Dedication

  In memory of Yolanda from my homeroom at Bisbee High

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  About the Author

  Also by J. A. Jance

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Seattle, Washington

  Thursday, November 22, 2018

  Thanksgiving Day 2018 dawned dark, cold, rainy, and windy as hell in Seattle, Washington. That’s hardly surprising. November in the Pacific Northwest is always dark and rainy. But on this day in particular, the steady downpour was accompanied by a raw wind blowing down from the north. A seemingly endless line of people stood outside a dilapidated brick warehouse on Seattle’s somewhat seedy waterfront where there was zero shelter from the weather. They hunkered down there, hoping that once they stepped into the warehouse turned food bank they’d find a little warmth from the bone-chilling cold as well as a free Turkey Day dinner.

  Inside an army of volunteers from various churches all over the city scurried around arranging tables and chairs, setting up serving lines, and putting out the food. By the time the doors opened promptly at ten a.m., the people waiting outside had been there for so long that a few of them were becoming belligerent.

  That was not unexpected, and several of the heftier members of the volunteer crew had been drafted to provide security and maintain order. One of those was Darius Jackson, a member of the crew from the Mount Zion Baptist Church. He was six four and two hundred and eighty pounds. One look from him was generally enough to settle whatever trouble might be brewing among those waiting for their share of turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, and gravy.

  Not long ago, Darius would likely have been on the receiving end of one of those free dinners. Now thanks to his grandmother Matilda Jackson, he was out of jail, back on the straight and narrow, and working as a bouncer for a popular but sketchy bar on Rainier Avenue South. The place was owned by someone who was a friend of one of his grandmother’s many friends and acquaintances. When Darius had agreed to accept the job offer, Granny had taken him to the woodshed and given him the lay of the land.

  “It’s a job,” she told him, “and you need a job right now. I don’t approve of drinking, but there aren’t that many places that will give someone like you so much as a second chance to say nothing of a job. But just because you work in a place like that doesn’t mean you’ve got a license to be drinking. You’re living with me now instead of out on the streets or in some homeless camp. You come home with booze on your breath, you’re out. Understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Got it.”

  “And on Sunday mornings you’d best be dressed in your good clothes and have your butt on the pew right next to me when services start at Mount Zion.”

  “Got that, too,” he replied.

  That conversation had occurred months earlier, but Darius was still taking it to heart. He was working the same job and was still living in his grandmother’s place just off Martin Luther King Way in the Rainier Valley. As a seventh grader, abandoned by his drug-addicted mother, living with Grandma Jackson had been mandatory rather than optional. The judge had given him a choice—go to juvie until he turned twenty-one or take probation and go live with his grandmother. He had chosen door number two. No matter how late he got off shift on Sunday mornings, she made sure he was present and accounted for at Mount Zion’s morning services, but back when he was a kid and there under duress, he’d slept through a lot of it and paid scant attention to the rest. At the time all that crap about loving your neighbor as yourself just didn’t grab him.

  Unsurprisingly, once in high school, Darius had taken up with the wrong crowd, which had led him straight into the arms of the wrong kind of girl. Gypsy Tomkins had been bad news from the get-go. She was a wild child who was beautiful but tough as nails. Once she had Darius in her clutches, everything his grandmother had ever tried to teach him went out the window. Compared to him, Gypsy had been tiny—five two and barely a hundred pounds soaking wet—but from the time Darius was fifteen, he had been putty in her vividly manicured hands.

  Eventually, since Gypsy’s family was involved in the drug trade, Darius was, too. As for their personal relationship? It lasted for years but had become more and more volatile over time until recurring bouts of domestic violence between them became the order of the day. Gypsy always knew exactly which buttons to push to drive Darius over the edge. As soon as she succeeded, she’d call the cops on him—screaming into the phone that he was beating her or threatening to kill her. Once officers showed up, she would somehow manage to convince them that he was the one at fault. As a consequence, he was the one who usually got hauled off to jail. The next day, of course, when they’d let him out because Gypsy hadn’t gone through with pressing charges, she’d laugh it off and act like it was all some kind of joke.

  Darius knew this was messed up and wrong, but he loved her and could never quite bring himself to walk away. During their last screaming match, she had pulled a knife on him. He’d managed to get it away from her, but in the course of the struggle, she’d sliced open her hand and was still bleeding when she called 911. This time, though, when he went to jail, Gypsy did press charges. He ended up doing six months in the King County Jail for assault. When he got out, he learned that she had sworn out a protection order on him. He wasn’t allowed inside the house even long enough to collect his stuff. Left with nothing but the clothes on his back and nowhere to live, he’d gone crawling back to Granny.

