First Avenue Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  First Avenue

  LOWEN CLAUSEN

  Watershed Books

  Seattle, Washington

  First Avenue

  Watershed Books

  Seattle, Washington

  Copyright© 1999 by Lowen Clausen

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Published in the United States by Watershed Books, Seattle, Washington.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99-63611

  ISBN 0-9669919-0-7

  For Pat and Sonya,

  I wrote this book because of a baby’s cry that I never heard and never forgot. –LC

  Chapter 1

  The sky showed no hint of morning as his double-bladed oar grabbed the water and pushed the kayak east toward the bright city lights. From the reflection of those lights, he saw the swelling, falling, living surface of the sea. Beneath him the water was black and impenetrable. Only twice had he overturned with the kayak and felt the blinding, cold water envelop him. He had fought frantically the first time to right himself; he had laughed underwater the second.

  As he crossed the bay, he carried a battery-powered lantern stowed between his legs to announce his presence to large ships, but he seldom used it. It would do little good anyway. While the kayak could turn quickly and easily, large ships took miles to change course. If the pilots could see him, and they likely could not, they would think he was out of bounds to take so small a craft into their territory. He didn’t care. Here on the water, he strayed out of bounds.

  Sometimes when the alarm rang longer than normal, he would stare at the ceiling, although there was nothing to see, and would consider taking the car to work and giving himself another thirty minutes of sleep. Discipline, he would tell himself—he was used to talking alone. Once on the water he would not wish for sleep. He would take the kayak even when the weather was marginal and the water rough, when the kayak would lunge and bounce its way across the surface instead of gliding smoothly and sinuously as it did this morning.

  He cut a diagonal line across Elliott Bay and passed the grain terminal where a ship was being loaded. Conveyer belts hummed a chant over the water, and grain dust rose into the work lights like ashes in the wind. He pushed across the last open stretch of water just as the ferry left its Seattle dock at 4:00 A.M. For a few cars and a few sleepy people, the ferry, ablaze in lights and horn shrieking, sent out shock waves from its propellers. He thought it should slip out quietly, compatibly with the hour, instead of making such a fuss. He waited for it to pass, and his kayak rose and fell in its wake. The day was beginning.

  A spotlight flashed on him as he approached the dock. He saw the police car on the street above the dock and signaled back by lifting his paddle. The driver’s door opened and Murphy got out. She walked down the steps onto the floating dock and stood at the spot where he landed. He tossed her a rope, and she pulled the kayak tightly against the wood planking.

  “Good morning, Sam,” she said with a bright smile on her face.

  He was not sure what to make of this greeting. Murphy and her partner, Mike Hennessey, worked his district on the shift before him. Several times during the last few weeks, they had met him on the dock and had given him a lift up the hill to the police station. It had always been on the nights when Murphy was driving.

  “Did you have a good paddle?” she asked as he steadied himself in the kayak before scooting onto the deck.

  “I had a fine paddle,” he said, looking up to her. “Busy night?”

  “Not busy enough.”

  He remembered that feeling. Now he approved if Radio chose to leave him alone. It would take a while before she understood. Murphy was one of the new ones. Her leather gear was shiny, and her shirt looked fresh even at the end of her shift. Her face looked bright and fresh, too, and her short brown hair was combed neatly in place. Cops had looked different when he worked nights. He might have stayed if they had looked like Murphy. He worked alone now, the morning shift, the quiet shift.

  Her first name was Katherine, but he had begun cutting it short to Kat. Beneath the blue shirt and bulletproof vest and heavy leather holster, there was little room for her. That was irrelevant now, they said, and it was certainly true that he had seen enough big cops make a mess of things. Still, he wondered what would happen if somebody punched her in the nose.

  “The week’s almost over, Kat,” he said to her as he pulled the kayak out of the water and tied it upside down on the deck.

  She started for the car, carrying the bag he had tossed onto the dock, and he caught up with her and took it from her hand. She gave him a strange smile as she released the bag, one beyond interpretation, one that flickered so briefly he had no chance to return it.

  Hennessey was swearing from the passenger’s side when Sam opened the back door. The blue vinyl back seat was loose from its anchors and rocked forward when Sam slid in.

  “We got a call at the Donald Hotel,” Hennessey said after they closed the doors. “Suspicious circumstances. Occupant hasn’t been seen for a while. Odor coming from the room. Probably some old drunk who croaked. Jesus, why couldn’t they wait another fifteen minutes?”

  “Maybe it’s just some rotten food,” Sam Wright said.

  “Want to bet?”

