by J. A. Jance
A sudden burst of anger left me shaken. “What the hell!” I exclaimed. “If you knew about the payoffs all along, why the hell are you just now getting around to letting anybody else know?”
“It was a one-man investigation, Beaumont. Ben Weston’s investigation into crooked cops. He didn’t know who could be trusted, and neither did I.”
“Goddamnit, you left him hanging out to dry.”
“Not knowingly,” Tony Freeman returned sharply. “Ben must have been a whole lot closer to nailing these bastards than he was willing to let on. Either that, or he himself didn’t know how close he was.”
I felt like I was on a damn emotional roller coaster. If Ben Weston was working for IIS, then I could stop being sick about him being crooked, up to a point, anyway. “What’s all this bullshit about student loans? What’s that all about?”
Tony Freeman sighed. “Beats me,” he answered. “The student loans were news to me. The first I heard about them was when Kramer turned up the applications in Ben’s desk. Those hit me from way out in left field, and I can’t for the life of me see how they fit into the rest of the puzzle.”
“But I thought you were the guy who was supposed to have all the answers.”
He laughed ruefully. “I wish I did,” he said. “I wish to hell I did!”
We were still stuck in the Mount Baker Tunnel, and I was beginning to feel downright claustrophobic. It was early Saturday morning. Traffic shouldn’t have been that bad, but crossing Lake Washington is always a crapshoot. We inched forward, car length by slow car length. Modern-day road construction flaggers seem to have lost sight of the idea that their main job is to see to it that traffic keeps moving. For some of them, getting the chance to hold up other people’s lives offers them their only possible power trip.
While I gnashed my teeth with impatience, Captain Freeman was still focused on the case. “Have you ever had any dealings with Sam Irwin?” he asked.
“Not many,” I replied. “I’ve talked to him a couple of times when I’ve been stuck with a broken-down car. He struck me as a surly son of a bitch, and not much of a mental giant.”
Tony Freeman nodded. “Right. That’s how he struck me, too. Not that smart and not really a cop either. Everything we keep hearing about this case says real cops are involved, not some renegade mechanic from Motor Pool. My guess is that Irwin will be a minor player, but maybe we can convince him to help us nail the others.”
“How?” I asked.
“I can be pretty damn persuasive when I want to be,” Tony Freeman declared.
Suddenly the dam broke and eastbound traffic began to move again. Once we were under way, it was only a matter of minutes before we turned off I-90 onto Bellevue Way. A half mile later we headed back west toward Beaux Arts.
In the dawn’s early light, we were hard-pressed to read street signs on the twisted, barely two-lane streets that wound through the village. Beaux Arts doesn’t have its own police force. The town council rents police and fire protection from King County and the city of Bellevue. For traffic control, villagers rely on a series of car-eating speed bumps. An unwary speeder may hit one of those too fast once, but he won’t do it twice, not if he has half a brain.
Reading fine print on the map would have driven me up the wall, but Freeman directed us unerringly through the tree-lined maze. “Take this one,” he said, pointing out a twisting ribbon of rain-wet pavement that led down to the water and to what had to be, by any estimate, a million-dollar piece of real estate perched on the pricey shores of Lake Washington.
Freeman whistled when he caught sight of the impressive roofline. “If a guy from Motor Pool can afford digs like this, crime really does pay. No question.”
I had pulled into the paved driveway and was puzzling about what to do next when the front porch light snapped on, the door opened, and a sweats-clad woman trotted down the stairs. Before I could turn around and retreat out of the roadway, she jogged up to the car and motioned for me to roll down the window.
“Can I help you?”
“We’re looking for Sam Irwin,” Tony Freeman said.
“Oh,” she said. “Sam’s my renter. His house is over there.” She pointed to a much smaller house, little more than a cabin, off to the side of the main house.
“He must be up already,” she added. “His lights are on. See you later.” With a congenial wave the woman darted away from the car and jogged up the hill and out of the driveway.
I turned to Freeman. “What now, coach?”
