want to help her, but she told me that if I didn’t help, she would turn me in for selling drugs which, sorry to say, I have been doing because it’s a very good way for me to earn money and I knew if your dad ever found out he would send me to jail. And so I did help her and I’m sorry and scared. I really wanted to go back home yesterday because Canada doesn’t have the death penalty for murder like the US does. When you wouldn’t come with me, I got so mad but I didn’t mean to hit you, I really really didn’t. Molly’s coming over to see me in a little while. She says we should go to Canada together right now, tonight. I told her I would, but that is a lie. If I don’t see you tonight, I hope you have a good life. I’m sorry for everything and I love you. You are the best thing that ever happened to me in my whole life. Dillon.
When I finished reading, I looked up to see Heather watching me closely. I couldn’t speak, but I was saying a small prayer of gratitude to Dillon Middleton. Suicide is said to be the most selfish of acts, yet in writing this note he had clearly exonerated Heather. Yes, her heart was broken-just as Amy had said it would be-but Dillon had gone out of his way to lift the cloud of suspicion that would otherwise have settled around her.
“That’s who he meant when he said ‘we,’ ” Heather said. “He meant Molly and him.”
I nodded. “And he was right,” I said when I was once again capable of speech. “Molly Wright was an evil woman.”
“I don’t understand. Why did she hate my dad so?” Heather asked.
I remembered what Amy had said earlier, about how much Molly had liked being Amy’s older sister and how much Amy hadn’t appreciated being bossed around.
“Because she was jealous,” I answered. “Because your father’s a good man-a good husband and father. From Molly’s point of view, it must have seemed as though her sister had everything Molly’s own life was lacking. In some twisted way, she thought pushing your father out of the picture would somehow even the score.”
Heather thought about that for a time. “Do you think she told Dillon the truth?” Heather asked finally. Her intense eyes were focused on my face. “When he stabbed her, do you think he had any idea that she was really his mother?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “She certainly hadn’t told him when he wrote this, and the e-mail is time-dated at five twenty-nine. If she did tell him, it would have been later than this.”
Heather reached for the paper, took it back, and then held it against her chest as if by holding tight to that precious piece of paper she could somehow reach across time and space and touch Dillon as well. “Will you have to give this to the detectives?”
“Yes,” I said. “They’ll need to have it-a copy of it, anyway. It’s what they’ll use to clear the two cases.”
I thought about Heather in one of the interview rooms on the homicide floor at Seattle PD. Maybe the interview rooms in the new building weren’t quite as grim as the gritty old ones in the Public Safety Building. Still, I didn’t like to think about her being interviewed by detectives with Paul Kramer hanging around on the sidelines.
“I could call Mel Soames,” I said. “She’d come over to talk to you.”
“Right now?” Heather asked.
“If I asked her.” I thought that was true, but I wasn’t one hundred percent sure. Regardless, it was worth a try.
“I could just as well talk to her now,” Heather said. “I won’t be able to sleep.”
“Go get out of those wet clothes, then,” I said. “There’s a robe and a pair of sweats in the guest room. I’ll call Mel and see what she says.”
And even though it was four o’clock in the morning as I dialed her number, and even though I again awakened her out of a sound sleep, Mel Soames didn’t blow me out of the water. “I’ll be there in half an hour,” she said. “But on two hours of sleep, this better include breakfast.”
I was snoozing in the recliner when the doorman called to let me know Mel was on her way up. I tapped on the guest-room door to summon Heather. Contrary to what she had said, she was sprawled across the bed, dead to the world. I eased the hard copy of Dillon’s last e-mail out from under her hand and left her sleeping. Armed with a freshly poured cup of coffee, I opened the door and met Mel in the corridor before she had a chance to ring the bell.
Considering the hour and the time she’d had available to get up and dressed, Mel looked surprisingly well put together in a dove-gray suit and a cream-colored blouse. “It’s going to be a long day,” she said. “I decided to wear what I’m going to wear to Elvira Marchbank’s funeral later on rather than having to run back and forth across the lake. By the way,” she added, “you look like hell.”
“Gee, thanks. This happens to be how I look when I don’t get any sleep,” I told her. “Obviously lack of sleep has no effect on you whatsoever.”
“Is that a compliment?” she asked.
“I think so.”
“Good. Now what’s up?”
“Heather’s asleep in the other room, but take a look at this.”
I handed her Dillon’s final e-mail. She read it with pursed lips. “Five twenty-nine,” she mused. “That would be consistent with what we found out.”
“Which is?”
“After we left Ron and Amy’s, Brad and I went back over to Dillon’s apartment on the back side of Queen Anne Hill. All we had to do was look in the window to know we’d found ourselves a crime scene. There was blood spatter everywhere. We immediately called it in to Seattle PD. Your friend Kramer-who’s a complete jackass, by the way…”
“I know,” I said. “I’m well aware of that.”
“…took his damned time about sending someone over. By the time he and his detectives showed up-search warrant in hand because ours was out of date-Brad and I had already located three different people who had heard the sounds of an altercation between a man and a woman coming from Dillon’s apartment around six P.M.”
“Heard it but didn’t report it,” I interjected.
Mel nodded. “That’s right. Lots of student-style apartments around there, so maybe noisy arguments are a regular occurrence. When Kramer showed up and realized Brad and I were the ones on the scene, I thought he was going to have a coronary on the spot. He ordered us to leave. Ordered!” Mel repeated derisively. “On the grounds that we were operating outside our jurisdiction! Who the hell does he think he is?”
“He’s someone who’s used to throwing his weight around.”
“In that case, Dillon’s e-mail may sound good enough for us to believe Heather wasn’t involved, and it’s probably good enough for the prosecutor’s office, but I doubt it’ll convince Kramer. He knows that you and Ron are good friends, and he’s going to go after this like a pit bull. All that means is we’re going to have to find proof. Or Heather’s attorney will.”
I liked the fact that having met Paul Kramer only once or twice, Mel already had his number.
“Any ideas?” I asked.
“Brad picked up a bunch of security videotapes. There’s a company down in Olympia that owns several dozen convenience stores. We need to go through those. If Molly and Dillon both had cell phones, we need to check those out. If there were calls made during the time in question, we may be able to get a physical location.”
Heather appeared at the end of the hallway. “You need Dillon’s phone?” she asked. “If you do, I have it. One of the medics gave it to me when we were in the ambulance. He said it was in the way.”
She turned and went back down the hallway. When she returned with the phone, she handed it over to me. The phone wasn’t the least bit like mine. I had to put on my reading glasses in hopes of sorting out how it worked, but the phone was as dead as could be. I remembered then that Dillon had told Heather it had lost its charge. Until we found a cord that fit it, the phone would stay dead.
“I’m so sorry to hear about Dillon,” Mel said to Heather. “Please accept my condolences.”
Mel’s words were uttered with such sincerity that Heather was taken aback. I don’t think she had expected sympathy from Mel. Nothing she said discounted the supposed “puppy love” aspects of the loss Heather was feeling. Grief was grief, and Heather nodded gratefully. “Thank you,” she said.
“I know you’re going through a very difficult time,” Mel continued, “and you may be too tired to go into any of this right now, but Beau asked me over so I could get a jump on the interview process. Lots of people and jurisdictions are involved in these cases. In order to close them, all the investigators are going to need answers to questions-answers that you alone may be able to provide.”
