J. Jance - Trial By Fury

I shrugged. "We've never talked about it."

"Somebody should have talked about it long before this," he said grimly. "And that somebody should have been me. It's my job."

"Come on now, Ralph. Don't blame yourself. We're all doing the best we can."

Unconvinced, Ames shook his head. "In a custody case like this, especially one where the mother is out of the country, I should have taken care of it."

I had come to Kirkland hoping Ames would make me feel better. Instead, he succeeded in doing just the reverse. The two of us sat there conferring miserably until fatigue finally caught up with us.

It was starting to get light outside when I bailed out and told him I had to get some sleep. Neither one of us went near Peters' bed. We rummaged around in a linen closet and found blankets and pillows. Ames took the couch. Stripped down to my T-shirt and shorts, I settled down on the floor.

I must have fallen asleep the instant my head touched the pillow. I was dead to the world when thirty-five pounds of kid did a belly flop onto my chest, knocking the wind out of me.

"Unca Beau, Unca Beau," Heather lisped. "Can I use the blanket, too?"

Unable to speak, I held up the blanket. A chilly, pajama-clad kid wormed her way into my arms, snuggling contentedly against my chest.

"Is Daddy still asleep?" she asked.

"I don't know, Heather. He's not here."

She sat up and looked at me accusingly. "He isn't? You said you were going to find him."

"I'm trying, but I haven't been able to yet."

"When will you?"

"I don't know. I can't say."

She got up and stood glaring scornfully down at me, both hands on her hips. "I want him home now," she announced. With that, she turned, flounced down the hallway without a backward glance, marched into her bedroom, and slammed the door.

"Sounds like ‘Unca Beau' is in deep shit," Ames observed dryly from the couch.

I struggled clumsily off the floor with my bad back screaming at me. I'm too old to sleep on floors. "‘Unca Beau' is going to get the hell downtown and find out what the fuck is going on," I growled, throwing the wad of bedding onto a nearby chair.

I glanced at the couch, where Ames still lay with the blanket pulled up to his chin. "Are you coming or not?"

"Not. I'll stay here," he said. "I think it's best."

I had to agree. When I finally got moving, I discovered the hour or so of sleep had done me a world of good. I was awake and alert as I started toward the city. I drove with my mind racing off in a dozen different directions at once: Why? And how? And where? Those were the basic questions, but where was the most important.

Where could they be? With every passing hour, that question became more critical. I was convinced Peters was being held somewhere against his will. As time passed, Andi Wynn had to be getting more and more desperate. And dangerous.

Through a series of mental gymnastics I had managed to keep my mind from touching on the bottom-line question, the question I had fought to avoid all night long. But as I crossed the bridge to return to Seattle, the question asserted itself, surging full-blown to the surface: Was Detective Ron Peters still alive?

Yes, he was alive, I decided, feeling my grip tighten involuntarily on the steering wheel. He couldn't be dead. No way. Like Heather, I wanted him home and alive. Now.

Fighting for control, I took a deep breath. In the twenty-four hours since Mrs. Edwards had first called me, I had worked my way through a whole progression of feelings, from being pissed because Peters was out screwing his brains out to being worried sick that he was being held someplace with a gun to his head.

But once the idea of death caught hold of me, I couldn't shake it. It filled up the car until I could barely breathe.

The badge and ID told me Peters wasn't in control when he left Candace Wynn's apartment. The morphine bottle hinted at why. I suspected morphine had given Andi the edge both with Darwin Ridley and with Peters, providing a chemical handcuff every bit as effective as the metal variety.

And if Andi Wynn had indeed killed Darwin Ridley, then I had to believe she was capable of killing again. It was my job to find her, to stop her, before she had the chance.

Downtown Seattle was a ghost town at seven-fifteen on Sunday morning. I parked the Porsche in front of the Public Safety Building and hurried inside. There were only two people visible in the crime lab when I was led into the room. One of them was my friend, Janice Morraine. She reached into her lab coat pocket, removed a package of cigarettes, and nodded toward the door. "Let's go outside," she said.

As soon as we were out in the elevator lobby, she lit up. "Did you find Peters?" she asked, blowing a long plume of smoke toward the ceiling.

I shook my head. "Not yet. What's the scoop on the stuff we brought in?"

She shrugged. "We've got matches everywhere-the prints from Ridley's clothes, from the flour container, from the Fremont apartment, and from Joanna Ridley's house as well."

I felt the cold grip of fear in my gut. Looking at Janice's somber face, I could see she felt it, too.

"What does that say to you?" I asked.

"That the killer doesn't give a damn whether you catch him or not."

The knot in my gut got a little tighter, a little colder. I pushed the call button on the elevator.

"That's what I was afraid you'd say, but it's a her," I added.

Janice blew another plume of smoke and ground out the remains of her barely smoked cigarette in the sand-filled ashtray in the hall. "Good luck," she said softly.

I stepped into the elevator. "Thanks," I told her. "We'll need it."

When the elevator stopped on the fifth floor, I was almost run over by two detectives who charged through the open door. One of them grabbed me by the sleeve and dragged me back inside as the door slid shut.

"Hey, wait a minute. I wanted off."

"You'd better come with us," Big Al Lindstrom ordered.

"How come? What's up?"

"Somebody just spotted that missing Chevy Luv," he answered.

"No shit? Where?"

"Parked in front of Mercer Island High School. That's where we're going."

"Who's we?" I asked.

"Baxter here and me. You, too, if you want. Mercer Island Police say they have the place pretty well sealed off, but they called us to let us know."

Big Al and Baxter got off at the garage level. I had to ride down to the lobby and charge down the street half a block to where I had parked, but once I fired up the Porsche, there was no contest. I passed Big Al and Baxter on the bridge like they were standing still.

I'm not sure if it was because the Porsche was a better car or because Peters was my partner.

Actually, it was probably a little of both.

We raced to the high school, only to find ourselves stuck behind a police barricade along with everybody else.

The next hour and a half was an agonizing study of affirmative action in action. From a distance, I caught a glimpse of the new Mercer Island Chief of Police-a lady wearing a gray pin-striped suit and sensible shoes with a dress-for-success polka-dot scarf knotted tightly around her neck. She had definitely taken charge of the situation.

When Marilyn Sykes, assistant police chief in Eugene, Oregon, was hired for the job on Mercer Island, there had been a good deal of grumbling in law enforcement circles. The general consensus was that, in this particular case, the best man for the job wasn't a woman. I hadn't paid a whole lot of attention to the debate since half the complainers said she was too tough and the other half claimed she was too soft. I figured the truth was probably somewhere in between.

Right then, though, watching the action from an impotent distance, my inclination was to dismiss Marilyn Sykes as a pushy broad, one who didn't have enough confidence in herself and her position to let any other cops within consulting distance, as though she was afraid our advice and suggestions might undercut her authority.