J. Jance - Without Due Process

I banged around in the kitchen, making as much noise as possible. Despite the rattling and clattering, no one emerged from the guest room. Ralph Ames and his lady friend were evidently either dead to the world, or they had vacated the premises while I was asleep.

On the dining room table I discovered an early-afternoon city edition of The Seattle Times with its full, three-column-wide, front-page account of the tragic Weston family murders. While I waited for the coffee, I scanned through the article. There wasn’t much in the story that I didn’t already know.

Various luminaries in city government as well as prominent members of the African-American community were quoted expressing their shock, dismay, and outrage. Speculation was pretty evenly divided between those who regarded the murders as racially motivated hate crimes and those who saw in the deaths the specter of escalating gang warfare. Neither possibility did much for Seattle’s much-vaunted national reputation for livability.

The coffee still wasn’t finished when a key turned in the lock and Ralph Ames sauntered in, grinning broadly from ear to ear. He was clearly inordinately pleased with himself, and I was discreet enough not to let on that I knew the real origins of that grin. Remembering Rhonda Attwood, I offered him coffee without even so much as the smallest sarcastic remark.

“Been here long?” he asked.

“Nope. Just walked in a few minutes ago.”

“Oh,” he said. “Good. I see you found the copy of the paper I left you. I figured you’d want to see it. How’s the case going?”

“Not bad, I guess. Things are always slow at this stage of the game while we wait for results from the various labs. Detective Kramer supposedly has a bunch of detectives out canvasing the nearby neighborhood. So far as I know, nothing much has turned up. I’ll find out more once I get back down to the department.”

“You must be beat,” Ralph said. “Aren’t you going to try to sleep for a while?”

I didn’t want to tell him I’d already done that. Hurrying to the counter after the coffeepot and another cup, I hoped my face wouldn’t give me away. Lying has never been one of my long suits.

“No,” I said. “I’m in pretty good shape, all things considered. I just came home to put my feet up for a few minutes and to have some decent coffee.”

That was true as far as it went, but it was also somewhat dishonest. Next to Ron Peters, Ralph is probably my best friend, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I knew what he’d been up to at lunchtime. I’m not the type to whack somebody on the shoulder and congratulate him for getting lucky in my guest room when he thought I was safely at work. I noticed he didn’t mention it to me either. Men may have the reputation for bawdy locker room score-keeping-type talk, but in my experience we’re a whole lot more reticent about personal disclosures than women are-Emma Jackson and Shiree Weston being prime cases in point.

I stood by the counter lost in thought, staring down at the two newly filled coffee cups sitting there steaming in front of me.

“What’s going on?” Ralph asked. “Is something the matter?”

“Nothing,” I told him, bringing the cups back to the table. “Nothing important.”

The phone rang just then. The caller was none other than Detective Paul Kramer himself, sounding excited.

“Beaumont, give me that Jackson woman’s phone number, will you,” he said. “Watty told me you had it. I need to talk to her right away.”

I knew from his voice that Detective Kramer was on to something. “Why? Did you find something to corroborate her story?”

“Not exactly,” he returned, suddenly turning coy. “I just want to hear whatever it is she can tell us about him.”

Like hell he did. “What exactly did you find, Kramer?” I insisted. As the one person at Seattle PD in sole possession of Emma Jackson’s phone number, I had myself some bargaining room and I was prepared to play hard to get.

Kramer paused, pondering whether or not to let me in on his little secret horde of knowledge. When someone’s that wound up, a few seconds of silence is the best ploy in the world.

“Did you know Shiree Weston worked for the Mount Zion Federal Credit Union?” he asked.

Of course I didn’t know that. I had been unofficially benched from the real investigation, sidetracked into something that should have been a dead end, but maybe my part of the job wasn’t such a dead end after all.

“So?” I said, unable to fathom how Shiree Weston’s job with a credit union might have anything at all to do with the price of peanuts.

“After I talked to Sergeant Watkins this afternoon,” Kramer continued, “I decided to take a look at Ben Weston’s desk here at the department. What I discovered was very interesting.”

“What?”

By then I knew nothing would keep Paul Kramer from blabbing his news to the world. Even to me, although under most circumstances, I would have been his very last choice of audience.

“Loan applications!” Kramer crowed.

At first I thought lack of sleep was screwing up my hearing. “Loan applications?” I asked. “What’s the big deal about that?”

“So far I’ve found he cosigned on three different student loans, and they’re not with his wife’s credit union either. Plus there’s another one that’s filled out but not signed. Does the name Ezra T. Russell mean anything to you?”

“Not that I can think of.”

“How about Knuckles Russell?”

That one did ring a bell. Knuckles Russell was a rising young star in the ranks of the Black Gangster Disciples, an upstart gang that rivals both the Bloods and the Crips when it comes to pieces of Seattle’s gangland turf.

“You mean Knuckles Russell of the BGD?” I asked, using the accepted shorthand for the Black Gangster Disciples.

“You got it. And the application lists Ben Weston’s address as Russell’s home address. Same way on the other three. I’ve got someone checking rap sheets on the others right now.”

“So what are you saying?”

“That Ben Weston got himself into something heavy, something that had nothing to do with screwing around behind his wife’s back. Gambling maybe, drug payoffs of some kind. Who knows? Whatever it was, I figure he ran short of cash and borrowed money to make ends meet. By doing it with student loans, nobody would come after him right away to start making payments. Sounds like a hell of a scam to me. What do you think?”

What I was thinking was how grateful I was that Big Al Lindstrom was nowhere within earshot. Kramer should have been too.

“So give me that woman’s address,” Kramer continued. “I want to find out if she knows anything about all this.”

“You’re right,” I said. “We should see what she has to say. Where are you, the department?”

“Yes, but…”

“Be down in front of the Third Avenue entrance in fifteen minutes,” I told him. “I’ll stop by and pick you up.”

“Wait a minute. Can’t you just give me the address? I’ll go talk to her myself.”

That was exactly what Kramer was angling for-to see Emma Jackson alone. I was equally determined not to give in, not to be cut out of the picture any more so than I already was, but I didn’t come straight out and tell my supposed cohort that I didn’t trust him any further than I could throw him.

“No,” I said reasonably enough. “Emma Jackson’s already been through hell today. She’s not the easiest person to deal with in the first place, and she already knows me. I’d better come along.”

“If you insist,” Kramer allowed grudgingly. “See you in fifteen.”

Ralph Ames was still sipping his coffee when I got off the phone. “Heading back out?” he asked. I nodded. “Any plans for dinner?”