Taking the Fifth(9)

Riley got up and left the room. He returned, carrying a manila file folder. He opened it, shuffled through several pages, then picked out one and read from it. “Their names are Dorothy and William B. Thomas. They live over in Bellevue.” He handed the paper to Al, who scanned it and made a few brief notes in his notebook.

“Jon kept the folder by his bed,” Riley continued. “He made notes in it about what he wanted done, what mortuary, what kind of service, who was to be notified—that kind of thing. Including no autopsy,” he added, glancing meaningfully at me.

Al finished making his notes; then he gingerly handed the paper back to Riley like it was a loaded hand grenade. Unconsciously, he rubbed his hand on his pants. It was clear the very idea of AIDS scared the living crap out of Big Al Lindstrom.

“Was he still lucid at the end?” I asked.

“Sometimes.”

“The boys from Narcotics will be here in a few minutes to pick up the package. Is it possible that Jonathan was masterminding a drug ring of some kind from his sickbed?”

“Jon? Are you kidding? He wouldn’t have done something like that. Never. I knew him.”

“What about Rick?”

Riley shrugged. “He’s another story,” he said.

“You mean he could have been into selling drugs?”

“I don’t trust him any farther than I can throw him. He could be into anything.”

“Including dealing drugs?”

Riley nodded.

“What time did you get here this morning?”

“Seven-thirty or so.”

“And what was the place like when you got here?”

“It was a mess, a pigsty.”

I looked around the somewhat shabby living room. It wasn’t nearly the mess it had been when I had first seen it through the parted curtains. “Who straightened it up?” I asked.

“I did,” Riley answered. “Sometimes Jon would want me to wheel him out here. He complained that the bedroom was boring. I didn’t want him to see the place like that. It would have upset him. Besides, I looked in on him and thought he was asleep. I cleaned up while I was waiting for him to wake up.”

“It wasn’t a mess when you left here last night?”

He shook his head. “I figured Rick had invited people over during the night. He’s never learned to pick up after himself.”

“And he never will,” I added quietly.

Riley frowned and gave me a searching look. “What do you mean, he never will?”

“We believe that Richard Darthan Morris was the victim of a homicide late last night, down near the Pike Place Market.”

I watched carefully to see what kind of shock value my words might have on Tom Riley, R.N. If I expected an overreaction, I was in for a real disappointment.

“Good riddance,” he said quietly.

And that was all.





CHAPTER 4




TWO DETECTIVES FROM NARCOTICS stopped by a short time later and took charge of the package we’d found in Jonathan Thomas’s bedroom. By then, Tom Riley had decided to be more cooperative. He allowed us to go through the place pretty thoroughly. I guess we all expected to find a collection of drug paraphernalia somewhere on the premises. No such luck. The only drug-related equipment was that found with the sickroom supplies in a cabinet to which Riley claimed to have the solitary key.

When our search was completed, we took Tom Riley over to the medical examiner’s office. His positive identification of Richard Dathan Morris was pretty much routine. When it was over, we returned to the house with Riley, where he gave us the name and address of Morris’s widowed mother, a Mrs. Grace Simms Morris, who lived ninety miles or so north of Seattle in Bellingham.

Riley left the house when we did, taking with him the newly orphaned cat. We assured him that after conferring with Jonathan Thomas’s doctor we would notify his parents of the death. The nurse seemed grateful to be relieved of that particular duty.

Doc Baker had been involved in a conference call when we stopped by to make the identification, but he had left word that he wanted to see us, both Al and me, ASAP. So back we went to the medical examiner’s office in the basement of Harborview Hospital on First Hill.

“It was a fall that killed him,” Baker began, regarding us inscrutably as we seated ourselves in his office.

“A fall? What fall?” I demanded.

Doc Baker shoved Richard Dathan Morris’s file folder in my direction, reached into his desk, and pulled out some paper clips, which he began to pitch toward the chipped blue vase that always sat in his windowsill. Tossing the clips offhandedly as he spoke, he nonetheless hit the lip of the vase with almost total accuracy.

“Not the fall, actually. Hitting the ground was what killed him.” The medical examiner smiled, amused by his own black wit.