Without Due Process

CHAPTER 1

Back in the not-so-distant and not-so-good old days, I remember staying up until all hours every April 14 finishing up my income tax returns. It wasn’t because they were all that complicated because there was never that much money. No, the difficulty was always nothing more or less than an almost fatal tendency to procrastinate where income taxes are concerned. Once I had completed the dirty job, likely as not I’d reward myself with a couple of stiff belts of MacNaughton’s.

A few things have changed since then, some of them for the better. For one, I’m trying, one day at a time, to keep away from Demon Rum. For another, thanks to Anne Corley, there’s a hell of a lot more money in my life, and as a consequence, a much more complicated income tax problem. These days, my relations with the IRS are handled by a CPA firm hired and supervised by my attorney and friend, Ralph Ames, whose presence in my life I also owe to Anne Corley. The only thing that hasn’t changed is my tendency to procrastinate.

That’s why, on the evening of April 14, Ralph showed up around eight o’clock, bringing with him my completed but unsigned returns. The ink was still wet. Ralph, who has been through this exercise with me now a time or two, had held a gun to my accountant’s head and insisted that, no, we were not going to file for an extension.

I fixed a pot of coffee, and for a while we sat in my living room window seat, visiting and watching the nighttime boat traffic crisscrossing the black expanse of Puget Sound. Finally, though, Ralph cleared his throat, switched on the table lamp, and handed me the weighty manila envelope. “Time to go to work,” he said.

As I read over the return, I knew better than to expect to get anything back, but when I hit the bottom line and saw that the amount due equaled 80 percent of my annual take-home pay as a homicide detective for the Seattle Police Department, I about hit the roof.

“You’ve got to be kidding! That’s how much I owe?”

Ralph Ames nodded and grinned. “Can I help it if you’re making money hand over fist? We lucked into some very good investments this last year. Stop complaining and write the check, Beau. You can transfer in enough money to cover it tomorrow or the next day.”

First I signed the return, then I reached for the checkbook. With pen in hand I paused long enough to verify that astonishing figure one last time. “What’s the point in working then?” I demanded irritably. “Why bother to show up down at the department day after day?”

Ralph waited patiently for me to finish writing the check. When I handed it over to him, he put both the signed return and the check on the coffee table.

“Good question.” He smiled. “Seems to me I’ve mentioned that very thing to you a time or two myself. You need to lighten up, Beau. Work less, learn to have some fun, maybe even find yourself a woman. That’s an idea. Whatever happened to Marilyn? I haven’t seen her around here for some time.”

Marilyn Sykes, the former chief of police on Mercer Island, had been a sometime thing, someone to chum around with and take to bed occasionally until she up and turned serious on me. With a lucrative job offer from Santa Clara, California, in hand, she had come to me with an ultimatum to either get with the program as in marriage or else forget it because she was leaving. She took the job in Santa Clara.

“She got married,” I said. “Just before Christmas last year. To some big-time electronics wizard down in California. She sent me an announcement.”

“You’ll get over her eventually,” Ralph said.

I shrugged. “It wasn’t that big a thing, really.”

Ralph shook his head. “I wasn’t talking about Marilyn Sykes,” he said carefully.

Without another word, I got up and went to the kitchen to get more coffee. Ralph Ames was one of the few people who knew just how big a hole Anne Corley’s death had torn in my heart. It’s not something I like to advertise. Years later, I still don’t much want to talk about it. Not even with Ralph.

For a few minutes I avoided the subject by dinking around in the kitchen and making one more pot of coffee. Then, just as the coffee finished, I was saved by the bell in the guise of a timely phone call that cut off all further discussion.

The familiar voice on the other end of the line belonged to Sergeant Watkins, the day desk sergeant in Homicide. My partner, Detective “Big Al” Lindstrom and I were on call that night, so the phone call was no particular surprise. What was surprising was for Watty to be making the call rather than the nightshift sergeant. Not only that, he sounded genuinely relieved to hear my voice.

“Glad you’re okay, Beau,” he said. “I’m more worried about the guys who don’t live in secure high rises. Big Al’s all right too, by the way. I just checked. He’s coming in from Ballard right now. I told him to stop by and pick you up. We need you both down at the department ASAP. I’ll meet you there.”

