Without Due Process

by J. A. Jance

  “Who’s going to do it?” I asked. “You or me?”

  “I will,” she volunteered over her shoulder. “You watch for trouble.”

  Making an arrest of any kind in a crowd situation is always a hairy, volatile proposition. Protecting the lives of innocent civilians must always be the primary consideration for the police officers involved.

  Already Sue was moving purposefully toward the door, pulling Flex-cufs rather than a weapon from her blazer pocket. I followed, closing the distance between us so that I was only a step or two behind her when she reached the place where an unsuspecting Gary Deddens stood chatting casually with several of his fellow officers.

  Sue stopped directly in front of him. He was saying something to the others, but he paused and half smiled a greeting. “How’s it going, Sue?” he said.

  “You’re under arrest,” she returned.

  He stepped away from her, but his back was to the wall of the church, and he couldn’t go far. “Come on, Sue, that’s not funny. Don’t even joke about something like that.”

  Around us the crowd fell strangely silent.

  “It’s no joke. Face the wall, hands on the back of your head, feet apart. I’m placing you under arrest in connection with the murder of Officer Benjamin Weston.”

  Surprise and shock registered on the faces of the men who, moments before, had been chatting amiably with Gary Deddens. Now they melted away from him, opening a circle where the three of us stood in isolation.

  “There’s got to be some mistake,” Deddens said, his eyes darting questioningly from Sue to me. “This is crazy.”

  “No mistake,” Sue insisted. “Turn around.”

  For an electric moment, he stood glaring and belligerent. Time seemed to stretch into an eternity before finally, with a casual shrug, he started to turn. As deftly as any professional pickpocket, Sue unfastened his holster and removed his automatic which she handed over to me. Behind us the wailing siren of the arriving squad car squawked once and was quickly stifled.

  Sue had successfully negotiated the first danger—cornering Deddens and capturing his weapon without anyone being hurt—but the incident was far from over. There was another danger as well, and every cop in the courtyard knew it. As the news of what had happened spread through the crowd, every police officer present realized that outrage over the multiple murders was an open, sucking wound in Seattle’s African-American community. I think we all feared that once the grieving people from the funeral realized what was going on, they themselves might very well evolve into a dangerous and potentially lethal mob.

  The danger in mobs is that they have no brain and no conscience. They are immune to innocence and equally blind to justice and guilt. You can’t talk to them or reason with them. If the searing spark of vengeance is once allowed to erupt into flame, there’s no stopping it until the glut of violence has run full course. If the people in the courtyard perceived Gary Deddens to be Ben Weston’s killer, if their rage was allowed to get out of hand, they might very well turn on the killer and on whoever was with him as well—Sue Danielson and me included.

  Speed was of the essence. Every moment of delay compounded the danger. With businesslike efficiency, Sue patted Deddens down. Other than the automatic, there was no weapon.

  “All right, you guys,” she barked at the clutch of stricken police officers surrounding us. “Help us get him over to the car. Now!”

  For a moment no one moved. An angry undercurrent of comment rumbled through the crowd as more people spilled out of the church, forcing their way into the now motionless crush in the courtyard. Near the door, someone shoved against someone else, and that backward and forward movement eddied through the entire gathering.

  “Let’s go!” Sue urged.

  Finally the nearby cops shook themselves alive. With me leading the way and with seven or eight officers forming a human shield around Deddens and Sue Danielson, we moved away from the protection of the church wall, past the hearses, and across the courtyard. Professional behavior forestalled the possibility of an unfortunate incident. The officers with us, all in uniforms but from several different jurisdictions, reacted instinctively as a unit. They might have been executing a procedure they’d practiced together time and again.

  As we made our way through the sullen but silently watchful crowd, I knew how Moses must have felt as he parted the roiling waters of the Red Sea. A way through the multitude opened magically and silently in front of us, revealing a cleared path that led directly to the patrol car waiting on the street.

