Peters bailed out of the office at about four-fifteen. Taking kids to dentists was one part of parenthood I had brains enough not to envy. I completed our share of paperwork and handed it over to Margie for typing.
I decided to walk back to my apartment and take my own car down to Rainier Valley to check on Darwin Ridley. People who know Seattle only from television weather reports assume we live under unfailingly gray and dreary skies. The network weather reports never mention that our clouds often burn off during the day, giving us balmy, springlike afternoons, while the rest of the country remains frozen in the grip of winter.
This was one of those afternoons. If it hadn’t been for the departmental issue.38 in my shoulder holster, I would have stripped off my jacket and slung it over my arm as I sauntered down a noisy Third Avenue. From either side of the street and from below it as well came the rumbling sounds of construction, the jackhammer racket of a city changing and growing. Harried pedestrians bustled past, blind and deaf to the process.
I entered the lobby of the Royal Crest and experienced a twinge of regret. Within weeks I’d be moving into a new place at Second and Broad, leaving behind the apartment that had been my haven ever since the divorce. Maybe being over forty makes the prospect of change, even change for the better, extremely uncomfortable.
It was rush hour. Honking horns told me that traffic was heavy everywhere, including the usually free-moving Fourth Avenue. It didn’t make sense for me to leave my apartment and jump into the fray. I wasn’t in that much of a hurry.
Instead, I made a pot of coffee and flopped into my ancient leather recliner, a relic from my first marriage, and the only stick of furniture I had managed to salvage from the house in Sumner when Karen threw me out. The recliner was brown and stained and scarred with years of use-ugly but honest. I had served notice to the interior designer working with me on the new place that where I went, so did the recliner.
With a steaming mug of coffee for company, I settled back to mull the Bailey’s Foods case and try to get a handle on it. Being a detective with Homicide is very much like playing chess with a dozen opponents. The game requires anticipating all the moves, yours and the other players’ as well, without ever getting a clear look at the board or knowing exactly who all the players are.
Was Darwin Ridley the dead man? A routine check of police records had turned up nothing but a couple of unpaid parking tickets. Ridley appeared to be a fairly law-abiding man. The name and address in Rainier Valley provided a very slender lead. Only the slimmest circumstantial evidence suggested we were on the right track. My first move was simple: Ascertain whether or not Darwin Ridley was alive. If he was, that was that, and we could go barking up another tree.
If lightning did strike, however, and it turned out Ridley was our victim, then the game would become infinitely more complicated.
Grieving families must be handled with utmost care, for two reasons. First, the sudden violent death of a loved one is possibly the worst shock a family ever withstands. Survivors are faced with a totally unanticipated death that leaves them with a lifetime of unresolved feelings and unsaid good-byes.
The second reason isn’t nearly as poignant. The killer may very well be lurking among those grieving relatives and friends. Most homicide victims are murdered by someone they know rather than by a total stranger. Separating real grief from phony grief is an art form in its own right.
So I sat there waiting for the traffic to die down and puzzling about an unidentified man by a grocery store dumpster who would never get the chance to flaunt his set of perfect teeth in some old folks’ home. And about a towed Buick Century, sitting forgotten in a corner of the Lincoln Towing lot. And about a man named Darwin Ridley, who was either dead or alive. By six o’clock, I was ready to find out which.
My Porsche was happy to be let out of the garage, but it protested being held to city speed limits. Or maybe it only seemed that way because I was hearing the call of the open road myself and wanted to be on a freeway going somewhere. Anywhere.
I found Ridley’s house with no trouble, a neat, old-fashioned brick Tudor, situated near Lake Washington but minus the high-priced view. There was a two-car carport attached to the house. In it, shining in the glow of an outdoor light, sat a sporty bronze-and-cream Mustang GT. The other half of the carport was empty. Early evening dusk revealed a well-tended front yard, trimmed by a manicured hedge. Several lighted windows in the house indicated someone was home. Pulling into the carport, I parked behind the Mustang.
The house looked peaceful enough, so much so that I almost dreaded ringing the bell. Whatever the outcome, having a homicide detective pay a call tends to disrupt a family’s ordinary evening routine. I more than half wished Darwin Ridley himself would open the door.
