Chump Change Read online

  Rachel sat two rows behind us. She’d been shopping. Found herself a well-tailored black suit that looked a bit tight across the chest but otherwise seemed to convey the moral gravity of this morning’s proceedings. A fashion plate, that one.

  The bailiff wasted no time. Took him fifteen seconds to run through the wheres, the whos, and the whys, during which Judge Keenan looked as if she’d rather be nearly anyplace else on earth. Before the bailiff’s echo had successfully exited the room, she looked out over her half-glasses at Jed and me. “To what do we owe the honor of a visit from the estimable Jedediah James?” she inquired.

  “Just practicing my trade, Your Honor,” Jed said, with a straight face.

  She arched her right eyebrow. “You’ll have to excuse me if I find it a bit odd that a relatively mundane matter such as this should attract such high-powered legal representation. Rather like hunting ants with an elephant gun, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Leo and I are old chums,” he said with an embarrassed smile.

  She lowered the eyebrow to half-mast, nodded, and turned her attention to the nondescript assistant district attorney sitting at the table across the aisle. “I’m given to understand, Mr. Fisher, that you and Mr. James have reached an accommodation as to the disposition in the matter of . . .” She read from the document in front of her. “Felonious assault. Assault on an officer. Interference with an officer in the performance of his duties. Resisting arrest. Disorderly conduct . . .” She rolled her wrist a couple of times, as if to say “et cetera, et cetera.”

  “We have, Your Honor,” the ADA interrupted.

  She began to read again. “Wherein Mr. Waterman is released on his own recognizance, pending possible further legal action at the discretion of the Lewis County District Attorney’s Office at some unspecified future date. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” he said.

  She scowled and sat back in her chair. “And why would that be?” she asked. “I mean . . . you charged the man with everything short of murder. Why the sudden urge to largesse?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean . . .” the ADA stammered.

  She peered down at him, disbelievingly. “The matter of assaulting an officer . . .” She leaned forward onto her elbows. “. . . is, in my opinion, not subject to plea agreements. I understand the young man had to be hospitalized.” She threw a disgusted hand in the air. “I don’t see that kind of offense as bargainable.” Her tone dared him to disagree.

  Fisher may have been nondescript, but he wasn’t stupid. “There were . . . uh . . . extenuating circumstances,” the ADA said.

  “Such as?”

  The words were across my lips before they crossed my mind. “Such as, a man ended up dead for absolutely no reason.”

  She gave me that specimen-jar look again. “Excuse me?”

  I stood up. “I guess I want to say something.”

  “I don’t recommend it,” she snapped. “That’s what lawyers are for.”

  “I want to get what happened onto the record,” I said.

  She looked at Jed. Jed shrugged.

  “I need to remind you, Mr. Waterman, that you have the right to remain silent.”

  “Yes, Your Honor, but apparently not the ability.”

  She stared at me for the longest five seconds in history.

  “If you insist,” she said finally.

  I laid it out for her. All calm and succinct. She was a good listener. “By that point, that guy was no threat to anybody,” I said as I was winding down. I waved an angry hand in the air. “His ankle was so badly broken the foot was facing in the wrong direction, for pity’s sake.” Inwardly, I winced at the image. “He was on the ground, unable to get up, when that idiot kid Tasered him to death.”

  “Your Honor!”

  It was last night’s older cop. Sergeant David Downing, if his name tag was to be believed. Like me, he’d gotten to his feet. Unlike me, he was tripe-faced with anger. “Officer Taylor was a trainee,” he blurted.

  “Well, apparently he needed a hell of a lot more traineeing,” I countered.

  The heretofore nondescript ADA Fisher was on his feet now, making an all-out effort to defuse the situation. “Officer Taylor has been placed on indefinite unpaid leave, pending a full investigation of the incident,” he assured the judge.

  She wasn’t ready to let it go. She threw her flinty gaze in my direction.

  “Did you assault Officer Taylor?” she asked.

