J. Jance - Without Due Process

Ben and Shiree Weston had taught their son to respect his elders, but that respect wouldn’t make our job any easier.

Big Al took another tack. “Where does she live? Somewhere close to you?”

“No. They live all the way over on Queen Anne. You know, that really steep hill, but Adam and Dougie go to the same school. McClure. They’re in junior high. I’m only in kindergarten now, but I’ll be big enough to be in first grade next year. Did you know that?”

Hearing the ingenuous certainty in Junior Weston’s voice made me wish I could be a little kid again myself. No matter what terrible disasters might befall, kids exist in a plane where much of the future is known and predictable. At least children were free to believe it predictable. Junior Weston’s parents, siblings, and friend had been wiped out in the course of a single catastrophic night, but the boy moved forward with every confidence that next year he would shift automatically from kindergarten to first grade. And he was probably right.

“Will I get to see my mommy and daddy?” Junior asked. “I saw Grammy after she was dead. She was in a long box with her good black dress on, her best church dress. There were lots of flowers. I thought she was sleeping. That’s what it looked like.”

I doubted any amount of mortician’s art would ever restore the appearances of Shiree and Bonnie Weston. They would certainly need closed coffins. As a consequence, the others probably would be too. As if reading my mind, Big Al spoke. “No,” he answered firmly. “I don’t think so.”

“Oh,” Junior Weston said. He rubbed his eyes. “I’m tired. Can I go home now? I want to go to bed.”

The shift was abrupt but not surprising. A five-year-old’s attention span is only so long, and his understanding of the tragedy was as yet only skin-deep. It was fine to talk about people being dead and in heaven, but Junior Weston still had no real grasp of the fundamental changes that had transformed his young life. He was tired, with good reason, but he couldn’t go home and go to bed, not to the home and bed he had known, not ever again.

“Someone’s gone to get your grandpa,” Big Al told him. “When he gets here, you’ll have to go home with him.”

“Grampa’s coming here?” Junior asked incredulously. “How can he? He can’t drive, and it’s too far to walk. Besides, he doesn’t like this place.”

“We’ll bring him here and then someone will take you both wherever he says.”

“Oh,” Junior said again. “Okay.”

He leaned back against Big Al’s shoulder and chest. Like a worn-out puppy, the boy closed his eyes. Within seconds he was sound asleep with one arm wrapped firmly around the teddy bear’s comforting neck.

I had been taking notes fast and furiously. “You did a hell of a job with him, Al,” I said.

Big Al Lindstrom nodded sadly. “Thanks,” he said. “He’s a pretty sharp kid. What’s next?”

“You sit there with him for the time being and I’ll see what I can do about locating Adam Jackson’s mother. I’d like to get to her before someone else does.”

“Right,” Big Al said. “I suppose I should call Molly, too.”

But before either one of us had a chance to do anything, we heard a jumble of voices coming down the corridor. I looked up as Sergeant Watkins escorted a tall, stoop-shouldered black man into our cubicle. I would have known him anywhere as Ben Weston’s father. Harmon Weston was a thinner, older version of his son.

“I’ve come for the boy,” he said without preamble, looking hard at Big Al Lindstrom through Coke-bottle-bottom glasses. “Has anybody told him yet?”

“I did, Mr. Weston,” Big Al said. “I’m so sorry.”

Harmon Weston nodded. “”All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.“ That’s what the Good Book says.”

At first I didn’t understand that the old man was talking about his own son, but Big Al Lindstrom had been far closer to the Weston family, and he immediately recognized the scriptural quote as an attack on Ben. He fairly bristled.

“That’s not fair,” he said quietly. “No matter what you think, Mr. Weston, your son was not a violent man. He wore a gun, but he didn’t use it. He never had to.”

“My son is dead,” Harmon Weston said stiffly. “I didn’t come here to argue about what he did or didn’t do. I came for the boy. Wake up, Benjy. Let’s go.”

Junior Weston fought to rouse himself. For a moment, he looked around, dismayed by the strange surroundings, then his eyes focused on his grandfather’s familiar face.

“It’s true, isn’t it, Grampa? It wasn’t a bad dream, was it?”

“No,” Harmon Weston answered, reaching out and taking the boy’s pudgy hand. He pulled the boy to him and held him close. As he gazed down at his grandson’s curly hair I glimpsed the terrible hurt behind the old man’s outward show of bitterness and rancor. “It’s no dream at all, Benjy. It’s a nightmare. Come on now.”

“Do you need a ride?” Big Al offered.

“The car’s waiting downstairs,” Watty said quickly. “We’ve already got that handled.”

Harmon Weston let go of Junior and started toward the door. The boy took a tentative step after him before turning back to Big Al.

“I’ve gotta go now,” Junior said.

Big Al Lindstrom nodded. “I know. Good-bye, Junior. Thanks for all your help.”

At that, the boy darted back long enough to give Big Al a quick hug around the neck. Then, clutching his teddy bear, he followed his grandfather into the hallway. Accompanied by Sergeant Watkins, the two of them disappeared from view, leaving Detective Lindstrom staring at the empty doorway behind them and shaking his head.

“Stubborn old son of a bitch,” he muttered. “He and Ben were at war for years, and now Harmon’s all Junior Weston has left in the world. I wouldn’t want to be in that poor little kid’s shoes for nothing.”

With Junior safely on his way to his grandfather’s house, Big Al and I headed back toward the Weston family home in Rainier Valley. Without lights and sirens, it’s a ten-minute drive from downtown. For a good part of that time we were both pretty quiet. Big Al finally broke the silence.

“What do you think?” he asked. “Was Ben the real target, or is the killer somebody with a grudge against every cop in the known universe, and Ben was just a stand-in?”

That in a nutshell was the crux of the matter. Should the investigation head off after every crazy who had ever voiced a grudge against the Seattle PD? Regardless, I knew we’d go searching through Ben Weston’s catalog of past and present acquaintances both on and off the job. The problem was, Gentle Ben Weston hadn’t been given that moniker for being some kind of bad-ass cop. The last I heard, he had been working a desk job in Patrol. Of all the possible jobs in the department, a desk position in Patrol seemed least likely to create long-term, homicidal-type grudges.

“What would somebody have against a guy like Ben?” I asked. “I can understand how a crook might build up this kind of rage against somebody in Homicide or Vice, but why have such a hard-on for a poor, pen-pushing desk jockey from Patrol?”

“He wasn’t in Patrol,” Big Al returned quietly, “not anymore.”

“That’s news to me. Since when?”

Lindstrom shrugged. “Six months? A little longer, maybe. Don’t you remember? He took a voluntary downgrade and transfer into CCI.”

In Seattle PD jargon, CCI translates into Coordinated Criminal Investigations. In departmental politics, it’s currently synonymous with hot potato. CCI started out as the unit nobody wanted to have, doing the dirty work with gangs that no one across the street in City Hall wanted to admit needed doing. CCI’s desirability waxes and wanes, depending on the fickle barometer of public relations.