by J. A. Jance
I put down the phone and turned around only to find Ralph Ames studying me with a puzzled expression on his face. “What was that all about?” he asked.
“One of the guys from the department who’s got a second job selling life insurance. I don’t know why, but he thinks I’m a likely prospect.”
“Maybe you are,” Ames said thoughtfully. “What company is he with?”
“Beats me. How the hell should I know? And anyway, I don’t need any life insurance.”
“Wait a minute,” Ralph said. “You’re thinking about leaving the department, and that means you’ll be walking away from a whole lot of fringe benefits. There may be some things about insurance that we’ll want to consider. My main worry would be about a rating.”
I took a moment to consider what he’d said. Evidently, the idea of my leaving the department was something Ralph Ames had been considering even if I hadn’t. But instead of thinking about giving up my life’s work, I focused in on the last word he’d mentioned.
“Rating? What’s a rating?”
“Remember, you’re fresh out of alcohol treatment,” Ames explained. “Of course, that would have to be disclosed in the medical part of any application. If the underwriters offer you insurance at all, most likely they’re going to charge you an extra premium added on to the regular one. They call it a rating.”
“That’s not fair.”
“What’s not fair?”
“You mean I have to give up MacNaughton’s and pay extra besides?”
“Beau,” Ames responded reasonably enough. “They have to charge you an extra premium to cover the extra risk.”
“Like hell they do. If Curtis Bell calls back, tell him to go piss up a rope. If I can’t have insurance at regular rates, I won’t have any at all.”
With that, and without bothering to thank Ralph Ames for cooking my breakfast, I slammed out of the apartment and went looking for Emma Jackson.
Extra premium my ass!
CHAPTER 7
Armed with Emma Jackson’s name and place of employment, I left Belltown Terrace and drove to University Hospital only to learn that she had already gone home for the day. Thanks to Carl Johnson’s phone call, I already had her home address in hand. I headed back downtown, to an address on the lower east side of Queen Anne Hill.
There are matches made in heaven and ones made in hell. My initial meeting with Dr. Emma Jackson was definitely one of the latter. Prejudice on both sides was the root cause of the trouble.
In this day and age, the word “prejudice” naturally conjures up racial difficulties, but between Dr. Emma Jackson and me, race was not necessarily the critical issue. My main bone of contention was the doctor part. Years ago, when my mother was in the hospital dying of cancer, I had a nasty run-in with a particularly arrogant young resident who knew, far better than the patient herself, exactly how much pain Mom could and should tolerate. Ever since then, I’ve had a bad taste in my mouth for all those not-quite-ready-for-prime-time doctors who are practicing to practice.
No doubt, some early and equally damaging experience had soured Emma Jackson on men in general and male cops in particular. The battle lines between us were drawn from the moment she answered my knock.
Emma lived in an aging, three-story Victorian, a formerly sizable single-family dwelling, that had been converted into a triplex. People from outside the downtown core assume that Queen Anne Hill is uniformly yuppified, gentrified, and scenic, but Emma Jackson’s daylight basement apartment at Sixth and Prospect would have given the lie to that notion. The only view from the yard of the Jackson place was of noisy traffic tooling up and down Aurora Avenue North. The place was ramshackle and run-down. The only door, an old-fashioned wooden one with a pane of clear glass at the top, was fast losing its cracked coat of oil-based paint, which was peeling off in long, narrow strips.
Finding no sign of a bell, I knocked. Initially, no one answered, but a diesel VW Rabbit parked nearby convinced me that someone was home. I knocked again, harder this time.
Finally, a woman wearing a blue sweatshirt and matching sweatpants came to the door. She peered out at me through the window and then pulled down the rolling shade over the inside of the window. The door opened, but only three inches or so, as far as the end of the latched security chain allowed.
“Who are you and what do you want?”
“My name’s Beaumont, Detective J. P. Beaumont. I’m a police officer. Are you Emma Jackson?”
“Dr. Emma Jackson.” There was a certain injured reproof in the way she emphasized the word “doctor.” She had evidently worked hard to earn the title of doctor, and she wanted me to know it.
“Dr. Jackson, I need to speak to you.”
She unlatched the chain and opened the door a few more inches, standing in the opening with her arms crossed. “What about? Why would a police officer need to speak to me? Did my license tabs expire? Is my front bumper hanging too far over the parking strip?”
In the past few years, Seattle area blacks-I still haven’t learned to say African Americans with any kind of consistency-have complained about alleged instances of police harassment, incidents in which law-abiding people have been stopped and questioned by Seattle PD officers for seemingly no other reason than their being wherever they are. Blacks certainly do live and work on Queen Anne Hill, but they’re not exactly plentiful.
I heard the undisguised antagonism in Emma Jackson’s voice and wondered if maybe she had experienced some similar kind of treatment. Even so, I’m sure she would have found undeserved police harassment far preferable to receiving the painful news I was about to deliver.
“It’s your son,” I said quietly. “About Adam. Do you mind if I come in?”
Instead of asking me in, Emma Jackson stepped out onto the concrete pavers that constituted the tiny apartment’s make-do porch and closed the door behind her. She was a woman in her early thirties, fairly tall, and well built. Her face was attractive but haggard, her dark eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot from lack of sleep.
