show.
“We have a slight advantage,” he said, “in that no one on the task force, other than Detectives Beaumont and Danielson, has any knowledge that we’ve been tipped off. As I mentioned before, it’s possible that one of the crooks is actually connected to the task force operation. We’ll have a much better chance of nabbing him if I don’t have to send up a red flag by transferring in one of the current crop of IIS investigators.”
“If you ask me, that’s not any advantage at all,” I put in. “We got our information from the street, so chances are the crooks will too. Informant loyalty always goes to the highest bidder. What’s to keep the beans from getting spilled in the other direction?”
Freeman considered for a moment before replying. “I guess we’ll just have to see to it that the information that’s on the street, including some of the information that goes through the task force itself, is wrong information.”
Sue Danielson had listened quietly to this exchange. Now, she spoke up. “That’s fine as far as it goes, but what about the boy?” she asked.
“What boy?”
“Junior Weston. He’s an eyewitness. To my knowledge, he’s the only one who can possibly identify the killer. Everyone who attended the task force meeting this morning knows Junior was moved from his grandfather’s house to Reverend Walters’s home. If someone on the task force…”
She didn’t complete the sentence, and she didn’t have to. Her words landed another haymaker in the pit of my stomach. Thanks to me, Junior Weston was still at risk and so were Reverend Homer and Francine Walters. I personally had come up with the brilliant idea of having him stay there.
I started out of my chair, determined to take some kind of precautionary action.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Freeman demanded.
“To call Reverend Walters, to warn him.”
“No,” Captain Freeman said.
“No?” I yelped. “What do you mean, no? People’s lives are at stake.”
Freeman’s calm eyes met mine and held them. “I’m well aware of that, Detective Beaumont. Sit down and tell me about your partner.”
“My partner. About Big Al? You know Big Al Lindstrom, Tony. You know him as well as I do.”
“My understanding is that he was removed from the case by Captain Powell here. Is that true?”
Captain Powell himself started to interject something, but Tony Freeman waved him to silence. “I was asking Detective Beaumont,” he said. “Tell me what you personally know about Detective Lindstrom being removed from the case.”
“Ben Weston and Big Al were friends, damnit. Good friends. I guess Captain Powell thought there might be a potential conflict of interest if Allen was investigating the case, that emotion might cloud his judgment.”
“Would it?” Freeman asked.
“I don’t think so. He’s the one who found Junior Weston hiding in the linen closet after the murders were discovered, and he did a hell of a job interviewing that little kid, of getting him to remember what he saw, of helping him open up and talk to us about it. You should have been there.”
“I wasn’t. Were you?”
I was fast losing patience. “What is it you want me to tell you? Are you asking me if I think Big Al is one of the crooked cops? Are you asking me if I think he did it? The answer is no, absolutely not, no way. I’d stake my life on it.”
“Would you stake Junior Weston’s life on it?”
Like any good investigator, Captain Freeman doesn’t ask questions if he doesn’t have a pretty damn good idea what the answers will be. Questions for him are always a means to a specific end, not a device for use in casual conversation. It took until then before I realized where his questions were going, what he was really asking.
“It’s risky as hell,” I said. “For all concerned, but, yes, I’d bet Junior’s life on Big Al Lindstrom in a minute.”
“Do you think he’d do it?”
“Damned right he would!”
Captain Freeman picked up his phone. “What’s his number? We’ll call him up and ask.”
Freeman waited with his finger poised over the number pad while my mind went totally blank. I couldn’t remember my own phone number right then to say nothing of Big Al Lindstrom’s.
“Just a second here,” Sue Danielson interrupted. “I don’t understand. What’s going on?”
“Seven eight five…” I started.
Now Captain Powell leaped into the fray. “Wait a minute. You can’t pull Detective Lindstrom back into all this. I already threw him off the case.”
Freeman put the phone down. “That’s exactly why I want him,” he returned mildly. “Because he’s off the case. No one’s going to think of him as a source of information. I asked Detective Beaumont for his opinion, but I happen to be of the same mind. I know Allen Lindstrom, have known him for a long time. Of all the people at Seattle PD right now, if I can only have one cop to guard Junior Weston, Big Al Lindstrom is the one I want.”
“Who said you can only have one, Captain Freeman?” chimed in Chief Rankin. “You can have as many as you want. All you have to do is ask.”
“Remember what I told you? This is going to be a limited incision,” Freeman reminded them, “an operation conducted with limited assets. If Big Al Lindstrom is the one guard on duty, one will be more than enough. I’m going to dial his number now and put you on the phone, Beau. Tell him you’ve just started worrying about Junior and ask him if he’d mind doing something about it overnight, unofficially, as a favor to you, but armed and with a bulletproof vest. We can take care of paying him overtime for it later, right, Larry?”
Captain Powell nodded glumly. “Right,” he said.
“Now what was that number?”
I gave it to him. In the intervening seconds, it had miraculously reappeared from my memory bank. When Freeman finished dialing, he handed the phone over to me. There’s an old Ogden Nash poem that says something about how one becomes a capable liar. If ever I wanted to be proficient at lying, this was it.
Molly Lindstrom answered the phone. “Is Al there?” I asked innocently.
“He is,” she said, “but he’s not feeling so good. He said he was going straight to bed.”
I heard the wariness in her voice, understood her wanting to protect her husband from any further hurt. “Get him up, Molly. He’ll want to talk to me.”
She slammed the phone down on the table. It was several long minutes before Big Al came on the line. In the interim, no one in Captain Freeman’s office said a word.
“ ‘Lo, Beau,” Big Al said finally. “Whaddya want?”
“I’m worried about Junior,” I said.
“Junior? What’s the matter with him?”
I heard Big Al snap to attention. It wasn’t necessary to lie. All I had to do was express my own legitimate worries and let Detective Lindstrom draw his own conclusions.
“He’s still our only eyewitness,” I said. “What if the killer hears where he is somehow and tries to take him out? I just realized everyone at the task force meeting knows where the boy is staying. If one of them happened to make a slip in front of the wrong person…”
“Gotcha,” Big Al said. “Ja sure you betcha. I can be there in twenty minutes flat. Does Kramer know anything about this?”
“Are you kidding? That schmuck would shit a brick if he even suspected I was talking to you about it.”
“Don’t tell him then,” Big Al said. “I’m on my way in my own car on my own time. No one needs to know about this but you and me.”
“By the way, Al, do me a favor. Wear your armor.”
“Right, Beau. And don’t you take yours off, either.”
He hung up and so did I. In the meantime, Kyle Lehman had rolled his apple core up in the empty potato chip bag and was looking around for a garbage can. Freeman took the bag and tossed it into a container under his desk.
“This is all very interesting,” Kyle was saying, “but what the hell am I doing here?”
