A Lonesome Place for Dying, page 3
“An honest to God murder, huh?” Mal’s enthusiasm dropped as he saw Ethan’s expression. The young officer slipped into professional mode. “What would you like me to start with, Ethan?”
Ethan, not Chief. “The hands, if you please.”
Careful not to move her fingers lest anything preserved under the nails be lost, Mal began bagging the dead woman’s hands. Mal, the former chief’s son, was bespectacled and stocky, and the most well-schooled of the officers in forensic preservation. The opposite of his father in a lot of ways, Mal was more comfortable with data, at home in the digital realm. “Raised by his mother and the damn internet,” Frank would say. For his part, Mal seemed to view his father as a throwback. Ethan wondered if Mal viewed him the same way.
“You weren’t at your dad’s retirement party last night,” Ethan said.
“The family had dinner before. And parties aren’t really my thing.”
“You’re okay with it, though? His retirement?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” The hands done, Mal shifted to collecting samples of the bloody branches. There weren’t many. “You know what my dad’s got planned?”
“No, what?”
But Mal smiled, shook his head, and didn’t say.
The medical examiner’s van parked on the shoulder of the road, and Dr. Sandra Jacinto crossed the grassy divide to the tracks. The Whatcom County medical examiner was a former professor of biology, a Filipina in her late fifties who dressed as fashionably as her morbid career allowed, and who usually had at least one assistant in tow. Today she was alone.
“How are you settling in, Chief?” the doctor asked, swapping her dress shoes for rubber boots. “It’s about time they gave the job to someone cute.”
“Nothing like jumping in with both feet,” Ethan said.
“Let’s see what we’ve got.”
He left her to examine the body. Brenda Lee was on hold with Amtrak. Pressing the phone into her shoulder, she told Ethan that the morning train was between Centralia and Kelso at the moment, but would be stopped and checked thoroughly when it pulled into Seattle.
“Are they missing a passenger?”
“Too early to tell.”
Feeling helpless, the odd person out of his own investigation, he called the Bellingham PD and Whatcom County sheriff. Better to loop them in ahead of time. Blaine shared forensic resources with the larger departments, and the sheriff’s office operated the county jail. Neither had information on a missing person matching the dead woman’s description.
When he was done on the phone, Ethan wandered back to where the medical examiner was making notations. “Can you tell me anything about time of death?”
“Some time before now,” Sandra Jacinto said without looking up from her clipboard. “Hollister and TOMS footwear. Oh, to be young again.”
“Any chance you could ballpark the time?” Ethan asked.
“Less than four hours, going from rigor and temp, but don’t expect me to write that down.”
Ethan nodded. “A passenger train went by here two hours ago.”
“Consistent.” With the end of her pen, Dr. Jacinto pointed at the bloody patch in the dead woman’s side. “It was probably quick. The puncture under the arm probably cut the axillary artery, and the other got close to the heart. An upward thrusting motion. Not much blood considering they struck two vital spots.”
“Someone who knew what they were doing?” Ethan asked.
“Or got very lucky.” The medical examiner put her clipboard back in her case, and removed a blue body bag. “I’m minus a student this morning. Strep throat. Be a doll and help me lift her.”
Maneuvering the body into the bag was cumbersome, but they managed to accomplish it without disturbing the hands. The van’s gurney couldn’t make it over the divide, so he asked Mal Keogh to help the medical examiner carry the body.
Mal was standing above them on the tracks, training his cell phone at one of the ties. “Busy here,” he said. “Can someone else do it?”
Authority issues already, Ethan thought, as he and Sandra lugged the corpse to the van. One more headache. Mal had gone from college directly to the department. As far as Ethan knew, he’d never worked a job where the boss wasn’t also his father. A blessing and a curse to that, he reasoned.
The medical examiner was surprisingly strong. She held her end one-handed as she unlocked and opened the back doors of the van. They slid the body onto the trolley. Sandra Jacinto retied her ponytail, a gleaming pale silver.
