J. Jance - Without Due Process

“Not that I can think of. After last night, I’ll be lucky if I’m still on my feet come dinnertime. Why?”

“There’s someone I want you to meet,” he said, “and if you don’t mind, I thought I’d whip up something on the barbecue.”

I tried my best to suppress a knowing grin. So he was going to bring the lady in question out from under wraps and introduce her around after all. That might be worth struggling to stay awake for.

“Make it early,” I said. “I’ll try to be home by six. If we eat by seven or so, it won’t matter if I crash right after dinner, will it?”

“No,” Ralph replied, poker-faced as ever. “I don’t suppose it will.”

I started toward the door. “By the way,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind. I took the liberty of calling that life insurance agent back. I left a message for him to get in touch with me. I’m not certain he’s the best man for the job, but it seems to me we ought to be exploring some of your options. After all, he did call to ask for an appointment.”

“I already told you. If I’ve got to pay a rating or whatever the hell they call it, I’m not buying a dime’s worth of insurance no matter what you say.”

“The least we can do is give him a fair hearing.”

“I’ll tell you what. You give old Curtis Bell all the fair hearings you like. I’m going to work.”

Ralph and I both know that on less than two hours’ worth of sleep I’m never going to win any congeniality awards. Fortunately, he isn’t the kind of friend who holds grudges.

By the time I was back out on the street, the afternoon had turned blustery and cold with a chill wind blowing in off Puget Sound. When Kramer and I got to Emma Jackson’s place, a half dozen cars were parked nearby. We were about to knock on the door when it opened and a broad, imposing man barred our way. His face seemed familiar, but I couldn’t quite place him.

“May I help you?” he asked in a bass voice that sounded like it was coming from a loudspeaker instead of a human chest.

“I’m Detective Beaumont,” I answered, “and this is Detective Kramer from the Seattle Police Department. We’re here to speak to Dr. Jackson.”

“I’m not sure Emma’s up to seeing anyone just now,” he told us. “Wait here. I’ll go check.”

He turned back into the apartment and left us standing on the little concrete porch. “Wasn’t that Reverend Walters?” Kramer asked.

“Reverend Walters?” I repeated.

“You know. Reverend Homer Walters of the Mount Zion Baptist Church.”

Reverend Walters of the Mount Zion Baptist Church is almost as much of a Seattle institution as the church itself. No wonder he looked familiar.

A few moments later he reappeared in the doorway, shaking his head. “No,” he said gravely, peering at us across the tops of his silver wire-rimmed glasses. “Emma’s on her way to bed now. We’ve been here doing a little planning for the funeral. With this many people involved, we have to get started right away.”

“What do you mean, this many people?”

“We have a very full schedule this weekend, so we’ll be funeralizing them all-Ben and Shiree and all those poor little children-at two o’clock on Saturday afternoon. They’re all members of the Mount Zion Church, you see, so we’ll be sending them off together. If we do it on Saturday, people who want to come won’t be missing any work.”

Detective Kramer cleared his throat. “Excuse me, Reverend Walters, but these are all homicide cases. It might be better if you made your plans for later, say sometime next week. That would give us a little more time for lab work, that kind of thing.”

Reverend Walters was already shaking his head.

“Even Sunday might be better,” Kramer said.

The Reverend Homer Walters pulled himself up to his considerable height. “Sunday is a day of worship, young man. I don’t do funerals on Sunday, and people have to work on Monday. Saturday will be just fine.”

Kramer seemed taken aback and for good reason. In homicide cases there are often innumerable delays before bodies can be released to families and funeral homes for preparation and burial.

“Have you discussed this with anyone down at Seattle PD?” Kramer asked, trying to move the burden on to someone else’s shoulders.

“I have not,” Reverend Walters declared, “and I don’t intend to. Emma Jackson, Harmon Weston, and I have discussed the situation with the Lord. He’s the only one who matters, you see. I am sure He will provide whatever laboratory time is necessary between now and then. The Lord does provide, you know.”

With that, the Reverend Homer Walters gently closed the door and went back inside, leaving a perplexed Detective Paul Kramer looking as though he had been run over by a truck-a gentle, Christian truck maybe, but a Mack nonetheless. It did my heart good to see it.

Amen, brother, preach on.

Kramer was ripped, both because of the speed of Reverend Walter’s funeral arrangements and also because we had missed out on the chance for him to talk to Emma Jackson. He grilled me on the way back to the department, trying to learn if there was anything I had gleaned from my talk with her that might give him a handle on how to approach her.

Now that he knew how to reach Emma himself, I was sure he would cut me out of any subsequent interviews, but that was hardly anything new and different in my dealings with Detective Kramer. Every time I have any contact with the man, he always acts as though we’re working for opposite teams. Come to think of it, maybe we are.

To give the devil his due, however, Kramer wasn’t the only one angling for information. If he wanted data from me, the reverse was also true. Those possibly fraudulent student loans that Kramer’s part of the investigation had turned up might bear some pretty unsavory fruit by the time the investigation was over.

According to law enforcement ethics, cops aren’t supposed to have any kind of business dealings with members of the criminal element. The idea is to avoid both the appearance of evil as well as the actuality of it. Owning jointly held businesses or taking out personal loans with crooks qualifies under the broad heading of conduct unbecoming an officer, and the offenses would cast a major blemish on Ben Weston’s previously flawless record.

I wanted to learn everything I could about those loans while Kramer and I were still trading tit for tat. “How did you find out about the loans?” I asked. “What tipped you off?”

He shrugged with uncharacteristic modesty. “To begin with, going through his desk was just routine, but when I found the set of bank statements, that got my attention. If somebody starts keeping financial records at work instead of at home, what does that usually mean?”

“That he’s got something to hide,” I replied. “And most likely he’s hiding whatever it is from his wife.”

“Exactly,” Kramer agreed. “So when I stumbled on the file folder with all the loan applications in it, I was already on point, already looking. It didn’t take me two seconds to figure it out. There are four separate bank loans all together, four different banks, and four different names, but all the cosigners share the same home address which also happens to be Ben Weston’s address. What does that say to you?”

“It does raise a question or two, doesn’t it?”

Kramer glared at me. “More than one or two, if you ask me. Several in fact. I’ve got Sue Danielson checking for rap sheets on the other three names. I turned up Russell’s on my own.”

“What about the schools?”

“Schools?” Kramer asked. “What schools?”

“Don’t student loan applications indicate where the student is enrolling? Have you checked with the registrars to see whether or not those students are actually there?”