“Of course you did. They’re her shoes.”
I’ve known Don Yamamoto for a number of years, and I’ve never seen him flustered. But he was this time. It showed all over.
“You know about Jasmine Day, then?” he demanded. “About her priors? Jan got one of the guys upstairs to run a check on her.”
“Jasmine doesn’t make a secret of her past,” I said. “Were any of her prints bloody?”
“No, but…”
It was too easy, the finger was pointing too clearly. My warning pip got stronger. “No buts, Don. The killer was wearing gloves.”
Don looked at me and shook his head. “You mean to tell me you don’t think she did it? There’s the wig and the shoes and the prints, but you still don’t think it’s her?”
When he said the word shoes, everything that had been bothering me came into focus. The shoes. The killer had used the shoes to pummel Richard Dathan Morris. Jasmine wouldn’t have needed shoes as a weapon, wouldn’t have stooped to that, not when she had a perfectly good foot handy.
A flood of relief rushed through my body. I hadn’t wanted it to be her, and now I was sure. Jasmine hadn’t killed Richard Dathan Morris, but who had? Someone wearing her costume, the one Morris had stolen.
I came back to the present to find Don Yamamoto staring at me, waiting for me to answer.
“Something about it doesn’t seem right to me,” I mumbled. “I don’t like it when all the pieces fall into place without a fight.”
It sounded half-assed and feeble, but it was better than blurting out what was really going through my mind and admitting to Don Yamamoto that the real reason I knew Jasmine hadn’t done it was that I had seen the lady in action, and she’d scared the living shit right out of me.
Don Yamamoto scratched his thinning black hair and shook his head. He looked as if he didn’t much believe me, and I didn’t blame him. On the surface it didn’t sound very plausible to me either.
“A frame-up?” he asked with a scowl. “Maybe it’s time to think about early retirement, Beau. The benefits are real good.”
“Piss up a rope,” I told him and left the crime lab. Neither one of us was going to change the other’s mind.
I was excited as I went up the three flights of stairs to my office. I felt I’d stumbled onto something important, but I didn’t know what to do with it or how to come up with some corroborating evidence. I sat down in my cubicle and stared briefly at the wall, trying to decide what to do next.
I was torn. Part of me wanted to go and try to talk with Jasmine Day, to see if she knew of any enemies in her past or present who might be out to get her. The other part of me wanted to talk to Mavis Davis and find out what she had to say.
Mavis Davis won the toss. I started for the garage and ran smack into Sergeant Lowell James. “I was just looking for you, Beau. What’s happening? I’ve gotten no report from you.”
“I’m on my way to interview a woman on the Morris case,” I said. “A new witness.” I told him about Mavis Davis, neglecting to say that she actually was a witness in the wrong murder. I convinced myself it was a case of careful editing rather than outright lying.
“Where’d you find her?” he asked.
“Maxwell Cole turned her up and came by to tell me.”
“You’re shitting me. Maxwell Cole? The Maxwell Cole from the P.I.?”
“That’s the one.”
Sergeant James shook his head. “Will wonders never cease?” he said.
I started on down the hall. “Remember,” Sergeant James called behind me, “I want a full written report before you go off duty tonight, understood?”
“Right,” I answered. “You’ll have it.”
I wondered what it would say.
CHAPTER 18
IT WAS SIX O’CLOCK WHEN I FOUND MAVIS Davis’s house just up from the Harvard Exit Theater. The only reason I was able to find a parking place was that the movie didn’t start for another hour.
The house was a tiny place, unfenced but with wrought-iron bars on every window and door. As soon as I rang the bell, a small dog started yapping inside, the hoarse, rasping bark of an old, frail dog.
A tiny peephole window opened in the door just at eye level. “Who is it?” a woman asked sharply.
“Miss Davis? I’m Detective J. P. Beaumont with the Seattle Police Department.” I held my identification up to the window so she could see it.
“What does it say?” she asked. “I can’t read it.”
“It says I’m a detective with the Seattle Police Department. I’d like to talk to you.”