J. Jance - A more perfect union

"I'll have to have one of the assistant medical examiners come take a look at this," she said. "I think Mike Wilson is on call."

"Any obvious wounds?" I asked, as she started to walk away.

She shrugged. "Possible homicidal violence."

The words "homicidal violence" constitute a catchall phrase that can mean anything or nothing.

Paul Kramer frowned, jerking his head in my direction. "Wait just a damn minute here. How come he's asking questions, Manny? I thought this was our case."

Manny made little effort to conceal his growing annoyance. "Professional courtesy," he answered curtly. "Beau was here when they found the body."

"Oh," Kramer replied. He didn't sound convinced.

I tried my best to give Detective Kramer the benefit of the doubt. After all, being a novice on the fifth floor of Seattle's Public Safety Building isn't any bed of roses. I thought maybe having a seasoned homicide veteran like me peering over his shoulder was making him nervous. Whatever was bugging him, Paul Kramer was creating a bad first impression as far as I was concerned.

Not wanting to escalate the situation further, I changed the subject. "That's one good thing about being called out on a Saturday," I said jokingly. "At least you won't be stuck with Doc Baker."

Manny snorted. "You got that right, Beaumont. Compared to Baker, Mike Wilson's a piece of cake."

On several different occasions in the past it had been my personal misfortune to summon Dr. Howard Baker, King County's chief medical examiner, away from a social engagement of one kind or another. Irascible under the best of circumstances, Baker could be a real pisser late at night or on weekends. Around homicide, a place where consensus on anything is virtually impossible, there seemed to be almost total agreement that Mike Wilson, Baker's newly appointed assistant, was a big improvement.

Wilson had a pleasant, easygoing way about him that was a breath of fresh air compared to his hard-assed boss. A recent transplant to Seattle, Wilson was an energetic man in his mid-thirties. Rumor has it that one of his undergraduate degrees is in philosophy, although that's probably something he wouldn't want advertised around in the law-enforcement community.

Mike Wilson arrived at Lake Union Drydock a few minutes later, still dressed in casual tennis togs. He went straight to Audrey Cummings. The two of them conferred briefly before going over to view the body, squatting together side by side on the edge of the dock. "How long do you think he's been in the water?" I heard Wilson ask.

Audrey cocked her head to one side as if giving the matter serious consideration. "A week, maybe?"

Wilson glanced up at the metallic blue sky above us and nodded in agreement. "Pretty good guess. Maybe longer than that, but in this kind of heat, a week is probably right on the money. That's about how long it would take for him to float to the surface."

Getting up, Wilson helped Audrey to her feet then ambled back to where the bunch of us still stood in a quiet circle-Manny Davis and Paul Kramer, Officers Baxter and Jackson, Derrick Parker and I. Mike glanced around the group, trying to figure who was in charge.

"We'll need a boat," he said finally to the whole group in general. "A boat and a body basket. Has anyone called Harbor Patrol?"

"They're supposedly on the way," Manny told him. He turned to Officer Jackson. "See what's holding them up, will you?" Merrilee Jackson nodded and left, slipping quickly through the assembled group of reporters, a few of whom had, despite Woody Carroll's best efforts, managed to work their way inside the perimeter of vehicles.

Meanwhile, Derrick Parker slipped away from us long enough to edge his way to the side of the dock and steal a curious glance at the body. He turned away, groaning. "I think I'll go check on Hannah and Cassie," he said, hurrying off without another word to anybody.

Manny watched him go. "Some hero, huh?" he said, shaking his head. "But my wife thinks he's the greatest thing since sliced bread."

"Come on, Manny," Kramer said shortly. "Quit stalling. Let's get this place cordoned off for a crime-scene search."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Crime scene? When a floater has been in the water as long as that one had, there's no way it would come to the surface the same place it went down. Not even someone as new to homicide as Kramer could be that stupid. It was a grandstand play, pure and simple, but I was in no position to call him on it. Mike Wilson did.

"Are you sure you want to bother, Detective Kramer? It looks to me as though the body's at least a week old. My guess is he died somewhere else and got carried here by the water. Not only that, we have no way of knowing whether or not it's homicide."

"But you can't say for sure one way or the other, can you?" Kramer insisted.

Wilson shrugged. "No," he agreed mildly. "I suppose not, but even if he went in the water on this very spot, look around. There's been a whole lot of activity on this dock. How can you expect to find any useful physical evidence in a place like this after that long a time?"

What Wilson was saying should have been clear to the most casual observer. Lake Union Drydock, already working overtime to get a series of naval minesweepers back in working order for duty in the Persian Gulf, was one busy place even before you factored in Goldfarb's moviemaking army. In fact, the naval repair contract schedule was so overloaded, they had been forced to cut back our on-site shooting from two weekends to one. During the previous week when I had stopped by the drydock with the location manager, the place where we were now standing had been a beehive of activity cloaked in a cloud of sandblasting dust.

Wilson was right, of course. No physical evidence could possibly have survived a week in that kind of turmoil, but Detective Paul Kramer wasn't buying any of it, and he was the one calling the shots.

"We're still going to look," he said shortly. He motioned to Officer Baxter. "Go get some tape," he ordered.

Baxter left, reluctantly, with Kramer right behind him.

I turned to Manny. "That's one arrogant asshole," I told him. "What Mike said made all kinds of sense."

Manny gave a long-suffering sigh. "Just because something makes sense to the rest of the world doesn't mean it will to Paul Kramer. He marches to a different drummer."

"But Goldfarb and his crew are going to need to go back to work here. They've only got today and tomorrow to finish filming this sequence."

Manny shrugged. "You're welcome to try to talk some sense into him, Beau, but don't hold your breath. Once Kramer gets a wild hair up his butt, you can't change his mind for nothing."

I started after Detective Kramer. Sam Goldfarb and Cassie Young intercepted me before I could catch up.

"What's happening?" Goldfarb wanted to know. "When are they going to clear out of here so we can get back to work?"

"I'm checking on that right now," I told them.

Kramer was removing a roll of Day-Glo crime-scene tape from the trunk of his unmarked patrol car when I caught up to him. He handed the tape to Baxter. "You and that partner of yours start roping off the area," Kramer directed. He pointed toward the minesweeper towering in the drydock. "Start from that boat over there and go all the way to the end of the dock."

"Come on, Kramer," I said. "Isn't this a little premature? Why rope off half of Lake Union when you still don't know whether or not you've got a homicide? You know as well as I do that you're not going to find anything. There've been dozens of people all over that dock today. There've been dozens of people on it all week long, and nobody saw anything."

I was stepping on toes, but Kramer needed to be taken down a notch.

"It's my case, Beaumont, and as far as I'm concerned, this is a crime scene," he insisted stubbornly. "If I say we do a search, we do a search." He slammed the trunk lid closed for emphasis.