J. Jance - Lying in vait

I rubbed the grit out of my eyes. The corneas felt as if they were made of etched glass and the lids of sandpaper.

"What's he saying about me now?" I asked wearily.

"It's not about you," Captain Powell responded. "Want me to read it to you?"

"Not especially," I said, "but go ahead."

"‘Ron and Bonnie Elgin, ace procurers of auction items for Poncho, Seattle's premier arts fund-raising event, are busy attending to months of preparty planning. Much to their surprise, yesterday they found themselves embroiled in Seattle's most recent murder.

"‘According to sources close to the case, Seattle police officers are combing the city, looking for a young Hispanic male who was seen running from the scene of yesterday's tragic and fatal boat fire on board the Isolde at Fishermen's Terminal in Ballard.

"‘The fleeing suspect evidently suffered a close encounter of the worst kind when he ran into the path of a vehicle driven by Bonnie Elgin. Despite injuries serious enough to merit medical attention, the man fled the scene on foot without waiting long enough to have his injuries attended to by a Medic I unit that had already been summoned by a call to nine-one-one.

"‘It sounds as though the missing suspect's wounds were fairly extensive, and it doesn't seem like it should be all that difficult to find him. Of course, that all depends on how hard someone is looking.

"‘Rumor has it that these days Seattle's Finest are spending their time trying to learn how to work their newest crime-fighting tools-laptop computers-which were purchased at taxpayer expense with the understanding that they would offer cops high-tech aid in taking criminals off the streets.

"‘I have a feeling our men in blue are spending so much time learning keystrokes that they can't be bothered with doing their real jobs-like actually looking for suspects and making arrests.'"

"Where the hell did Max come up with all that crap?" I demanded.

"That's what I thought you'd tell me," Lawrence Powell returned grimly. "And once I find the guy who blabbed, I'm going to bust his nuts."

"Look, Captain. I never talked to Maxwell Cole about this case. And I didn't talk to anyone else in the media, either. Somebody else must have told him, but it wasn't me."

"Sue Danielson maybe?"

"I doubt it."

"According to Watty, she's the only other Seattle Police Department detective assigned to this case."

"It wasn't Sue," I asserted. "She wouldn't shoot off her mouth to the media any more than I would."

"Maybe you're right," Powell returned. "And then again, maybe you're not. In any case, Beaumont, it's your problem now. I want you to find the source of that leak, and I want it stopped. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir."

"And I want it done today."

When I put down the phone that time, I didn't even bother crawling back under the covers. There was no point. Instead, I staggered out of bed and headed for the bathroom and a much-needed shower. I had taken a shower when I came home from Camano Island but I wasn't sure one shower was enough to wash the soot and smoke off my body and out of my nostrils. It sure as hell wasn't enough to wash what I had seen out of my mind.

I left Belltown Terrace and drove straight down Clay to Western. A short twenty minutes after I got off the phone with Captain Lawrence Powell, I was standing in the reception area of the Seattle P.-I.

Times have changed in the country, and not necessarily for the better. In the old days, it was possible to walk into an airport or a radio station or a newspaper office without having to go through a whole security rigmarole. Compared to getting into the P.-I., breaking into an armed camp would have been easier.

"I'm sorry, but Mr. Cole isn't available," the receptionist told me with a blandly sweet smile. "He's on special assignment today."

"Where?"

"I'm sorry, I'm afraid I can't give out that information."

"When will he be back?"

"Probably later on this week. For sure by next Monday morning."

Captain Powell hadn't given me until Monday. He wanted results today. Now. And so did I.

"Is he calling in for messages?"

"I'm not sure. Somebody up at the City Desk could probably answer that better than I can."

The switchboard phone rang, not once but three separate times in a row. And each time the receptionist handled the phone before coming back to me. It's the same kind of song and dance that happens in auto-parts stores or hardware stores where the important person on the phone always takes precedence over the poor hapless boob who is actually standing in front of the counter with money in his hand waiting to buy something.

The receptionist came back to me eventually. She looked at me as though she'd never laid eyes on me before. "May I help you, please?"

"Maxwell Cole, remember? You were going to connect me to the City Desk." By then I was no doubt clenching my teeth.

The light came on. Dim, but a light. "Oh, that's right. Sorry. Just step to that phone over there."

In the long run, the City Desk folks wouldn't or couldn't give me a straight answer on Maxwell Cole's whereabouts, either. But someone did finally agree to connect me with the "City Beat" voice-mail line.

"Max," I snarled into the phone. "This is Detective Beaumont. I need to talk to you. ASAP. And I mean talk in person, not just play telephone tag back and forth on these damn voice-mail networks."

I left both my home and office numbers on the voice-mail message and then stalked back outside, where my 928 waited next to the curb. Even after maneuvering through downtown morning rush-hour traffic, I parked in the garage on James and still made it into the Public Safety Building and up to the homicide digs on the fifth floor a good fifteen minutes before Sue Danielson.

"What are you doing here, Sleeping Beauty?" she asked when she caught sight of me. "The last time I talked to you, I thought you were going back to bed."

"So did I," I grumbled. "Right up until Captain Powell called to ream my ass out."

"What about?"

I handed her a photocopy of Maxwell Cole's column, one that had magically appeared in the middle of my desk by the time I arrived at work. Sue read the column in silence, then gave it back to me.

"Where did he get his information?" she asked.

"That's what Captain Powell wants to know. It wasn't from you, was it?"

Her eyes narrowed. "Are you accusing…?"

I cut her off, stopping her in midreply. "No, I'm not, but I had to ask. Forget it. Powell gave me orders to find the leak. I'm going through the motions, that's all. But if you didn't talk to Maxwell Cole, and if I didn't, who else is there?"

"The two guys from Patrol who took the initial report and Bonnie Elgin herself."

"Wait a minute," I said, remembering my late evening phone call to the Elgins' house. There had been a lot of noise in the background. "That has to be it."

"What does?"

"When I called Bonnie about the prints, it sounded as though there was a party going on. Maybe there was. I'll bet either Maxwell Cole was there in person, or else one of his big-mouthed sources was."

"When Bonnie shows up for fingerprinting, we'll have to check that out," Sue Danielson said.

"Yes," I agreed. "We certainly will."

As it turned out, I was nowhere near the Public Safety Building by the time Bonnie Elgin and Sue Danielson finished up with the prints and sketch.

About 9:15 A. M. Detective Stan Jacek came wandering back through the fifth-floor maze of cubicles and found me sitting at my desk, holding up my head and working on paper. Paper paper. Somebody needed to let Maxwell Cole know that not everybody at Seattle P.D. had a handy-dandy laptop computer at his or her disposal.

Stan hadn't slept any longer than I, and he was equally grouchy. "How can people stand living and working in a place like this?" he demanded irritably. "It took me ten minutes just to find a parking place."