  At last we were there, opening the door, shoving Deddens unceremoniously into the backseat. Behind me a car horn blared. It sounded over and over. One of those horn alarm security systems, I supposed.

  “You get in front,” I said to Sue. “I’ll ride in back.”

  By now the courtyard crowd had spilled over onto the street itself. When the officer driving the patrol car started to move, the way was blocked by fifty or sixty people with more being added all the time.

  “Come on. Let’s get out of here,” I urged the driver. “We’re all right so far, but we’re not home free, not by any means.”

  He turned on the siren and started nudging his way into the crowd. Some of the bystanders leaned over and stared into the car, trying to catch a glimpse of whoever was there as we eased by them. And then, just as I thought we were close to breaking out, someone began pounding furiously on the trunk of the car.

  I figured it was the beginning of the end and that we were all in for it. Even Gary Deddens seemed concerned.

  “We’re not going to make it,” he whined. “If they get hold of me those people will tear me apart.”

  “Maybe we should let them, creep,” I said. “Maybe I should just open the door and let them have you.”

  He paled. “No, please. Don’t do that.”

  People in front of the car stopped us again while the pounding on the back of the squad car continued. It was on the back panel now, just behind my shoulder, angry and insistent. Next the hammering started on the window beside my head.

  Gary Deddens looked at the window with a sharp, involuntary intake of breath. I turned to see what had caused it.

  The distorted angry face of a young black man was pressed against the glass. Abruptly the face was jerked away as someone grabbed the man from behind and pried him from the car. Only then did I recognize the face. Knuckles Russell stood there struggling furiously and gesturing toward the patrol car.

  Something had happened, and Knuckles was trying to let me know.

  “Stop the car and let me out,” I demanded.

  “What do you mean let you out?” the driver returned. “You got a death wish or something?”

  “Goddamnit,” I insisted. “I said let me out!”

  Reluctantly, he stopped the car and unlatched the door. Sue jumped out to open it. “What the hell is going on?” she began.

  But I didn’t reply. Instead, I leaped to where Knuckles still stood, trying to free himself from the unrelenting grasp of the King County police officer who had nabbed him.

  “What is it?” I demanded. “What’s wrong?”

  “Come on,” Knuckles answered urgently. “Ron Peters says you gots to come with me.”

  “It’s okay,” I said to the officer. “Let him go. I know this man.”

  The car horn was still sounding, closer now and more insistently. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Ron Peters’s Reliant pressing its way toward me through the massed humanity. Taking Knuckles by the arm, the two of us started for the slow-moving car. Without waiting for Ron to come to a complete stop, Knuckles clambered into the backseat while I climbed into the front.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. “What’s happening?”

  “Curtis Bell,” Ron Peters answered, still trying to escape the crush of people and the endless row of vehicles that was already queuing up to form the funeral cortege. Ron’s specially equipped car with all its push-button controls would have been a complete myster
y for me to operate, but he drove it with the consummate ease and confidence of a speeding juvenile delinquent.

  “Curtis Bell? What about him?”

  “You should have seen him. He came through the door of the church just as you were moving Deddens toward the car. As soon as he saw what you were up to, he took off like a dog with firecrackers tied to his tail.”

  “But I thought he was selling…”

  “Evidently more than insurance,” Ron Peters finished. “No wonder he was so interested in getting appointments with you and Big Al. My guess is he thought one of you would slip and tell him how much you knew.”

  “I’ll be damned. He was trolling for information the whole time.”

  “You’ve got it,” Peters replied. “Looking for leaks and trying to cover his tracks all at the same time.”

  We finally negotiated our way through the last of the milling crowd. With squealing tires, Ron Peters sent the car rocketing forward. He turned westbound onto Madison.

  “So where is he?” I asked.

  “See that blue car,” Knuckles Russell asked, pointing from the backseat. “The one just now goin’ over the top of the hill? That’s him.”

