Big Al cleared his throat. “When did you disown your son?” he asked.
William Thomas’s eyes shot from me to Al. “Why do you ask that?”
“We’re trying to put together a background profile.”
The answer evidently satisfied him. “A year and a half ago,” he replied. “On Christmas Eve. He said he had something to tell us, that he had to be honest with us. It almost killed his mother. We were better off not knowing.”
“Did you know his…” I stopped and rearranged what I was going to say. “Did you know his roommate?”
“Richard? Sure, we knew him. They had been friends, we thought, since college. We didn’t have any idea…”
“You didn’t understand the real nature of their friendship?”
“Absolutely not. Not until that night.”
“And what happened?”
“I threw him out of the house, right then.”
“This house?”
He shook his head. “A different house. Over in Sahalee. We got rid of it. I couldn’t stand to stay there afterward.”
“You said you knew about his illness.”
“That’s why he told us.”
“Because he was dying?”
Just then the front door opened and closed. Moments later a middle-aged woman wearing lime green sweats and trendy Reebock running shoes entered the room. Carrying an armload of dry cleaning, she stopped cold when she saw us.
“I didn’t know you were expecting anybody,” she said.
“I wasn’t, Dorothy. Come sit here by me.”
He patted the seat next to him. Obediently she came to his side. Dorothy Thomas was a good twenty years younger than her husband. I put her age at about fifty-five, although if she’d had the help of a good plastic surgeon, she might have been older.
“These men are policemen,” William Thomas was saying. “They’ve come to talk to us about Jonathan.”
“Jonathan?” Unconsciously, her left hand went to her throat, the huge diamond on her ring finger glittering in the sunlight. “Is something the matter?”
“He’s dead,” Thomas told her.
She looked into her husband’s face, her eyes wide, but she didn’t fall apart. She didn’t give way to whatever it was she was feeling.
“May God have mercy on his soul,” she whispered.
I suspected that God would probably come across with a hell of a lot more Christian charity than either one of Jonathan Thomas’s pious parents could muster.
When we finally left, I was relieved to be outside that heartless shell of a house, happy that we had to walk some distance to the car. It gave me a chance to let off steam.
“Could you do that?” Al asked me as we walked.
“Do what? Throw my kid out of the house when I knew he was dying?”
Al nodded.
“I don’t think so,” I told him. “Not even if he was as queer as a three-dollar bill.”
CHAPTER 9
WHEN WE GOT BACK TO THE DEPARTMENT, we contacted the Bellingham police and asked them to dispatch officers and notify Richard Dathan Morris’s mother. Back in our cubicle, I finished my part of the paperwork and rested my head on my hands while I waited for Al to complete his.
I closed my eyes for a moment, hoping the fatigue would somehow magically disappear. It didn’t, and for good reason. A glance at the clock on the wall told me I was well into a second twenty-four-hour period with no sleep.
“Let’s go get some coffee and some food,” I told Al. “In that order. I’m ready to drop.”
On the way back downstairs, we stopped off at the Washington State Patrol crime lab to see what, if any, progress they were making. My old friend, Janice Morraine, had been assigned the high-heeled shoe.
“My preliminary analysis says the blood and hair we found on the shoe match that of the victim. We’ve taken some prints off the shoe, but no prints with blood on them. The blood has been smeared though.”
“The killer was wearing gloves?” I asked.
“Probably. It’s a fairly expensive shoe, by the way. Cole-Haan, size 8½B. And it’s seen some real hard use.”
“Cole what?” I asked.
“Cole H-a-a-n. They’re manufactured in Italy. I’ve got people tracking the batch number.”
“Think you’ll have any luck?”
Janice shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine, but the color is so unusual that I’m hopeful. My source over at Nordstrom’s says it’s possible they’re custom-made.”
“Anything else?”
“Doc Baker says he discovered some trace evidence on the victim. Some hair. We’ll have that tomorrow morning. We also sent investigators back up to the parking lot above where the body was found. They picked up some material, but we don’t know yet whether or not it’s related.”