Without Due Process

CHAPTER 25

The coffins were still being carried down the aisle when my pager went off, summoning me back from the stirring hymn and Ben Weston’s unfinished business to my own. I stifled the pager’s racket as soon as I could and glanced at the display that listed Tony Freeman’s extension at Seattle PD. Why was he there instead of at the funeral? I knew he had planned to attend.

“Freeman’s not here?” I asked sue in an undertone.

“I haven’t seen him.”

“Call him back on the double,” I whispered, “and use a pay phone, not a radio. Find out what he wants, and tell him I’ve got another name for him to add to the list-Deddens, Gary Deddens from Patrol. Got that?”

Sue nodded, but she didn’t move. None of the rest of the congregation had, and I knew she was questioning the propriety of our leaving during the recessional.

“Go now,” I urged, “while we can still get out. Meet me out front as soon as you can. We’ve got work to do.”

I had finally managed to spot Gary Deddens sitting near the end of the third row of uniformed officers. He was far closer to the door than we were, and I knew that the slightest delay in our getting out would mean losing him and also losing the opportunity to send a chilling message to any other crooks still left in the group. I wanted to serve notice that we were closing in on them; I wanted to force them into making some kind of strategic blunder.

Shaking her head in disapproval, Sue nonetheless started for the side aisle, leading the way and excusing us to the people whose feet we had to step over in the process. In the vestibule, she asked directions to the nearest phone while I took up a station outside the door just as the last coffin emerged followed by Emma Jackson and Harmon and Junior Weston. They disappeared into the waiting limo while the rest of the people began to trickle out of the church into the courtyard. I looked around, trying to catch sight of Ron Peters and Knuckles Russell, but they were nowhere to be seen.

Sue erupted through the doors and looked around anxiously until she caught sight of me. “How’d you do that?” she demanded.

“Do what?”

“Come up with Gary Deddens’s name. Freeman says you’re right. Kyle Lehman’s copy of Ben’s deleted files finally turned up on Tony’s desk. He says we’ve got probable cause. He wants us to take Deddens into custody and bring him down for questioning right away.”

“But wait a minute,” I objected. “I’ve got to be here in case…”

“Captain Freeman is sending a squad car for us and for Deddens both,” she replied. “He wants the two of us there. He was very specific about that.”

Just then the first batch of uniformed officers emerged into the fitful sunlight, where they joined the growing crowd milling around the limo and the collection of hearses. I turned my attention on the officers, scanning faces, hoping to see that of Gary Deddens. I examined each one, some of them familiar and some not, and wondered how far the cancer of corruption had spread and how many more officers were involved in the protection racket. The possibility made me sick.

“There he is,” Sue whispered. “He’s just now shaking hands with Reverend Walters.”

“Who’s going to do it?” I asked. “You or me?”

“I will,” she volunteered over her shoulder. “You watch for trouble.”

Making an arrest of any kind in a crowd situation is always a hairy, volatile proposition. Protecting the lives of innocent civilians must always be the primary consideration for the police officers involved.

Already Sue was moving purposefully toward the door, pulling Flex-cufs rather than a weapon from her blazer pocket. I followed, closing the distance between us so that I was only a step or two behind her when she reached the place where an unsuspecting Gary Deddens stood chatting casually with several of his fellow officers.

Sue stopped directly in front of him. He was saying something to the others, but he paused and half smiled a greeting. “How’s it going, Sue?” he said.

“You’re under arrest,” she returned.

He stepped away from her, but his back was to the wall of the church, and he couldn’t go far. “Come on, Sue, that’s not funny. Don’t even joke about something like that.”

Around us the crowd fell strangely silent.

“It’s no joke. Face the wall, hands on the back of your head, feet apart. I’m placing you under arrest in connection with the murder of Officer Benjamin Weston.”

Surprise and shock registered on the faces of the men who, moments before, had been chatting amiably with Gary Deddens. Now they melted away from him, opening a circle where the three of us stood in isolation.

“There’s got to be some mistake,” Deddens said, his eyes darting questioningly from Sue to me. “This is crazy.”