  “No,” Sam said. “I’ll ride along.” He unzipped his bag and pulled out the snub-nosed pistol he kept there together with a towel and emergency dry clothes. He shoved the holstered pistol into his pants and pulled his sweatshirt over it. “I’ll handle the paperwork if it comes to that.”

  “It’s not your call,” Katherine said. “You haven’t even started yet.”

  “Hey, let’s not get too generous here when I’m doing the paper,” Hennessey said. “Wright can handle it if he wants. He’s got all day.”

  Sam saw the muscles clench in Katherine’s jaw as she backed the car into the street and drove silently away. He was reminded why he worked alone.

  The Donald Hotel was north of the Pike Place Market on First Avenue. It had a wide urine-treated stairway that led up to a lobby on the second floor. There was a tavern on the ground level—a convenience likely appreciated by many of its tenants. The manager stood waiting for them inside the front office. It had a barred window that looked out to the stairway. Inside the open door an old woman sat in
a stuffed green chair that took up half the office. The manager was slightly less drunk than she.

  Sam looked around the ill-lit, paint-peeling corridor. He had the feeling something might crawl up his pant leg or drop from the ceiling into his hair. He was careful not to brush against the walls. From fresh sea air to a pit like this in five minutes. It took a little pleasure off that morning smile.

  “You call?” Hennessey asked in a terse tone that revealed his distaste.

  The manager nodded but said nothing as he looked suspiciously past the blue uniforms to where Sam was standing.

  “He’s with us,” Hennessey said, not offering to explain anything more. “Which room is it?”

  “It’s next to mine,” the drunken woman said. “I told Ralph he ought to check. I ain’t heard nothing for days. It smells real bad. I told Ralph he ought to check.”

  “Did you check?” Hennessey asked him.

  “I thought I ought to wait for the cops.”

  “That baby crying all the time. I couldn’t stand it,” the woman said.

  “There’s a baby in there?” Hennessey asked, his voice rising sharply.

  “A mother and her kid,” the manager said as he rubbed his right hand nervously across his stretched dirty T-shirt. “She didn’t owe rent. Never caused trouble.”

  “Never mind that. You got a key?”

  “We got keys to all the rooms,” the manager said and pulled a ring of keys from a decrepit desk drawer.

  “That baby crying all the time. Night and day. I couldn’t stand it.” The woman shook her head and looked at them with bleary eyes.

  “You stay here,” Sam told her. He was already sick of listening to her. “Stay here and be quiet.”

  There was no mistaking the odor as they stood in front of the door on the fourth floor and waited for the manager to find the right key. Sam wished he had a cigar to cover the smell. He kept a few in his briefcase, a trick learned from the coroners, but his briefcase was still in his locker. No smell was more repugnant than decaying flesh, and the three of them were already swallowing hard as they waited outside the door.

  “Give me those keys,” Sam said, impatient with the manager’s fumbling.

  “It’s this one.”

  Sam jerked the keys away from the drunken manager and lost track of the one he had selected. “You wait down there,” he said and pointed toward the end of the hall.

  “She never caused no trouble.”

  “Never mind about that,” Hennessey said. “Just wait down there like the officer said.”

  Sam found a key marked with the room number and slipped it into the lock. Before turning the key he paused and looked at Hennessey and Katherine.

  “Murphy, you stay by the door and don’t let anybody in. Lend me your flashlight, will you? Hennessey, we don’t touch more than we have to.”

  Hennessey and Katherine nodded agreement. Slowly and reluctantly Sam opened the door. The stench rolled out of the room like a fog, and he swore softly and consistently to hold back the gagging. With the flashlight he found the light switch and flipped it on. A single bulb hung from a cord in the middle of the ceiling. Sam stood in the doorway, trying not to breathe, and used his flashlight as though the room were still dark. There was a baby crib beside a single bed, and a tiny lifeless form lay inside the crib.

  “Try to get those windows open,” he told Hennessey. He pointed with his flashlight to the two wooden windows on the outside wall.

  He walked carefully toward the crib, looking around but never averting his true attention from the huddled form behind the rails. He had stopped swearing and tried to stop everything as he stood above it. The baby—not more than a few months old—lay facedown on the mattress, clothed only in a diaper, legs curled under it, the side of its face blackened unevenly. Dried mucus hung from its nose and mouth. He didn’t touch the baby. There was no need.

  “It’s been dead a long time,” he told Hennessey, who joined him at the crib. He didn’t know whether to call the baby a he or she and didn’t want to think of it that way. “Call the sergeant. We’ll need Homicide, too. Tell them 1-David-4 is with you and will handle the paper.”

