running the show.
CHAPTER 8
The catered dinner was not a huge success. In fact, although the food itself was excellent, the company was lacking. Kelly and Jeremy did not attend. Lars wasn’t hungry. Scott and Cherisse showed up an hour and a half later than expected due to their Seattle-bound aircraft having had some kind of mechanical problem while it was still on the ground at SFO. Their food was cold. Mel didn’t show up for dinner at all. And she didn’t call.
This should probably be filed under the heading of “Just Deserts,” because if my ex-wife Karen were still alive, I’m sure she could recount, chapter and verse, the many times I missed meals-and didn’t call, either. But knowing it was payback time didn’t make me feel any better. About 9:00 p.m., when I came back from returning Lars to his digs at Queen Anne Gardens, Mel was home. I found her at the dining room table. Still damp from taking a shower and clad only in a robe, she was chowing down on leftovers.
“How’d it go?” she asked.
“Could have been better,” I muttered. “Where’ve you been?”
“Crime scene,” she replied. “Out by Mount Si. We were out in the boonies far enough that we ended up in a telecommunications black hole. Cell phones don’t work there.”
“What kind of crime scene?” I asked.
“Homicide,” she said. “What did you think it would be?”
Barring unusual circumstances, SHIT isn’t often called in on homicide crime scenes. First response usually falls to local agencies and jurisdictions.
“Whose case is it?” I asked. “And how come you took the call?”
“It happened in rural King County,” Mel explained. “But it turns out the victim is one of mine-one of my registered sex offenders, that is. So we’re running a joint investigation. The guy’s name is Kates-Allen Christopher Kates. That’s still tentative, even though it’s based on ID we found on the body. We’ll need dental records to get a positive, and we won’t have those from the Department of Corrections until tomorrow at the earliest.”
The call for dental records implied that the body had been there for a while. I’ve been to grim crime scenes like that. The fact that Mel could come from a sickening homicide investigation with her appetite for dinner still intact said a lot about who she was-and why I liked her.
“Kates lived by himself in a little camper shell out in the woods, sort of like the guy down in Oregon,” Mel continued. “He wasn’t big on friends and family, since he’d been dead for a month or longer before anyone bothered to report him missing.”
“Meth lab?” I asked.
People who live by themselves in the woods often participate in the manufacturing sector. Mixing up batches of meth is a growth industry in rural areas all over the country.
“Nope,” Mel said. “No sign of meth. He was growing plenty of grass, however.” And she didn’t mean Bermuda.
“What did he die of?” I asked.
“A single bullet wound to the head. It was fired from pointblank range. Blew out most of his skull.”
“Self-inflicted?” I asked.
“Not likely,” she answered, “since no weapon was found at the scene.”
“And how did you get dragged into it?”
“Like I said, he was one of the guys on my list. I happened to be checking on him at the same time someone else was busy finding the body.”
“That makes what, now-three of your guys, as you call them-dead? One in Oregon, one in Bellingham, and now this?”
“More like seven,” Mel said as she stood to clear her plate and carry the remaining containers of roast beef, mashed potatoes, and gravy back to the fridge. “I thought Ross wanted me to verify addresses of living sex offenders. I had no idea so many of them would have croaked. And the dead guys are all over the map-literally. Two now in Washington, one each in Idaho, Oregon, and Montana, and two more in Arizona.”
It didn’t surprise me to think that any given list of ex-cons, violent sexual predators or otherwise, would have a high mortality rate. They’re not exactly the kind of folks who avoid what insurance actuaries like to call “risky behavior.” Accidental overdoses of illegal drugs routinely take out far more bad guys these days than executioner- administered lethal injections ever will.
“So your guys are dying like flies. What of?”
Mel smiled at my inadvertent rhyme. “Three car accidents,” she said. “The guy on Chuckanut Drive and the two in Arizona. Ricardo Fernando Hernandez and Felix Andrade Moreno were cell mates in Monroe and later roommates down in Phoenix. Their vehicle ended up upside down in an irrigation canal outside Phoenix. Hernandez was behind the wheel and drunk. That one’s been ruled an accident. Idaho and Montana were both overdoses, most likely suicides, although no notes were found.”
“Maybe they couldn’t write,” I suggested.
“And maybe there was too much pressure,” Mel said. “At least that’s how it looks for some of them. Once they’re out of the slammer they’re required to register with local authorities and their information is posted on the Internet. The guy in Pocatello, Frederick Jamison, lost his job and was being evicted once his information became public. Pretty much the same thing happened to Ray Ramirez in Helena, Montana. There was a huge public outcry from the neighbors about him coming back there to live with his parents.”
“Pardon me while I don’t go all warm and fuzzy over a bunch of loser sexual predators,” I told her. “And what’s the matter with you? Sounds like you’re saying ‘evil, nosy neighbors’ and ‘poor, pitiful sexual predators.’”
Mel looked troubled. “I’m not saying anything of the kind, but it does strike me as odd. I’ve only worked my way through a hundred and fifty names or so, and seven dead strikes me as a pretty high number. These are reasonably young guys, mostly in their thirties and forties. I think something’s amiss here, and I don’t know what. I also think that’s why Ross has me looking into it-because, as you said, they are dying like flies.”
I was starting to feel better by then, lulled by the simple normality of talking shop with Mel, of discussing the nuts and bolts of her several cases. I have no doubt that my visit to the King Street Mission would have benefited from a dose of Mel Soames’s insightful analysis, too, but asking for her help on that one would have meant admitting I was working a case when I was supposedly off work on bereavement leave and looking after Lars. The same went for Anthony David Cosgrove. Since I wasn’t supposed to be working, I didn’t bring that one up, either.
We went from the table to the window seat, where Mel moved a cushion and unearthed one of Kayla’s toys, a red hand puppet that looked a lot like the cartoon character she’d been watching on TV earlier in the afternoon. Obviously Jeremy’s rushed toy-collection mission hadn’t been entirely successful.
“Elmo,” Mel said, slipping the puppet onto her hand.
“I never heard of him,” I told her. “How do you know this guy’s name is Elmo?”
Mel laughed. “I’m a detective, remember?” she said, whacking me playfully on the noggin with Elmo’s semi- hard head. “I get paid for knowing things. Actually, my niece loves anything Elmo. What’s your excuse for not knowing? And where did everybody go? I expected to come home to a houseful of company.”
And so I gave her a blow-by-blow description of my disastrous “family” afternoon and evening, including the part about Kelly decamping in a huff once she found Mel’s personal items lurking in the guest room closet and bathroom.
“Sounds like she’s suffering from a severe case of separation anxiety,” Mel said. “She’s afraid of losing you to me.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I argued. “Kelly isn’t losing me. I’m not going anywhere.”
“She just had a baby,” Mel pointed out. “I’m guessing her hormones are all out of whack at the moment. You need to be patient.”
“She’s the one who could use some patience,” I grumbled.
Shaking her head, Mel changed the subject. “Did you ever get around to making some kind of arrangements