“No mistake,” Sue insisted. “Turn around.”

For an electric moment, he stood glaring and belligerent. Time seemed to stretch into an eternity before finally, with a casual shrug, he started to turn. As deftly as any professional pickpocket, Sue unfastened his holster and removed his automatic which she handed over to me. Behind us the wailing siren of the arriving squad car squawked once and was quickly stifled.

Sue had successfully negotiated the first danger-cornering Deddens and capturing his weapon without anyone being hurt-but the incident was far from over. There was another danger as well, and every cop in the courtyard knew it. As the news of what had happened spread through the crowd, every police officer present realized that outrage over the multiple murders was an open, sucking wound in Seattle’s African-American community. I think we all feared that once the grieving people from the funeral realized what was going on, they themselves might very well evolve into a dangerous and potentially lethal mob.

The danger in mobs is that they have no brain and no conscience. They are immune to innocence and equally blind to justice and guilt. You can’t talk to them or reason with them. If the searing spark of vengeance is once allowed to erupt into flame, there’s no stopping it until the glut of violence has run full course. If the people in the courtyard perceived Gary Deddens to be Ben Weston’s killer, if their rage was allowed to get out of hand, they might very well turn on the killer and on whoever was with him as well-Sue Danielson and me included.

Speed was of the essence. Every moment of delay compounded the danger. With businesslike efficiency, Sue patted Deddens down. Other than the automatic, there was no weapon.

“All right, you guys,” she barked at the clutch of stricken police officers surrounding us. “Help us get him over to the car. Now!”

For a moment no one moved. An angry undercurrent of comment rumbled through the crowd as more people spilled out of the church, forcing their way into the now motionless crush in the courtyard. Near the door, someone shoved against someone else, and that backward and forward movement eddied through the entire gathering.

“Let’s go!” Sue urged.

Finally the nearby cops shook themselves alive. With me leading the way and with seven or eight officers forming a human shield around Deddens and Sue Danielson, we moved away from the protection of the church wall, past the hearses, and across the courtyard. Professional behavior forestalled the possibility of an unfortunate incident. The officers with us, all in uniforms but from several different jurisdictions, reacted instinctively as a unit. They might have been executing a procedure they’d practiced together time and again.

As we made our way through the sullen but silently watchful crowd, I knew how Moses must have felt as he parted the roiling waters of the Red Sea. A way through the multitude opened magically and silently in front of us, revealing a cleared path that led directly to the patrol car waiting on the street.

At last we were there, opening the door, shoving Deddens unceremoniously into the backseat. Behind me a car horn blared. It sounded over and over. One of those horn alarm security systems, I supposed.

“You get in front,” I said to Sue. “I’ll ride in back.”

By now the courtyard crowd had spilled over onto the street itself. When the officer driving the patrol car started to move, the way was blocked by fifty or sixty people with more being added all the time.

“Come on. Let’s get out of here,” I urged the driver. “We’re all right so far, but we’re not home free, not by any means.”

He turned on the siren and started nudging his way into the crowd. Some of the bystanders leaned over and stared into the car, trying to catch a glimpse of whoever was there as we eased by them. And then, just as I thought we were close to breaking out, someone began pounding furiously on the trunk of the car.

I figured it was the beginning of the end and that we were all in for it. Even Gary Deddens seemed concerned.

“We’re not going to make it,” he whined. “If they get hold of me those people will tear me apart.”

“Maybe we should let them, creep,” I said. “Maybe I should just open the door and let them have you.”

He paled. “No, please. Don’t do that.”

People in front of the car stopped us again while the pounding on the back of the squad car continued. It was on the back panel now, just behind my shoulder, angry and insistent. Next the hammering started on the window beside my head.

Gary Deddens looked at the window with a sharp, involuntary intake of breath. I turned to see what had caused it.

The distorted angry face of a young black man was pressed against the glass. Abruptly the face was jerked away as someone grabbed the man from behind and pried him from the car. Only then did I recognize the face. Knuckles Russell stood there struggling furiously and gesturing toward the patrol car.

