Lying in Wait (9780061747168) (6 page)

A few minutes later, we pulled up in front of a bare-bones duplex on Dayton in the Fremont neighborhood. The place was a long way from lavish, but it was in a decent, settled part of the city. From the way the yards had been kept up and from the number of older, sedan-type cars visible on the street, I had an idea that some of those
homes still housed the original owners—little old people who were just now making plans to sell off their bungalows in order to enter retirement or nursing homes.

“It's a long way from Belltown Terrace,” Sue said defensively as she stopped the Mustang in the driveway in front of a minute garage.

“What do you mean?”

“Compared to where you live, this place must seem like almost as much of a dive as that bum's tent back there over the railroad tracks.”

I felt a momentary flash of anger. I've never made a big deal of my money, one way or the other. All I want to do is to be left alone to do my job without having to justify where I live or how. I glanced at the house. It may have been a humble little place, but a big orange, black, and brown construction-paper turkey covered the entire lower half of the front door. A lot of time and effort and love had gone into that damn turkey. Sue Danielson didn't have anything to apologize for—certainly not to me.

“You pay the freight on this place all by yourself, don't you?” I asked.

She nodded. “Such as it is.”

“With or without child support?”

“Mostly without,” she admitted.

“So you earn this place, don't you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, where I live is a goddamned accident, Detective Danielson. I'm living in the penthouse of Belltown Terrace because God reached out and struck my life with lightning once, not because I've earned the right to be there. So don't give me
any crap about it. And while you're at it, don't give me any crap about where you live, either. Got it?”

After a moment, she smiled slightly and nodded. “The guys down at the department are right about you, aren't they? You can be a crotchety old bastard at times.”

“Damn straight! Now, are you going to go get that kid of yours, or am I?”

“I'm going, I'm going,” Sue Danielson said.

And she did.

The instant
Jared Danielson trailed out of the duplex on his mother's heels, I knew why she wanted to brain him. In fact, so did I. On sight.

He was a gangly, scrawny kid who shuffled along in unlaced high-tops. He wore a Depeche Mode sweatshirt, the sleeves of which ended several inches below his longest finger. Although early November means legitimately winter weather in Seattle, his legs were bare. His ragged jams seemed to be several sizes too large for his narrow hips.

I know the look. The oversized clothing means only one thing to me, and I was sure it sent the same insulting message to his mother. Jared Danielson was a gang wannabe.

The drooping crotch of his pants hung down almost to his knobby knees. Had I been walking behind him, I think I would have been tempted to give them a yank. It wouldn't have taken much effort to have dropped them around his ankles.

For some unknown reason, kids who insisted on wearing their baseball caps backward six months ago have now, for no apparent reason, collectively turned them bill forward. Jared Danielson was no
exception. At least the maroon-and-gray Washington State University baseball cap perched on his head was turned in the right direction. The dark brown hair sticking out beneath it fell well below his shoulders, and a small gold hoop earring pierced the lobe of one ear. He sported a spectacularly black-and-blue bruise under his right eye.

I'm old enough and old-fashioned enough so that the combination of earring and shiner jarred. When I was growing up, a boy who wore earrings wasn't likely to be hauled into the principal's office for fist-fighting. I take that back. They got in fist fights, all right, but they usually weren't the ones who started them. This punk looked as if he had mouthed off to the wrong person.

Just one look at his typical twelve-year-old-tough-guy pout as Jared Danielson slouched into the backseat of the Mustang was enough to make me regret having offered to take the little ingrate along to lunch. But then, settling back into my own seat, I managed to find something positive in the prospect. Lunch with Jared Danielson was all I was in for. He was Sue Danielson's son. She was stuck with the kid for life.

“Where to?” Sue asked me, once she resumed the driver's seat.

Attempting to play the role of polite host, I turned to Jared. “What would you like for lunch?” I asked.

Jared glowered back at me and shrugged. “I dunno,” he said.

“Fair enough. It's my call then. Let's try that little diner up on Forty-fifth,” I said. “The one just across from the Guild Forty-five Theater.”

Ever since the Doghouse Restaurant closed in downtown Seattle, I've felt like a displaced person. Over the past few months, I've auditioned a few other hangouts, but so far none of them quite measures up.

I hate to admit it, but I miss the thick gray haze of secondhand smoke. I miss the butt-sprung orange plastic booths with their distinctive, triangular tears and duct-tape patching. I miss the basic “Bob's Burger” with the onions fried into the meat. But most of all, I miss the crusty old-time waitresses who always knew how I liked my coffee and who saved me a daily collection of crossword puzzles from various abandoned newspapers.