That meant Watty had called me from home. His coming back into the department at night was more than slightly out of the ordinary, so something was definitely up. “What’s going on?” I asked.

“A call came in to nine-one-one about forty minutes ago. The guy claims to have killed a police officer and wiped out his entire family. The chief has all supervisors checking with individual squad members by phone. Wherever we get no answer, we’re sending out cars to check.”

“It must have sounded pretty legit,” I said.

“You’d better believe it. Enough to get everyone moving in high gear. So far nothing’s turned up, but my guess is not everyone’s been called yet, either.”

“What about us?”

“The chief wants detectives lined up and ready to move at a moment’s notice. That’s where you and Detective Lindstrom come in. The night shift told me you two were on deck.”

“Right,” I said. “Can you give us any more information? What exactly was said? Where did the call originate?”

King County’s Enhanced 911 system shows a visual display of the originating address for all emergency phone calls. This allows the operators to have accurate address information to forward on to police, fire, and medic personnel.

“Not now,” Watty replied. “No time. I’m not done with my calling yet. I’ll finish briefing you once we’re all down at the office. Gotta go.”

The call-waiting signal on my own telephone buzzed impatiently, announcing that I had another call on the other line. “Me, too,” I told him. “That’s probably Big Al now, calling to say he’s downstairs.”

I switched to the other line and heard the bearlike Detective Lindstrom growling into the receiver. “I’m here, Beau. Hurry it up, will you? Watty’s climbing the walls on this one.”

Big Al didn’t sound any too happy about being out and about. As far as partners go, he’s not bad, but he tends to be surly when he’s short on sleep. After buzzing Big Al into the lobby, I put the phone down and went back into the living room, where Ralph was finishing licking the flap on the official IRS envelope. He looked up at me as I slipped on my bulletproof vest and fastened my shoulder holster in place.

“Duty calls?” he asked. I nodded.

“Want me to see that this gets in the mail?”

“Thanks, Ralph. That would be great. Send it certified, return receipt requested. I don’t trust those guys any further than I can throw them, and I sure as hell don’t need Uncle Sugar on my butt for missing the deadline.”

“When will you be back?”

I knew that if the anonymous 911 caller had told the truth and that we really were dealing with a multiple homicide, it was going to be a long, terrible night.

“Don’t wait up,” I said. “There’s no telling. Some asshole claims he’s killed a cop and several other people besides. With any kind of luck it’s somebody’s idea of a bad joke.”

“I hope so,” Ralph said.

“Me too,” I added grimly.

He followed me to the door as I made my way into the elevator lobby and pushed the down button. “Sorry if I upset you a minute ago,” he said. “I didn’t mean to pry, but when the two of us are together, it seems like I can’t help thinking about her.”

Until that very moment, it hadn’t occurred to me that I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t managed to get past the pain of Anne Corley’s death. And I wasn’t the only dummy she had led around by the nose, either.

“Don’t worry about it, Ralph,” I said as the elevator door swished open. “It’s no big deal.”

He was still standing there looking at me, when the door shut and the elevator started its descent. I usually use the twenty-five-story elevator ride as a pressurization chamber, a place to switch gears from home to work and vice versa, but I was still thinking about Anne and Ralph and me when the door opened and I saw Big Al striding back and forth across Belltown Terrace’s marbled lobby while the building’s uniformed doorman cowered nervously behind his rosewood writing desk and pretended to read a book.

One look at Big Al’s impatient face told me he for one believed the 911 call was the real McCoy. There had been a total changing of the guard in the top echelons of Seattle PD, and the honeymoon period had been brief enough to be almost nonexistent. The new chief was rumored to be a closet racist, while word was out on the streets that someone somewhere was taking payoffs. In previously scandal-free Seattle, community relations had plummeted. Verbal abuse and threats against police officers were up as were outright physical attacks. Maybe the top brass weren’t directly affected by all this, but it was no surprise that the middle managers, people like Watty and Captain Powell, were taking this latest telephoned threat in dead earnest.

“Come on,” Big Al said, heading for the door as soon as he saw me. “Let’s get going.”

“You don’t think this is just some kind of a kook?”

“Are you kidding?”

I followed him out to the curb and clambered into the car with a knot of apprehension solidifying in the pit of my stomach. If Big Al was right, if Watty was, somewhere in the city of Seattle, a police officer was dead. Chances are, whoever he was, that cop was someone I knew.

