J. Jance - Lying in vait

"You don't believe that," I said, "and neither do I. Erika Weber Schmidt plays for keeps. If anybody ever sees those three women again, they'll probably be as dead as Gunter Gebhardt."

Sue shook her head. "I hope not." She opened the door, started to get in, and then thought better of it. "Give it up for the night," she advised kindly, almost as an afterthought. "We're both too tired to do anything more right now, but call me in the morning. As soon as you wake up. We'll take another crack at it then."

As soon as she said it, I recognized she was right. I was bone-tired, and she had to be every bit as worn out as I was. Still, she had stuck with me all night long; backed me up every futile, bureaucratic inch of the way.

"You've been a brick tonight, Detective Danielson," I said gratefully. "Most guys would have given up and gone home long before this."

She gave me a wan but game grin. "We're partners, remember? Now go home and get some sleep, and I will, too."

I did, and so did she. I hauled my weary ass home, crawled out of my still partially damp clothes, and heaved myself into a nice warm bed. The clock radio came on at six-fifteen Sunday morning, just as it does every morning.

It wasn't that I especially wanted to be up again at that unreasonable hour. The truth is, my radio comes on that way every morning. I can tinker with it for a nap now and again, but I always reset it. I live in fear of not remembering Sunday night to reset it for Monday morning.

When the radio came on that Sunday morning, I'd had so little sleep that I could barely open my eyes and couldn't get my head screwed on straight. Blind with fatigue, I got up and staggered for the bathroom, thinking it was actually Monday.

For one thing, Paul Brendle, The KIRO radio traffic reporter, was in the air giving the helicopter-eye view of a massive but totally unusual Sunday morning traffic tie-up on Interstate 5 just north of downtown Seattle.

Early that morning, a speeding southbound semi had jackknifed on the rain-slicked pavement of the Ship Canal Bridge. The truck had plowed through the Jersey barrier at the south end of the bridge and had taken out two northbound vehicles. One of the wrecked cars, a sedan with one fatality and two seriously injured passengers inside it, had fallen from the northbound lanes into the middle of the express lanes some distance below, while the cab of the truck itself still dangled off the far edge of the raised roadway.

As a result, I-5 was closed to traffic. All lanes were shut down, including the two regular roadways as well as the express lanes. The Department of Transportation's Incident Response team was on the scene. Traffic had been diverted onto surface streets, creating a separate tangle all its own. According to the helicopter-based reporter, even with light weekend traffic volumes, things were a mess in downtown Seattle, and they were likely to remain so for some time-well into daylight hours.

My first thought was that none of this had anything to do with me. I headed back to bed, expecting to close my eyes and go back to sleep. Then the guy back in the studio said something to Paul Brendle to the effect that it sounded like a good day to be up in a helicopter rather than down on the ground. At the sound of those words, something clicked in the back of my head, and I sat bolt upright in bed.

For years, my connection to Paul Brendle-who broadcasts traffic information for the local CBS affiliate-had been exactly the same as that of most other Seattle-area radio listeners. His was a disembodied voice that came to us over the airwaves for several hours each morning and evening, waking us up in the morning-telling us which bridges were screwed up and what alternate routes might work when the one we were accustomed to using turned into an undeclared parking lot.

But my voice-only relationship with him had changed that previous spring when Alexis Downey had invited me to participate in the Seattle Repertory Theatre's first annual charity auction. Along with me, Paul and his wife, JoAnne, had been in attendance at the gala's inaugural event. Both feeling very much like fish out of water, Paul Brendle and I had somehow gravitated to one another and struck up a conversation.

We soon discovered a common bond-we were both moderately disturbed at the idea of being charity-auction cannon fodder. We hid out in a quiet corner of the crowded ballroom. Uncomfortable in my rented monkey suit, I looked to Paul for sympathy. He sighed and nodded, allowing as how he was far more comfortable in a flight jacket, but he advised me to do as he did-to go ahead and buy a tux that actually fit. I told him I'd think about it.

In the course of our few minutes' worth of conversation, the man had proudly told me a little about his company-Puget Sound Helicopters-and about how they had, only the week before, sent three of their twenty-five two-man helicopters up in the air to comb Vashon Island for a missing Alzheimer's patient who had wandered away from home. As I remembered, they had found the man, too, before the elements and hypothermia had a chance to get him.

Search and rescue! As my feet hit the floor, my fingers were scrabbling in the nightstand table looking for the phone book. Maybe Seattle P.D. couldn't-or wouldn't-afford to spend money on mounting a search-and-rescue operation, but J. P. Beaumont, private citizen, sure as hell could.

I tend to be a slow learner, but gradually I've come to have an understanding about the value of having money. What's taken me more time than anything else is coming to the realization that it's mine now, and I'm free to spend it any damn way I please.

I found the number in the phone book and dialed. At Puget Sound Helicopters, a very polite young man answered the phone.

"I'd like to speak to Paul Brendle," I said.

"I'm sorry, sir. He's out of the office right now. Can I give him a message for you?"

"Yes, you can," I said. "My name's Beaumont, Detective J. P. Beaumont, with the Seattle Police Department."

"Does Mr. Brendle know you?"

"I believe so," I answered. "We met last spring at a charity auction. I need to speak to him as soon as possible regarding a search-and-rescue operation."

"You said detective," the young man responded. "Who are you with?"

"Seattle P.D. If my name doesn't ring a bell, tell him I'm the one who gave away the Bentley at the Seattle Rep auction."

"Do you already have the authorization form?" the young man asked.

"What authorization form?"

"A search-and-rescue requisition," the young man explained patiently. "Our insurance requires that we have a signed requisition from the requesting agency in our hands before we can put a helicopter and pilot in the air."

"Seattle P.D. isn't authorizing this search," I told him.

"They aren't?" The man sounded confused. "But I thought you said…Who is, then?" he asked.

"I am. Me, personally."

"Mr. Beaumont," he said patronizingly, as though I were some kind of nut case, "these kinds of operations are very expensive…"

"How expensive?" I cut in.

"How big an area do you want to search?"

"Puget Sound," I answered.

"That's a big place," he returned. "If we put ten aircraft up, we could pretty well cover the area in three or four hours. At a hundred sixty dollars an hour times four hours times ten aircraft, you're looking at sixty-four hundred dollars plus tax. We'd need a check for seven thousand dollars to launch that kind of operation."

"Do you take American Express?"

"Yes."

"Good. Have Mr. Brendle call me ASAP," I ordered, and followed that by rattling off my phone number. "By the way," I added, "tell him I'm prepared to pay for more than one four-hour shift if that proves necessary. And if I have to cough up overtime pay because it's Sunday? So be it. I'll spring for that, too."