Page 82 of Den of Iniquity

“Yup,” he said, “like absolutely nothing out of the ordinary was going on. How did you know that’s what she’d say?”

“Because she’s my daughter,” I told him. “She’s more than slightly stubborn, and she hates like hell to admit she might have made a mistake.”

“Like marrying Jeremy, for instance?” Scott asked sarcastically.

I didn’t reply to that one.

“It annoys the hell out of me when she goes all big sister on me and treats me like I’m still a little kid who can’t be trusted with anything important. I’m a grown-up now, for pity’s sake—a cop even, not just her baby brother. Where does she get off?”

I didn’t blame him for being pissed.

“Don’t feel like you’re the only one being left out of the loop,” I told him. “Mel and I wouldn’t know anything about what was happening, either, if Kyle hadn’t told us.”

That seemed to mollify him. He turned to go but then paused again. “How long will you be here?” he asked.

“Not sure,” I answered. “I’m waiting for a call from the crime lab. Why?”

“I won’t be at the courthouse long,” he said. “If you’re still here when I get back, how about we grab some dinner together, just the two of us?”

A chance to have dinner alone with my son? Are you kidding? That was even better than Kyle’s asking for us to watch a movietogether. No way in hell was I going to pass on that offer no matter what time I headed home to Bellingham.

“Sure thing,” I said, doing my best not to sound too enthusiastic. “Why not? I’ll hang around upstairs until you get back.”

Scott left then while I boarded the elevator and pushed floor number seven. The desk sergeant was on the phone, so I gave him a friendly wave as I passed by and made straight for Detective Sechrest’s desk. She was there, but she was on the phone, too, so I took a seat and waited for her to finish.

“Scotty just left,” she told me once the call ended.

“I know. We met up by the elevator in the lobby.”

“What have you got for me?” she asked.

“A name and what I hope will turn out to be a ton of DNA evidence,” I said, “but we’ll have to wait and see how long it takes for Gretchen Walther at the crime lab to obtain a profile. In the meantime, I thought we should do some old-fashioned police work.”

Obligingly, Sandy pulled out a notebook and a ballpoint pen. “Suspect’s name?” she asked.

“Constance Herzog,” I answered. “She’s a longtime dispatcher at Seattle’s 911 call center.”

Sandy’s pen stopped moving in midair. “A dispatcher from the call center?” she repeated in disbelief. “Are you kidding?”

“Not kidding at all, I’m sorry to say,” I replied, “and not an ordinary dispatcher, either. She’s a supervisor.”

Sandy frowned. “Are you sure about this?”

“Reasonably so,” I replied. “She’s a quilter in her spare time, and I just forked over two thousand bucks to buy one of her quilts, which I dropped off at the crime lab on my way here.”

“Hoping for touch DNA?” Sandy asked.

“Yup.”

“Obviously you’re willing to put your money where your mouth is on this,” Sandy observed wryly. “So what else do you know about her?”

“For starters, at age sixteen she was arrested but never charged with killing her father. She stabbed him in the back with a butcher knife while he was in the process of assaulting her mother. Somehow the knife blade managed to slip past his ribs and hit his heart. He was pronounced dead at the scene. The death was ruled to be justifiable homicide.”

“Is that why she chooses victims who are domestic violence offenders—because she’s got daddy issues?”

“When we catch her, maybe we can ask her about that,” I said. “And then there’s the money. Remember those hundred-dollar bills found at all our crime scenes?”

Sandy nodded.

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