  “I hit him,” I admitted. “But just once. Kind of a knee-jerk reaction, I guess,” I added sheepishly.

  “Officer Taylor was performing his duty,” Downing shouted. “We risk our lives every day, trying to—”

  I’d wheeled to face him. “The only thing you guys protect anymore is yourselves, and the only interests you serve are your own,” I said. “There’s no reason that man should be dead.” He opened his mouth to respond, but I cut him off. “If the job’s too dangerous for you, maybe you oughta consider another vocation.”

  “Stop it, you two,” the judge ordered. She gestured angrily with the gavel. “Both of you sit down.”

  You don’t get to be a Superior Court judge without knowing which way the wind blows. The financial ramifications of an unjustified killing by a police officer were not lost on Rosemarie Keenan. Nor was her duty to protect the good people of Lewis County, Washington, from potential litigation, even if she hated the trade-off. Her seat was, after all, an elective office.

  She turned her eyes to Fisher.

  “I’m going to approve your agreement with Mr. James,” she announced. “Mr. Waterman is hereby released on his own recognizance.” She lifted the gavel and then looked right at me. “Unless someone else has something to add,” she intoned.

  I began to rise, to voice my indignation, one last time, regardless of the consequences. Didn’t take Perry Mason to see that Lewis County wanted this thing long gone and soon forgotten. Any talk of internal investigations was just that . . . talk.

  Some sentient self-righteousness that lived at the very center of me hated that somebody’s life could be swept under the rug in such a cursory manner. Just business as usual. Next case on the docket! Are we rolling, Bob?

  Jed instantly sensed my intent and laid a restraining hand on my elbow. He looked up at me. “This is the Clint Eastwood moment,” he whispered, then grinned at me. “She’s giving you the chance to make her day. You give her a reason and she’ll clamp your big ass in the hoosegow as a material witness and leave you in there for the next seventy-two hours.” He could tell my blood was up, so he added an additional dose of reality. “During which time, they’ll reinstate the charges on the original complaint, convict you of them—because they are, after all, true—and send your behind to the county lockup, where you can languish for a year or two, while I bluster on about due process and they drag their big rural feet, after which, I can, in all probability, get you out on appeal.”

  I hesitated, my hands flat on the table, ass sticking out like a mare’s. I closed my eyes and treated myself to a deep breath. Jed was right, of course. This wasn’t a trip I could afford to take. All that stood between me and a stretch in jail was the county’s horror of being sued. If I pushed them beyond their line in the sand, all bets would be off. Cue the chain gang and the striped suits. I slowly released the air from my lungs and plopped back into my seat like a sullen schoolboy.

  The judge waited a full beat before banging the gavel.

  “All rise,” the bailiff bellowed.

  Behind a final withering gaze, Judge Keenan got to her feet, rounded up her paperwork, and exited stage left. Jed kept his hand on my arm until the courtroom was completely empty, which was probably a good thing.

  The jailer was a mouth-breather. He opened the clasp on the manila envelope and dumped the contents onto the battered counter. I pocketed my wallet and car keys, slid the change over the edge, and then dropped the coins into my pants pocket.

  He slipped a release form under the w
ire. “Make sure you’ve got everything you came with and then sign on the bottom,” he said.

  “Where’s the folding money?” I asked.

  He pulled the paperwork back to his side and squinted down at it.

  “Says here all you had at the time of booking was ninety-three cents.”

  “I was carrying forty-seven thousand dollars in cash when I was arrested.”

  The jailer straightened up. Blinked several times, his bored expression suddenly replaced by confusion.

  “Leo,” Jed’s voice came from over on my right. “Don’t.”

  “I was you, Waterman, I’d listen to my mouthpiece there,” a vaguely familiar voice piped in. It was Sergeant Downing, the older cop, coming out from behind the counter.

  “Just take your things and get the hell out of here.”

  I wasn’t going to let it go . . . couldn’t . . . but Downing beat me to the punch.

