Taking the Fifth(76)

I splashed some cold water on my face. It was going to be another long night.

It was a good thing I looked at the gas gauge when I got back in the Porsche. It’s a good car, but it doesn’t run on fumes. I was close enough to the appointed meeting place that I was able to stop at a self-serve place on Denny, fill up, and still be at University Village on time.

As I drove north on Interstate 25 my sense of outrage heated up and boiled over. I’m a cop who happens to work in Seattle, not L.A., not New York or Chicago. I know about what goes on in those other jurisdictions, about the graft and corruption that turn law-enforcement officers into monsters and worse. And I know what it’s like to be a cop in a city where cops are looked on as something lower than the scum of the earth.

But Seattle’s different. That’s one of the reasons I like it. Crooked cops aren’t tolerated here, and B. W. Wainwright was a crooked cop of the first water. My gut instinct said to treat him like the vermin he was, take him out, blot him off the face of the earth. I patted my .38 Smith and Wesson for luck, just to know it was available in case I got a chance to use it. And I fully intended to use it if I could.

Sergeant James and Roger Glancy were already in the parking lot when I got there. From the look of things, James had managed to convince Glancy that we weren’t jacking him around, that Wainwright had been living two decidedly different lives.

Glancy seemed shaken, disoriented, almost. I would have felt the same way if someone had just told me that Sergeant Lowell James robbed banks on the weekend for fun and profit. When someone you’ve worked with and respected falls from grace, it’s hard to know how to go on.

“Do you just want to show us the house and then back off?” James was asking Glancy. “This is hard enough as it is.”

Roger Glancy shook his head. “If what you’re saying is true, we’ve all been played for a bunch of fools. I want to get a little of my own back.”

It made perfect sense to me.

Because we were afraid Wainwright might recognize Glancy’s car, he rode with me in the Porsche. We led the way.

“Damn,” I said as I started the car. “I’ll bet nobody thought to get a search warrant.”

Glancy patted the breast pocket of his coat. “Don’t count on it,” he said. “I’ve got a neighbor who’s a judge. His kid died of an overdose at seventeen. He told me to come see him any time of the day or night and he’d sign one for me. He lives two houses away. It only took a minute.”

I looked at Glancy with new respect. He wasn’t along for the ride, and I’m willing to bet he was grappling with his own set of crooked-cop demons.

He directed me off Sand Point Way a few blocks north of Children’s Orthopedic. I could see the wisdom of Sergeant James’s strategy the moment we turned off the arterial. The short blocks didn’t follow any particularly logical pattern. You simply had to know where you were going.

“Is Wainwright married or divorced?” I asked.

“Divorced,” Glancy answered. “It happened just before he transferred in here three years ago. According to him, she wiped him out.”

I glanced around at the imposing houses, gracious colonials and low-slung brick ramblers. “It looks like he landed on his feet,” I said.

“I’ll say,” Glancy replied grimly.

We didn’t say anything more. The house was a two-story job without a light or car showing. The three-car caravan parked and Glancy directed us around the place, arousing the ire of at least two neighborhood dogs. When we were sure all possible avenues of escape were cut off, Glancy and I approached the front door.

I stood to one side, and Glancy rang the bell. There was no answer. He waited only half a minute or so before he kicked the door in with a one-shot DEA technique that put this particular Seattle cop to shame.

With adrenaline pounding through our systems, we made a quick survey of the house, moving from room to room warily, covering one another. The place was empty. The clothes closet had been gutted. Underwear and sock drawers had been hastily emptied. B. W. Wainwright had left in a hurry, and wherever he was going he didn’t plan to come back any time soon.

When we got back to the living room, Glancy paused and sniffed the air. “Do you smell smoke?” he asked.

I followed suit. There was indeed the acrid smell of paper smoke lingering in the air. We both headed for the fireplace. I felt the bricks under the mantel. They were still warm to the touch.

“He hasn’t been gone long,” I said.

Glancy got down on all fours and moved the fireplace screen out of the way. There was a stack of curled ashes, the remains of individual papers. Wainwright had been in too much of a hurry to be thorough. One envelope was only partially burned. In the upper left-hand corner, still plainly visible, were the initials RDM.