by J. A. Jance
From a strictly survival standpoint, I had to admit the kid had the right idea. Paperboys on bicycles are sitting ducks for drive-by shootings. I took out my notebook. “What’s his name again?”
“Bob. Robert actually. Robert Case.”
“Well, Bob Case is probably right to be scared. I don’t hold it against him. Did he get a look at the driver?”
“Not really. He said it was a young black man, but he claims he didn’t get a good enough look to give us a positive ID.”
“That figures. My guess is even if he did, he wouldn’t tell us. License number?”
“Negative on that too.”
“So we have what is commonly known as a semi-eyewitness. What about the rest of the unexplained traffic you were telling me about? The news about someone seeing that speeding Lexus moments after the shooting is great, but what did he say about other vehicles?”
“Three. One is a Honda CRX driven by a young black male. On several occasions, Case saw this one driving along beside Ben Weston. The driver and Ben seemed to be chatting while Ben jogged, but the last time he saw that one was maybe as long as a month or two ago. The second is a late-model white Toyota Tercel, driven by a Caucasian male.”
Sue Danielson stopped talking and made no indication that she was going to continue.
“You said three,” I prodded. “What about the last one?”
“A patrol car.” She said the words softly and then waited for my reaction. I didn’t disappoint.
“A patrol car!” I exploded. “You mean as in a Seattle PD blue-and-white?”
Sue Danielson nodded grimly. “That’s exactly what I mean. One of our own. With a uniformed driver.”
“Well,” I said, “what’s wrong with that? That’s not so unusual. There are cop cars in every neighborhood in the city at all hours of the day and night.”
I said the words, but even as I voiced my objection, I remembered what Janice Morraine had said about the Flex-cufs and the possibility of the killer being a cop. First the cuffs and now a patrol car. I let Sue Danielson continue on with her story, hoping my face didn’t betray everything that was going on in my head.
“According to Bob Case, it’s highly unusual in his neighborhood, especially at that hour of the morning. Except for Ben Weston, who happened to live there, other cops tend to show up only when somebody hollers ”cop.“ The rest of the time they pretty much leave well enough alone. In other words, there’s usually zero police presence.”
I didn’t like the troubled look in Sue Danielson’s eyes or the stubborn set to her chin, and I wanted there to be some reasonably innocent explanation for the appearance of that patrol car, just as there had been for the Flex-cufs.
“Maybe the officers in the car were friends of Ben’s from Patrol. Maybe they stopped off now and then to chew the fat for a while before their shifts ended.”
Sue Danielson was prepared for that one, and she lobbed it right back at me. “That’s what Bob Case thought too, until the morning he saw Ben headed down the street in one direction and the patrol car pulled into the alley and stopped behind Ben’s house. The car made zero effort to follow Ben, and the kid thought it was odd. So do I.”
“Surveillance maybe? Had Ben or anyone else reported any recent break-ins or car prowls?” I asked.
“No,” Sue Danielson responded. “I wondered that myself. I already checked.”
“So what do you think?”
“I’ve been wrestling with it ever since I found out. I figure it could go any number of ways.”
I could see several myself. “Maybe whoever was in the patrol car suspected Ben was up to something, and they wanted to catch him at it,” I suggested blandly, already knowing that even Patrol would be more subtle than that. “Or maybe they had a tip that something serious was about to go down, and they were trying to protect him.”
“You’re dead wrong about one thing,” Sue said, “and that’s the ”they‘ part of the equation. According to Bob Case, there was only one person in that car every single time he saw it-a male Caucasian.“
“But graveyard uniformed officers only operate in pairs,” I objected.
She nodded. “I know. I thought at first that maybe someone had called in Internal Investigations Squad, but they usually operate in plain clothes and in unmarked vehicles, don’t they?”
“Most of the time. Did you call up to Internal Investigations and ask?”
Sue Danielson shook her head. “I didn’t have enough nerve. I’ve never talked with anyone from IIS, and I’m still not sure if there’s anything here worth bothering them about.”
