Without Due Process

by J. A. Jance

  We started moving forward again, going up and around the circular ramps. “Ezra,” Peters was saying. “Are you listening?” Our passenger had been so quiet for so long, I had almost forgotten Knuckles Russell’s presence, but Ron Peters hadn’t.

  “Yo,” Knuckles responded.

  “Listen to me. I’m going to throw you out. Run like hell into the terminal and alert security. Have them seal off the garage. Tell them not to let anyone in or out until they hear from Detective Beaumont or me. Got that?”

  “Got it!” Knuckles replied.

  I felt a surge of elation. It wasn’t just Peters and me after all. Knuckles was there. If he could go for help fast enough, there was a chance he could save us all.

  On what must have been the inside curve of the next ramp, Peters stopped long enough for Knuckles to leap out. “Get going!” he ordered, but Knuckles paused momentarily outside the door.

  Ron pressed the button to roll down the windows. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “What if they doan listen?”

  “Make them!” Peters barked. “You’ve got to.”

  Moments later I heard the first echoing slaps of Knuckles’s retreating Reeboks, then Peters continued two-wheeling us up that gut-wrenching circular ramp.

  My heart sank. Every single day, cops make life-or-death judgments based on appearances alone, on how the people they’re dealing with look, act, and sound. Ezra Russell looked fine. He wasn’t wearing gang-type clothing, but he still sounded like a street tough. There was nothing in the way he spoke that announced he had changed his ways and matriculated at an institution of higher learning as a respectable college student. I worried about what kind of call the port police would make with all our lives hanging in the balance.

  “What if he’s right?” I asked. “What if they don’t believe him?”

  “That’s a risk we’ll have to take, isn’t it?” Peters returned. “Hold on. You get out here. It looks to me as though he’s on his way up to the top floor.”

  “But…” I objected.

  “No buts. This is seven, the end of the line. Come up either the stairs or the elevator. As far as he’s concerned, I’ll be a sitting duck. I’m counting on you to see to it that isn’t the case.”

  Peters paused barely long enough for me to clamber out of the car. Luckily I landed on my feet. The next thing I knew, I, too, was racing through the almost deserted parking garage. The place was full of cars, but empty of people. Evidently Saturday isn’t a primo flying day.

  Never before had I noticed how unbearably long those aisles were. They must have stretched forever while behind me I heard the squeal of tires as Peters rounded the last curve that would take him onto the eighth level of the parking garage, the top and unroofed level.

  I ducked my head and ran that much faster, dreading with every step the reverberation of a gunshot echoing off concrete that would mean the end of Ron Peters.

  Overhead I heard a terrible crash followed by the scraping of metal on concrete. There was no way to tell what had happened. The sound seemed to come from behind me, from what was now the far side of the garage. By then there was no point in running all the way back to the ramps and making my way up from there. I was already far closer to the elevators and stairwells.

  Between stairs and elevator, there was no contest. I knew from bitter firsthand experience that a stairwell can be as bad as a blind alley, a trap, or a box canyon. But at least a stairway exit door wouldn’t ring a bell and point an arrow announcing my arrival.

  I dashed through the door marked STAIRS. On the first landing I paused for a moment to hear if anyone was headed either down from above me or up from below, but there were no echoing footsteps. The place was empty. Relieved, I pounded up the remaining set of steep concrete stairs, covering three steps at a time. By then, my breath was coming in short, sharp gasps, there was a splitting pain in my side, and one ankle was giving me trouble.

  Damn! I still expected my body to respond like it had twenty years ago, but it didn’t. Couldn’t. Even if I didn’t want to accept the idea that middle age was setting in with a vengeance, my body knew it. I had to wait outside the heavy metal door to catch my breath before I dared open it and go on.

  Without my consciously being aware of it, the 9 mm automatic appeared in my hand. Taking a deep breath, I pushed the door open a crack.

  Level 8 in the Sea-Tac Airport Parking Garage—the uncovered, rooftop portion—is the floor of last resort when it comes to parking cars. Usually it’s relatively open. Not so that particular day, and not because cars were parked on it either. Instead, the whole place had become a construction material staging area for the massive expansion of the parking garage. The place was strewn with stacks of lumber and iron rods, rolls of metal mesh fencing, piles of sheet metal, and several parked forklifts.

