West Seattle Blues Page 5

  “How did it go? Was it good to meet him?” I asked, smiling inside.

  “Yeah,” he answered, then paused as if the enthusiasm had taken him by surprise. “He left just a few minutes ago.”

  “He stayed all this time?” I checked my watch; they’d been together for seven hours.

  “Yeah, it was good. He’s coming back at the weekend.”

  “I’m glad for you.”

  “Thanks for finding him. I’ll send you a check.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m wondering,” he spoke slowly, “if you might want more work.”

  “What kind of work are you talking about?” I asked warily. “If you’re still thinking about a book, it’s not a great idea. I don’t think anyone would go for it.” It was best to be honest.

  “It’s not that. It’s to do with my son’s death.”

  “What about it?” I asked. “Didn’t you ask your grandson what happened?”

  “Of course,” he answered. “And he told me.”

  “Then I don’t follow.” Carson already had his answers. What more could he need?

  “You found my grandson,” he reminded me.

  “You know, all that took was a little information and plenty of phone calls. And some luck.”

  “And you found who killed that guy a few years ago.” I didn’t reply. We’d already gone over this and I didn’t like where it was headed. “My son was murdered. I didn’t even know about that until a couple hours ago.”

  “Murdered?” I drew in my breath. No, I thought. No. I wasn’t going anywhere near this.

  “I never knew him but it still hurt like hell,” he continued, as if I hadn’t spoken. “Four years ago… that’s nothing.”

  “I’m sorry, Carson. Did they find out who killed him?”

  “No, they never did. That’s what I want you to do.”

  “No,” I said firmly. “I won’t do that.”

  “I wasn’t part of his life. The least I can do is find out why he died.”

  “Hire a private detective.”

  “You found Jim in just a few hours. You found out who killed that guy a few years ago.”

  I sighed. “That…that was different, it wasn’t what I set out to do. Believe me, the way it turned out wasn’t what I ever wanted. It screwed up my life for a long time. You need a private detective. He’d know people I don’t, and he could find things out no one would ever tell me. Or she,” I added lamely.

  “Do you know any?” he asked.

  “I’ve never needed one.”

  “Look,” Carson said wearily, “will you at least read up on it and see what you think? That’s all I want. Go back and look at the papers, what they said about it. Nothing more than that. I can’t think straight about it. I need someone else to help me on that.”

  “Just the newspaper reports? That’s all?” How had it gotten this far? From an interview and an article to finding his grandson and now researching a murder?

  “I swear to God.”

  I was in no hurry to answer. After the Craig Adler business I’d felt frozen in the darkness for the best part of a year. There had been too many nights when I couldn’t fall asleep. Way too many tears and times when I just felt numb, like someone looking through a window at the world, unable to get in. And with no Steve then; I had no one close, no one to hold on to when I really needed it. The months had passed like years. Even now there were times when shards of it all would come back in dreams and leave me waking up scared. I never wanted to experience anything like that again.

  “Just research at the library?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I guess there’s no harm in that,” I agreed finally. I liked Carson, and I felt sorry for him. As long as it was only reading about the case and telling him what I believed, there couldn’t be any harm in it. But that was as far as I was going.

  “Why don’t you swing by tomorrow?” he suggested.

  “Could you come by here?” I countered. Dustin would be back at work so I’d be looking after Ian all day.

  “Sure,” he answered easily. “About ten?”

  “That’s fine.”

  The first thing he did was hand me a check. I put it on the kitchen counter, ready to deposit later. I’d already made coffee, and we settled in the living room, watching Ian crawl around as we talked.

  “I’m so sorry about your son,” I said.

  He nodded. Today Carson looked like the joy of life had been battered out of him.

  “Yeah, it kind of hit me hard when James told me the details yesterday.”

  “It happened four years ago? That’s what you said, right?”

  “Yeah.” He pulled a piece of paper from his jeans and read out: “February 7th, 1990.”

  I made a note, then asked, “Where?”

