Dismissed With Prejudice (9780061760631) (18 page)

Yes, he and Tadeo had worked together at RFLink. Yes, he had been present during the patent discussion between Blakeslee and Tadeo, and when Blakeslee had refused the product, both he and Tadeo had quit outright. No, he had never received a summons to testify in Tadeo's behalf during the patent infringement trial, and yes, he would have been glad to do so had he been notified.

Woodruff told me that he had received a commission to compose an original work for the Houston Symphony, and he had been working on that night and day for months, not accepting phone calls or seeing any visitors. Maybe the subpoena had come then, he said.

Throughout the discussion, Woodruff seemed gravely concerned, particularly when I told him about what had happened to Machiko and Kimi. “Are they going to be all right?”

“Machiko's already out of the hospital. She's staying with a friend of Kimi's near Pullman. Kimi's in Sacred Heart in Spokane. From what I heard today, she's doing much better, but she's a long way from being released.”

“I see,” he said.

“According to Mrs. Oliver, you called Mr. Kurobashi on Friday.”

Woodruff nodded. “That's right.”

“Why?”

“I had told Tad that when I finished up with my commission, the two of us would do something together.”

“What do you mean? Go fishing? Take a trip?”

“No, no. We were a good team, the two of us. I knew that Tadeo was working on something, had been for years, and I wanted to market it for him. It takes three things to bring off a new product—engineering, money, and marketing.”

“What new product?”

Woodruff's eyes became veiled. Until then, his answers had been forthright and easily given. Now he clammed up. He covered his mouth with his hand, letting one finger rest against the side of his nose. I worked my way through college selling Fuller Brush door-to-door. I can tell when somebody stops buying. Clay Woodruff had stopped cold.

“I can't talk about it,” he said.

“What do you mean you can't talk about it?”

“I'm doing a favor for a friend,” he replied. “Just because Tad is dead doesn't mean I won't keep my word.”

I wasn't getting anywhere, so I tried a different angle. “When Mr. Kurobashi came to see you that day, did he seem upset to you?”

“Upset? Hell yes, he was upset. He had lost everything, and all because I didn't testify. Then, out of the blue, I call him up and act as though we're still asshole buddies. He was pissed as hell.”

“Were you?” I asked.

“Was I what?”

“Were you still asshole buddies?”

“As far as I was concerned we were,” Woodruff replied.

“Why didn't you testify then?” I asked.

Woodruff drew back and looked at me. “I already told you. Because I never got called. I never got a summons. When I explained that to Tad, he understood. When I tried to reach him on Friday, I was calling in the dark. I had no idea that the judge had ruled against him and he was losing his business.”

“Tell me about his state of mind that day. Did he give any hint that he was in some kind of trouble or that his life might be in danger?”

“No.”

“And this product that you say he was working on. Would it be something that could be of use in
illegal activities, something the Mafia might have a vital interest in?”

“No.”

“Did you ever know Mr. Kurobashi to have any dealings with criminal types?”

Once more Woodruff's eyebrows knitted together to form a solid bridge across his nose. “You're asking me if I have any knowledge of Tad being involved with organized crime?”

“Yes.”

Woodruff's finger moved away from his nose. He rubbed his hand thoughtfully back and forth across his jutting chin. The salesman in me recognized the gesture as a buying signal—decision time.

“Wait here,” Woodruff said. “I need to go get something. Want another beer?”

“Fine,” I said.

Woodruff picked up the pitcher and filled both of our glasses; then, grabbing his computer from the floor, he excused himself and walked over to the bar. He spoke briefly to the bartender, then he came back to where we had been sitting.

“It's upstairs,” he said. “I'll be right back.”

“Take your time,” I said casually, trying to conceal any show of curiosity about what he was going to get. The bartender came to the table and busily wiped off the damp rings left by the pitcher and glasses.

“So you're from Seattle, are you?” he said, “Here for the weekend?”

“Just tonight,” I replied.

“The music starts up at nine,” he offered helpfully. “Local group, R and B. Real laid back. People around here seem to like it.”

“You mean you don't play Woodruff's music here in the bar?”

The bartender grinned. “Oh, it gets played in here all right. Not necessarily on purpose. For instance, everybody knows that section he was working on today pretty much by heart.”

“The soundproofing's not that good?”

“You could say that.”

