I shook my head. “I can’t promise any deals,” I said, “but if you’ll help us, I’ll do what I can to help you.”
It was lame, but it was the best I could do under the circumstances, and it probably wouldn’t have worked if Fred Beman hadn’t been ready to turn himself in. He didn’t need a deal. All you had to do was look at him to see that his conscience was eating him alive. He had run home to Daddy after what happened at the Doghouse. He was half dead from a combination of too much booze and too little sleep. I could tell from the haunted look in his eyes that wherever he went and no matter how much he tried to drink himself into oblivion, Fred could find no escape. Lulu McCaffey in her black uniform and little white apron was still lying there on the hot, dirty pavement, as dead as could be.
“Put down the pitchfork, please,” I said quietly. “Place your hands on your head.”
There was another long pause. I hadn’t drawn my weapon, but I had heard the subtle snap of leather as both Larry and Watty drew theirs. As I said, it was deathly quiet in that barn. I think we were all holding our breaths. When Fred finally moved, it was only to lean over and carefully lower the pitchfork to the floor. Without a word, Watty stepped forward and cuffed him. I read him his rights. By then, Fred was crying his eyes out.
“I couldn’t believe it when it happened,” he sobbed. “It was just supposed to be fun. He shot her down like she was an animal or something.”
We were cops from out of town and were a long way outside our jurisdiction. We also hadn’t reported our arrival to any of the local authorities. As a consequence, we needed to get out of Dodge. And since Fred seemed willing enough to talk, we wanted that to happen before he got all lawyered up. Fortunately, Larry Powell had planned ahead. He had brought a battery-powered cassette tape recorder with him. Once the four of us were settled in the car with me riding in back with Fred, we turned on Larry’s recorder, read Fred Beman his rights again, and announced into the tape who all was present in the vehicle. Then we began the long drive back to Seattle, listening to his story as we went.
It turned out that skipping out on checks in restaurants was Benjamin Smith’s hobby. He did it all the time, whether he had money in his pocket to pay for his dinner or not. He traveled around town on bus passes. That’s why he often timed his dine-and-dash events to happen during rush hour when there were plenty of people out and about and lots of buses on the streets. That’s how he managed to disappear so readily—by blending in with the crowd.
Gradually, when Fred got a grip on himself, we had him go over the story again, and recount exactly what had happened in the Doghouse parking lot. His story matched Pickles’s in every detail, including the fact that none of the three of them—Lulu, Benjamin, or Fred—had seen Pickles Gurkey in the parking lot prior to the moment when he had attempted to intervene in the fight between Lulu and Benjamin. They had stopped their altercation long enough to see him standing there, holding a drawn weapon, and announcing he was a cop. Then he had simply dropped the gun, staggered backward, and fallen against the building.
“I don’t know if the guy was drunk or what,” Fred continued. “Benjy reached down and picked up the gun. The woman had stopped yelling by then because she was all worried about the guy who had just fallen over. I think she realized at the last moment that Benjy had a gun, but by then it was too late for her to get away. As soon as Benjy shot her, he wiped the gun off with his shirt, put it in the guy’s hand, and then dropped it in his lap. The guy on the ground was so out of it, I doubt he had any idea what had just happened. After that, we took off, ran like hell over to Denny, and hopped a bus up to Capitol Hill. Benjy said not to worry, that he was sure both the woman and the cop were dead. Benjy was convinced people would think the cop had done it and that no one would ever find us, but you have,” he finished. “You did.”
“It turns out Medic 1 showed up in time, and Detective Gurkey didn’t die,” I told him. “In fact, he’s the whole reason we’re here today. He’s being charged with murder in the death of Lulu McCaffey. He’s about to go down for what you did. Our job is to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“You still don’t understand,” Fred insisted. “I’m telling you, I didn’t do it. I’m not the one who shot her. Benjy did.”
“And then what?”
“And then I had to get out of Seattle. I called my dad and asked if I could come home. Again. He said he’d give me a place to stay and food to eat, but I had to work for it, just like his other hands. And that’s what I did.”