CHAPTER 22
At five o’clock in the morning, the sky was beginning to brighten over the Cascades as we made our way out of the Public Safety Building. While we had been preoccupied with tracking things down on the eleventh floor, Chief Rankin’s early-morning press conference had evidently concluded, sending both the reporters and their quarry to ground and leaving my Porsche parked in lonely splendor on the street.
Sam Irwin’s address was on the east side of Lake Washington. I don’t subscribe to the common downtown Seattleite’s notion that intelligent life ceases at the entrance to the Mount Baker Tunnel, but I do know better than to venture into the wilds of the Eastside without a precautionary map. Once in the car, we flipped on the reading lamp and pored over my latest edition of the Thomas Brothers Guide. Irwin’s address seemed to be within the confines of Beaux Arts, an exclusive little enclave on the banks of Lake Washington. I had never been there, but I knew it to be a separate governmental entity located entirely within the boundaries of its much larger neighbor, the city of Bellevue.
We headed out. After putting in another almost round-the-clock shift, I should have been dead on my feet, but we were on the scent now, circling ever closer to some real answers. That knowledge kept me energized, focused, and alert, carrying me forward as surely as did the powerful engine of my 928.
With me driving and with Tony Freeman in charge of navigation, we headed east toward a recently opened stretch of I-90-the new Mercer Island floating bridge. Lights and siren weren’t an option, but we were making good time until we hit the tunnel. There eastbound traffic was coned down to two lanes, making way for construction vehicles and equipment parked in the far right-hand lane of the new bridge in support of the crews of workmen busily sandblasting guardrails and pavement off the old bridge deck. Now, in preparation for bringing out an additional piece of oversized equipment, a flagger brought traffic to a complete stop.
In typical type-A fashion, I fumed and pounded the steering wheel while Tony Freeman remained seemingly unruffled.
“So who’s the mastermind behind all this?” I asked. “And was Ben Weston in on it and one or more of the others decided to get rid of him?”
“Ben Weston wasn’t in on it,” Tony Freeman said quietly.
It was one of those times when somebody jolts you, but it takes a second or two to get the message. “You sound pretty certain about that.”
“Ben was working for IIS.”
I’m sure my jaw dropped a foot. “He was?”
“He came to me last summer when he started hearing word on the streets about the payoffs. He was the one who suggested he transfer into the gang unit.”
“But you engineered it?”
“That’s right.”
“So he wasn’t really in trouble on Patrol?”
“We made it look like it. We were both hoping the crooks would invite him to join them. It just didn’t work out that way.”
A sudden burst of anger left me shaken. “What the hell!” I exclaimed. “If you knew about the payoffs all along, why the hell are you just now getting around to letting anybody else know?”
“It was a one-man investigation, Beaumont. Ben Weston’s investigation into crooked cops. He didn’t know who could be trusted, and neither did I.”
“Goddamnit, you left him hanging out to dry.”
“Not knowingly,” Tony Freeman returned sharply. “Ben must have been a whole lot closer to nailing these bastards than he was willing to let on. Either that, or he himself didn’t know how close he was.”
I felt like I was on a damn emotional roller coaster. If Ben Weston was working for IIS, then I could stop being sick about him being crooked, up to a point, anyway. “What’s all this bullshit about student loans? What’s that all about?”
Tony Freeman sighed. “Beats me,” he answered. “The student loans were news to me. The first I heard about them was when Kramer turned up the applications in Ben’s desk. Those hit me from way out in left field, and I can’t for the life of me see how they fit into the rest of the puzzle.”
“But I thought you were the guy who was supposed to have all the answers.”
He laughed ruefully. “I wish I did,” he said. “I wish to hell I did!”
We were still stuck in the Mount Baker Tunnel, and I was beginning to feel downright claustrophobic. It was early Saturday morning. Traffic shouldn’t have been that bad, but crossing Lake Washington is always a crapshoot. We inched forward, car length by slow car length. Modern-day road construction flaggers seem to have lost sight of the idea that their main job is to see to it that traffic keeps moving. For some of them, getting the chance to hold up other people’s lives offers them their only possible power trip.
While I gnashed my teeth with impatience, Captain Freeman was still focused on the case. “Have you ever had any dealings with Sam Irwin?” he asked.
“Not many,” I replied. “I’ve talked to him a couple of times when I’ve been stuck with a broken-down car. He struck me as a surly son of a bitch, and not much of a mental giant.”
Tony Freeman nodded. “Right. That’s how he struck me, too. Not that smart and not really a cop either. Everything we keep hearing about this case says real cops are involved, not some renegade mechanic from Motor Pool. My guess is that Irwin will be a minor player, but maybe we can convince him to help us nail the others.”
“How?” I asked.
“I can be pretty damn persuasive when I want to be,” Tony Freeman declared.
Suddenly the dam broke and eastbound traffic began to move again. Once we were under way, it was only a matter of minutes before we turned off I-90 onto Bellevue Way. A half mile later we headed back west toward Beaux Arts.
In the dawn’s early light, we were hard-pressed to read street signs on the twisted, barely two-lane streets that wound through the village. Beaux Arts doesn’t have its own police force. The town council rents police and fire protection from King County and the city of Bellevue. For traffic control, villagers rely on a series of car-eating speed bumps. An unwary speeder may hit one of those too fast once, but he won’t do it twice, not if he has half a brain.
Reading fine print on the map would have driven me up the wall, but Freeman directed us unerringly through the tree-lined maze. “Take this one,” he said, pointing out a twisting ribbon of rain-wet pavement that led down to the water and to what had to be, by any estimate, a million-dollar piece of real estate perched on the pricey shores of Lake Washington.
Freeman whistled when he caught sight of the impressive roofline. “If a guy from Motor Pool can afford digs like this, crime really does pay. No question.”
I had pulled into the paved driveway and was puzzling about what to do next when the front porch light snapped on, the door opened, and a sweats-clad woman trotted down the stairs. Before I could turn around and retreat out of the roadway, she jogged up to the car and motioned for me to roll down the window.
“Can I help you?”
“We’re looking for Sam Irwin,” Tony Freeman said.
“Oh,” she said. “Sam’s my renter. His house is over there.” She pointed to a much smaller house, little more than a cabin, off to the side of the main house.
“He must be up already,” she added. “His lights are on. See you later.” With a congenial wave the woman darted away from the car and jogged up the hill and out of the driveway.
I turned to Freeman. “What now, coach?”
“Block the road with your car,” he said. “Then we’ll go have a chat with the man before any other early- morning joggers are up and about. Keep your gun handy, Beaumont. Irwin’s resume says he’s a trained killer, and I for one believe it.”
Tony Freeman didn’t say shoot to kill, but that’s what he meant, and I knew it.
I didn’t like the idea of using the Porsche as a roadblock, but Freeman didn’t give me any options. With considerable misgiving, I moved my car to a spot directly in the middle of the narrow driveway, effectively cutting