  “Maybe if you weren’t such a clown and did what you were told once in a while . . . maybe that guy would still be alive and Officer Taylor would still have a career.”

  I wanted to get loud. Defiant. To scream about how my actions had nothing to do with that guy’s death. Problem was . . . I didn’t quite believe it, so I clamped my mouth closed and turned to Jed.

  “I want to see the body,” I said.

  “Let me see what I can do,” he whispered. “Rachel’s waiting in the car.”

  Jed walked me all the way out the door.

  The rain began as a thin, insistent drizzle, then, as is its habit in the great Northwest, morphed into a relentless downpour. Rachel and I were sitting cheek to cheek, so to speak, in the back of Jed’s new Lexus 600h L. “First one in the state,” he’d bragged to me.

  Rachel had taken care of everything. Closed up the house, packed our stuff, called the property management people, gone shopping for the suit, and had it all ready to go by the time I walked out the side door of the Lewis County Law and Justice Center a free man.

  Jed arrived a minute or two later. Like many well-heeled Seattleites, Jed had developed truly mad umbrella skills. He managed to keep it open and above himself until he was fully ensconced in the front seat, at which point he shut it, shook it, and stowed it in a single fluid motion, without allowing so much as a drop to slop into his new car.

  He looked back over his shoulder at Rachel and me, and grinned.

  “You guys are both going to love this,” he said.

  I was in no mood for guessing. “They gonna let me see the body or not?”

  “It’s not here,” he said.

  “Where is it?”

  “This is the part you’re going to love,” he cooed. “They don’t do their own forensics out here. Don’t have the funds or the facilities. They farm it out to . . .” He cocked his head and repeated the dumb grin.

  “King County,” Rachel said with a hearty chuckle.

  “Bingo. The lady wins the Kewpie doll,” Jed said as he started the car.

  I kept my mouth shut, looking out through the rushing wipers as Jed wheeled out into the street and started through the middle of town, rolling east toward the highway.

  Rachel patted my arm. “You two don’t talk, do you?”

  I kept it as simple as I could. “No” was what I said.

  The you two Rachel was referring to were me and my former paramour Rebecca Duvall, who just happened to be the chief forensic examiner for King County. After twenty-five years of dating, Rebecca finally had enough of my lack of ambition and what she called my post-adolescent posturing, so she bolted for what seemed the greener pastures of a devilishly handsome yacht salesman by the name of Brett Ward, who, as fate would have it, turned out to be a sleazeball of monumental proportions. A man whose greed and stupidity damn near got all of us killed.

  On the day of his funeral, Rebecca and I promised to keep in touch, but it hadn’t happened. Not a call. Not a card. I figured it was because she was embarrassed, and I didn’t blame her. I married a low-grade moron like Brett Ward, I’d be embarrassed too.

  Jed broke the silence. “Why’d you want to see the body anyway?” he asked.

  I didn’t answer right away. I kept my mouth shut as we rolled up the entrance ramp to Route 609 and found a spot in the center lane, where we wouldn’t be eating some eighteen-wheeler’s rooster tail all the way back to Seattle.

  “There’s something I haven’t told anybody,” I said finally.

  Neither of them asked what.

  “Something he said right before he died.”

  Again, I got the silent treatment.

  “He looked up at me and said . . .” I admit it; I paused for effect. “He said . . . ‘Leo?’ ”

  Like they say in Brooklyn, “Ya coulda hoid a pin drop.”

  Rachel let go of my arm. Searched my eyes. She’s big on that.

  “You’re sure?” she asked.

  “Positive,” I replied. “He knew who I was. I’m certain of it.”

  I’d been a PI for over twenty-five years. Even if you’re not the brightest bulb in the box, you do something for that long and you’re gonna get good at it. That’s just the way it is, and these two knew it. If I said the guy knew me, then he knew me.

  “And you have no idea who he is . . . was?” Jed asked from the front seat.

  “As far as I know, I’ve never seen that guy before in my life.”

