Trial by Fury

by J. A. Jance

  Peters was still trapped. How could they save his life if they couldn’t even get him out of the van?

  I forced myself to sit there. While the paramedics worked furiously to save Peters’ life, they didn’t need someone like me looking over their shoulders, getting in the way, and screwing up the works.

  Detectives are ill-suited to doing nothing. It goes against their training and mind-set. Sitting there, staying out of the way, took tremendous effort, a conscious, separate act of will for every moment of inactivity. Watching the paramedics and the firemen on and in the van was like watching an anthill. Everyone seemed to be doing some mysterious specialized task without any observable direction or plan.

  Then, suddenly, the anthill of activity changed. There was a new urgency as firemen moved forward, bringing with them the heavy metal shears they call the jaws of life. Without a wasted motion, they attacked the side of the van. Within minutes, they had cut a hole a yard wide in the heap of scrap metal. Leaning into the hole, they began to ease something out through it. They worked it out gradually, with maddening slowness, but also with incredible care.

  Peters lay on a narrow wooden backboard with a cervical collar stabilizing his head and neck. Blood oozed from his legs, arms, and face. Carefully, they placed him on a waiting stretcher and wrapped his legs in what looked like a pressurized space suit, then carried him ever so gently toward a waiting medic unit. A trail of IVs dragged along behind them.

  I was grateful to see that. The IVs meant Peters was still alive, at least right then.

  As the medic unit moved away, its siren beginning a long rising wail, I was surprised to discover that darkness had fallen without my noticing. Floodlights had been brought in to light the scene so the paramedics and firemen could see to work. It was dark and cold and spitting rain. I had been so totally focused on the van that I had seen and felt none of it.

  Chilled to the bone, I straightened my stiffened legs and walked to where the paramedics were busy reassembling and packing up their equipment. I buttonholed one I had seen crawl out of the van just before they brought Peters out.

  “Is he going to make it?” I demanded.

  “Who are you?” the paramedic returned without answering my question. “Do you know him?”

  I nodded. “He’s my partner.”

  “Do you know anything about his medical background? Allergies? Blood type?”

  “No.”

  “We couldn’t locate any identification. What’s his name so I can call it ahead to Harborview.”

  “Peters,” I said quietly. “Detective Ron Peters, Seattle P.D.”

  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.

  CHAPTER

  32

  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.

  The fifth call was from the building manager, explaining that he was letting someone deliver a chair and that he hoped it was all right with me.

  The sixth was someone calling to see if I was interested in carpet cleaning.

  The seventh was from Ned Browning. He didn’t say what day or time he was calling. He said he had just discovered that the keys to the Mercer Island team van were missing from his desk. Checking in the district garage, he had discovered that the van was gone as well. He had reported it missing, but did I think it possible that Candace Wynn had taken the keys from his desk while he was down in the locker room?

  I stopped the answering machine and replayed Browning’s message. Possible? It was more than possible. You could count on it. So that was why she had insisted on meeting Browning at school, why she had pretended to have just learned about the names in the locker the night before. She had lured Browning there so she could get the keys and steal the van.

  But why? That still didn’t give me the whole answer. Parts of it, yes, but not the whole story. Maybe she had known we were getting close and had wanted to use another vehicle in case we were already looking for her truck. But why a school van? Surely she must have known that by Monday at the latest someone would have noticed and reported it missing.

  Unless, by then, she no longer cared whether she got caught. I remembered the fearless, single-minded way she had crashed through the barriers onto the exit ramp. Maybe she had reached a point where being caught was no longer the issue. Now, with Candace Wynn dead, hope faded that I would ever learn the answers to those questions.

  I turned back to my answering machine to play the next message. The eighth one was from Joanna Ridley, asking me to call her as soon as I could. She left her number.

  The ninth and tenth messages were both from Ames, looking for me, wondering what was going on, and had I learned anything.

  The machine clicked off. I dialed Joanna’s number, but there was no answer. I poured myself a tumbler full of MacNaughton’s and dialed Peters’ number in Kirkland. Ames answered on the second ring.

  “It’s Beau,” I said.

  “It’s about time. Did you find him?”

  “Yes.”

  “It sounds bad. Is it?”

  “He’s in the hospital, Ralph. The doctors don’t know whether or not he’ll make it…”

  “And…?” Ames prompted.

