Mortal Danger

his hand in the cookie jar,” the former dentist said. “Like it wasn’t really a bad thing she was referring to, but, still, he seemed mortified. He kind of stuttered when he said, ‘That’s the kind of thing that guys talk about in private. Guys don’t talk about that in front of people.’”
    Randall Nozawa wondered what Turi Bentley had learned about John during their trip south, and he was almost embarrassed for him.
    None of them moved for what seemed like a long time, then John walked out of the room.

Chapter Thirteen
    It was 7:30 a.m. on Friday, March 30, 2007, when Detective Fred Douglas of the Gig Harbor Police Department was dispatched to the cul-de-sac in front of the little gray-and-white house on Lost Beach Road with a Man Down call. This was an unlikely neighborhood for such a call, and an unusual time—in the early morning hours. Still, there were many retired people living in Seascape Hills, and the person who had collapsed might be a resident who’d had a heart attack or a stroke. Douglas was at the address in four minutes.
    There was no way for Detective Douglas to have prepared himself for what he found when he turned right into the little circular street, where the crocuses, daffodils, and cherry blossoms were just beginning to bloom. He had never worked a homicide in his ten years on the department, and he certainly wasn’t expecting to find one.
    A resident on the street—Ted Sanford, a retired headmaster of a private school—had heard someone calling for help when he’d come out to pick up his morning paper. It was then that he’d seen a terribly injured man, wrapped in a white blanket or a sleeping bag, now stained a mahoganyred with dried blood. The injured man was on his feet, but just barely, near the carefully landscaped mound of earth in front of their houses. He was bleeding heavily from his mouth, and there was something wrong with his eyes.
    “He kept saying, ‘Help me…help me!’” Sanford said later. “I ran in my house and called 911, and then I came back out and stayed with him until the police arrived. It was very peculiar—nightmarish.”
    And, indeed, it was. The man’s right eye was gone, and the wound still bled. His other eye appeared to be scarred, and he had injuries in his mouth, too. EMTs were summoned immediately, and he was able to say a few garbled words before he was rushed to the ER at Tacoma General Hospital, where he was admitted in critical condition and taken immediately up to surgery.
    About all Douglas and Police Chief Mike Davis understood was that there had been some kind of domestic disturbance. It was amazing that the injured man could say that much; his eye was missing, his jaw was broken, several of his teeth were knocked out, and his tongue had nearly been shot off. It would take eight hours of surgery to even begin putting his face back together. Whether he would survive or not was up in the air.
    The detectives were able to discern that there were supposed to be two people inside the house itself, but the victim didn’t seem to know if they were dead or alive. Since Gig Harbor has a small police department, they called for an assist from the Pierce County sheriff’s office, its detectives, and its SWAT team.
    Quietly, officers from both departments cleared the street to avoid anyone else being injured if there should bemore gunfire. They surrounded the house the injured man had come from. And then they called the phone in the house.
    There was no response.
    For hours, they attempted to raise anyone left in the small gray-and-white home, but the phone rang and rang, shrill but empty. It was the only sound inside.
    There was a vehicle in the garage, suggesting no one had driven away. That, however, didn’t mean that they hadn’t. There might have been another car parked in the steep, short driveway. Neighbors had heard nothing alarming during the previous night, no screams, arguments, or gunshots. They said they hadn’t really known the couple who lived there, but they had known the elderly woman who used to live there. Her name was Liv Lee, and they thought that the female half of the couple was Liv’s daughter.
    Public records indicated that the house was owned by Turid Lee Bentley. That was probably Liv Lee’s daughter.
    With so many hours of nonresponse, there was only one thing left to do—enter the house. It was 10:00 a.m. when the SWAT team went in. They were not met with any resistance. The house was as quiet as