J. Jance - Without Due Process

“Not yet as far as I know. Would you like to handle that? You probably know her better than anyone else here.”

“Sure,” I said, my voice cracking. “As soon as I drop the chief off, I’ll go pick her up and take her to the hospital. Which one, the trauma unit at Harborview?”

“They’re the local Roto-Rooter-of-choice for bullet extractions. When it comes to that kind of thing, it pays to use people with experience.”

Before I signed off, I gave the dispatcher my phone number in case he needed to get back to me, then, after I hung up, I prayed that the phone wouldn’t ring again because I was afraid of what the caller might tell me if it did.

“I can’t believe this,” Rankin was saying. “Has the whole city declared open season on cops?”

I knew the answer to that question was no, and so did Chief Rankin. The whole city wasn’t killing cops, and neither were street gangs. Cops were killing cops, crooked cops killing straight ones.

“Do you have Captain Freeman’s number?” I asked.

“Which one, home or office?” Rankin asked.

“Both,” I told him. “We’d better call him so he’ll be in on this case from the beginning. It may be that nobody else has thought to call him. They wouldn’t necessarily know there was a connection between this and IIS.”

Chief Rankin reached inside his jacket and removed his pocket-sized Day-Timer. He took out the tiny telephone directory notebook and consulted that. As soon as I saw it, I thought about Ben Weston’s Day-Timer, lying there on the bedroom floor, the pages filled with appointments-some kept and some forever unkept-and the elusive numbers he couldn’t remember without writing them down.

The sad truth about homicide is that most people are murdered by people they know. For that reason, a victim’s calendar in the days shortly before his death becomes a prime starting point in tracing his activities and connections. More often than not, the perpetrator will be found among those final few social or business contacts. For that reason alone, Ben Weston’s Day-Timer should have been right at the top of the task force’s concerns. I didn’t remember Paul Kramer assigning it to anyone, so I assigned myself.

By then Chief Rankin had managed to locate Captain Freeman’s number and was dialing it. Tony Freeman’s wife answered the phone and told him her husband had just left the house. She said someone had called a few minutes earlier and that Tony was on his way back downtown to his office, although it was still too soon for him to be there. Knowing Freeman was on his way made me feel better. It meant someone besides me was making the same connections and drawing the same conclusions.

When we turned off Columbian Way onto Fifteenth and again onto Dakota, we were thrown into what was almost an instant replay of two nights earlier. Law enforcement vehicles and flashing lights abounded. Traffic was being rerouted. No one on the force expected Chief Rankin to show up at all, to say nothing of having him appear as a passenger in a Porsche 928. It seemed as though every few feet another traffic cop waved us over and tried to divert us in a different direction.

It took time to work our way through the crush to a parking place in front of the Walterses’ house, but we made it eventually, stopping only a few feet away from the Medic One van. I had yet to bring the Porsche to a complete stop when Chief Rankin hopped out and began pushing his way through the crowd surrounding the truck. I got out myself and walked up to where a grim-faced Major Phil Dunn, the night commander of Patrol, was conferring with an equally somber Captain Powell.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

Captain Powell shook his head. “Not good,” he said. “Not good at all.”

“Was anyone else hurt?” Only during the last few minutes of the drive had I finally had brains enough to worry about Junior Western. I asked the question with a good deal of dread.

“No. Big Al evidently surprised someone trying to climb in a basement window.”

“Man or woman?”

“Man.”

“He got away?”

Powell nodded. “So for, but we’re working on it. We’ve brought in two of the K-nine units, but they haven’t found anything yet.”

“What I want to know,” Major Dunn was saying, “is what the hell Big Al was doing here in the first place. I thought you pulled him off this case, Larry, but that’s Junior Weston over there in that car or I’ll eat my hat.”

“Junior Weston?” I asked, my heart flooding with gratitude. “Where is he? Is he all right?”

“He’s fine,” Major Dunn answered. “He’s over there in one of my patrol cars with a two-person guard.”

Under most circumstances, that would have been good news, but Major Dunn didn’t know we were looking for a crooked cop whose identity we had yet to uncover. Our bad guy could just as easily be from Patrol as from anywhere else.

“Let’s go check on him,” I said. “I’ll feel better once I see him.”

Major Dunn shrugged as if to say who can understand these crazy Homicide dicks anyway, but he set off at a rapid pace while I tagged along behind. We found Junior Weston huddled in the far corner of a Seattle PD patrol car once more clutching his precious teddy bear. The two cops with him were doing what they could to reassure him, but they were understandably outraged by everything that had happened to the poor little kid, and they were frustrated by their inability to offer him any real comfort.

I turned back to Major Dunn. “I know the boy,” I said. “Tell your guys they can go.”

“But-” Major Dunn began.

“Please,” I interrupted. “Let me talk to him alone.”

“All right,” Dunn said, giving in. He turned to his men. “You can go now. We’ll take care of the boy from here on out. Go on over to the command van and get reassigned. I’m sure there’s plenty to do.”

The two patrolmen climbed out of the car, and I got into the driver’s seat, closing the door behind me, shutting out the night and the rest of the officers, including Major Dunn.

“Remember me?” I asked.

Junior looked up, nodded, and immediately buried his face in his teddy bear.

“Are you okay, Junior?” I asked. He nodded but this time he didn’t raise his head.

“Are you worried about Big Al?”

Another nod. “Is he going to be all right? Is Adam’s mom going to be able to fix him up?”

“Adam’s mom? Was she here?”

“Yes.”

That was news to me. If Dr. Emma Jackson was there, I hadn’t seen her. “I don’t know if she’ll be able to or not. I didn’t get a chance to talk to her or the Medic One guys either. They’re working on him right now.”

“It was the bad man, looking for me again, wasn’t it? How come? Why can’t you stop him?”

The simultaneous accusation and cry for help cut to the quick. “We’re trying,” I said. “We’re doing our best.”

“It’s all my fault,” Junior Weston whimpered. “It’s because of me Mr. Lindstrom got hurt.”

“It isn’t your fault, Junior. None of it is.”

“But what does the bad man want? Why’s he still looking for me then?”

“Because he knows you saw his face,” I answered quietly. “He’s afraid you can identify him.”

Junior Weston raised his head then and looked at me, his small chin set in staunch defiance. “And I can, too,” he said determinedly. “I will.”

“But until you do,” I cautioned, “we’ve got to make sure you’re safe. I thought you’d be safe here, at this house with the Walterses, but the bad man found you anyway. What would you think of coming home with me for a day or two, Junior? I live in a downtown high rise with a swimming pool and a hot tub and a rooftop garden.”