Trial by Fury

by J. A. Jance

  I understood then why Sergeant Watkins was at the top of the steps and everyone else was waiting down below. Watty’s nobody’s fool. He was looking out for my ass, and his, too. It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud as I kicked Candace Wynn’s door in one more time. Once more with feeling. Take it from the top. J. P. Beaumont does “Miami Vice.”

  The only problem was, I kicked the door like it was really locked, like it hadn’t been wrecked only hours before. I almost broke my neck when it caved in under my foot.

  Once inside, Watty motioned the rest of the troops to join us. It turned out the suitcase contained King County’s laser printfinder. The deputy, huffing, lugged the case up the stairs and put it down in the middle of Candace Wynn’s living room.

  The printfinder weighs around eighty pounds or so, and it works off a regular 110 volt plug-in. He fired it up, plugging it into an outlet right there in the room. The crime scene investigators dusted the various surfaces in the room with a fluorescent powder. Then, one of them donned a pair of goggles.

  “Okay, you guys,” the other said. “Here go the lights.”

  With that, he turned out all the lights in the room. We were plunged into darkness. The only illumination was the finger of light from the printfinder as it played over the glowing powder and the periodic flashes from a 35-mm camera as the other investigator snapped pictures.

  I felt like a kid who had stumbled into a midnight session with a Ouija board. There was nothing to do but stand there with my hands in my pockets and wait as the investigator ran the lens in the end of a length of fiber optic cable over everything that wasn’t readily movable and bagged up everything that was.

  He picked up prints from everywhere—the table, the refrigerator, the bathroom counter and mirror, the couch and chair in the living room, all the while recording the prints on film for later examination. Not only did the laser pick up prints, it also located other bits of trace evidence—hairs and fiber fragments that would have been tough to find with the naked eye.

  Finally, tired of doing nothing, the rest of the team went outside. The other homicide detectives gathered a series of paint scraping samples from the handrail on the stairs. I showed them which garbage can had held the painting debris I had discovered earlier in the evening when I had been looking for something to use to clean my hands.

  Fascinated by the workings of the laser, I went back inside and followed the deputy around like a puppy. I was so intrigued with the process that I failed to notice when one of the crime lab boys came to the door and motioned Watty aside. Moments later, Watty switched on the lights.

  “Hey, why’d you do that?” the laser operator griped.

  “Can you take that thing outside?” Watty demanded. He looked more anxious, more upset, than I had ever seen him. His whole demeanor vibrated with unmistakable urgency.

  “Now?”

  Watty nodded.

  “I guess we can finish up in here later,” the tech grumbled. “But I’ll have to get the van to fire up the generator. I thought we were going to be inside. Nobody told me we’d be working outside. I need a place to plug all this shit in.”

  “What’s up?” I asked Watty as soon as they called the deputy back upstairs to carry the equipment down to the alley. “What did they find?”

  “Come see for yourself,” Watty said grimly.

  I followed him outside and down the steps. The King County van had been moved farther down the alley and was parked next to the garbage can. The deputy was busy hauling out power cables to hook the laser up outside.

  As we started away from them without acknowledging their presence, the members of the press put up a hell of a fuss.

  “Ignore them,” Watty ordered. I was only too happy to oblige.

  We walked down the alley and gathered around the garbage can like a group of male witches around a mysterious cauldron. Standing to one side, I watched as the laser operator lowered his cable into the can. The brilliant light illuminated only a tiny area at a time. Someone had removed the top layer of paint-sodden rags. I moved even closer to see what had been unearthed, what the light was focusing on.

  It was a bottle, a tiny medicine bottle, the kind liquid narcotics are stored in before someone sucks them into a syringe.

  I turned to Watty then. “Morphine?” I asked.

  He nodded, saying nothing.

  “Oh, shit!” I muttered. Sick with dread, I turned to walk away.