“Where are we going?” I asked as we started down Second Avenue.

“To the department. Watty says they have a car waiting for us in the garage. We’re supposed to call in as soon as we’re back out on the street.”

At night, there’s hardly ever a shortage of on-street parking outside the Public Safety Building. We left Big Al’s Ciera parked half a block away and hoofed it into the garage. Marty Sampson, the nighttime garage supervisor, was standing in the guard shack along with the attendant. They both seemed so mesmerized by something that they didn’t even see us until we were directly on top of them. It turned out they were staring at their radio.

“Hey, guys,” Big Al said, jarring them awake. “What’s happening? Which car is ours?”

When Marty looked up at us, his face reminded me of someone awakened from a terrible nightmare. “That one,” he said, pointing. “And hurry. An officer-down call came in a few minutes ago. Watty wants you there, pronto.”

“Where?”

“Down in the south end someplace. The street’s Cascadia. I don’t know the exact address. You can get that once you’re on your way.”

Big Al and I sprinted to the car, climbed in, and shot out of the garage with lights and siren both going full blast. With Big Al driving, I ran the radio, giving our position and letting Dispatch know we were on our way.

It was several moments before a harried-sounding dispatcher radioed back to us directly. The people who work in Dispatch, officers and civilians alike, pride themselves in maintaining professional composure no matter what, but this one was having a tough time of it. She was so choked up I could barely make out the street name, Cascadia. Once again the exact address got lost in the shuffle while she plunged on with the rest of the transmission.

“Officer down. We’ve got uniforms and emergency vehicles on the scene. They’ve called for detectives. That’s all I can tell you so far.”

No doubt that was all she could say over the air due to the many unofficial ears that routinely monitor official police channels, but her emotion-charged voice allowed my imagination to fill in some chilling blanks.

By then we were careening down the far side of First Hill. “Repeat that address,” Big Al said forcefully into the radio. “We didn’t catch it the first time.”

This time the numbers came through clear as a bell, and I thought I was a dead man.

“Dear God in heaven!” Big Al roared, simultaneously slamming on the brakes. By a mere fraction of an inch we avoided rear-ending a hapless taxi whose oblivious driver had meandered into our path.

“Hey, watch it,” I yelped, grabbing at the dash with an outstretched arm. “You could get us killed.”

“No,” Big Al said.

“What the hell do you mean ”no‘? You missed that guy by less than an inch.“

But Big Al Lindstrom didn’t seem to be listening. “Son of a bitch!” he exclaimed, pounding the steering wheel with both gigantic hands, which meant that he wasn’t holding on with any. The whole car seemed to shudder from the force of the blow. The idea of Big Al pitching a temper tantrum at any time is daunting enough, but having him do it in a car which he was supposedly driving at the time was downright terrifying.

“What the hell’s going on?” I demanded. “What’s the matter with you?”

“It’s Ben. They got Gentle Ben. That’s his address.”

The lump in my gut turned to solid ice. “Are you sure?” I asked, all the while knowing he was.

“Yes,” Big Al replied in a snarl of rage. “I know it as well as I do my own.”

Maybe for some people the words “Gentle Ben” evoke only memories of an old, forgettable TV series, but in the parlance of Seattle PD, they referred to just one person-Benjamin Harrison Weston, known to friend and foe alike as Gentle Ben.

Years earlier, Big Al and Ben had worked together when they were both new detectives in the Property division. Except for the distinct difference in skin color, they might have been twins. Massively built yet easygoing, plodding but amazingly thorough, the burly Norwegian and his African-American colleague always left a singular impression on those who had any dealings with them. After six months of working together, diverging career paths had led them in different directions-Big Al into Homicide and Ben into Patrol, but a genuine affection existed between them. Through the years the former partners had stayed in touch.

“They just said officer down,” I suggested, trying to inject some hope into the situation. “Maybe he’s not dead.”

“It wasn’t a ”help the officer‘ call,“ Big Al pointed out. ”That means it’s too damn late for help, and you know it.“

He was right. There was no arguing that point. While Allen Lindstrom drove us through the city with terrifying, single-minded ferocity, I tried to quell the tide of unreasoning anger boiling up inside me.

