by J. A. Jance
He exchanged polite greetings with Lehman and then turned to us. “What are you two doing here?” he asked.
Freeman answered before either Sue or I could open our mouths. “Waiting for the rest of our party to show up. Want some coffee, Larry?”
Connie, who evidently was capable of taking a hint once her nails were filed, grabbed the pot along with the rest of its evil-smelling dregs and disappeared into the outer office.
Norman Nichols showed up next. He nodded to Sue as he took a seat next to Captain Powell. Having just helped Sue break into Ben Weston’s computer files, Nichols probably more than anyone had a fairly good idea of why we were there.
Time passed. Tony Freeman sat gazing serenely at the artwork on the wall behind us as though he didn’t have a care in the world. Kyle munched thoughtfully on his corn dog and sipped his soda while the rest of us waited in uneasy silence. There was no joking or lighthearted banter. The new coffee was halfway through dripping into the pot and Connie had left for the day when the third tap finally sounded on the door. Freeman pressed the button and in walked Chief of Police Kenneth Rankin, flushed and puffing and out of breath.
“Why did you insist I use the stairs for God’s sake, Tony?” Chief Rankin growled. “I was all the way down in the Crime Lab. It’s a helluva long hike up from the third floor to the eleventh, you know. And what’s so damned important that it couldn’t wait until tomorrow morning?”
“Have a seat, Chief,” Freeman said quietly. “We’ll get to it as quickly as we can. Thank you all for coming. Does everyone know everyone else?”
We all did. “Good,” Freeman continued. “I’ve called you here this afternoon to ask for your help and cooperation. It looks as though we have a serious problem on our hands—a rogue cop problem.”
Rankin paled. “Don’t tell me we’ve got another one,” he groaned. “The business with Benjamin Weston is bad enough.”
Lehman, who doesn’t regard himself as a cop and finds no horror in the words “rogue cop,” chose that moment to noisily open a bag of potato chips. Larry Powell looked stricken but sat up straight, paying absolute attention.
“It’s possible,” Captain Freeman said softly, “that this one is far worse.”
“Worse!” Rankin exploded. “How could it possibly be worse?”
“Unless I’m sadly mistaken, Ben Weston may have been nothing but the tip of the iceberg.”
His words grabbed my gut and shook it. Tip of the iceberg? In other words, Tony Freeman was convinced Ben Weston was part of whatever dirty crap was going on. That hurt. It hurt real bad.
“This has something to do with the murders then?” Larry Powell asked after a moment.
Freeman nodded. “Probably. What I’m about to tell you is not to be discussed with anyone outside this room. I’ve just had a very disturbing visit from someone who’s working undercover for Narcotics. Word is out on the streets that the Bloods, Crips, and BGD want to have a summit meeting with someone from Seattle PD. Preferably Chief Rankin here himself.”
That caught me completely flat-footed. After all I thought we were going to discuss something else entirely. And I wasn’t the only one who was surprised. Chief Rankin’s eyes bulged. “With me? All of them at once? What about?”
“About Ben Weston,” Freeman answered. “They say they aren’t responsible for killing Ben Weston and his family. They want to help us find the cops who did.”
You could have heard a pin drop in that room. Sue and I had been gradually collecting our own set of suspicions, but to hear them come ricocheting back at us, uttered with Captain Freeman’s unsmiling, dead certainty, made the hair prickle on the back of my neck.
Chief Rankin was the first to find his voice. “Did you say cops?” he croaked. “You’re saying that a fellow police officer or officers killed Ben Weston and all his family?”
“That’s what they said—cops, plural not singular,” Tony Freeman answered grimly. “That means two or more.”
“And the gangs, all of them together, are offering to help us catch them? I’ve never heard of such a thing. That’s preposterous.”
“I’ve never heard of anything like it before, either,” Tony Freeman agreed. “But that’s the message. They say they’ll help, but only on the QT. Word of this temporary truce is not to go beyond this room, is that clear?”