  “Pike Street, up on Capitol Hill. Someone shot him. He was dead by the time he reached Harborview.” He spoke like a newsreader, keeping the emotion out of his voice.

  “And they never found who did it?”

  He shook his head and pursed his lips. “The police looked for a killer, then I guess they gave up pretty quickly.” He raised his head and looked directly at me. “My son was a criminal. He’d been in and out of jail. He’d only been out a week when it happened.” He shrugged. “I know what that means. They’re not going to search too hard.”

  I couldn’t imagine how hard it must be to find out that the flesh and blood you’d never even known was in the ground after a short lifetime on the wrong side of the law. I glanced over at Ian, glad he’d be close to me for years yet. I could protect him and guide him, and keep all the bad things away. Maybe I’d never completely succeed, but I was damn sure going to try.

  “All I know is what my grandson told me yesterday,” he said. “I’d like you to look around, find newspaper articles, whatever you can find. Anything. I just need to know about it.”

  That was something I definitely could do. The newspapers would be on microfiche at the library. I could find the post-mortem report at the coroner’s office. That was safe, I assured myself. There was no danger in just doing that.

  “You’ll need to give me a few days.”

  “I’ve waited over forty years, so a couple more days isn’t going to hurt,” he replied with a thin, sad smile.

  “I’ll give you a call when I’ve put everything together. That okay?”

  “Yeah, fine.”

  For the rest of the day I played with Ian, reading to him, crawling around on the floor with him, and taking him out in the stroller around the neighborhood. He tried one faltering step, so close to real walking that I held my breath. It would happen very soon, I knew. After that I’d need to watch him constantly. That was the way it happened. From the moment they were born, kids started growing away from their parents. It was meant to be like that. I’d love him, do all I could to keep him safe and happy, but I was determined I’d never be a clingy mom. And he was going to be an only child. Dustin and I had discussed it when I was pregnant. One was enough, so he’d had a vasectomy last fall.

  As Ian napped, I made the preparations for dinner. It looked special and needed work, but it was really pretty simple – scallops and crabmeat in a white wine and cream sauce over fettuccine noodles. Dustin had spoiled me with dinner out; now it was my turn to impress.

  In the morning I’d fill my purse with dimes and quarters for the copy machine and head on down to the library. I was curious to learn what had happened to the late James David Clark.

  “This is wonderful,” Dustin said as we sat at the table, eating. A bottle of wine stood between us, a good Washington state white, and my glass was almost empty. Except for Ian in his high chair with pureed squash smeared all around his mouth, it could have been a very romantic scene.

  “I’m glad you like it.” I’d made the same once before, when we were dating and I wanted him to believe I could cook; he didn’t remember.

  “So this guy was murdered?” he asked, picking up the thread from a fe
w minutes before.

  “That’s what Carson says, anyway. I guess I’ll know more tomorrow.” I leaned over and wiped Ian’s face, and he grinned. Sometimes I believed he knew exactly what he was doing. I spooned up some chocolate pudding and saw his eyes sparkle. “Do you want it?” I asked and his mouth opened expectantly. Pavlov’s baby, I thought as his tongue obediently licked it all away. Just add chocolate and he was happy.

  “What will you do if he asks you to go deeper into it?”

  “Say no.” I poured myself more wine and took a sip. “I don’t want to go near anything like that again. I told you what the last time did to me.” I felt a shadow pass over me, a small shiver down my back.

  “You know you’re already involved?” Dustin pointed out. “You just found his grandson and now you’re pulling together all the articles about the killing.”

  “That’s different. It’s research, nothing more than that.”

  Dustin laughed. “Laura, I love you, but that’s bullshit. He’s gotten you suckered in. Once you’ve done this it’ll be something else. Little by little, he’ll have you doing it anyway.”

  “No,” I answered firmly, after a while. I could feel my hackles starting to rise but I wasn’t going to let it show. I knew where I could draw the line better than anyone. Because I’d been there; Dustin hadn’t. “The research is something I can do better and easier than him, that’s all. I know what to look for and where to find it. And,” I pointed out, “he’s paying me.” To finish everything off, I played my trump card. “Anyway, I couldn’t do anything more. Not with Ian.”