“Block the road with your car,” he said. “Then we’ll go have a chat with the man before any other early-morning joggers are up and about. Keep your gun handy, Beaumont. Irwin’s résumé says he’s a trained killer, and I for one believe it.”
Tony Freeman didn’t say shoot to kill, but that’s what he meant, and I knew it.
I didn’t like the idea of using the Porsche as a roadblock, but Freeman didn’t give me any options. With considerable misgiving, I moved my car to a spot directly in the middle of the narrow driveway, effectively cutting off the possibility of vehicular flight. I switched off both the lights and the motor. Closing the doors as quietly as possible, we started toward the house.
Halfway there, Freeman motioned frantically toward the side of the house. My heart went to my throat, but finally I understood why he was pointing. There, parked in a small lean-to, sat a white Toyota Tercel. I gave Freeman a thumbs-up acknowledgment. If either one of us had been entertaining any doubts, that was the end of them. The presence of a car that matched one of Bob Case’s suspicious vehicles pretty much corked it.
Automatic in hand, I followed Captain Freeman onto the small wooden porch. Boards creaked ominously underfoot. From inside came the sound of a radio station playing soft rock music. The door itself stood partially ajar. There was no doorbell.
Freeman stepped to the door and pounded on the casing. “Sam,” he called. “Sam Irwin. Are you in there?”
There was no answer. None. But the radio continued to play. Freeman knocked again. Still no answer.
Cautiously, moving the door aside with his foot, Freeman shoved it open. Across the room a man sat in front of a glowing computer screen.
“Sam?” Freeman asked again tentatively.
There was no answering movement, no sound. The man’s hands hung down limply on either side of the straight-backed chair. His head lolled crazily to one side.
With two long, quick strides, Tony Freeman covered the distance between the door and the chair. I stood in the doorway with automatic at the ready, just in case, but that wasn’t necessary.
“You’d better go call nine-one-one on that cute little cellular phone of yours,” Tony Freeman told me. “This one’s already dead.”
Summoned by 911 dispatchers, cops from the King County Police Department arrived within minutes, followed by a pair of longtime homicide detectives named Edwin Hammer and Tom Crowe. Over the years, passing in and out of courtrooms, we’ve all developed something of a nodding acquaintance. I stayed with them while Tony Freeman hustled off to talk with the commander in charge of the arriving contingent of officers.
For a change, I was shuttled into the background, answering questions only when called upon to do so, giving information that would show up in other people’s reports as well as in my own, eventually. When they put me on hold while awaiting the appearance of someone from the Medical Examiner’s Office, lack of sleep caught up with me. I was sitting on the couch dozing when Detective Crowe happened to read the words written on the computer screen.
“Get a load of this!” he gloated to his cohort Detective Hammer. “We’ve got this one sacked and bagged, and we’ve barely been here twenty minutes. Hey, J.P. What’ll you give us if we solve your case for you?”
Far too worn-out to get a kick out of their teasing, I willed my tired legs to move and forced my butt off the couch to go see what they were talking about. I had already seen the selection of drug paraphernalia on the table next to the computer,
had already observed the bandage on Sam Irwin’s wrist which I assumed probably concealed a set of Spot Weston’s teeth marks, but I hadn’t spent a whole lot of time examining the body. In my business, if you’ve seen one drug overdose, you’ve seen ’em all. It doesn’t take a whole lot of imagination to fill in the blanks.
Detective Hammer pointed me toward the computer. The screen itself was filled with text. I had glanced at it briefly in the beginning, and it seemed to be some kind of building fund report, but in the ensuing hubbub, neither Tony nor I had finished reading it.
I did so now, however, starting from the beginning, squinting down at the amber letters, and wondering if it was time to have my eyes checked. Halfway through the screen, layered in with the other text, was the following: “To Whom It May Concern: I can’t live with what I’ve done. Tell my mother I’m sorry. Sam.”
I wasn’t particularly impressed. “That doesn’t say much,” I said to the two King County cops. “So it was a deliberate overdose rather than an accidental one. What’s the big deal?”
