Page 79 of Den of Iniquity

I nodded. “Mel spotted one she likes on Constance’s website. I’m going down to Seattle tomorrow afternoon to pick it up.”

After another brief exchange of emails, the two o’clock appointment was confirmed, and I had the address of Constance’s place on Evanston Avenue a few blocks north of Northgate Way. That’s when a call came in from Todd Hatcher. Leaving Mel and Kyle to finish watchingAmerica’s Funniest Videosin peace, I went into the other room to take the call.

“Boy, do you know how to pick ’em!” Todd said when I answered.

“What do you mean?”

“You asked me to look into someone named Constance Herzog, and she’s a doozy!”

“How so?”

“For starters,” he said, “when she was sixteen, she stabbed her father to death while he was in the process of assaulting her mother, Irene.”

I was shocked, remembering that Constance Herzog had told Ellen Mitchell that her father hadn’t gone to prison because he had gotten off, but that wasn’t true. He hadn’t been found innocent in a court of law. Instead, he’d been murdered!

“She stabbed him to death?” I asked. “Really?”

“Really,” Todd replied. “I’m looking at a digitized copy of an article from theButte Mountain Gazette, which went out of business in 2003. These days a teenager murdering her father in cold blood would be big news all over the country, but this happened back in1982 before we ended up living in a 24/7 news cycle. I doubt the story had legs anywhere outside the state of Montana. But I have to hand it to her. She must have been operating on pure adrenaline at the time. She stabbed him once in the back with a butcher knife, but she did so with enough force that she severed his aorta. He died at the scene.”

That’s one way to become a successful serial killer, I thought to myself.Start early.

“So here’s her basic bio,” Todd continued. “She was born Constance Marie Landon in Butte, Montana, on November 18, 1966. Her parents were Frank and Irene Landon.”

My heart skipped a beat. “Wait,” I said. “I know that name. Hold on a second. Let me check something.”

It took a few moments for me to scroll back through my notes and locate my interview with Harriet Bonham. In it she had told me plain as day that William Landon’s older brother, Frank, had died of natural causes at the age of five in 1927. Now here he was dying again, due to a stab wound this time, in 1982. So that was how William Landon, the Brinks holdup man, had vanished from view. He had gone into hiding in Butte, Montana, by assuming his dead brother’s name, but obviously he hadn’t lived happily ever after.

“This explains a lot,” I told Todd and gave him some of the background I’d been given by Harriet Bonham.

At that point, Todd continued. “Landon’s sixteen-year-old daughter, unnamed in the article on account of her being a juvenile, was found at the scene still holding the bloodied knife. Neighbors had heard the commotion and summoned the authorities. The daughter confessed at the scene and was taken into custody. While Irene, the wife, was transported to a hospital for treatment of serious injuries, which included a concussion and deep bruising around her throat,the daughter was held in a juvenile facility for several days while the local authorities along with the coroner conducted their investigations. Once Landon’s death was declared to be justifiable homicide, the daughter was released into her mother’s custody.”

“Is that when they moved to Seattle?” I asked.

“Property records indicate Irene Landon purchased a home on Evanston Avenue in the Northgate area in 1983. There’s no mention of a mortgage, so she must have paid cash.”

No doubt with some of her husband’s stolen money, I thought. William had probably gone to work in the copper mines because he was worried that if he flashed too much money around, people might connect him to the Brinks robbery. Once he was dead, Irene must finally have felt free to spend some of it.

“How much did she pay?”

“At the time the assessed value was $55,000. It’s worth a lot more than that now,” Todd added. “The current assessed value is $750,000. Irene Landon died in 1997. Her daughter still lives in the residence.”

“What else did you turn up?”

“Constance attended the University of Washington and graduated with a degree in Criminal Justice in 1988. She briefly enrolled in law school but dropped out in 1990 when she married Thomas Herzog. They divorced five years later with no indication of their having had any children.”

I couldn’t help myself. “What about him?” I asked. “Did the poor guy manage to make it out alive?”

Todd laughed. “According to what I’m finding, he’s alive and well and living somewhere in the Phoenix area, a place called Sun City West.”

“Glad to hear it,” I said.

“Anyway,” Todd continued, “Constance was out of the workforcefor a number of years while she cared for her ailing mother. After her mother’s passing, Constance hired on with Seattle’s 911 call center as a dispatcher. Apparently she still works there, now in a supervisory capacity.”

And using that position as a hunting ground for her victims, I thought.

“One more thing, Todd, were there any indications of other domestic violence incidents prior to Landon’s stabbing?”

“Several,” Todd replied. “I’ve only been hitting the high points here. I’ve created a folder with all applicable links, which I’m sending now. Anything else I can help you with?”

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