Page 38 of Den of Iniquity

“Big surprise there.”

“In 2010, they were living in Seattle when he damn near killed her. Kicked her in the small of the back so hard that it left her a paraplegic. While she was hospitalized for that, she suffered a stroke and still has difficulty speaking. That time there was no question about charges being filed. When he was arrested, Lisa was still in the hospital hovering between life and death. Originally he was charged with attempted homicide. Since she didn’t die, he ended up with a plea deal—ninety-three months flat time for assault in the first degree.”

“Flat time means he served out his whole sentence?”

“Yup,” Ron said, “every single day of it.”

“And once he was out of the slammer, he went straight back to his parents’ place in Liberty Lake?” I asked.

“You bet he did, because that’s the kind of folks Tom and Darlene Spaulding are. They believe in the power of forgiveness. When their son got out of prison and had nowhere else to go, they let him come home. A week later he was dead.”

“One week?”

“One week to the day. As far as I’m concerned, that’s more freedom than he deserved,” Ron declared. “Beth and I caught the case, but I was lead.”

“Beth?” I asked.

“That’s my former partner, Detective Byrd. Her name’s Elizabeth, but she goes by Beth. I think most people in town were of the opinion that Jake Spaulding finally got exactly what he deserved, but we worked it like we would have any other case. The fact thathe had overdosed on vaporized fentanyl was odd. According to everyone we talked to, booze was his drug of choice, but maybe that changed while he was locked up. The Washington State Corrections System isn’t exactly a drug-free zone.”

I certainly know that to be true.

“The night he died, he’d been drinking at a joint called the Hitching Post, just off the freeway on the far east side of town. It’s probably the scuzziest bar around, and there’s known to be a good deal of drug activity in that area. When the daytime bartender came to open up at sixa.m.the next morning, he found Spaulding dead in his car in the parking lot. He was sitting in the driver’s seat of his vehicle with his window wide open. By the way, the vehicle involved, an old Crown Vic, belonged to Tom Spaulding, his dad. Jake hadn’t been out of prison long enough to have wheels of his own.

“When Beth and I arrived on the scene we saw no sign of any violence, and our first thought was that maybe Spaulding had died of natural causes. We were able to locate and interview most of the people who had been at the Hitching Post the night before—both the bartender on duty as well as the customers. No one reported seeing or hearing anything out of the ordinary—no fights, no arguments, nothing like that.”

“Any video surveillance?” I asked.

“Are you kidding? We noticed there were cameras located inside the building and outside as well, but when I asked the bartender about viewing the footage, the guy laughed his head off. He said he’d worked there for more than five years, and that the surveillance system had been broken the whole time.”

“Too bad,” I said.

“When we went to Tom and Darlene and asked if they knewof anyone who may have wanted to kill their son, they told us to watch the video of Jake’s sentencing hearing, so we did. Lisa was there, but since she couldn’t speak on her own back then and still can’t, as far as I know, her older brother, Dave, spoke on her behalf. He was so angry it looked like the man was going to explode. He said the plea deal was a pile of crap. Considering the extent of Lisa’s injuries, I happen to agree with him on that score—the plea deal was a joke. Dave also said, and I quote, ‘If you ever get out of prison, you’d better watch your back, buddy, because I’m coming for you.’”

“Which turned him into suspect number one?” I asked.

“It certainly did. The problem is, Dave was fishing in Alaska when Jake died. He voluntarily gave us unlimited access to his electronic devices. He also agreed to a polygraph test, which he passed with flying colors. Dave had no involvement whatsoever in Jake’s death, and we were able to clear him almost immediately.

“Once that female DNA profile turned up, we asked Lisa’s female friends and relations to submit DNA samples. They all complied with no questions asked. Since most of them live in the Seattle area, it was easy to verify their alibis, and we cleared them as well. We wondered if maybe the female involved could have been Jake’s dealer, but we were unable to identify any potential suspects.

“That’s about the time the Spokane County Medical Examiner’s report came in pegging Spaulding’s death as undetermined, so naturally that case didn’t get the same kind of attention as the next case, which happened only a few weeks later and turned out to be an actual homicide from the get-go. By the time I retired, the Spaulding case had gone cold. Beth and the new guy may have done some work on it after I left, but I doubt it.”

“New guy?” I asked.

“The department generally has only two investigators on staff, and they handle everything, from soup to nuts. A couple of guys were under consideration for the job when I left, but I’m not sure who they promoted to take my place.”

“One more question,” I said. “Was any money found on the body?”

Ron hesitated. “Why do you want to know?” he asked at last.

“Well,” I insisted, “was there?”

“As a matter of fact there was,” Ron replied. “We discovered a couple of twenties and a five or two in his wallet, but there were also two crisp one-hundred-dollar bills. His folks were really mystified about those. Jake was fresh out of prison and wasn’t working. As far as they knew, he was dead broke, so where did the money come from?”

Bingo! Two one-hundred-dollar bills! With that I knew for sure that there was a connection here. The presence of those two pieces of currency meant that although the woman matching our DNA profile might not be responsible for all three deaths, she was sure as hell connected to all three victims.

After that I spent the next twenty minutes bringing Ron Wang up to speed as far as what I was working on and giving him an overview of everything I had learned so far about both Raymond with the redacted last name and Darius Jackson.

“Sounds like you’ve got a serial killer on your hands,” Ron observed when I finished, “and possibly a female one at that. Considering the three victims’ criminal histories, maybe she’s some kind of domestic violence vigilante.”

---