J. Jance - Name Witheld

"That's what I wanted all right," I answered, letting the door slide shut. "For whatever good that will do."

I walked the length of the garage and walked up the ramp into vivid midday sun. After the gloom inside the garage, the unexpected sunlight was almost blinding. The glare hurt my burning eyes and escalated the pounding between my ears. My mouth felt dry and cottony, and it tasted even worse. Standing with my hands in my pockets and waiting for Detective Kramer to show up, I longed for a breath mint, for something that would combat the sour taste in my mouth. Kramer still hadn't arrived when I caught sight of a drugstore across the street.

"If anyone comes looking for me, tell them I'll be right back," I called over my shoulder to Ryland. "I'm going across the street for a minute."

I was back on the sidewalk and sucking on an Altoid when Kramer showed up in a full-size Chevy bulge-mobile a few minutes later. By then, though, I think excess MacNaughton's must have been leaking out through my pores. When I climbed into the car and shut the door, he wrinkled his nose in distaste and made a production of rolling down his window. "Where to?" he asked.

I looked up Grace Highsmith's address in my notebook and read it off to him.

"Where's that?" he demanded. "I'm from Seattle, remember? I don't know diddly-squat about Eastside."

"Is that so?" I returned. "I was under the impression you knew damned near everything. Since you don't, and neither do I, you might want to talk to Officer Ryland back there in the garage and see if he can give us directions."

Kramer put the bulky Caprice into a rubber-squealing U-turn and drove back to the garage entrance. While he was out of the car asking directions of Officer Ryland, I popped another relatively useless Altoid into my mouth. I briefly considered going back to the 928 to retrieve my Thomas Guide to make it easier for us to stumble around in Bellevue and Kirkland. I decided against it, though. Why go out of my way to be helpful with good old Detective Kramer, my son of a bitch partner pro tem.

"I don't like being kept in the dark," Kramer fumed as he crawled back into the car and headed out of the garage. "You've been holding out on us."

"Holding out about what?" I asked.

"About your interview with Grace Highsmith, for starters. And then there's ballistics info, to say nothing of-"

"Holding out implies I had a chance to pass along information and didn't. After we all left the Lake View Condos yesterday morning, I never saw you again until just now. So don't give me that. And if you're interested in picking a fight, I'll be more than happy to oblige. You've been sitting on some info of your own, Kramer."

"For instance?"

"Finding Lizbeth Wolf's car, for one thing. And then, there's just being a general all-around asshole. Like spouting off your big mouth about my presumed sexual orientation to an investigator from Child Protective Services."

A flush crept up Detective Kramer's thick neck. "I didn't mean anything by that," he said. "It was nothing but a little joke. After all, it isn't every day some swish guy sashays around the fifth floor looking for autographs. I thought it was funny."

"It's funny, all right," I told him. "An absolute scream. Madame Hilda Chisholm of Child Protective Services seems to be under the impression that not only am I switch-hitter, I'm a pedophile as well. As a matter of fact, I'm considered such a serious threat as a child predator that Amy and Ron Peters may very well end up losing custody of his two kids by virtue of my being a friend of the family."

"I'm sorry," Kramer said. "I didn't mean to cause any trouble."

"Sure you didn't," I sneered, crossing my arms and staring out the window. "And when you went crying to Captain Powell about my holding on to the rape tape, I don't suppose you meant to do any harm with that, either."

For several minutes, we drove north through Bellevue and Kirkland, along Lake Washington Boulevard and Juanita Drive, in tight-lipped silence. Kramer was the first to speak.

"Look," he said, "Detective Arnold and I didn't ask to be put on this case with you. And if those rape tapes have something to do with our investigation, we should all have access to them. I thought Captain Powell ordered us to be a team."

"Kramer," I said, "Captain Powell ordered us to work together. He can't order us to be a team. Turning the two of us into a team would take an act of God!"

And that was pretty much where things stood when Kramer gave the wheel a sharp twist and sent us speeding down a steep, winding road through a forested ravine. I figured his temper tantrum was going to kill us both, but I was damned if I'd tell him to slow the hell down. When we finally reached the bottom of the hill, we turned north on Holmes Point Drive past a narrow band of high-priced, lakefront homes.

Remembering the almost reverential manner in which Suzanne Crenshaw, Grace Highsmith's attorney, had spoken of Grace's Lake Washington digs, and after seeing some of the nearby waterfront homes, I was prepared to be confronted by something downright palatial. I was surprised, then, when the numbered address in my notebook turned out to be attached to a ramshackle single-car garage that teetered on the edge of a steep cliff. The garage crouched between two massive houses that rose up in three-story splendor on either side. Like pricy waterfront properties everywhere, parking spaces in that neighborhood were at a premium. Grace Highsmith had evidently manufactured an extra, one-way-in-and-out space by leveling the ground above a retaining wall that was meant to keep her ancient garage from tumbling down the mountain. A berm at the end of the ledge was designed to keep cars from falling as well.

Kramer parked the Caprice with the front bumper grazing the berm. "Great view," he said, looking out over the lake, "but a hell of a bad place to have your brakes go out."

We got out of the car and walked forward to a garage that came from an era of smaller, narrower vehicles. The door had been left open in order to accommodate the enormous tail fins of a hulking 1961 classic all-white Cadillac that didn't quite fit inside the four walls.

Next to the garage, a set of wooden plank steps, flanked by a two-inch pipe handrail, led down to a house tucked tidily into the side of the bluff some twenty-five steps below street level. Pausing at the top of the steep flight of stairs, we were almost even with the level of a rooftop chimney. A column of wood smoke spouted out of the chimney and curled out over the water.

"I guess some people have enough clout that they don't have to worry about burn bans," Kramer said sourly.

The Puget Sound area, always on the cutting edge of environmental activism, is one of the nation's first bastions of smoke police. During winter months-especially during periods of cold, clear weather-atmospheric inversions form, trapping dirty, polluted air near the ground. When the Cascades and Olympics disappear behind bands of reddish gray glop, the state of Washington imposes burning bans. During those bans, the use of woodstoves or fireplaces is prohibited except in homes where they provide the only source of heat. In order to enforce the bans, the state sends out smoke police whose job it is to warn and fine those poor misguided and mostly overly romantic folk who mistakenly try toasting their wintry toes in front of cozy fires.

For over a week, now, the weather around Seattle had been unseasonably clear. A burning ban had been in effect for at least two days that I knew of. It struck me as funny that Detective Kramer was so offended by Grace Highsmith's breaking that particular rule.

"Look," I said, "if the lady doesn't worry about concealed-weapons permits, why would she bother with a burning ban?"

"Because rules should apply to everybody," Kramer said. "That's the way it's supposed to work." At the top of the stairs, he stepped to one side. "After you," he added.