J. Jance - Without Due Process

Of course, there wasn’t much likelihood of Kramer looking for me for any reason other than to tell me to drop dead. I figured hell would freeze over completely before he would voluntarily pass along any information at all, but I couldn’t very well say that to Janice Morraine.

“It looks as though he’s gone home, so why not tell me about it yourself?”

“It’s a plant,” she answered at once.

“A plant?” I repeated dubiously. “It sure as hell looked like hair to me.”

“Don’t joke around, Beau. This is important. The hair you found stuck between Shiree Weston’s fingers was placed there on purpose after she was dead. I’ve checked it out. The hairs don’t all match. My assessment is that the hair was taken from somebody’s brush, a brush several different people had used. Black hair,” she added, “as in race, not color. All of it. It could match up with hair from the family members themselves. I’ll be checking on that tomorrow, but I doubt it.”

I was barely listening to her. Instead, I was remembering how Junior Weston had described the man he had seen struggling with his sister. He had said that the man was a white man with skin tones very much like my own, that Bonnie Weston’s killer was a white man wearing gloves.

“That means whoever did it meant for us to go looking for a black perpetrator, doesn’t it?”

“Right,” Janice replied, “and with feelings in the city running so high, I didn’t want to risk not letting you know about this.”

“That’s what they were counting on,” I mused, “that everyone in Homicide would be so strung out that we wouldn’t pay close enough attention, that we’d go after any kind of slipshod evidence just to make an arrest.”

“Wrong!” Janice Morraine returned. Her single-word vehemence made me laugh.

“Right,” I said.

Whoever the killers were, they hadn’t taken the likes of Janice Morraine and Tony Freeman into consideration. Or me either, for that matter.

“Anything else interesting come up on your end?” I asked.

“Not really. I spent the whole afternoon working on the hair problem. Once I finish checking the Weston samples, I’ll probably be doing something else tomorrow.”

“Same case, though?” I asked.

“Are you kidding? Word filtered down from George Yamamoto. For right now, the Weston case is the only game in town. Everything else takes a backseat.”

“You’ll keep me posted?”

“What do you think?” she replied.

That’s what’s nice about having a working history with someone. Janice Morraine’s and my relationship, rocky though it may be at times, goes well beyond the official guidelines people like Kramer would like to impose. In fact, that was probably precisely why she had called me in the first place.

“Thanks, Janice. I appreciate it.”

“No prob,” Janice said. “If anything important comes up, I’ll be in touch.”

I put down the phone. A plant, I thought. The kinds of people who blow one another away over a line of heroin or a lump of crack cocaine don’t usually bother leaving behind a trail of manufactured evidence. Most of the time, people routinely involved in those kinds of crimes are already so well versed in the criminal injustice system, they could probably give the state bar exam a run for its money.

Habitual criminals know full well, from vast personal experience, that it doesn’t take much effort or even a particularly good lawyer to beat almost any rap we cops may manage to lay on them. Why bother with leaving behind a trail of phony evidence when a well-placed plea bargain makes that whole charade unnecessary?

As far as I was concerned, in the case of the Weston family murders, planted evidence turned the process into a whole new ball game. If we had renegade cops, including at least one white one, they were going to great lengths to point suspicion at black suspects, and parts of the task force investigation were probably exploring those very possibilities. If the street gangs all knew that none of their people were responsible, no wonder they were in an uproar and wanted a summit meeting with Chief Rankin. Their turf was being invaded, their supremacy challenged.

I sat staring at my telephone and wondered how to go about setting up that meeting. The gang unit probably could have given me a hint-maybe even a phone number or two-but Captain Freeman had issued strict orders not to involve any other personnel without his advance approval. Chances are, my friendly neighborhood gangs had their own voice-mail arrangements and probably even fax machines, but I couldn’t reach out and touch them since I didn’t happen to know their numbers.

After several minutes of wishing I had a Ma Bell phone directory for crooks, I realized that maybe I did. Or at least, I had a friend who did. That very afternoon I had held in my hand Ron Peters’s hard-copy pages of Ben Weston’s preliminary gang member data base. I considered going to see Kyle and asking him for a look at Ben Weston’s most recent data base, but I reconsidered. Why bother him and take him away from what he was doing for Tony Freeman when Ron Peters could probably give me exactly what I needed?

As soon as the thought crossed my mind, I called Ron at home. Heather answered. “Hello, Uncle Beau,” she said, sounding very grown-up and businesslike. I missed the gap-toothed, lisping way she used to say “Unca Beau” before her newly sprouted permanent teeth came in. “Just a minute,” she said. “I’ll get my dad.”

Ron Peters came on the phone a moment later. “Hey, Beau, I was looking all over for you this afternoon but Margie said you never came back after lunch. Amy came up with a great idea.”

“What’s that?”

“She did her preliminary physical therapist work over at Central Washington University in Ellensburg. One of her girlfriends married a guy who’s the assistant registrar at the university there. We thought we’d take a run over to Ellensburg either tonight or early tomorrow morning, talk to them, and see what we can find out. We should be back in plenty of time to make Ben’s funeral at two. What do you think of that?”

“Don’t ask me,” I told him, trying to keep the enthusiasm out of my voice, obeying the letter of Tony Freeman’s law but not the intent. “What I don’t know can’t hurt me, can it?”

Ron laughed. “Gotcha,” he said. “Mum’s the word, but if we could locate even just one of those missing kids, I’d feel like I was doing something real again and not just marking time. So why did you call, Beau? What’s up?”

“Do you still have that copy of Ben Weston’s project?”

“I sure do. I own it. He gave it to me months ago. Why?”

“Does it have names, addresses, and telephone numbers on it by any chance?”

“I think so. Hang on. I have it right here with me.” The sound of rustling papers came through the phone. “Some of them do. Not all, but some. What do you need?”

“Phone numbers.”

“Phone numbers?” Ron echoed. “Why the hell do you need gang members’ phone numbers, Beau? You planning on selling these guys tickets to the Bacon Bowl maybe?”

The Bacon Bowl is a once-a-year, old-timers’ football game, a fund-raising rivalry played between teams of police officers from the Seattle and Tacoma areas who are really frustrated, over-the-hill jocks. I’ve got brains enough not to play football anymore, but I’m reasonably good at selling tickets.

“Not likely,” I replied, “but I need those phone numbers all the same. I’d like even representation of Crips, Bloods, and BGD, as many numbers of each as you can give me.”

“You don’t want much, do you. Why not try Directory Assistance?”

“Why not give me a hard time?” I returned. “Just read me the damn numbers, would you?”