J. Jance - Trial By Fury

When I hung up the phone the second time, I told Ames what the crime lab had said as we marched out of the office.

Despite the good news from Yamamoto, I was still mad enough to chew nails. It was one thing if Peters wanted to get his rocks off with someone he had just met. I didn't have any quarrel with that. Peters' sex life was none of my concern, one way or the other. What burned me was that he had been so irresponsible about it. If not irresponsible, then certainly inconsiderate. Mrs. Edwards was upset. His kids were upset. So was I for that matter.

The least he could have done was call home, give some lame excuse or another, and then go screw his brains out. That way I wouldn't have been dragged out of a sound sleep and neither would Andy Taylor.

"So where are we going," Ames asked me once he caught up with me on the street. "Back to your place?"

"Not on your life. I'm not going to spend all day sitting there fielding phone calls for some wandering Romeo. And I'm not going to try calling his girlfriend's house, either."

"Why not?" Ames asked.

"Because I don't feel like it. Want to go whack a few golf balls around a golf course?"

Ames stopped in his tracks. "You really are pissed, aren't you? I've never once heard you threaten to play golf before."

"Nobody said anything about playing golf," I muttered. "I want to hit something. Hitting golf balls happens to be socially acceptable."

"As opposed to hitting someone over the head?" Ames asked. "Ron Peters in particular?"

"That's right."

"Golf it is," said Ames. "Lead the way."

The Foster Golf Course in Tukwila was the only place a couple of rank amateurs could get a toehold and a tee time on a sunny Saturday afternoon in March. We chased balls for eighteen holes' worth and were more than happy to call it quits. Ames wanted a hamburger. Just to be mean, I dragged him to what used to be Harry and Honey's Dinky Diner, until Honey ran Harry off and removed his name from the establishment. We had cheap hamburgers before returning to my apartment late in the afternoon.

On the kitchen counter, the little red light on my new answering machine was blinking cheerfully, announcing a message. Grudgingly, I punched the play button and waited to see what would happen. The machine blinked again, then burped, whirred, and beeped.

"Beau, I just…" a voice began, followed by the dial tone and then an operator's voice announcing, "If you wish to place a call, please hang up and dial again. If you need help, hang up and dial your operator."

Ames came out of the bathroom and wandered into the kitchen just as I punched the play button again. "Who was it?" he asked.

"I don't know. I think it's Peters," I told him. "He sounded funny, though. Hang on a minute. I'm playing it again."

When I heard the message the second time, I was sure the caller was Peters, but once more he was cut off, practically in mid-word.

"That's all?" Ames asked. "Are there any other messages?"

"No, just this one."

I picked up the phone and dialed Peters' number in Kirkland. Tracie, Peters' older daughter, answered the phone instantly. Disappointment was evident in her voice when she realized I wasn't her father.

"Oh, hi, Uncle Beau. Is my daddy with you?" she asked.

"No, he's not."

"When will he be home?"

"I don't have any idea, sweetie. Let me talk to Mrs. Edwards."

"She's taking a nap. I'm taking care of Heather for her. Should I wake her up?"

"No, never mind. She's probably tired. I'll call back later." I hung up.

"He's still not there?" Ames asked.

"No, and that message on the machine has me worried."

Ames nodded. "Me, too. Mind playing it again?"

I did. It proved to be no different from the first two times we had heard it. The message simply ended in mid-sentence with no reason given.

"You're right. It sounds strange," Ames commented after the message had finished playing. "He seemed upset."

"That's what I thought, too. I've got a bad feeling about all this."

"Why not try the department once more," Ames suggested. "Maybe he showed up there while we were out playing golf."

I tried, but no such luck. No one had heard from him. For a long time I stood with the phone in my hand, my dialing finger poised above the numbers, wondering what I should do. There was a big part of me that wanted to go on living in a fool's paradise, believing that everything was hunky-dory, that Peters was just getting his rocks off with Andi Wynn and didn't care if the sun rose or set. But there was another part of me, the partner part of me, that said something was wrong. Dead wrong.

I finally dialed Sergeant Watkins at home. Watty has been around Homicide two years longer than I have. He's virtually unflappable. "What's up, Beau?" he asked when he knew who was on the phone.

As briefly as possible I summarized what I knew, that Peters had stayed out all night, that he had been fine when he dropped off the departmental vehicle at nine, that he had been seen on the fifth floor in the company of a young woman, and that he had left an abortive message on my answering machine at home.

"So what are you proposing?" Watty asked when I finished my recitation.

"File a missing persons report for starters," I said.

"Missing persons or sour grapes?" he asked.

"Watty, I'm serious about this. It's not like him to go off and not bother to call home."

"Now look here, Beau. Let's don't hit panic buttons. You know as well as I do how long it's been since Peters' wife took off. And you know, too, that he's had his hands full with those two kids of his. In other words, he hasn't been getting any. Give the guy a break."

"But Watty…"

"But Watty nothing. We don't accept missing persons reports for at least twenty-four hours. You told me yourself that Andy Taylor saw him at nine o'clock last night. Nine o'clock is still a good five hours away. If you go ahead and file a report, he'll probably show up and be pissed as hell that you're advertising his love life all over the department."

"But…" I tried again.

"No, and that's final."

Watty hung up and so did I.

"I take it he didn't think much of the idea," Ames observed mildly.

"Right."

I paced over to the window and stared down at the street below. It was Saturday and the area of the city around my building was like a deserted village. No cars moved on the street. No pedestrians wandered the sidewalks. Only a live bum kept company with the bronze one in the tiny park at the base of what I call the Darth Vader Building at Fourth and Lenora.

"So what are you going to do?" Ames asked. "Are we just going to sit around here and do nothing?"

"No, we're not," I replied. "I'm going to go to Candace Wynn's place, pry that worthless bastard out of the sack, and knock some sense into him. After that, I'll hold a gun to his head and make him call his kids."

Ames nodded. "Sounds reasonable to me," he said.

"Are you coming along, or not?" I asked.

Ames shook his head. "I think you'd better take me over to Kirkland and drop me off at Peters' house. You've got a bad feeling about it, and so do I. Somebody should be there with his kids, just in case."

One look at Ames ' set expression told me his mind was made up. I shoved the paper with Andi Wynn's address into my pocket. "Good thinking," I agreed. "Let's get going." After I jotted down Candace Wynn's address from the file, Ames and I took off.

I didn't let any grass grow under my steel-belted radials as we raced across the Evergreen Point Bridge toward Kirkland. For a change there was hardly any traffic. The needle on the Porsche's speedometer hovered around seventy-five most of the way there. I screeched off the Seventieth Street exit on 405 and slid to a stop in front of Peters' modest suburban rambler.