Justice Denied (10 page)

“No idea,” I said.

Robert Staunton, the chaplain from Queen Anne Gardens, officiated at the ceremony and did a credible job of it. It was clear from his remarks that he knew Lars and Beverly well, and that he had liked and respected them. What he had to say was in fact a celebration of the love and caring they had brought to each other late in life.

Toward the end of the service Staunton opened the proceedings for comments from friends and family. I was surprised when Kelly handed Kyle over to Jeremy and stepped up to the microphone.

“I didn’t meet my great-grandmother at all until just a few years ago,” Kelly said. “But I know she loved us even when we weren’t together, and I’m grateful to have known her at all. And I’m grateful to Lars for making her so happy.”

That pretty well said it for me. There wasn’t a single thing I could have added to that statement, so I didn’t try.

When it came time to leave the chapel, Lars handed the two boxes of cremains over to Scott for safekeeping. Then he picked up the photo and carried it with him for the remainder of the day, clutching it to his chest as though it were a talisman that would drive away the several elderly women who did tend to cluster around him. As far as they were concerned,
however, Lars Jenssen’s opinion to the contrary, I never saw anything at all in the women’s behavior that was the least bit inappropriate. They seemed like nice, ordinary women who were clucking in order to express sincere concern for someone who had lost his mate. Period. If one of them was dead set on maneuvering Lars into the sack, I didn’t see any evidence of it.

Scott and Jeremy loaded all the flowers into the back of Scott’s rented Taurus to take back to Belltown Terrace for the reception. As they were doing the loading, Lars was busy obsessing about how he’d manage to write all the thank-you notes.

“Not to worry,” Mel assured him. “I’ll handle it.”

Thus saving my bacon one more time.

We made it through the reception in fairly good shape. I had been prepared to take the whole group out to dinner, but Scott let me know that wasn’t necessary. “Jeremy and Cherisse haven’t spent much time in Seattle,” he said. “And, according to them, Kayla spent her whole day’s worth of good behavior at the funeral. We’re going to go out for pizza and then tomorrow we’re going to go sightseeing. If you want to come along…”

Somehow the idea of my kids’ spending some adult time together because they wanted to, without squabbling and without parental enforcement, was an idea that warmed me. “I think I’ll take a pass on pizza and sightseeing,” I said. “But maybe we can have dinner together tomorrow night.”

Mel caught my eye. “We’re booked tomorrow evening, remember?” she said. Then she added, “Although, if you want to spend time with your kids, I can go alone.”

Then I remembered—the fund-raising auction and the tux.

I also knew that the day had gone as well as it had due, in no small measure, to Melissa Soames’s efforts. I owed her.

“How long are you staying in town?” I asked.

Scott grinned. “The desk clerk said our bill is paid until Sunday, so we aren’t going home before then. Really, though, Sunday is when our plane leaves, and that’s when Kelly and Jeremy plan to head back, too.”

“Saturday, then,” I said. “We’ll make a day of it and have dinner together on Saturday.”

By six everybody was gone. Lars had returned home. The floral arrangements had been dispersed—some to Queen Anne Gardens, some to the front lobby of Belltown Terrace, and some to our living room. I was in the recliner with my feet up. Mel had just kicked off her shoes and curled up on the window seat to browse through Beverly Jenssen’s scrapbooks when her cell phone rang. She had to get up and track down her purse in order to answer.

I listened in on her part of the conversation, but her noncommittal yeses and uh-huhs didn’t tell me much. By the time she ended the call, though, she was visibly upset.

“Who was that?” I asked.

“Lenny Kessleman,” she said. “Head of CSI for King County.”

“What’s the matter?”

“The bullet from the Kates homicide scene is missing.”

“Maybe one of the detectives who was there yesterday picked it up and failed to put it in the log.”

“It’s missing from the wall,” Mel clarified firmly. “We all saw the hole in the wood paneling inside the camper. Since it didn’t penetrate the outside of the camper shell, we assumed it was lodged between the paneling and the shell and was probably stuck somewhere in the insulation. We decided to leave the
paneling as is until after the CSIs had finished up with the other evidence.”

When a bullet exits a human skull, there’s always plenty of biological evidence—blood, bone chips, and brain matter—left behind. I understood why detectives on the scene would have left the bullet undisturbed until after all that evidence, including blood spatter and possible shoe prints, had been properly photographed, collected, and cataloged.

“So today they cut out that chunk of paneling and dug through the insulation, but the bullet wasn’t there,” Mel continued. “And from what Kessleman just told me, when they took the piece of paneling in for processing, they found evidence that would be consistent with the bullet having been removed from there at the time of the shooting.”

