Betrayal of Trust

I glanced at my watch. “We need to leave in about twenty, if we’re going to make it across the water before traffic stops up.”

Since we were sitting looking out at an expanse of water, it would be easy to think that’s the water I meant when I spoke to Mel, but it wasn’t. In Seattle, that term refers to several different bodies of water, depending on where you are at the time and where you’re going. In this case we were looking at Elliott Bay, which happens to be our water view, but we work on the other side of Lake Washington, in this instance, the “traffic” water in question. People who live on Lake Washington or on Lake Sammamish would have an entirely different take on the matter when they used the same two words. Context is everything.

“Okeydokey,” Mel said, hopping off the window seat. “Another refill?” she asked.

I gave her my coffee mug. She took it, went to the kitchen, filled it, and came back. She handed me the cup and gave me a quick kiss in the process. “I started a new pot for our travelers,” she said, then added, “Back in a flash.”

I had showered and dressed while she was out, not that I needed to. There are two full baths as well as a powder room in our unit. When I married Mel, rather than share mine, she took over the guest bath and made it her own, complete with all the mysterious vials of makeup and moisturizers she deems necessary to keep herself presentable. I happen to think Mel is more than presentable without any of that stuff, but I’ve gathered enough wisdom over the years to realize that my opinion on some subjects is neither requested nor appreciated.

So we split the bathrooms. As long as we share the bed in my room, I don’t have a problem with that. Occasionally I find myself wondering about my first marriage to Karen, who is now deceased. Most of the time we were married, we had two bathrooms—one for us and one for the kids. Would our lives have been smoother if Karen and I had been able to have separate bathrooms as well?

No, wait. Denial is a wonderful thing, and I’m going to call myself on it. Despite my pretense to the contrary, the warfare that occurred in Karen’s and my bathroom usually had nothing to do with the bathroom itself. Karen was a drama queen and I was a jerk, for starters. Yes, we did battle over changing the toilet paper rolls and leaving the toilet seat up and hanging panty hose on the shower curtain rod and leaving clots of toothpaste in the single sink, but those were merely symptoms of what was really wrong with our marriage—namely, my drinking and my working too much. All the squabbling in our bathroom—the only real private place in the house—was generally about those underlying issues rather than the ones we claimed we were fighting about.

For years, Karen and I never showed up at the kitchen table for breakfast without having spent the better part of an hour railing at each other first. I’m sure those constant verbal battles were very hard on our kids, and I regret them to this day. But I have to tell you that the pleasant calmness that prevails in my life with Mel Soames is nothing short of a dream come true.

Don’t let the different last names fool you. Mel is my third wife. She didn’t take my name, and I didn’t take hers. As for the single day Anne Corley’s and my marriage lasted? She didn’t take my name, either, so I’m two for one in the wives-keeping-their-own-names department. Karen evidently didn’t mind changing names at all—she took mine, and later, when she married Dave Livingston, her second husband, she took his name as well. So much for the high and low points of J. P. Beaumont’s checkered romantic past.

When the coffeepot—an engineering marvel straight out of Starbucks—beeped quietly to let me know it was done, I went out to the kitchen and poured most of the pot into our two hefty stainless-steel traveling mugs. This is Seattle. We don’t go anywhere or do anything without sufficient amounts of coffee plugged into the system.

I was just tightening the lid on the second one when Mel appeared in the doorway looking blond and wonderful. Maybe the makeup did make a tiny bit of difference, but I can tell you she’s a whole lot better-looking than any other homicide cop I ever met.

On our commute, she drives. Fast. It’s best for all concerned if I settle back in the passenger seat of my Mercedes S-550, drink my coffee, and do my best to refrain from backseat driving. One of these days Mel is going to get a hefty speeding ticket that she won’t be able to talk her way out of. When that happens, I expect it will finally slow her down. Until that time, however, I’m staying out of it.

And don’t let all this talk about making coffee fool you. Mel is no wizard in the kitchen, and neither am I. We mostly survive on takeout or by going out to eat. We have several preferred restaurants on our list of morning dining establishments once we get through the potential bottleneck that is the I-90 Bridge.

The people who planned the bridges in Seattle—both the 520 and the I-90—were betting that the traffic patterns of the fifties and sixties would prevail—that people would drive into the city from the suburbs in the mornings and back home at night. So the lanes that were built into the I-90 bridges have express lanes that are westbound in the morning and eastbound in the afternoon. Except there are almost as many people working in the burbs now as there are in the city, and “wrong-way” commuters like Mel and me, on our way to the east side of Lake Washington to the offices of the Attorney General’s Special Homicide Investigation Team, pay the commuting price for those long-ago decisions every day.

If we make it through in good order, we can go to the Pancake Corral in Bellevue or to Li’l Jon’s in Eastgate for a decent sit-down breakfast. Otherwise we’re stuck with Egg McMuffins at our desks. You don’t have to guess which of those options I prefer. So we head out a good hour and fifteen minutes earlier than we would need to without stopping for breakfast. Getting across the lake early usually makes for lighter traffic—unless there’s an accident. Then all bets are off. A successful outcome is also impacted by weather—too much rain or wind or even too much sun can all prove hazardous to the morning commute.

