Read Online Without Due Process by J. A. Jance - Free Book Online Page A

Simmons bounded over me. We both reached the door in time to see a car door open and close as someone leaped inside a waiting, dark-colored vehicle. Leaving behind a spray of gravel, the car, with headlights and taillights both doused, sped away down the still night-black street.
    Simmons’s partner, a guy named Gary Deddens, had been left to guard the back door. He sprinted up behind us. “What the hell is going on?” he demanded.
    The two of them must have arrived at the Weston house at about the same time I did, the second time around. Their car was parked a good block and a half away. While Simmons raced after it, his partner started up the street after the long-gone vehicle. I paused long enough to explain to an ashen-faced Janice what had happened, then I too darted up the sidewalk. We flagged down Simmons as he drove past. The wheels on his patrol car were back in motion before the doors closed.
    “You all right, Detective Beaumont?” he asked.
    “Yeah. I’m fine. A little shaky, but fine.”
    “You handle the radio,” he said to Deddens. “Did either of you see what kind of car it was?”
    “No,” we both answered together.
    “Shit!” Simmons muttered. “Neither did I.”
    Within minutes of our call, all of Rainier Valley was crawling with a bunch of very spooked cops. Word was out that someone had declared open warfare on officers of the Seattle Police Department. With Ben Weston and his family dead, and after my narrow escape, we were all feeling mighty vulnerable. And mortal.
    Unfortunately, nothing Simmons, his partner, or I could tell our fellow searchers was of any help. In the next hour and a half, a careful dragnet of the neighborhood turned up a few moving violations, including one DWI, but there was no trace at all of our missing gunman and his getaway car.
    With Simmons still driving, we had searched as far as the western shore of Lake Washington when the sun came up over the still snowbound Cascades later on that morning. I don’t know if this happens in other parts of the world or not, but it was one of those special Washington mornings when, as the natives say, the mountains were out, their rugged profiles shining brilliantly in the early-morning sun without their usual cloak of cloud cover. It was the kind of morning when Seattle’s cross-bridge commuters get regular traffic advisories warning them to watch out for the unaccustomed glare of sun off Lake Washington. It was a morning when, shootings aside, Seattle really is one of the most livable cities on the face of the earth.
    Believe me. I was happy as hell to be alive to enjoy it.

CHAPTER 6
    SIMMONS AND DEDDENS OFFERED TO GIVE me a lift back downtown to the Public Safety Building, and I would have been more than happy to accept, but Watty sent a message through Dispatch that I was to return to the Weston house for a debriefing. When I got there, Detective Kramer was sitting on the front porch waiting for me, notebook in hand. He was not a happy camper.
    “I was just crawling into bed for a nap when Watty called and told me to come back here and take your statement. I feel like so much dogshit.”
    “Well pardon me all to hell for getting shot at,” I returned. “Remind me to schedule the next one at a more convenient time, would you, Kramer? I hate to think that I’m causing you to miss your little nappy.”
    “Cut the crap, will you, Beaumont? Just tell me what happened so we can both get out of here.”
    So I told him, as briefly as possible, while he took notes. No doubt I’d have to do some paper on the assault, but it seemed fair enough that someone else should have to do so as well. After all, I’m a taxpayer too, I thought, remembering, for the first time since writing it, the sizable check to the IRS that I had left in Ralph Ames’s charge.
    “The crux of the question, then, is did someone plan to hit Ben Weston, or were you the target this time?” Kramer asked finally.
    “I have to assume the bullet was meant