  Curtis Bell’s blue Beretta crested the rise and momentarily disappeared from view as we sped up the steep grade behind him.

  “He’s ahead of us,” Peters agreed grimly, “but not that far and not for long. You two keep an eye on him, and we’ll catch up.”

  “And what do we do then?” I asked.

  “I’m gonna smoke the mother,” Knuckles Russell murmured.

  Even barreling hell-bent-for-leather down the street, Ron Peters managed to dredge up a shred of his customary sense of humor.

  “That’s probably a bad idea, Ezra,” he cautioned reasonably. “There’ll be too many other people in line. You might hit the wrong person.”

  “What if he gets off?” Knuckles demanded.

  “He won’t. We’ll see to it.”

  There was no way right then to tell who had done what, but in the state of Washington, regardless of who had been running the show and regardless of who actually wielded the weapons, all those involved would be considered equally guilty. In this state, murders committed by others in the course of a conspiracy to commit a felony offense damn all the conspirators. Not only that, Curtis Bell was a crooked cop besides.

  “Killing’s too damn good for him,” I said heatedly. “Look! He’s turning north on Sixth. Where’s he going?”

  We were turning onto Sixth only a block behind him as the light at Spring turned green ahead of us and he sped in a sharp right-hand turn onto the southbound on-ramp to I-5. Peters followed suit, but dropped back and stayed far enough behind so we could keep him in view without arousing suspicion.

  “Five bucks says he’s headed for the airport,” Ron Peters breathed.

  “I never placed no bet with cops before, but you’re on,” Knuckles asserted from the backseat. His eyes never left the back of Curtis Bell’s car.

  Previous encounters with Ron Peters had taught me the folly of betting money against him on anything. It was a valuable lesson Knuckles Russell would have to learn for himself the hard way.

  “It’ll be coming out of your student loan,” I told him.

  And actually, that was probably fair. I figured it would prove to be an educational experience.

  CHAPTER 26

  FOR MONTHS NOW PEOPLE IN THE MEDIA have complained bitterly about the growing traffic problems in the Puget Sound area. When you live and work primarily in the downtown core, it’s easy to ignore the fact that Seattle’s freeways often deteriorate into vast parking lots, and not just at rush hour, either.

  At four P.M. that Saturday afternoon some major cultural or sporting event must have let out minutes earlier, because the southbound lanes of I-5 were crammed. After merging into traffic, we literally inched our way past the I-90 interchange and the city’s perpetual Kingdome exit construction projects. Curtis Bell’s blue Beretta was only six or seven cars ahead of us as we crawled along.

  “I could probably sprint fast enough to catch up with him,” I said, itching to jump out of the car and collar the bastard.

  “And what happens then?” Peters returned. “What happens if Bell takes off and you end up causing a chain reaction accident? We’ll be stuck here with no backup and no way to send for any. We’re better off waiting until we know for sure where he’s going.”

  I might have argued with him, except he was probably right. When you’re dealing with that kind of traffic volume, any slight fender bender can result in hours of delay for everyone. Under those circumstances, police and emergency vehicles are only marginally better off than civilian ones.

  The good thing about being stuck in traffic was that it was easy to keep track of exactly where Curtis Bell was and what he was doing, without it being blatantly obvious to him that he was being tailed. The bad part was that if he somehow did catch on and start making evasive maneuvers, it might be difficult for us to react. I breathed a sigh of relief when he went straight past the Spokane Street and Michigan exits. I was happy when he skipped Martin Luther King Junior Way as well. It was looking more and more like Sea-Tac all the time.

  About then my pager went off two different times in rapid succession. Once the readout gave me Tony Freeman’s number and once Captain Powell’s, but without a radio or a phone in the car, there was no way for me to respond right then.

  “You really ought to have a cellular phone in here,” I told Peters. “It would make our lives a hell of a lot easier right about now.”

