J. Jance - Long Time Gone

Kramer made a sour face. “When has that ever stopped you?” he asked.

“It might not have stopped me, but I happen to work for the Washington State Attorney General’s office. Ross Connors doesn’t tolerate that kind of thing.”

“That must mean you’re working one of our old cases then? Did you clear it with anyone upstairs before you came down here?”

When he said “upstairs,” he wasn’t talking about the sleepy security guard up in the lobby. He meant upstairs upstairs-back on the top floors of the new building where the brass hang out.

“Paul,” I told him patiently, “I have a badge, and I have an assignment. Special Homicide means just exactly that-special. I don’t have to clear what I’m doing with you or with anyone else.”

“It seems to me that as a simple matter of interdepartmental courtesy, you would have stopped by…”

“Look, Kramer,” I interrupted. “Can it. I don’t work for you. I don’t answer to you. If you have any questions about what I’m doing here, you’re more than welcome to contact my boss and find out.”

“And your boss would be?”

Before I could reply, the clerk returned to the counter carrying a document box. She looked from me to Kramer.

“Oh, Captain Kramer,” she said. “I didn’t hear you come in. Is there something I can do for you?”

“Sure,” he said, staring pointedly at the box she was carrying. “I’ll sign for that, Sandy. Mr. Beaumont and I can take it back to my office where we can go through it together.”

In the bad old days, I probably would have punched him out, but I like to think I’m older and wiser now. Besides, there was no point. Eager to be of help, the clerk produced the proper form, which Kramer signed with all due ceremony. Then, picking up the box-my evidence box-he turned back to me. “Shall we?” he asked.

Kramer had the box in his hands-a box that contained all the surviving evidence as well as the musty case books to Madeline Marchbank’s murder, a homicide that was more than fifty years old. Kramer had the box, but he didn’t have access to the information I had recently unearthed-eyewitness accounts to that murder from both Bonnie Jean Dunleavy’s and Sister Mary Katherine’s separate points of view. Without those bits of the puzzle or the information I had managed to pull together, the box was just that-a useless thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle with all the critical pieces missing. Kramer could study whatever was in the box until hell froze over. Without my help, he wouldn’t learn a thing.

“No, thanks, Paul,” I said after a moment. “That’s all right. Be my guest. Go through it on your own.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out one of my business cards. “Here’s my number,” I added, dropping the card on the dust-laden lid to the box. “Give me a call a little later. I’ll be very interested to hear what you find out.”

With that, I opened the door to the evidence room and stepped back into the cluttered basement corridor. I left Paul Kramer standing there with his mouth open, holding on to the box and holding on to all his unanswered questions as well. It wasn’t a very dramatic exit. It wasn’t one of those high-testosterone departures where you go out in a blaze of gun-firing glory, but from my point of view, it still felt damned good.

Even if Harry I. Ball or Ross Connors ended up calling me on the carpet later, it was still worth doing. And given half a chance, I’d do it again.

I could have bailed right then. I could have called Harry and dropped the case along with the dust-covered evidence box right in Kramer’s lap, but I wasn’t ready to do that. I guess what I really wanted to know was where all this was going. Was the attorney general’s office’s involvement really as benign as I’d been told, or was there more to it than the simple fact that Ross Connors and Father Andrew had played football together back in high school? I wouldn’t know what Paul Harvey and his much younger successor continue to call “the rest of the story” until I had followed the Marchbank murder trail all the way to the end.

I spent more than twenty years at Seattle PD, most of it in Homicide. I’ve forgotten the details of most of the killers we caught and sent to prison, but every day of my life I carry around a complete catalog of the ones who got away. I can tell you the names and ages of the victims along with where, when, and how they died. Those ugly memories sit lodged in my heart, but unlike grains of sand trapped inside oyster shells, my remembered victims don’t turn into iridescent pearls. Instead, they show up in the middle of the night, waking or sleeping, as an ugly Greek chorus of accusatory ghosts demanding to know why I allowed their unnatural deaths to pass into oblivion and their killers to go free.

I can also list by name all the grieving relatives-parents, sisters, brothers, and occasionally even children-who called me each year, usually on or near the anniversary of their loved ones’ deaths. The family members called looking for closure. They called wondering if anything new had turned up. They called asking if anyone was still looking for their loved one’s killer and seeking reassurance that someone else-anyone else-still cared.

Yes, William Winkler may have run off the rails when he got moved upstairs in Seattle PD, and yes, he may have been drummed out of the corps along with a lot of other dirty cops back in the mid-to late fifties, but once a homicide detective, always a homicide detective. Mimi Marchbank’s murder had happened on his watch, and her killer was one of Wink’s loose ends. I didn’t know whether or not the man was still alive, but if he was-and if he was still in possession of his faculties-I guessed he’d remember everything that was in Paul Kramer’s dusty evidence box-everything to be found in the box and possibly more besides.

While I stood in the garage lobby waiting for the attendant to return the 928, I called directory assistance. There were five Winklers listed. Two of them were listed as William and one was initial W only. Rather than dialing the three at random, I tried a different tack.

The International Order of Footprinters is a service organization made up of some still active but mostly retired law enforcement folks. The Seattle area chapter includes people who once served and protected in King, Pierce, Snohomish, and Thurston counties, and in various municipal jurisdictions as well-Seattle, Renton, Tacoma, Bellevue, and Everett. Some of the retired officers served in local branches of the FBI, the DEA, and the INS or in local port-policing agencies. There may be some ongoing competition and sibling rivalry among those branches, but once you graduate into Footprinters, it’s time to get over it and let bygones be bygones.

Martin Woodman, a long-retired FBI special-agent-in-charge, is the grand old man of the Seattle area chapter. Widowed for at least twenty years now, he lives alone in the Wall Street Tower, which used to be called the Grosvenor House, and spends his long afternoons and relatively short evenings hanging out at the Five-Spot Cafe. Marty is too old and arthritic to carry on as part of the Keystone Kops anymore, and he’s served in all the organization’s various elective offices, both local and national, on numerous occasions. Now that he’s slowing down, he limits his Footprinters involvement to that of self-appointed goodwill ambassador.

Whenever former or retired cops from this side of the mountains run into difficulties, Marty is on hand to look out for them regardless of where or when they served. He makes it a point to visit and collect get-well cards for whoever ends up in a hospital, and when somebody dies, Marty is on hand to make sure the deceased officer is laid to rest with all due ceremony and respect. It’s his personal mission in life to make sure those old cops and their families aren’t forgotten. You have to respect a guy like that. Marty Wood was the one man in Seattle who would know for sure whether or not Wink Winkler was still alive. He’d also probably know where I could find him.