My glass was partially empty, and the bartender filled it with the dregs of the pitcher before hurrying back to the bar, where someone was calling him for a refill. I sat there alone for several minutes watching the denizens of Port Angeles and Davey's Locker perform. They all knew one another, knew who was good at pool and who was lousy, who could hold their beer and who couldn't. A television set in the background was quietly playing a “Star Trek” rerun to an audience of one medium-old lady with a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other. The place seemed as innocuous as an overgrown living room.

I drifted for a few moments, sipping the beer and contemplating what it would be like to live in a small town like this as opposed to a big city. When my glass was almost empty, though, I began to grow uneasy. It was taking Woodruff a hell of a long time to bring back whatever it was he was going to show me.

I turned and tried looking out the window, but the opaque blue glass barred any view of the street outside. I stood up, walked over to the door, opened it, and looked up and down. In either direction, the sidewalk and the wide one-way street were totally deserted. I stepped far enough out onto the sidewalk to see the windows of Woodruff's apartment above Davey's Locker. They were dark and empty, with no sign of life behind them, and when I tried the door to the stairway that led up to the Ritz Hotel, it was locked with an old-fashioned Masters padlock.

There was a sudden sinking sensation, a lurch in my stomach, telling me that somehow, for some reason, I'd been suckered. I turned toward the 928. My door was still locked, but I could see that the door on the passenger's side wasn't, even though I knew I had locked it. After all, I'm a cop. I
always
lock car doors.

“Damn!”

I hurried around to the driver's side and opened it with my key. I shoved the key into the ignition and turned. Nothing happened. Not even so much as a click.

“Damn,” I said again. “Damn, damn, damn.”

B
Y MIDNIGHT
I
WAS BACK IN LINE WAITING
for a ferry. Again. This time, I was on the Winslow side, trying to return to Seattle. The ferry had been pulling away from the dock just as I came roaring down the hill into Winslow. The ferry schedule isn't like horseshoes. Near misses don't count. The score for the day stood at Washington State Ferry System—two; J. P. Beaumont—zip. Had there been a blood-pressure measuring device in my car, I'm sure I would have registered off the charts.

I'm not any kind of mechanical genius, and I make it a point
never
to fiddle around with the complicated equipment under the hood of my flashy 928. I let someone else do it, preferably a tried-and-true Porsche specialist.

On this Friday night in Port Angeles, it had taken Triple A more than an hour to send out some jerk in a tow truck. He tried using a set of jumper cables, turned the key, and nothing happened. Then he had poked around under the hood with a flashlight, finally discovering that the battery cable
had been neatly clipped. Whoever did it had made sure that the break in the wire was well out of sight.

So the damage was repairable, but everything took time, and I knew that with every passing moment, Clay Woodruff was slipping farther and farther beyond my grasp. While the tow truck guy was looking for a replacement battery cable, I walked across the street to the Port Angeles Police Department and attempted to swear out a complaint against Clay Woodruff, accusing him of vandalizing my car. The Port Angeles cops treated the whole situation as an enormous joke.

How did I know it was Woodruff who had vandalized my car? Had I actually seen him do it? What was it he had gone to get when he left me waiting in Davey's Locker, and where had he gone when he left there? My complaint that every passing moment was giving Woodruff more time to get away fell on deaf ears. Get away from what? Was Woodruff under suspicion for some crime? Was the Seattle Police Department looking for him for a specific reason? Woodruff had been a law-abiding citizen in Port Angeles for a number of years. Who the hell was I?

I'm a slow learner, but eventually I got the picture—small-town cops stonewalling big-city cop. On the small-town cop's turf. At the city cop's expense. They laughed at first, but finally, reluctantly, they put out an APB, but by then Woodruff was nowhere to be found.

Recrossing the street, I went back inside Davey's Locker long enough to hassle the bartender. I told him his friend was in a whole shitload of trouble, and he invited me to leave. Point/counterpoint. Mexican standoff. I took the hint and left, convinced that the city of Port Angeles had revoked every welcome mat in sight.

Back on the street outside Davey's Locker, beneath the black lifeless windows of the Ritz Hotel, I was forced to kibitz, peering over the tow truck driver's shoulder until he finished installing the new battery cable and had my 928 purring again. By then it was almost ten o'clock, too late to go driving around the Olympic Peninsula looking for Clay Woodruff. Even had I known where he was going, he had a several-hour head start. I never would have been able to catch up.

Much later, sitting in the car at the ferry dock, I tried my best to be philosophical about having lost Clay Woodruff and also about having missed the ferry. My eyelids were getting heavy and I was dozing off when the phone rang, startling me awake. It was Ames, calling from my apartment.