He didn’t.
Instead, an attractive black woman, still puffing with exertion, came to the door. Her hair was held back by a purple sweatband. A fine film of perspiration beaded her upper lip.
She flung open the door angrily, as if expecting someone she knew but wasn’t too happy with. Then, seeing a stranger, she slammed it almost shut.
"Yes?" she asked guardedly through the crack.
"I’m Detective Beaumont, Seattle P.D." I held my ID up to the open slit of the door. "Are you Joanna Ridley?"
There were long, brilliantly colored fingernails on the hand that took my ID into the house and then passed it back to me without opening the door further. "What do you want?"
"I was hoping to speak to your husband."
"He’s not here."
"Do you know when he’ll be back?"
"No."
She wasn’t exactly brimming over with spontaneous information. "Could I speak with you then, Mrs. Ridley?"
Reluctantly, she inched the door open a little wider. In the glow from the porch light, she looked up at me defiantly, her full lips pursed, eyes smouldering. Her hair was pulled back from a high, delicately curved forehead. I was struck by her resemblance to that classic bust of Nefertiti I had seen when it came through Seattle with the King Tut exhibit years ago.
Joanna Ridley was an exotic beauty, with wide-set eyes glowing under magenta-shaded lids. Her look of absolute disdain brought me back to earth in a hurry.
"Why do you want to talk to me?" Her arch tone was almost a physical slap in the face.
"We’re conducting an investigation, Mrs. Ridley. It’s important that I talk to you."
"I suppose you want to come in?"
"Yes."
She stepped aside to allow me inside. My gaze had been riveted to her face. It was only when I looked down to gauge the step from the porch up into the house that I realized one of her hands rested on a wildly protruding tummy. Joanna Ridley was more than slightly pregnant. She was very pregnant.
She wore a huge pink sweatshirt that hung almost to her knees. An arrow pointed downward from the neck, and the word Baby was emblazoned across the appropriate spot. Her legs, what I could see of them, were well-shaped and encased in a pair of shiny, royal blue leotards. Joanna Ridley was the complete technicolor lady.
Padding barefoot ahead of me, she led the way into the living room. A rubber exercise mat lay in the middle of the floor. On the VCR a group of blurred aerobic exercisers were frozen in midair. She switched off the VCR and the screen went blank. I wondered if unborn babies liked aerobics, if they were willing or unwilling participants in America ’s latest health-nut fad.
Joanna Ridley spun around to face me. Her question was terse. "What do you want?"
"Do you have any idea how we could reach your husband?"
"No."
"Has he been gone long?"
Some of the defiance left her face. Awkwardly, she squatted down beside the exercise mat, folded it, picked it up, and wrestled it behind the couch. Once more her hand returned unconsciously, protectively to the swell of baby in her abdomen. I got the distinct impression she was avoiding the question.
"A couple of days," she said evasively.
"How long?" I insisted.
"I saw him last Friday morning, at breakfast, before he left for school. He’s a teacher. A coach for Mercer Island High School."
"He’s been gone since Friday and you haven’t reported him missing?"
She shrugged. "He lost."
"I beg your pardon?"
"The game. The Islanders lost Friday night. The first round of the championship. He’ll come home when he’s good and ready."
"He does that? Just disappears?"
She nodded. "When they win, he celebrates. When they lose, it’s gloom and doom. He hides out afterward. He usually doesn’t miss school, though," she added.
"He did today?"
Joanna Ridley turned her back on me and walked to the couch. She sat down, curling her legs under her in a way that should have been impossible for someone in such an advanced stage of pregnancy. Maybe doing aerobics does make a difference. Uninvited, I helped myself to a chair.
She took a deep breath. "They called looking for him. Left a message on the machine. I didn’t return the call."
There was a brief silence between us while I wondered exactly how pregnant she was and whether the female reproductive system would withstand the shock my intuition told me was coming. If Darwin Ridley was missing, had been since Friday, I had a feeling I knew where he was, and I didn’t know how she’d take it.
