Of course, with everything that had happened just before Christmas, the whole holiday season had turned into something of a bust. Then, at the last minute, Mel had been summoned to Washington, D.C. Homeland Security was putting on an antiterrorism dog-and-pony show for police chiefs from all over the country. Mel, the recently designated chief of police in Bellingham, had initially declined the invitation, saying she didn’t have the time or the travel budget to attend.
Then, someone in D.C. had taken a look at their RSVP list and realized that, in terms of diversity, they were on the low side when it came to female attendees. I suspected there were a couple of reasons for that, number one being that female chiefs of departments were still pretty much, as my mother would have said, “scarce as hens’ teeth.” And the top-drawer ones like Mel took their responsibilities seriously and probably figured they had better things to do with their time than to go trotting off to a meaningless conference in D.C. where they would be treated as little more than window dressing.
The upshot was, early in the week a new batch of invitations had been issued, ones that included Homeland Security coughing up all travel and hotel expenses—for the distaff chiefs. This struck me as an out-and-out case of discrimination toward the male attendees. Nonetheless, Mel had accepted the offer and flown off to D.C. on a red-eye late on Thursday. Her absence left me batching it in Seattle rather than spending a quiet weekend with her in our downtown condo.
With our plans shot to hell, I had called Scott, intending to bail on the party rather than go without Mel. Scott, however, had not only insisted that I come along, he even offered to pick me up so we’d all be able to use the express lanes. With their ETA less than half an hour away, I headed into the bedroom to get ready. Fifteen minutes later, showered, shaved, and wearing the Montblanc cologne Mel had given me for Christmas, I stepped into my walk-in closet and pulled down the garment bag that held my best suit.
After straightening my pocket square, I slipped one hand into the jacket pocket and noticed an object lurking there. As soon as I felt the contours, I recognized what it was—my Special Homicide badge. Drawing it out of the pocket and seeing the black band still wrapped around it hit me like a ton of bricks. The last time I had worn the suit had been for Ross Connors’s funeral.
Unbidden, a whole series of images from that terrible time flashed through my waking mind just as they often do in my dreams at night. First there was the supposedly carefree December evening. There had been flurries of snow as Mel and I headed for Seattle Center intent on a much-anticipated company party that never happened. Mel and I had stood together, frozen to the ground in horrified silence, as a speeding Range Rover, driven by a pair of totally clueless bank robbers, plowed into the side of Ross Connors’s town car as his driver attempted to make a left turn off Broad into the Space Needle parking lot.
Now, alone in my bedroom, I recalled the screams of sirens as first responders converged on the awful scene. I remembered heart-stopping moments as, one by one, I realized four people were dead. The two crooks, driving hell-bent for leather without seat belts, had both been thrown clear of their vehicle. They had died instantly.
The town car had been T-boned on the driver’s side. Racing to the vehicle, I checked on both Ross and his driver, Bill Spade, searching for pulses. There were none. The only sign of life inside the town car was in the front passenger seat where Harry Ignatius Ball, my immediate supervisor from the Special Homicide Investigation Team, sat howling in pain. His legs had been nearly severed by the sheet metal from the town car’s roof as it collapsed under the weight of a fallen utility pole.
When they hauled Harry away from the scene that night, rolling him first into the KOMO building at Fisher Plaza and then flying him by helicopter to Harborview, I was sure the man was a goner. But the docs at Harborview turned out to be miracle workers. He lost both his legs above the knee, but he lived.
In the aftermath of those events, with Ross barely cold in his grave, the newly appointed attorney general had laid waste to what had been Ross’s pet project, the Special Homicide Investigation Team. With little advance notice and less fanfare, S.H.I.T. became a thing of the past, and those of us who had worked there were out of a job.
While the rest of us were being kicked out onto the street, Harry was shut up in a hospital, first fighting for his life and later, in rehab, dealing with the grim realities of his new life as a double amputee. With nothing else to keep me occupied, I had assumed the task of fixing Harry’s Eastlake condo and turning it into a place he could use both while he was still mostly confined to a wheelchair and later—how much later I still didn’t know—when he would be fitted with a pair of new hi-tech legs.
The rehab job had been a complicated endeavor. While Harry bitched about his medically necessitated incarceration, I had been in charge of the Harry I. Ball Project, as we called it. Lots of people were ready and willing to make donations, but someone had to be in charge of handling those funds and properly thanking whoever had contributed. My mother would have been proud of all my handwritten thank-you notes.
For the design work, I had enlisted the help of Jim Hunt. There had been permits to obtain, contractors to juggle, materials to be purchased, to say nothing of endless days of design decisions. I didn’t care if I ever set foot in a lighting or plumbing fixture store again. Then, once work started, I was in charge of overseeing construction.
The hurry-up remodeling project had come in on time but slightly over budget. Weeks earlier, Harry had finally been released from rehab. He had gone home under the supervision of a capable but nightmare-inducing retired RN named Marge Herndon, whom many regard as a clone of Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. She had been my grim-faced, overly bossy drill instructor/taskmaster during my stint of rehab following bilateral knee replacement, but she’d gotten the job done. I had suggested that Harry look into hiring her to help him once he was sent home. I never anticipated what happened once those two tough-minded individuals were thrown together. I had expected they’d initially lock horns and only gradually come to some kind of understanding. Instead, they’d gotten along like gangbusters from the outset, their shared addiction to tobacco having helped seal the deal. And if Harry thought, as I had, that Marge was bossy as all hell, he had so far failed to mention it.
Lost in thought, I had no conscious recollection of sinking down on the side of the bed, but that’s where I was when the phone rang.
“Hey,” Cherisse announced. “We’re here.”
There was still a lump in my throat, one I had to swallow before I could reply. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll be right down.”
On the ride down in the elevator, I attempted to compose myself. I realized that Scott and Cherisse were right to insist that I go to the gala. After all, there have been far too many fallen officers in my life for me to take a pass on Behind the Badge, and that’s what the evening would be about—remembering those folks and honoring them.
As the elevator descended, I enumerated them one by one, starting, of course, with the most recent—Delilah Ainsworth. Before Delilah came Sue Danielson; before Sue came the big guy, Benjamin Harrison “Gentle Ben” Weston; and before Gentle Ben there was my very first partner in Homicide, Milton “Pickles” Gurkey. Pickles had been on duty when he suffered a fatal heart attack during a shoot-out in the parking lot outside the Doghouse restaurant.