J. Jance - Without Due Process

I’ve never actually been in a horrible hurricane, but it must be very much like the meeting that went on in Captain Freeman’s office that day as late afternoon changed to evening. In Seattle the Weston family murders dominated the local news. As a consequence, the room was charged with an almost electric tension. Anthony Freeman took control and issued orders to everyone involved, Chief Rankin included. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the commander of IIS was running the show.

Most of the time Internal Investigations deals with specific allegations against specific officers, police brutality in the course of making an arrest being one of the most common, although drug use, domestic violence, and job-related alcohol problems show up with a fair amount of regularity. In all of these instances, the identity of the officer isn’t so much in question as is the propriety of his actions. Here, we were faced with a far more difficult and complicated problem because not only were the identities of the officers and their actions totally unknown to us, there was a reasonable possibility that one or more of them might be actively involved in some aspect of the Weston Family Task Force investigation.

Captain Freeman began the meeting by laying out for all of us the situation as he saw it. “At the moment, there’s no way to tell whether or not what our informant has told us is true and that the gang warlords really will cooperate with us on this. I’ve been around Seattle PD for a long time, folks. So have most of you. Anybody here ever hear of the gangs making this kind of offer? I’d be less surprised if Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy dropped in to pay a personal visit.”

Most of us shook our heads. “It could be a trick,” Chief Rankin suggested.

Freeman disagreed. “I don’t think so,” he said somberly. “I think we’re going to have to operate on the assumption that the intelligence we have been given is correct and that fellow police officers are somehow responsible for the murders of Ben Weston and the others. For a change, the gangs don’t want to be blamed for something they didn’t do.”

Freeman allowed his gaze to wander slowly around the room while the weight of his words sank in. If he was expecting objections, no one made any. Even Kyle Lehman, who was doubtless the least affected, paused for a long moment before biting thoughtfully into an apple which had appeared from the same jacket pocket as the diet Pepsi.

“These people,” Freeman continued, “however many of them there are, constitute a cancer on the body of the Seattle Police Department-a cancer I’m determined to eradicate. How do you get rid of a cancer? By taking it out, by cutting it out, by destroying it before it destroys you. This is the preliminary biopsy stage, that critical time where early detection is the key to survival. We’re going to find out who these people are, and we’re going to take care of them. We’re going to do it the same way a surgeon would-by making the smallest possible incision.

“To that end, my intention is to limit the number of people who actually know what’s going on to a mere handful, specifically to those of us who are in this room at this very moment. If it becomes necessary to add more-and it probably will-those additions will be handpicked by me and nobody else. You are not to include anyone else in this part of the investigation without my express permission. Do I make myself clear?”

This time a response was definitely in order. We all nodded in turn, including Chief Rankin. His was probably the most heartfelt of all. Rankin, one of a vast number of unappreciated and much maligned California transplants, was fairly new to Seattle. Coming from Oakland, he brought along with him a reputation for being both a consummate politician and an ace delegator-two prime prerequisites for being the chief of police in any major metropolitan area. Rumors that he was also a closet racist had followed him to Seattle, but as far as I was concerned, they had yet to be proven one way or the other.

Rankin’s ability to delegate, however, was without question. The people I knew who’d been handed assignments by him respected the fact that Rankin hadn’t second-guessed them. When he put someone in charge, they stayed in charge. I could see that myself as Tony Freeman continued to run the meeting as a one-man show.

“We have a slight advantage,” he said, “in that no one on the task force, other than Detectives Beaumont and Danielson, has any knowledge that we’ve been tipped off. As I mentioned before, it’s possible that one of the crooks is actually connected to the task force operation. We’ll have a much better chance of nabbing him if I don’t have to send up a red flag by transferring in one of the current crop of IIS investigators.”

“If you ask me, that’s not any advantage at all,” I put in. “We got our information from the street, so chances are the crooks will too. Informant loyalty always goes to the highest bidder. What’s to keep the beans from getting spilled in the other direction?”

Freeman considered for a moment before replying. “I guess we’ll just have to see to it that the information that’s on the street, including some of the information that goes through the task force itself, is wrong information.”

Sue Danielson had listened quietly to this exchange. Now, she spoke up. “That’s fine as far as it goes, but what about the boy?” she asked.

“What boy?”

“Junior Weston. He’s an eyewitness. To my knowledge, he’s the only one who can possibly identify the killer. Everyone who attended the task force meeting this morning knows Junior was moved from his grandfather’s house to Reverend Walters’s home. If someone on the task force…”

She didn’t complete the sentence, and she didn’t have to. Her words landed another haymaker in the pit of my stomach. Thanks to me, Junior Weston was still at risk and so were Reverend Homer and Francine Walters. I personally had come up with the brilliant idea of having him stay there.

I started out of my chair, determined to take some kind of precautionary action.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Freeman demanded.

“To call Reverend Walters, to warn him.”

“No,” Captain Freeman said.

“No?” I yelped. “What do you mean, no? People’s lives are at stake.”

Freeman’s calm eyes met mine and held them. “I’m well aware of that, Detective Beaumont. Sit down and tell me about your partner.”

“My partner. About Big Al? You know Big Al Lindstrom, Tony. You know him as well as I do.”

“My understanding is that he was removed from the case by Captain Powell here. Is that true?”

Captain Powell himself started to interject something, but Tony Freeman waved him to silence. “I was asking Detective Beaumont,” he said. “Tell me what you personally know about Detective Lindstrom being removed from the case.”

“Ben Weston and Big Al were friends, damnit. Good friends. I guess Captain Powell thought there might be a potential conflict of interest if Allen was investigating the case, that emotion might cloud his judgment.”

“Would it?” Freeman asked.

“I don’t think so. He’s the one who found Junior Weston hiding in the linen closet after the murders were discovered, and he did a hell of a job interviewing that little kid, of getting him to remember what he saw, of helping him open up and talk to us about it. You should have been there.”

“I wasn’t. Were you?”

I was fast losing patience. “What is it you want me to tell you? Are you asking me if I think Big Al is one of the crooked cops? Are you asking me if I think he did it? The answer is no, absolutely not, no way. I’d stake my life on it.”