J. Jance - Trial By Fury

I glanced at Ames. His ashen color told me we had made the trip in record time.

Heather and Tracie were out in the front yard tossing a frisbee back and forth. They dashed over to the car, pleased to see me and thrilled to see Ames. Ralph was the person who had bailed them out of their mother's religious commune in Broken Springs, Oregon. He is also one of the world's softest touches as far as little girls are concerned. They look on him as one step under Santa Claus and several cuts above the Tooth Fairy.

The two of them smothered him with hugs and kisses while he scrambled out of the Porsche.

"Call as soon as you can," he said, leaning back inside the car to speak to me. "I'll hold the fort here."

As I turned the car around in the driveway, he was walking up the sidewalk into the house with a brown-haired child dangling from each arm. Ames is my attorney, but he's also one hell of a good friend. He somehow manages to be in the right place at the right time, just when I need the help. No matter what was going on with Peters, Heather and Tracie couldn't have been in better hands.

Relieved, I flew back across the bridge. My mind was going a mile a minute, rehearsing my speech, the scathing words which would tell Detective Ron Peters in no uncertain terms that I thought he was an unmitigated asshole. In my mind's ear, I made a tub-thumping oration, covering the territory with pointed comments about rutting season and bitches in heat. In my practice run, Andi Wynn didn't get off scot-free, either. Not by a long shot!

The area west of the Fremont Bridge and north of the Ship Canal is a part of Seattle that hasn't quite come to grips with what it wants to be when it grows up. There's a dog food factory, a dry cleaning equipment repair shop, and a brand-new movie studio soundstage. Added into the mix are Mom-and-Pop businesses and residential units in various stages of flux, from outright decay to unpretentious upscale.

Andi Wynn's address was actually on an alley between Leary and North Thirty-fifth, a few blocks north of the dog food factory. The fishy stench in the air told me what they were using for base material in the dog food that particular day.

I remembered Andi had told us that she lived in the watchman's quarters of an old building. The place turned out to be an old, ramshackle two-story job with a shiny metal exterior stairway and handrail leading up to a door on the second floor. An oil slick near the bottom of the stairs testified as to where Andi Wynn usually parked her pickup truck. Right then, though, the Chevy Luv was nowhere in sight.

I parked the Porsche in the pickup's parking place and bounded up the stairs. Halfway to the top, I tripped over my own feet and had to grab hold of the handrail to keep from falling. I caught my balance, barely. When I let go of the rail, my hand came away sticky.

The paint on the handrail wasn't wet, but it was fresh enough to be really tacky. The palm of my hand had silver paint stuck all over it.

"Shit!" I muttered, looking around for somewhere besides my clothes or the wall to wipe the mess off my hand. I turned and went back down the stairs. Partway down the alley, an open trash can sat with its cover missing. Whoever had painted the rail had used that particular can to dispose of painting debris, from old rags to newspapers. I grabbed one of the rags, mudded off my hand, and started back up the stairs.

Pausing where I had tripped, I examined the damage l'd done to the fresh paint. There, clearly visible beneath the fresh silver paint, was a scar. A deep blue scar.

I'm not sure how long I stood there like a dummy, gazing at the smudge in the paint. My eyes recorded the information accurately enough, but my mind refused to grasp what it meant.

Blue paint. What was it about blue paint?

When it finally hit me, it almost took my breath away. Flakes of paint, blue metal paint, had been found in Darwin Ridley's hair! And around the top end of the noose that had killed him.

"Jesus H. Christ!" I dashed on up the stairs and pounded on the door. "Police," I shouted. "Open up!"

There was no answer. I'd be damned if I was going to ass around looking for some judge to sign a search warrant, or call for a backup, either.

The first time I hit the door with my foot, it shuddered but didn't give way. The second time, the lock shattered under my shoe. With my drawn.38 in hand, I charged into the tiny apartment.

Nobody was home.

J. P. Beaumont rides to the rescue, and nobody's there. It's the story of my life.

Cautiously, and without holstering my.38, I gave the place a thorough once-over. By the time I finished, I was beginning to worry about kicking down the door.

As nearly as I could tell, nothing seemed amiss in the apartment. There was no sign of any struggle. It looked like the bed had been slept in on both sides. I found nothing to indicate a hurried leave-taking. The closet was still full of clothes, and the dresser drawers contained neat stacks of female underwear.

Finally, I put my gun away, picked up the phone, and dialed Sergeant Watkins. At home. I figured I was going to get my ass chewed, and I wanted to get it over with as soon as possible.

Watty was particularly out of sorts when he came on the phone. It sounded like he was out of breath. I had a pretty fair idea what Saturday evening activity my phone call might have interrupted.

"I just broke into Candace Wynn's apartment," I told him without preamble. "Nobody's here."

"You what?" he demanded.

"You heard me. I broke into her apartment, hoping to find Peters. They're not here. Now I need some help."

"You're damn right about that! You need more than help. You need to have your goddamned head examined! You ever hear of a fucking search warrant? You ever hear of probable cause?"

"Watty, listen to me. That's what I'm trying to tell you. I've found something important. Remember the blue paint on the rope that killed Ridley and the chips of paint they found in his hair? I think I've found where it came from. I want a crime scene investigator from the crime lab over here on the double."

"Over where?" he asked. "To a place you've broken into without so much as a by-your-leave, to say nothing of a search warrant?"

"Did you hear what I said?"

"I heard you all right. Now you hear me. No way is someone coming over there until you have an airtight search warrant properly filled out, signed, sealed, and delivered. Understand?"

"But Watty," I objected. "It's Saturday night. Where am I going to find a judge at this hour?"

"That's your problem, buster. And you make damn sure it's a superior court judge's signature that's on that piece of paper. I don't want someone throwing it back in our faces later because it's just some lowbrow district court judge. You got that?"

"I don't want to leave here, though," I protested lamely. "What if they come back while I'm gone and find the door broken?"

"You pays your money, and you takes your choice," Watty told me. "You get your ass out of there and don't go back until you have that warrant in your hot little hand."

Watty was adamant. There was no talking him out of it. "All right, all right. I'll go get your fucking search warrant. But we're wasting time."

"You'll be wasting even more time if somebody files a breaking-and-entering or illegal-search complaint against you. Now, give me the address. I'll get somebody over there to watch it until you get back."

Grudgingly, I drove back down to the Public Safety Building, parked in a twenty-four-hour loading zone, and went upstairs to type out the proper form. When I finished typing, I grabbed the list of judges' home phone numbers and started letting my fingers do the walking. I didn't know it, but I was in for a marathon.