J. Jance - Without Due Process

I turned to the two uniformed officers. “Did either of you leave these tracks?”

The younger one, Officer Dunn, fresh from the academy and barely into his probationary thirteen-week Field Officer Training Program, answered quickly for both of them. “No, sir. We were real careful about that. I came up over there.” He pointed to a clean spot on the tile. “I got close enough to check her pulse and then…” He shrugged. “She was already dead. Nothing we could do.”

I glanced at Big Al. With his face a gray mask, he stood staring down at the dead girl. “This guy’s one mean son of a bitch,” he said grimly, “a real sicko.”

In some politically correct quarters, Big Al’s instant assumption that the killer was male might have been regarded as sexist, but I agreed. Homicide is not yet an equal opportunity occupation, although the numbers are gradually coming up as far as female perpetrators are concerned. But women don’t usually kill with that kind of wanton brutality. And they usually don’t leave that kind of mess either.

“At least she’s still got her clothes on,” Officer Dunn observed helpfully.

What he was trying to say in his own clumsy fashion was that Bonnie Weston had most likely been spared the further indignity of sexual assault, but that knowledge did nothing to mitigate the ruthless butchery of the young woman’s death. I don’t think Big Al even heard him.

“How come nobody came to help her?” he asked. “Couldn’t anybody hear what was going on? Where were Ben and Shiree?”

Again Officer Dunn was quick to answer. “The parents?” Big Al nodded. “In the bedroom at the far end of the hall. I doubt they heard a thing. When we got here, the stereo in the living room was playing fairly loud, tuned to some hot rock station, and the TV set was on in the parents’ room. We switched them off by pulling plugs. We couldn’t hear ourselves think.”

I nodded, glad someone else had thought to turn off the noise, but grateful that the uniformed officers hadn’t touched any of the radio or television controls. I left Big Al to process the kitchen, and I followed Officer Dunn down the hallway to a small bedroom. There, on a two-tiered bunk bed lay two small African-American males, both dead. Both lay on their sides, facing the wall, and both might have been asleep except for deep puncture wounds at the base of each small skull.

Nothing in the room seemed to be disturbed. Little-boy litter, toys and clothes, lay scattered about, but it appeared as though the two children had died without the slightest advance warning of their impending doom.

Without touching anything, I left the room. I found Officer Dunn waiting outside. “Whatever you do,” I told him, “don’t let Detective Lindstrom set foot inside that room.”

Dunn looked at me quizzically. He was far too new on the force to have any inkling of Big Al and Ben Western’s mutual history, but he didn’t argue or question my order. “Right,” he said. “I’ll see to it.”

I went back to the living room and discovered my partner standing there, turning slowly, taking in everything there was to see. Except for faint traces of bloodied footprints on the beige carpet, the living room showed no other sign of tragedy. Nothing in that room had been disturbed. A single floor lamp glowed near the end of a long comfortable-looking couch. A soft green afghan was piled in the middle of the couch, looking as though it had been tossed aside by someone momentarily abandoning a cozy reading nest. A book bag sat on the floor near the afghan while an assortment of school paraphernalia-a stack of textbooks, pens and pencils, and an open notebook-littered the oak coffee table. Nearby was a partially filled ceramic mug with the name “Bonnie” printed in cheerful blue script on the outside.

Big Al leaned over and sniffed the mug. “Tea,” he said.

“Tea?” I asked. “At her age? Why not Coke or Pepsi?”

“Vondelle, Bonnie’s mother, always drank tea. Only tea. No coffee, no sodas. Bonnie must have picked up the habit. Kids do that, you know. It’s a way of hanging on to the past.”

Big Al swung back toward Officer Dunn. “Exactly how long ago did you two get here?”

I think the terrible reality of what had happened was just beginning to hit home with Officer Dunn. His color had faded to a sickly yellow. Perhaps the younger man was beginning to question his own culpability over those five deaths. He seemed to misread an accusation into Big Al’s straightforward question.

“We came as…as…soon as we could,” he stammered. “I’m sorry as hell we didn’t get here sooner. We were on another call, a domestic, when Dispatch asked us to come here. We didn’t dawdle, but we didn’t burn up the car, either. We didn’t think it was that…” He broke off, ducking his chin, his voice choked with emotion.

I felt for him, knew firsthand the impotent frustration of arriving at a crime scene or automobile accident too late to do any good or make any real difference. This might be Officer Dunn’s first such gut-wrenching experience. If he made it through his probationary period, it wouldn’t be his last.

“You couldn’t have saved them,” I said consolingly. “They were probably dead long before you took the call.” He nodded, but it didn’t seem to make him feel any better.

We started toward the hallway only to encounter King County’s medical examiner, Dr. Howard Baker. He nodded in my direction. “What do you want us to photograph first, Beaumont, the kitchen or one of the bedrooms?”

I pointed toward the room where the boys were. “Do that one,” I said.

Doc Baker headed for the bedroom and Big Al started to follow. Officer Dunn and I both stepped forward to stop him. “The boys?” he asked.

I nodded. “You don’t need to see it, Al. Not right now.”

He shook his head helplessly. “No,” he agreed. “I suppose not.”

Without another word, he continued on down the hallway, leading the way into what had been Ben and Shiree Weston’s modest master bedroom. I caught him by the arm before he had a chance to step inside.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked. “Sure you’re all right?”

“Ja,” he said, slipping into Ballardese. “I’m okay.” He didn’t sound terribly convincing but we went on inside anyway.

The room looked as though it had been through a major earthquake. A six-drawer dresser had been shoved away from the wall with its drawers askew and clothing spilling out. A small television set had fallen on its face beside it. The mirror behind the dresser was a splintered wreck.

Avoiding the scatter of furniture, I moved toward the bed. A bedside lamp with its glass base broken lay in a shattered heap on the carpeted floor along with the usual debris that surfaces daily from male clothing-a wallet, some loose change, a small maroon cowhide Day-Timer, a couple of receipts, and a ticket stub from a dry cleaners. Looking at Ben Weston’s leavings, I was struck by the fact that he had emptied his pockets with no inkling that he was doing it for the last time.

That’s the irony of what we call “home invasion” cases, where the victims, presumably safe in their own homes, carry on with their normal lives until the precise moment when their killer comes to call.

But looking at demolished furniture, examining the items on the floor, and philosophizing was nothing more than a delaying tactic, a way of putting off the inevitable necessity of examining the murdered man himself. It’s bad enough to encounter victims who are total strangers. This one was much worse than that. Benjamin Harrison Weston was no stranger to any of us. Not only was he an acquaintance of long standing, he was a cop besides.

He lay facedown in the exact middle of his king-size bed. Sometimes the dead seem to cave in upon themselves, to shrink. Not so Gentle Ben Weston. In life he had been a mountain of a man, and he remained so in death. He too had died of a single stab wound to the neck. Like that to the two boys, Ben’s damage was limited to a single deep puncture right at the base of his skull.