WITH JUNIOR SAFELY ON HIS WAY TO HIS grandfather’s house, Big Al and I headed back toward the Weston family home in Rainier Valley. Without lights and sirens, it’s a ten-minute drive from downtown. For a good part of that time we were both pretty quiet. Big Al finally broke the silence.
“What do you think?” he asked. “Was Ben the real target, or is the killer somebody with a grudge against every cop in the known universe, and Ben was just a stand-in?”
That in a nutshell was the crux of the matter. Should the investigation head off after every crazy who had ever voiced a grudge against the Seattle PD? Regardless, I knew we’d go searching through Ben Weston’s catalog of past and present acquaintances both on and off the job. The problem was, Gentle Ben Weston hadn’t been given that moniker for being some kind of bad-ass cop. The last I heard, he had been working a desk job in Patrol. Of all the possible jobs in the department, a desk position in Patrol seemed least likely to create long-term, homicidal-type grudges.
“What would somebody have against a guy like Ben?” I asked. “I can understand how a crook might build up this kind of rage against somebody in Homicide or Vice, but why have such a hard-on for a poor, pen-pushing desk jockey from Patrol?”
“He wasn’t in Patrol,” Big Al returned quietly, “not anymore.”
“That’s news to me. Since when?”
Lindstrom shrugged. “Six months? A little longer, maybe. Don’t you remember? He took a voluntary downgrade and transfer into CCI.”
In Seattle PD jargon, CCI translates into Coordinated Criminal Investigations. In departmental politics, it’s currently synonymous with hot potato. CCI started out as the unit nobody wanted to have, doing the dirty work with gangs that no one across the street in City Hall wanted to admit needed doing. CCI’s desirability waxes and wanes, depending on the fickle barometer of public relations.
In the past few years, Seattle has received a lot of good press and has turned up on more than one “most livable city” list. Livable cities evidently exist in some kind of fantasy world, and they’re not supposed to have any problems, most especially not gang problems. For years the brass upstairs wallowed in denial despite reported gang-type shootings that came in as regularly as One-A-Day vitamins. When other cities started gang units, Seattle didn’t because starting a unit would have meant admitting it had the problem. When a new unit was finally created, it was given the innocuous and hence less threatening name of Coordinated Criminal Investigations.
A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but CCI’s whole purpose is to combat gang-related criminal activity, a problem the city still isn’t wild about acknowledging. Not surprisingly, the guys in CCI don’t always get a whole lot of respect, and a posting to that unit isn’t regarded as a plum assignment. If Ben Weston had taken a voluntary downgrade and transfer from patrol supervision to a lower position as a CCI investigator, it was as good as admitting that his career path was way off track and in a downward spiral.
“When did all that happen?” I asked. “I don’t remember hearing anything about it.”
“There was plenty of talk at the time,” Big Al answered. “Maybe it was while you were down in Arizona.”
Any number of things had slipped by me the previous fall when I spent the better part of two months in doctor-ordered attendance at an alcoholism treatment center near Wickenburg. In the world of work, two months is a considerable period of time. Most departmental gossip doesn’t have a two-month-long shelf life. Talk about Ben Weston had evidently run its course well before I came back to work.
“That’s probably when it happened, all right,” I admitted. “Nobody said word one to me.”
“There was quite a stink about it,” Big Al said, “with all the usual crap about how he got as far as he did because of quotas and affirmative action and not because he was any good at what he did. Some people claimed Ben couldn’t measure up in Patrol and that he transferred out before they caught on to him.”
Big Al had known Gentle Ben Weston far better than anyone else in the department. If anyone knew the truth of that matter, he would. “What do you say?” I asked.
There was another pause, longer this time. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “I just don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“His transferring didn’t make any sense to me. He was already on the promotion list for lieutenant, but one day for no good reason he just up and says piss on the whole damn thing. Even took a cut in pay because there were no openings at his level. What kind of crazy idea is that with a wife and three kids to support?”
“Did you talk to him about it? Did you ask him why?”
“He told me he had to.”
“That’s all he said?”
“That’s it.”
As he answered, Big Al turned off Genesee onto Cascadia and into Ben Weston’s immediate neighborhood. The surrounding streets were still jammed with law enforcement vehicles. Adding to these were the media’s multiplicity of transportation. We had to park and walk from almost two blocks away. Naturally, someone recognized us, and a group of reporters attached themselves to us like so many hungry leeches, snapping pictures of our backsides and shouting questions behind us.
Maybe familiarity breeds contempt, but most reporters remind me of demanding two-year-olds. No matter how often you tell them you aren’t allowed to comment on current investigations, they can’t remember it from one time to the next. They still ask the same damn stupid questions. Or, if by chance you do screw up and answer, someone else will ask the same thing over again two minutes later as though they had turned stone-cold deaf the first time you answered.
On this occasion neither Big Al nor I said a word. I was looking forward to ditching the reporters and getting on with the investigation right up until I saw Detective Paul Kramer standing next to the door on Ben Weston’s front porch, talking earnestly to Officers Dunn and Wyman.
