Empty Promises

policies. It didn’t make sense, not for a single man with no dependents. Marberg said he would check further on this new information.
    “Larry told me he was homosexual about six months ago,” the elder Duerksen said. “I don’t know anything about his life in Seattle, though.”
    University of Washington investigators advised that they had talked with Larry Duerksen’s supervisor at the library. “The witness reports she had lunch with Larry on the fourteenth,” the follow-up read. “He told her that he and Gareth were supposed to meet with a man from the Dorian Society [a gay support group in Seattle] at the base of the George Washington statue that night to discuss publicity for Gareth Leifbach’s case.”
    Homan and Tando shook their heads. Why on earth would they meet outside in the dark in a driving rainstorm when they could have met with the Dorian representative in their apartment? To back up their growing suspicions, the detectives checked with the Dorian Society to see if anyone there knew of such a meeting. Nobody did.
    If he and Larry had planned to meet the activist, why hadn’t Gareth mentioned it to Tando and Homan? He had repeatedly assured them that he didn’t know where Larry was going that night. The investigators approached the problem from another angle, brainstorming possible scenarios. “Okay,” Tando began. “The witness said she saw two men—who seemed to be very close companions—sharing an umbrella. Is it possible that Gareth led Larry out into the dark campus on the pretext of some secret meeting, which never existed?”
    “Possible, sure—but why?” Homan asked. “What would Gareth Leifbach hope to gain if Larry died? He had a lot more to gain by keeping him as his strongest supporter if he wanted to continue to gain publicity. Larry apparently idolized him.”
    “Larry was afraid of something,” Tando said, repeating what they already knew. “All those people he worked with at the library verify that. They’re telling us he was obsessed with the idea that someone was going to kill him. He was really scared. This wasn’t his usual tall tale.”

    The investigation became increasingly puzzling. Sergeant Don Cameron received a frantic phone call from Gareth Leifbach. “About thirty minutes ago,” he said, his voice trembling, “I got another of those calls! The guy said, ‘I got Larry and I’ll get you if it takes a year!’ ”
    “Why did you wait a half hour to report this?” Cameron asked.
    “I don’t know,” Leifbach answered. “I think I’m just going to stay in my apartment. I’m very frightened.”
    No sooner had Cameron hung up—after promising to see about putting a tap on Leifbach’s phone—than he received a phone call from the Seattle Police Department’s communications center. “A guy just called—sounded young, probably Caucasian,” the officer reported. “He said, ‘Tell Sergeant Cameron I killed Larry Duerksen and I will kill Gareth Leifbach … or whatever his bastard name is.’ ”
    The caller had, of course, refused to give his name. Either there was an assassin out there stalking gay activists, or someone wanted the homicide detectives to believe there was. Unfortunately, the anonymous call had come in on a business line and was not recorded, as a 911 call would have been.
    Detective Darryl Stuver of the University of Washington police and the three Seattle detectives assigned to the case were working almost full time now, trying to ferret out the truth behind Larry Duerksen’s murder. Larry had told almost everyone he knew that he’d been threatened, but no one had believed him. A check with the phone company elicited the information that Duerksen had gone so far as to call a representative on October 8 to report that he had received six threatening calls, but he hadn’t requested a tap or any follow-up from Pacific Northwest Bell.
    All of the investigators working on his murder had come to have doubts not only about Larry Duerksen’s respect for the truth but also about Gareth Leifbach’s. The two were so much alike—both given to braggadocio and elaborate exaggeration. Which one had lied? Or had both of them lied? Or neither?
    Now Gareth was the only flesh-and-blood suspect they had. But they still had no motive. If it was he who shot Larry Duerksen, they didn’t know why. No one who knew them recalled so much as a minor argument between them. They seemed to be genuinely fond of each other and united in their