J. Jance - Long Time Gone

“I hadn’t realized the highway on Whidbey was closed.”

“Not the highway,” she said. “That’s open. The problem is our road-the private one that goes from the highway to the convent. There’s snow and several downed trees as well. But I’ve been away for days now, and I’m ready to be home, even if I have to get out and walk.”

Sister Mary Katherine struck me as the kind of woman who wouldn’t be above hiking through snow and ice to get where she wanted to go, but I wondered if she was strong-willed enough to deal with all the emotional fallout from that long-ago Saturday afternoon.

I helped her retrieve her bags from the bellman, then we stood together under the covered portico waiting for our vehicles to be brought around. A steady downpour was falling on the street outside. Compared with the previous days of bitter cold, the forty-degree weather felt downright balmy.

“Are you sure you’re going to be all right?” I asked again.

Sister Mary Katherine nodded. “Yes,” she said. “But it’s not easy. I just never thought I’d be involved in something like this. These kinds of things aren’t supposed to happen to people in my line of work.”

“You’d be surprised,” I said.

The parking valet drove up in a white Odyssey minivan. Once Sister Mary Katherine’s bags had been loaded, she turned back to me and held out her hand. “Thank you, Beau,” she said. “I’m sure working with you and Freddy-with people I know and trust-has made this far less traumatic than it would have been otherwise.”

“You’re welcome,” I said. I handed her one of my cards. “Call me if you remember anything more.”

She studied the card for a moment before slipping it into the pocket of her coat. “All right,” she said. “And you’ll let me know what’s going on?”

“Yes, but remember, this is going to take time.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said.

I watched her drive away. By then my 928 was there as well. I got into the Porsche and headed for SPD. Melting snow and the warm driving rain combined to turn Seattle’s downtown streets into rivers. I felt sorry for hapless pedestrians trying to stay out of the way of rooster tails of oily, dirty spray kicked up in the wake of passing cars.

Even though the department is now in its new digs up the hill from the old Public Safety Building, out of habit I drove to the old parking garage on James where I used to be a regular customer. No one there recognized me or the 928. And the same thing was true for the new Seattle Police Department Headquarters building on Fifth Avenue. None of the officers on duty in the classy lobby had any idea of who I was. After being issued a visitor’s pass, I went upstairs to Records.

When I told the woman in charge what I wanted, she shook her head. “Oh, honey,” she said. “All cold case stuff that old is still down in the vault at the old Public Safety Building. You know where that is?”

“I’m pretty sure I can find it,” I assured her.

“Good. You go right on down there then. I’ll call ahead and let them know you’re coming.”

Being a typical Seattle native, I have a natural aversion to umbrellas. By the time I walked first up the hill and then back down again, I was wet through. And once I reached the building that had been my place of employment for so many years, I found out you really can’t go home again. The Public Safety Building, soon scheduled to meet the wrecking ball, was a pale shadow of its former self. One side of the once busy lobby was stacked with the cots used by a men’s homeless shelter that temporarily occupies that space overnight. A janitor was haphazardly mopping the granite floor. He nodded at me as I made my way to the bored security guard stationed near the elevator bank.

“Basement, right?” he asked, putting down his worn paperback.

That meant someone had called ahead to say I was coming. “Yes,” I said.

“Downstairs,” he said. “Take a right when you exit the elevators and go to the end of the corridor.”

Here no pass was necessary. The lobby may have been a cot warehouse, but the basement corridor was worse. It was stacked floor to ceiling with a collection of decrepit gray metal desks, shelving units and cubicle dividers, along with dozens of broken-down desk chairs missing backs and casters. I suspect my old fifth-floor desk was there in that collection of wreckage that looked more like a gigantic garage sale than a corridor.

I dodged my way through the maze of furniture and into what’s called the vault. The clerk in charge of the evidence room was a middle-aged lady whom I didn’t recognize. “This is from a long time ago,” she said, examining my request form complete with the specifics of the Mimi Marchbank murder. “It may take a while for me to dig this out,” she added. “Why don’t you have a seat?”

The only place to sit was at a battered wooden study carrel that looked as though it predated the junk in the corridor by several decades and made me wonder if it wasn’t a displaced refugee from an early version of the U. Dub Library.

Convinced I had come into the building entirely under everybody’s radar, I was taking a load off when, two minutes later, the door slammed open. A fighting-mad, rain-drenched Paul Kramer marched into the room.

That would be Captain Paul Kramer. At the time I left Seattle PD, it may have looked to the world as though I was bailing because of Sue Danielson’s death. Sue, my partner at the time, had been gunned down by her ex-husband, and I admit it-her murder was a contributing factor to my leaving when I did. Sue’s senseless slaughter was one more than I could stand. But the other part of it was the fact that the departmental hierarchy had seen fit to promote a backstabbing worm like Paul Kramer to the rank of captain.

Sure, he had aced the test. I don’t question the fact that he had the scores to justify a promotion. What Kramer didn’t have were people skills. He was an ambitious, brownnosing jerk who flimflammed his superiors by being utterly scrupulous about his paperwork, but he wasn’t above hanging his fellow detectives out to dry whenever it suited him. He and I had been on a collision course from the first day he turned up in Homicide. Back then it was all I could do to tolerate being in the same room with him. In the aftermath of Sue’s death, the idea of having to report to the guy was more than I could handle.

Now, years later, someone had gone to the trouble of sounding an alarm and letting him know I was in the building. Territorial as any dog, he had hurried down the hill and down to the basement to lift his leg metaphorically and pee in my shoe.

“Hello there, Beaumont,” he said, sounding as obnoxiously official as ever. “Long time no see. Imagine meeting you here.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “Imagine that.”

He meandered over to the counter and looked around for a piece of paper that might give him a clue as to why I was there. Fortunately, the clerk had taken my request with her when she had wandered off through the towering maze of sagging metal shelving. If Captain Kramer wanted to find out what I was doing in the evidence room, he was going to have to come straight out and ask-which he did with as much hail-fellow-well-met phoniness as he could muster.

“What brings you back to the old stamping ground?”

“Working a case,” I said.

“Really,” he said. “For SHIT?”

“Yup,” I told him. “That’s where I hang my hat these days.”

Kramer leaned back against the counter and folded his arms across his chest. “Your being here wouldn’t have anything to do with what’s going on with Ron Peters, would it?”

I could have answered the question straight out, but Kramer has always brought out the worst in me. This was no exception. “Since Ron and I are good friends, wouldn’t that be a clear conflict of interest?” I asked.