  Once on the outside he’d soon learned that Gypsy had taken up with someone else during his absence. Two months later, Gypsy and her new boyfriend had been found shot to death in an alleyway in the Denny Regrade. Darius was her ex, so naturally the cops came around asking questions. His job as a bouncer—the one Granny had found for him—had saved his bacon, though, because at the time of Gypsy’s death he’d been at work at a place with all kinds of surveillance cameras, and those had given Darius an airtight alibi. That didn’t mean the cops didn’t question him about it or check his hands for gunshot residue, but eventually there was nothing to link him to the double homicide, and he was cleared.

  Darius knew it was only by the grace of God and Granny’s job that he’d dodged being charged and possibly even convicted of the two murders. That was one of the reasons, maybe even the main one, that this time when he accompanied Granny to services at Mount Zion, he did pay attention. He found himself listening intently to what the reverend had to say. He let himself get caught up in both the Word and the music. Finally, one Sunday when people were invited to come forward to be saved, he got up and went, finding himself a whole new lease on life in the process. Which was why this year, when the call went out for Mount Zion’s crew of volunteers for serving Thanksgiving Day dinner at the food bank, Darius had signed up.

  It was well after dark when, while patrolling the line, Darius caught sight of an older woman leaning heavily on the end of her overloaded shopping cart. A few sprigs of white hair stuck out from under her hoodie. Swaying unsteadily on her feet, she looked as though she was about to keel over.

  “Are you all right, ma’am?” he asked. “You don’t have to wait in line. If you’re not feeling well, I’ll be glad to escort you inside.”

  “No, no,” she said quickly. “I’m too tired to eat anything. If you’d just walk me back to my van, I’ll be fine.”

  “Where is it?” he asked.

  “Over there a block or two,” she said, nodding toward the south.

  “Are you sure? Do you think you can make it that far?”

  “I believe so,” she said, “but would you mind helping with the cart? I have some money. I can pay you.”

  “Paying me won’t be necessary,” he assured her. “I’m glad to help.”

  Darius went back to the head of the line and told one of the other volunteers that he was escorting someone back to her van. That was the last time anyone reported speaking to him. The next morning his lifeless body was found two blocks away lying next to an alleyway dumpster.

  During the brief investigation that followed, footage from one of the warehouse’s security cameras showed two people threading their way through the parking lot—a hulking Black male accompanied by a much shorter female. The woman, who appeared to be Caucasian and
somewhat overweight, was leaning on a grocery cart so full of goods that it was almost as tall as she was. However, the grainy quality of the video made it impossible to make out any facial features. Law enforcement was never able to locate or identify the apparently homeless woman, and no sign of her shopping cart was ever found, either.

  An autopsy performed by the King County Medical Examiner’s Office determined that Darius had died of a fatal dose of fentanyl. His death was ruled to be accidental, and the case was closed. No further investigation was deemed necessary.

  Chapter 1

  Bellingham, Washington

  Friday, February 14, 2020

  Valentine’s Day 2020 dawned clear and cold in Bellingham, Washington. For most people in the area that was a welcome change from several weeks of mixed rain and snow—definitely not suitable for walking. But with the twenty-four-hour news cycle consumed with the looming Covid pandemic, outside was exactly where I wanted to be. So I called Hank Mitchell, my next-door neighbor, and asked if he and his black-and-tan Chihuahua, Mr. Bean, aka Beanie, would like to join my Irish wolfhound, Sarah, and me for a walk along our street, Bayside Road. I’m sure passersby find us an interesting foursome—two old guys accompanied by a stately Irish wolfhound with a bouncy, noisy Chihuahua yapping at her ankles.

  The Mitchells’ place is just down the hill from ours. When my wife, Mel, and I first moved into the neighborhood, their house had been a real eyesore. That was one of the reasons our house had been so affordable. Bayside Road, our street, is hilly. The blue tarp covering the leaky roof of the house next door had been fully visible from our living room windows. In the Pacific Northwest, tarp-covered houses are often vacant and generally regarded as teardowns. The problem is, this one was occupied by a whole slew of people with random vehicles coming and going at odd hours.

  Mel happens to be the chief of police in Bellingham, Washington. From a law enforcement standpoint, that kind of activity is typical of drug houses inhabited by squatters up to no good. Before Mel had a chance to have anyone look into it, however, the residence became the subject of a police investigation when someone called in an anonymous tip asking for a welfare check on Lorraine Mitchell, the elderly woman who lived there.

  By the time uniformed officers arrived on the scene, they found Lorraine, age ninety-four, deceased in her bed, apparently from natural causes. She had been gone for at least a week before the cops showed up. No one else was found at the residence, including Lorraine’s supposed caretaker, and the place had been stripped clean of anything of value except for a derelict 1966 Shelby Mustang found rotting away in the garage. The vehicle probably would have been worth some money on the open market, but there’s a good chance none of the lowlifes hanging around the place had bothered to steal it because they had no idea how to drive a standard transmission.

