Without Due Process

CHAPTER 3

It seemed important to have Junior Weston well away from the house before Doc Baker’s helpers began wheeling gurneys loaded with body bags out the front door and into waiting vans. We bundled the boy into a jacket over his pajamas and then took him along downtown. Some kids might have balked at or been terrified by the prospect of a trip to the Public Safety Building, but because Junior was a cop’s kid, for him it was nothing more than a trip to his dad’s office.

After a quick but necessary visit to the bathroom, we brought him back to our crowded cubicle on the fifth floor. There he settled easily into Big Al’s lap, clutching the teddy bear. A steaming cup of cocoa sat at the ready on the detective’s cluttered desk.

Genetically linked stubbornness has necessitated a long learning curve, but now when I’m wrong, I can come right out and admit it. In regard to Detective Lindstrom and the Weston family murders, I’m happy to report I was absolutely dead wrong. During the next few minutes Big Al reverted almost totally to type. By dint of pure Scandinavian hardheadedness, he set aside his own feelings of grief and outrage and functioned flawlessly as the consummate investigator questioning a vulnerable but essential eyewitness.

In dealing with witnesses of any kind-young or old, willing or not-that initial questioning session often offers the best chance of gleaning really useful information. With young children especially, those first few moments are critical. It’s important to hear what the child himself has to say before his memory is colored or diluted by the preconceived notions of those around him. Well-intentioned adults-relatives, friends, or social workers-may inadvertently or deliberately encourage him to forget or change what he remembers, thinking that by doing so they will somehow lessen the trauma of what the child has experienced.

In the case of Benjamin Harrison Weston, Jr., there was no other detective in the Seattle Police Department who could have worked with the five-year-old boy the way Big Al did. Already a known and trusted adult in the Weston family sphere of influence, he dealt with the child in a straightforward, no-nonsense manner that gave the kid credit for having a good head on his shoulders. The detective’s whole approach, caring but devoid of condescension, was no doubt good for the boy, with the reverse also true-Junior Weston’s trusting innocence gave courage and purpose to the man.

“Do you know what dead is?” Big Al opened the discussion with a quiet but throat-lumping question.

Junior nodded, his eyes focused intently on the man’s face. “My granny’s dead,” he answered slowly, “and so’s Bonnie’s mama. She died before I was born. Mommy told me that when people die, they go to heaven.”

Big Al faltered, his voice cracking slightly. “They’re dead, Junior. They’re all dead-your mommy and daddy, your sister and your brother.”

The child was quiet for a moment, assimilating the words. “Does that mean they’re in heaven now, with Jesus?”

Big Al blinked. “Yes,” he said. “I suppose they are.”

“Can I go too?”

“No, Junior. You can’t. You’ll have to stay here.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

The boy turned away while two gigantic tears slipped down his round cheeks. “The bad man did it, didn’t he,” Junior said softly. “He hurt Bonnie. I saw him do it.”

“You saw him?” Big Al asked with a meaningful glance in my direction.

“Yes. In the kitchen. He had a knife, a big knife. He started to come after me, too, but I ran and hid in the closet. I closed the door so he couldn’t find me.”

The bearers of bad news can also issue a rousing call to arms. Big Al, after delivering his devastating news, now wisely offered Junior Weston the opportunity to do something about what had happened to him. “We’ve got to catch that bad man, Junior. Will you help us?”

The boy’s huge, unblinking brown eyes met the detective’s searching gaze. “It’s what my Daddy would have done, isn’t it,” he said gravely, making a statement, not asking a question.

Big Al nodded. “Yes,” he said. “It’s exactly what your daddy would have done.”

For a moment Junior Weston nuzzled his small, tear-stained face against the top of the fuzzy teddy bear’s head. “I want to catch him,” he whispered.

I didn’t know Big Al was holding his breath until he let it out in a long, grateful sigh.

“Try to remember everything you saw and heard, Junior. Tell us whatever you can about the man, about how he looked and acted and sounded, about how big he was. Anything at all that you remember. Will you do that?”