Considering the presence of both the Flex-cufs and the mysterious patrol car, I thought there was, but I wanted to play those cards fairly close to my chest.
“With what we’ve found out in the past twenty-four hours,” I said, “especially the bank loan thing, I’d be surprised if they weren’t interested. As a matter of fact, maybe they already were. That would take care of the patrol car problem in a minute.”
“Except for what you said before, that IIS wouldn’t send someone out in a blue-and-white.”
“So where does that leave us?”
Sue pushed her plate away, flattened her napkin, and pulled out a pen. She reminded me of my old-time Ballard High School football coaches, hanging around Zesto’s, drawing X ‘s and O ’s on innumerable paper napkins.
“We have at least two, maybe three players,” Sue said, explaining for her own benefit as well as for mine. “The black guy in the Lexus and the black guy in the CRX who may or may not be one and the same, ditto with the white guy from the patrol car and the one from the Tercel. Since he was fleeing the scene of a crime, it’s safe to assume the guy in the Lexus is also a bad guy. As far as the other two are concerned, it’s anybody’s guess.”
I felt obliged to add my two cents’ worth. “And is the guy in the patrol car really a cop or is he somebody masquerading as a cop?”
“If he isn’t, how would he get hold of the car?” she asked.
“If he’s fake, the vehicle could be too.”
“I suppose,” she agreed reluctantly, but she didn’t sound entirely convinced. Neither was I, but the idea of an imposter posing as a cop sounded a lot more acceptable than the other alternative of a police officer perpetrator.
“What do you think?” I asked her.
“Wild-assed guess?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know Ben Weston personally, but from what people have told me about him, if he could go bad, then anybody in the department could go bad, you and me included.”
Detective Danielson’s bleak assessment wasn’t that far from my own. She put her pen down and pushed her napkin with its good guy-bad guy notations in my direction. “Any additions or corrections to the minutes?”
“No, you’ve pretty well covered it all.”
“Any suggestions about what to do next?”
That last question gave me the opening I had been looking for, a way to bring up the question of Ben Weston’s computer project.
“It would help a lot if we knew for sure about Ben Weston, wouldn’t it?” I suggested tentatively.
In a homicide investigation, sometimes the small and seemingly unimportant answers to side questions lead to answers on the important ones as well. Sue grabbed the bait and ran with it. “It sure as hell would.”
“Has anyone talked to you about what exactly Ben was doing in the gang unit?”
“Not specifically, no.”
“Doesn’t it seem like they should? I found out today, almost by accident, that he’s been building a gang profile data base. It includes all kinds of information on the various gang members-where they came from, what their affiliations are, that kind of thing. He was doing it all on the CCI computer.”
“Sounds reasonable,” she said.
“Maybe. Today I saw a very early version of that data base, something he was doing on his own long before he ever transferred into CCI. Two of the bank loan names
were on even that early version. We need to get a look at what he’s been doing recently. Maybe then we’ll be able to sort out a pattern or see some connection.”
“Are you sure Detective Kramer hasn’t already done this?”
“Maybe, but I doubt it. Kramer’s got his hands full. He might not even have thought of it, but I’ll tell you one thing, if I ask him to look into it, it’ll be a cold day in hell before it actually gets done. Remember the court orders?”
Sue looked at me warily. “So why are you telling me? Do you want me to go see if I can get you a copy of whatever it is?”
I tried to look as innocent as possible. “You’re still supposed to be locating those missing cosigners, aren’t you? And having their families’ names and telephone numbers couldn’t hurt that process, could it? In fact, it might just make your job a whole lot easier.”
She smiled then, for the first time since we’d entered the restaurant. “Men are so damn transparent it’s disgusting. This is still part and parcel of what’s going on between you and Kramer, isn’t it? You’re afraid to give him the information for fear he’ll ignore it. And you think I’m dumb enough to jump into the cross fire.”
“Are you?”