I’ve done plenty of head-shot crime scene investigations in my time. Encountering the physical evidence of one of those can be a soul-shattering experience—even long after the fact. If Allen Kates’s killer had been tough enough to wade through fresh blood and gore in order to retrieve damning evidence of his crime, it was likely we were dealing with someone who was appallingly cold-blooded. Most murderers don’t come equipped with the presence of mind to clean up after themselves. Most of them aren’t that smart.

“What about shoe prints?” I asked.

“What I saw would be consistent with a killer who wore booties.”

That meant the guy was definitely crime-scene savvy.

“Sounds like you’re dealing with somebody who’s watched way too many CSI programs on TV.”

“There is one more possibility,” Mel ventured after a pause. “Maybe our killer is a cop.”

Unfortunately, given the circumstances, that conclusion wasn’t at all outside the realm of possibility.

“That would certainly explain why Ross Connors is involved.”

“Wouldn’t it just,” Mel agreed. With that, she once more reached for her phone.

R
oss Connors’s SHIT squad is the first place I’ve ever worked that isn’t all hung up on everybody going through channels and across desks. I find that very refreshing. Yes, Harry I. Ball runs our unit, but Ross values the handpicked people he’s chosen as his investigators and he trusts them. He’s made it abundantly clear that we all have direct access to him whenever and wherever we deem it necessary. So it didn’t surprise me that the call Mel placed was to the attorney general. Nor did it surprise me when he called her back five minutes after she left him a message.

She gave him a brief rundown of what Kessleman had told her, then she started hedging. “I suppose I could meet you at the office or else my place in Bellevue in about twenty minutes.”

Mel paused while he said something in return. After a glance
in my direction, she replied, “Ten minutes? Sure. That’ll be fine. One of us will be downstairs to let you in.”

To my astonishment she was blushing as she closed her phone. “So who told Ross we were living together?”

“I sure as hell didn’t!” I exclaimed.

“Well, somebody did,” she said. “He’s at a meeting at the Fairmont. He’ll be here in ten minutes.”

“He’s coming here?” That did surprise me. The mountain usually doesn’t go to Muhammad, and the fact that he was coming to Belltown Terrace for a late-evening personal visit meant something was up—something that couldn’t wait until regular business hours.

With only ten minutes’ worth of warning there wasn’t time to stand around speculating about it. I’m on the wagon. Have been for years. Washington State attorney general Ross Connors is definitely not on the wagon. Anything but.

In the old days—the pre–Melissa Soames days—an unexpected evening visit from him would have necessitated my knocking on my neighbors’ doors in search of a borrowed cup of spirits. Now that Mel was living here, however, we had a moderately decent wine cellar. The best I could do was offer Ross a glass of wine from a twenty-dollar bottle of imported French Bordeaux purchased from Mel’s wine merchant of choice—Costco.

While Mel went downstairs to collect our visitor I opened the bottle, set out some glasses, and poured myself a tonic and tonic over ice.

When Ross showed up, he looked surprisingly distressed and I could tell he’d already had a drink or two. “This is ostensibly a condolence call,” he said brusquely as Mel led him into the room. “Other than that, no meeting has taken place. Got it?”

So Beverly Jenssen was still providing cover—this time for the A.G. himself.

“Got it,” I said. I poured him a glass of wine. He took a long sip without really tasting it.

“So let’s go over this Kates thing again,” he said to Mel. “From the top.”

He listened without comment as Mel recounted the story. “Any ideas?” he asked when she finished.

“Beau and I were speculating just before you got here,” Mel replied. “We’re wondering if maybe Kates’s killer could be a cop, or at the very least someone with a law enforcement background.”

Ross shifted uneasily in his chair, and since he had appropriated my recliner, I knew it wasn’t that uncomfortable. “Could be,” he said. Then he sighed and continued. “Our killer could be a cop or an ex-cop or maybe even a correctional officer who’s systematically targeting ex-cons who did their time in Washington State. We need to know if this is an inside job. That’s why I put both of you on the two separate cases—with Mel running the sexual-offender roundup and you on the LaShawn Tompkins incident. That way, if the two cases do link up, I’m hoping to localize the problem.”

Mel gave me a look. Hers said clearly, “Who the hell is LaShawn Tompkins?” which meant that whatever more Ross might say in that regard was going to put me in deeper—in the other kind of shit—with Melissa Soames.

