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  The ancient green hulk of a taxi was stopped directly in front of me as I stepped out onto the sidewalk. It was disgorging an improbable number of laughing, baby-gift-carrying women on their way to a noontime shower. Without a moment’s hesitation, I climbed into the newly unoccupied taxi and directed the driver to take me north to Charlotte Chambers’ Forest Grove apartment complex.

  The heavily traveled streets weren’t nearly as bad as they had been earlier. Sand, slightly warmer temperatures, and friction from passing vehicles had combined to turn most of the roadways to lumpy slush, although driving conditions would probably still change for the worse once the sun went down for the evening.

  When we reached the Forest Grove Apartments, I could see that someone had made a halfhearted attempt at scraping clean the driveway down into the complex. Nonetheless, I had the cabbie drop me on the street and I walked the rest of the way.

  The rickety stairway and handrail leading up to the Chambers’ apartment had also been scraped clear of snow, but the layer of ice that remained on the slick wooden steps was far more treacherous than the snow would have been.

  From inside, I could hear the noise of an industrial-strength vacuum cleaner. No one answered my first knock, or the second. I waited until the vacuum went off before I tried again. This time the door opened immediately, and a wizened man stood before me.

  “Yes?” he asked.

  I handed him my card. “I’m looking for Mrs. Chambers,” I said.

  He glanced uneasily over his shoulder. “Charlotte isn’t here just now,” he said. “She’s expecting some family members to arrive from out of town, and the wife and I are waiting here in case they come before she gets back.”

  “I see. Can you tell me where she is or when you expect her?”

  The man looked back into the room. “I can’t say for sure,” he replied. A woman wearing an apron and carrying two bulging garbage bags appeared over his shoulder.

  “Who is it, Floyd?” she asked.

  “A policeman,” Floyd replied uncertainly. “He wants to know where Charlotte is and when she’ll be back.”

  “Well,” the woman said impatiently. “Let him in. Don’t just stand there with the door open. It’s cold outside. And go ahead and tell him where she is. If Charlotte Chambers isn’t ashamed of herself, she certainly ought to be.”

  Floyd stepped back from the door and motioned me inside. Gravely he held out his hand. “The name’s Patterson. Floyd Patterson, and this is my wife, Alva.”

  “How do you do, Mr. Patterson,” I said, glancing over his shoulder into the room behind him. The curtains were open, and an almost miraculous transformation had taken place in the dingy little apartment. It was clean, almost spotlessly so. The dirty dishes were gone, as were the collection of boxes and the wads of clothes. The unmistakable back-and-forth tracks of a vacuum cleaner marched virtuously across the orange and green shag carpeting.

  “Well?” Alva Patterson said expectantly to her husband. “Are you going to tell him or am I?”

  “The movies,” he murmured.

  “Pardon me?” I asked, not understanding.

  “Charlotte’s at the movies.”

  “Right down here at the Oak Tree,” Alva Patterson sniffed. “The so-called bargain matinee. She took the bus. If it weren’t for Richard, we wouldn’t be here at all, but I can’t imagine him coming home and finding this place the way it was this morning, and with his morning, and with his mother not here besides.”

  She shook her head disdainfully and clicked her tongue in matronly disapproval. “Those two men deserved so much better,” she added with a sniff. “Both Richard and his father.”

  “So there’s a son?” I asked. “I wasn’t aware they had any children. Mrs. Chambers didn’t mention it yesterday when we talked to her.”

  Floyd Patterson nodded. “They have a son, all right. Richard’s in the Navy. Stationed in Norfolk, but he’s been on a cruise in the Mediterranean. He’s getting hardship leave and should be arriving home sometime today. Maybe not until this evening, with the way the weather’s been, but I told him we’d stay around here and come pick him up once he gets in. Charlotte doesn’t drive, you see, and it’s way too expensive for him to take a cab all the way here from Sea-Tac.”

  “Driving’s not all that woman doesn’t do,” Alva Patterson remarked pointedly, and flounced off toward the kitchen with a stack of overflowing garbage bags still in hand.