  Just beyond the police barricade, a camera-man caught me walking back down the alley. As I passed him, I was aware of the red light from his videocam shining full on my face. It was then I realized I had never called Ames to let him know what was going on, and here I was, live, on the eleven o’clock news.

  I wanted to grab the camera out of the man’s hands and shove it down his throat. I didn’t.

  Excessive common sense is one of the few side benefits of advancing middle age.

  Unfortunately, it’s also a symptom of despair.

  CHAPTER

  26

  We went back into Candace Wynn’s apartment, eventually, after the deputy had used the laser to go over everything of interest in the garbage can. By then, Watty was as serious as hell. The morphine bottle was no joke. He watched over our shoulders while the crime scene team, the other two Seattle P.D. detectives, and I scoured the place inch by inch. We found a number of useful items, including the automobile license renewal form on Andi’s Chevy Luv. Watty phoned the license number, in to dispatch and told them to put out an APB on Candace Wynn.

  I lost all track of time. Long after one in the morning somebody thought to reach down behind the couch cushions. There, stuck in the crack between the springs and the back of the couch, we discovered a small, dark, leather wallet. I recognized it at once.

  “That’s Peters’,” I said.

  Sure enough. Inside we found both his badge and his departmental ID. I felt like somebody had kicked me in the stomach.

  Right up until then, I suppose I’d kept hoping I was wrong. Hoping that, despite the mounting evidence, Peters would show up and chew my butt for pushing panic buttons when he was just out knocking off a piece of ass. Finding his badge corked it for me. Cops don’t get separated from their badges without a fight. Or without a reason.

  When we finally left Candace Wynn’s apartment, Watty and I took our separate vehicles and drove back downtown to the Public Safety Building. I went upstairs to write my report while a team from the crime lab night shift went to work as fast as they could on comparing the prints we’d found on the things in Joanna Ridley’s trunk with the prints in Candace Wynn’s apartment.

  With every moment vital, it was frustrating to realize that the process, which would take several hours of manual labor, could have been done in a matter of seconds with a computerized fingerprint identification unit. The last request for one had been turned down cold by the state legislature.

  When I finished my report, I stamped around the fifth floor, railing at anybody who would listen about goddamned stupid legislators who were penny-wise and pound-foolish.

  In the meantime, another team downstairs had tackled the paint samples. It turns out that paint samples take a hell of a lot less time to compare than fingerprints. My friend, Janice Morraine, called me at my desk about three-thirty in the morning to let me know that the samples taken from Candace Wynn’s porch matched those taken from Darwin Ridley’s hair as well as those from the rope found in Joanna Ridley’s trunk.

  That one little chip of information told me who. It didn’t tell me why or how. And it didn’t give me a clue as to where she was right then.

  I left the office about four. I had caught my second wind. Instead of driving home to my apartment, I headed for Kirkland. I needed to talk to Ames and tell him what we had found, to say nothing of what we hadn’t. I also needed his calm assessment of the situation.

  Much to my surprise, even at that late hour the lights were blazing in Peters’ living room. I peered in the window of the
door and caught a glimpse of Ames’ head peeking over the back of a chair. His face was pointed at a snowy, otherwise blank television screen on the other side of the room.

  A series of light taps on the window brought Ames scrambling to his feet. “Who is it?” He opened the door, then stood back, rubbing his eyes. “Oh, it’s you,” he mumbled. “Did you find anything?”

  Ames led me into the kitchen, where we scrounged around for sandwich makings while I told him what I knew. He nodded as I talked.

  “I watched the news at eleven,” he commented somberly. “The reporters didn’t have any idea what was going on, but I could tell it wasn’t good.”

  “Did Heather and Tracie see it?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Mrs. Edwards finally talked them into bed about ten.”

  “Good.”

  Over a thick tuna sandwich, I finished the story, including all the minute details I could remember, from the paint samples and the morphine bottle to Peters’ ID holder hidden in the couch.

  Me and my big mouth.

  When I ended my story, the room got quiet. It was then I heard the sound of a muted whimper coming from the other room.

