Justice Denied by J. A. Jance Read Free Book Online Page A

an old Norwegian, a retired halibut fisherman, whose accent gets markedly worse the moment he comes in contact with a telephone.
    “I’m on my way,” I said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
    Driving down 405, I called Mel at work and told her what was going on. “I’ll let everyone here know,” she said. “If you want me to, I’ll drop everything and meet you there.”
    “No,” I said. “That’s all right. I’m okay.”
    Which wasn’t exactly true. This was hitting me very hard. Beverly Jenssen was my last surviving elder. She and my grandfather had been estranged from my mother and me for many years both while I was growing up and long into adulthood. My grandfather, a man of unbending principles and scant human kindness, had thoroughly disapproved of the fact that my mother had not only gotten herself pregnant outside the bonds of holy matrimony but had also adamantly refused to “do the right thing” and give me up for adoption. It was only in the past ten years or so—and long after my mother’s death—that I had established a connection with them at a time when my hard-nosed grandfather had been on his last legs.
    It was then, after all those years, that I had learned how my grandmother, forbidden by her husband to have any contact witheither my mother or me, had faithfully followed as many of my exploits as she could. She had kept voluminous scrapbooks that included clippings of everything to do with J. P. Beaumont. Some had been as early as Cub Scout endeavors. They included high school athletic competitions and later news mentions drawn from my long career at Seattle PD. There had been copies of Scott’s and Kelly’s newspaper birth announcements as well as a mention of Karen’s and my divorce proceedings. Wifely duty had kept Beverly from contacting me against her husband’s wishes, but seeing those secret scrapbooks, ones my grandfather had known nothing about, had told me everything I needed to know about Beverly Beaumont’s selfless love and constancy.
    And then she met Lars. That had been an incredible bonus for all of us. Widowed by then, Beverly had come to help out at the memorial service for my late partner, Sue Danielson. Somehow my grandmother and Lars, my AA sponsor, ended up doing dishes together in the party-room kitchen at Belltown Terrace and had hit it off. They had married within months of meeting, and everything had been fine. Until now.
    At Queen Anne Gardens I parked in the visitors’ lot and then signed in. “She’s not in their apartment, you know,” the desk clerk told me. “She’s been moved to our Care Center.”
    Euphemistically speaking, Care Center was assisted living code for ICU. I thought they should have called it IWU—intensive waiting unit. There were two beds in the room, but only one was occupied. Lars, leaning on his cane and staring off into space, was seated next to Beverly. When he saw me he smiled and made an effort to rise.
    “Sit,” I told him. “What’s happening?”
    He shrugged and sank back down. “She’s sleeping now,” he said. “But she was asking for you earlier. That’s why I called.”
    I looked at Beverly sleeping. I had never before seen her without her false teeth. That alone made her seem less dignified and far frailer. Somehow she appeared to be much smaller than I remembered, even though I had seen her only a few days earlier, shortly before Mel and I left for Ashland. At the time she had still been in their apartment. There she’d had Lars to see to it that she got wheeled back and forth to the dining room and to make sure she was eating. I doubted she was taking much nourishment now.
    “Is she in any pain?” I asked.
    “No,” he said. “She’s yust tired. We both are.”
    A glance at Lars’s weathered face told me that was true. His eyes were red-rimmed and watery. “We had some good times,” he added. “But she’s ready to move on.”
    I looked around the room. There was no heart monitor. No oxygen