When Emma Jackson saw that I was coming along, I expected her to voice an objection. Instead, she seemed almost happy to see me and greeted both of us with a tentative smile. “Did you get some sleep?” she asked Junior.
He nodded. “And I got to see the ducks. I even got to feed them. The mama duck’s name is Gertrude.”
“How can someone have ducks in a high-rise building?” Emma asked disbelievingly.
“Don’t ask me,” I told her. “Ask the duck. She comes here every year and lays her eggs on the recreation level.”
“In a downtown condo?”
“Gertrude must be an upscale duck,” I told her.
I was under the impression that we were headed directly for the church. When the limo driver took us down to Columbia and up the entrance ramp onto the Alaskan Way Viaduct, I didn’t understand what was happening. “Where are we going?” I asked.
“To West Seattle,” Emma replied. “To pick up Harmon.”
I shook my head. “He’s not going to be thrilled having me along for the ride.”
Dr. Jackson pulled Junior Weston close to her and held him protectively under her arm the way a mother hen shelters her helpless chicks.
“He’ll understand,” she said. “He may not like it, but he’ll understand.”
I settled in for the ride, surreptitiously glancing over my shoulder now and then to make sure we weren’t being followed. Just because Sam Irwin was dead didn’t mean that was the end of all our difficulties. It would take time to figure out whether or not Sam Irwin had taken his own life, but in any event I was fairly certain Sam was the knife-wielding killer Junior had seen on the night of the murders. I was also convinced that, whatever his involvement, Sam wasn’t operating alone. The other killers had no way of knowing whether Sam was all the child had seen.
We sped south along the viaduct. The previous few days of clear skies had given way to heavy clouds. Puget Sound lay slate-gray beneath a dark and lowering sky. I’m sure both the weather and fatigue contributed to my growing sense of gloom and despair. So did the fact that I was on my way to a five-person funeral. If we couldn’t save innocent people like that from the bad guys, I berated myself, what the hell was the point of being a cop?
For a few minutes, Junior was content to sit there cuddled against Emma Jackson’s breast, but finally he pushed himself away.
“Is Mr. Lindstrom all right?” he asked.
Emma looked to me for an answer. “He should be, Junior,” I replied. “But he wouldn’t have been if Dr. Jackson hadn’t been right there to help when it happened.”
The boy nodded. “I’m glad he’s going to be okay,” he said. “I was afraid he’d die too.”
I caught Emma Jackson’s eye. “Thank you for reminding me, Junior. I should have remembered to thank Dr. Jackson myself as soon as I got in the car.”
She gave me a half smile and shook her head. “You don’t have to thank me, Detective Beaumont,” she returned. “You’re not the only one around here with a job to do.”
Considering the previous fireworks between us, the matching antagonisms, conversation between us in the limo was surprisingly cordial, and it lulled me into a false sense of security, made me think maybe things were starting to get a little better.
We crossed into West Seattle on the Spokane Street Bridge and meandered south, stopping at last in front of a small, carefully maintained bungalow on Southwest Othello Street. Harmon Weston must have been watching through the window. As soon as the driver stopped the limo, the front door banged open, and the old man came hurrying toward the car. I moved to the jump seat to give him a place to sit.
“The killer’s dead!” Harmon Weston declared animatedly as he clambered into the limo. Then, seeing me, a curtain seemed to fall across his features.
“What’s he doing here?” Harmon Weston demanded.
“Got who?” Junior was asking excitedly. “Who’d they get? Tell me.”
“What’s happened?” Emma asked.
Harmon Weston looked hard at me. “Ask him,” he said. “I’m sure he knows all about it.”
Three pairs of questioning eyes turned on me, but I was under strict orders to keep my mouth shut. Tony Freeman had told me that when I heard the news I’d better be surprised, but I’ve never been known for my propensity for role play.
“Knows all about what?” I asked ingenuously. “Who’s dead?”
Harmon Weston’s smoldering eyes drilled into me. “My son’s killer, that’s who. They found him somewhere over in Bellevue.”
“Is he dead for real?” Junior asked. “Did the cops get him? Did somebody shoot him?”
Suddenly accusatory, Emma Jackson turned on me as well. “You knew about this, didn’t you?”
“No,” I said, trying for total innocence. “I had no idea.”
My acting ability will never win an Academy Award. Emma shot me a withering look. “You expect us to believe that you, one of the detectives on the case, didn’t know a thing about this?”
Emma turned from me to Harmon Weston. “What happened?”
“A drug overdose,” he answered. “They think he committed suicide.”
She looked back at me, shaking her head disparagingly. “So the police didn’t even catch him.” She turned away from me and stared out the window while an uneasy silence settled over the car. No one spoke for several minutes while Junior Weston looked questioningly from one adult face to another.
Finally he caught my eye. “I’m glad he’s dead,” the child said. “I wanted him to be dead.”
I nodded, but I didn’t say anything else. I figured I was better off keeping my mouth shut.
We arrived at the Mount Zion Baptist Church a full hour and fifteen minutes before the two o’clock funeral. Already the neighborhood was dogged with traffic, including an ever-growing contingent of law enforcement vehicles from all over the state. They lined one side of Nineteenth Avenue for three full blocks.
The limo stopped in the front courtyard of the church behind a collection of gray hearses. Emma, Harmon Weston, and Junior Weston were whisked away into the church by three solicitous funeral attendants. They probably would have let me come along too, if I had pushed it, but I felt I had intruded enough. Undecided as to what to do next, I started toward the street to join forces with some of the other police officers who were scattered here and there on the sidewalk, talking together in small groups.
Halfway across the courtyard, a young black male sidled up to me. Staggering drunkenly, he was dressed in ragged, disheveled clothing. A battered baseball cap, worn sideways, was pulled down low on his forehead.
“Hey, man,” he whimpered to me. “You gots a dollar for a cuppa coffee?”
Before I could answer, a formidable African-American man, much older and dressed in an impeccable black suit along with spotless white gloves, appeared from nowhere.
“You get out of here now,” he told the kid firmly. “These folks are here for a funeral. We don’t need the likes of you hanging around begging.”
“I ain’t beggin‘,” the boy whined. He caught my eye for a fraction of a second, then dropped his gaze and stared at my feet. “I’m jes axing my friend Beaumont here if he gots ’nuff money to buy me some coffee.”
The deacon frowned, looking hard from the kid to me. “You know this young man, mister?”
He did seem vaguely familiar, and although I couldn’t place him right off the bat, he obviously knew me. I don’t make a habit of giving money to bums on the street, but then most bums don’t know me by name either. I reached for my wallet. The deacon shrugged and shook his head.
“You get away from here now, boy,” the deacon said firmly as he walked away. “I don’t want to see your face around here anymore.”
I handed the kid a dollar bill. “Don’t spend it all in one place,” I told him.
He pocketed the money, staggered a little, and grinned, but the urgency in his voice belied the drunken leer.
“Ron Peters says for me to talk to you right away. Only to you, and away from here. Down the hill on Madison at the deli in ten minutes.”
He shambled off in the opposite direction, meandering unsteadily from side to side and heading for the corner of the building that would allow him to avoid the growing collection of cops. I was still watching his slow progress when Sue Danielson materialized beside me.
