Page 43 of Den of Iniquity

By the time I clambered out of bed the next morning, both Mel and Kyle were long gone. Mel had left a note next to the coffee machine saying that she’d bring home Kentucky Fried Chicken for dinner. A check in the fridge revealed that the remains of her fire-breathing curry from Saturday night had somehow vanished. I was smart enough not to ask where it had gone, but I suspect it made an ignominious exit down the kitchen garbage disposal.

With the house to myself, and knowing there was plenty of time to meet the FedEx pickup deadline for Bellingham, I gave myself the morning off, lounging around in a robe rather than getting dressed. I also caught up on my backlog of unworked crossword puzzles. I remember reading somewhere that doing crosswords on a daily basis is good for keeping aging brain cells alive and functioning.So far, despite our steady diet of fast food, I seem to be doing all right in that department.

The previous week the weather had been so warm that it had felt as though spring had sprung. Today winter was back with a vengeance. It was windy, wet, and cold, with occasional snow showers mixed with rain blowing in off the Pacific. At the bottom of our bluff, the heaving waters of Bellingham Bay were a forbidding gunmetal gray as far as the eye could see.

“No walk today, old girl,” I told Sarah.

I don’t know if she understood me, but she responded with a brief thump of her lanky tail.

It was close to noon and I was thinking about getting dressed when an email from someone named Greta Halliday showed up on my iPad.

My name is Greta Halliday. I just had a call from Yolanda Aguirre, saying that a private investigator named J. P. Beaumont is looking into the death of my late brother, Loren Gregson, on the off chance that he might have been murdered. I know Ms. Aguirre is involved in some kind of study of drug overdose deaths in the Seattle area. She interviewed my mother, Alma Gregson, about this a while ago. She wanted to interview me as well, but at that time I declined to participate.

When Loren died in 2015, his death was deemed to be accidental, but Mother always felt as though there was something unresolved about it. She passed away two months ago, shortly after the first of the year, leaving me in charge of handling her final affairs.

I was ten years old when Loren was born, and we were neverclose, but if there really are unanswered questions concerning his death, I’ll be happy to be of whatever assistance I can. Please feel free to contact me at any time at the numbers listed below. According to Ms. Aguirre, my mother’s interview is file number 87.

I was glad to know she was willing to talk to me, but rather than reach for my phone, I wanted to reread file 87 and have all my ducks in a row.

At the time Loren died, my mother was heartbroken and insisted that he must have been murdered. My brother had a history of mental health issues and resisted taking medications of any kind. Based on that, my mother claimed that he never would have self-administered a lethal dose of fentanyl either by accident or as an attempted suicide.

As I said, my brother and I weren’t close, and I have to say that the idea Loren might have been murdered seems unlikely to me, but with my mother gone, settling the question of his death once and for all is the one thing I can still do for her. Please feel free to reach out to me at your convenience.

Sincerely,

Greta Halliday

Abandoning the whole idea of getting dressed, I turned to my iPad. File 87 was dated September 4, 2018. I had read it before, but now I knew that the redacted name had been Gregson. He had been found in Seattle’s Fremont District on the morning of Monday,January 12, 2015. A woman out walking her dog in the grassy area between North Canal Street and the Ship Canal had spotted his body lying partly concealed in a clump of blackberry bushes.

Law enforcement was summoned to the scene. The medical examiner determined that the death had occurred sometime overnight on Saturday, January 10. Documents found at the scene—a state-issued ID card as opposed to a driver’s license—identified the victim as Loren R. Gregson, age thirty-eight. His manner of death was deemed to be accidental. Cause of death? A fentanyl overdose combined with exposure.

Loren was the youngest of three children born to Alma and Harold Gregson. Although he hadn’t spent much time in jail, his interactions with law enforcement consisted mostly of arrests for being drunk and disorderly and disturbing the peace. There were also several domestic violence arrests stemming from disputes with his widowed mother, Alma. The last one of those had occurred in 2014. Unlike previous incidents, on that occasion, his mother had gone ahead and pressed charges, resulting in his spending sixty days in the King County Jail. Upon release, he was met with a no-contact order on the part of his mother. Since he had still been living at home at the time of his arrest, he suddenly found himself homeless.

In today’s vernacular, Loren Gregson represented a serious case of failure to launch. He had dropped out of school as a high school sophomore. He worked occasionally at various menial jobs, but mostly he lived off his mother. With that much background it was time for the meat of Yolanda’s interview.

Yolanda:Once again, I’m so sorry for your loss, but please tell me about your son.

Alma:Loren was always a challenging child. It wasn’t his fault, though. He was one of those change-of-life babies. I was forty-three when I found out I was pregnant. I thought I was old enough to be beyond all that nonsense and had gone off the pill on my doctor’s orders because he was concerned about their long-term side effects.

When I found out I was expecting, Harold, my husband, was thrilled at the news. I was worried. I had heard that babies with older mothers tended to have ongoing issues, and that was certainly true for Loren. He was angry almost from the day he was born. He was never cuddly or happy like my older two children were, and from kindergarten on, school was a nightmare.

Part of that was due to dyslexia. He was diagnosed fairly early. The schools did the best they could. They gave him tools that would have helped him to learn to read, but he wasn’t interested in doing the work. He couldn’t be bothered.

After dropping out of high school, he went to work for his father. Harold and a partner had a boat repair shop down on Lake Union, a few blocks down the hill from our home in Fremont. It was close enough that they could walk back and forth from home to work. That lasted for several years, but after Harold died and the partner took over, Loren didn’t like working for him. That’s when he quit. He took various jobs here and there, but they never lasted long. And because he couldn’t read, his choices were limited.

Yolanda:I understand the two of you had some domestic violence issues.

Alma:That’s true. Loren always had a temper. Something as simple as asking him to take out the trash could be enough to set him off. He hit me a couple of times, and yes, I did have tocall 911 on occasion, but once he cooled off everything was always fine.

Yolanda:So you never pressed charges?

Alma:Only that once, and that was all Greta’s fault.

Yolanda:And Greta is?

Alma:My daughter. She was ten years old when Loren was born, and the two of them never got on very well. Fought like cats and dogs. She always claimed that I spoiled Loren too much—that he was handed things she and James, my other son, had to work for. Not only that, Greta has a very high opinion of herself, and she’s always been full of business.

One night when Loren was having one of his spells, she happened to turn up at the house unannounced. I had some bruises on my arms and my nose was bleeding just a little, but she called 911 anyway. She’s the one who insisted that I file charges against him and apply for a restraining order. What she did was nothing short of blackmail. Greta told me that if I didn’t do as she said, she’d wash her hands of me and that I’d be totally on my own except for Loren.

---