Page 27 of Den of Iniquity

Lucille Benson, aka Little Lulu because she’s barely four ten, is a recent addition to TLC’s collection of volunteer cold case investigators. The Last Chance was created years ago by a woman named Hedda Brinker. Frustrated by the fact that her daughter’s homicide had gone unsolved for decades, she decided to use her winnings from a huge Powerball jackpot to create an all-volunteer cold case squad to tackle abandoned cold cases for the benefit of other grieving families.

When it came time to set TLC in motion, she had called on a guy named Ralph Ames to handle all the organizational details and to make sure any residual funds were reinvested to cover ongoing expenses. Ralph is also the guy who brought me to TLC in the aftermath of my forced retirement due to the dismantling of the Special Homicide Investigation Team. Ralph first came into my life when I met and married my second wife, Anne Corley. Anne died on the day of our wedding, but Ralph and I have remained friends ever since.

Like me, Ralph is getting up there in terms of age, and he’s recently handed over the reins for overseeing TLC to his son, Rafe, who, not surprisingly, is also an attorney and who happens to live in Denver, the location of TLC’s headquarters. By way of introducing Rafe to all the folks involved—a group made up of retired detectives, prosecutors, and forensic folk—earlier that year we had all, spouses included, trekked to Denver’s Brown Palace for a meet and greet where Mel and Lulu had hit it off like gangbusters.

Lulu and I are about the same age, and we both grew up withLittle Lulucomics, which were the only comic books my mother allowed in our apartment. While my friends readSupermanandBatman, I was stuck withLittle Lulu. Mel is fifteen years younger than I am and never saw one of those comic books, but when we told her about Little Lulu’s pal, Tubby, and his clubhouse plainly marked “NO GIRLS ALLOWED,” she got the picture.

Lucille Benson had entered the “boys only” world of law enforcement much earlier than Mel. After graduating cum laude from the University of Nebraska with double majors in Chemistry and Microbiology, she had gone to work in Nebraska State Patrol’s Crime Lab. Her first day on the job, she was taken to task by the director for wearing a miniskirt to work, something he said would serve as a distraction to her fellow criminalists—all of whom happened to be male. The next day she had shown up in a pair of cut-down overalls and tiny work boots. Turned out that costume was deemed to be a distraction as well. Shortly thereafter, everyone working in the lab, male and female alike, were directed to wear knee-length lab coats. Once that happened, whatever was worn underneath was no longer an issue.

Relating that story made Lulu and Mel instant pals. Mel, too, had her own set of law enforcement hazing stories from a somewhatlater generation, giving the two women a good deal in common. Despite Lulu’s somewhat problematic introduction to the crime lab, she had hung in there. By the time she retired some forty years later, she’d been the director for the previous ten. In retirement, rather than reading books or traveling or gardening, Lulu had set her sights on tracking down her family tree. Eventually she had succeeded in tracing her roots on both sides of her family as far back as the sixteenth century in the UK. One of her distant ancestors had actually been on board theMayflower.

But then 2018 came along when cops in California used DNA and forensic genealogy to finally bring down the Golden State killer. Suddenly something that had been little more than a retirement hobby for Lulu Benson morphed into a crime-fighting tool. Just like that, she was ready to take everything she had learned about genealogy and go back to work.

TLC didn’t come looking for her. She went looking for them. She had introduced herself to Rafe Ames about the time he was taking charge and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. She’d be willing to join forces with TLC and bring several other retired criminalists along for the ride if TLC would spring for a full-fledged laboratory equipped with the latest in DNA profiling equipment.

Most of the cold cases that come to TLC as a last resort are there because the homicides in question had occurred in jurisdictions with limited funds and even more limited investigative resources. Not only is DNA testing expensive, it takes time—lots of it. Wait times on active cases may seem frustratingly slow, but for cold cases, they’re downright interminable.

Knowing Hedda Brinker would approve, Rafe agreed to spend a big chunk of her Powerball fortune to purchase an appropriate lab location. He then set about filling it with the latest and greatestDNA processing equipment. Most of the people at TLC are volunteers, but to have a properly certified lab whose results would stand up in court, it was necessary to actually hire qualified personnel to work there. That was a far more complicated task than anyone had anticipated. Months later, it still wasn’t up and running—which meant Lulu wasn’t, either. It occurred to me that if she was sitting around twiddling her thumbs, maybe she wouldn’t mind taking on a side gig, even if it wasn’t exactly TLC’s cup of tea.

“Great idea, Mel,” I said, giving her a good night kiss as she settled down beside me in bed. “I’ll give Lulu a call first thing Monday morning.”

Chapter 12

Bellingham, Washington

Monday, February 24, 2020

By week two of our new family’s back-to-school adventure, we were starting to get the hang of things. Kyle was okay with cold cereal and toast for breakfast, and that suited me just fine because I’m generally good with toast and coffee. Once he left, I picked up the phone and dialed Lulu.

“How are things?” I asked.

“I’m bored to tears,” she replied.

“Still no movement on getting the lab up and running?”

“Not so as you’d notice. The whole purpose of having our own lab is being able to cut through the red tape. The problem is, there’s a mountain of red tape to get through before we can get the lab certified and operational. What’s up with you and Mel?”

“Well,” I said. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

It took some time to explain our sudden return to the world of parenthood and the background that led to it.

“So you’re asking for my assistance in tracking down the real identities of two people who may have been placed in WITSEC in the early two thousands?”

“Correct.”

“If we succeed, that’s not going to win us any points with the US Marshals Service.”

“No, it won’t.”

“Well,” Lulu observed, “if the case was big enough that the Marshals were pulled into it, you can bet it was large enough to have garnered a good deal of media coverage, such as it was back then. My guess would be something to do with either cartels or organized crime. What we really need is some idea of how many cases like that were active back in 2002 or 2003. Do you have any DNA?”

“That would be a hard no. When Kyle left home, he didn’t exactly come away with his father’s pregnant girlfriend’s toothbrush stowed in his backpack. Said girlfriend is easily a good eight-and-a-half-hour drive from here. Given the circumstances, I don’t think a visit from me would be very welcome at this point.”

“Does the girlfriend smoke?”

“She’s expecting a baby, so I doubt it,” I answered.

“Lots of people smoke while they’re pregnant,” Lula countered, “but they don’t go around talking about it. Does your son-in-law smoke?”

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