“Where are you?” he asked. “I've been trying to raise you on the phone all night.

“I've been out of range. Right now I'm stuck in Winslow, waiting for the ferry. Why? What's up?”

“The phone's been ringing off the hook all night. Doesn't anybody ever call you at work?”

“Hardly ever. What's going on?”

Ames was his unflappable best. “In order of pri
ority, I suppose the call from Dana Lions is the most important.”

“A call from Dana Lions? What about?”

“They found her father.” Ames paused. “He's dead.”

With those two words my worst suspicions about David Lions and his traveling Visa Card were confirmed. There was no elation in being right, only a grudging acknowledgment that I had seen it coming. I thought of Dana Lions, waiting by her phone in Kalama. At least I hadn't told her so, although maybe it would have been kinder if I had given her some hint, some warning.

“Who found him?” I asked.

“A group of Cub Scouts from Seattle on a camp out over near Lake Kachess. Dana's on her way to Seattle right now. According to what the state patrol told her, he was found just inside the King County Line, and they're bringing the body to the medical examiner's office here.”

“How do they know for sure it's Lions?” I asked. “We've already been through one false alarm when everybody thought he'd been found in Chicago.”

“His dog tags from Vietnam. They got his name off them.”

I remembered Dana mentioning the dog tags then, so there was probably no mistake, and the body really was that of David Lions.

“If Dana calls back, tell her I'm on my way and that I'll meet her at Harborview as soon as I can. What else?”

“A call from Alvin Grant in Illinois. He said it's too late for you to call him back tonight. He says he'll talk to you in the morning.”

“Anything else?”

Ames paused. “Well, actually, there was one other call.”

“Who from?”

“A Dr. Blair. He sounded a little crusty. And serious. He says that he checked with Dr. Wang and that you didn't do as you were told and go see him. Blair wants to know if you have another doctor in mind. If so, when do you plan on making an appointment? What's this all about, Beau?”

“No big thing,” I answered. “Dr. Blair's the guy who took care of my fingers.”

“So who's Dr. Wang?”

“An internist, somebody Blair wants me to go see for a second opinion.”

“For a second opinion on your fingers? Do broken fingers call for an internist?”

Ames didn't get to be where he is or what he is without being an astute judge of human behavior. He is also a consummate asker of questions. He can sniff out and demolish one of my puny smoke screens from miles away.

“Not exactly.”

“What then?”

I hesitated. Unable to find a plausible fib, I was forced to answer without one. “Blair seems to think my liver's enlarged. He wants me to go see this Wang character for a complete checkup.”

“Wants? It sounded more like he gave you strict orders to go and you didn't bother.”

“I'll go, I'll go,” I said irritably.

“When?”

“When I get around to it, dammit. This case has me tied up in knots right now. I'll go when I have time.”

I could hear the defensiveness in my voice and it made me even angrier. I hadn't wanted to discuss the subject of my enlarged liver with Ralph Ames in the first place. Now, here he was, in it up to his eyeteeth. I knew that if I tried dropping the subject, old “Aimless” was far too cagey to let it stay dropped. I made the attempt anyway.

“Let's just forget it for the time being,” I suggested. “How was your trip to Colfax?”

“Fine, fine,” Ames replied. “Archie and Machiko are getting along famously. You might be interested to know that he speaks what I understand to be passable Japanese.”

“That would be useful,” I said.

“Incidentally, Machiko came back here to Seattle with us this afternoon. She has a meeting scheduled with Dr. Yamamoto in the morning.”

My yellow mental warning light came on. Ralph Ames was venturing into dangerous territory, talking casually about an ongoing police investigation over a mobile phone. Cellular phones are notorious for allowing casual eavesdropping under even the best of circumstances. That was without hav
ing had an electronics wizard break into the car and do God knows what.

I peered out across the water. The incoming ferry was nowhere in sight. “Wait a minute, Ralph. Let me call you back.”

“Call me back?” Ames echoed. “What's the matter?”

“Never mind. I'll call you back in a minute.”

I hung up, got out of the car, locked it, and went loping back up to the terminal building. Inside, I finally located a bank of pay phones and dialed my home number.

“What's going on?” Ames asked, as soon as he answered.

“People listen in on car phone conversations all the time,” I muttered irritably. “The Kurobashi case isn't exactly public domain, you know.”

Ames laughed. “Are you getting paranoid in your old age?”

“Maybe,” I returned. “Now tell me. Why is Machiko seeing George?”

“To ask him for the sword.”