“Where’d he come from?” I asked.
Big Al sighed. “Out from under a rock,” he answered.
Kramer caught sight of us about then. “There you are. Captain Powell sent me out here to snag you when you came back. There’ll be a task force meeting starting in five minutes in the Mobile Command Post van in the alley out back. He wants you two there along with everybody else.”
“Task force?” I asked. “What task force?”
He looked at me and grinned. “This is a big case, Beaumont. You didn’t think you and that square-head partner of yours would get to run the whole show, did you? Come on. Get a move on. Powell wants to talk to both of you before the actual meeting starts.”
Kramer motioned for us to follow him and started away without seeing the look of undiluted rage that washed across Detective Lindstrom’s face. By and large, Al isn’t the excitable type. I would say he’s even-tempered and fairly slow to anger, but Kramer’s little byplay had an amazing effect that brought Big Al straight to the boiling point. He strode after Kramer, caught him by one arm, and spun him around.
“Get one thing straight, bub,” Big Al said without raising his voice. “It’s no show! A good man is dead along with most of his family. If you think that’s a show, then you can kiss my ass!”
The kind of menace in Big Al’s voice usually comes from someone holding the business end of a loaded weapon. Kramer’s jaw dropped. “Sorry,” he said, with only the slightest hint of sarcastic exaggeration.
“You’d oughta be,” Big Al returned coldly. “Now take us to Captain Powell.”
For a moment the two men stood staring at one another, and I was afraid they were going to mix it up physically. If anyone tried to break up that confrontation, the guy in the middle would get the short end of it. Finally, Kramer dropped his eyes and started away while I breathed a quick sigh of relief. The incident startled me every bit as much as it did Detective Kramer.
I had worked with Big Al off and on for several years without ever seeing him fly off the handle that way. I wondered if this wasn’t the kind of thing Captain Powell meant when he had threatened to pull Big Al from Ben Weston’s case. If the captain got even the slightest wind of it, he wouldn’t hesitate to make good his threat.
“You’d better cool it before Powell sees you,” I suggested. “You know what he said.”
“I know very well what he said,” Big Al replied, “but if that bastard Kramer so much as looks at me sideways, I’ll knock his block off.”
What was it Simon and Garfunkel used to say about bridging troubled waters?
“Besides, you know that’s the whole idea anyway, don’t you?” Big Al continued.
“What’s the whole idea? What are you talking about?”
“You heard him—the task force. Powell’s already figured out a way to pull me off the case. If they’re going to turn this into a task force operation, it’ll be nothing more than a group grope. You know how those work. People run around like so many chickens with their heads cut off getting in each other’s way. It’ll be impossible to get anything done.”
I knew Big Al was right. Task forces are notoriously inefficient and cumbersome, but they sound good on paper, make for better public relations, and that was something Seattle’s new police chief needed desperately.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go. The captain’s waiting.”
But Big Al stood without moving, seemingly lost in thought.
“We’d better get going,” I urged again.
Big Al Lindstrom seemed to shake himself out of some kind of trance. “You go on ahead,” he said, waving me away. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
He turned his back and lumbered off in the opposite direction. “Hey, wait a minute. Where are you going?”
“If he’s going to pull me, I want to go back for one more look. I might’ve missed something important.”
I let him go. For one thing, Big Al is bigger than I am, and there was nothing I could do to stop him. For another, I figured it was probably wise for him to give himself a few cool-down moments before facing either Detective Kramer or Captain Powell.
“Don’t take too long,” I cautioned.
I headed for the Mobile Command Post in the alley. It’s nothing more than a glorified RV that once belonged to a snowbird drug dealer whose delivery route consisted of driving up and down the I-5 corridor. He had a well-heeled clientele that stretched all the way from Canada to Mexico, and he sold drugs in RV parks from the back of a very upscale Winnebago. When a Seattle narcotics unit got lucky and busted him in a parking lot near Northgate, the dealer went off for a stretch in Monroe. The Winnebago, already equipped with a tantalizing array of electronics gear, switched sides and came to work for the Seattle Police Department.
Janice Morraine, a criminalist who’s worked her way up to second in command in George Yamamoto’s crime lab, was standing outside, smoking a cigarette. Despite insistent warnings from the Surgeon General and despite state laws outlawing smoking on the job, Janice continues to chain-smoke. “Don’t go inside any sooner than you have to,” she warned. “It’s a sardine can.”
“How many people are in there?”
“More than should be. It’s like Noah’s ark except only the Homicide dicks come two by two. One each from everywhere else.”
“Sounds great.”
Janice Morraine nodded. “That’s what I thought. There’s nothing like a middle-of-the-night meeting to keep everybody from getting the job done,” she grumbled. “I should be back in the house working, not out here cooling my heels.”
She stood up on tiptoe and peered over my shoulder. “By the way, where’s Detective Lindstrom? As I understand it, we’re all waiting for you two to show up.”
“He’ll be here in a minute. I’d better go tell the captain.”