  Patterson motioned me toward the couch. “Won’t you have a seat, Detective Beaumont?”

  I moved toward the sagging couch. It too had been thoroughly vacuumed. The stray popcorn leavings from the day before had disappeared completely. No dust rose from the cushions as I lowered myself onto them.

  “I take it you and your wife are friends of the family, Mr. Patterson?”

  Floyd hung his head. “Of Alvin more than Charlotte, I’m afraid. Charlotte’s, well…she’s always been difficult.”

  “You can say that again,” Alva offered tartly from the kitchen, where she was furiously scrubbing the counter. The odor of undiluted bleach wafted into the living room. “You should have seen the parsonage after they moved out. I tell you it was criminal.”

  “Now, Alva,” Floyd cautioned mildly. “Remember, judge not…”

  “That’s easy for you to say, Floyd,” Alva snapped, cutting him off in midsentence. “You menfolks didn’t have to clean those filthy bathrooms. The women did. And the kitchen! We found roaches in some of the kitchen cupboards, can you imagine? And don’t you think for one minute that I’m here working today because of Charlotte Chambers. Absolutely not. I’m doing this for Richard so that when his friends stop by to visit, he won’t have to be embarrassed.”

  “So you’re members of the church where Alvin Chambers used to be the minister?” I asked, directing my question to Floyd.

  He nodded. “That’s right. The Freewill Baptist down in Algona. I’ve been deacon there for fifteen years. I was on the committee that hired Pastor Al when he first came to us ten years ago. I hated to see him go when he left, especially for a job like that. It’s such a terrible waste, but then…” Floyd left off and shrugged. “It was just one of those things, I guess.”

  “Why did he leave?” I asked.

  “Because of the remodeling,” Patterson answered without hesitation. “It was all because of that.”

  The fall from grace of numerous televangelists as well as that of a few of the less reputable local clergy had prepared me for the worst. I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised by the recounting of any number of peccadillos, but the word “remodeling” definitely wasn’t on the list of what I expected to hear.

  “Did you say remodeling?” I asked.

  Patterson nodded sadly. “It was all so silly. We…” He paused. “The church had finished paying off the mortgage. In fact, we celebrated with a mortgage- burning at the annual dinner. I remember Pastor Al telling me how much he was hoping we’d be able to spend some of that extra money on a new outreach program that he had in mind. Mission work we could do in our own backyard, right there in Algona. But at the very next board of directors meeting, someone came up with the idea of remodeling the sanctuary, and that’s what the board voted to do. Remodel. I think it broke Pastor Al’s heart.”

  Alva Patterson appeared in the kitchen doorway, drying her hands on the front of her apron.

  “It wasn’t just that, Floyd, and don’t you sit there and say it was.”

  “Now, Alva,” Floyd cautioned, holding up his hand.

  “Don’t you ”Now, Alva‘ me,“ his wife returned. ”You know as well as I do that the remodeling was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. The real problem was Charlotte. She was the problem then, and she’s the problem now.“

  Without warning, Alva Patterson pulled the skirt of the apron up to her wrinkled face and sobbed into it. “That poor man. Whatever did he do to deserve the likes of her for a wife! It’s not fair. He should have had better!”

 
At that precise moment, my pager went off. Floyd Patterson directed me to the kitchen telephone, where I dialed Margie’s number.

  “Beaumont here,” I said.

  “I’m glad you called right back,” Margie said. “Detective Kramer telephoned before court went into session and wanted me to get in touch with you. He said to tell you ”Bingo.“”

  “Bingo? What the hell does that mean?”

  “Beats me. That’s all he said.”

  I wondered, had he learned something important during the course of his lunch with Jennifer Lafflyn or had the fingerprints from Pete Kelsey’s spoon shown up somewhere on the AFIS system? It was just like my friend Kramer to play games and not tell me exactly what was happening.

  “Where’s Kramer now?” I asked.

  “In district court. Court was just then being called to order. He said he’ll probably be there all afternoon. Do you want me to try to get word to him?”

  “No. Don’t bother,” I said. “I’ll handle it myself.”

