highsmith, she was walking in the door of her gift shop in downtown Bellevue. I don't understand why everybody's so upset. There was never any question of my arresting her."

"Why the confession, then?" Watty asked.

"Grace Highsmith is a nice little old lady who was trying to protect her niece."

"Nice little old lady!" Watty scoffed. "Here she is, confessing to a killing and announcing the victim's name in public when we haven't even released that information to the media. Makes the whole department look like a bunch of jackasses. And if she's so damned nice, Detective Beaumont, how come she knew the victim's name?"

"I already told you, Watty. She was trying to protect her niece."

"So the niece is the killer then?"

"Could be. I don't know," I said. "Not yet anyway, although there's a good possibility. The aunt gave me a gun that may be the murder weapon. She opened up her purse and dumped a thirty-two auto out onto the table right in the middle of lunch."

"Is it the murder weapon or isn't it?" Watty demanded.

"Maybe."

"Look here, Detective Beaumont. I want a lot more than maybes on this, and I want it fast. Where is this alleged murder weapon right now?"

"In my pocket."

I didn't add that it was wrapped up in doggy-bag aluminum foil. I don't think Sergeant Watkins would have seen any humor in that.

"You'd by God better find out whether it is or not," he fumed. "I want a definitive yes or no, and the sooner the better. If I were you, I'd take the damn thing straight to the crime lab and check it out. And I'd do it before Captain Powell nails you. He's hot."

"Hot? What's he upset about?"

"About your not keeping us informed about what you're doing, that's what. If one of his officers is investigating a member of the University of Washington Board of Regents with regard to a current homicide case, then it stands to reason that the captain would appreciate having that information come to him directly from the detective involved and not from some lippy television reporter who looks like she just got her high school diploma late last week."

A few words leaped out at me from Watty's latest harangue, and they left me stunned: Member of the Board of Regents! Did that mean Grace Highsmith?…Of course, no wonder her name had sounded so familiar.

"Now where the hell are you?" Watty continued. "Captain Powell was looking for you a few minutes ago, and so was Detective Kramer."

Obviously, at that precise moment, they both wanted to see me a whole lot more than I wanted to see either one of them.

"Like you suggested, I'm on my way to the State Patrol Weapons Section in Tacoma," I said quickly. "If I head down there right away, I may be able to make the trip before rush hour rather than being caught in the middle of it."

"I want to hear from you the moment you know anything," Watty said. "You got that?"

"Got it," I said.

"What about this next-of-kin situation on both Don Wolf and the I.D. on the second victim? With his name out over all the media, people are beginning to link the two cases. The captain wants to know-"

"Tell him I'm on it," I said. "I'll keep you posted."

"Good," Watty returned. "You do that."

Once I hit I-5, I turned south toward Tacoma. In the old days, two o'clock in the afternoon would most likely have been pre-rush hour. Nowadays, in the Seattle/Tacoma area, rush hour tends to last twenty-four hours a day. I made fairly good time until I got to the diamond-lane construction zone and a three-car injury accident down by Boeing Field. From then on, it was stop-and-go traffic all the way to the Midway landfill. A drive that should have taken forty-five minutes max took almost two hours.

That's the price of progress, I guess. Used to be, in order to get to the weapons experts, all I would have had to do was walk down a couple of flights of stairs. For years, most of the local functions of the Washington State Patrol crime lab were performed in the Public Safety Building in downtown Seattle. In recent months, however, all that had changed as the crime lab moved into more modern and supposedly more earthquake-proof quarters elsewhere. The firearms section was now working out of a temporary location on the outskirts of Tacoma.

Gabe Rios is a forensic scientist who specializes in weapons, especially firearms. When the receptionist led me into his cluttered office, I was pleased to note that here was a man whose work space was even messier than mine. Sitting with his feet propped up on a paper-strewn desk, Gabe was so deeply engrossed in reading a gun magazine that I wondered if he'd even notice our presence.

"Sorry," he said, when he eventually looked up and caught sight of us. He put down the magazine, made some kind of notation on a computer keyboard, then looked back at me with a lopsided grin as the receptionist dropped me off and then backed out the door.

"Hey, Detective Beaumont. Long time no see. What brings you all the way down here to the wilds of east Tacoma?"

Without a word, I handed over the foil-wrapped package.

"Lunch?" Gabe asked. "Beau, you shouldn't have."