That Monday morning we were golden—no accidents, no stop-and-go traffic. By the time the sun came peeking up over the Cascades in the distance, we were tucked into a cozy booth in Li’l Jon’s ordering breakfast. And more coffee. Because our office is across the freeway and only about six blocks away from the restaurant, we were able to take our time. Mel had pancakes. She’s a runner. She can afford the carbs. I had a single egg over easy with one slice of whole-wheat toast.

We arrived at the Special Homicide Investigation Team’s east side office at five minutes to nine. We don’t have to punch a time clock. When we’re on a case, we sometimes work extraordinarily long hours. When we’re not on a case, we work on the honor system.

For the record, I do know that the unfortunate acronym for Special Homicide Investigation Team is S.H.I.T., an oversight some bumbling bureaucrat didn’t understand until it was too late to do anything about it. In the world of state government—and probably in the federal government as well—once the stationery is printed, no departmental name is going to get changed because the resulting acronym turns out to be bad news. S.L.U.T. (the South Lake Union Transit) is another unfortunate local case in point.

But for all of us who actually work for Special Homicide, the jokes about S.H.I.T. are almost as tired as any little-kid knock-knock joke that comes to mind, and they’re equally unwelcome. Yes, we laugh courteously when people think they’re really clever by mentioning that we “work for S.H.I.T.,” but I can assure you, what we do here at Special Homicide is not a joke. And neither is our boss, Harry Ignatius Ball—Harry I. Ball, as those of us who know and love him like to call him.

Special Homicide is actually divided into three units. Squad A works out of the state capital down in Olympia. They handle everything from Olympia south to the Oregon border. Squad B, our unit, is in Bellevue, but we work everything from Tacoma north to the Canadian border, while Squad C, based in Spokane, covers most things on the far side of the mountains. These divisions aren’t chiseled in granite. We work for Ross Connors. As the Washington State Attorney General, he is the state’s chief law enforcement officer. We work at his pleasure and direction. We work where Ross Connors says and when Ross Connors says. He’s a tough boss but a good one. When things go haywire, as they sometimes do, he isn’t the kind of guy who leaves his people blowing in the wind. That sort of loyalty inspires loyalty, and Ross gives as good as he gets.

That morning Mel and I both managed to survive the terminal boredom of the weekly staff-meeting ritual. After that, we returned to our separate cubicle-size offices, where we were continuing work on cross-referencing the state’s many missing persons reports with unidentified homicides in all other jurisdictions. It was cold-case work, long on frustration, short on triumphs, and even more boring most of the time than staff meetings.

When Squad B’s secretary/office manager, Barbara Galvin, poked her head into our tiny offices and announced that Mel and I had been summoned to Harry’s office, it was a real footrace to see who got there first.

Harry is a Luddite. He has a computer on his desk. He does not use it. Ross Connors has made sure that all his people have the latest and greatest in electronic communications gear, but he doesn’t use that, either. It’s only in the last few months that he’s finally accepted the necessity of carrying a cell phone and actually turning it on. He and Ross Connors are really birds of a feather in that regard—they’re both anti-geeks at heart. Occasionally we’ll receive an e-mail with Harry’s name on it, but that’s because he has dictated his message to Barbara, who dutifully types it at the approximate speed of sound and then presses the send button. The same goes for electronic messages that come our way from Ross Connors’s e-mail account. His secretary, Katie Dunn, sends out those missives.

In our unit, Barbara Galvin and Harry I. Ball are the ultimate odd couple in terms of working together. Harry is now, and always has been, an exceptional cop who was kicked out of the Bellingham Police Department due to a terminal lack of political correctness that survived several employer-mandated courses in sensitivity training. He would have been stranded without a job if Ross Connors, no PC guy himself, hadn’t taken pity on him and hired him as Squad B’s supervisor.

Barbara Galvin is easily young enough to be Harry’s daughter. Her body shows evidence of plenty of piercings, but she comes to work with a single diamond stud in her left nostril. I suspect that her clothing conceals any number of tattoos, but none of those show at work. She’s a blazingly fast typist who keeps only a single photo of her now ten-year-old son on an otherwise fastidiously clean desk. She manages the office with a cheerful efficiency that is nothing short of astonishing. She prods at Harry when he needs prodding and laughs both with him and at him. When I’ve had occasion to visit other S.H.I.T. offices, I’ve also seen how Squads A and C live. With Harry and Barbara in charge, those of us in Squad B have a way better deal.

When Mel and I walked into Harry’s office he was studying an e-mail that Barbara had no doubt retrieved from his account, printed, and brought to him.

“Have a chair,” he said, stripping off a pair of drugstore reading glasses.