  Damn! Charlotte Chambers’ next-of-kin interview was going to have to wait a little longer. I flung the phone back on the hook and turned back toward the living room, where a still-sobbing Alva Patterson stood leaning heavily against her husband’s comforting shoulder.

  “What is it?” Floyd Patterson asked.

  “Something’s come up,” I told him. “I’ve got to go back to the department. Do you know where the phone book is?” I asked. “I need to call a cab.”

  “Don’t bother with that,” Floyd said. “I’ll be glad to give you a lift. Alva can stay here to handle the phone calls if Richard’s plane should come in before I get back.”

  It was a generous offer, and I was happy to take him up on it because time was of the essence. I rode back downtown in an aging Mazda.

  “Alva’s right about Charlotte,” Floyd told me, once we were alone in the car. “She’s a sick woman, and I’m sure Pastor Al was burdened by it, but where could he go? We always expect our ministers to help us when we have problems, but who helps them when they get into trouble?”

  He shook his head sadly and lapsed into silence. I was relatively certain Floyd Patterson himself hadn’t pulled the trigger, but he was nonetheless carrying a heavy burden of guilt over what had happened to Alvin Chambers.

  “You knew him well?” I asked.

  “As well as anyone, I suppose,” Patterson replied. “We had the whole family over to our house for dinner several times in the early years. And our two sons ran around with Richard some, but after Charlotte got so bad, it was hard to invite them over together.”

  “What happened to her?”

  Patterson shook his head. “I don’t know exactly. It was sort of gradual. She stopped going out much, except to movies, and she started putting on so much weight. Pastor Al told me once that he had tried to get her into counseling for depression, but she refused to go.”

  “So you and he remained friends in spite of it?”

  “Yes.”

  “What can you tell me about him?”

  “He was a kind man, a good man,” Patterson declared firmly. “And it’s terrible for him to have been gunned down that way. Where will all this godlessness end?”

  “This isn’t easy to ask, Mr. Patterson, but to your knowledge, did he ever fool around?”

  “Fool around? You mean with other women? Absolutely not! I’m telling you, Pastor Al was a God-fearing man, in the strictest sense of the word. He believed adultery was a sin, plain and simple. Just because he left out church didn’t mean he left his calling.”

  I might have pointed out that being a man of the cloth hadn’t prevented any number of other ministers from doing things they shouldn’t have, but Floyd Patterson was clearly affronted by my question and he was, after all, going miles out of his way to give me a ride.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” I said placatingly. “In the course of an investigation like this, it’s important for us to have some idea of what kind of man he was.”

  “I already told you,” Floyd replied. “Pastor Al Chambers was a good man, a good man through and through.”

  Floyd Patterson dropped me off in front of the Public Safety Building. Inside the lobby, waiting for the slow-moving elevator, I wondered if Detective Kramer had actually picked up an AFIS report or if he had just called in to check on it. Instead of going directly back to my cubicle on the fifth floor, I stopped off on four.

  Tomi Nakamoto, one of the clerks who works in the AFIS section, used to work in Homicide. We’re still buddies.

  I stopped at the counter and waited until she looked up. When I waved, she smiled broadly. “How’s it going, Beau? Long time no see.”

  “Fine. Did Detective Kramer pick up that report on our crook, Pete Kelsey?”

  Tomi got up and walked to another desk, where she riffled through a stack of papers in a wire basket. She shook one out of the pile.

  “Nope,” she said, walking toward the counter. “Here it is. He said he’d be in for it later, but you can go ahead and take it now, if you like.”

  “Thanks,” I told her. “Kramer’s busy in court. I want to get cracking on this right away. You do good work.”

  “I know.” Tomi beamed, her dark eyes flashing humorously behind wire-framed glasses. “You dicks couldn’t get along without us.”

  I waited until I was back out in the elevator lobby before glancing down at the piece of paper in my hand. When I did, my first reaction was that Tomi must have made a mistake and given me the wrong report. Pete Kelsey’s name wasn’t on it. I studied the paper for several long moments before the truth of the situation slowly began to dawn.