For several moments we were all too thunderstruck to even open our mouths. I was the one who finally managed to ask a question. “How’s this all going to work?”
“One step at a time,” Freeman replied confidently. “By the way, Larry, as of now and until further notice, Detectives Beaumont and Danielson are working for me.”
Powell nodded his acquiescence, and Captain Freeman turned to us. “Any questions?”
“No, sir,” Sue Danielson replied. “Just tell us what you want us to do.”
CHAPTER 16
I’VE NEVER ACTUALLY BEEN IN A HORRIBLE hurricane, but it must be very much like the meeting that went on in Captain Freeman’s office that day as late afternoon changed to evening. In Seattle the Weston family murders dominated the local news. As a consequence, the room was charged with an almost electric tension. Anthony Freeman took control and issued orders to everyone involved, Chief Rankin included. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the commander of IIS was running the show.
Most of the time Internal Investigations deals with specific allegations against specific officers, police brutality in the course of making an arrest being one of the most common, although drug use, domestic violence, and job-related alcohol problems show up with a fair amount of regularity. In all of these instances, the identity of the officer isn’t so much in question as is the propriety of his actions. Here, we were faced with a far more difficult and complicated problem because not only were the identities of the officers and their actions totally unknown to us, there was a reasonable possibility that one or more of them might be actively involved in some aspect of the Weston Family Task Force investigation.
Captain Freeman began the meeting by laying out for all of us the situation as he saw it. “At the moment, there’s no way to tell whether or not what our informant has told us is true and that the gang warlords really will cooperate with us on this. I’ve been around Seattle PD for a long time, folks. So have most of you. Anybody here ever hear of the gangs making this kind of offer? I’d be less surprised if Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy dropped in to pay a personal visit.”
Most of us shook our heads. “It could be a trick,” Chief Rankin suggested.
Freeman disagreed. “I don’t think so,” he said somberly. “I think we’re going to have to operate on the assumption that the intelligence we have been given is correct and that fellow police officers are somehow responsible for the murders of Ben Weston and the others. For a change, the gangs don’t want to be blamed for something they didn’t do.”
Freeman allowed his gaze to wander slowly around the room while the weight of his words sank in. If he was expecting objections, no one made any. Even Kyle Lehman, who was doubtless the least affected, paused for a long moment before biting thoughtfully into an apple which had appeared from the same jacket pocket as the diet Pepsi.
“These people,” Freeman continued, “however many of them there are, constitute a cancer on the body of the Seattle Police Department—a cancer I’m determined to eradicate. How do you get rid of a cancer? By taking it out, by cutting it out, by destroying it before it destroys you. This is the preliminary biopsy stage, that critical time where early detection is the key to survival. We’re going to find out who these people are, and we’re going to take care of them. We’re going to do it the same way a surgeon would—by making the smallest possible incision.
“To that end, my intention is to limit the number of people who actually know what’s going on to a mere handful, specifically to those of us who are in this room at this very moment. If it becomes necessary to add more—and it probably will—those additions will be handpicked by me and
nobody else. You are not to include anyone else in this part of the investigation without my express permission. Do I make myself clear?”
This time a response was definitely in order. We all nodded in turn, including Chief Rankin. His was probably the most heartfelt of all. Rankin, one of a vast number of unappreciated and much maligned California transplants, was fairly new to Seattle. Coming from Oakland, he brought along with him a reputation for being both a consummate politician and an ace delegator—two prime prerequisites for being the chief of police in any major metropolitan area. Rumors that he was also a closet racist had followed him to Seattle, but as far as I was concerned, they had yet to be proven one way or the other.
Rankin’s ability to delegate, however, was without question. The people I knew who’d been handed assignments by him respected the fact that Rankin hadn’t second-guessed them. When he put someone in charge, they stayed in charge. I could see that myself as Tony Freeman continued to run the meeting as a one-man show.
