J. Jance - Without Due Process

I hadn’t warned Detective Danielson about that aggravating aspect of dealing with Tony Freeman. Talking to him is often like dropping so many pebbles into a deep, dark well-a lot may go in, but not much comes back out. Sue didn’t catch on to that right away.

“Were you conducting one earlier, before Ben Weston died?”

“Detective Danielson, I can tell you that as of now, Ben Weston is definitely a person of interest as far as this office is concerned. Not his murder, since that is already being handled by you down in Homicide, but certainly his other activities. We’re trying to understand what exactly went on, whether or not there was any criminal activity involved, and whether or not there were any other Seattle PD personnel involved as well. As you know, our usual procedure is to investigate allegations of wrongdoing on the part of departmental personnel. If we find evidence to back up those allegations, the inquiry is turned over to the proper squad for further investigation as well as for the filing of charges should that prove necessary.”

“You say ”as of now,“ Captain Freeman, but I was asking about earlier,” Sue insisted. “Were you or any of your people conducting an investigation of Ben Weston prior to his death?”

“No, we were not.”

“You’re sure no one from your office had Ben Weston under surveillance?”

“Absolutely.”

“Somebody from Seattle PD did,” Sue Danielson said quietly.

“Who?” Freeman demanded.

“We were hoping you could tell us. Actually, we were hoping it might be someone from here.”

“What kind of surveillance are you talking about?”

Sue took a deep breath. “We have a witness who tells us that a Seattle PD blue-and-white with a single-occupant driver was seen cruising Ben Weston’s neighborhood regularly in the early-morning hours in the weeks preceding the murders.”

“Always the same car and driver?” Freeman asked.

“Maybe not the same car, but always the same driver, and always in close proximity to Ben Weston’s house.”

Freeman picked up his pen and started making notes. “Who’s the witness?” he asked sharply.

“A paperboy,” Sue answered.

“Does he have something to gain by making the police department look bad?”

“I can’t see how. He’s just a high school kid, and he was scared to death to come forward. His mother forced the issue. If he had been left to his own devices, I don’t think we would have heard from him.”

“Have you checked with Patrol?” Freeman asked.

Sue shook her head. “Not yet, but my understanding is that Patrol doesn’t send out single officers at that time of the night, and, to my knowledge, none of the other units told the task force about the existence of a prior surveillance. That’s why we thought it might be someone from here, one of your people.”

“A single occupant in a patrol car on the graveyard shift,” Captain Freeman mused thoughtfully, as though speaking to himself. “That does narrow it down, doesn’t it?”

“That’s not all,” Sue said grimly.

“What else?”

“A little while ago Detective Beaumont suggested to me that maybe we should look into the project Ben Weston had been working on for Coordinated Criminal Investigations.”

“His gang-member profile?” Freeman asked.

“You know about that?”

The captain nodded. “I sure do. It’s a good piece of work. Once it’s finished, it’s going to be an invaluable crime-solving tool. Up to now we’ve had no systematic way of following all the strings and seeing how all the various street gangs are interrelated, of knowing who is connected to whom and why.”

“Was he working on anything else?”

“He may have been, but that’s all I know of. Why?”

“Because the morning after his death, between one and three o’clock, someone got into Ben Weston’s secured computer file and opened and closed every single file.”

Sue Danielson stated her case quietly and then shut up, allowing Tony Freeman to draw his own conclusions.

The captain frowned. “It sounds to me like someone looking for something but they weren’t sure if it was there to begin with, and they had no idea what file name it might have been under. You say this was the morning after the murders?”

Sue nodded.

“I wonder if anything is missing,” Freeman mused.

His comment seemed to annoy Sue. “It’s a little difficult to tell what’s missing from looking at the files,” she countered. “If a file had been deleted, it’s just not there.”

Freeman nodded. “What about the floppy disk back-up copy? Everybody’s supposed to keep one of those, and that would have been with Ben himself. Does Property show it on the inventory?”

Sue looked questioningly at me. “I never saw one,” I said. “In fact, now that you mention it, I remember Ron saying something about Ben working on this gang project at home originally, but I don’t remember seeing a computer in his house, either.”

“Ron?” Freeman asked.

“Ron Peters, in Media Relations. He used to be my partner before he got hurt. He’s the one who brought the gang profile project to our attention in the first place.”

Tony turned back to Sue. “All right. Go on.”

“That’s all we have so far,” Sue answered. “It’s not much, but…”

Abruptly, Freeman spun his chair around and sat for several long moments with his back to us, staring out through the still dripping rain at the moldy green-brown facade of the building across the street. Finally, he turned back toward us, reaching for the telephone at the same time.

“Connie,” he said. “Call upstairs and see if the chief’s still here. If he is, ask him to come down. Tell him to use the stairs. I don’t want anyone to see him punching the button for this floor in the elevator. And see if you can reach Larry Powell down in Homicide and Captain Nichols in CCI. I need to see the three of them and Kyle Lehman too. On the double.”

Freeman paused. “Yes, I know damn good and well that Kyle sleeps all day and works all night. Wake him up and tell him it’s urgent. Oh, and bring in some more chairs from the conference room, would you?”

I had expected someone from Internal Investigations to be interested in what we had to say, but Freeman’s prompt calling of a top-level meeting was beyond my wildest expectations. Assuming Sue and I were being dismissed in favor of a roomful of brass, I got up and headed for the door.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Freeman demanded. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Back downstairs. We’ve got work to do.”

He shook his head and motioned me back toward the chair. “No way. We’re having a little meeting here in just a few minutes. You and Detective Danielson constitute exhibits one and two. Sit down. Would either of you like some coffee?”

To be polite, I dutifully accepted a cup of coffee from an acrid-smelling pot on a table in the corner of the room. Sue Danielson remained in her chair.

“Is all this really necessary?” she asked. “Do we really need to be here for the meeting? We’ve already told you everything we know.”

Freeman smiled at her. “You don’t like all this very much, do you, Detective Danielson? Remember, we’re only Internal Investigations, not the Spanish Inquisition.”

Sue kept her cool verbally, but two angry splotches of color appeared on her cheekbones. “Don’t make fun of me, Captain Freeman. I’m new at this job. I still have lots to learn.”

“Sorry,” he apologized quickly. “No offense. It’s just that people often label IIS in their minds and turn it into something it isn’t. All the detectives in the department get cycled through here eventually, including you once you’ve been around long enough. That keeps the unit from becoming a real power structure which, considering what we do, could be dangerous. Our job is to keep good cops from going bad and to find bad cops and get them off the force. It’s that simple.