“You can’t come in here,” I called. “It’s off limits.”
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I’m a police officer.”
“Oh,” he said. “Good. You’re just who I’m looking for.” With that he ignored what I had said, stepped easily over the tape, and came on into the yard anyway.
Knees creaking, heels yelping in pain, I got up and limped forward to head him off. “I tell you, you can’t come in here. Who are you?”
When he stopped next to me, I realized he dwarfed me. He held out his hand. “Johnson,” he said. “Carl Johnson. I’m the principal of McClure Middle School.”
If I hadn’t been two thirds brain-dead, I would have made the connection without him having to draw me a picture, but I was too slow on the uptake.
“Douglas Weston attends my school,” he explained. “One of my parents called me at home and told me something had happened, that police cars had been here during the night. I’m always concerned about anything that affects one of my children, so I came by to see if I could be of any help. What’s going on?”
For a moment, I didn’t know whether to hug the man or what. His appearance was an answer to a prayer. “Do you happen to know how to get hold of Adam Jackson’s mother?”
“Adam? He’s here too?”
I nodded. Carl Johnson frowned. “I don’t know her number right off the bat, but I’m sure I could get it for you from the office. If Adam spent the night here, it probably means she’s on call.”
“On call?”
“Emma Jackson is doing her residency with University Hospital. She told me about it at the beginning of the year. She has trouble getting a sitter for those thirty-six-hour shifts, so Adam often spends the night with the Westons. You still haven’t told me what’s going on.”
I reached in my pocket and pulled out a card. He read it, then met my eyes over the top of the card. “This says Homicide.” I nodded. “Has someone been killed?”
“Several people,” I answered quietly. “Maybe you’d better have a seat here on the porch so I can tell you about what happened.”
Carl Johnson shed real tears when I told him, but he jumped up as soon as I finished. “I’d better get back to school,” he said urgently. “I need to alert the faculty and the counselors. The district has a team of people who come in to help in situations like this, but I’d better hurry. I want to be there when word gets out.”
He started away, then stopped and turned back. “Where will you be?” he asked. “I’ll call you with Emma Jackson’s phone number as soon as I get back to my office.”
I gave him my home number. “I’m going to race home, take a shower, and change clothes. It’ll only take a few minutes. If there’s no answer, leave the number on my machine, but please don’t make any effort to contact Emma until after I do.”
“Of course,” Carl Johnson agreed. “I wouldn’t think of it.”
“And I’d appreciate it if you’d hold off making any kind of official announcement, again at least until after I get in touch with her.”
“You’ll let me know?”
“Yes,” I said. “Go ahead and start gathering up the people you need. Just don’t give out any names until you get an official go-ahead.”
“Right,” he said. “I understand.”
Carl Johnson strode away from me, his broad shoulders straight, his chin set. Again he stepped over the yellow tape. His ancient Beamer sputtered and backfired before he was able to start it on the third try.
Educators like him seem to be rare these days-old-time teachers who put kids first and everything else second. From the looks of the car he drove, making money sure as hell wasn’t Carl Johnson’s first priority. No matter what the salary schedule, we’ll never be able to pay the Carl Johnsons of this world a fraction of what they’re worth.
Janice Morraine came out on the porch just as Carl was driving away, his car coughing and choking. “Who was that?” she asked.
“His name’s Carl Johnson,” I told her, “and he’s a national treasure.”
She leveled a hard stare at me, as though I were some kind of raving maniac. “You don’t seem to have a car here. Would you like a ride back downtown?” Detective Kramer had taken off while I was dealing with Carl Johnson, and only now did it occur to me that I was totally without transportation.
Considering my previous behavior, I was a little surprised Janice Morraine made the offer. Maybe the fact that someone almost killed me had softened her bony little heart. “I’d appreciate it,” I said, meaning every word. “So would my bone spurs.”
“It won’t take much longer,” she said. “I’ve got one more load of gear to take out to the van.”
She turned down my offer of help with the loading. While waiting for her to finish stowing equipment in her state-owned Aerostar, I stood off to one side and thought about Paul Kramer’s questions. It seemed unlikely to me that anyone so apparently inoffensive as Gentle Ben Weston would have two entirely different sets of enemies out to kill him, both on the same night. I suffer from the homicide detective’s natural aversion to coincidences, and two entirely separate murder plots at once was a bit of a stretch. That being the case, then the second scenario was far more likely-a vicious murderer was out to do in any number of Seattle’s finest and their families as well.
Which brought me abruptly to the question of why me? Out of the fifteen hundred or so police officers in the city of Seattle, why had the gunman shot at me? It seemed likely that fate alone had cast me as a potential victim since Simmons, the officer left guarding the front door, would have been far more likely to open it.
I remembered how we had sprinted down the sidewalk after the gunman’s car disappearing in the early-morning darkness. Almost all the law enforcement vehicles in the neighborhood had been gone by then, and the crime scene tape had not yet been strung across the gate. If it had been, Simmons, Deddens, or I would have stumbled over it in our race to the car. With that in mind, it was conceivable, then, that whoever did the shooting still believed that Ben Weston was the only possible person who would open his own door at that ungodly hour of the morning.
Which brought me full circle and right back to Ben being the target of two totally separate murder plots at the same time-unless, as Janice Morraine had suggested, the killer really was a cop who knew full well that Ben Weston was already dead, who understood exactly what was going on, who had an accurate count of who was still inside the house, and who could make a pretty good guess which of those was most likely to open the door.
Around and around I went, my thoughts chasing themselves like so many stupid dogs, endlessly pursuing their own tails.
Janice Morraine climbed into the van and started the engine while I jolted myself out of my reverie and settled into the rider’s seat. “Where to?” she asked. “The department?”
“Sure. That’s fine. I need to pick up a car.”
We drove in silence for a few blocks. “Sorry about tonight,” I said. “I was out of line.”
“We were all tired,” she returned. “When people are running on nerves like that, you can’t expect everyone to be on their very best behavior.”
“You may be right,” I said quietly. “Not about Big Al, but about the murderer being a cop out to kill other cops.”
“Forget it,” she said. “I’ve changed my mind about that, too.”
“You have?”
“We found six Flex-cufs in Ben Weston’s nightstand drawer and two in the kitchen. Maybe he was collecting them. God knows how many others he had stashed here and there around the house, but a cop wouldn’t have made all the mistakes.”
“What mistakes?”
“The footprints, for one thing. If we once find that pair of shoes, believe me, we won’t have any trouble matching them up. And the hair for another.”
“The hair stuck between Shiree Western’s fingers?”
She nodded. “That’s right. Any cop in his right mind would have noticed and had brains enough to get rid of those.”