  “I still bet you five dollars you end up looking into it.”

  I stared at him, feeling something between love and anger.

  “Deal,” I said. “And there’s no way you’ll win.” I waited a moment and then changed the subject. “Have you decided about that job with Elliott Bay?”

  “He’s going to give me more details soon. Then you and I can talk about it. It’s your decision, too.”

  I stopped by to say hi to Monica, then went through to the microfiche department, pulling out the films for both the Seattle Times and the P-I covering February and March 1990. The first mention came on February 8th, a report of a man shot and killed on Pike Street, printed the day after the murder. There was more the following day, although it merited nothing larger than two paragraphs on the front page of the local news section. Not even a picture. Even in death James David Clark didn’t warrant much attention.

  The police had discovered the body about ten in the evening after answering a ‘shots fired’ call. James David Clark was already dead when they arrived, lying on the sidewalk outside a parking garage. He still had his wallet and there was cash in his pocket. His address was in Everett. Reading between the lines, there were no immediate suspects.

  The story continued over the next couple of days, but there was little new information. The cops found Clark’s car in a parking lot on Harvard Avenue, behind Seattle Central Community College, just a few blocks away. But that seemed to be as far as it went.

  With no results and nothing breaking, there was less and less about the killing in print. At first there was a gap of a day, then two, then a week. The cops had talked to Clark’s associates and neighbors, but they’d come up with nothing. There was also a mention of his criminal record. By early March the thin trickle of coverage stopped altogether, as if it had just been placed in a pile to forget.

  But it was what the papers didn’t say that interested me. Nothing about a job, or any family left behind. There was no sense of outrage at the killing, no image painted of the late James David Clark as a good, upright citizen. Just someone who’d gotten what he deserved. Between the two dailies, there was scant coverage for me to put together. Less than twelve photocopied pages. It didn’t seem like much for someone shot down in cold blood. No real memorial. I searched for an obituary, anything else I could deliver to Carson, but there was nothing I could find. I went through once more, just in case I’d missed anything, but the haul still remained pathetically low for a murder. It was as if no one had really cared about the truth, or that the priority had been so low. That seemed strange, since the cops liked to get those murders off the books.

  I wondered what had happened to let the killing of James David Clark slip through the cracks. Maybe it had been as simple as finding no evidence, no motive. But, from the coverage, it looked as if they’d never worked it too hard.

  Four years had passed since then and I doubted much more had happened since. I put everything away and wandered back to consult Monica. She checked the database, but there were no more mentions of Carson’s son. I already had it all.

  From the library I drove up to Harborview Hospital. It was perched on a hill and looking down on the city, too beautiful a building to be filled with illness and death. The coroner’s office was there, and looked exactly as I remembered it from six years before. The air conditioning was cold, the décor sterile. The last time I’d been here, I’d been looking into Craig Adler’s death, believing he’d simply overdosed.

  I had to wait almost an hour. They weren’t that busy, but someone had to go down to the basement to dig out the investigator’s report. Then I paid my ten dollars and walked away with the photocopy. One more item for the pile. Outside I mingled with the patients enjoying a smoke in the fresh air, and read it. James David Clark had been shot three times. Twice in the chest, and finally once more in the head. The first shot had been the fatal one, the rest simply making sure.

  He’d been a quarter inch short of six feet and weighed one hundred eighty pounds, with three scars on his arms and another on his calf. A jailhouse tattoo of a star was inked on his forearm. He’d died wearing a pair of Levi’s, a tee shirt and an old Carhartt blanket jacket.

  There were just three sparse paragraphs: everything pared down to the essence. Someone had done a poor job of scratching through Clark’s address in Everett, because it was still perfectly legible. At least Carson would have something for his money. I added the piece of paper to the others I’d gathered at the library. Not a single one of them offered any of the answers to the questions he would want to ask.