“But he can't give it to her. It's part of an active murder investigation. He still doesn't have the print results back from the computer. How on earth could he possibly turn loose of the sword?”

“It doesn't hurt to ask,” Ralph Ames replied mildly.

Ask like hell, I thought. George had called it blackmail, not asking, and he had accused Ralph
Ames of being behind it. I've known Ames long enough to know there's solid granite concealed under his foppish exterior. I was glad to know, however, that George Yamamoto hadn't knuckled under. At least not yet, he hadn't.

Ames misread my silence for tacit approval. “At least now we know why her husband never tried to sell it,” he continued.

“We do?”

“Because of her husband,” Ames said. “Her first husband. When Archie told Machiko how much the sword would probably bring at auction, she broke down and told him the whole story. It must be a tremendous relief for her to finally be able to let go of that burden after all these years.”

“Goddamnit, Ames. Will you stop talking in circles and tell me what the hell's going on?”

“Tadeo Kurobashi killed Machiko's first husband. With the sword.”

Ralph Ames knew good and well what kind of impact that news would have on me. He paused, waiting for my reaction.

“Good Lord. You've got to be shitting me!”

“Not at all. The first husband's name was Lamb. Aaron Lamb. He met Machiko when she was working in Tokyo after the war.”

“When she was working as a hooker?” I asked innocently. I'll be damned if I was going to let Ames think he was the only one holding any cards in this particular game.

“That's right. She had evidently lost her entire
family and wanted to come to this country in the worst way. Machiko says now that she thought at first that Lamb loved her. Once they were here in the States though, he turned mean and abusive. He beat her constantly. She didn't dare leave or ask for help because he told her that if he divorced her, she'd be deported and sent back to Japan.”

“What does the sword have to do with all of this?”

“It was her most prized possession, her only possession. A gift from her grandfather. He told her never to draw it unless she intended to use it, but that if it became necessary, she should use the sword to defend her honor or her life.

“One day Lamb came home drunk. He accused Machiko of hiding money from him. While he was looking for the money, he found the knife. He had never known about it before, had never seen it. Machiko had brought it with her, concealed in her luggage. Lamb came after her with the knife. He had it out of the box and was threatening her with it, demanding to know what else she had hidden away in the house. And that's when Tadeo Kurobashi happened to show up. He was out delivering groceries.”

“And killed the husband?”

“Unintentionally. With Machiko's sword,” Ames added. “Tadeo was trying to disarm him but in the struggle, Lamb went down, fatally wounded. Machiko was terrified that without Lamb, she'd be shipped back to Japan. Kurobashi was scared, too.
It was such a short time after the war. He was afraid he'd be facing lynch-mob mentality, not justice. He didn't think anyone would believe he had acted in self-defense, so he and Machiko disposed of the body. Kurobashi came back for it that night in his grocery truck. They carted the body out to Ballard and dumped it into Salmon Bay, where it was found a week later.”

“And no one ever suspected?” I asked.

“Think about it,” Ames said. “It was just after the war. Lamb was a lowlife to begin with, a thug, married to a Japanese woman, an ex-prostitute he had brought home with him. The spoils of war, as it were. I don't think anybody cared very much.”

“No,” I said quietly. “I don't suppose they did.” I thought about it for a moment. “So why did the Kurobashis keep the sword hidden all those years?”

“Out of some form of irrational fear that they'd be found out,” Ralph Ames answered. “For years it was in the safe at Kurobashi's office. Until last week.”

“What happened last week?”

“I don't know, but whatever it was, it made Kurobashi change his mind. He called Machiko late Sunday morning and told her that he had decided to go ahead and sell the sword. He said they would use whatever proceeds they got from it to start a new company.”

“Where's Machiko now?” I asked.

“Archie put her up down at the Four Seasons.
That's fairly close to the Public Safety building, where we'll be meeting with Dr. Yamamoto tomorrow.”

“The Four Seasons! Isn't that a little steep?” I asked. “How can she afford it?”

“She can't. Archie's paying for it. Cost of doing business and all that.”

“Making sure he gets first dibs to handle the sword?”

“That too,” Ames replied. “He wouldn't be doing it if he didn't think it would be worth it in the long run for both of them.”

I was feeling more than moderately irritable with Ames and Archibald Winter both. Ames sounded smug. Not only had he stepped into my business with Dr. Wang, here he was, along with his high-toned friend, messing around in more of my business, solving a murder, a forty-year-old one at that, an unsolved murder nobody had looked at in years.