Page 69 of Den of Iniquity

Kyle finished polishing off the last of his sandwich and then gave me a quizzical look. “Any idea what’s for dinner?” he asked.

That wasn’t too surprising. After all, he’s still a growing boy, but slick as can be, I dodged the what’s-for-dinner bullet. “I’m meeting Mel for a late lunch,” I told him, “and I’ll see what she has to say.”

“Please,” Kyle said, “but whatever you do, don’t let her make any more curry.”

“Trust me on that,” I said, “I’ll do my best.”

Chapter 31

Bellingham, Washington

Friday, March 6, 2020

Before meeting Mel for lunch, I turned to my email account; sixty-four more interview transcriptions had arrived from Elena, along with a separate one stating that those were all the ones she had at present. Ben Weston and Sandra Sechrest were continuing to make good progress going through the case files I was sending them. Between them they had flagged five more files for further study, but Yolanda had yet to notify me if any of those people had consented to additional interviews.

I met up with Mel at our favorite daytime hangout, Jack and Jill’s, an old-fashioned diner two blocks from Mel’s office. Today marked three weeks since Kyle had unexpectedly shown up in our lives. Sitting in a booth together, just the two of us, seemed special somehow—almost like a date. And having a homey meal that required no advance planning on either of our parts was like going on vacation. It also gave us a chance to talk, one-on-one.

For Mel, the breast-fondling situation at the high school was boiling over. When her detectives had done a canvass of current students involved in the school’s music program, eleven more female students had come forward with inappropriate touching complaints.

“George Pritchard has been at Bellingham High for the past five years, so there are probably additional victims who have either graduated, transferred to another school, or dropped out. I also had one of my investigators contact the school district in Sacramento where Pritchard taught prior to coming here. It would appear that he left there under some kind of cloud, but so far no one’s willing to share any details. The district didn’t out and out fire him, but they also didn’t discourage him from leaving.”

“No wonder no one’s talking,” I said. “Instead of dealing with the problem straight out, they sent a guy who should have been unmasked as a sex offender along to some other unsuspecting school district where he’s had access to a whole new set of victims.”

“Right,” Mel said bitterly. “And now he’s my problem instead of theirs. I’ll be talking to the county attorney this afternoon to see if he’s willing to swear out an arrest warrant. The thing is, Pritchard has a wife and two school-age kids who most likely have no idea about who he really is, so putting him in jail will be hell on them, too.”

I nodded my head in agreement. That’s something I had come to realize over the years. Whenever I arrested a killer, the victims’ families were always adversely affected by whatever crime had been committed, but there were often plenty of injured innocentbystanders among the offenders’ loved ones as well. It was about then that I realized that same dynamic was currently at work in my own family. Jeremy Cartwright was the one who was screwing around on his wife, but Kelly, Kayla, and Kyle were all suffering the consequences.

“I don’t remember stuff like this happening back when I was a kid,” I muttered.

“I’m pretty sure pedophiles have always been with us,” Mel said. “The big difference is that back in your day, girls—and boys, too—were far more reticent about coming forward.”

Put in my place but realizing she was right, I sat back and took the front tip off a piece of Jill’s incomparable lemon meringue pie.

“Thanks for reminding me that I’m a grouchy old man,” I said.

“Grouchy on occasion, yes,” Mel told me, “but pretty darned nice most of the time.”

Buoyed by that last remark, I was on my way home from lunch when a call came in from Lulu Benson.

“I’ve got a familial hit on that unidentified female profile your friend Gretchen Walther sent over.”

“Boy, lady,” I said. “You’re batting a thousand. How close a match?”

“Second cousin. Your unidentified female DNA belongs to this woman’s mother’s first cousin.”

“Where is she from?”

“Lexington, Kentucky.”

“That’s a hell of a long way from Seattle,” I commented.

“Yes, it is,” Lulu agreed. “She posted her DNA on GEDmatch, looking for her mother’s long-lost cousin. Do you want her name and number or not?”

I hesitated for a moment. By rights, this had to do with Detective Elizabeth Byrd’s open homicide investigation, and I should probably have turned it over to her to begin with, but it was my longtime connection to Gretchen Walther that had made the hit possible.

“Of course I want her number,” I replied.

Lulu laughed. “Somehow I thought you would,” she said.

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