“The sooner you can autopsy her, the better,” Ethan said.
“I’m short-staffed, but since it’s your special day, I’ll do what I can.”
“It’s appreciated.”
She smiled. “Exactly how much?”
The flirtation was a part of their working relationship, one-sided, but he didn’t object. Dr. Sandra Jacinto was attractive, and he was single now. More or less.
With the body removed, he could view the impression left. The ground had sopped up some of the blood. In places the foliage was already regaining its former shape. A fact about death: it stopped nothing.
A piece of paper was tangled in the crushed flowers, folded in half and smudged with blood. Mal slid it into an evidence bag. A receipt for $69.62, paid for in cash. Two pale ales, two rum and Cokes, a cheeseburger supreme, and a bag of Tim’s Salt and Vinegar potato chips. Steep for four drinks, a sandwich, and a side.
“Seems pricey,” Mal said. “Maybe we should be looking for a robbery suspect as well.”
There’d been no wallet or change purse around the body, nothing in the woman’s pockets. So how had she paid? Why hold onto the receipt? And was the food and drink all hers, or had someone shared it with her?
Ethan called in two auxiliary officers to guard the scene, then told Mal he’d need to help with the canvass. The forensic expert seemed disappointed at the task.
“There’s clay on the rails here,” Mal said, showing Ethan the photo he’d taken. A few gray scuffs on the weathered steel. “As if someone paused there to scrape their shoes.”
“Lot of people walk these tracks.”
“Not since the last time it rained.”
“It’s good work,” Ethan said. “But right now I need you to walk south a pace and see if there’s more to our crime scene.”
After an awkward pause, Mal nodded, hiding his reluctance as best he could. “A piece of advice, Ethan?”
“I’ll take all I can get.”
“Don’t try to be my dad. His ways don’t work anymore. I don’t know if they ever did.”
He watched the young officer start down the side of the train tracks, wondering exactly what was meant by that.
5
By noon Ethan Brand was at his desk, shaping his notes into a preliminary report on the Jane Doe homicide. His first time occupying the chief’s small private office, looking out through the glass walls, through venetian blinds a dirty cream color. A bank box of Frank Keogh’s personal items sat on the filing cabinet. Lena, Frank’s wife, and a teenaged Mal grinned at him from a framed photo.
He had nothing to replace the photo with, no decorations to make the space his own. That would have to wait.
The canvass along the tracks had yielded nothing so far. Ethan busied himself checking reports of missing persons throughout Washington State. None matched Jane Doe’s description.
His ankle was sore.
At one o’clock, with every other hand busy with the homicide, he took a wildlife call from the Orca Fin Motel. One of the guests had left their door propped open to fetch ice, and come back to find “a giant wolf or mountain lion” munching their continental breakfast.
The motel owner handed him a key card without looking up from the television behind the check-in desk. Ethan crossed the courtyard, thinking this was where he’d caught Cliff Mooney accepting money from a woman who’d later killed herself. The motel staff asked no questions. He’d spent a few afternoons in these rooms himself, after the split with Jazz. He and Steph had been serious about each other—serious enough she had considered leaving her husband. But guilt and responsibility had beat out romance, and they’d broken it off.
A fact of living in small towns, Ethan thought. Whether on the Washington coast or in the mountains of the Hindu Kush, your life happened within sight of everyone else. A true unknown, like his Jane Doe, was rare.
A shirtless man stood outside room 14, smoking a cigar. The hair on his chest formed a white diamond.
“Finally,” the man said. “You gonna shoot it?”
“Let’s see what we’ve got first. Step back, sir.”
Ethan opened the door and shook his head.
“You again,” he said to the coyote.
The blue-eyed animal looked up from the empty plate, saw the open door, and trotted out. Almost sauntering, Ethan thought. The man beside him winced and froze. The coyote licked her lips as she passed them, darting through the hedge along the border of the parking lot. As soon as she was gone, the man turned bellicose again.
