Page 39 of Den of Iniquity

That’s why every case needs new eyes and new perspectives. I felt as though I’d been whacked upside the head. A domestic violence vigilante? Of course! That made perfect sense. I had been so busylooking at the details of each case that I had failed to look at the big picture. My mother would have said that I wasn’t seeing the forest for the trees.

Domestic violence was a common denominator in all three cases. Each of the victims had a long history of DV-related arrests that had seldom resulted in their doing any kind of serious jail time. And although Jake Spaulding may have died in Liberty Lake, his domestic violence crimes had been committed in Seattle.

I’m well aware that female vigilantes can be tough to pick out of a crowd. After all, I married one, didn’t I? Anne Corley had been the kind of beauty no one would ever have pegged as a possible serial killer, but she was. Maybe that homeless woman at the food bank who had asked Darius for help with her grocery cart of goods hadn’t been nearly as helpless or harmless as she seemed.

“A vigilante,” I said finally, repeating Ron’s word back to him. “You may have just hit the nail on the head!”

“What are you going to do now?” Ron asked.

“I’m going to go back to reading through the rest of Yolanda Aguirre’s overdose interviews to see if I can identify any other possible victims.”

For the second day in a row, I skipped my crosswords entirely. Now that I was firmly on the trail of a killer, the crosswords would have to wait.

Chapter 18

Bellingham, Washington

Saturday, February 29, 2020

Cop shows on TV are all high-speed chases, sirens, and shoot-outs. The reality is far less exciting, and to that end I spent the remainder of Saturday reading. This time, with Ron Wang’s comments in mind, I made a note of each file number wherever a history of domestic violence surfaced in the case transcript. None of those rose to the level of an obvious connection, but it seemed to me that at least seven of them merited further investigation, and I intended to ask Yolanda if she would try putting me in touch with members of those individual families.

While I sat with my nose buried in my iPad, Mel announced that she was going to make chicken curry for dinner. She and I eat a good deal of Thai food takeout, so that seemed like a reasonable idea. Our kitchen is more or less for show—high on looks and low on function. After locating a recipe online, she made an extensiveshopping list of all necessary ingredients that we didn’t have in stock and headed for the store.

For the remainder of the day, I kept on reading while she was busy in the kitchen. Meanwhile Kyle spent most of the day out in the garage with the heater on, hammering away on his drums. Over the years I had heard the term “garage band” tossed around. For the first time ever, those words were now part of my reality.

When he came into the house later, he presented me with an open brown manila envelope that was addressed to him. “I picked up the mail from the street,” he announced. “It’s the cigarette butts from Rick.”

The Ziploc bag inside held a total of twenty or so cigarette butts, most of them with a smear of lipstick on them. For our purposes, the presence of lipstick was a good sign.

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll drop these off at FedEx first thing on Monday.”

By the time Mel announced dinner was ready, I was surprised to see that we would be eating at the dining room table. We generally eat at the island in the kitchen, but in this case, every flat surface in the kitchen, including the island, was littered with some kind of food prep debris. Looking at the mess, I didn’t envy Kyle his evening KP duties.

The curry wasn’t exactly a roaring success. The sauce was so hot—spicy hot—that when I took my first bite, tears actually shot out of my eyes and dripped onto my napkin. Through the course of the meal, I think each of us went through two or three glasses of milk. As for the chicken itself? It was, as Gordon Ramsay would say, “RAW!” We had to zap our individual servings in the microwave for five minutes or so to cook the chicken enough that we didn’t risk food poisoning.

But Mel had made the effort, after all, and both Kyle and I manned up and ate without complaint.

“I ran into our neighbor, Mr. Mitchell, while Sarah and I were out walking,” he said casually, partway through the meal.

I was grateful for that bit of polite conversation for two very different reasons. For one, it wasn’t a commentary on the quality of the food, which would have been problematic regardless of what he said. For another, the fact that he had referred to Hank Mitchell as “our” neighbor made me feel as though Kyle was starting to feel at home.

“I’m not sure about that little dog of his, but Hank seems like a nice guy,” Kyle observed.

Wait, I thought.Mr. Mitchell had already morphed into Hank?

“I couldn’t agree more,” I said. “And Mr. Bean may grow on you. He has on me.”

“Did you know Hank used to be a drummer?”

“I believe he may have mentioned that somewhere along the way.”

Kyle took a bite of curry, washed it down with another swallow of milk, and added, “Did you ever hear of a guy named Gene Krupa?”

I nodded. “He was an old-time drummer and bandleader. My mom was a big fan. His band played in Seattle once when I was a kid. My mother actually hired a babysitter to look after me so she could go see him. It was a big deal for her. She hung on to the program from that night. I found it when I was cleaning out her place after she died.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

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