  Where I expected a clear line of vision from the stairs to the ramps, instead the view across the floor was totally obscured. Over the noise of a departing jet, I could hear nothing. The only way to find out what was happening with Peters was to leave the relative safety of the stairwell.

  I stepped out onto the concrete rooftop. At that exact instant, Curtis Bell’s Beretta came hurtling past my line of vision. Heading toward the exit ramp and busy dodging among the piles of construction material, I don’t think he even saw me. Raising the 9 mm, I assumed the proper shooting stance, hoping to squeeze off a shot at him before he disappeared down the ramp, but then I saw Peters.

  Nosing his car straight through a stack of fencing, he sent huge rolls of the stuff spinning off in all directions. But the maneuver had accomplished its desired effect, creating a shortcut that took him to the top of the exit ramp and cut off Curtis Bell’s only remaining avenue of escape. With a sickening crunch the speeding Beretta plowed into the Reliant’s rider’s side. The grinding, sheet metal-devouring crash that followed made me grateful that I wasn’t sitting there in Peters’s car on the rider’s side. If I had been, I would have been holding the front end of the Beretta’s V-6 engine.

  Instead of moving forward toward the melee, I stood as if frozen, still holding my weapon. There was no way for me to pull the trigger. If I had, Ron Peters would have been directly in my line of fire.

  The dust settled slowly. At first glance I didn’t see either Ron Peters or Curtis Bell. Then, just when I’d almost convinced myself that they were both either dead or too badly injured to move, the clamshell top on the wheelchair carrier shot up and with a whir Peters’s wheelchair lowered down beside the car. So Ron was all right. He was getting out, moving himself expertly from car to chair.

  Breathing a sigh of relief, I started forward, but then I saw movement in the Beretta as well. Curtis Bell, his head bloodied, crawled out through the rider’s side window. There was no need to shout a warning—they saw each other at precisely the same moment.

  Midafternoon sun had finally managed to burn through the cloud cover. I saw the reflected glint of sunlight on metal and knew without a doubt that Curtis Bell had a gun in his hand.

  My main problem was one of distance. Physics and reality to the contrary, it seemed as though the eighth floor aisles must have been far longer than those on the seventh, longer at least by half. I tried to shout a warning across the intervening space, but the sound was swallowed up in the roar of a departing jet. My only hope—Ron Peters’s only hope—was that I close the distance between us. Knowing I didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting there in time, I ducked my head, said a silent prayer, and ran.

  It was like running in slow motion or in water or sloughing through deep sand. The vast distance that separated us didn’t seem to get any smaller. Partway there, I could see that Ron Peters and Curtis Bell were speaking earnestly back and forth across the hood of Ron’s car, but I wasn’t close enough to hear their voices. I wondered if they were negotiating about which one would end up having to give up and let the other one go.

  With less than a quarter of the distance to go, a blaring alarm
began sounding from somewhere inside the terminal itself. Thank God, I thought with relief. Knuckles had done it. He had somehow sounded the alarm and airport security was coming to help, but before that could happen, Curtis Bell swung around and saw me.

  He saw me and pulled the trigger all in the same movement. He didn’t pause, didn’t have to think about it. He aimed and fired, hoping to gun me down without even the slightest pretense of hesitation. A long way from any cover, I hit the ground and skidded along the rough concrete surface just as the first bullet whizzed by overhead.

  Curtis Bell was carrying the same kind of automatic I was. There should have been a whole barrage of bullets, but there wasn’t. Not exactly. There was a second shot—I heard it—but it didn’t hit anywhere near me.

  I heard a single outraged screech of pain and I saw Curtis Bell crumple to the ground. Ron Peters may have looked like a sitting duck, but he wasn’t. And maybe his aim wasn’t all it had been once, before his accident, but it was close enough for government work, close enough to do the job and save my life.

