Big Al’s dirty little secret was safe with me.
CHAPTER 21
By the time I left the hospital, there was no sense in going back by the Walterses’ home. Whatever was happening with the on-site investigation would have been well under way and assigned to someone else. Instead, I headed down the hill to the department with one overriding question still reverberating in my brain. Sanders. Who the hell was Sanders? Try as I might, I couldn’t think of anybody.
Even though it was three o’clock in the morning, press vehicles were a visible presence around the Public Safety Building. What Chief Rankin had called “open season on cops” continued to be the biggest story in town that week. I couldn’t blame the media for chasing after it, but I sure as hell didn’t want to end up being trapped into talking to any of them.
“What’s going on?” I asked the officer stationed in the lobby.
“Press conference,” he answered.
“At this hour of the morning?”
He shook his head. “Why not? All those people are up anyway-Chief Rankin, Detective Kramer, and all those crazy reporters. They could just as well keep each other company and stay out of everyone else’s hair.”
I nodded sympathetically. My sentiments exactly. Luckily, I made it into the elevator without running into anyone. But then, when it came time to push the button, I took a wild notion to go upstairs and see if Captain Freeman was still around. I skipped 5 and punched 11 instead.
When the elevator door opened, I saw that the receptionist’s desk was empty, but the door into Freeman’s office was propped open with a chair. A reading light glowed from inside.
“Who is it?” he called as I stepped into the lobby.
“Detective Beaumont,” I answered.
“Come on in.”
I stepped to the inner door. Captain Freeman didn’t bother to get up. With his tie loosened and shirt sleeves rolled up, he sat at his desk, laboring over that same, much-used yellow pad I had seen earlier. In a world that has gone overboard for computers, I have to respect a guy who hasn’t jumped on the latest technological bandwagon.
As I walked in, he put down his pen and rubbed his eyes. “Good to see you, Beau. How’s Detective Lindstrom?”
“The doc says he thinks he’s going to make it. He came through the surgery all right.”
“Great.”
“By the way,” I said, easing myself into one of the several chairs that still littered the office. “I didn’t log in. Do you want me to?”
Freeman smiled wearily. “Hell with it. I didn’t either. That’s a good piece of work on the Day-Timer and the floppy, Beau. I’m following up right now, as a matter of fact.”
“You found them?”
“No, but I’m working on a list of possibles-all the people I’ve been able to verify who were actually there in Ben Weston’s house the night of the murders. Unfortunately, it’s a very long list.”
As far as I’m concerned, making lists and checking them twice is a line that has nothing to do with “Here Comes Santa Claus.” They’re words to live by in the crime-solving business.
I nodded. “Good. I would have done that myself eventually, but I’ve been too busy. While you’re at it, I’ve got another name for you. The doctor who performed Big Al’s surgery gave it to me while Al was in the recovery room. He said that crazy Norwegian bastard wouldn’t let them start doing surgery on him until one of the doctors agreed to bring me the message.”
Captain Freeman sat up and picked up his pen, holding it poised over the paper. “Who?”
“That’s the thing, I’m not sure. The doctor couldn’t quite remember the name. He said it was something like Sanders or Sanderlin. Those were his two choices, and I don’t recognize either one. And I don’t know how accurate the doctor is. He thought my name was Beaufort. Whatever the name is, the guy supposedly has something to do with a garage, maybe even Motor Pool.”
Freeman frowned. “Sanders? Sanderlin? Neither one of those rings a bell.” Nevertheless, he wrote both names down on his list, tying them together with a two-line parenthesis.
“I want this guy,” he said quietly. “I want him in the very worst way. The people of this city are all up in arms. In fact, I just got a look at tomorrow morning’s…this morning’s Post Intelligencer. Maxwell Cole is raising the roof because, according to him, Seattle PD is doing nothing to put a stop to the gangs that are running rampant in the streets and endangering the lives of the ordinary and innocent citizens of this community. As a matter of fact, I seem to remember a quote from Detective J.P. Beaumont in the article.”
“More likely a misquote,” I said.
He smiled ruefully. “What I’m getting at, is they still don’t know the half of it. Once the people of Seattle hear rumors to the effect that Ben Weston may have been tainted and that we’re investigating fellow police officers in regard to the Weston murders, there’s going to be hell to pay, but I say bring it on and let’s get it over with.
“Whatever is behind it-payoffs, protection-may have happened on my watch, Detective Beaumont, but I’m telling you it’s going to get fixed on my watch as well. I’ve spoken to Ken Rankin. From what the gang members said, this protection racket must have been going on for some time, since long before Chief Rankin came on the scene. But at least now we know about it, and I want it stopped. I want everyone connected with it brought to justice.”
He stopped speaking suddenly and stared up at the darkened ceiling above his head. “No,” he said. “That just doesn’t make sense, not any at all.”
Freeman is one of those rare people who has mastered the art of mental time-sharing and can think about more than one thing at a time. I had trouble keeping up.
“What doesn’t make sense?”
“The Motor Pool. Someone who worked there wouldn’t have enough connection with the department’s day- to-day investigative activities to be able to provide that much valuable information. In order to make a protection racket pay off, you have to offer valuable and accurate intelligence. So maybe someone there is involved, but we have to look for someone else as well, someone higher up in the departmental hierarchy who would have some idea of what was happening on the various squads in different parts of the city. They’d need to know that in order to warn the gangs away from locations targeted for increased enforcement.”
“So you’re saying someone in Patrol or perhaps in Investigations?”
“At least. Here’s the list so far. Take a look at it and see if I left anybody off.”
Freeman’s list was a Who’s Who of the Medical Examiner’s Office, the Crime Lab, and the Homicide Squad of Seattle PD. The names were there, all of them glaringly familiar.
“It makes you sick to think about it, doesn’t it?” he said, as my eyes traveled slowly down the list.
“Yes,” I agreed. “It certainly does.”
“So what are we going to do about it?”
“Can we get a list of everybody in Motor Pool?”
“Good idea,” Tony Freeman said, “I should have thought of that myself.”
He picked up the phone and dialed a number. “Hi, Kyle. How’s it going?” He listened for a moment before saying, “Good work. Keep after it. How are you doing on the car question?” Again there was a pause. “Sure, I understand that one’s tricky, but we may have a way around it. Can you get me a printout of everyone assigned to Motor Pool? Right, mechanics, clerks, everybody. Sure, if the other one is taking too much time, bring this one down as soon as you can. We’ll work on that in the meantime.”
Freeman put down the phone. “Kyle Lehman’s working on Ben’s hard drive, but he says it’s not all straightforward. He’s having to plow through a lot of junk to see if he can find that deleted file. He says he can bring up the Motor Pool list in just a few minutes.”
Within fifteen minutes Kyle himself appeared in the office door, bringing with him a hard copy of the Motor Pool list which he dropped casually on Tony Freeman’s desk. The captain picked up the list and began studying it