  Pete Kelsey wasn’t Pete Kelsey at all. His real name was Madsen, John David Madsen, from Marvin, South Dakota. He was, in fact, PFC John David Madsen, who had gone AWOL from his unit in Southeast Asia on the fifteenth of March, 1969, and who had subsequently been declared a deserter on April fifteenth of that same year.

  Holding the report in my hand, I almost laughed aloud, not because Pete Kelsey wasn’t who he said he was and not because he was a wanted fugitive. That was clearly no laughing matter. What was funny was that we now knew Pete Kelsey was a wanted man, but thanks to Detective Paul Kramer, we couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

  Because Kramer had picked up that spoon and the damning fingerprints in the course of an illegal search.

  The joke was on Kramer, and it served him right.

  Chapter 15

  I hurried up to the fifth floor and sat at my desk poring over the AFIS report as if reading the same black-and-white words over and over again would somehow unlock the secrets hidden behind them, because the words gave the bare-bones skeleton of a hell of a story.

  John David Madsen, alias Pete Kelsey, had been on deserter status from the United States Army for more than twenty years. Why?

  Picking up the phone, I dialed South Dakota information. As I waited for the operator to answer, I thought about how a son’s or brother’s or husband’s sudden reappearance after so many years of unexplained absence might affect the family he had presumably left behind. But the information operator came up empty.

  If John David Madsen had any surviving relatives, they were no longer living in the vicinity of Marvin, South Dakota, wherever the hell that was.

  Then, since I had come up empty-handed on the first try, I made another wild stab at it. This time I dialed Ottawa information, asking for either a Madsen or a Kelsey. Again, no Madsens, but three Kelseys were listed, one of which was a Peter. It sounded to me like one of the oldest phony ID tricks in the book-assuming the identity of a long-deceased child.

  I jotted down the telephone number, but it took several minutes to work up nerve enough to dial it. The woman who answered sounded elderly and frail, and I berated myself for being an uncaring bastard even as I laid the ground-work for asking the painful questions.

  “Is this Mrs. Peter Kelsey?” I asked.

  “You’ll have to speak up a bit. I can’t quite hear you.”

/>   I upped the volume. “Is this Mrs. Peter Kelsey?”

  “Yes it is. Who’s calling, please?”

  “My name is Beaumont, Detective J.P. Beaumont, with the Seattle Police Department.”

  Had I been on the other end of the line, I probably would have demanded that my caller offer some further form of identification or verification. Mrs. Peter Kelsey did not.

  “What can I do for you, Detective Beaumont?” she asked.

  “This may be difficult for you, Mrs. Kelsey,” I said gently, “but I’m working on a case where someone has been living under an alias for many years. It’s entirely possible that this person has taken the name and assumed the identity of someone in your family.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I see. Go on.”

  “What I’m calling for, Mrs. Kelsey, is to see whether or not there was a child in your family named Peter Kelsey, a child who died at a very early age.”

  The sharp intake of breath answered my question in the affirmative long before she spoke, her voice quavering tremulously. “Yes. He was my youngest,” she said, almost in a whisper. “My baby. He died of whooping cough when he was only three months old. I sat up with him all night in the hospital, but there was nothing anybody could do. Nothing at all. He died at five past seven in the morning.”

  I was struck by the fact that even after all those years, the exact time of her child’s death was still engraved in her heart and brain. Mothers are like that, I guess.

  She paused, waiting for me to say something. While I was still fumbling ineptly for an appropriate comment, she continued. “You say someone is living with my little Peter’s name? Someone there in Seattle?”

  I didn’t want to drag this particular Mrs. Peter Kelsey, an innocent bystander, any further into the ugly morass. By just making the phone call, I had already inflicted far too much damage.

  “It’s a police matter now, Mrs. Kelsey,” I said. “Knowing what you’ve told me, I’m sure we’ll be able to straighten things out in no time.”

  “But this person,” she insisted stubbornly. “Has he done anything wrong, I mean anything that would reflect badly on my Peter?”