No one in L.A. had known of Morris’s death until Friday morning, and Donaldson had ordered the Westcoast arrests in L.A. without notifying Seattle until it was absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, once Morris had obtained the tape naming Wainwright, he had never gotten a chance to contact Donaldson. Unable to reach Donaldson by phone, he had at least had the presence of mind to mail the tape to his mother in Bellingham.
On Sunday, Donaldson went to Bellingham and took charge of Ray Holman. Ray, of course, blamed it all on B. W. Wainwright, who wasn’t there to defend himself. And maybe that was true.
Wainwright had evidently had some hint that things were beginning to come unraveled. According to Holman, he had come up with the idea of Jasmine Day’s tour with the sole purpose of framing her. Ed Waverly, in too deep to prevent it, had helped ensnare Jasmine. No one had ever intended that the show would be a hit. That had been a surprise benefit.
Tom Riley, Jonathan’s nurse, wasn’t the only one who thought Richard Dathan Morris was a scuz. He had played the part well. It was only when he was caught in the costume trunk that he came to Waverly’s and Wainwright’s attention. They had assumed initially that he was only trying to cash in on the coke concealed in the bottom of the trunks. But then Holman discovered the tape recorder. The incriminating tape was gone, but Holman and Osgood knew what had been said, and Richard Dathan Morris was on his way out.
Since Osgood had been the one who had brought Morris into the group, Wainwright assigned him the task of getting rid of him and finding the missing tape. They had him use Jasmine’s costume, hoping we’d discover it. After all, it fit right in with the rest of the scenario.
Osgood managed to murder Morris, but he bungled the job of finding the tape. When Jonathan Thomas woke up and found him in the bedroom, Osgood was forced to get rid of Jonathan too.
The problem with Osgood was that he really was only a pusher. He didn’t do murder the way some people don’t do windows. It must have bothered him. When we started to get too close, he tried to bail out, attempting to bargain with Wainwright for either some money or some cocaine to help him relocate and start over.
Osgood had met Ray at the Fifth Avenue between five-thirty and six. By then, Wainwright and Holman knew things were falling apart. Ray was there packing up the coke. When Osgood showed up, Ray took care of him. Holman had rented a car in downtown Seattle. He took the coke down to Boeing Field and loaded it into Wainwright’s car. They had planned to leave town as soon as Wainwright got back from Bellingham with the damning evidence.
But by the time Wainwright got back to town, he knew the tape wasn’t in the collection of evidence he had picked up from Mrs. Grace Simms Morris. So Wainwright made one more futile attempt at damage control.
He sent Ray to Bellingham to try one more time to get the tape while he himself put in an alibiing appearance at the Fifth Avenue Theater. And Ray muffed it. He seriously underestimated Grace Simms Morris. She chucked him over the head with that vase, and he’s on his way to the electric chair. Of course, it’ll be years before he exhausts all his avenues of appeal, but with any kind of luck he’ll pay, eventually.
The National Air Transportation Safety Board investigated Wainwright’s crashed Tomahawk. They finally determined that, in attempting to keep from hitting the radio towers, Wainwright lost control of the plane and hit the tree. They said the load in the passenger seat probably shifted. Too bad.
Donaldson, Sergeant James, Watty Watkins, and I spent all Sunday afternoon on the phone. At two-thirty on Monday, three hundred and fifty law-enforcement officers from all over the state of Washington showed up at Bellingham’s First Lutheran Church for Richard Dathan Morris’s funeral. It was everything Mrs. Grace Simms Morris had wanted for her son.
Six agents from the DEA, all of them—including Roger Glancy—wearing black arm bands, served as pallbearers. Richard Dathan Morris wasn’t what you could call a cop’s cop, but we all had to salute him for what he had done. Working under almost impossible conditions, without any help or backup, he had single-handedly put B. W. Wainwright and his friends out of business. There wasn’t one police officer at that funeral who wasn’t grateful.
When Donaldson took the folded American flag from the coffin and handed it to Mrs. Morris, she turned to me and dissolved into tears. I held her and let her cry on my shoulder. It was the least I could do. At last Mrs. Morris looked up at me and said, “Richard would have just loved you.”
Knowing what I did about Richard Dathan Morris’s sexual preference, I didn’t quite know how to take that remark, but I finally decided to accept it in the manner in which it was intended, as a sincere compliment.