Without Due Process jpb-10

by J. A. Jance

  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 mystery 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.

  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.

  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.