Hoping to divert her attention, I spoke up. “Are you saying you think we’re dealing with two separate issues, or one?”

Ross nodded. “I’m not sure,” he said, “but it’s possible they’re not separate at all.”

He peered bleakly at Mel over the rims of his glasses—the one in his hand and the pair perched on his nose. “The report you sent me yesterday morning, prior to finding Mr. Kates’s body, indicated you had found six dead victims. Let’s assume for argument’s sake that the two guys who ended up in the irrigation canal in Phoenix really were involved in a drunk-driving incident and their deaths aren’t related. But the rest do seem suspicious, not so much when taken individually—as I’m sure was intended—but certainly when taken together. So what have you learned so far?”

“Les Fordham is the victim from down near Roseburg,” Mel answered. “Arson investigators found nothing amiss with any of the gas appliances or gas lines in the trailer. The burners were simply left on without being ignited. Eventually enough gas built up inside the mobile home for the pilot light on the hot water heater to set it off. Roseburg effectively closed the case by assuming it was suicide, but Fordham’s parole officer swears his client was doing well. He had a good job and a new girlfriend. There was nothing going on that would account for his committing suicide.”

“Any note?” Ross asked.

“No note,” Mel told him.

“What about the guy on Chuckanut Drive?” Ross asked.

“That would be Ed Chrisman,” Mel answered, without having to resort to looking at the notebook she had retrieved from her briefcase. “That, too, was officially designated an accident. The problem with that is that when the vehicle was recovered, it was still in gear. How many times in your life did you get out of a car to take a leak and leave the damned thing in drive?”

Mel’s question was directed at Ross, but I was the one who answered.

“Never,” I said.

Ross nodded, reached for the bottle, and poured himself a second glass. I didn’t say anything, but my concern must have been obvious. “Don’t worry,” he said, glancing at me. “I have a car and driver waiting downstairs.” Then he turned back to Mel. “What about the others?”

Mel scanned her notes. “Frederick Jamison died of an accidental overdose in Pocatello, Idaho. Ray Ramirez succumbed to the same thing in Helena, Montana.”

“Were each of those cases thoroughly investigated?” Ross asked.

“I can’t say one way or the other,” Mel answered. “I certainly don’t have access to all the files at this point, but my guess is probably not. They were labeled suspicious deaths. The reports I’ve seen so far are pretty sketchy. Maybe whoever did this counted on that—on the idea that local authorities wouldn’t expend a lot of time, energy, or expense in resolving these cases. After all, who gives a damn about one dead crook more or less?”

Clearly Ross Connors did. These guys were all dying on his watch.

“Someone else is bound to pick up on this and start making connections. It’s going to explode once it hits the media,” he said glumly. “At that point there’ll be hell to pay regardless of who’s actually doing the killing here. And guess who’s going to have to shoulder the blame?”

For the better part of twenty years Ross Connors had navigated Washington State’s stormy political seas with apparent impunity. I suspect that, for the first time, he was encountering a crisis that could leave him vulnerable. That explained his wanting to keep our investigation under wraps, at least in these preliminary stages.

“So what we need to know is who is behind this,” Ross said. “Who he is and how he’s locating and targeting his victims.”

“Finding them is easy,” Mel said. “So far all the dead guys on my list are sexual offenders with their addresses posted on the Internet.”

“But that doesn’t explain LaShawn Tompkins,” Connors said. “He wouldn’t be on any registered sexual offender list because he’s not a sexual predator per se since he was actually exonerated on the rape charge.”

“If he’s not listed,” I said, “maybe his death has nothing to do with the others.”

Ross heaved a sigh. “But Tompkins was imprisoned here,” he said. “He may not have been guilty, but the fact that he’s out of prison now makes him an ex-con. What neither of you know is that three more dead ex-con cases turned up today—one in New Mexico, one in Nevada, and one more here in Washington, down in Vancouver. None of them would have ended up on Mel’s list because they’re not sexual predators. Two are grand theft auto and the other one is a bank robbery. Two died of unexplained drug overdoses and one of carbon monoxide poisoning in a closed garage.”

I remembered Mel saying her cases were all over the map. These were even more so, not only geographically but also in terms of murder weapon. The more I heard, the more unlikely it seemed that we were dealing with a single killer.

“We’ve got someone twisted here,” Ross continued morosely, “some egomaniac who’s appointed himself judge, jury, and executioner. From what you’ve told me, whoever killed Allen Kates is familiar with crime scene investigation and forensics.”