Hammer grinned at Crowe and jabbed him in the ribs. “He still hasn’t seen it. Not this case, stupid. Yours. The one that’s got the whole city of Seattle turned inside out. Look again.”
Again I struggled to read the text. At last Hammer could stand it no longer. “What are you, blind? Look at the metal plate glued to the bottom of the CRT.”
I saw it and read it and felt like somebody had jabbed me in the ribs. “Property of Benjamin Weston, Sr.,” the plate said, followed by Ben’s complete address and phone number.
“So what do you think?” Hammer gloated. “Have we found the killer for you or not? You guys are always rubbing our noses in it, but this time we’ve got the drop on you. What say we go over to the Pancake Corral when we finish here and have a cup of coffee. You buy.”
“Buy nothing!” I headed for the door.
“Wait a minute,” Tom Crowe said. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“To call Sergeant Watkins. He’s head of the Weston Family Task Force. He needs to know about this on the double.”
Freeman met me in the doorway. “Needs to know about what?”
I pointed. “That’s Ben Weston’s computer. It’s got an ID plate on the CRT.”
The head of IIS went over to the computer and looked for himself. “I’ll be damned,” he said under his breath. He turned around and faced Detectives Hammer and Crowe. They were grumbling back and forth about me being your basic spoilsport.
“Do you two know who I am?” he demanded. The question and the way it was asked cut through the comedy.
“Yes, sir,” Detective Crowe said respectfully. “We certainly do.”
“Good,” Freeman returned. “Now I’m going to tell you to forget it. Not just tell you to forget it, order you to forget it. Do you understand?”
The two King County detectives exchanged puzzled glances.
“There’s a whole lot more at stake here than a simple murder investigation,” Tony Freeman continued. “It is absolutely vital that no one—no one at all—knows that Detective Beaumont and I were here this morning.”
Detective Hammer looked as though he was building up to say something cute, but Freeman cut him off. “I’ve already spoken to your superior about it. He understands the seriousness of the situation. You are to say that the body was reported by person or persons unknown. I’ll get the nine-one-one operators to back you up on that for the time being. No way is word of Detective Beaumont’s or my participation in this to be leaked to anyone inside or outside your department. Is that clear?”
“You bet,” Detective Hammer returned, but his reply sounded less than halfhearted. Captain Anthony Freeman was not amused.
He moved a foot or so closer to Edwin Hammer. “You may think,” he said softly, “that as a King County police officer you are immune from an Internal Affairs officer at Seattle PD, but let me assure you, if word of Beau’s or my presence here leaks out, I will hold you both accountable for whatever happens, and I’m prepared to make it stick.”
Tony Freeman may have been SPD’s regular straight arrow, but it didn’t pay to piss him off. Detective Hammer finally got the message. He swallowed hard and took a step backward.
“Yes, sir,” he responded. “I understand completely.”
Freeman did not smile. “Good,” he said. “We’ll be going then. Come on, Beau. They’re holding the media at bay out front. I have it on good authority that once we make it to the street, someone can lead us out of here by a back way. That red car of yours is a little too distinctive.”
Moments later we were back in the Porsche and threading our way through Beaux Arts. “So that’s what you meant earlier when you told me you could be persuasive?” I asked.
Tony sighed and leaned back against the headrest, closing his eyes. “Whatever works,” he said wearily. A moment later he was sound asleep and snoring.
CHAPTER 23
CAPTAIN FREEMAN DIDN’T WAKE UP UNTIL I pulled to a stop in front of the Public Safety Building. “My brains are scrambled,” he said. “Detective Danielson’s probably already here for our eight o’clock meeting, but I’m going to have to cancel on her. I’ve got to go home and get some sleep.”
Those were my sentiments exactly. It was somehow reassuring to realize even the resident Eagle Scout of IIS, the original iron man himself, needed sleep occasionally. I was in good company.
“You’ll be coming to the funeral, won’t you?” he asked as he climbed out of the car.
