Page 52 of Den of Iniquity

“That would be a huge help,” Mel said. “Come to think of it, there’s something else you could do.”

She reached into her pocket, fished out her wallet, and extracted her Visa card. “Once you finish walking her, how about if you go by Costco and stock up on all the things you like to eat. If the restaurants are going to be closed, there’s going to be a lot of panicky shopping, and it’ll be crowded, but since Grandpa and I are so dependent on takeout, I don’t want any of us to starve to death.”

“Will do,” Kyle said, pocketing the credit card. “And I’m guessing this is for groceries only,” he added with a grin. “I’m not allowed to pick up a new computer while I’m at it?”

“In your dreams,” Mel replied, but she was smiling, too.

It seemed as though a night’s sleep had done all of us a world of good. However, to avoid my having to visit any restaurants, Mel insisted on packing a lunch for me—an amount of food equal to several lunches in fact. I hit the road laden with a bag containing four PB&J sandwiches, a bag of sour-cream-and-onion potato chips, and a bunch of bananas. If we’d owned an old-fashioned thermos,I’m sure Mel would have insisted that I fill that with coffee before leaving the house.

“Not to worry,” I told her. “The Evidence unit is part of Seattle PD. I’m sure I’ll be able to scrounge up coffee as needed.”

Out in the garage, Sarah seemed a little confused when I ordered her into the back seat of Mel’s Interceptor rather than into my Mercedes, but once she realized that her rug was already there and waiting, she complied at once. By the time I shut the car door, she was curled up and settled in.

When it came time for Mel to climb into the driver’s seat, she gave me a quick kiss. “Be safe,” she said.

In the years I had known her, I had seldom seen Mel scared or even so much as spooked. In that moment, I could see in her eyes how frightened she was, not just for me, but for Kyle, for her department, her country, and maybe even for the whole world. I wanted to tell her,Youneed to stop watching so much news, but there wasn’t any point.

“I will be,” I said. “I promise.”

Heading south, I was grateful it was overcast but not raining. Had it been clear, the moisture from the previous day’s rainstorms might have left a coating of black ice on the roadway. The marine layer meant the road was wet but not slick. I had started late enough that, by the time I reached Everett, the worst of Seattle’s inbound morning traffic was beginning to subside. I made straight for SODO without passing Go and without paying two hundred dollars.

Officer Harriman recognized me on sight. “You again?” she asked.

“Just call me the bad penny.”

“What do you need this time?”

On the drive down, I’d made up my mind that I needed to revisit the Darius Jackson file along with the other two.

“I need the same file you gave me last time—the one on Darius Jackson—and a couple more besides,” I told her, handing over Sandra Sechrest’s Post-it note. “I’ll also need to be able to view any DVDs that may be included.”

Thankfully, I didn’t have to go through the whole rigamarole of showing my ID. Officer Harriman handed me a clipboard and told me to sign in while she dispatched someone else to fetch the evidence files. But then she eyed the bag Mel had packed for me. “What’s in that?” she asked.

“My lunch,” I explained.

“No food or beverages are allowed in evidence rooms. You’ll need to stow it in one of the lockers over there,” she said, pointing to a bank of lockers, most of which had keys in the doors.

“Not many visitors here today,” she added, “so take your pick.”

The clerk who brought the evidence boxes from wherever they were kept escorted me into a different room and then gave me a quick lesson on how to operate the video equipment. I’m sure Scotty Beaumont wouldn’t have had the least bit of trouble with it, but his dear old dad required some assistance. After the food bank video was locked and loaded, it took a few practice tries for me to master the art of frame-by-frame viewing, along with using the keyboard to increase and decrease the size of the images I was examining.

And that’s how I studied the video footage of Darius Jackson and the unidentified homeless woman as they left the entrance of the food bank and walked through the darkness toward the street on Thanksgiving night. They moved in sync with him on the right and her on the left and closer to the camera.

One frame at a time, almost one step at a time, I followed theirmovements. Then, as they reached the sidewalk and turned left, I saw what I was looking for—a tiny pinprick of light gleaming on the woman’s left wrist. At regular speed it had been invisible, and it appeared only during the step or two it took for her to turn the corner, but the movements involved must have inadvertently caused the sleeve of her coat to ride up slightly on her arm, enough so that the camera lens captured what I was now sure was a momentary flash of light from the glowing face of an Apple Watch.

My emotional response was much the same as Matt Barr’s had been. What the hell was a homeless woman doing with an Apple Watch? Where had she gotten it and how did she charge it? Did she have a solar panel hidden in that cart of hers so she could recharge the watch as needed? No, there was only one answer to the Apple Watch question. This woman wasn’t homeless at all. She was masquerading as someone who was.

“Gotcha!” I exclaimed aloud to the image on the screen. “I may not know who the hell you are at the moment, but you’d better believe I’m coming for you.”

The next box I had requested was the one for Loren Gregson. Once the dog-walker called in to report finding a dead body in a blackberry patch, uniformed officers had been first to respond. Shortly thereafter, Seattle PD detectives had been summoned, and there I spotted a familiar name. Detective Sandra Sechrest had been one of the original investigators on the scene. No wonder she’d been willing to give me the case numbers. Not only had she spoken to Matilda Jackson, she’d also been required to walk away from the Gregson case once the M.E. made the autopsy call.

The detectives had initiated a neighborhood canvass to see if anything out of line had been reported from the night before. That turned up nothing. The detectives had collected surveillancefootage from three separate businesses in the area—a mini-mart, a restaurant, and a bar: the Fremont Inn, the very one Loren Gregson’s mother had mentioned. The footage had then been transferred to DVDs, which were placed in the evidence box, but no notation in the accompanying murder book indicated that any of the video material had ever been analyzed. My best guess was that once the accidental death ruling came in, the investigation into Loren Gregson’s death had ground to a halt. At that point, further examination of any evidence would have been deemed unnecessary.

The M.E. had reported the time of death as being sometime overnight on Saturday, January 10. During wintertime Seattle, nights are long indeed. It made sense that someone committing a crime would aim to do so late at night, thus lessening the risk of having possible witnesses out and about. I decided arbitrarily that I’d focus my attention on the footage time-stamped between the hours of elevenp.m.and fivea.m., but that was a hell of a lot of footage to review, especially since I was doing the job solo.

Not only that, there was no way to make use of the fast-forward button. Depending on the speed of movement, vehicles especially and even pedestrians passed in and out of camera range in mere seconds. That meant every scrap of video had to be examined in real time. So that’s what I did, minute by minute and hour by hour. Knowing that late-night trouble often occurs in bars, I examined the bar’s interior video first—reviewing the evening of January tenth both outside and inside the Fremont Inn starting at sevenp.m.

Having seen Loren’s various mug shots, I had a reasonably good idea of who I was looking for. The resolution on the bar’s interior surveillance system was excellent, allowing me to view the goings-on from several different angles. That took even more time. While the time stamp on the video moved from seven tonine thirty, noon my time came and went. By then my eyes were killing me and so was my back. I was about to give up, but when I hit the 9:30p.m.time stamp, that’s when my perseverance paid off.

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