  “Even if he does, he may be paralyzed. His neck’s broken.”

  There was a stricken silence on the other end of the line.

  “Are the girls in bed?” I asked eventually.

  “Mrs. Edwards put them down a little while ago. I told them we’d wake them up if we heard any news.”

  “Don’t get them up yet. Wait until I get there,” I said. “I’m at home now. I need to shower. I’ll come prepared to spend the night.”

  “Good,” Ames said. “That sounds like a plan.”

  “I’ll be there in about an hour,” I told him. “Captain Powell was to give the hospital that number in case they need to reach us. Is there anything you need over there?” I asked as an afterthought.

  “As a matter of fact, bring along some MacNaughton’s.”

  “In addition to what’s in my glass?”

  “Bring me some that hasn’t been used,” he replied.

  The shower helped some. At least it gave me enough energy to gather up a shaving kit and some clean clothes. I drove to Kirkland in the teeth of the roaring gale. Waves from Lake Washington lashed onto the bridge and across my windshield, mixing with sheets of rain and making it almost impossible to see the road ahead of me.

  The storm’s fury matched my own. J. P. Beaumont was in the process of beating himself up and doing one hell of a good job. What if I had called for help before I ever left Ballard? Was it possible that a patrol car could have reached the Scarborough house in time to keep Candace Wynn from getting away, from making it to the freeway? What could I have done differently so Peters’ life wouldn’t be hanging in the balance?

  In the end, I couldn’t ditch the singular conclusion that it was my fault. All my fault.

  Ames met me at the door. He looked almost as worn and haggard as I felt. “Tell me,” he commanded, taking the bottle of MacNaughton’s from my hand and leading me into the kitchen.

  Ames poured, and I talked. Off and on I tried Joanna Ridley’s number, but there was still no answer. Between calls, I told Ames every detail of what had happened that day, down to the doctor’s last words as I left the hospital. When I finished, Ames ran his hands through his hair, shaking his head.

  “God what a mess! What are we going to do?”

  “About what?”

  “The kids.”

  “What do you mean? What’ll happen to them?” I asked.

  “That depends,” Ames said quietly. “If Peters lives long enough to make his wishes known, he might have some say in it. Otherwise, with their mother out of the country, the state may very well step into the picture and decide what’s best.”

  “You mean hand the girls over to Child Protective Services or to a foster home?”

  “Precisely.”

  “Shit!” I had seen the grim results of some foster home arrangements. They weren’t very pretty.

&
nbsp; “Has Peters ever mentioned any plan to you? A relative of some kind. Grandparents maybe? An aunt?”

  “No. Never.”

  Ames poured us both another drink. He looked at me appraisingly when he handed it to me. “What about you, Beau?”

  “Me?” I echoed. I was thunderstruck.

  “Yes, you. God knows you’ve got plenty of money. You could afford to take them on without any hardship.”

  “’You’re serious, aren’t you!”

  “Dead serious. We’ve got to have some kind of reasonable plan to offer Peters at the first available moment, before the state drops down on him and grabs Heather and Tracie away. And we’ve got to have something to tell the girls in the morning.”

  “But, Ames, I’m not married.”

  “Neither is Peters, remember? But you’ve raised kids before, two of them. And from what I’ve seen of them, you did a pretty commendable job of it. You could do it again.”

  “I’ve just bought a place downtown,” I protested. “No grass. No yard. No swings.”

  “Children have grown up in cities for as long as there have been cities. Besides, if they don’t like it, you can move somewhere else.”

  Ames was talking about my taking on Peters’ kids with the kind of casual aplomb that comes from never having raised kids of his own. People talk that way about kids and puppies, about how cute they are and how little trouble, only when they’ve never pulled a six-year-old’s baby tooth or housebroken an eight-week-old golden retriever.

  Ames spoke with the full knowledge and benefit of never having been in the trenches. His naiveté was almost laughable, but he’s one hell of a poker player. He had an unbeatable wild card—my sense of responsibility for what had happened. And the son of a bitch wasn’t above using it.

  “So what do we do?” I asked. He read my question correctly as total capitulation.

  “I’ll draw up a temporary custody agreement,” he replied. “As soon as Peters is lucid enough for us to talk to him about it, we’ll get it signed and notarized.”

  “Signed?” I asked.

  “Witnessed,” he corrected.