Looking for a way to delay or soften the blow, I cleared my throat. "As I said, Mrs. Ridley, we’re conducting an investigation. Would you happen to have a recent photograph of your husband?"
Despite her bulging center of gravity, Joanna Ridley gracefully eased her way off the couch. She left the room and returned a few moments later carrying an eight-by-ten gilt-framed photograph, which she handed to me. Staring back at me was a good-looking middle-aged man with a sprinkle of gray in his curly hair. His mouth was set in a wide grin. With perfect teeth.
"It’s a good picture," I said.
She took it back from me and examined it closely herself, as though she hadn’t looked at it for a long time. "It is, isn’t it."
"Did your husband ever have any kind of surgery?"
She looked at me thoughtfully, considering before she answered. "On his knee," she said at last. "An old football injury."
"Right or left?"
"Left." Suddenly, she seemed to lose all patience with me and my apparently inane questions. "Are you going to tell me what’s going on?"
"Mrs. Ridley, I’m sorry to have to say this, and at this point let me stress that we’re not sure, but we have reason to believe your husband may be the homicide victim who was found on Queen Anne Hill early this morning."
Her slender fingers tightened around the picture frame, gripping it until the knuckles showed light against the darker skin. She stepped backward, sinking heavily onto the couch.
I hurried on. "We need someone to make a positive identification. This afternoon we discovered that over the weekend your husband’s car was towed away from the same parking lot in which the victim was found."
"You think he’s dead?" She choked over the last word.
"As I said, Mrs. Ridley. We’re not sure. From looking at the picture, I’d say it was the same man, but that doesn’t constitute a positive identification. There’s certainly a strong resemblance."
She leaned back against the couch, resting her head on the wall behind her, closing her eyes. Her breathing quickened. I was afraid she was going to faint. Alarmed, I got up and went to her.
"Are you all right, Mrs. Ridley? Can I get you something? A glass of water? Something stronger?"
She looked up at me through eyes bright with tears. "Where is he?"
"The medical examiner’s office. Harborview Medical Center."
"And you came to take me there?"
I nodded. "If you’re up to going. You could send someone else-a relative, a close friend. A person in your condition…"
She stood up abruptly. "I’ll go."
"You’re sure it won’t be too hard on you?"
"I said I’ll go," she repeated.
She paused by the door long enough to pull on a pair of leg warmers and some short boots. She draped a long yellow wool shawl over her shoulders. "I’m ready," she said.
Outside, I helped her into my car. Sports cars are not built with pregnant ladies in mind, whether or not they do aerobics. There was absolute silence between us during the drive to Harborview. She asked no questions; I offered no information. What could I say?
A brand new, peach-fuzzed night tech in Doc Baker’s office came out of the back as we entered. "What can I do for you?"
"I’m Detective Beaumont. Seattle P.D. I believe we have a tentative identification on the Queen Anne victim."
"Great!" He glanced at Joanna Ridley’s somber face. She stood there silently, biting her lower lip. He curbed some of his youthful enthusiasm. "Sure thing," he said. "If you’ll wait here for a couple of minutes…"
He disappeared down a short hallway. I offered Joanna a chair, which she refused. Instead, she walked over to the doorway and stood peering out. Harborview Medical Center sits on the flank of First Hill. Even from the ground floor she could look down at the city spread out below and beyond the early evening hazy glow of parking lot lights. Eventually, the tech came back for us.
"Right this way, miss," he said. I winced. He wasn’t going to win any prizes for diplomacy, or for observation either, for that matter.
He led us down the same hallway and stopped in front of a swinging laboratory door. He pushed it open and held it for her to enter. Joanna seemed to falter. I didn’t blame her. Eventually, she got a grip on herself and went inside. I followed her, with the tech bringing up the rear.
A sheet-draped figure lay on a gurney in the far corner of the room. "This way, please," the tech said.
Joanna Ridley didn’t move. She seemed frozen to the spot. I stepped to her side and took hold of an arm, just above the elbow. Gently, I led her forward.
The tech moved to the head of the gurney and held up a corner of the sheet far enough to expose the still face beneath it. In the quiet room, Joanna gave a sudden, sharp intake of breath and turned away.
"I need to lie down," she said.