“What about him?” she asked. “Where is he? Is he all right?”
It didn’t seem right, telling her there on the porch in front of God and everybody. “Really, Dr. Jackson, if we could just go inside…”
“I’m too tired to play games. If something’s happened to Adam, tell me and tell me now!”
“There’s been an incident…”
“What kind of incident?”
“Where did your son spend last night?”
“With some friends. Why?”
“Could you tell me their names?”
“Why should I?”
“Dr. Jackson. Please, this is a very serious matter.”
For the first time the tiniest bit of alarm seemed to leak into her overriding anger. “Ben and Shiree Weston. They live down in the south end. What’s this all about?”
There was no way to soften the blow, and she had refused any suggestion that would have allowed me to tell her in the privacy of her own home.
“Dr. Jackson,” I said quietly, “I want you to understand that we don’t have a positive ID yet, but we have reason to believe that your son has been murdered, along with Shiree and Ben Weston and two of their three kids.”
Emma Jackson’s eyes darted back and forth across my face as though trying to read the truth of what I was saying from what she saw there. Both hands went to her mouth.
“No,” she said.
“Officers were summoned…”
“No,” she repeated, a little louder this time. “That can’t be true!”
“It is true, Dr. Jackson,” I insisted. “I came to take you downtown so…”
“No!” This time the word was an anguished shriek that echoed through the relative peace of a pristinely clear Seattle morning. Not only did Emma Jackson scream, but she launched herself at me in an all-out physical attack, flailing at me with both balled fists. I caught her by the wrists and held her at arm’s length-far enough away to keep her from bloodying
my nose.
“Please, Dr. Jackson,” I pleaded. “Quiet down. Listen to me.”
But she didn’t listen and she didn’t stop screaming. “No! No! Please, God, no!”
Anyone hearing that terrible, agonized cry on a city street was bound to assume the worst, that a woman was being viciously assaulted in broad daylight. A neighbor evidently took corrective action and called for help, because the two of us were still standing there locked in struggle when I heard the quick sharp burst of siren from an approaching squad car. The wail of the siren seemed to penetrate through Emma Jackson’s pain. She stopped screaming suddenly and stood quivering, her hands limp. I didn’t know if I dared let loose of her or not. To be on the safe side, I didn’t.
“We need you to do a positive ID,” I said into the echoing silence. “On the other victims as well, if you could, since you evidently knew them all.”
“It’s true then?” she whispered brokenly. “All of them?”
“Yes,” I answered. “It’s true, all but Junior.”
I expected another outburst. Instead, she tugged her hands free of mine just as a blue-and-white squad car pulled up and parked behind the Rabbit. Emma Jackson started inside as two uniformed cops leaped out of the car and came toward us.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“To put on some other clothes,” she answered, her voice fiercely calm and controlled. “I can’t go downtown dressed like this.”
I’ve seen some pretty amazing things in my time as a police officer, but Emma Jackson’s transformation was downright astonishing. Now that I know her a little better, I suspect that pride kept her from wanting to share pain that was that deep, that intense with a total stranger, but I can’t say for sure. In any event, she started into the house.
“Tell your friends here that it’s okay,” she said over her shoulder. “I’ll be right back.”
I turned to meet the two patrol officers who were hurrying up the walkway. Rank hath its privileges around Seattle PD, and most of the day-shift officers have been on the force for some time. I knew both these guys, Joe Miller and Fred Keanes.
“Hey, Beau,” Joe said, recognizing me. “What’s going on? We had a report of a domestic disturbance.”
“Not a domestic,” I told them. “The woman who lives here is the mother of the child who spent the night with Ben and Shiree Weston.”
“The one who’s dead?” Joe asked. I nodded. “And she just found out?”
“That’s right. I came to tell her what happened and to take her downtown for the ID.”
“Jeez!” Joe shook his head. “It’s terrible. I hear through the grapevine that whoever it was took a potshot at you too, didn’t they? What’s the world coming to, Beau? Seattle never used to be like this.”
He was wrong there. Seattle always used to be “like this.” That’s why people like me have jobs as homicide detectives.
Moments later Emma Jackson emerged from the house. She was wearing a blazer, a blouse, and a pair of well-tailored slacks. Her face was set in a grim mask. “I’m ready,” she said flatly. Her voice was low and husky, as though the strain of screaming had somehow damaged her vocal cords. “Where to? The medical examiner’s office?”
I nodded, remembering after all that since she was Dr. Emma Jackson, she probably knew the drill.
“Yes.”
I led the way. Emma Jackson stood to one side while I held the car door for her. Once we were both inside, I started the car and headed for Harborview Hospital and Doc Baker’s office. I glanced at her from time to time, but she remained locked in stoic silence. I felt like I was riding next to a human Mount St. Helens. Emma Jackson was quiet, just like the mountain was for a hundred-and-twenty-odd years, but smart money said she was probably going to blow sky-high sooner or later.
“When did you find them?” she asked eventually.
“I didn’t. Not me personally. Somebody else did. Around eleven.”