  “Never had a chance,” he said softly. He stood beside the crib after Hennessey had left and allowed himself to come dangerously close to thinking about the baby instead of holding it away. “Never had a chance.”

  He turned away, intending to not ever look back, and tried to see the rest of the room the way a cop was supposed to see it. There was little to see. A dresser with most of its handles missing. Several cans of food on top of it. A hot plate beside the sink. A washed plate and bowl, a fork and spoon stacked neatly on a towel on the other side of the sink. A baby’s spoon. Inside the single closet, there were clothes on the floor, probably the mother’s—blue jeans, shirts, and a woman’s underwear.

  Who was the mother? he wondered as he bent down to inspect the clothes. They needed to know what had happened to her, why she had not come back. If she had abandoned the baby intentionally, she was a murderer, but something else may have happened. Crying night and day, the old woman had said.

  Hennessey had gone out to the hallway to use the radio, and Katherine stood at the doorway looking in. Her face was without color in the insufficient light, and her hand shielded her nose. Sam had forgotten her. He shook his head when he saw her eyes.

  “We’ll lock it up and wait for the sergeant. Do you want me to get a First Watch car up here?”

  “No,” Katherine said. “We’ll stay and finish this.” Hennessey, standing beside her in the doorway, nodded his agreement.

  “Might as well start getting statements then,” Sam said. “Do you want the manager or the woman?” he asked Katherine.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Take the woman. See if you can get some idea how long that baby cried and when it stopped. Find out if she knows anything about the mother. We want a signed statement for Homicide. Hennessey, you take the manager. Keep him away from the woman. I’ll start banging on doors.”

  Even without his uniform, he was now in the familiar police mode. Training took over. They would find out what had happened, but that was probably all they could do.

  With his fist, he beat on the door of the adjoining room so hard that the whole frame shook. He told himself to take it easy, to think only about what he had to do. There was no answer. He went to the room on the other side and banged just as hard. A man opened the door, and other doors up and down the hall opened cautiously.

  “Police,” he said, showing the man his badge. “Seattle Police,” he shouted to the eyes peering at him from darkened rooms. “Keep your doors open. We need to talk to everybody.”

  The man who had opened the door returned to his bed and sat down. He lit a cigarette and coughed violently. He thought he might have heard something, some sort of noise from the room, but could not remember when. “Was the noise like a fight, like a struggle?” Sam asked. Might have been. Like a radio? Might have been that, too. Ever hear a baby crying? Was there a baby in that room?

  Sam went from room to room. Each one was similar—paint stained by layers of yellow tobacco smoke, a small worn-out bed. In most there were bottles on the floor, bottles on the dresser, sacks overflowing with bottles. Through all the rooms there was a sense of impermanence. There were no pictures on the walls, although in two or three of the dingy rooms, small framed photographs were propped up on the dressers. When he was a young cop, he might have picked up a picture and found out who it was. Now he simply wanted to get the necessary information and get out.

  The First Watch sergeant, his sergeant, found Sam in the hallway on the fourth floor. The sergeant was from the old school so he still wore a hat when he got out of the car. He was old enough that he usually made Sam feel like a young cop. Sam led him to the locked door and told him what they knew. Sam also explained how he happened to be with 3-David-4, the night crew.

  “I already called Homicide,” Sam said. “I didn’t think I ne
eded to wait.”

  “It’s your call,” the sergeant said, reaffirming an unspoken agreement between them. As long as Sam’s decisions brought no heat to the sergeant, he could make decisions as he wished. According to the book, wherever that was, the sergeant was supposed to make that call.

  Sam inserted the key in the door lock. “We haven’t touched anything inside,” he said. “The baby is facedown in the crib. It looks like it’s been there a long time.”

  “Abandoned?” the sergeant asked, taking a deep breath. He was still breathing deeply after the four flights of stairs.

  “I don’t know.”

  Sam opened the door and stepped back. The sergeant turned his head away as though to shift the impact of a blow. It was a bad place to be out of breath. The sergeant stood for a moment in the doorway to steady himself.

  “We opened the windows,” Sam said. “It was even worse before.”

  Sam waited at the door for the sergeant to finish his brief inspection. There was no need for him to go into the room again. He had investigated crimes where half the police department had tromped by to look, like spectators at a car accident. That was before he learned to lock the door.

  When the sergeant rejoined him, Sam pointed to the small stack of washed dishes beside the hand sink.

  “Would the mother wash the dishes if she didn’t intend to come back? Would she stack them to dry? If you were going to abandon your baby, would you care about dirty dishes?”