She grinned back at me. “I prefer to call it curiosity rather than stupidity, if you don’t mind.”
“Which is why you’re going to be one hell of a detective one of these days, if you aren’t already.”
I was deliberately baiting her, expecting a little on-the-job male-female give-and-take. Instead, Sue nodded and raised her Coke glass in acknowledgment, ignoring the teasing and accepting my comment as a compliment.
“And what do you suggest we do about IIS?” she asked. “Call them in? Leave them out of it?”
“That’s a sticky one. I would imagine they’re already looking into the Ben Weston matter. Their concern will be what exactly he was up to and whether or not any other police officers were involved. For right now, though, until we get a better handle on your ”players,“ as you call them, I don’t think we should call the Double I’s in. It would be premature, and it just might backfire.”
She nodded. “That’s exactly why I wanted to talk to you about it, Detective Beaumont. I figured if anybody could give me the benefit of the long view, it was you.”
I’m sure Sue Danielson meant her comment as a compliment-at least I think she did-but there’s a certain amount of ego damage that goes along with being considered the ancient, all-knowing, and time-honored dispenser of the long view. When she offered to buy my coffee, I let her, and I left the restaurant feeling more butt-sprung than ever.
We walked back to the Public Safety Building together. Sue headed for CCI while I went back to my little cubicle in Homicide. Big Al was gone, giving me some working peace and quiet for a change. I was just getting a good start on the Emma Jackson report when the phone rang. It was Sue. I could tell from the sound of her voice that something was seriously wrong.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Meet me on the eleventh floor,” she answered tersely. “We’re going to IIS for sure, now, and I do mean now. I tried to get hold of Kramer to tell him, but he’s not around, and neither is Watty. I don’t think we should sit on this any longer. It’s too important.”
“For Christ’s sake, Sue, tell me what’s happening?”
“I had to jump through all kinds of hoops, but I finally got Ben Weston’s password and current verification question from the only person who supposedly has it, Kyle Lehman, the department’s computer systems operator. Captain Nichols, the head of CCI, woke him out of a sound sleep to do it. We logged into Ben’s directory on the computer just a few minutes ago.”
I didn’t like the way she verbally underlined the word “supposedly.” “And?” I prompted.
“Between one forty-five and two-fifteen on the morning of April fifteenth, all but two of the files in Ben Weston’s directory were opened and closed.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that within hours of Ben Weston’s death, someone went through his secured computer directory in CCI. The directory shows log-on and log-off times. In each case the file was open for less than a minute.”
“Was anything changed?”
“I don’t think so.”
“But someone was looking for something.”
“Someone inside Seattle PD was looking for something,” Sue Danielson corrected. “You know yourself. The computer operates on a secured system. You don’t get into it without having the proper passwords as well as coming up with all the right answers to the verifying questions.”
“What do you suppose they were looking for?” I asked.
“And did they find it?” Sue added.
Of course, that changed everything. If someone had tampered with Ben Weston’s files on a secured computer system located in the Public Safety Building within hours of his murder, then it was definitely time for someone to pay a visit to Internal Investigations. High time.
“You’re absolutely right, Sue,” I said. “See you on the eleventh floor just as soon as that damned slow-boat-to-China elevator can get us there.”
CHAPTER 15
In my opinion, the internal investigations Section is a whole lot like a plumber’s friend-one of life’s necessary evils. A bathroom plunger isn’t something you’re particularly proud of owning. You don’t wave it around and brag about it, but when you need one, there’s nothing in the world quite like it. As circling water rises ominously and inevitably toward the rim of a backed-up toilet bowl, you’re usually damned grateful to have one in your hand.
I wasn’t ready to brag about IIS, but knowing that in the aftermath of Ben’s murder someone inside the Seattle Police Department had gained unauthorized access to his computer files made me more than ready to go see them. Sue Danielson, still too new at the Detective Division to have rotated in and out of IIS, was edgy about the entire process. I, on the other hand, had done a couple of stints in IIS over the years. Once again, I was able to offer some moral support from that dubiously gratifying vantage point-the long view.