The diner on Forty-fifth was trying hard—too hard—to achieve a “real” 1950s look and atmosphere. Their recipe for authenticity was missing several essential ingredients. What was needed was more grime, more cigarette smoke, a few nonconforming extension cords strung along the moldings, and some hash-slinging waitresses at least one of whom would have a racing form handily tucked in her apron pocket.

Jared skulked into the far corner of a booth. Sue slid in beside him. We had no more than picked up our menus when Sue's pager went off. She headed for the pay phone in the back. “Order me a burger with fries and a cup of coffee,” she said on her way. “I'll be right back.”

I turned to Jared, who was scowling at the menu. “What'll you have?” I asked, trying once again to break the ice.

“I dunno,” he said. “A cheeseburger, I guess.”

Such unbridled enthusiasm, to say nothing of gratitude. I wanted to slug him.

He avoided my gaze by staring out the window. “So what are you?” he mumbled sarcastically. “My mom's new boyfriend? Are you two going out or something?”

Boyfriend? Going out? If I had ever been tempted to cut the kid any slack, that just about corked it.

“The lady happens to be my partner,” I explained as civilly as I could manage. “We're working a homicide case together. Period.”

He looked at me then, his eyes angry and accusing. “Well,” he said, “you're taking us to lunch. It seems like a date to me.”

The waitress showed up at the booth and saved me from knocking the presumptuous little shit upside the head. I ordered burgers for Sue and me, then stewed while Jared unconcernedly ordered a cheesburger and chocolate shake. I waited until the waitress left the table before I answered.

“Look, Buster. Your mother had to squander her lunch hour checking on a smart-mouthed kid who just happened to get his butt kicked out of school for the next three days. So for the record, I'm taking my partner to lunch. At the moment, however, I seem to be baby-sitting you, and it sounds to me as if you need it.”

Jared Danielson was used to dishing out free-floating hostility to any and all comers. He wasn't used to taking it, especially not from a complete stranger. My returned volley of dispassionate animosity caught him off guard.

“I hate school,” he said, as though that some
how justified his rude behavior. “I hate this town. I hate my mother.”

“So give her a break. Go live with your dad,” I said amiably. “Good riddance. You'll be doing your mom a favor. What's stopping you?”

For a moment, his chin jutted defiantly, then his face fell. “I can't,” he croaked.

“Why not?”

Jared Danielson shrugged. The tough-guy mask disintegrated. His lower lip trembled, while his eyes filled with self-pitying tears. The surly, belligerent teenager faded into something younger and much more vulnerable.

“We don't know where he is,” Jared answered, while his changing voice cracked out of control. “He's supposed to pay child support, but he doesn't. He left town, and Mom can't find him. She thinks he went to Alaska.”

Sue Danielson came back to the table. “You two look serious,” she said, her questioning glance shifting apprehensively between Jared and me. “What's going on? What are you talking about?”

For the first time, Jared Danielson's eyes met mine in a silent plea for help. “Football,” he finally mumbled.

We were? I needed a second to take the hint. I took a clue from the WSU baseball cap still parked on his head and tried to follow his lead.

“How about those Cougs,” I said, feigning an enthusiasm for collegiate football that I don't feel. “We were wondering who would win the Apple Cup this year—WSU or the U-Dub. Who do you think, Jared?”

As quickly as the boy had emerged from his hard little shell, he retreated back inside. “Who cares?” he muttered before lapsing once more into a stubborn, resentful silence, but not before I caught a glimpse of what was ailing Jared Danielson.

I never knew my own father. He died as a result of a motorcycle accident eight months before I was born. Days before he and my mother planned to elope, my father was headed back to the naval base at Bremerton after a date with her when the motorcycle he was riding skidded out of control and threw him directly into the path of an oncoming truck. He died two days later without ever regaining consciousness.

Faced with Jared Danielson's pain, I could see now how losing a parent you never knew was different from being willfully abandoned by a father you had grown to know and love. Having a parent die on you is a long way from having your father run away. One loss leaves a clean break that eventually heals. The other leaves in its wake a lifetime of hurt, of unanswered questions and emotionally charged blame.

In spite of myself, I felt sorry for Jared Danielson—baggy pants, smart mouth, and all.

I expected Sue to see right through the phony football ploy, but she seemed to fall for it. “Football,” she said, sliding back into the booth. “That counts me out. Oh, by the way, that was Watty. Alan Torvoldsen called in and wants us to come by and see him sometime this afternoon.”

“We can do that later. I'd rather go see Else Gebhardt first.”

“Fine.”

Jared ate his cheeseburger and drank his shake in sullen silence. Sue and I talked some over ours, but by mutual-if-unspoken consent, neither one of us said anything more about the case. When we dropped Jared back at the duplex, he didn't bother to say thank you. Or even kiss my ass. Not to me and not to his mother, either.