  Driving back along the viaduct, eyeing the long, empty plane of grey sky, I felt a sadness weighing down on me. All I was taking to Carson was some pain, and I was in no rush to do that. Instead I stopped at Alaska Junction. Easy Street Records was there, an independent store right on the corner. It was a place to spend half an hour, scuffing through the used albums and rarities. Then on to Husky Deli. It was still chilly out, but I couldn’t resist their chocolate-orange milkshakes.

  I was killing time and I knew it. Trying to put off the moment when I handed it all over and saw the look in his eyes. I walked along the street, past the Indian restaurant and the florist, the little shop with the dusty windows and crappy antiques. I finished up the drink. I had to do it.

  “There’s not a whole lot,” I told him as I handed the papers over. He glanced through them, pausing to read a sentence here and there.

  “Thanks,” he said after a short while and reached into his back pocket for his wallet. “How much do I owe you?”

  “Call it thirty.”

  He counted out the bills and looked up at me.

  “Listen…” he began.

  “No,” I said. I knew what he was going to ask, and I wasn’t about to do it - exactly as I’d told Dustin. It scared me way too much. There were plenty of other people who could do that work.

  He nodded and shrugged. “Okay.” He brightened. “That guy Dan from the Tractor called me back this morning. I got a definite gig there next month. April fifth.”

  “That’s great.” It was the same day as Ian’s birthday. That made it easy to remember.

  “Top of the bill, too,” he said proudly. I knew that quite a few years had passed since he’d last enjoyed that status. At least it softened the sparseness of the news that I had brought.

  “That’s pretty cool. I’ll be there.” I was
curious to hear what he’d sound like now, my memory of his music being faint. I’d kept some of the 45s that had belonged to my parents, but there was nothing of his among them. The best place to find anything now would probably be in a thrift store. Then it struck me. “That article about you in The Rocket will be out by then. I’ll make sure they tag it. That should bring a few people in.”

  “That’s cool.” He still wanted to try and persuade me to find out what had happened to his son; that was obvious in his eyes. But I’d refused and he was too much of a gentleman to push it.

  “Okay. I don’t know if any of what I found helps, but it’ll give a detective somewhere to start.” It was the best thing to say, to try and prod him on to using someone else. I liked Carson but I wasn’t going to risk my mental health for him. I was ready to go home and see my baby again. To remind myself of what was really important.

  He smiled and nodded. We said our goodbyes, and that was it.

  Six

  For the next week and a half I stayed busy. One thing about being a mom: it didn’t leave much free time. Ian kept me crazy, wanting attention from waking until he slept. Nap time was an oasis, a chance for me to sit and catch my breath. I loved it all but it was wearing. We spent part of the time completing the raised beds in the backyard. Dustin had ordered some topsoil and I passed a morning hauling it from the parking strip and into its new home. Ian was out there with me. The weather was typical for Seattle: long grey days that hovered somewhere between winter and spring. Not too cold but no heart in the temperature. Wrapped up warm, he was fine, and I didn’t mind if he guzzled a little dirt. Kids had been doing that for centuries without any problem. By the time we finished, there was a sense of satisfaction. Everything ready for planting as soon as it warmed up. At the same time, I felt as if there was a burr rubbing against my skin. I wasn’t writing. And that meant I wasn’t earning.

  Dustin was working locally, so he was home for dinner every night. There was still no more on the possible job. I started to wonder if it had been nothing more than idle talk, that he’d read too much into it. Life trundled along until March decided to go out like a lion. The weather turned wet again, trapping us indoors. When we’d gone through all his toys and put them away again, Ian and I worked on his walking. He could pull himself up, reach for the coffee table and lift himself onto his legs. Then he’d fall down again and crawl away. I helped him take two or three tottering steps at a time, holding and encouraging him. I wanted to give him the idea of having two legs even though I knew he wouldn’t really walk until he was ready. All the tiny crumbs of independence slowly coming together to make one big cake. Once he began walking…how long before he didn’t need us anymore?