“He was wearing sweats,” the boy said at once. “Red sweats, and his arm was bleeding.”

“Which arm?” Big Al asked. “Right or left?”

Junior shook his head. “I don’t know. I can’t remember right and left.”

“Was it the one that was holding the knife?”

“No, the other one.”

“Tell us some more about his clothes. You said sweats. Both top and bottom?”

“Yes. The top had a zipper.”

“What about his shoes?”

“High tops, like Reeboks. The kind my daddy doesn’t let us get because they cost too much money.”

Busy taking notes, I forgot myself and asked a question of my own. “What was the man doing when you first saw him?”

Butting in like that was a serious tactical error, and the moment I opened my mouth I was sorry. Junior Weston stared at me blankly as though I had spoken to him from outer space in some strange, indecipherable language. Totally tuned in to the man who was holding him, he would answer questions from no one else.

“Can you tell us what was happening?” Detective Lindstrom asked, quietly resuming control of the interview.

The boy swallowed hard before he answered. “They were fighting. Bonnie and the man were fighting. He was bigger than she was, and she couldn’t get away.”

“Did either one of them say anything to you?”

“Bonnie saw me, and she shook her head like for me not to come any closer. The man saw me too, I think, but I ran away before he could catch me.”

“What did he look like?”

Junior shrugged. “I dunno. Just a man, I guess.”

“Was he tall or short? Taller than your mommy? As tall as your daddy?

“Tall, but not as tall as my daddy.”

Big Al looked at me. “Ben was six five,” he said before turning back to Junior. “Was he fat?”

“No, he was kinda skinny.”

“Was the man black or white, brown or yellow?”

“White,” Junior answered at once.

“What kind of white?” Big Al asked.

Junior Weston regarded Big Al with his head cocked to one side. “Not like you,” he said seriously. “You’re kinda red. More like him,” he said, pointing at me, “and his hair was brown.”

“Long or short, straight or curly?”

Junior leaned back. “It wasn’t curly,” he said. “Definitely straight.”

“Had you ever seen him before? Is he maybe someone from right around here, someone from this neighborhood?”

“No. I never saw him before.” Junior hunkered against the detective’s chest. “I’m tired. Can’t we stop now?”

Big Al shook his head. “It’s important to go on. You might forget something.”

“Okay,” Junior said.

“Do you know what time it was?”

The boy shook his head. “No. We were in bed. We were supposed to be asleep, but Dougie and Adam started telling ghost stories. They do that sometimes, just to scare me ‘cause I’m littler than they are. That’s when I went out to sleep in the closet in the hall. It’s my secret hiding place. I go there when Dougie and Adam start acting mean or picking on me. I closed the door almost all the way so they couldn’t find me. When they got quiet, I was going to go back to bed, but I heard a noise. I went into the kitchen. That’s when I saw the bad man.”

“Did Bonnie say anything to you?”

“No, she couldn’t. She tried, but there was something over her mouth. He was behind her. When she shook her head, he looked up and saw me.”

“What did you do then?”

The boy ducked his head and bit his lip. His answer was little more than a whisper. “I ran away.”

“You went back to the closet?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Where did the bad man go?”

“I don’t know. I heard some doors opening and closing. I think he was looking for me. I think he went into our room.”

“Why didn’t you call your daddy?”

“I was too scared to make a noise. I heard him getting closer, going past. Then, after that, I wanted to get out, but I couldn’t. The door was stuck. It got really quiet.”

“But you did hear noises?”

This time, instead of answering aloud, Benjamin Harrison Weston, Jr., buried his head against Big Al’s chest and sobbed into it. The detective didn’t bother to ask him what he had heard-there was no need. We both had a pretty good idea what the horror outside must have sounded like to a terrified child hiding in a darkened closet, wondering if the monster would come after him next.

“I knew he hurt them. He was bad,” Junior Weston said finally. “Before you even told me, I thought maybe he killed them. Like on TV.”

