Empty Promises

it off the bridge. I called a yellow cab and we took the gun, without the ammo, and threw it off the Aurora Bridge.”
    But they already knew that the cab company had no record of a second call to the victim’s address on December 14. Gareth insisted that he and Larry had thrown the gun away. He even described the cabbie who’d driven them to the bridge: “A bald guy with a big mustache. Didn’t say much.”
    Gareth insisted that he had no idea whom Larry planned to meet “to discuss business” with on the campus at six o’clock that evening. All he knew was that Larry had promised to return within an hour.
    There is one axiom that detectives count on: If none of the facts match, be careful. But if a witness or suspect remembers details too precisely, be very, very careful. Gareth Leifbach remembered the day his friend (and probable lover) was murdered as if he had a photographic memory.
    “After he left,” Gareth continued. “I watched Walter Cronkite and then All in the Family. Tami Scott called about eight o’clock, and we discussed a party we were going to go to on Saturday. Right after that, the hospital called and said Larry had been shot and that he’d ‘expired.’ ” Gareth said he was so distraught that he’d called Tami back at once and asked her to come over. Then the police from the University of Washington arrived to question him. The story Gareth was telling Homan and Tando made a weird kind of sense. The victim had talked of threats, even though his stories were so bizarre that his friends doubted them. Maybe Larry hadn’t been crying wolf after all. He had walked away from the apartment to meet someone, still unidentified, and he had been shot to death. Maybe there was some wacko out there who hated “faggots” so much that he would actually murder a campaigner for gay rights. If that was true, then Gareth Leifbach was probably even more of a target than Larry Duerksen had been.
    Something niggled at Tando and Homan: Leifbach’s bravado, his love of publicity, and the fact that his story continued to change, however imperceptibly, troubled them.
    “Was Larry nervous that night?” Tando asked, suddenly. “Did he act frightened about his meeting?”
    “Yeah … yeah, he did seem kind of nervous,” Gareth agreed.
    Duane Homan and Mike Tando obtained a search warrant for Larry Duerksen’s apartment. Although Gareth had given permission for a first, more casual, search, they now looked in every drawer, every corner. When they were finished, they were convinced there was no gun there.
    Gareth Leifbach showed the detectives his few belongings. And again, he couldn’t resist bragging about his fame. He opened his attaché case and pulled out a handful of articles written about him.
    The detectives swabbed Leifbach’s left hand, telling him this was routine, that a neutron activation analysis test would show if he had fired a gun recently. At this point, it was a “psychological swabbing” rather than one that might detect gun debris. Leifbach had probably washed his hands dozens of times since Larry’s death.
    But Gareth appeared apprehensive about the test. “Maybe it would show positive,” he offered, “because I handled the gun before I threw it away.”
    “No,” they said. “Only if you fired it.”
    “Well, I haven’t fired any gun, especially that Beretta.”
    His vehemence about this made the detectives hold their breath. They half-expected him to say more, but he didn’t. The neutron test surprised him and, for the first time, seemed to throw him off stride. In moments, however, Gareth Leifbach was his old confident self.
    Detective George Marberg, working the third watch, found himself in the Homicide offices at 3:40 A.M. , taking a phone call from Larry Duerksen’s father, who was calling from Nebraska. Still reeling from the shock of learning that his son was gay, he now had to deal with the fact that Larry had been murdered. He promised to help detectives in any way he could. “I talked to Gareth the night Larry died,” the elder Duerksen said. “He said something about Larry having insurance policies and that Larry had made him the beneficiary of those policies.”
    Larry’s father said the only policy he knew about was one for $10,000 that was part of the benefits package provided by his employment at the University of Washington. He said he himself was listed as the beneficiary of that policy. He was surprised to hear that there had been other