“That’s true in the other cases as well, at least as far as I’ve
perused the files,” Mel said. “In each case the assailant left behind almost no trace evidence.”

“So he’s wily,” I said. “And careful. And he is also someone who has access to prison-release records,” I added.

“That’s why I’m saying it’s a rogue cop,” Ross concluded. “That’s what I’ve been thinking ever since Todd brought it to my attention. Either a bad cop or a corrections worker gone postal.”

I know all the guys who work for SHIT—at least I thought I did. But the name Todd didn’t ring a bell.

“Todd who?” I asked.

Ross squirmed in his seat once more. “Todd Hatcher,” he answered. “A guy who works in my office.”

“An attorney then?” I asked.

“No,” Ross said. “Actually, he’s an economist.”

I almost choked on a sip of icy tonic. When I was in college I washed out of only two classes—economics and philosophy. I ended up taking incompletes in both of them. Since then I’ve looked on practitioners of either profession with a somewhat jaundiced eyeball.

“An economist?” I croaked. “Are you kidding?”

“Not at all,” Ross returned. “Ever heard of forensic economics?”

Mel and I shook our heads in unison.

“It’s relatively new,” Ross said. “Before last summer, neither had I, but then Todd turned up and told me all about it. He had just picked up a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Washington. He claimed that by doing a statistical analysis of our current and recent prison population he could create a computer model that would predict our recidivism rates, tell us how many prison beds we would need in the future—where, when, and
what kind. For instance, he thinks he can sort out the exact number of geriatric facilities we’ll eventually need as our prison population ages.

“Believe me, those kinds of studies can cost big bucks. But here was this one very motivated guy who wanted to do it for practically nothing. He had made a similar proposal for his dissertation, but his faculty adviser had turned him down. I think he came to me because he was still pissed at his adviser. The fact that the university had axed the project made him that much more determined to do it, so much so that he offered to work for a pittance as long as I gave him unlimited access to our data. Truth be known, he probably has a book deal waiting in the wings somewhere. Why wouldn’t he? He’s an economist, for God’s sake. But in terms of cost to the state of Washington, it was an irresistible offer.”

“So you took him on,” Mel said. “An economist, not a cop.”

“That’s right,” Ross agreed. “So I hired Hatcher. I gave him an office and a computer and turned him loose with oodles of information. Shortly after he started doing his study, however, Todd hit on an anomaly—a sudden spike in mortality rates among recently released inmates, one that didn’t fit inside the expected actuarial norms for that particular population. That’s his area of expertise, you see—demographics.”

“How recent a spike?” I asked.

“In the last year and a half or so. Before that, the death rates were pretty steady and followed predictable patterns. Many of those deaths were clearly age-, behavior-, or illness-related. But the dead guys in this new group are all fairly young—twenties, thirties, and forties—relatively healthy, and they all seem to have died under mysterious circumstances that aren’t necessarily homicides.
Several of the deaths have been labeled simply suspicious. So I asked Todd to start looking into it. He’s been at it for only two weeks now and he’s already come up with the ones I told you about tonight as well as with the ones Mel found. You can see why I’m leaning in the direction of a cop gone bad, and if it turns out he’s someone who’s worked for me…” Ross shook his head, lapsed into a moody silence, and stared into the depths of his almost empty wineglass.

Now I began to fathom why Ross Connors was so gun-shy about news of our investigation getting out. A previous leak from the A.G.’s office had resulted in the death of a woman in the witness protection program—someone it had been his professional obligation to protect. I knew that failure on his part still weighed heavily on him, especially since it had eventually led to the death of Ross’s own wife. No wonder he was so concerned. If it turned out a serial killer with close to a dozen victims could be traced back to his administration, Ross’s days as attorney general were probably numbered. Still, it irked me to think that Mel and I were working as glorified fact-checkers for some hotshot economist.

“If we discover present or former law enforcement personnel are involved,” Ross resumed after a pause, “I’ll have to bring in the feds, no question, but I don’t want to do that until I’m reasonably sure what we’re dealing with. On the other hand, we simply must put a stop to this. Yes, the victims are some pretty bad dudes, but they’ve also served their time and paid their debts to society. According to the Constitution, even scumbags have a right to due process.”

“What about Mr. Tompkins?” Mel said.

On the surface her question was directed at Ross, but the look she sent in my direction said otherwise.

“What’s the story with him?” she continued. “Whatever it was must have happened before I came to town.”

That was true. LaShawn Tompkins had been both wrongly convicted and rightly released long before Melissa Soames turned up in Bellevue as Ross Connors’s latest addition to SHIT.