My Mercedes S55 may have come to me used, but it’s several years newer than Mel’s BMW, so her 740 tends to be relegated to second-class status on most workdays. The only problem with sharing cars is my steadfast refusal to have talk radio playing in mine. Period. (In my opinion, a little bit of all-talk-all-the-time arguing goes a very long way.) So when we’re in the Mercedes we tend to listen to KING-FM. I’m a latecomer to classical music, but it’s the one inarguable alternative to perpetual arguing.
Once on the east side, we split up and drive on to the SHIT Squad B offices in Eastgate in our two separate vehicles. We park next to each other in the parking lot and ride up in the elevator together. Big secret—sneaky and subtle. It’s a lot like thinking you’re pulling the wool over parental eyes when you’re in junior high and busy sneaking in and out of the house in the middle of the night. I suspect our boss, Harry I. Ball, knows all about it and simply chooses to keep his mouth shut on the subject. I believe it’s a variation on the theme of “Don’t ask; don’t tell.”
Mel showed up in the kitchen looking like a million dollars. She gave me a breezy kiss, filled our two thermos traveling cups with coffee, and we headed out. It had been sunny in Ashland over the weekend, but it had rained from Thursday on in Seattle and it was still raining like crazy that Monday morning.
“Did you call Beverly and Lars?” she asked.
Beverly, my ninety-something grandmother, lives with her second husband, Lars Jenssen, in an assisted-living facility up on Queen Anne Hill. Beverly was fading—they both were—and I dreaded calling for fear of hearing bad news.
“Not yet,” I said. “Too early.”
That was nonsense, of course. Both Beverly and Lars were lifelong early risers who could have, individually and together, roused the birds out of bed.
“Try giving them a call later, then,” Mel advised. “Kelly sent along that little framed picture of Kyle—the one they took in the hospital. She wanted to be sure we got it to them right away.”
“Right,” I said. “Maybe we can see them after work tonight.”
We rode up in the elevator together. Mel ducked into her office and turned on her radio. I was surprised to see that Barbara Galvin, our super-efficient office manager, wasn’t at her desk. I found her in the break room waiting for a pot of coffee to finish brewing.
“Heads up,” she said. “The big guy’s here.”
“The big guy,” of course, was none other than Attorney General Ross Alan Connors. In the two years I had worked for the man, I could count on one hand—more like one finger—the times the A.G. had sallied forth from his lair in Olympia and driven up the I-5 corridor to pay a personal visit to Squad B of his Special Homicide Investigation Team.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Who knows?” Barbara replied with a shrug. “He turned up a few minutes after I did. He’s been closeted with Harry for the last twenty minutes.”
I’m a guilt magnet—even when I haven’t done anything wrong. In this case, I knew I was at fault. There was no doubt in my mind that Ross Connors had appeared in person to read me the riot act for carrying on with Mel. (Mel would insist I was being a sexist jerk since, in actual fact, we were both equally at fault.) Sexist or not, however, when Ross showed up outside my door a few minutes later, I was ready to take full responsibility for our little indiscretion.
“Hey, Beau,” Ross said. “Do you mind?”
“Come on in,” I replied as casually as I could manage. “Be my guest.”
Ross Connors is a big man, someone who fills up any room he enters. That goes triple for my tiny office. At six-four and two-eighty, he looks like what he was in high school and college, a top-drawer tackle. He’s also an experienced politician with all the careful grooming, finely tailored clothing, and good looks that go with that territory. But Ross was beginning to show his age. His wife’s very public suicide a year or so earlier had taken its toll. His hair, once a distinguished salt-and-pepper, was now solid gray, and there were dark circles under his eyes—as though he wasn’t sleeping well. I could certainly relate to that.
Holding a cup of coffee, Ross settled back in my only guest chair. He took a tentative sip of the coffee and then heaved a contented sigh. “Much better,” he said. “I don’t know who made that first pot. It was like drinking crankcase oil.”
“That would be Harry,” I told him. “His own personal witch’s brew. The rest of us have learned to wait until Barbara Galvin makes the next pot.”
“Wise decision,” Ross said. “Remind me next time.”
My office isn’t much larger than a cubicle would be anywhere else. When Ross reached over and pushed the door shut, I figured he was building up to giving me my dressing-down, but he didn’t. Instead, he took another measured sip of coffee.
“So what are you working on these days?” he asked.
This qualified as a disingenuous question of the first water because I was sure Ross Alan Connors knew exactly what each of his special investigators was working on. I decided to go with the flow.