Something had happened, and Knuckles was trying to let me know.

“Stop the car and let me out,” I demanded.

“What do you mean let you out?” the driver returned. “You got a death wish or something?”

“Goddamnit,” I insisted. “I said let me out!”

Reluctantly, he stopped the car and unlatched the door. Sue jumped out to open it. “What the hell is going on?” she began.

But I didn’t reply. Instead, I leaped to where Knuckles still stood, trying to free himself from the unrelenting grasp of the King County police officer who had nabbed him.

“What is it?” I demanded. “What’s wrong?”

“Come on,” Knuckles answered urgently. “Ron Peters says you gots to come with me.”

“It’s okay,” I said to the officer. “Let him go. I know this man.”

The car horn was still sounding, closer now and more insistently. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Ron Peters’s Reliant pressing its way toward me through the massed humanity. Taking Knuckles by the arm, the two of us started for the slow-moving car. Without waiting for Ron to come to a complete stop, Knuckles clambered into the backseat while I climbed into the front.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “What’s happening?”

“Curtis Bell,” Ron Peters answered, still trying to escape the crush of people and the endless row of vehicles that was already queuing up to form the funeral cortege. Ron’s specially equipped car with all its push-button controls would have been a complete mystery for me to operate, but he drove it with the consummate ease and confidence of a speeding juvenile delinquent.

“Curtis Bell? What about him?”

“You should have seen him. He came through the door of the church just as you were moving Deddens toward the car. As soon as he saw what you were up to, he took off like a dog with firecrackers tied to his tail.”

“But I thought he was selling…”

“Evidently more than insurance,” Ron Peters finished. “No wonder he was so interested in getting appointments with you and Big Al. My guess is he thought one of you would slip and tell him how much you knew.”

“I’ll be damned. He was trolling for information the whole time.”

“You’ve got it,” Peters replied. “Looking for leaks and trying to cover his tracks all at the same time.”

We finally negotiated our way through the last of the milling crowd. With squealing tires, Ron Peters sent the car rocketing forward. He turned westbound onto Madison.

“So where is he?” I asked.

“See that blue car,” Knuckles Russell asked, pointing from the backseat. “The one just now goin‘ over the top of the hill? That’s him.”

Curtis Bell’s blue Beretta crested the rise and momentarily disappeared from view as we sped up the steep grade behind him.

“He’s ahead of us,” Peters agreed grimly, “but not that far and not for long. You two keep an eye on him, and we’ll catch up.”

“And what do we do then?” I asked.

“I’m gonna smoke the mother,” Knuckles Russell murmured.

Even barreling hell-bent-for-leather down the street, Ron Peters managed to dredge up a shred of his customary sense of humor.

“That’s probably a bad idea, Ezra,” he cautioned reasonably. “There’ll be too many other people in line. You might hit the wrong person.”

“What if he gets off?” Knuckles demanded.

“He won’t. We’ll see to it.”

There was no way right then to tell who had done what, but in the state of Washington, regardless of who had been running the show and regardless of who actually wielded the weapons, all those involved would be considered equally guilty. In this state, murders committed by others in the course of a conspiracy to commit a felony offense damn all the conspirators. Not only that, Curtis Bell was a crooked cop besides.

“Killing’s too damn good for him,” I said heatedly. “Look! He’s turning north on Sixth. Where’s he going?”

We were turning onto Sixth only a block behind him as the light at Spring turned green ahead of us and he sped in a sharp right-hand turn onto the southbound on-ramp to I-5. Peters followed suit, but dropped back and stayed far enough behind so we could keep him in view without arousing suspicion.

“Five bucks says he’s headed for the airport,” Ron Peters breathed.

“I never placed no bet with cops before, but you’re on,” Knuckles asserted from the backseat. His eyes never left the back of Curtis Bell’s car.

Previous encounters with Ron Peters had taught me the folly of betting money against him on anything. It was a valuable lesson Knuckles Russell would have to learn for himself the hard way.

“It’ll be coming out of your student loan,” I told him.

And actually, that was probably fair. I figured it would prove to be an educational experience.