“Ja,” Big Al said softly. “I thought maybe you did. You’re a smart boy, Junior, and you were real smart to stay hidden. Your daddy would be proud of you.”

At the mention of his father, Junior’s eyes once more clouded with tears. “But I wanted to help…what if…” he began, then he broke off. For the next several minutes he sobbed brokenly into Big Al’s massive chest. I couldn’t know how a five-year-old would process the end of that sentence. Maybe he wondered what would have happened if, instead of hiding, he had warned his father, just as Officer Dunn had wondered what would have happened if the patrol car had somehow arrived on the scene sooner.

In the aftermath of death, “what if” becomes a haunting question, a philosophical imperative dictating the lives of survivors. Some ask themselves variations of that question for the rest of their lives. I’ve done it myself on occasion, especially in regard to Anne Corley, a woman I loved and who I thought loved me-right up until she tricked me into killing her.

Actually, over the years I’ve almost managed to convince myself that she did love me with the same kind of life-changing ferocity I felt for her. I’ve wondered if the force of that love didn’t somehow bring her face-to-face with the reality of the fiendish monster she’d become. I don’t blame her for not being able to live with that reality, but I’ve often wished she had committed suicide with her own hand instead of mine.

Still, though, I’ve asked myself countless times what if I had done something else? What if I had taken some other action? Would it have caused a different result? Would we somehow, somewhere have managed to live happily ever after? I don’t know. I doubt it.

It was painful hearing Junior Weston, sitting there on Detective Lindstrom’s lap in our little cubicle, ask himself those same questions for the very first time. Finally, having cried himself out, the boy grew still.

“He was way bigger than you. You did the best you could at the time,” Big Al said reassuringly. “Now you’re helping us. We’ll have an artist work with you on a composite, a picture drawn from your description. Do you know about those?”

Junior nodded. “I saw one once when Daddy brought me down here on a Saturday morning.”

“We’ll do that later on, tomorrow or the next day,” Big Al added. “In the meantime, we have to talk to the other boy’s family, to Adam’s family. What’s his last name?”

“Jackson. Adam Jackson. He slept over because his mama had to work all night.”

“Where does she work?”

“In a hospital.”

“Where? Which one?”

“Somewhere,” Junior said vaguely. “I don’t know the name of it.”

“What’s Adam’s daddy’s name?”

“He doesn’t have a daddy.”

“Does his mother have another name, a first name?”

“Her name is Mrs. Jackson,” Junior responded firmly. “That’s what my mommy said to call her.”

Ben and Shiree Weston had taught their son to respect his elders, but that respect wouldn’t make our job any easier.

Big Al took another tack. “Where does she live? Somewhere close to you?”

“No. They live all the way over on Queen Anne. You know, that really steep hill, but Adam and Dougie go to the same school. McClure. They’re in junior high. I’m only in kindergarten now, but I’ll be big enough to be in first grade next year. Did you know that?”

Hearing the ingenuous certainty in Junior Weston’s voice made me wish I could be a little kid again myself. No matter what terrible disasters might befall, kids exist in a plane where much of the future is known and predictable. At least children were free to believe it predictable. Junior Weston’s parents, siblings, and friend had been wiped out in the course of a single catastrophic night, but the boy moved forward with every confidence that next year he would shift automatically from kindergarten to first grade. And he was probably right.

“Will I get to see my mommy and daddy?” Junior asked. “I saw Grammy after she was dead. She was in a long box with her good black dress on, her best church dress. There were lots of flowers. I thought she was sleeping. That’s what it looked like.”

I doubted any amount of mortician’s art would ever restore the appearances of Shiree and Bonnie Weston. They would certainly need closed coffins. As a consequence, the others probably would be too. As if reading my mind, Big Al spoke. “No,” he answered firmly. “I don’t think so.”

“Oh,” Junior Weston said. He rubbed his eyes. “I’m tired. Can I go home now? I want to go to bed.”