  Margot, Rebecca’s receptionist, seemed to be having one of those “What’s wrong with this picture?” moments. She kept blinking her eyes. The closer I got, the faster she blinked.

  Margot was pink and puffy. The hair, the sweater, the earrings, the shoes . . . all of it . . . all the time, pink and puffy.

  As seemed to be all the rage these days, she said, “Leo?”

  “How goes it, Margot?” I asked cheerfully.

  She swallowed hard. “Is she expecting you?”

  “Nope,” I said.

  She scrambled to her feet. Waved a confused hand. “I think she’s . . . I’ll have to . . .”

  “I know,” I said. “Tell her I’m here on business.”

  Rebecca let me cool my heels for a bit. Musta sent Margot on her break. Left me alone in the tombstone silence. I figured there was a message in there somewhere.

  She was pulling off a pair of blue latex gloves, one finger at a time, when she backed through the swinging door. I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t still have a little place inside of me that yearns for her. A place that remembers it all. A word here. A kiss there. An afternoon spent sailing the Sound. It’s all stored in there someplace. Twenty-five years of sharing your life with somebody will do that.

  “Leo,” she said with a halfhearted smile. “Long time no see.”

  “I gave up cadavers for Lent.”

  She almost smiled, but caught herself. The silence was deafening. We’d never talked about it. Never mentioned the gunfight down in Tacoma. The mess her husband got her into, and I had to get her out of. I’d kept my mouth shut. I led everybody to believe Brett Ward had gotten himself killed while trying to rescue Rebecca from the heavies. No sense letting on how, at the moment of his death, all he was doing was trying to save his own ass. Didn’t seem to be any point. Rebecca knew what had happened. I could tell. That was enough for me.

  “You look good,” I threw into the breach. Can’t claim I understand women, but I’m pretty sure most of them like hearing they look good. Her hair was a little longer and darker than I’d seen it before. Wearing a bit more makeup than I remembered. Looked like maybe she’d lost a few pounds too. From what mutual friends had told me, Rebecca was sort of in limbo these days, looking for herself, trying on metaphorical hats and dresses until she found something she could live with.

  She got right to the point. “Thanks,” she said, wary now. “Margot said you had some business.”

  “A body sent over by Lewis County.”

  “Male or female?”

  “Male. Big guy.”

  She rolled her green eyes. “That poor soul.�
�

  “Why poor soul?”

  She had both gloves off now. “He’s what to you?”

  Rebecca was almost messianic in her insistence that the privacy and dignity of the dead be preserved. The way she saw it, they’d already suffered the indignity of dying; the least she could do was protect them from wagging tongues and prying eyes.

  “I was there when he died,” I said.

  “Ah.”

  I knew what that meant too. She wanted the details, so I gave them to her, leaving out the rolling-around-naked-with-Rachel parts, for the sake of brevity, of course.

  She shrugged, as if to say she’d like to help me but . . . “We haven’t notified next of kin,” she offered, by way of explanation.

  “Why not?” I asked. Usually, that was the first thing they did. Call the family. Give em the bad news about ol Uncle Jack.

  “We don’t have an ID yet,” she said.

  “No wallet?”

  “No nothing. We put his postmortem photo out on the wire. Every cop in the country has seen his face by now. Maybe we’ll get something from the great beyond.” She read my mind. “He’s not in IAFIS either.”

  The Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System is the largest biometric database in the world, housing the fingerprints and criminal histories of more than 70 million slimeballs, along with more than 34 million sets of civilian prints. If you’re not in the system, you’ve never served in the military, taught in the public school system, been arrested for a felony, applied for a liquor license, or had to pass a background check of any kind. You’ve been pretty much living under a rock.

  She eyed me quizzically. “And his last word was your name?”

  I gave her the Scout’s honor sign. “I swear.”

  “And you’ve never seen him before?”

  “Nope.”

  “Eerie.”

  I agreed. “What did he die of?” I asked.

  “Heart attack,” she said.

  “Taser-induced?”