Leaving her alone with only her glowing cigarette for company, I forced my way into the press of people crammed into the RV. Winnebagos may be spacious enough for some little old retired couple traveling the highways and byways to visit their grandkids, but this one was far too small for the group Captain Powell had assembled. People stood shoulder to shoulder.
Powell glanced up at me briefly as I opened the door and worked my way inside. “Where’s Detective Lindstrom?” he asked.
“Making a pit stop.” That sounded plausible enough. “He’ll be here in a minute.”
Kramer cleared his throat, but I ignored him and so did Powell. “We’ll start as soon as he gets here,” the captain said.
I glanced around the room and discovered quite a gathering. Captain Powell edged his way back into the crowd, where he huddled in a hushed consultation with Captain Norman Nichols, the young, newly appointed head of CCI. With them was Lieutenant Lea Dunkirk, a special projects liaison officer who works directly out of the chief’s office. Nearby but not part of the quiet conversation were several others, among them Dr. Mike Wilson, one of Doc Baker’s special assistants, and Lieutenant Gilbert McNamara, the ranking officer in Media Relations.
In the background I saw a collection of several somber Homicide detectives—Manny Davis; his partner, Ray Chong; Sue Danielson, whose great misfortune it was to be Paul Kramer’s newest partner; and, of course, Kramer himself, who stood with his arms folded smugly across his chest. He glowered in my direction as if to say it was all my fault that Big Al Lindstrom still hadn’t answered his summons.
I had started to work my way over to the detectives when the door opened. Ducking to keep from hitting his head on the metal doorframe, Big Al inched his way inside while Janice Morraine squeezed in behind him. Al seemed to have regrouped, to have gotten himself back under control.
“Sorry I’m late, Captain,” he mumbled to Powell, who nodded.
“That’s okay. We’ll go ahead and get started now. Does everybody here know each other?”
We all looked around, checking faces. Detective Danielson, a recent transfer to Homicide from Sexual Assault, was new to the unit, but not to the department. Everyone else was pretty much a known quantity.
“Good,” Powell continued, “I’ll make this quick. As of now, you are all, with the exception of Detective Lindstrom, part of what will be known as the Weston Family Task Force. For the time being and until further notice, each of you is assigned to this case on a full-time basis. All direct contact with the media is strictly prohibited. Information on this case is to be filtered through Lieutenant McNamara here or one of the other Media Relations officers. All of it. Do I make myself clear?”
We all nodded. It was business as usual only more so.
“What about me?” Big Al interjected.
“I’m coming to that, Al. Detectives Beaumont and Lindstrom were the ones originally assigned to this case, but due to the identity of the victims, and since Detective Lindstrom especially has very close personal connections to the Weston family, we’ve been forced to make some changes in assignments. Detective Beaumont will still be officially assigned to the case, but his area of responsibility will focus primarily on the second boy—John Doe for now, a victim who is evidently not a part of the Weston family proper.”
“Wait a minute…” Big Al began, but Powell silenced him with an impatient wave of his hand.
“Obviously, this case will be conducted under intense media and public scrutiny. We can’t afford any screwups or any appearance of ignoring due process. Everyone in this room knows that as soon as a police officer is killed, there’s an automatic assumption among the media and among the population at large that the entire department turns into a bloodthirsty vigilante committee. Considering your personal relationship with Ben, Detective Lindstrom, I’m sure you can understand why I deem it necessary to remove you from the case. It’s no reflection on your professionalism, Al, but you’ll be assigned alternate duty for the time being. Any questions?”
If Big Al had questions, he wasn’t able to voice them. His face flushed a brilliant red from the top of his shirt collar to the roots of his hair while an incredible array of emotions marched in rapid succession across his broad features.
“No…sir,” he stammered at last. “Can I go now?”
“Sure,” Powell returned sympathetically. “That’s probably a good idea. Take the rest of the day off too, why don’t you, Al. Get some rest. I’ll be in touch with you tomorrow.”
To the captain’s credit, I knew he had wanted to speak with Big Al prior to the meeting. A private conference in advance might have spared the detective the public humiliation of being pulled from the case in a roomful of his peers. By coming late, Big Al himself had robbed Captain Powell of any more diplomatic alternative.
Without another word, Big Al stalked out into the night, slamming the flimsy metal door behind him. The rest of us waited in uncomfortable silence. I don’t think there was anyone in the room, with the possible exception of Paul Kramer, who thought Captain Powell was doing the wrong thing, but we all wished it hadn’t come down quite the way it had.
Kramer started to make some off-the-wall comment, but Captain Powell’s reprimanding stare shut him up. “As for task force organization,” Powell continued, “With this many victims, we’re going to need a clearinghouse for personnel and reports both. Sergeant Watkins from Homicide will be taking over as director. He will be assisted by Detective Kramer, who has in the past shown a certain facility for organization and reports. Detective Kramer will work directly under Sergeant Watkins and help delegate assignments.
“We want this thing handled, people. We want it handled right, and we want it done soon. Any questions?”
Paul Kramer favored me with the smallest of smirks. It was lucky for him that Big Al Lindstrom had already left the room.