J. Jance - Without Due Process

The receptionist jumped up and hurried through the swinging door that opened into the lab. She returned moments later with Doc Baker in tow.

Emma had walked over to the window and was standing with her back to us looking outside when the M.E. came into the room. “Hello there, Beau,” he said, nodding in my direction. “I understand you brought the mother along?”

Emma Jackson whirled around and faced him. At once I saw a look of shocked recognition cross Doc Baker’s face. “Why, Emma. It’s not your boy, is it?”

“That’s what he told me,” she said grimly. “I’m here to find out for sure, one way or the other.”

Clearly Drs. Baker and Jackson knew each other, although I had no idea how. He held out his arm, and she took it. “This way,” he said solicitously, leading her toward the swinging doors.

Maybe up until then Emma Jackson still had some hope I was wrong. But of course, I wasn’t.

In the years I’ve worked homicide, I’ve been through plenty of identification ordeals. Seeing your own child dead in some cold, stainless-steel-furnished morgue has to be one of the worst trials a parent ever endures. The emotional devastation of that encounter strikes both men and women pretty much equally. I’ve seen more than a few men faint dead away and have to be carried out of the room. Hysterics, explosions of anger, and racking wails of despair are common occurrences that know no gender divisions at a time like that. Men and women, fathers and mothers, are both identically susceptible to grief.

Even though she’d pulled herself together so well back at her apartment, Emma Jackson’s reaction still surprised the hell out of me. It was like she slipped out of the role of mother, put on her doctor suit, and was totally professional about doing what had to be done. When Doc Baker lifted the sheet that covered her son’s face, she swallowed hard and nodded.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s him. That’s Adam.”

I excused myself long enough to call Carl Johnson at McClure Middle School. When I came back, Doc Baker was leading Emma from one victim to another. Each time he lifted the sheet, she spoke quietly for several minutes while the M.E. took copious notes. Their exchanges were conducted in guarded undertones, totally inaudible to me or to anyone else in the room. Whatever information she imparted was delivered with a quiet dignity that I found absolutely mind-boggling considering the circumstances.

Subconsciously keeping count, I was surprised when, after Ben and Shiree Weston as well as the three dead children had all been identified, Doc Baker led Emma Jackson to yet another gurney. Beneath the sheet on that one lay Spot, the Weston family’s dog. That was the first and only time I ever knew of a dog being accorded the medical examiner’s office’s full, deluxe postmortem treatment.

After that, we left the lab and retreated to Doc Baker’s private office. This, too, was highly unusual. After making the IDs, victims’ relatives are usually hustled away from Harborview as quickly as possible. They are generally excluded from any debriefings between the M.E. and the Homicide detectives working the case. When Baker ushered us into his office, I naturally assumed he was just being polite and that conversation would be strictly limited to sympathetic small talk.

“Coffee?” he asked, motioning us into chairs.

The stuff they call coffee in the M.E.“s staff lounge bears a startling resemblance to battery acid with just a hint of formaldehyde on the side. When Emma Jackson nodded and said, yes, she’d like some, I figured she simply didn’t know any better. I did, but I was desperate. The beneficial effects of Ralph Ames’s refueling breakfast were fading fast. My back hurt and so did my feet. My eyes burned from lack of sleep. Even terrible coffee was bound to help a little.

“I’ll have some too,” I said.

“Still drink it black?” Baker asked.

I thought for a moment he was talking to me and was surprised and gratified that he remembered, considering the number of Homicide dicks that pass through his office on a daily basis, but it turned out he was asking Emma.

“Black will be fine,” she said.

That set me back on my heels. Theirs had to be more than a nodding acquaintance. “How is it that you two know each other?” I asked.

“Emma didn’t tell you? She used to work here. Upstairs, I mean, in the hospital trauma center. Whenever she lost a patient, she’s the only one of the whole bunch who ever bothered to follow them down here to find out what exactly went wrong. A lot of doctors never figure out that even dead patients can teach you something. Sometimes especially the dead ones.”

Doc Baker smiled a proud mentor’s smile which Emma Jackson did not return. Instead, she picked up the steaming cup of coffee the receptionist had placed on the desk in front of her.

“Tell him about the dog, Howard,” she urged.

“What about the dog?”

Baker seemed unhappy that she had turned the conversation away from his reminiscing. “Spot’s the only one we’ve had a chance to work on so far. He’s told us a little, but not much.”

“For instance?”

“He bit somebody,” Emma Jackson blurted, answering my question before Baker had a chance.

“Really?” I asked.

Baker nodded. “Tried to anyway. Just before he died. I found traces of material, a thread or two, still stuck to his teeth. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to determine whether or not he actually drew blood.”

“He did,” I said.

Both Doc Baker and Emma Jackson sat up and took notice. “How do you know that?” Baker asked.

“The boy told us,” I replied. “Junior Weston. He told me the man’s arm was bleeding. I thought maybe he’d cut himself with his own knife in the struggle with Bonnie, but I’ll bet the dog nailed him at least once.”

Baker nodded and began writing himself a note, talking as he did so. “We’ll have to analyze all those bloodstains very carefully. We may have some of the killer’s blood mixed in with that of the victims. As for the bite itself, the killer may have been bitten, but it’s hard to say how badly. It might be worthwhile to check with the emergency rooms around town and see if they treated any dog-bite victims overnight.”

I was shocked to hear Baker strategizing in front of a civilian, a victim’s mother yet, without seeming to care whether or not she was authorized to hear those kinds of case-specific details, but it wasn’t my place to tell him to shut up, not when he was essentially giving me marching orders. The possibility of finding a dog-bite victim somewhere among the metropolitan area’s myriad hospitals didn’t amount to much of a lead.

“There are a lot of emergency rooms in this town,” I said.

Baker glowered at me with a look that meant don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. He said, “It’s more than you had before.” Which was undeniably true.

“Now tell him about the hair,” Emma Jackson urged.

“The hair we found in Shiree Weston’s hands?”

Doc Baker opened his desk drawer, carefully removed a pile of paper clips and began to toss them thoughtfully into the vase in the windowsill. “Actually, we found two distinctly different hair samples-the ones in Shiree Weston’s hand and on her body and some with the daughter as well. Naturally, the Crime Lab will be doing a detailed analysis of all samples, and there may be some other explanation for their presence at the crime scene, but my initial reaction is that we have two distinctly separate individuals here.”

“Two?”

Baker nodded. “Two. One would be a…” I’m sure Doc Baker started to say “black,” but he corrected himself in time. “…an African American. The second is definitely Caucasian.”