“I’ll be there,” I said.
“Good. The three of us—you, Sue Danielson, and I—will have to get together and strategize sometime later on today, but probably not until after the funeral, considering the way I feel right this minute.”
“You’re the boss,” I told him.
Tony Freeman smiled and nodded. “Thanks, Beau. It’s been a hell of a night, but you do good work. Go home and get some sleep.”
It’s a good man who can remember to compliment someone else when he’s too tired to keep himself upright. Tony Freeman’s stock was already pretty high in my book, but it went up a little more right about then.
He closed the car door and started away, but he turned and came back before I could pull away from the curb. I rolled down the window.
“Remember,” he warned, “not a word of this to anyone. No one is to know that you and I were anywhere near Sam Irwin’s house in Beaux Arts. When you hear the news that he’s dead, it had better be news to you. Understand?”
“I got the message,” I told him. “I figured it out at the same time you were telling Hammer and Crowe.”
“Good,” he said. He waved me away and hustled into the building. I arrived home right around eight o’clock, staggering into what I expected to be a quiet house. Wrong. The apartment reverberated with the clatter and rumble of electronic warfare. In the den I discovered Heather Peters and Junior Weston happily ensconced on the floor, deeply engrossed in some kind of two-player video game.
I wanted to interrupt, to tell Junior that I thought we had found at least one of the men responsible for the murders of his family members. I would have liked to be able to tell him that I was almost certain the bad man who had killed Bonnie was dead himself, but Tony Freeman had given me marching orders to the contrary. There were far too many other loose ends in the investigation for me to risk speaking out of turn and revealing IIS involvement.
Stifling my loose-lips impulse, I left the kids where they were and went looking for Ralph Ames. I found him in the kitchen, bemoaning the fact that I didn’t own a waffle iron. Someday in the far distant future I may have a kitchen that will measure up to Ralph’s expectations.
“Where’d you get the video game?” I asked, pouring myself a glass of orange juice from a pitcher of freshly squeezed that had appeared mysteriously in my formerly empty refrigerator.
Ralph shrugged. “I called Reverend Walters and asked him. When he said no problem, I sent a messenger over to his place to
pick it up. It was a present to Junior from Big Al, you know. The poor kid was really upset that he couldn’t bring it along last night. As much as he’s been through the past few days, I wanted it here first thing this morning.”
Ralph Ames is the only person I know who’s a softer touch than I am, especially when it comes to little kids. “And how did you go about locating Reverend Walters?” I asked.
He grinned at me. “It’s an old Indian trick,” he told me. “I used the phone book.”
On that note, I headed for bed. “By the way,” I said, pausing in the doorway, “did Homer Walters say anything about what arrangements have been made for Junior to attend the funeral?”
“The way I understand it, the limo from the funeral home will pick up Emma Jackson first and then stop by here for Junior around noon.”
“Good. Wake me up no later than eleven so I can get ready.”
“You’re going along in the limo?”
“You bet. I’m not letting that kid out of the building without me along as a bodyguard. What about clothes for him? I didn’t think to bring along anything but the pajamas he was wearing when I picked him up.”
“It’s already handled. Homer Walter’s wife had clothes for him there, and the messenger brought them along when he picked up the Nintendo,” Ames said. “I figured that was one less thing we’d have to worry about later on today.”
I should have known that if Ralph Ames was in charge, all those pesky little details would get handled in a totally seamless fashion. Gratefully mumbling my thanks, I stumbled down the hall and fell into bed. I don’t even remember lying down. It seemed only a matter of minutes later when Heather Peters brought me a cup of coffee and announced it was time for me to get up.
Settling cross-legged on the foot of the bed, she regarded me seriously while I sipped coffee and waited for my head to clear.
“Is it hard to tie a tie, Uncle Beau?” she asked.
Heather seems far more mature than I like these days. I still haven’t adjusted to the relative size of her new permanent teeth which seem totally out of proportion with the rest of her small, round face. And I miss that damn toothless lisp.