  Hurrying to the pocket door between the kitchen and the dining room, I slid it open. There, crouched on the floor, I discovered Tracie, her whole body shaken by partially muffled sobs.

  “Tracie, what is it? What’s the matter?”

  I picked her up and held her against my chest. “You didn’t find my daddy. You promised you would and you didn’t.”

  I touched her brown hair, smoothing it away from her tearstained cheeks. “Shhh, sweetie,” I whispered. “It’s all right.”

  She pulled away and looked at me reproachfully. “It’s not all right. He’s dead,” she declared. “I know he’s dead.”

  “No, Tracie. Your daddy’s not dead. He’s lost, and we’re going to find him. You wait and see.”

  “But what if he is,” she insisted stubbornly. “That’s what happens on TV. The bad guys and the good guys shoot each other. Usually, the bad guys die. But sometimes the good guys die, too.”

  Ames came over and gave Tracie’s head a comforting pat. “This isn’t TV, Tracie. Everything’s going to be all right. You’ll see.”

  “But what if?”

  “Don’t you worry. You go back to bed and let Uncle Beau and me handle it. It’s late. Mrs. Edwards said you have to go to Sunday school in the morning.”

  “I don’t want to go to Sunday school.”

  “Too bad.” Ames reached out and took Tracie from my arms. She went without objection. He carried her out of the room and down the hall. When he returned to the kitchen, he was alone.

  “Will she stay in bed?” I asked.

  “We’ll see,” he answered.

  “Goddamned television,” I muttered.

  Ames sat down across the kitchen table from me, a small, tight frown on his face. He rubbed his forehead wearily. “What would happen to the girls?” he asked.

  “You mean if something happened to Peters?”

  Ames nodded again. “Has he made any arrangements? Do you have any idea?”

  I shrugged. “We’ve never talked about it.”

  “Somebody should have talked about it long before this,” he said grimly. “And that somebody should have been me. It’s my job.”

  “Come on now, Ralph. Don’t blame yourself. We’re all doing the best we can.”

  Unconvinced, Ames shook his head. “In a custody case like this, especially one where the mother is out of the country, I should have taken care of it.”

  I had come to Kirkland hoping Ames would make me feel better. Instead, he succeeded in doing just the reverse. The two of us sat there conferring miserably until fatigue finally caught up with us.

  It was starting to get light outside when I bailed out and told him I had to get some sleep. Neither one of us went near Peters’ bed. We rummaged around in a linen closet and found blankets and pillows. Ames took the couch. Stripped down to my T-shirt and shorts, I settled down on the floor.

  I must have fallen asleep the instant my head touched the pillow. I was dead to the world when thirty-five pounds of kid did a belly flop onto my chest, knocking the wind out of me.

  “Unca Beau, Unca Beau,” Heather lisped. “Can I use the blanket, too?”

  Unable to speak, I held up the blanket. A chilly, pajama-clad kid wormed her way into my arms, snuggling contentedly against my chest.

  “Is Daddy still asleep?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, Heather. He’s not here.”

  She sat up and looked at me accusingly. “He isn’t? You said you were going to find him.”

  “I’m trying, but I haven’t been able to yet.”

  “When will you?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t say.”

  She got up and stood glaring scornfully down at me, both hands on her hips. “I want him home now,” she announced. With that, she turned, flounced down the hallway without a backward glance, marched into her bedroom, and slammed the door.

  “Sounds like ‘Unca Beau’ is in deep shit,” Ames observed dryly from the couch.

  I struggled clumsily off the floor with my bad back screaming at me. I’m too old to sleep on floors. “‘Unca Beau’ is going to get the hell downtown and find out what the fuck is going on,” I growled, throwing the wad of bedding onto a nearby chair.

  I glanced at the couch, where Ames still lay with the blanket pulled up to his chin. “Are you coming or not?”

  “Not. I’ll stay here,” he said. “I think it’s best.”

