Taking the Fifth(45)

The best defense was to go on the attack. “Look,” I said. “There are only so many hours in a day. We’ve been tracking her. The neighbors said she was out of town. They weren’t able to say where she’d gone. I finally left a message for her last night, but I still haven’t been able to make a connection.”

Powell finally looked up at me. “Doug and Larry did,” he said. Detectives Doug Manning and Larry Hicks worked Homicide on the day shift; obviously, they were the team Sergeant Watkins had assigned to the Jonathan Thomas case.

“How come?”

“Because she showed up this morning at the house up on Bellevue, that’s how come. When she found out what had happened, they had to call an aid car for her.”

“So where is she now—in a hospital? I tried calling her hotel a little while ago, and she wasn’t there.”

“Don’t waste your time looking for her now. In other words, what you’re telling me is that you knew where she was staying last night, but you didn’t bother to get word to her.”

“Look, Captain,” I said. “There wouldn’t be a murder for Doug and Larry to investigate if Big Al and I hadn’t spent half the day battling the system and tracking down Thomas’s parents to get this agreement on the autopsy. If it weren’t for us, someone would have gotten away with murder in this town.”

I was hot now. I hadn’t exactly been lying down on the job. I felt as if I’d been living and breathing Richard Dathan Morris for days.

“Not only that,” I continued, “most of the people involved in this case will be leaving Seattle tonight as soon as Jasmine Day’s concert is over at the Fifth Avenue Theater. They’re on their way to Vancouver, B.C. When I finish up with the people who are leaving the country, I’ll get around to the people who aren’t.” With that, I turned on my heel and started out of the room.

“And Al is off tonight?”

“Yes, he’s off tonight. His grandson had emergency surgery last night. The kid almost died. Big Al spent the night at the hospital with his wife. Of course he’s not coming in.”

“Great—” Powell began, but I slammed the door behind me, cutting off whatever else he might have said. I ran into the night-shift Homicide squad leader, Lowell James, in the corridor on my way back to my desk.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “How come Powell had you in the fishbowl? I heard he’s mad enough to chew nails.”

“He needs a fucking Ping-Pong ball,” I snapped. “And I’m it.”

James followed me to my desk and leaned against a corner of it, crossing his arms. “Maybe you’d better tell me what’s going on.”

“Powell is ripped because I didn’t notify Morris’s next of kin before his mother showed up at another crime scene and found out on her own.”

“Have you talked to her yet?”

“No. And I never will, if people don’t get off my case and give me a chance to go to work.”

James uncrossed his arms and backed away from my desk. “I can take a hint,” he said. “Don’t let me stand in your way.”

He started away from my desk but stopped long enough to say, “By the way, I guess you heard the results on the Thomas autopsy. You were right. It was a cocaine overdose.”

“I know,” I said and let it go at that.

As soon as Sergeant James left, I picked up the phone and dialed the Executive Inn one more time. They said Mrs. Morris was in but that she wasn’t taking calls, not from anybody. I went down to the garage and checked out a car to pay her a personal visit.

The desk clerk at the Executive Inn wasn’t the least bit happy about telling me where Mrs. Grace Simms Morris’s room was. “Something terrible has happened to that poor woman,” the clerk said. “She wants to be left alone.”

I held my identification so the clerk could read it. “I know what’s happened to her,” I said. “That’s why I have to talk to her.”

Reluctantly, the clerk picked up the phone and dialed a number. “This is the desk, Mrs. Morris,” she said apologetically. “There’s a detective down here who insists on seeing you.”

The clerk listened for a moment, then looked at me. “Are you with the DEA?” she asked.

I had already shown her my identification, which said I was with Seattle P.D., not the Drug Enforcement Agency, but evidently that hadn’t sunk in. “I’m with Homicide,” I answered. “I’m investigating the murder.”

She repeated what I’d said to Mrs. Morris. “All right,” the clerk said finally, setting the phone down. “She says you can go on up. It’s room 338, just to the right of the elevator.”