J. Jance - Payment in kind

“I haven’t had a chance to copy it yet,” I responded heatedly, because by then, my hackles were up too. “When I get around to it, believe me, you’ll be the first to know.”

Just then Sergeant Watkins appeared, drawn as inevitably to the sound of raised voices as iron filings to a powerful magnet. He paused in the doorway and peered at us both from over Detective Kramer’s burly shoulder. “What’s going on here, guys?” he asked.

“You could call it a slight procedural difference of opinion, Sergeant Watkins,” I replied. “It’s no biggie.”

I modified my tone slightly, answering the question as evenly as possible. Detective Kramer, still seething, said nothing.

“Anything I can do to help?” Watty asked, looking back and forth between us.

“Sure thing,” I told him. “We need all the help we can get.”

I shuffled through the impressive stack of papers that had collected throughout the day in the much-folded manila envelope Kramer had given me early that morning. The pile now contained not only the autopsy results, but also the duplicated logbook pages, the school district lists from Kendra Meadows, as well as the AFIS report. I separated out the last two sets of papers and handed them past Kramer, placing them directly in Watty’s hands.

“Give these to Margie to copy before she leaves, if you could. Detective Kramer here will need his copies, of course, but I’d like to have the originals back. Now, if you two will excuse me, I’ve got to finish up this report and head out of here. I’ve got a meeting at five-thirty.”

“Sounds reasonable to me,” Watty said. He dropped copies of my two earlier reports onto my desk. I’d left them on his as I came past. “Much better, by the way,” he said. He glanced down at what I was doing.

“Is that about the thing on Crockett?” I nodded. “Too bad Kelsey got away,” Watty continued, “but you handled it as well as anyone could under the circumstances. You can’t use deadly force in a room full of people.”

With that, Watty took the copying for Margie and left. As far as he was concerned, all was forgiven, at least for the moment, at least until the next time Kramer was able to sucker me. And if I was more careful, maybe that wouldn’t happen.

“I won’t forget that,” Kramer snarled. “Now, what the hell’s all this about Kelsey, and what went on up on Crockett?”

“I didn’t think you were interested, but we found a. 25 Auto Browning in Marcia Kelsey’s underwear drawer.”

“You did what?”

“I tried to tell you earlier, but you weren’t listening. Pete Kelsey’s mother-in-law found it in her daughter’s dresser drawer along with a whole bunch of Marcia Kelsey’s brand-new bras and panties.”

I had finally succeeded in getting Kramer’s undivided attention. “No shit?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Well, where is it?”

“Still back at Kelsey’s house, secured in the bottom of a shoe box, and sitting on the floor in Pete Kelsey’s bedroom.”

“Is it the same gun that killed Alvin Chambers?”

“It could be, but I don’t know yet, not for sure, because it still hasn’t come down here to the crime lab. My guess is that it’s the murder weapon, all right, at least one of them.”

“So you found the gun, then what happened?”

“While we were looking for a way to secure it, Kelsey himself showed up. As soon as he saw the gun, he took off like a shot.”

“And you let him get away?”

“You have a wonderful way with words, Kramer. Kelsey got away, but you heard Watty. I didn’t let him. You wouldn’t have had any better chance of catching him than I did.”

I shoved the first part of my report in his direction. “Since you haven’t gotten a look at your copy of the AFIS report yet, maybe you should start by reading this, and for your information, Pete Kelsey’s real name isn’t Pete Kelsey.”

“It’s not? Who is he then?”

“Shut up and read.”

While Kramer dropped heavily into a chair and started reading, I returned to working on the rest of the report. Before he had completed the first page of the one report, Margie came into the cubicle, bringing the others. Kramer read those as well with such absorbed concentration that I had completed the second and final page of my report, cleared the top of my desk, and was standing behind the desk with my coat on before he glanced up.

A deep frown scarred his broad forehead, but for the moment, his quarrel with me was entirely forgotten. I had to give the devil his due. Detective Kramer focused on the case almost to the exclusion of everything else, including his petty feud with me. That meant I had to shape up, too.

“What’s this character hiding?” Kramer asked musingly while rubbing the stiff bristles of his five-o’clock shadow. “It must be something serious for him to have been hiding out for more than twenty years. That’s a long time. A capital crime, maybe? The statute of limitations would have run out by now on something less than that.”

I nodded. It was a good point, and one I hadn’t thought of in precisely the same way.

Kramer referred once more to the first page of my report. “It says here you couldn’t find any of John David Madsen’s South Dakota relatives when you called looking for them.”

“Not through information. And not by that name. That’s not to say they don’t exist, however. There may be others, but it’ll take someone on the spot to track them down.”

“And as soon as Kelsey saw you were there with the gun, he took off?”

“That’s right.”

“He probably figured we were getting too close to the truth. Now that I think about it, what if Marcia knew about whatever it was and was threatening to expose him? Maybe that’s why he knocked her off.”

I could see where his line of reasoning was going, and reluctantly, I had to agree it made sense. “Whatever it is, it could also explain why he stuck it out in an otherwise unsatisfactory marriage, but why two guns?” I asked. “And why leave one at the scene and leave the other one hidden in a place where, once found, it would inevitably point suspicion in his direction?”

“That’s pretty damn stupid,” Kramer agreed. “Think about it. If we hadn’t already stumbled on this AFIS report, we certainly would have once the gun was found, and if he’s hidden out under cover for this long, you’d think he’d be smarter than that.”

It was interesting to realize that for the first time during the investigation, Detective Kramer and I seemed to be operating on similar wavelengths. As he was inching away from his conviction that Kelsey had to be the killer, I was moving toward it. With any kind of luck, we’d meet somewhere in the middle.

“So what’s going to happen?” Kramer asked. “Do you think he’ll try to go back to the house?”

“I doubt it. I’ve made arrangements for a twenty-four-hour surveillance team, though. As near as I can tell, there are only two ways into the house-the passage up from the garage that leads into the pantry and the front door, both of which are visible from Crockett.”

“It sounds like that daughter of his wouldn’t be above helping him out if she got a chance. Aren’t you worried that she’ll try to deep-six the gun or mess with it in some way?”

“I can’t say for sure,” I told him, “but my guess is no. She gave me her word, and I think she’ll honor it and let us take the gun when we show up with the warrant. Actually, she’s doing us a favor. That way there can be no question later about whether or not that gun was illegally removed from the premises.”

“When is the warrant supposed to be ready?”

“Later this evening, maybe. Otherwise, not until tomorrow morning. Do you have to be in court again tomorrow?”