with the law. They buy junk from garage sales and private parties and try to resell it to metal recyclers. That’s the business they claim to be in. Their trash heap is on the far side of Tumwater.
“Greg lives in a moldy, wrecked motor home that doesn’t even have running water. He comes here to shower and wash his clothes. When he filled out his needs assessment he said that his long-term goal is to graduate from high school and join the military. I was hoping we could help him rise above his family’s bad karma. I even helped set up a meeting for him with an Air Force recruiter.” Meribeth shook her head sadly. “He was all excited about it, but if he’s mixed up in this mess, his getting into the service probably isn’t going to happen.”
“Do you have a street address on their place?” Mel asked.
Meribeth nodded and read it off. “I don’t recommend going there, though,” she said. “I’d try finding him at the grocery store first. I took him home one night when his car broke down. Their place isn’t officially a junkyard, but it comes complete with a full assortment of junkyard dogs. They were pretty scary.”
Meribeth sounded disheartened, and I didn’t blame her. She had invested years of her life, her time, and her effort on behalf of a ragtag bunch of kids nobody else seemed to give a damn about. Now one of those investments had most likely betrayed everything the poor woman stood for or hoped to accomplish.
It was clear to me that Greg “Hammer” Alexander and his pals were using the safe haven offered by Janie’s House for a lot more than just “hanging out” and doing their laundry. It was also clear that if word got out that the shelter was under any kind of law enforcement scrutiny, the kids involved in what had happened to Josh Deeson and Rachel Camber would disappear like puffs of smoke.
“You said Greg has a vehicle of some kind?” Mel asked.
“An old Toyota, I think,” Meribeth said. “Don’t quote me on that.”
When Mel and I left a few minutes later, Meribeth was watching as Todd copied data from the computers’ hard drives so he could analyze them at his leisure. Once we were in the car, I took over the driving while Mel found the only Tumwater, Washington, Safeway store and had the GPS guide us there-to no avail. This happened to be Greg’s day off.
“That’s all right,” Mel said. “I love going to scary places that have guard dogs.”
She put the Alexanders’ home address into the GPS and we headed there next. On the way to and through Tumwater, Mel checked with Records for rap sheet details on Greg’s family. His father, Demetri; his mother, Barbara Jane; and their older son, Matthew, weren’t exactly what you could call stellar. Matthew was a twenty- one-year-old guy currently out on bail on a weapons charge. Demetri had an extensive criminal background that included drug dealing and grand theft auto. Barbara had two DUI arrests and had spent six months in Purdy on possession of stolen goods.
All that information was enough to make me glad both Mel and I were armed and wearing vests. We weren’t really expecting to be shot at, but people who end up having repeated run-ins with the law aren’t the kind of folks who make sensible decisions. Their first response to having a cop show up on their doorstep might well be a hail of gunfire.
When we arrived at the address, we could see that what might have been a legitimate auto junkyard at one time had devolved into little more than a privately owned dump. I was surprised the county hadn’t shut it down. Maybe the planning and zoning folks weren’t any fonder of guard dogs than Mel and I were.
A closed chain-link front gate, complete with a hand-painted BEWARE OF DOG sign, barred our way. As if to prove the sign was telling the truth, a chorus of dogs let us have it from the far side of the gate, barking, snapping, and snarling. A smaller sign with an arrow said RING BELL. Taking the dogs into consideration, we rang the bell- several times.
Eventually a man emerged from a collection of moss-covered motor homes that stood to one side of a tangle of rusted-out vehicles. They were circled end to end, like a wagon train, and they must have leaked like sieves because they were all draped with tarps aimed at helping keep the no-doubt moldy interiors partially dry. Living in one of those during Washington’s cold, wet winters couldn’t be fun.
The man, presumably Greg’s father, Demetri, was broad-shouldered and heavyset. Everything about him was gray-his hair, his skin, his clothing. In all that monochromatic grime it wasn’t easy to determine his exact age. He could have been fifty; he could have been seventy. As Demetri moved toward us, he brought with him the unmistakable odor of unwashed flesh. I remembered what Meribeth had told us about Greg’s place of residence having no running water.
Demetri approached us with a newly lit cigarette in hand, but the smoke from that was just a layer of cover to disguise the reek of recently smoked weed.
“Whaddya want?” he demanded.
No gunfire was in evidence, but Demetri wasn’t exactly rolling out the welcome mat, either.
“We’re looking for Greg Alexander,” I said, showing him my badge. “Are you his father?”
“That’s right. I’m Demetri, but Greg’s not here. Whaddya want him for?”
A 1988 Toyota with a collection of mix-and-match bodywork was parked just inside the gate. I was pretty sure that was Greg’s ride, and that meant he was most likely home.
“That’s his vehicle, isn’t it?” I asked.
The old man started giving us a song and dance, but before he got very far a young man emerged from inside a different one of the circle of wrecked motor homes, one that was much smaller than the old man’s.
“What is it, Dad?” he asked.
“Nothin’,” Demetri said. “Go back inside.”
“Are you Greg?” Mel asked.
“I am,” he said. “What’s this all about?”
“We’re police officers. We have a few questions we’d like to ask you about Janie’s House,” Mel said. “It won’t take long. Just a couple of minutes.”
“It’s okay, Dad,” Greg said to this father. “I’ll handle it.”
Shaking his head in disgust, Demetri went back the way he had come. Greg, moving the pack of barking dogs to one side, made his way out through the gate to where we were standing.
I showed him my badge.
“You’re cops?” he asked. “Is something wrong?”
Despite Greg’s rudimentary living arrangements, he was neatly dressed. Thanks to the services available to him at Janie’s House, Greg was clean and so were his clothes.
“You’re Hammer, right?” Mel asked.
“Excuse me?”
“That’s your online name-your user name on the computer system at Janie’s House-Hammer?”
“Oh, that,” he said with a laugh. “Yeah. I was going to use ‘Saw’ for my user name, but that was too short. You have to have at least six letters, so I chose Hammer instead.”
There was almost no resemblance between Greg and his father. Demetri looked like an Eastern European thug. Greg looked like an all-American kid-a clean-cut nice kid-who, right at that moment, seemed to be in the process of breaking Meribeth Duncan’s heart.
“What can you tell us about Josh Deeson?”
Greg shook his head. “I’ve never heard of him. Who is he?”
“His name has been in the papers a lot the last couple of days,” Mel said.
Greg gestured back toward the Alexanders’ unsightly pile of trash. “My parents aren’t big on newspapers,” he said. “And I don’t have time to read them online.”
“What about Rachel Camber?” Mel asked.
“Who?”
“You might have known her under her other name, Amber Wilson.”
“Sure,” Greg said without a hint of hesitation. “I know Amber. I met her a couple of times at Janie’s House when she showed up there. Nice girl. We watched TV and loaded dishwashers together a few times. Why? What about her?”
His answers were open, direct, and seemingly guileless. Greg Alexander was either one hell of a liar or he was absolutely innocent of any wrongdoing.
“Where were you Sunday evening?” Mel asked. “Say, seven to ten.”
“This past Sunday? I was at work. School is out. Everybody wants to head out on vacation. I’ve been picking up extra shifts right and left.”