“Sorry he was so rude,” Sue apologized after her son slammed the car door shut and sauntered off up the walk.

“Don't worry about it,” I reassured her. “That's what twelve-year-old kids are like these days. Give him ten or twelve years. Maybe he'll improve with age.”

“I hope so,” she said.

I do, too, I thought as we headed for Ballard. For Sue's sake as well as Jared's.

Ballard as a district is considered to be Seattle's Scandinavian enclave. Whenever the king of Norway comes to town, somebody always schedules a ceremonial visit to Ballard. Whatever goes on there is headline-making news in the Ballard-based
Western Viking
, one of this country's two surviving Norwegian-language newspapers.

Ethnic jokes may be politically incorrect in the rest of Seattle, but down on Market Street, it's still open season on Sven and Ole jokes. People from Ballard don't necessarily see much humor in Garrison Keillor's tales of Lake Wobegon, because, as far as Ballardites are concerned, that's “yust the way things are.” And when Ballard folks say “
Uff da
,” or “
Ja
, sure, you betcha,” it's no
“yoke.” And it's not sarcasm, either. Even down through third-generation Sons of Norway.

Blue Ridge, the neighborhood where Gunter Gebhardt had lived with his wife, Else, is upper-crust Ballard, which isn't the oxymoron one might think. In Seattle, the price of houses always goes up the closer you get to the water, and the Gebhardts' house was on the view side and in a cleft at the bottom of Ballard's westernmost glacial ridge. The corkscrew street was named Culpeper Court.

The house Sue stopped at was a tidy if unassuming sandstone-veneer 1950s-era rambler. It may have been a “view property” once, but a newly constructed house with recently planted landscaping had been built directly across the street in a way that pretty much closed off the Gebhardts' visual access to the water and the shipping lanes.

Several cars were grouped in and around the driveway of the unfenced, meticulously mowed and landscaped yard. Three women, presumably friends, neighbors, or relatives of Else and Gunter Gebhardt, stood in a tight knot on the front porch. They eyed Sue and me suspiciously as we stepped up onto the porch from the manicured brick walkway.

“Can I help you?” one of them asked, but she moved in front of the doorbell and effectively blocked our access to it.

“We're police officers,” I explained, displaying my badge. “Detectives. Is Else Gebhardt here?”

The women exchanged guarded glances, but finally, with a shrug, the one blocking the doorbell
stepped aside. “Else's in the kitchen,” she said. “Go to the end of the entryway and turn right.”

In addition to Else, there were another seven or eight women milling about in the spacious country-style kitchen—middle-aged and older ladies who looked very much alike with their ice-blue eyes, more-than-ample figures, and blond hair going gray. Like the women outside the house, these turned on us as well with an unmistakable solidarity of distrust. Their collective message was clear. Mourners were welcome. Inquisitive strangers were not.

“Are you reporters?” one of them demanded.

This time, while Sue dragged out her I.D. and explained who we were, I caught sight of Else on the far side of the room. She was seated at a small desk that had been built into a bank of knotty-pine kitchen cabinets. Her back was to the room, and she was talking on the telephone.

“Please, Michael,” she was saying, her voice controlled but pleading, her whole body tense with suppressed emotion. “Please put Kari on the phone. I've got to talk to her.”

There was a momentary silence on Else's end of the line. The other women in the kitchen shifted uneasily. One of them offered Sue a cup of coffee more as a diversionary activity than out of any real interest in hospitality.

“Else's on the phone right now,” the woman explained, edging Sue toward the door. “Wouldn't you like to wait in the living room until she's free?”

Sue seemed to take the hint, allowing herself to be herded toward and through the doorway, but
something about the obvious discomfort of the women gathered in the kitchen, something about the tense set of Else Gebhardt's shoulders, kept me from following suit.

“Because I don't want to give you the message, that's why!” Else said sharply into the telephone mouthpiece. “This is important! I want to talk to Kari myself! Put her on the phone. Now!”

There was another brief pause. “Hello?” Else said a moment later, depressing the switch hook several times in rapid succession. “Hello? Hello? Why, that lousy little bastard! He hung up on me!”

“Else, such language!” an elderly woman exclaimed in a voice still thick with old-country inflections.

Across the room from where I stood was a small oak kitchen table. Seated at it, with her back to the window and with a sturdy wheeled walker stationed nearby, was a rosy-faced white-haired woman. She held a clattering cup and saucer in her palsied hand. Keeping her eyes focused on Else, the woman lifted the dainty china cup to her mouth and took a sip of coffee. When she put the cup back down, it rocked and rattled dangerously, but not a single drop of coffee spilled into the saucer.