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.
Inside, Freeman’s digs are almost spacious, with an “art in public places” piece-one of the less-controversial ones-that covers most of one wall. The Scandinavian teak furnishings themselves may not qualify at the corporate executive level, but they’re a whole lot better than the Spartan green metal stuff down in Homicide.
Once we stepped inside the room, the lock clicked home and Freeman paused long enough to flip on the switch to the red light. Evidently we were not to be disturbed. Then he hurried over to his desk and turned over the top page of the yellow pad that was lying there before straightening up and looking us in the eye. He proffered his hand.
“Hello there, Detective Beaumont. Good to see you again.” He shook my hand and then turned to Sue. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”
“Detective Danielson,” she said quickly, returning his handshake. “Sue.” He nodded back at her and sat down behind the desk.
Captain Anthony Freeman is as straight a straight arrow as they come. As Seattle PD’s designated Eagle Scout, Freeman has the spit-and-polish look of the military about him. Prematurely bald but with a fringe of reddish hair and a matching bottle-brush mustache, he inarguably counts as one of the good guys. You don’t get to be Camp Fire’s Man of the Year two years in a row without making some contribution to the community at large, but he’s no pushover either. Despite twenty-two years on the force, he still manages to maintain some of his youthful illusions, but anyone who’s broken the rules will tell you that he’s hell on wheels when it comes to crooked cops.
He motioned the two of us into chairs. “What can I do for you today?” he asked. “Connie said you wanted to talk to someone about Ben Weston.”
Sue glanced briefly in my direction, as though appealing for help, but then she launched off into it on her own anyway. “We’ve just learned something very disturbing, Captain Freeman. Detective Beaumont and I both thought it necessary to bring it directly to your attention.”
“The two of you are on the Weston Family Task Force, aren’t you?” Freeman asked. “I believe I remember seeing both your names in the set of reports I’ve been given.”
Sue nodded. “Detective Beaumont is assigned to the Adam Jackson part of the investigation. Since my regular partner, Detective Kramer, is helping Sergeant Watkins run the entire operation, I’ve been pitching in wherever needed.”
Freeman nodded. “Before you begin, let me ask you a question, Detective Danielson. Has whatever it is you’ve learned, whatever you’ve come here to tell me, been brought to the attention of either Sergeant Watkins or Detective Kramer or some other member of the task force?”
“I mentioned some of it to Detective Kramer earlier today, but I haven’t written an official report yet. I haven’t had time. The other, the part we found out just a few minutes ago, we haven’t told anybody. As I said, we came directly here.”
“Good,” Captain Freeman said, nodding thoughtfully. “Now, go on.”
Sue hesitated. “Is Internal Investigations conducting its own Ben Weston inquiry?”
“I’m not at liberty to say at the moment,” Anthony Freeman replied. “Considering everything that’s happened in the past few days, it would certainly be reasonable to assume that we were; and whether or not we are, I’d be most interested in hearing whatever it is you have to say.”
I hadn’t warned Detective Danielson about that aggravating aspect of dealing with Tony Freeman. Talking to him is often like dropping so many pebbles into a deep, dark well-a lot may go in, but not much comes back out. Sue didn’t catch on to that right away.
“Were you conducting one earlier, before Ben Weston died?”
“Detective Danielson, I can tell you that as of now, Ben Weston is definitely a person of interest as far as this office is concerned. Not his murder, since that is already being handled by you down in Homicide, but certainly his other activities. We’re trying to understand what exactly went on, whether or not there was any criminal activity involved, and whether or not there were any other Seattle PD personnel involved as well. As you know, our usual procedure is to investigate allegations of wrongdoing on the part of departmental personnel. If we find evidence to back up those allegations, the inquiry is turned over to the proper squad for further investigation as well as for the filing of charges should that prove necessary.”
“You say ”as of now,“ Captain Freeman, but I was asking about earlier,” Sue insisted. “Were you or any of your people conducting an investigation of Ben Weston prior to his death?”
“No, we were not.”
“You’re sure no one from your office had Ben Weston under surveillance?”
“Absolutely.”
“Somebody from Seattle PD did,” Sue Danielson said quietly.
“Who?” Freeman demanded.
“We were hoping you could tell us. Actually, we were hoping it might be someone from here.”
“What kind of surveillance are you talking about?”
Sue took a deep breath. “We have a witness who tells us that a Seattle PD blue-and-white with a single- occupant driver was seen cruising Ben Weston’s neighborhood regularly in the early-morning hours in the weeks preceding the murders.”
“Always the same car and driver?” Freeman asked.
“Maybe not the same car, but always the same driver, and always in close proximity to Ben Weston’s house.”
Freeman picked up his pen and started making notes. “Who’s the witness?” he asked sharply.
“A paperboy,” Sue answered.
“Does he have something to gain by making the police department look bad?”
“I can’t see how. He’s just a high school kid, and he was scared to death to come forward. His mother forced the issue. If he had been left to his own devices, I don’t think we would have heard from him.”
“Have you checked with Patrol?” Freeman asked.
Sue shook her head. “Not yet, but my understanding is that Patrol doesn’t send out single officers at that time of the night, and, to my knowledge, none of the other units told the task force about the existence of a prior surveillance. That’s why we thought it might be someone from here, one of your people.”
“A single occupant in a patrol car on the graveyard shift,” Captain Freeman mused thoughtfully, as though speaking to himself. “That does narrow it down, doesn’t it?”
“That’s not all,” Sue said grimly.
“What else?”
“A little while ago Detective Beaumont suggested to me that maybe we should look into the project Ben Weston had been working on for Coordinated Criminal Investigations.”