“You should put those things down,” the man said. “Attacking innocent people.”
“Seems like all she attacked was some powdered eggs and bacon. But if you want to write a formal report, sir.”
The man shook his head, muttering. “Knew I shouldn’t a stopped here.”
“The Chamber of Commerce thanks you,” Ethan said, heading back to his truck.
* * *
At two thirty he was finished the report. Brenda Lee Page entered the office to tell him the morning train would be stopped in Seattle, tickets checked, and a cursory search conducted. She was heading south now to assist. The rail company would send a list, including crew members, before the end of the day.
“Best they can do,” Brenda Lee said. “Trains normally don’t count heads when passengers leave.”
She lingered in the office chair, wanting to say more.
“I’d like to lead the investigation. With your supervision, of course.”
“You haven’t led a homicide investigation before,” he said.
“You haven’t supervised one.”
Ethan nodded, a fair point. “This means you’re staying on?”
“I make no excuses for wanting your job,” Brenda Lee said. “But I do like mine. And, frankly, you need the help.”
“I appreciate it.”
“And you did mention something pertaining to a salary bump.”
* * *
By three, his foot was bothering him. Something about the incline leading from the train tracks to the body had jolted his ankle the wrong way. He drew the blinds and unlaced the boot.
The injury itself didn’t pain him any longer. A partial foot amputation, the outermost metatarsals removed. The tissue had healed smoothly, and the hinged foot plate which compensated for the two missing toes did its job reasonably well. He could walk just fine, even run when he needed to. But on steep inclines or uneven terrain, if the plate got jostled, it would send a throb up the ankle.
When the injury was new and he felt that pain, he’d take pills, usually several at a time. No more of that. These days, Advil was as far down the road of pain medication as he was comfortable traveling.
No sooner had he adjusted the plate than he heard “shave and a haircut” knocked on the glass. Ethan briskly replaced the boot as Frank Keogh poked his head through the door.
“Good afternoon, Chief,” Frank said. “I heard you caught a body your first day. If it weren’t for bad luck, what would we have, huh?”
Ethan put on his most professional administrative smile. “Hello, Frank. I’m going to need you to go back to reception, please. We don’t allow civilians back here.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“I’m afraid it’s policy.”
Ethan held the tight smile as long as he could, and when Frank shrugged and began to withdraw from the office, he grinned and stood to hug his former boss.
“Almost had me,” Frank said. “I thought I’d grab you before the ceremony for a quick drink.”
Ethan hadn’t put anything in his stomach since breakfast. “How about a spring roll instead?”
Together they walked across First Street in the direction of Lucky Luk’s. Frank wore a brown poplin jacket and tan Dockers. The former chief was only sixty-two. Until a few months ago, he’d never so much as hinted about retirement.
“You’re limping,” Frank said. “Everything all right?”
“Took a wrong step at the crime scene, that’s all.” Ethan didn’t know if Frank was aware of his injury and prosthetic. He suspected so. Frank didn’t miss much. But they’d never spoken of it.
He’d decided to hide it, or at least hide the extent of the damage. A decision he’d made out of pride and stubbornness, one he sometimes regretted. The doctor who handled the department physicals had lost a brother in Iraq, and hadn’t noted the injury in Ethan’s file. Workwise, the injury had never proved an issue.
An electric blue Mazda pickup was idling in front of the war memorial. As they crossed H Street and entered Lucky’s, Ethan watched a rangy man peer at them from the driver’s seat of the truck. Nobody he recognized.
“Twice in one day, Chief,” Mei said. “And the old chief, too. This is gonna be the safest café in town.”
They took a table in the corner where Ethan could keep watch on the truck. Frank noticed this, shaking his head with amusement as he ordered a plate of spring rolls and a beer.
“Old habits die hard, they say. Me, I’m happy to kill as many old habits as I can. Let younger shoulders carry ’em.”
