J. Jance: Trial By Fury

Just then a uniformed officer caught sight of me. " Beaumont! There you are. We were responding to your distress call when this happened. We heard you were here, but we couldn't find you."

I didn't tell him that I had been hiding out, that I hadn't wanted to be found. I shook my head. The paramedic I had been talking to moved toward me with an air of concern. I must have looked like hell.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"I'm okay," I muttered.

A uniformed female patrol officer with an accident report form in her hand stepped forward and addressed the paramedics in general. "You found no ID of any kind? Any idea how the accident happened?"

"Nope." The paramedic pointed toward me. "He says the guy is a detective with Seattle P.D."

She turned to me, looking for verification. Sudden anger overwhelmed me, anger at myself mostly, but I focused it on her. She was handy. She was there.

"It wasn't an accident, stupid. Call Homicide. Get 'em down here right away."

I turned on my heel and stalked away. She followed, trotting to keep up.

"Who are you?" she demanded.

"I'm Detective Beaumont, Homicide, and that's Ron Peters, my partner, in that medic unit."

"You know that for sure?"

"Yes, I know it for sure! Now call Homicide like I told you."

"If you know something about this, I've got to talk to you," she snapped back.

She was right and I was wrong, but I kept walking. "They're taking him to the trauma unit at Harborview. If you need to talk to me, that's where I'll be."

My Porsche was parked at a crazy angle half on and half off the sidewalk. The flashers were still flashing. The woman followed me to the car and persisted in asking questions until I slammed the door in her face and drove off.

When I reached Harborview, Peters' empty medic unit sat under the emergency awning with its doors still open and its red lights flashing. The hospital's glass doors slid silently open and the two paramedics wheeled their stretcher back outside.

"Is he going to be all right?" I asked as they came past me.

"Who?" the one asked. "The guy we just brought in?"

"Yeah," I replied gruffly. "Him."

"Talk to the doctor. We're not allowed to answer any questions."

Talking to the doctor turned out to be far easier said than done. I waited for what seemed like hours. I didn't want to call Kirkland and talk to Ames until I had some idea of what to tell him, until I had some idea of what we were up against.

Word traveled through the law enforcement community on an invisible grapevine. The room gradually filled with people, cops keeping the vigil over one of their own. Captain Powell and Sergeant Watkins were two of the first to arrive. Shaking his head, the captain took hold of the top of my arm and gripped it tightly. He said nothing aloud. I felt the same way.

Margie, our clerk, came in a few minutes later, along with several other detectives from the fifth floor. It wasn't long before the officer from the scene showed up, still packing her blank report. Watty sent her away. I think we all figured there'd be plenty of time for filling out forms later.

At last a doctor emerged through swinging doors beside the nurses' station. A nurse directed him to me. He beckoned for me to follow him. I did. So did Watty and Captain Powell. He took us down a polished hallway to a tiny room. A conference room. A bad news room.

The doctor motioned us into chairs. "I understand Detective Peters is your partner?" the doctor said, turning to me.

I nodded.

"What about his family?"

"A couple of kids."

"How old?"

"Six and seven."

"No wife?"

"No." I took a deep breath. "Should someone go get the kids? Bring them to the hospital?"

The doctor shook his head. "No. He's in surgery now. It'll be several hours. If he makes it through that…" His voice trailed off.

"Look, doc. How bad is it?"

He looked me straight in the eye. "Bad," he said quietly. "His neck's broken. He has lost a tremendous amount of blood."

His words zinged around in my head like wildly ricocheting bullets. "But will he make it?" I demanded.

The doctor shrugged. "Maybe," he said. The doctor spoke quietly, but his words washed over me with the crushing roar of breaking surf.

Stunned, I rose from the chair. I couldn't breathe. I scrambled away from the doctor, from the brutal hopelessness of that maybe. I battled blindly for a way to escape that tiny, oppressive room before its walls caved in on me.

Powell caught me by the arm before I reached the door. "Beau, where are you going?"

"To Kirkland. To talk to his kids."

"I can send somebody else," Powell told me. "You don't have to do it."

"This is unfortunate," the doctor said. "Perhaps it would be better if someone else…"

I turned on him savagely. "Unfortunate?" I bellowed. "You call this unfortunate!"

Powell gripped my arm more tightly. "Hold it, Beau. Take it easy."

I glared at the doctor. "I'm going to Kirkland," I growled stiffly through clenched jaws. "Don't try to stop me."

I shook off Powell's restraining hand and strode from the room. They let me go.

When I pushed open the swinging door at the end of the hall, the waiting room was more jammed than it had been before. I recognized faces, but I spoke to no one. The room grew still when I appeared. Silently, the crowd stepped aside, opening a pathway to the outside door.

On the outskirts of the crowd, just inside the sliding glass door, I saw Maxwell Cole. He stepped in front of me as I tried to walk past.

"I just heard, J.P. Is Peters gonna be all right?" he asked.

I didn't answer. Couldn't have if I had tried.

Max gave me a clap on the shoulder as I went by him. "Too bad," I heard him mutter.

He made no attempt to follow me as I got into the car to drive away.

Maybe Maxwell Cole was growing up.

Maybe I was, too.

I started the engine in the Porsche. Instantly, a mantle of terrible weariness fell over me. It was as though all my strength had been sapped away, all the stamina had drained out of me and into the machine. Gripping the wheel, I felt my hands tremble. I was chilled, cold from the inside out.

It was well after ten. I understood why I had hit a wall of fatigue. The days preceding it, to say nothing of that day itself, had taken their toll.

Common sense ruled out hurrying to Peters' house to tell his girls. It was long past their bedtime. They were no doubt already in bed and fast asleep. Let them sleep. The bad news could wait.

I decided to go home, shower, and change clothes before driving to Kirkland. Mentally and physically, I needed it. Besides, a detour to my apartment gave me a little longer to consider what I'd say, what I'd tell Heather and Tracie when I woke them.

When I got to the Royal Crest, it was all I could do to stay awake and upright in the elevator. I staggered down the hallway, opened the door to my apartment, and almost fell over what I found there. My newly recovered recliner had been returned and placed just inside the door. How Browder had gotten it done that fast I couldn't imagine. But he had.

Unable to walk through the vestibule, I turned into the kitchen. There on the counter sat my new answering machine with its message light blinking furiously.

I counted the blinks, ten of them in all. Ames had told me that each blink indicated a separate message. I pressed rewind and play.

The first two were hang-ups.

The third was a voice I recognized as that of Michael Browder, my interior designer, telling me he was on his way to downtown Seattle. He was bringing the chair in hopes of dropping it off on his way.

The fourth call was Browder again, calling from the security phone downstairs this time, asking to be let into the building.