  I scrambled to my feet and hurried over to where Curtis Bell lay writhing on the ground, clutching his bleeding gut. Picking up his weapon, I left him lying there and walked past him to check on Ron Peters.

  “You all right?” I asked.

  “My car’s screwed,” he answered, “but I’m okay.”

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass about your car as long as you’re fine.”

  With a whir of his electric wheelchair, Ron Peters rolled up beside me, and we both looked down at the injured and helpless Curtis Bell. Neither one of us leaped forward to administer first aid.

  “He’s not, though, is he?” Ron said casually. “Looks as though he’s hurt pretty bad…”

  “You shot him real low,” I said. “Looks like you hit him well below the vest.”

  Ron shook his head and clicked his tongue. “Can you imagine that. Guess I’m still not used to shooting from this angle. Maybe I need more practice.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to change a thing,” I told him. “And neither would Big Al.”

  CHAPTER 27

  THE MEDIC ONE UNIT CAME FROM ANGLE Lake. As soon as we gave the port police the all clear, the medics arrived on the scene, where they determined Curtis Bell’s condition was far too serious to risk an ambulance ride. Harborview’s med-evac helicopter was summoned. Despite the construction debris and wrecked vehicles, it landed right there on top of the garage and the injured man was loaded aboard along with a police officer guard, compliments of the Port of Seattle.

  Before the tow trucks finished hauling away broken cars, the garage had turned into a jurisdictional nightmare. Because of the likely connection to the Beaux Arts case, King County wanted to be involved as well as the city of Seattle and the Port of Seattle. Knuckles Russell remained on the fringes of the ever-expanding group, shoulders hunched, hands in his pockets, warily watching the proceedings.

  One of the last officers to arrive on the scene was Captain Anthony Freeman. He spoke first to Peters and me, then he asked Ron to introduce him to Knuckles Russell.

  “I’m Captain Freeman from Internal Investigations,” Tony Freeman told him, shaking hands. “Thanks for all your help, Ezra. We’ve got them now. Sue Danielson is down at the office working with Gary Deddens right now. He’s waived his right to an attorney. He’s spilling his guts.”

  “You shoulda caught him sooner,” Knuckles said accusingly. “Then Ben Weston wouldn’t be dead.”

  “You’re right. Ben was almost ready to move on this. From looking at the file, I can see what he was doing. Ben didn’t want to do anything until he had enough corroborating evidence that he wouldn’t have to call you or any of the others back to testify. Even though he had gleaned much of his information from you, he didn’t want you to be involved.”

  A jet took off in the background. No one said anything for a moment while Knuckles Russell’s eyes filled with tears.

  “You mean Ben’s dead ’cause he was protectin’ me?”

  Tony Freeman nodded. “You and the others,” he said.

  “Shit, man!” Ezra muttered fiercely. “Shit!”

  He walked away from us to the far side of the garage, where he stood hunched and withdrawn, looking down at the traffic below. No one followed him. At that moment, Knuckles Russell needed nothing so much as to be left alone.

  I turned back to Captain Freeman. “So how much more cancer is there?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Not much I hope, but I don’t know, not for sure. Like I said. Deddens is spilling his guts, hoping it’ll go easier on him. If anyone else is involved, he’ll tell us. Turns out he’s the one who placed the call to nine-one-one, hoping to create enough confusion over the massacre that Curtis Bell would have a chance to get into Ben’s office computer undetected and do the deleting. From the looks of the files, Ben was within minutes of bringing me the case. Unfortunately, I was out of town.”

  “So the deletion almost worked, didn’t it,” I said.

  Freeman nodded. “It might have. If Kyle hadn’t managed to bring those files back up when he did, they could have been written over and lost for good. But we’ve got it now. Gary Deddens can squeal all he wants, but I’ve got some bad news for him and Curtis Bell as well. I’m going to convince the prosecutor to go for aggravated first degree for both of them, not only for murdering the Westons but also their pal Sam Irwin.”

  “They wanted us to turn him into the fall guy, didn’t they?”

  “Yes, but by then they were panicked and it didn’t work. Those two bastards may figure out a way to wiggle out of the death penalty, but they’ll never be out on the streets again, either one of them. I’ll see to it.”