“We have a slight advantage,” he said, “in that no one on the task force, other than Detectives Beaumont and Danielson, has any knowledge that we’ve been tipped off. As I mentioned before, it’s possible that one of the crooks is actually connected to the task force operation. We’ll have a much better chance of nabbing him if I don’t have to send up a red flag by transferring in one of the current crop of IIS investigators.”
“If you ask me, that’s not any advantage at all,” I put in. “We got our information from the street, so chances are the crooks will too. Informant loyalty always goes to the highest bidder. What’s to keep the beans from getting spilled in the other direction?”
Freeman considered for a moment before replying. “I guess we’ll just have to see to it that the information that’s on the street, including some of the information that goes through the task force itself, is wrong information.”
Sue Danielson had listened quietly to this exchange. Now, she spoke up. “That’s fine as far as it goes, but what about the boy?” she asked.
“What boy?”
“Junior Weston. He’s an eyewitness. To my knowledge, he’s the only one who can possibly identify the killer. Everyone who attended the task force meeting this morning knows Junior was moved from his grandfather’s house to Reverend Walters’s home. If someone on the task force…”
She didn’t complete the sentence, and she didn’t have to. Her words landed another haymaker in the pit of my stomach. Thanks to me, Junior Weston was still at risk and so were Reverend Homer and Francine Walters. I personally had come up with the brilliant idea of having him stay there.
I started out of my chair, determined to take some kind of precautionary action.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Freeman demanded.
“To call Reverend Walters, to warn him.”
“No,” Captain Freeman said.
“No?” I yelped. “What do you mean, no? People’s lives are at stake.”
Freeman’s calm eyes met mine and held them. “I’m well aware of that, Detective Beaumont. Sit down and tell me about your partner.”
“My partner. About Big Al? You know Big Al Lindstrom, Tony. You know him as well as I do.”
“My understanding is that he was removed from the case by Captain Powell here. Is that true?”
Captain Powell himself started to interject something, but Tony Freeman waved him to silence. “I was asking Detective Beaumont,” he said. “Tell me what you personally know about Detective Lindstrom being removed from the case.”
“Ben Weston and Big Al were friends, damnit. Good friends. I guess Captain Powell thought there might be a potential conflict of interest if Allen was investigating the case, that emotion might cloud his judgment.”
“Would it?” Freeman asked.
“I don’t think so. He’s the one who found Junior Weston hiding in the linen closet after the murders were discovered, and he did a hell of a job interviewing that little kid, of getting him to remember what he saw, of helping him open up and talk to us about it. You should have been there.”
“I wasn’t. Were you?”
I was fast losing patience. “What is it you want me to tell you? Are you asking me if I think Big Al is one of the crooked cops? Are you asking me if I think he did it? The answer is no, absolutely not, no way. I’d stake my life on it.”
“Would you stake Junior Weston’s life on it?”
Like any good investigator, Captain Freeman doesn’t ask questions if he doesn’t have a pretty damn good idea what the answers will be. Questions for him are always a means to a specific end, not a device for use in casual conversation. It took until then before I realized where his questions were going, what he was really asking.
“It’s risky as hell,” I said. “For all concerned, but, yes, I’d bet Junior’s life on Big Al Lindstrom in a minute.”
“Do you think he’d do it?”
“Damned right he would!”
Captain Freeman picked up his phone. “What’s his number? We’ll call him up and ask.”
Freeman waited with his finger poised over the number pad while my mind went totally blank. I couldn’t remember my own phone number right then to say nothing of Big Al Lindstrom’s.
“Just a second here,” Sue Danielson interrupted. “I don’t understand. What’s going on?”
“Seven eight five…” I started.
Now Captain Powell leaped into the fray. “Wait a minute. You can’t pull Detective Lindstrom back into all this. I already threw him off the case.”