“Eleven?” she demanded. “That long ago? Why the hell am I not finding out about it until almost twelve hours later?”
“The child wasn’t wearing any identification,” I told her. “At first we had no way of knowing who he was. In fact, we thought he was one of Ben and Shiree’s until we found Junior.”
“Junior? He’s all right?”
“He’s fine. He was hiding. The killer missed him. Junior gave us Adam’s name, but he couldn’t give us an address or tell us where you worked. And your phone number isn’t listed.”
“It still shouldn’t have taken so long,” she said. “You said yourself that it’s already been on the radio.”
“Without any names being mentioned,” I told her. “We never release names until after we’ve located the next of kin.”
“Just like good Boy Scouts,” she returned sarcastically. “Ben was always a great one for telling us that you guys did things by the book. So who killed him?”
“Who killed your son?”
“No. Adam was just a little boy. The real question is who killed Benjamin Weston, isn’t it?”
The hard edge on her question put me on notice that there was something behind it. “I don’t know,” I answered. “Do you have any idea?”
She shrugged. “A jealous husband, most likely,” she said. “That would be my guess.”
I was thunderstruck. Gentle Ben Weston? Screwing around on the side? That didn’t square with anything I personally knew about the man, but I wasn’t exactly what you could call a friend of the family either. Emma Jackson was, and she sounded quite certain.
“Do you know something about that,” I asked, “something we maybe should know too?”
“You tell me. For months now Shiree’s been complaining to me about him going to work early and coming home late with no apparent explanation. You figure it out. What’s the usual answer when that kind of thing gets started? I told Shiree that in this day and age she was stupid as a stump to look the other way and let him get away with it.”
“Shiree Weston discussed the situation with you?”
“Shiree Garvey and I go back a long way. We discussed everything. I hated him for what he was doing to her.”
The shrinks call it transference, I believe. It works the same way radar jamming does. By keeping her mental signals full of other angers and issues, Emma Jackson avoided the terrible subject at hand-the senseless death of her son. It’s a form of denial, and denial is common in the people I deal with. Nevertheless, I couldn’t afford to ignore the fact that this woman might be presenting me with both a possible motive and hence a possible suspect.
“Did she mention any names?”
“No, but it won’t be hard to find out. Men are never nearly as clever about these things as they think they are.”
“I assume Garvey was Shiree Weston’s maiden name?” Emma nodded. “How far back do you two go?” I asked.
“Grade school.”
Both my question and Emma’s initial answer seemed innocuous enough, but then she added an afterthought. “About the same age Adam is now. Was,” she whispered.
Suddenly Dr. Emma Jackson’s steely reserve shattered. She began crying quietly into her hand while I kept driving. By the time we arrived at Harborview, Emma had pulled herself together again. I would have gone around and opened the car door for her, but she beat me to the punch. She led the way into the building as though she knew it well.
“You seem to know your way around,” I commented.
“I’ve been here before,” she replied without explanation.
The lower floor of Harborview Hospital, occupied by the King County Medical Examiner’s Office, is dedicated to the dead rather than to the living. There Dr. Howard Baker reigns supreme over a small corps of dedicated employees and an ever-changing and always deceased clientele. As a Homicide detective bringing in victims’ relatives to make identifications, I’m used to taking charge at the receptionist’s desk. This time, however, Emma Jackson handled it herself.
“I’m Dr. Jackson,” sh
e announced. “I’m here to see Dr. Baker about my son, Adam.”
The receptionist, bleary-eyed from being called in during the middle of the night, blinked in recognition at the name. “Oh, of course. Wait right here. Dr. Baker’s busy in the back right now.”
“In the back” is a medical examiner’s office euphemism that means either that Doc Baker’s really out playing golf or else he’s up to his armpits in an autopsy, a word that is seldom if ever uttered aloud in that grim little waiting room.
The receptionist jumped up and hurried through the swinging door that opened into the lab. She returned moments later with Doc Baker in tow.
Emma had walked over to the window and was standing with her back to us looking outside when the M.E. came into the room. “Hello there, Beau,” he said, nodding in my direction. “I understand you brought the mother along?”
Emma Jackson whirled around and faced him. At once I saw a look of shocked recognition cross Doc Baker’s face. “Why, Emma. It’s not your boy, is it?”
“That’s what he told me,” she said grimly. “I’m here to find out for sure, one way or the other.”
Clearly Drs. Baker and Jackson knew each other, although I had no idea how. He held out his arm, and she took it. “This way,” he said solicitously, leading her toward the swinging doors.
Maybe up until then Emma Jackson still had some hope I was wrong. But of course, I wasn’t.
CHAPTER 8
In the years I’ve worked homicide, I’ve been through plenty of identification ordeals. Seeing your own child dead in some cold, stainless-steel-furnished morgue has to be one of the worst trials a parent ever endures. The emotional devastation of that encounter strikes both men and women pretty much equally. I’ve seen more than a few men faint dead away and have to be carried out of the room. Hysterics, explosions of anger, and racking wails of despair are common occurrences that know no gender divisions at a time like that. Men and women, fathers and mothers, are both identically susceptible to grief.