The shift was abrupt but not surprising. A five-year-old’s attention span is only so long, and his understanding of the tragedy was as yet only skin-deep. It was fine to talk about people being dead and in heaven, but Junior Weston still had no real grasp of the fundamental changes that had transformed his young life. He was tired, with good reason, but he couldn’t go home and go to bed, not to the home and bed he had known, not ever again.

“Someone’s gone to get your grandpa,” Big Al told him. “When he gets here, you’ll have to go home with him.”

“Grampa’s coming here?” Junior asked incredulously. “How can he? He can’t drive, and it’s too far to walk. Besides, he doesn’t like this place.”

“We’ll bring him here and then someone will take you both wherever he says.”

“Oh,” Junior said again. “Okay.”

He leaned back against Big Al’s shoulder and chest. Like a worn-out puppy, the boy closed his eyes. Within seconds he was sound asleep with one arm wrapped firmly around the teddy bear’s comforting neck.

I had been taking notes fast and furiously. “You did a hell of a job with him, Al,” I said.

Big Al Lindstrom nodded sadly. “Thanks,” he said. “He’s a pretty sharp kid. What’s next?”

“You sit there with him for the time being and I’ll see what I can do about locating Adam Jackson’s mother. I’d like to get to her before someone else does.”

“Right,” Big Al said. “I suppose I should call Molly, too.”

But before either one of us had a chance to do anything, we heard a jumble of voices coming down the corridor. I looked up as Sergeant Watkins escorted a tall, stoop-shouldered black man into our cubicle. I would have known him anywhere as Ben Weston’s father. Harmon Weston was a thinner, older version of his son.

“I’ve come for the boy,” he said without preamble, looking hard at Big Al Lindstrom through Coke-bottle-bottom glasses. “Has anybody told him yet?”

“I did, Mr. Weston,” Big Al said. “I’m so sorry.”

Harmon Weston nodded. “”All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.“ That’s what the Good Book says.”

At first I didn’t understand that the old man was talking about his own son, but Big Al Lindstrom had been far closer to the Weston family, and he immediately recognized the scriptural quote as an attack on Ben. He fairly bristled.

“That’s not fair,” he said quietly. “No matter what you think, Mr. Weston, your son was not a violent man. He wore a gun, but he didn’t use it. He never had to.”

“My son is dead,” Harmon Weston said stiffly. “I didn’t come here to argue about what he did or didn’t do. I came for the boy. Wake up, Benjy. Let’s go.”

Junior Weston fought to rouse himself. For a moment, he looked around, dismayed by the strange surroundings, then his eyes focused on his grandfather’s familiar face.

“It’s true, isn’t it, Grampa? It wasn’t a bad dream, was it?”

“No,” Harmon Weston answered, reaching out and taking the boy’s pudgy hand. He pulled the boy to him and held him close. As he gazed down at his grandson’s curly hair I glimpsed the terrible hurt behind the old man’s outward show of bitterness and rancor. “It’s no dream at all, Benjy. It’s a nightmare. Come on now.”

“Do you need a ride?” Big Al offered.

“The car’s waiting downstairs,” Watty said quickly. “We’ve already got that handled.”

Harmon Weston let go of Junior and started toward the door. The boy took a tentative step after him before turning back to Big Al.

“I’ve gotta go now,” Junior said.

Big Al Lindstrom nodded. “I know. Good-bye, Junior. Thanks for all your help.”

At that, the boy darted back long enough to give Big Al a quick hug around the neck. Then, clutching his teddy bear, he followed his grandfather into the hallway. Accompanied by Sergeant Watkins, the two of them disappeared from view, leaving Detective Lindstrom staring at the empty doorway behind them and shaking his head.

“Stubborn old son of a bitch,” he muttered. “He and Ben were at war for years, and now Harmon’s all Junior Weston has left in the world. I wouldn’t want to be in that poor little kid’s shoes for nothing.”