J. Jance - Payment in kind

He lurched backward and settled on a stool behind the bar. “How?” he whispered hoarsely. “How did it happen?”

“We don’t know that yet and won’t until after the autopsy.”

At that, Pete Kelsey bent over, burying his face in his hands while his wide shoulders shook with uncontrollable sobs. The gray-flecked ponytail flopped up and down like a landed fish. He was mumbling to himself through the sobs, and I strained to hear the words.

“I never should have…” was all I could make out.

Kramer and I waited patiently for a break in the emotional storm. At last there was a letup.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked hopelessly, looking up at us only after wiping his tear-stained face on the shoulders of his faded blue work shirt.

“If you could accompany us downtown, we need to have someone make a positive identification.”

He nodded. “It’ll take me a few minutes to close up. And I should call my manager…”

“I’ll do that,” Maxwell Cole offered. “I can call Nancy and let her know. You do whatever else needs to be done.”

By this time the couple in the corner had become aware of the situation. With hurried words of clumsy condolence, they paid their tab and left. Pete Kelsey seemed to have regained control of himself as he turned off coffeepots, emptied the cash register, and turned out lights.

“Nancy said to leave the change in the bottom drawer of her desk,” Max reported when he got off the phone. “She’ll be in to reopen about four. She’s waiting for someone to come put chains on her car.” Max paused for a moment before adding, “She says to tell you she’s sorry.”

Pete Kelsey nodded, but he went on with what he was doing, stopping by the window long enough to turn the orange and black CLOSED sign so it faced out. Then he opened the door to let us back out onto the street.

“Me too,” he murmured fiercely under his breath. “Me too.”

Outside, standing in the snowbound and all-but-deserted street, we suggested that Pete ride with us as far as Harborview Hospital, but he declined, saying that he didn’t want to have to come all the way back across town to pick up his car from the tavern. Considering the hazardous driving conditions, I didn’t blame him. It was time for compromise.

“I’ll ride with you then,” I suggested. Pete nodded in agreement, pulling car keys from the pocket of a faded sheepskin-lined denim jacket as he started toward the cars.

Meanwhile, Maxwell Cole, who was still hovering solicitously in the background, tagged along after us. “Want me to come too?” he asked hopefully.

“No, Max,” Pete answered. “I’ll be all right.”

Max’s heavy features sagged with disappointment at the idea of being left behind. “I’ll give you a call later then,” Max added. “Just to see if there’s anything you need me to do.”

“Sure,” Pete said.

His car, parked in Seattle’s peculiar BACK-IN-ANGLE-ONLY fashion near the buried curb, was a bowlegged old Eagle station wagon. Nut brown in color, it was the kind of nondescript vehicle used-car dealers call “transportation specials,” a means of getting around rather than an extension of the owner’s ego. It also had the lived-in look of a one-person car.

I waited while Pete Kelsey sorted through the accumulated debris on the rider’s seat, which included several sets of blueprints, a series of empty coffee cups, and a massive old-fashioned satchel that evidently functioned as a briefcase. All this he tossed carelessly onto the floor behind the front seat. The backseat had been folded flat, and the entire rear of the car was occupied, from side to side and back to front, by an enormous old-fashioned, claw-footed tub.

“Sorry about the mess,” Pete apologized. “I picked the tub up from the refinishing company Saturday afternoon and was supposed to drop it off at a remodeling job today, but with the weather and now this…” His voice trailed off.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Let’s go.”

The four-wheel-drive Eagle may have looked ungainly, but properly equipped with snow tires, the station wagon was as agile and surefooted as a mountain goat, and Pete Kelsey was a capable driver. He knew the streets of the city well enough that we got to Harborview Hospital a good two minutes before Detective Kramer did.

While we waited for Kramer to arrive, I sat there knowing what was to come and dreading it. You can’t be human and not feel some empathy for the people whose broken loved ones lie on cold, hard slabs in morgues waiting for someone to come identify them. Often the survivors’ shattered hopes and dreams lie there dead as well.

Leading Charlotte Chambers through the process had been bad enough. Fortunately for her, the bloody wound on her husband’s chest had been mercifully concealed, hidden from view beneath the antiseptic covering of the body sheet. With Pete Kelsey it would be different. There was no way to conceal Marcia’s ugly head wound. It would be fully visible. My heart went out to her husband. So far, he was bearing up pretty well, but I couldn’t, in good conscience, allow him to walk unprepared into the medical examiner’s office. I felt a moral obligation to give him some advance warning about what was coming.

“Have you ever seen a gunshot victim?” I asked.

It was a moment before he replied. “Yes,” he answered dully without elaborating as to where or when. “I have.”

“So you know what to expect?”

He nodded grimly.

“It’ll probably be pretty rough, Mr. Kelsey. The bullet went in through her chin and came out the back of her head.”

“Oh.”

The single word wrenched out of him as an involuntary groan. Pete’s fingers closed around the steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip, but he kept himself under control.

“I’ll be all right,” he said at last, loosening his fingers from the steering wheel and unclenching his stiffened jaw. “Thanks for letting me know.”

Frigid air had crept into the car. We were both getting cold. I led him inside, and Kramer caught up with us in the reception area. The three of us walked into the morgue together. When the attendant pulled out the body and removed the sheet, Pete Kelsey took one quick look, then turned away and dashed for the door, his face ashen, his throat working convulsively.

I found him standing outside the building, gulping in deep, shuddering breaths of the icy air.

“Couldn’t they have done something to clean her up?” he whispered hoarsely.

“Not until after the autopsy,” I explained. “It’s a matter of preserving evidence.”

He shook his head miserably. “Her hair,” he murmured in a voice choking with raw emotion. “I can’t believe her hair. Marcia was always so vain about it. She loved being a blonde, a real, natural blonde. When the gray crept up on her a few years ago, she hated it and started dipping in the dye.”

Suddenly, thinking about his wife’s once beautiful hair proved to be too much. There was no way for him to reconcile the memories of what Marcia Kelsey had once been with the terrible ruin in the morgue behind us. Kelsey plummeted over the edge of control. Leaning against the building, he stood with his face averted from me, sobbing uncontrollably.

I couldn’t help him. No one could have. That kind of wild grief is beyond the reach of comfort. I waited until the worst of the tears had spent themselves.

Finally he straightened up and squared his shoulders. “I’m all right now,” he said shakily. “What happens next?”

“We’ll need to ask you some questions. It’s cold out here, Mr. Kelsey. Let’s go back inside.” The frigid air sliced through my clothing, chilling me to the bone, but I don’t believe Kelsey even noticed. I pulled open the door and made as if to lead him back inside.