J. Jance - A more perfect union

"Hey, wait a minute. I know him."

Kramer bounded off the love seat to stand beside me. "Who is he?" he demanded.

"Martin Green."

"Martin Green?" Kramer echoed. "Who the hell is he?"

"The executive director of the ironworkers' local here."

"And you know him?" Kramer demanded.

"He lives in my building."

"What about him?" Manny asked, stepping forward so he too could see.

I tried to quell the rising excitement I felt but I didn't want to blurt out anything more in front of the two outsiders. "Let's take a look at the next frame," I said quickly.

"The one after the fall shot?" Jack asked.

I nodded.

With Kath Naguchi's help, we examined several more frames of film both before and after Angie Dixon's fall, as well as pictures taken at approximately the same time by the other camera.

There was nothing else unusual, only the unmistakable presence of Martin Green.

"Would you like a hard copy of this?" Jack asked when we finally told him we were finished.

"What do you mean, hard copy?" Kramer asked.

Kath Naguchi sighed. "Do you want a copy of the tape or not? It'll only take a few minutes."

"Yes, we do," I answered.

Once more Kath and Jack disappeared into the back room. Paul Kramer rounded on me. "Now tell me. Who the hell is Martin Green?"

"The guy Linda Decker suspects is responsible for Logan Tyree's death."

Manny whistled. "Hot damn! And maybe this one too?"

"Let's don't jump to conclusions," I cautioned, "but it could be. It just could be."

When you're fighting in the dark, any connection is better than no connection. And that was the way with this. If Martin Green had been on the iron with the doomed Angie Dixon only minutes before her fatal fall, then it was possible he had something to do with her death. However, we had all been cops too long for any of us to accept that premise at face value.

By the time we were back out on the street, we figured there was probably some perfectly legitimate reason for Green's presence on the Masters Plaza job site. Not only that, we'd made a joint decision to go ask him about it. With that in mind, we headed for the Labor Temple.

There was an election of officers going on in one of the union locals, and parking was at a premium. Kramer and Manny parked in a loading zone on Clay, while I pulled into the first floor of Belltown Terrace's garage and grabbed the first available spot.

The weather had turned wet again and it was raining hard by the time I dashed across the alley that separates the Labor Temple from my building. Paul Kramer was just giving his card to the ironworkers' receptionist when I caught up with them. She gave me a funny look as though trying to place someone she vaguely knew.

"May I help you?" she asked.

"I'm with them," I told her.

She picked up her phone and spoke into an intercom. "Someone's here to see you," she announced.

"Who is it?" he asked. "I'm busy."

"They're detectives," she answered.

Her quiet announcement brought Martin Green to the door of his office in a hurry. The broken glass had been replaced. The receptionist handed him Detective Kramer's card. Green glanced down at it and then up at us, his eyes traveling briefly from face to face until he stopped at mine. He frowned.

"Beaumont, isn't it? From Belltown Terrace?"

I nodded. "That's right."

"To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"We need to ask you a few questions."

"You're with these other gentlemen?" he asked, waving Kramer's card.

"Yes, I am."

"What kind of questions?"

"About Angie Dixon."

He frowned again and cocked his head to one side. "All right. Come in. Kim, hold all my calls, will you?"

Green ushered us into his office and then he had to step back outside to bring along an extra chair. "What about Angie Dixon?" he began, not waiting until he was seated before he asked the question. "I thought that was all settled, that her death had been ruled accidental. Has something changed?" Since we knew each other however briefly, his statements were addressed to me.

I took the ball. "When's the last time you saw her?"

"Minutes before she died."

Green answered evenly, without a moment's hesitation. His straightforward manner surprised me. There was no outward show of concern that our placing him at the scene of Angie Dixon's possibly non-accidental death might mean he was under suspicion.

"What were you doing there?"

"I needed to talk to her," he answered.

"You must have needed to real bad, to track her down at a job site on a Sunday morning."

Martin Green didn't respond, but he met my gaze with unblinking indifference.

"Why was it so important for you to see her?"

This time there was a pause, the kind of noticeable, momentary indecision that puts any detective worth his salt on red alert.

"She had something I needed," Green answered blandly.

"And what might that be?" Kramer asked, plowing into the process-the proverbial bull in a china shop.

Martin Green's eyes momentarily flicked from me to Kramer, as if assessing the weight of the interruption. By the time he answered, though, he was once more addressing me, closing out both Manny and Kramer. The two of us might have been alone in the room.

"Some tapes," he answered quietly. "I believed she had some accounting tapes. I wanted them."

The accounting tapes! Linda Decker's infernal tapes again. I tried not to let anything in my voice betray that we knew what tapes he was talking about, that we did have copies of them.

"And did she give them to you?"

"She was going to," Martin Green answered. "She said she wouldn't be able to get them until the next day."

"But instead, she died a few minutes later," I prompted.

Green nodded.

"Did it occur to you that there might be some connection between her death and her agreeing to give you those missing tapes?"

"No. The people I talked to said her death was an accident, and I believed them."

"And where were you the night Logan Tyree's boat blew up over on Lake Union?"

"The night Logan Tyree was killed? I was out of town."

The fact that he spat out that detail right off the top of his head alerted me further. Without careful reflection, people don't usually remember what they were doing on a certain day or at a certain time. Unless that time and date have some special significance.

"Where out of town?" I asked.

"Vancouver, B.C."

"Is there someone who can verify that?"

"No."

The abrupt certainty of his answer set more alarm bells clanging inside my head. "You're saying that you went to Vancouver that night, but no one saw you there."

"Why are you asking me about that night?"

"Because I have someone who claims Logan Tyree had an appointment to see you the night he died."

For the first time, Martin Green looked uncomfortable. "That's impossible. I wouldn't have scheduled an appointment with him. That's the night…" He broke off suddenly and didn't continue.

"That was the night what?" I prodded.

Green shook his head stubbornly. "I did see someone there, in Vancouver, but I won't bring her into it. She's married."

"To someone else?"

"That's right."

That struck me as ironic. Here was Martin Green claiming to be stuck with an unusable alibi. If the story was true, his reticence, for somewhat different reasons, was still the same as mine with Marilyn Sykes-confidentiality.

"But why would I want to kill Logan?"

"For the same motive you might have to kill Angie Dixon," I replied. "To get the tapes."

"Don't you understand?" Martin Green demanded. "I wanted the tapes. I didn't have to have them."

"Wait a minute. I thought you said you went to see Angie Dixon on the job because of the tapes."