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.