Since there was only one visitor’s chair in the room, I let Mel have that one. When Harry looked up and saw I was still standing, he bellowed, “Hey, Barbara. Can you round up another chair? Who the hell keeps stealing mine?”

Without a word, Barbara brought another office chair to the doorway and then rolled it expertly across the room so it came to a stop directly in front of me.

“Sit,” Harry ordered, glaring at me.

I sat.

Harry picked up the piece of paper again and returned the reading glasses to the bridge of his nose.

“I don’t like this much, you know,” he said.

Mel and I exchanged looks. Her single raised eyebrow spoke volumes, as in “What’s he talking about?”

“I’m not sure why it is that you’re always Ross’s go-to guy, but you are,” Harry grumbled, sending another glower in my direction. “This time the attorney general wants both of you in Olympia for the next while. It’s all very hush-hush. He didn’t say what he wants you to do while you’re there, or how long he wants you to stay. He says you should ‘pack to stay for several days,’ and you should ‘each bring a vehicle,’ which leads me to believe that you won’t necessarily be working together. You’re booked into the Red Lion there in Olympia.”

“I’m assuming from that we probably won’t be staying in the honeymoon suite?” I asked.

“I would assume not,” Harry agreed glumly. “Now get the hell out of here. Time’s a-wastin’.”

CHAPTER 2

SINCE WE HADN’T PACKED TO GO TO THE OFFICE, AND since we hadn’t brought both cars, we had to go back home to throw some clothing into suitcases and pick up Mel’s Porsche Cayman. Driving into Seattle, though, we were able to be a two-person carpool in the right direction for a change. Way to go!

Packing took no time at all. We have no kids at home and no pets, either—not even a goldfish. That meant that all we had to do was turn off the lights and lock the door. Simple. Trouble-free. Then we headed south, caravanning on I-5 with Mel in the lead.

It’s a little over sixty miles from downtown Seattle to downtown Olympia. Driving directions say the trip should take a little over an hour. It actually took an hour and a half due to a semi that jackknifed for no apparent reason on a perfectly dry, straight highway just south of Fort Lewis. Driving alone gave me time to think about what Harry had said about my connection to Ross Connors. He was right. I was and am Ross Connors’s “go-to guy” for more reasons than Harry I. Ball knows.

Ross and I have dealt with similar tragedies. Anne Corley, my second wife, chose suicide by cop, although that was long enough ago that the term wasn’t in common usage at the time. Ross’s wife, Francine, was carrying on a torrid affair with the husband of a friend. In the process she let slip some information on a supposedly protected witness with fatal results for said witness. When Francine realized that the jig was up and we were coming for her, she went out into their backyard with a handgun and blew her brains out.

Ross and I had also had our difficulties with booze before those tragedies struck, and we both had to get a lot worse before we got better. Ralph Ames, who was once Anne Corley’s attorney and who is now my friend, helped get me into treatment. When Ross finally came to me for help, I did the same thing for him by personally escorting him into his first AA meeting.

-People who venture into AA are given a sponsor—someone you can call in the middle of the night when the temptation to drink is too great and you need a human voice to talk you down out of the trees. My longtime AA sponsor is Lars Jenssen, a retired ninety-something halibut fisherman who became my stepgrandfather by virtue of marrying my widowed grandmother, Beverly Piedmont. He was my sponsor before he married my grandmother and he remains my sponsor to this day, even though, in the aftermath of my grandmother’s death, he took up with another widow, Iris Rasmussen, from Queen Anne Gardens, a Seattle-area retirement home, where the two of them are evidently scandalizing all concerned by openly living in sin.

But I digress. Ross wanted me to be his sponsor. I know from personal experience that having a sponsor who’s more than an hour away is a bad idea, so I found him a group and a sponsor in Olympia. That was the part Harry knew nothing about. Mel knew because she had been privy to some of the phone conversations when Ross called me looking for help, and I know for a fact that Mel can be trusted to keep her mouth shut.

Ross must have understood that, too, I theorized, or he wouldn’t have asked Harry to send both of us, but I couldn’t imagine why. What was going on that Ross couldn’t afford to hand the case off to his Squad A home team?

It had to have something to do with politics. Ross is a political animal. He’s won reelection to the position of attorney general over and over, usually by wide margins. The last election, after the scandal with Francine, he won again, but that one was a squeaker. He had hinted to me that after this four-year term, he most likely wouldn’t run again. Those weren’t words that made me feel all warm and fuzzy. S.H.I.T. has Ross’s own particular stamp on it, and I couldn’t really see myself—or any of us—working for someone else with the same kind of personal loyalty that we all give willingly to Ross Connors.

Whatever this case was, it was also big enough to bring people down.

Harry called while I was still stuck in the traffic jam waiting for the wreckage of the semi to be towed off the freeway.

“Ross says to meet him in the coffee shop of the hotel,” Harry said. “What’s the matter? Doesn’t that ‘dreaded Red’ have a bar? Or maybe their coffee shop serves booze.”