“It’s not really an us-and-them situation, you know,” I counseled, once we met in the elevator lobby on the eleventh floor. “As a detective, you’ll find yourself assigned to work up here from time to time. These folks are mostly just a bunch of regular guys, especially Tony Freeman.”
Sue shot me a skeptical glance. “They may all be regular,” she countered, “but I still can’t see myself ever wanting to join them.”
Because IIS is a secured area, we had to stop at the reception desk and log in. “I’m Detective Beaumont,” I said to the young woman sitting there. “And this is Detective Danielson from Homicide. We’re here to talk to whoever’s handling Ben Weston’s case.”
There must be something about the set of my eyes and nose, or maybe it’s the way I comb my hair that brings out the worst in receptionists everywhere. This one was no exception. Busy filing a broken nail, she seemed only vaguely interested in what I had to say.
“Do you have an appointment?” she asked.
I smiled back at her, one of those long-view smiles. “We work in Homicide,” I told her. “It’s hard to schedule those a week or so in advance. Can you tell me if someone in IIS has been assigned to work on the Weston case?”
“I’m not allowed to give out that kind of information.”
“Who is?”
“Captain Freeman.”
“Can we see him?”
She glanced pointedly behind her at the door with its number-coded lock. A red light glowed above it, announcing to those outside that the room was occupied and no one was to enter without Captain Freeman’s express permission. “He’s with someone right now,” the receptionist replied curtly, “and it’s already after four. Maybe you could come back tomorrow morning.”
“Maybe we’ll wait,” I said. “In fact, I’m sure of it.”
I motioned Sue into a chair and took one myself. It’s the kind of
passive/aggressive resistance that universally drives receptionists crazy. This one flushed angrily and slammed the nail file into the top drawer of her desk. She picked up the phone and pounded the keypad.
“Captain Freeman? There are two detectives from Homicide out here. They want to talk to someone about the Weston case. Should they wait, or should I have them come back later?”
After listening for a moment, she nodded. “All right. I’ll tell them.” Putting down the phone, she allowed grudgingly, “You can wait, but it may be some time.”
We must have cooled our heels for a good half hour before the light went off and the inner door clicked open. Captain Anthony Freeman, the tall, ramrod-straight commander of IIS, ushered a young black woman out of his office. She was five six or so and slender, wearing one of those tight, ankle-fitting getups we used to call toreador pants. She wore a red windbreaker with the word “Powerized” printed on the back. Her hair hung down in a mane of shoulder-length, pencil-thin braids. She carried a large leather purse which she held up to her face as they slipped past us, effectively obscuring her features from our view.
Captain Freeman hustled her into the elevator. Only when she was safely inside the elevator and totally out of sight did he stop to shake her hand. “Thank you so much for coming in,” he said to her. “You can be sure we’ll get on this right away.”
There was a murmured but inaudible reply, then Freeman stepped back and the elevator door glided shut.
Who’s this mystery lady? I wondered. She must have had something to do with Ben Weston’s case, or they both wouldn’t have been so concerned about Sue and me not being able to identify her later. Whoever she was, she was important enough that Captain Freeman himself, the head honcho of IIS, rather than one of his investigative underlings, was dealing with her directly.
Now, though, Freeman turned his full attention on us. He came back to where we were sitting. “Won’t you come in,” he said graciously, as though inviting welcome guests into his own personal living room.
For someone used to the dingy municipal appointments of the rest of the Public Safety Building, IIS can be a real shock to the system. Just to give some scale of value, let me point out that Captain Powell’s fishbowl office on the fifth floor has zero windows to the outside world. Tony Freeman has two. Powell conducts his business in his cramped office where everyone who walks by has a clear view of everything that goes on at his desk. Freeman’s interviewees are hidden from view beyond that daunting security door with its electronically controlled lock.