Ethan ordered his usual with a side of broccoli. He drank some coffee. The blue pickup was still there, the man inside still watching them.
“You ever receive a death threat, Frank?” he asked.
“I’m a Black man who spent thirty years writing tickets on white folks in pickups. What do you think?”
Ethan showed him the note. “Found this taped to my door this morning.”
Frank broke out a pair of reading glasses, examined both sides of the note. “Rare anyone takes the time to print something out these days. Got an idea who left it?”
“Brenda Lee says someone who either wants my job, is afraid of what I’ll do, or who I wronged romantically.”
“Smart lady,” Frank said. “You make things right with her?”
“I think so.” Ethan had a few bites before asking, “Why didn’t you consider her for the job?”
“Who says I didn’t?”
Frank poured soy sauce on his plate and wiped a spring roll across it.
“It was a tough decision. Brenda Lee is smarter than you. More ambitious. Her personal life is a damn sight more stable. On the other hand, you’re better with folks. Less apt to throw the book at them. You got to police everyone fairly in this job. And fair doesn’t always mean equal.”
“So what clinched it?” Ethan asked.
“I had to put it to one thing, that day at Black Rock.”
He remembered. Two months ago a fire had started in a warehouse owned by Black Rock Logistics. A pair of forklift operators had been working the night shift. Both were hospitalized for smoke inhalation.
The fire was started with a Molotov cocktail, in protest over a new pipeline project that Black Rock was involved with. Most of the protests had been peaceful, and the project was under reconsideration when the bomb had gone off. The site staff caught two suspects sneaking back onto the shipping yard. The two barricaded themselves in the break trailer, an angry mob of workers soon surrounding it.
Brenda Lee Page and Ethan Brand had taken the call. By the time they arrived, bottles were being smashed against the trailer, the windows already broken. Weapons were moving through the crowd—bricks, box cutters. There was talk of building a fire and smoking the dirty rats out.
They pushed their way through the mob, talking the protestors into letting them inside the trailer. The perpetrators were nineteen and seventeen years old. Both were scared, the younger one bleeding from the broken glass.
The trailer began to rock. Backup was called. Brenda Lee drew her service weapon. Threats flew back and forth through the broken windows.
In the end, Ethan had opened the door and stepped out to face the crew. He spotted rifles and jerry cans of gasoline. Someone told him to get out of the way.
He stood his ground. Couldn’t remember what he said in the moment, but it amounted to a warning. If he drew his gun, someone was going to die. The mob could no doubt get him, but he’d take a few down with him. Down all the way.
In the end he didn’t have to draw.
“Partly it’s a matter of temperament,” Frank Keogh said, pointing at him with the chopsticks. “Part of it’s the look, that tall drink of water Eastwood thing you got going on. But mostly, son, it’s the fact you don’t default to violence. Force as a last resort. Can’t teach that.”
“What about Brenda Lee?” he asked.
“You’ll never find a better officer, but I’m not comfortable how quickly she sidled up to Wynn Sinclair. The wealthy tend to get their way, law and order-wise. But you can’t make it too easy on them.”
They finished their meal. He asked what Frank had planned for his retirement.
“Weed,” the former chief said, surprising him. “I’m officially in the marijuana cultivation business. Lena’s brother offered me a quarter share of his farm. Don’t think the irony escapes me.”
Only a few years ago they’d been stopping people for smoking pot—or more often than not, looking the other way. Legalizing marijuana had pushed the grow-op crews into other avenues of commerce. Cocaine, methamphetamines, prescription pills, and weapons.
And now the former chief was a pot grower. Ethan remembered what Frank’s son had said about the old ways not working anymore. Maybe Mal was right. And maybe Frank Keogh had realized that sooner than anyone else.
Outside, he asked Frank for the keys to the chief’s vehicle, and any last words of advice.
“Remember what I told you, that time I came to see you? About looking beyond yourself?”
