Page 16 of Den of Iniquity

“Where in Renton?” I asked.

She gave me an address.

“I’m calling from Bellingham. That’s where I live these days. Would it be possible for me to see you tomorrow, maybe some time in the early afternoon?”

“That would be fine,” Matilda said. “I have a doctor’s appointment in the morning, but I should be home by twelve thirty or one.”

“In the meantime, I need Darius’s date of birth and date of death.”

“He was born September 18, 1992,” Matilda answered. “He died on November 22, 2018.”

After the call ended, I continued to think about Darius’s birth date. He would have been twenty-six when he died—eight years older than Kyle. At that age he should have been a young man at the beginning of the prime of his life rather than dead in a grimy Seattle alleyway. I was sitting there thinking about that when Mel turned up.

“Hey,” she said. “How are things on the home front?”

“Okay,” I said.

“What did the two of you have to eat?”

“Frozen dinners,” I admitted. “I heated them up in the microwave.”

She laughed at that. “Hardly cooking 101,” she said. “Where’s Kyle?”

“He took Sarah for a walk after dinner and then disappeared into his room. He’s not exactly the talkative type.”

“I don’t blame him. He’s got a lot to process right now.”

“So do I... have a lot to process, that is,” I told her. “I’ve caught a case.”

“A paying case or another freebie?” she asked.

“The latter,” I said. “It’s a cold case Benjamin Weston asked me to look into.”

“Your ‘teddy bear’ boy?” Mel asked.

The incident in question had occurred years before Mel and I met, but she knows me too well.

“The very one,” I said.

“How about if I pour myself a glass of wine?” she asked. “Then you can tell me all about it.”

Chapter 7

Renton, Washington

Thursday, February 20, 2020

At onep.m.the next afternoon, I pulled up in front of a small bungalow on NE Tenth Street in Renton, one of Seattle’s near neighbors to the south. What set this house apart from its neighbors was the clearly newly installed wheelchair ramp leading up to the front porch. A red Dodge minivan with a handicapped license plate sat in the driveway.

I walked up the sidewalk and used the steps to access the front door. When I rang the bell, an older Black woman, maybe in her late sixties or early seventies, opened the door.

“May I help you?” she asked.

“My name’s J. P. Beaumont. I’m here to see Matilda Jackson.”

“Glad to meet you, Mr. Beaumont,” she said, offering her hand. “I’m Margaret Dawson, Matty’s sister. She’s inside. Won’t you come in?”

The house I stepped into, built in the fifties or sixties, was decades away from today’s current passion for open-concept designs. The living room was tiny. By far the largest piece of furniture in the room was one of those self-rising recliners with a wheelchair parked nearby. The woman seated there so closely resembled the one who had answered the door that the two of them might have been twins.