  The irony of what I’d just said wasn’t lost on me, and Ron Peters didn’t miss it either. He glanced at me sideways. “Ralph Ames has created a technological monster out of you, hasn’t he?” Ron said with a laugh. “Maybe I should have a portable fax in here as well.”

  I didn’t want to talk about who owned a fax and who didn’t, but joking around helped ease the tension in the car. It gave us something to think about besides the grim reality of the coming confrontation.

  And grim it was. It’s one thing to go up against crooks. They may be armed to the teeth, but they’re also like untrained guerrilla warriors who often can be outflanked and outmaneuvered by the strategic thinking of even a much smaller force. Unfortunately Curtis Bell was a fellow police officer. He would be armed, probably the same way I was armed—with an automatic weapon—and he had been trained the same way I had been trained, probably by some of the same people. More important, he was desperate. That made him doubly dangerous.

  “What do you think he’ll do when he realizes he’s being followed?” I asked.

  “He’s likely to recognize the car,” Peters said. “If he thinks I’m alone with no way to summon help, maybe we can trick him into coming after me.”

  “No way! That’s risky as hell.”

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  I didn’t. Every mile we traveled was taking us closer and closer to Sea-Tac Airport, but the traffic jam had broken up and the average highway speed had increased dramatically. We were zipping along at an unlawful but traffic-pacing sixty-six. Now there were only two cars between us and Curtis Bell. As I watched, one of them switched on a turn signal indicating a planned exit at Tukwila. Bell moved into the far right-hand lane just past that same exit.

  “Sea-Tac it is,” Peters said grimly. “You two had better get down. He’s bound to notice the car sooner or later.”

  Peters’s rooftop wheelchair carrier isn’t entirely unique—I’ve seen one or two others like it in my travels—but it is very distinctive and through a special dispensation from both the chief and the mayor, Ron is allowed to park it in a specially designated handicapped spot just inside the department’s parking garage. Everyone on the force sees it on an almost daily basis.

  As of that moment, Peters’s plan, risky or not, was the only one available. I did as I was told and scrunched down in the seat, assuming that behind me Knuckles Russell was doing exactly the same thing.
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  Peters switched on his own signal, and the Reliant swerved slightly to the right. “Southcenter?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Hang on. I’m going to narrow the gap now, let him know I’m back here, and see what he does about it.”

  What Bell did next was obvious in Ron Peters’s reaction. He accelerated to warp speed. There’s something about riding blindly down a highway in a speeding vehicle with your shoulder seat belt dangling improperly around your neck to give you yet another glimpse of your own mortality. Almost like dodging the bullet in a drive-by shooting. Almost like having a life insurance salesman pay a call, but I kept my mouth shut and didn’t tell Peters to slow down. People who can’t see the road shouldn’t backseat drive.

  Overhead, the shadow of an overpass blinked across the windshield while we angled first to the right and then to the left. That meant we were turning onto the private road approaching the airport. Theoretically, that stretch is heavily patrolled by port police. Maybe, with any kind of luck, both vehicles would be stopped for speeding and Peters and I would have some help after all, but of course, that didn’t happen. Traffic cops are hardly ever anywhere around when you need them.

  “Where’s he going?” I asked, automatically starting to slide back up in the seat.

  “The parking garage. Stay right where you are,” Peters ordered.

  I slid back down, banging my knees on the bottom of the dashboard as we screeched to a sudden halt at the wooden control gate that allows only one car at a time access into Sea-Tac’s parking area. Peters rolled down his window as the buzzer sounded. He grabbed the ticket. I was glad he’d stopped. Otherwise, the Reliant would have been wearing a hunk of two-by-six Douglas fir as a hood ornament.

  “Good, he’s headed up the ramp,” Peters said, reporting what was going on outside my line of vision like some macabre play-by-play sports broadcaster, but this was no game. In the next few minutes, there was going to be a gunfight and someone was liable to get hurt. Considering the small number of people involved, the odds were pretty damned high that a fast trip to Harborview’s Trauma Unit was looming in my future.