Murder investigations don’t allow any room for rage. The beginning of a homicide case demands total focus and clearheaded logic. Anything else is an unaffordable luxury. Outrage would have to come later, along with grief. In the meantime, we would both have to shove aside all personal considerations and start asking the stark, necessary, and routine questions about who had killed Ben Weston and why?

The human psyche can assimilate only so much bad news at one time. For a few moments as we raced, siren howling, through the night-lit city, I thought only of Ben. Then I remembered the rest of Watty’s phone call-that the killer had bragged of killing a police officer and his entire family. In that mysterious unspoken communication that happens sometimes between husbands and wives or partners, Big Al reached the same conclusion at almost the same moment. He grabbed for the microphone.

I knew exactly what was on his mind. “Don’t bother asking,” I said. “Dispatch isn’t going to tell you what you want to know over the air.”

With an oath that was half English and half unprintable Norwegian, Big Al heaved the microphone out of his hand as though it were a piece of hand-singeing charcoal. They make radio equipment out of pretty tough materials these days. The microphone bounced off both the windshield and the dashboard without splintering into a thousand pieces.

“How many are there?” I asked.

“Five,” he said. “Ben, his wife, and three kids, two from his first marriage and then the baby, Junior.”

“How old?”

“Bonnie’s the oldest. She must be fourteen or fifteen by now. Dougie is twelve. Junior’s what?…maybe five or six. I forget which.”

“And the wife’s name?”

“Shiree. She’s good people,” Big Al declared. “I don’t know what Ben would have done if she hadn’t been there to help out when his first wife died. Ben was all torn up, and Shiree sort of glued him back together.”

I glanced across the seat in time to see Big Al swipe at a damp cheek with one of his huge, doubled fists. “Want me to drive?” I offered.

“Hell no! You wouldn’t go fast enough. I’m gonna get there in time to kill the bastard myself!”

He meant it too, and I didn’t blame him. I shut up and let him drive. When we finally reached the general area, we found that an eight-block area around the Weston family home on Cascadia was cordoned off. It was lit up like daylight by the massed collection of emergency vehicles surrounding it. Big Al snaked his way through the crush as far as possible. After that, we got out and walked.

A grim-faced Captain Lawrence Powell, head of our Homicide division, met us on the front porch and barred the way, stopping Big Al in his tracks.

“You probably shouldn’t go in there, Detective Lindstrom,” the captain cautioned. “It’s real rough-five dead so far.”

Big Al’s huge shoulders sagged and he lurched visibly under the weight of Powell’s words. Five dead? That meant that along with Ben his entire family-his wife and all three of his children-had been eradicated from the face of the earth!

“I know you and Weston were friends,” Powell continued, reaching up to place a restraining hand on Big Al’s massive chest. “I’ll assign somebody else…”

Impatiently, Big Al shook off the captain’s hand as though it wasn’t there. “Everybody who ever met Ben Weston was his friend,” Lindstrom countered doggedly. “Sergeant Watkins assigned me to this case, and I’m taking it.”

“Are you sure?”

Detective Lindstrom is a good six inches taller than the captain, and he outweighs him by a minimum of seventy-five pounds. Big Al stared down at Powell, his face contorted by grief, his skin pulsing an eerie red in the reflected glow from the flashing lights of an ambulance parked just outside Ben Weston’s gate.

“Yes,” Detective Lindstrom replied fiercely. “I’m sure.” With that, he stomped off and disappeared into the house.

Captain Powell turned to me. “You keep an eye on him, Beaumont. If Big Al can’t handle it, if he needs to be pulled from this case, I expect you to let me know immediately.”

“Right,” I said, but that wasn’t what was going through my mind.

Like hell I will, I thought as the appalling death toll continued to explode in my head. Five! Five! Five! If Captain Powell thought he could count on me to spy for him and report on the correctness of Big Al’s behavior in this case, he was on the wrong track. I wouldn’t do it, and nobody else would either. The death of Gentle Ben Weston was everybody’s business.

Concerned about public image and letter-of-the-law proper procedure, Captain Powell might very well pull Big Al from the case, but being taken off officially didn’t mean the detective would stop working the problem. Not at all. Assigned or not, every homicide detective in the city of Seattle would be walking, talking, and breathing this case twenty-four hours a day until it was over and the killer was either dead or permanently behind bars.

Cops are people too, you see. When faced with the slaughter of one of our own, we all take it very, very personally.