J. Jance - Lying in vait

"Of course, I told her that was ridiculous, but she didn't seem to pay any attention. I think it's hitting her so hard because they were…well, you know…she and Gunter were…estranged."

This time Else was unable to suppress a series of sobs that rose in her throat and temporarily choked off her ability to speak. Her audible anguish, captured in all its misery on the recording, flashed through the machine and into me-emotions transformed to electrical shocks.

Bad as Else Gebhardt's suffering was right then, I knew it would only grow worse once she learned about the existence of Denise Whitney and the young woman's relationship to Gunter.

Eventually, Else's voice came back on the recording. A little stronger and steadier, more under control.

"Sorry," she managed. "I didn't mean to fall apart like that. Anyway, I'll be up early in the morning. If I go to sleep at all, that is. So call me any time after six or else stop by. I really do need to talk to you."

I erased that message. Alan Torvoldsen had dodged the bullet, that damned lucky stiff. I was the one who would be stuck with the thankless task of revealing the fact that Gunter Gebhardt had made a mockery of his marriage vows.

The next hour seemed to take forever. My coffee dipstick wasn't registering quite full, so I made another pot and then sat in my recliner, sipping coffee and considering what I had learned about the people I so far knew to be part of Gunter Gebhardt's life. More often than not, murderers are found within the realm of the victim's circle of acquaintance.

In other words, Gunter was a whole lot more likely to have been bumped off by someone he knew than by someone he didn't. And by someone who knew him well. The savagery of the crime didn't point to random violence perpetrated by a passing stranger. The killer was someone twisted who reveled in human suffering-someone with an appalling grudge against Gunter and Denise both. Which of those two was the primary target? I wondered. Was it one or the other or both? That was the basic starting point. Until we understood that, the investigation had no focus. We were shooting blind.

My instinctive choice for primary target was Gunter. That's probably nothing more than prejudice on my part. The reading we'd been getting on him was a mixed bag. Yes, he had done good things-including rescuing his financially failing in-laws, but there were plenty of other things that weren't nearly so commendable.

And that's when I started thinking about Gunter's twenty-two-year-old daughter, Kari. Naturally, Else had categorically dismissed her daughter's self-incriminating admission of guilt. And why not? Mothers are almost universally like that. Else had attributed Kari's emotional distress to the fact that Gunter had died without ever resolving the quarrel between them.

And that was possible. But I wondered if that was all of it. Exactly how long had Kari Gebhardt and her father been at war? I asked myself. How long and why?

I happened to know there were things about Gunter Gebhardt that his wife and widow didn't yet suspect. What about Kari? Had she somehow learned her father's ugly secret? What if she had discovered not only the existence of Denise Whitney, but also of the concealed financial assets that allowed her mother's rival to live in isolated splendor in the house on Camano Island.

As the father of a more-or-less unpredictable daughter, I'd like to think that torture patricide isn't something well-brought-up girls do-not even when they learn awful truths about their daddies screwing around behind their mommies' backs. Still, irate daughters have committed murder on occasion. Had that happened here? Or if Kari Gebhardt wasn't tough enough to do the dirty deed herself, might she not-in defense of her mother's honor-have found someone else to do it for her?

After years in Homicide, I have more than a nodding acquaintance with killers. Some of the most disturbing perpetrators-the ones I consider to be the scum of the earth-are the contract-killer types, the ones who murder for hire and see their job as nothing more or less than a business transaction. Some of them are willing to do anything for money-anything at all. And a scary few take inordinate pride in a job well done-the bloodier the better.

I left my apartment at a quarter to six and drove through Seattle's third day of unremitting morning fog. When I got to the top of Greenbrier, I had to dodge out of the way of a fire-engine-red Jeep Cherokee that came surging up the rise and almost ran me off the road. I would have had a few choice words about drivers of bright red cars, but I didn't. After all, I happen to be the driver of a bright red car myself.

I arrived at Else Gebhardt's Blue Ridge house at exactly the same time as the delivery boy for the Post-Intelligencer.

I picked up the paper from where he had tossed it in the driveway and carried it into the house. It seemed to me it was probably fortunate that the paper and I arrived at the Gebhardt house at precisely the same time. At least it gave Else someone familiar to lean on as the tawdry details of her dead marriage began to unravel in public.

Maybe I was kidding myself, but I wanted to believe that my being there would help.

I had a single, overriding reason for not wanting to be the one who gave Else Gebhardt the damning news about her husband-I knew how much it would hurt.

Faced with this kind of after-the-fact revelation of betrayal, people are always quick to trot out that useless old saw "The truth will set you free." Use of that particular quote always causes me to respond in kind with a line of my own, with the title of a song from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess — to wit, "It Ain't Necessarily So."

I know from personal experience that a painful truth learned about a departed loved one-news that arrives after that person's death-is more than merely hurtful. It can be paralyzing. I'm not hypothesizing, either. I know that pain personally because I've been there, and years later, it still hurts.

I've wondered sometimes, in the years since Anne Corley died, how would I have reacted if things had been different. For instance, if I had been given a clear-cut choice to go either way-to know the truth about her or to spend the remainder of my life in blissful ignorance-which would I have chosen? Would I have opted for truth or would I have clung blindly to those few precious moments and memories? Yes, having to come to terms with the "real" Anne Corley inalterably changed me. Grieving over her loss forced me to grow up. Was loving and losing worth it? I don't know.

Some days-like the day I first held Kayla, my granddaughter, in my arms-I can say unequivocally that life since Anne was well worth the pain. But other times, I'm not so sure. The jury's still out.

On occasion I give myself little pep talks and try to convince J. P. Beaumont that of course he loved Anne Corley unconditionally. That's a hell of a lot easier to say or contemplate as long as she's dead and safely buried up in Mount Pleasant Cemetery. I'm afraid the reality of living out our lives would have been a whole lot tougher. For one thing, we would never have been able to live together as man and wife, not with me working homicide year after year and with her locked away, either in a prison or else in a facility for the criminally insane.

So Anne Corley was on my mind that morning when I sat in Else Gebhardt's cheerfully decorated kitchen, telling her what I suspected to be the sad truth about Gunter, her philandering and now-dead husband. Else's sallow, haggard features became even more so as I related what I knew of her husband's illicit connection to Denise Whitney and of the still-smoldering love-nest hideaway on Camano Island.

The problem for Else Gebhardt was entirely understandable. I believe that while Gunter was alive, Else gave him his husbandly due in the form of willing and unconditional love. Now she was finding out too late that rather than treasuring her devotion, he had hurled it back in her teeth. I told her as diplomatically and gently as I could, yet she seemed to shrink under the hurtful impact of my words.