  I had to agree. When I finally got moving, I discovered the hour or so of sleep had done me a world of good. I was awake and alert as I started toward the city. I drove with my mind racing off in a dozen different directions at once: Why? And how? And where? Those were the basic questions, but where was the most important.

  Where could they be? With every passing hour, that question became more critical. I was convinced Peters was being held somewhere against his will. As time passed, Andi Wynn had to be getting more and more desperate. And dangerous.

  Through a series of mental gymnastics I had managed to keep my mind from touching on the bottom-line question, the question I had fought to avoid all night long. But as I crossed the bridge to return to Seattle, the question asserted itself, surging full-blown to the surface: Was Detective Ron Peters still alive?

  Yes, he was alive, I decided, feeling my grip tighten involuntarily on the steering wheel. He couldn’t be dead. No way. Like Heather, I wanted him home and alive. Now.

  Fighting for control, I took a deep breath. In the twenty-four hours since Mrs. Edwards had first called me, I had worked my way through a whole progression of feelings, from being pissed because Peters was out screwing his brains out to being worried sick that he was being held someplace with a gun to his head.

  But once the idea of death caught hold of me, I couldn’t shake it. It filled up the car until I could barely breathe.

  The badge and ID told me Peters wasn’t in control when he left Candace Wynn’s apartment. The morphine bottle hinted at why. I suspected morphine had given Andi the edge both with Darwin Ridley and with Peters, providing a chemical handcuff every bit as effective as the metal variety.

  And if Andi Wynn had indeed killed Darwin Ridley, then I had to believe she was capable of killing again. It was my job to find her, to stop her, before she had the chance.

  Downtown Seattle was a ghost town at seven-fifteen on Sunday morning. I parked the Porsche in front of the Public Safety Building and hurried inside. There were only two people visible in the crime lab when I was led into the room. One of them was my friend, Janice Morraine. She reached into her lab coat pocket, removed a package of cigarettes, and nodded toward the door. “Let’s go outside,” she said.

  As soon as we were out in the elevator lobby, she lit up. “Did you find Peters?” she asked, blowing a long plume of smoke toward the ceiling.

  I shook my head. “Not
yet. What’s the scoop on the stuff we brought in?”

  She shrugged. “We’ve got matches everywhere—the prints from Ridley’s clothes, from the flour container, from the Fremont apartment, and from Joanna Ridley’s house as well.”

  I felt the cold grip of fear in my gut. Looking at Janice’s somber face, I could see she felt it, too.

  “What does that say to you?” I asked.

  “That the killer doesn’t give a damn whether you catch him or not.”

  The knot in my gut got a little tighter, a little colder. I pushed the call button on the elevator.

  “That’s what I was afraid you’d say, but it’s a her,” I added.

  Janice blew another plume of smoke and ground out the remains of her barely smoked cigarette in the sand-filled ashtray in the hall. “Good luck,” she said softly.

  I stepped into the elevator. “Thanks,” I told her. “We’ll need it.”

  When the elevator stopped on the fifth floor, I was almost run over by two detectives who charged through the open door. One of them grabbed me by the sleeve and dragged me back inside as the door slid shut.

  “Hey, wait a minute. I wanted off.”

  “You’d better come with us,” Big Al Lindstrom ordered.

  “How come? What’s up?”

  “Somebody just spotted that missing Chevy Luv,” he answered.

  “No shit? Where?”

  “Parked in front of Mercer Island High School. That’s where we’re going.”

  “Who’s we?” I asked.

  “Baxter here and me. You, too, if you want. Mercer Island Police say they have the place pretty well sealed off, but they called us to let us know.”

  Big Al and Baxter got off at the garage level. I had to ride down to the lobby and charge down the street half a block to where I had parked, but once I fired up the Porsche, there was no contest. I passed Big Al and Baxter on the bridge like they were standing still.

  I’m not sure if it was because the Porsche was a better car or because Peters was my partner.