  Within a matter of weeks, the tarp disappeared and decades of accumulated trash was carted away. The house was gutted down to the studs in preparation for a total rehab. And that’s when and how I first met Hank, the new owner who, as it turned out, had a lifetime connection by marriage to Lorraine and had a personal interest in the place. He was a retired contractor. Rather than wielding a hammer himself, with Mr. Bean at his side, he was happy to serve as a sidewalk supervisor and observe the construction project from afar.

  Hank is a couple of years younger than I am. When we first met, I was not yet a dog-person, so I wasn’t exactly charmed by the obnoxious presence of Mr. Bean, but over time Hank and I became friends. While the remodel on their place continued, my life changed when an enormous Irish wolfhound named Lucy, my first dog ever, came into my life. She and Mr. Bean soon became fast friends. The same holds true of Sarah, Irish wolfhound number two. In the meantime, Hank’s and my friendship has continued to flourish.

  Growing up I had school pals, of course. In college I developed a network of drinking buddies, some of whom became holdovers in my new life once I became a cop. After that my friends were mostly LEOs, law enforcement officers of one stripe or another. When I went through rehab and sobered up, I became friends with any number of people in recovery, but Hank Mitchell is my first ever friend who also happens to be a next-door neighbor.

  On our walks, by mutual agreement, we avoid discussing the news. It’s all bad, anyway, so why bother? Instead, as we stroll along, we share the stories of our lives, and that’s how I learned about Hank’s somewhat challenging connection to our now deceased neighbor. It turned out Lorraine Mitchell had not only been Hank’s father’s first wife; she’d also been a very troublesome one.

  As a teenager in the early forties, Lorraine Harding had been hot stuff at Bellingham High. Despite the fact that she had been two years older than Henry, the couple had been high school sweethearts. They married shortly after Henry graduated and days before he shipped out to serve his country during World War II. Lorraine didn’t exactly sign up to be Rosie the Riveter in his absence, building up an unsavory reputation around town for playing the field while he was off serving his country. When word of her escapades got back to Daniel Mitchell, Hank’s grandfather, a local attorney with a family reputation to uphold, the old man had been less than pleased.

  Hank’s father spent his time in the service in the Army Corps of Engineers. When he came home, he joined his uncle’s construction business and built the place on Bayside expecting it to be his and Lorraine’s forever home. Once he found out about her extramarital exploits, he tried to divorce her, but by then Lorraine had her eye fixed firmly on the prize, the Mitchell family’s considerable fortune, and she refused to leave quietly, if at all.

  Henry could easily have gotten a divorce by going to court and charging her with adultery, but in small-town Bellingham the resulting scandal would have been devastating. So his father, the attorney, worked out a deal. Since no children were involved, there was no question of child support. Instead, Lorraine was offered a generous amount of alimony. She was also allowed to stay in the house until such time as she should marry. At that time, the alimony would cease and the home on Bayside would revert either to her former husband or to his estate.

  Henry Sr. remarried shortly after the divorce became final, and Hank, an only child, was the result of that second marriage. In the meantime, Lorraine, the cast-off first wife, remained a fly in the ointment for the remainder of Henry’s life. She refused to remarry and didn’t die. Instead, she engaged in one scandalous romantic entanglement after another, always making sure none of them ended up at the altar. As a consequence, she continued receiving alimony checks until Henry Sr.’s death in the early nineties.

  Over the years, as the value of her monthly alimony checks had dwindled, Lorraine had been forced to supplement her income by working as a bartender. Once the checks stopped altogether, she began taking in lodgers to make ends meet, including the parade of very dodgy-looking lowlifes Mel and I had seen coming and going from her house.

  At some point after Henry Sr.’s death, Hank, the son from that second marriage and a widower himself by then, became aware that Lorraine had stopped paying taxes on the property. To keep the house from going into foreclosure, he had brought the taxes up-to-date and kept them current with the idea that at some point he’d turn the property on Bayside Road into a retirement dream house for him and his relatively new wife, Ellen.

  Their relationship is similar to Mel’s and mine in that Hank’s retired from the construction business now while Ellen is still employed full-time. That’s another reason we don’t discuss the news. With Covid bearing down, we were both worried about how that would impact both of our still-working wives—Mel is at Bellingham PD and Ellen is a 911 supervisor at What-Comm, Whatcom County’s emergency communications center.

  “What are you and Mel doing for Valentine’s Day?” Hank asked.

  “I scored a reservation at Dirty Dan’s,” I told him. In my opinion, Dirty Dan’s is Fairhaven’s premier fine dining establishment. “What about you?”

  “Ellen’s working tonight. We’ll be doing our Valentine’s celebration on Sunday, her next day off.”

  When we reached our driveway, Sarah and I peeled away and walked down to the house where I spotted an unfamiliar vehicle—an older-model Honda Accord—parked next to the garage. As we approached the car, the driver’s door swung open and a long drink of water climbed out. It took a moment for me to recognize my grandson, Kyle Cartwright.