Free Justice Denied by J. A. Jance

house about midafternoon. Before leaving I had been introduced to Etta Mae’s neighbor, Janie Griswold, who had eventually emerged from the kitchen and resumed her thankless task of trying to clean up the blood-spattered entryway.
    Walking back to the car, I felt frustrated. What should have been an uncomplicated, straight-up interview had ended up being more of a prayer meeting, one in which I had been on the defensive far more than I should have been. I came away knowing that Etta Mae’s belief in her son’s miraculous transformation was utterly unshakable. I, on the other hand, had my doubts.
    When I had first pulled up in front of the house on Church Street, I had turned off my cell phone. It would have been morethan a little awkward if Mel had called and asked what I was doing when I was in the midst of interviewing an important witness in a supposedly nonexistent case. As soon as I turned the phone back on, it was bristling with a collection of messages and missed calls.
    I dialed Mel immediately. “Where are you?” she wanted to know.
    “Headed home,” I hedged. I was in fact driving back toward downtown Seattle at that very moment—just not from the direction she might have anticipated.
    “How’s Lars?” she asked.
    “Medium,” I said.
    “Did you invite him to dinner?” she said.
    “Did,” I said. “He turned me down.”
    “He probably shouldn’t be alone right now,” Mel said. “He should have people with him.”
    I thought about the gaggle of unattached Queen Anne Gardens dames Lars had claimed were hovering around him, all of them circling for a premature landing. “I doubt he’ll be all that alone,” I said.
    “Still,” Mel said. “He should be with family at a time like this. Do you think I should call and ask him?” she wanted to know.
    Mel probably could have talked Lars into coming out for dinner, but if she did, we might end up having a discussion of exactly when I had dropped him off and what I’d been doing in the meantime, et cetera, et cetera. What was it my mother always used to say? “Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”
    “He seemed pretty tired,” I said. “Let’s leave well enough alone.”
    I gave her the arrangement details for Beverly’s services so she could pass them along to Barbara Galvin and Harry. She extracted a promise that I’d order more flowers. She also told me that she’d made arrangements for the kids to stay at the Homewood Suites a few blocks away from Belltown Terrace at the bottom of Queen Anne Hill. Once again I appreciated Mel’s attention to detail. Making room reservations was something I probably wouldn’t have remembered—until it was too late.
    “What are you going to do now?” Mel asked.
    “Go home and put my feet up,” I said. “It was a pretty short night.”
    On the way, I listened through a string of condolence calls—from Ron Peters, a former partner and a good friend; from Ralph Ames, my attorney; from Ross Connors along with several other members of the SHIT squad. In other words, Mel had put out the word.
    When I got as far as downtown, I thought briefly about stopping by Seattle PD, but decided against it. It would create far less of a stir if I phoned Kendall Jackson than it would if I showed up on the premises in person asking questions. And since Ross seemed to want deniability, less of a stir would be far preferable to more of one.
    Back at the condo I settled into the recliner, picked up the phone, and dialed that old familiar number that took me straight to the heart of Homicide. In the old days I couldn’t have made such a call without spending several minutes chewing the fat with Watty Watson, who was, for many years, the telephone-answering nerve center for Seattle PD’s homicide squad. But now Watty had moved on—either up or out. The phone was answeredby someone whose name I neither caught nor recognized. I was put through to Detective Jackson with no chitchat and no