  Without our noticing, Knuckles Russell had returned from the other side of the garage and was hovering just outside our circle of conversation. Captain Freeman stepped aside and motioned for him to join us.

  “Did you need something?” Freeman asked.

  For several seconds the two men stood facing each other, their eyes locked in an unblinking stare—the tall balding white man with his red bottlebrush mustache and the much younger black one.

  “Ben Weston tol’ me once that a One-Time named Freeman was all right. I can see that be…that’s true.”

  It was a moment of understanding that cut both ways. Freeman nodded. “Ben had a lot of faith in you, too, Ezra. We were on the right track, but it’s possible Curtis Bell might have gotten away if you hadn’t come forward when you did.”

  “I din’t come forward on my own,” Knuckles said, shaking his head. “But for him,” he added, pointing a finger at Ron Peters, “I’d still be in Ellensburg.”

  Tony looked from Ron to me and back again. “Detective Beaumont, I thought I told you specifically not to add any additional personnel to this investigation without my express permission.”

  “Excuse me, Captain Freeman,” Peters interrupted. “I put myself on the case, long before Beau had any idea Internal Investigations would be involved.”

  “Why? Don’t you work in Media Relations?”

  “That’s my job,” Peters conceded, “but what I do on my own time is my business.”

  “Including tearing hell out of your own car in the process of apprehending a fleeing felon?”

  “That too.”

  Peters and I both stood there waiting for what we figured was an inevitable chewing out. Instead, Captain Freeman nodded. “I see,” he said. “Why don’t you come talk to me next week some time, Officer Peters. I might have a place in IIS for someone as motivated as you. Seems to me you’re wasting your time in Media Relations.”

  “You name the time,” Ron Peters said. “I’ll be there.”

  Freeman turned back to Knuckles. “Where are you going to be staying tonight, Ezra? And how can I get in touch with you once you get back over to Ellensburg? Questions may come up that we’ll need you to answer.”

  Knuckles shrugged. “I dunno about staying here. The Disciples still wa
nts my ass.”

  “He can stay with me tonight,” I offered. “With Junior and Ralph Ames there, too, it may be a little crowded, but we’ll manage.”

  It was beginning to feel as though I was running a hotel. “Good,” Freeman said, accepting my answer at face value. “Now. How are you all getting back to town? Should I make arrangements for rides?”

  “I called my wife, Amy,” Ron told him. “She’s bringing the van. There’ll be plenty of room.”

  By the time we finished giving statements to everyone who needed them, Amy Peters had arrived. Afterward, she gave us all a ride back to Belltown Terrace.

  “Ralph said we’re invited for dinner,” she told me as we drove into the parking garage. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  Actually, I did. I was once more running out of steam—I just can’t seem to go without sleep the way I used to. Besides that, my feet were killing me. But if Ralph was doing the cooking, all that would be required of me was to hold up my head long enough to eat.

  Knuckles looked at me suspiciously as I held the door for him to go into my apartment. “How come a cop gets to live like this?”

  “Don’t worry,” I told him. “I inherited it. On what I make, I could barely afford the bottom floor in this place.”

  The house smelled of garlic and roasting chickens and something else, something exquisite, that turned out to be homemade bread. Once inside the apartment, I expected to hear the clattering din of a video game, but the house was quiet. I introduced Ralph to Knuckles Russell, explaining that he was a friend of Ben Weston’s and that he needed a place to spend the night.

  “Where are the kids?” I asked.

  “The girls are down swimming. Junior hasn’t come back from the funeral yet, although I expect them any minute. Emma Jackson called to say they’d be by in a few minutes to pick up Junior’s things.”

  “Where’s Dr. Jackson taking him, back to West Seattle to his grandfather’s?”

  “Oh, haven’t you heard?” Ralph asked. “Evidently Ben and Shiree Weston named her as legal guardian if anything ever happened to both of them. Emma said they’d come by for the Nintendo on the way. They’re going to take some time off. She says she’s taking him to the coast for a few days so they can get used to the idea of living together.”