J. Jance - Trial By Fury

"You wanted to see me?" I asked.

Without warning, she whirled and sprang at me, clenching both fists as she did so. She moved so fast I was surprised she didn't lose her footing on the slippery, wet grass. Just in time I realized she was bringing a haymaker up from her knees, putting the full force of her body behind it. If she had landed that blow, it would have sent me flying.

My reflexes may not be what they used to be, but they were still good enough to save my bacon. I dodged back, away from her doubled fist, which whizzed past my face within an inch of my nose. She came scrambling after me, her face a mask of hard, cold fury.

I had seen a similar version of that look once, that night in the Dog House after we left the medical examiner's office. That look was mild compared to this. Right then, Joanna Ridley appeared to be entirely capable of murder.

"It's about time you got here, you son of a bitch!"

I had expected our encounter to begin on a somewhat more cordial note. After all, I wasn't even late. I stepped back again, just to be on the safe side, staying well out of reach.

"What the hell's going on, Joanna? What's wrong?"

Her right hand shot toward the pocket of the voluminous sweater. My first thought was that she was going for a gun.

Once burned, twice shy. The last time I got burned by a lady with a gun, I came within inches of checking out for good.

With adrenaline pumping from every pore, I bounded forward and grabbed her wrists, pinning them to her sides before she had a chance to draw. Like a desperate, captive bird she struggled to escape my grasp. We must have stood like that for half a minute or so before I realized that what she had in the pocket of her sweater was nothing more than a rolled-up section of newspaper.

She was still pulling against me with all her might when I let go of her wrists. She fell away from me toward the breakwater and would have fallen backward into the lake if I hadn't caught her. We fell to the ground together in a tumbled heap.

The fall knocked the wind out of her. For a moment she was silent, her dark eyes staring up at me in mute rage. When she caught her breath, she screamed. "Get away from me, you bastard. Get away!"

"Are you all right? Are you hurt?" I tried to break through her anger, but she didn't hear me. She kept right on screaming.

Suddenly, I was lifted off the ground. Someone grabbed me by the back of my shirt the way a mother dog grabs a puppy to carry it. Except puppies don't wear ties with knots that block their windpipes. I dangled in midair, coughing and choking.

From behind me, I heard someone say, "Hey, lady. This guy botherin' you?"

Joanna Ridley didn't answer him. I swung around, trying to break his hold, but the guy had arms like a gorilla. I couldn't lay a hand on him. I was about to black out when he dropped me to the ground like a sack of potatoes. I lay there for a moment, stunned and gasping, trying to force air back into my lungs. When I looked up, a giant of a man was gently helping Joanna to her feet.

"I'm a police officer," I sputtered. I reached for my ID, but my pocket was empty. The leather case had evidently fallen out in the course of the struggle.

"Yeah, and I'm Sylvester Stallone," he returned. Joanna Ridley was on her feet and mercifully quiet. "You all right, lady?" he asked. "You want somebody to take you home?"

I crawled around on my hands and knees in the grass, searching for my ID. Finally, I located it, resting against a rock, just below where Joanna and I had fallen. I clambered to my feet and staggered over to where they stood. At six three, I'm no piker when it comes to size, but this guy made me look like a midget. Muscles bulged under his oversized T-shirt and rippled down his legs from under the skimpy running shorts he wore.

I tried to show him my ID, but he brushed me aside. "Get away from her before I call the cops."

"Goddamn it, I am a cop. Detective J. P. Beaumont, Seattle P.D. Homicide."

"No shit? Since when do cops go around beating up pregnant ladies in parks?"

I wouldn't have convinced him, not in a million years, but right then Joanna Ridley stopped her silent sobbing and, surprisingly, spoke in my defense. "It's all right. I fell down. He caught me."

The man bent down and looked her full in the face. "You sure, now? I can throw his ass in the water if you want. You say the word and I'll drown this sucker."

"No. Really. It's all right."

He stepped away then, reluctantly, looking from one of us to the other as if trying to figure out what was really going on. "Okay, then, if you say so." Without another word, he turned on his heel and jogged away from us, running shoes squeaking on the wet grass.

Warily, I approached Joanna. "What's wrong? Tell me."

Once again, she reached into the pocket. When her hand emerged, she was holding the newspaper. She was under control now, but her eyes still struck sparks of fury as she slapped the newspaper into my outstretched hand.

"I thought you said you'd keep it quiet."

"Keep what quiet?"

"About what happened. I thought I could trust you, but you took it straight to the newspaper."

"Joanna, what are you talking about?"

"The picture."

"My God, is the picture in here?" Dismayed, I unrolled the newspaper.

"It just as well could be," Joanna replied grimly.

I scanned down the page, the front page of the last section of the newspaper. The local news section. There on the bottom four columns wide, was Maxwell Cole's crime column, "City Beat." The headline said it all:

"Sex Plus Race Equals Murder."

I scanned through the article quickly, while Joanna Ridley watched my face. When I finished reading, I looked up at her. I was sickened. There could be no doubt from the article that Maxwell Cole had indeed seen the photograph of Darwin Ridley and Bambi Barker. All of Seattle could just as well have seen it. The article left little to the imagination. The only thing it didn't mention was Bambi Barker's name. Knowing Maxwell Cole, I figured Wheeler-Dealer's money and position in the community had something to do with that.

I took Joanna Ridley by the arm and led her to her car.

"Where are you going?" she asked as she half-trotted to keep up with me.

"To find Maxwell Cole," I told her. "If I don't kill him first, you can have a crack at him."

I put Joanna Ridley in her car and told her to go on home, that I'd call her as soon as I knew anything.

As she started the Mustang, I motioned for her to roll down the window. "Don't forget to put your phone back on the hook," I told her. She gave me a half-hearted wave and drove away.

I started the Porsche and rammed it into gear. My first instinct was to find Maxwell Cole, beat the crap out of him, and find out who the big mouth was, either in the crime lab or in Seattle P.D. Somebody had leaked the information.

I drove straight to the Post-Intelligencer's new digs down on Elliott, overlooking Puget Sound. Eight o'clock found me standing in front of a needle-nosed receptionist who told me Maxwell Cole wasn't expected in before ten. I should have known a slug like Cole wouldn't be up at the crack of dawn.

Rather than hang around the newspaper and cool my heels, I went down to the Public Safety Building. I stopped at the second floor and stormed into the crime lab.

Don Yamamoto, head of the Washington State Patrol's crime lab, is a criminalist of the first water. He's one of those second-generation Japanese who, as a kid, was incarcerated along with his parents in a relocation camp during World War II. He spent all his spare time during the years they were locked up reading the only book available to him-a Webster's unabridged dictionary-and he came out of the camp with a far better education than he probably would have gotten otherwise.