J. Jance - Without Due Process

When Kramer finished his formal presentation, he called on the officers present in the room to volunteer any additional information that had turned up during the night. Sue Danielson was the first to raise her hand.

“I’ve been in touch with all the schools mentioned on the loan applications,” she said. “All of them cite confidentiality issues, and they all refuse to confirm or deny the attendance of any of the names listed.”

“What do you mean, refuse?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Just that. Evidently, one of the schools gave out unauthorized information on a student years ago and that student ended up as the victim of a serious crime. They all seem to be under orders not to make the same mistake again. The only way we’ll get any real information out of them is with a court order.”

I tried to catch Watty’s attention. “Can we get one?”

He deferred my question to Kramer, who said, “When we get around to it, Beaumont. All in good time.”

In other words, don’t hold your breath.

A brief silence followed before one of the uniformed officers raised his hand. “I’ve been down working the neighborhood canvass. This morning I had a callback from the mother of a paperboy, who told her he’s seen a couple of strange cars hanging around Ben Weston’s neighborhood for the past few days. The kid goes to school at Garfield. I’ve got his name. Do you want me to go interview him, or should somebody else?”

“Detective Danielson, how about if you handle that one?” Kramer said. She nodded.

It was neat the way he did it, giving her something relatively important to do so she wouldn’t have any spare time to go trailing after the school records of those student loan applicants. I figured it was a good bet that Kramer wouldn’t authorize me to go after them either.

“Anything else?” he asked.

I waited to see if someone else would volunteer. No one did. “I may have something to add,” I said.

“What’s that?” Kramer asked bluntly.

“Ben Weston Junior has been moved to an undisclosed location for safekeeping.”

Kramer looked surprised to hear that. “Really. Who came up with that brilliant idea?”

“I did. It came to my attention that his grandfather might not be physically able to protect him properly. Mr. Weston is, after all, up in years and hard of hearing, while Junior Weston must be regarded as an invaluable eyewitness.”

“Do you mind telling us where this ”undisclosed location‘ is so those of us who need to interview him will actually be able to find him?“

“He’s staying out on Beacon Hill with Reverend Homer Walters and his wife, Francine.”

“I see. Anything else?”

I didn’t want to bring up Big Al’s part in the proceedings. “Well, actually, there is one more thing. When I was taking Junior over there, to the Walterses’ place, he happened to remember that the man, the killer, was wearing gloves of some kind, yellow rubber gloves.”

“Do you place any particular importance on this, Detective Beaumont?”

“Only that the killer may be a known criminal with readily identifiable fingerprints.”

Kramer gave a half smile designed to put me in my place. “I think most of us already figured that out. Anything else?”

He glanced around the room. No one on the task force seemed to have anything more to add, but now Captain Powell, who had slipped virtually unnoticed into the chair beside me, raised his hand. When Kramer acknowledged him, Powell strode to the front of the room. He too was wearing a badge with a somber black ribbon covering part of its face.

“In a few minutes, Sergeant Watkins, Detective Kramer, and I will be meeting with the Media Relations folks to decide what, if anything, from this meeting can be released to the public. There will be the usual holdouts, of course, so I don’t need to tell you again that confidentiality is essential, but there’s something else I do feel compelled to add.

“You are all aware that in the past few months there’s been an increase in the number of threats made against the police officers of this city. One of our own is dead, and another, Detective Beaumont here, came very close to taking a bullet early yesterday morning. At this time, no firm link has been made between these last two incidents and the other threats, but it is certainly possible that they are connected.

“Therefore, as you conduct this investigation, I ask each and every one of you to exercise extreme caution. We are dealing with some very volatile and dangerous elements here, and I don’t want to have to wear more than one piece of black ribbon on my badge at a time. Is that clear?”

It was clear, all right, and also extremely sobering. Twice now, in the course of the task force meeting, I had been reminded that I, too, had been a target. I had been so busy hustling around and being a worker bee that I had almost forgotten the bullet that had slammed into the wall behind me. Remembering didn’t improve my outlook on life, and it didn’t change the color of my socks either.

People were fairly quick about clearing the room once the meeting was over. Sue Danielson had been close to the door. I had to push and shove my way through the crush to catch up with her by the time she reached the elevator. “Care to stop long enough for a cup of coffee?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said. “Why not? But not in here. There’s an espresso cart down on the street.”

A few minutes later we found ourselves huddled under the building overhang on Third Avenue, drinking lattes and trying to stay out of a chill wind while Sue Danielson inhaled deeply on one of her Virginia Slims.

“What did you want to talk about, Beau?” she asked.

“Tell me exactly what the schools said when you talked to them.”

“You want me to tell you what they said, or do you want my gut instinct?”

“Both.”

She shrugged. “All right. You heard what I said upstairs, and that’s the official line, but I think they’re lying through their teeth. That’s instinct, pure and simple. In each case, I didn’t get an answer from the little lowly clerk who first took my call. In each case, I got passed on upstairs more than once before someone told me that no, they could neither confirm nor deny that person’s presence. My impression, and it’s nothing more than that, is that those people are actually there and enrolled in each of the schools, but they are absolutely under wraps and with some kind of flag on their records that dictates special handling. Bottom line, it sounds almost like some kind of witness-protection arrangement, except no one here at the department is willing to say so.”

I nodded. That assessment sounded almost plausible. We stood there for a few moments in contemplative silence.

“Supposing that’s true,” I said finally, “what does it take to pull three or four fast-living, souped-up, hell-bent-for-election gang-type kids out of their home turf and get them back in school, any kind of school?”

Sue Danielson looked at me thoughtfully through an eddying plume of smoke. “Are you asking me?”

“You bet I’m asking you. You’ve got teenagers, don’t you?”

“A club,” she answered.

“You mean like Kiwanis or Rotary?”

She smiled. “No sir. I mean club as in baseball bat. A club and a miracle. In that order. Now I’d better get my ass moving and head for Garfield.”

I smiled as I watched her go. Kramer may have given her an assignment designed to keep her away from traipsing after the student loans, but by accident he was sending her on another errand for which Sue Danielson was eminently qualified. If anyone could get usable information from an adolescent paperboy at Garfield High School, Detective Sue Danielson was definitely it.