Freeman put the phone down. “That’s exactly why I want him,” he returned mildly. “Because he’s off the case. No one’s going to think of him as a source of information. I asked Detective Beaumont for his opinion, but I happen to be of the same mind. I know Allen Lindstrom, have known him for a long time. Of all the people at Seattle PD right now, if I can only have one cop to guard Junior Weston, Big Al Lindstrom is the one I want.”
“Who said you can only have one, Captain Freeman?” chimed in Chief Rankin. “You can have as many as you want. All you have to do is ask.”
“Remember what I told you? This is going to be a limited incision,” Freeman reminded them, “an operation conducted with limited assets. If Big Al Lindstrom is the one guard on duty, one will be more than enough. I’m going to dial his number now and put you on the phone, Beau. Tell him you’ve just started worrying about Junior and ask him if he’d mind doing something about it overnight, unofficially, as a favor to you, but armed and with a bulletproof vest. We can take care of paying him overtime for it later, right, Larry?”
Captain Powell nodded glumly. “Right,” he said.
“Now what was that number?”
I gave it to him. In the intervening seconds, it had miraculously reappeared from my memory bank. When Freeman finished dialing, he handed the phone over to me. There’s an old Ogden Nash poem that says something about how one becomes a capable liar. If ever I wanted to be proficient at lying, this was it.
Molly Lindstrom answered the phone. “Is Al there?” I asked innocently.
“He is,” she said, “but he’s not feeling so good. He said he was going straight to bed.”
I heard the wariness in her voice, understood her wanting to protect her husband from any further hurt. “Get him up, Molly. He’ll want to talk to me.”
She slammed the phone down on the table. It was several long minutes before Big Al came on the line. In the interim, no one in Captain Freeman’s office said a word.
“ ’Lo, Beau,” Big Al said finally. “Whaddya want?”
“I’m worried about Junior,” I said.
“Junior? What’s the matter with him?”
I heard Big Al snap to attention. It wasn’t necessary to lie. All I had to do was express my own legitimate worries and let Detective Lindstrom draw his own conclusions.
“He’s still our only eyewitness,” I said. “What if the killer hears where he is somehow and tries to take him out? I just real
ized everyone at the task force meeting knows where the boy is staying. If one of them happened to make a slip in front of the wrong person…”
“Gotcha,” Big Al said. “Ja sure you betcha. I can be there in twenty minutes flat. Does Kramer know anything about this?”
“Are you kidding? That schmuck would shit a brick if he even suspected I was talking to you about it.”
“Don’t tell him then,” Big Al said. “I’m on my way in my own car on my own time. No one needs to know about this but you and me.”
“By the way, Al, do me a favor. Wear your armor.”
“Right, Beau. And don’t you take yours off, either.”
He hung up and so did I. In the meantime, Kyle Lehman had rolled his apple core up in the empty potato chip bag and was looking around for a garbage can. Freeman took the bag and tossed it into a container under his desk.
“This is all very interesting,” Kyle was saying, “but what the hell am I doing here?”
He’s such an obnoxious little twit, I couldn’t understand how Freeman could tolerate him, but he did. “I was just getting around to that. I want you to do an analysis of all the blue-and-whites in the department. I want to know their locations, their usual drivers, who else may have checked them in and out. I want you to look for any discrepancies in mileage. If one has consistently more than one of the others, I want to know about it.”
Lehman nodded. “I can do that. It’ll take a while and some work, but it can be done. Anything else?”
“Yes,” Freeman said. “There is. You know that PC down in the gang unit?”
Kyle nodded again. “What about it?”
“I want you to take charge of it. Personally. Physically remove it if necessary. Say it crashed or something. Do it now before anyone else has a chance to touch it. My understanding is that as long as no one has written over a deleted file, it may be possible to retrieve the information. Is that right?”
“Pretty much. It’ll be hell on wheels finding it is all,” Lehman returned. “It’ll take time, lots of it. Why? What are we looking for? And why can’t we get the information from one of the back-up floppies?”