“And there’s no record of Richard Dathan Morris in your personnel files.”
“No.”
“Did he ever apply to work for you?”
“Not so far as I can tell. I looked through the inactive application files after Mrs. Morris left here, but I didn’t see any mention of him.”
“So once she left your office, you did at least check.”
“Detective Beaumont, Mrs. Morris is a woman under a great deal of stress. I checked, but just so I could tell her honestly that we showed no record of her son in this office. None whatsoever.”
“Doesn’t it seem a little unusual for someone like Mrs. Morris to come up with that kind of story?”
“Are you kidding? It happens all the time. Parents don’t want to think their kids are involved with drugs. They’ll come up with any harebrained rationalization to make it look like what is, isn’t.”
“How do you explain the envelopes, then?”
Wainwright frowned. “What envelopes? She never mentioned any envelopes.”
Of course she hadn’t mentioned them, because B. W. Wainwright had acted like a turkey, had treated her exactly the same way he was treating me. I said, “The ones Richard Dathan Morris sent to his mother before he died. The ones she keeps in her safety deposit box in Bellingham.”
“She didn’t say anything to me about that.”
“She didn’t think you’d believe her.”
“Did she tell you what’s in the envelopes?”
I shook my head. “No. And I didn’t have time to go look at them today either. I’ve got my hands full as it is, and my partner’s off today. I told her we’d come up next week and take a look.”
“In other words, you think there’s something to the story.”
“Yes. Mrs. Morris said envelopes, not packages. She seems to think her son sent her information—names, dates, places, deals. Things he needed held for safekeeping.”
Wainwright nodded slowly. “I suppose that’s possible, but if he wasn’t working for us, who was he working for? Seattle P.D., maybe?”
“I’ll check that out. If he wasn’t connected to you or our department, he might have been freelancing and stumbled into something big, something he couldn’t handle.”
“Freelancing is dangerous,” Wainwright said.
“Dangerous, hell,” I told him. “In this case, it was downright fatal. Twice.”
“You mean the roommate? I heard about that.”
I nodded. “I was the one who found the cocaine in his pillowcase.”
“Then you’re also the one who insisted on an autopsy. That was good police work.”
“Thanks,” I said, but I wanted to get back to the subject at hand, back to Richard Dathan Morris and his mother. “What are you going to do about Mrs. Morris?”
Wainwright looked clearly affronted. “Do about her? I’m not going to do anything about her. Not one blessed thing! Look, Detective Beaumont, you and I are in pretty much the same business. Do crackpots ever call you up and give you information that isn’t worth a plugged nickel?”
“Occasionally.”
“Believe me, that’s what we’re dealing with here. In spades. I’d bet money on it. Mrs. Morris lost her son in a drug deal gone sour. She wants desperately to paint him as a hero so she can feel better and look people straight in the eye, so his death won’t seem like such a waste. I’m willing to let her believe whatever she wants to believe, but I’m not squandering one more minute of my agency’s time or resources on this scam.”
“Any other ideas, then?” I asked. “If he wasn’t working for us and he wasn’t working for you, who was he working for?”
“Another dealer. They’re like sharks. Big fish eat little fish. It happens all the time.”
Wainwright got up and showed me to the door. The interview had come to a close. “Thanks for your help,” I said, holding out my hand.
“It was nothing,” Wainwright said. “Any time.”
I wasn’t much the wiser for my interview with B. W. Wainwright, but the conversation had given me food for thought.
Supposing Richard Dathan Morris had been freelancing, supposing he had found something big. The package of coke we’d found in Jonathan Thomas’s pillowcase wouldn’t have been worth much more than $25,000 on the street. What if Morris had stumbled into a conspiracy, into something much larger and more complex than that one simple package of cocaine? What if he had unearthed a major distribution network? Who else would be involved? Who else, that is, besides Jasmine Day?
It was time to beard the lioness in her den, time to have a little heart-to-heart chat with the lady. After all, now that she knew I was a cop, I might just as well go ahead and be one.