J. Jance - Without Due Process

I took a moment to consider what he’d said. Evidently, the idea of my leaving the department was something Ralph Ames had been considering even if I hadn’t. But instead of thinking about giving up my life’s work, I focused in on the last word he’d mentioned.

“Rating? What’s a rating?”

“Remember, you’re fresh out of alcohol treatment,” Ames explained. “Of course, that would have to be disclosed in the medical part of any application. If the underwriters offer you insurance at all, most likely they’re going to charge you an extra premium added on to the regular one. They call it a rating.”

“That’s not fair.”

“What’s not fair?”

“You mean I have to give up MacNaughton’s and pay extra besides?”

“Beau,” Ames responded reasonably enough. “They have to charge you an extra premium to cover the extra risk.”

“Like hell they do. If Curtis Bell calls back, tell him to go piss up a rope. If I can’t have insurance at regular rates, I won’t have any at all.”

With that, and without bothering to thank Ralph Ames for cooking my breakfast, I slammed out of the apartment and went looking for Emma Jackson.

Extra premium my ass!

Armed with Emma Jackson’s name and place of employment, I left Belltown Terrace and drove to University Hospital only to learn that she had already gone home for the day. Thanks to Carl Johnson’s phone call, I already had her home address in hand. I headed back downtown, to an address on the lower east side of Queen Anne Hill.

There are matches made in heaven and ones made in hell. My initial meeting with Dr. Emma Jackson was definitely one of the latter. Prejudice on both sides was the root cause of the trouble.

In this day and age, the word “prejudice” naturally conjures up racial difficulties, but between Dr. Emma Jackson and me, race was not necessarily the critical issue. My main bone of contention was the doctor part. Years ago, when my mother was in the hospital dying of cancer, I had a nasty run-in with a particularly arrogant young resident who knew, far better than the patient herself, exactly how much pain Mom could and should tolerate. Ever since then, I’ve had a bad taste in my mouth for all those not-quite-ready-for-prime-time doctors who are practicing to practice.

No doubt, some early and equally damaging experience had soured Emma Jackson on men in general and male cops in particular. The battle lines between us were drawn from the moment she answered my knock.

Emma lived in an aging, three-story Victorian, a formerly sizable single-family dwelling, that had been converted into a triplex. People from outside the downtown core assume that Queen Anne Hill is uniformly yuppified, gentrified, and scenic, but Emma Jackson’s daylight basement apartment at Sixth and Prospect would have given the lie to that notion. The only view from the yard of the Jackson place was of noisy traffic tooling up and down Aurora Avenue North. The place was ramshackle and run-down. The only door, an old-fashioned wooden one with a pane of clear glass at the top, was fast losing its cracked coat of oil-based paint, which was peeling off in long, narrow strips.

Finding no sign of a bell, I knocked. Initially, no one answered, but a diesel VW Rabbit parked nearby convinced me that someone was home. I knocked again, harder this time.

Finally, a woman wearing a blue sweatshirt and matching sweatpants came to the door. She peered out at me through the window and then pulled down the rolling shade over the inside of the window. The door opened, but only three inches or so, as far as the end of the latched security chain allowed.

“Who are you and what do you want?”

“My name’s Beaumont, Detective J. P. Beaumont. I’m a police officer. Are you Emma Jackson?”

“Dr. Emma Jackson.” There was a certain injured reproof in the way she emphasized the word “doctor.” She had evidently worked hard to earn the title of doctor, and she wanted me to know it.

“Dr. Jackson, I need to speak to you.”

She unlatched the chain and opened the door a few more inches, standing in the opening with her arms crossed. “What about? Why would a police officer need to speak to me? Did my license tabs expire? Is my front bumper hanging too far over the parking strip?”

In the past few years, Seattle area blacks-I still haven’t learned to say African Americans with any kind of consistency-have complained about alleged instances of police harassment, incidents in which law-abiding people have been stopped and questioned by Seattle PD officers for seemingly no other reason than their being wherever they are. Blacks certainly do live and work on Queen Anne Hill, but they’re not exactly plentiful.

I heard the undisguised antagonism in Emma Jackson’s voice and wondered if maybe she had experienced some similar kind of treatment. Even so, I’m sure she would have found undeserved police harassment far preferable to receiving the painful news I was about to deliver.

“It’s your son,” I said quietly. “About Adam. Do you mind if I come in?”

Instead of asking me in, Emma Jackson stepped out onto the concrete pavers that constituted the tiny apartment’s make-do porch and closed the door behind her. She was a woman in her early thirties, fairly tall, and well built. Her face was attractive but haggard, her dark eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot from lack of sleep.

“What about him?” she asked. “Where is he? Is he all right?”

It didn’t seem right, telling her there on the porch in front of God and everybody. “Really, Dr. Jackson, if we could just go inside…”

“I’m too tired to play games. If something’s happened to Adam, tell me and tell me now!”

“There’s been an incident…”

“What kind of incident?”

“Where did your son spend last night?”

“With some friends. Why?”

“Could you tell me their names?”

“Why should I?”

“Dr. Jackson. Please, this is a very serious matter.”

For the first time the tiniest bit of alarm seemed to leak into her overriding anger. “Ben and Shiree Weston. They live down in the south end. What’s this all about?”

There was no way to soften the blow, and she had refused any suggestion that would have allowed me to tell her in the privacy of her own home.

“Dr. Jackson,” I said quietly, “I want you to understand that we don’t have a positive ID yet, but we have reason to believe that your son has been murdered, along with Shiree and Ben Weston and two of their three kids.”

Emma Jackson’s eyes darted back and forth across my face as though trying to read the truth of what I was saying from what she saw there. Both hands went to her mouth.

“No,” she said.

“Officers were summoned…”

“No,” she repeated, a little louder this time. “That can’t be true!”

“It is true, Dr. Jackson,” I insisted. “I came to take you downtown so…”

“No!” This time the word was an anguished shriek that echoed through the relative peace of a pristinely clear Seattle morning. Not only did Emma Jackson scream, but she launched herself at me in an all-out physical attack, flailing at me with both balled fists. I caught her by the wrists and held her at arm’s length-far enough away to keep her from bloodying my nose.

“Please, Dr. Jackson,” I pleaded. “Quiet down. Listen to me.”

But she didn’t listen and she didn’t stop screaming. “No! No! Please, God, no!”

Anyone hearing that terrible, agonized cry on a city street was bound to assume the worst, that a woman was being viciously assaulted in broad daylight. A neighbor evidently took corrective action and called for help, because the two of us were still standing there locked in struggle when I heard the quick sharp burst of siren from an approaching squad car. The wail of the siren seemed to penetrate through Emma Jackson’s pain. She stopped screaming suddenly and stood quivering, her hands limp. I didn’t know if I dared let loose of her or not. To be on the safe side, I didn’t.