Last Dance, Last Chance

Bertha’s grand-nephew on assault charges. The detectives soon found out where he was. They left their cards, and he walked into the Homicide Unit voluntarily to talk to them. He said he hadn’t seen his great-aunt in seven months. He’d been in Everett—26 miles north of Seattle—with his sister on the evening of May 18. He produced a bus ticket that showed he’d left Everett for Idaho at 10:30 on May 19. Witnesses verified his story, and he passed a polygraph test cleanly.
    Another nephew was located in Payette, Idaho. He said he hadn’t been in the State of Washington for months; in fact, he couldn’t travel because he was recovering from a back injury.
    Bertha Lush had saved everything, and the detectives sorted through piles and piles of papers, receipts, and other records in the motel office. They found a receipt from a drug-abuse center in the north end of Seattle, which showed that Bertha had made a donation of some chairs for a garage sale. Was it possible that the men who picked up the donated items had thought Bertha would make an easy target for robbery?
    It was possible, but it hadn’t happened. The men who’d come for the items were the responsible directors of the center. They remembered going to the motel on May 15. Bertha Lush had given them bottles, vases, and chairs.
    “She was a real nice lady—a little eccentric, maybe—but really nice,” one man commented.
    By the end of June, Detectives Fonis, Dorman, and DePalmo had come to a dead end on a case where so many promising leads fizzled out. They had a suitcase, a shaving kit, the print from the toilet paper core—and that was about it. Half a dozen suspects had had their prints compared with the killer’s. None of them had matched. The mysterious woman who had dropped off the man Bertha was afraid of had never surfaced. Maybe she hadn’t seen all the TV coverage on the case, or maybe she was part of the crime. It was possible that she was simply someone who had given a stranger a ride.
     
    On July 17, Detective Sergeant Jim Lehner of the Albuquerque, New Mexico, Police Department called the Seattle Police’s Homicide Unit. He inquired if Seattle had an open case involving the murder of a woman in a motel.
    It was the kind of break that detectives dream about and devoutly hope for—but that happens infrequently. Benny DePalmo called Lehner back the minute he arrived for the early morning shift. Lehner said that two detectives from his department had staked out a downtown corner after they got a tip that a man wanted for murder in Seattle would be there soon.
    “Our informant tipped us to this guy,” Lehner said. “Your guy’s name is James Homer Elledge. He had a lot to tell us. I’ll fill you in—and I’ll send you his mug shots and fingerprints.”
    Lehner said that he’d gone through Elledge’s wallet and found the name and phone number of a Seattle woman. “Her name’s Kim Lane * .”
    After two months of dead ends, the solution to Bertha Lush’s death seemed close. DePalmo called Kim Lane and talked to a very startled young woman. She said she was unaware of the murder because she never followed crime news.
    “But I know Jim Elledge,” Kim said. “I met him on a bus from Texas to Seattle on May 10. He seemed like a good guy. We had coffee together at all the rest stops along the way. He told me that he was regional manager for a big restaurant chain. He said he’d worked so much overtime for so long that he just made up his mind to take a leave of absence. He was traveling around the country to see old friends.
    “He got off the bus in Wichita Falls, Texas—”
    DePalmo’s heart sank. If Elledge had gotten off the bus in Texas and he was in New Mexico now, how could he be Bertha Lush’s killer?
    “He asked for my phone number,” Kim continued. “He said he was planning to come to the Northwest soon. I really never expected to see him again.”
    “Did you see him again?” DePalmo asked.
    “Yes. I got home to Seattle on May 12, and I got a phone call two days later about 7:30 in the evening. It was Jim. He told me he was in Portland, Oregon, and was just about to get on a plane for Seattle. He asked if I could pick him up at the airport.”
    A plane ride from Portland only took half an hour or forty-five minutes, and Kim met Jim Elledge at the Seattle-Tacoma Airport a little over an hour later. “We had a drink in the airport lounge—and then Jim said he had to make some phone calls to a friend in