Page 34

Bellingham, Washington

Saturday, March 7, 2020

That’s about the time Kyle came breezing into the house. He went straight to the fridge where he grabbed two sodas.

“How was the stick shift lesson?” I asked.

“It was great,” he answered with a wide grin. “And that Shelby is amazing!” Then he headed for the door.

“Where are you going now?” Mel asked.

“Back to the garage,” Kyle replied. “Hank went home to get his drums. He’s going to bring them over here so we can try jamming

together. Later.” With that he ducked back out the door.

I was stunned. Three weeks earlier when Kyle had first shown up, Hank was the one who had voiced concern about the advisability of taking in a teenager. At the time, it hadn’t occurred to me that in short order Kyle and Hank Mitchell would not only be on a first-name basis, they’d also be such good pals that they’d be playing drums together.

“I never saw that one coming,” Mel murmured as the door slammed shut behind him.

“That makes two of us,” I said.

That’s when Mel’s phone rang. She listened for a time before saying, “Okay. I’ll be on the scene in twenty.”

That sounded serious. “What’s up?” I asked as she grabbed her coffee cup and headed for the bedroom.

“My guys just got an arrest warrant for George Pritchard,” she told me. “It’s bound to be a media firestorm, so I need to

be on hand when they take him into custody.”

While she headed out to attend to that unpleasant duty, I turned back to my iPad. An email from Yolanda told me that she had

sent a message to an interviewee named Norma Adams regarding her son, Lawrence, age forty-three, who had died of an accidental

drug overdose on May 16, 2018. It turned out that Norma herself had passed away only two months after doing that initial interview.

The person who had responded to Yolanda’s request for additional information was Norma’s daughter, Janelle, who had been keeping

tabs on her deceased mother’s email account in case there were any lingering items that needed to be handled.

Before attempting to make contact with the daughter, I did the same thing I had done previously and read through the applicable case file. Lawrence, a decorated veteran of Desert Storm, had been found dead next to a dumpster in a Denny Regrade alleyway. His death had been ruled accidental, but throughout his mother’s interview with Yolanda, Norma had insisted that her son had been murdered, and Ben Weston had flagged the file due to Norma’s staunch insistence that her son was the victim of a homicide as opposed to an accidental death. Norma had admitted to Yolanda that Larry had been a homeless drug user, largely attributable to PTSD resulting from his military service. She also believed that he had been killed in the course of a robbery gone bad since his treasured collection of military medals had not been found with the body.

Since Janelle had expressed an interest in connecting with us, I was taken aback by her hostile response when I reached her

by phone a little while later.

“Why the hell are you people going through all this crap again?” she demanded, once I identified myself. “Why can’t you just

give it a rest?”

I explained that we were looking into overdose deaths that had been mistakenly identified as suicides or accidents when they

should have been investigated as homicides.

“Well, you’re dead wrong on that score here,” she responded. “My brother wasn’t murdered. Larry Adams was a lying SOB who

had my mother wrapped around his little finger. The part about his being homeless because of PTSD is a bunch of BS. He never

saw a single day of combat duty. He ended up being dishonorably discharged after getting into a beef with his commanding officer

during basic training. As for all his precious medals? They were stolen all right—from somebody else.

“Does the term ‘stolen valor’ mean anything to you? My brother could have written the book on that. I don’t know how he ended

up with all those medals, including the Purple Heart he liked to wave around, but he sure as hell didn’t earn them. As for

the drug paraphernalia found on his body? Mom insisted those were planted there by his killers to throw the investigation

off track.”

“So you have no quarrel with the accidental death ruling?”

“None whatsoever, but my mother was outraged. Finally, in hopes of shutting her up, I actually went downtown and spoke to the M.E. She told me there were indications of long-term intravenous drug use on his body, and that he had most likely run into a batch of something that had more of a kick to it than he expected. My understanding is that, when it comes to fentanyl dosages, there’s a very small margin of error between living and dying.”

“How did he support that kind of habit?” I asked.

“How do you think he supported it?” Janelle retorted. “My mother. I didn’t know until after she died that she was virtually

penniless. Her death was a suicide, by the way. She overdosed, too, on Ambien as opposed to fentanyl. Maybe somebody should

be doing an interview with me about her death. I’d be only too happy to give them an earful. Larry was already gone at the

time she died, but he’s the one who killed her.”

Once off the phone with Janelle Adams, I sat for a long time lost in thought. The situation was eerily similar to Loren Gregson’s.

Both men had had loving mothers who refused to accept or even recognize their sons’ shortcomings, and both had left behind

sisters who were now doomed to carry far more than their fair share of the family’s emotional burdens. It made me wonder about

all those other fractured families out there.

Yolanda Aguirre’s careful study was uncovering those wherever we looked. For King County, each death was just another hash mark in the ever-increasing numbers in their overdose column. My job was to identify the unknown serial killer who was lurking inside those indifferent statistics, but the depth of Yolanda’s interviewing technique was also allowing me to see beyond the nonexistent headlines and giving me an understanding of exactly how each of those individual deaths—so easily shrugged off by everybody else—was an all-consuming tragedy for the loved ones left behind.

Each was a pebble dropped into some family’s existence that sent long-lasting ripples of sorrow and hurt in every direction.

The overdose death of someone found next to a dumpster or in a back alleyway wasn’t an attention grabber. Those kinds of deaths

don’t garner headlines or public attention. They also often fail to attract serious scrutiny from law enforcement.

And what had brought all this home to me? A caring old woman named Matilda Jackson trying to learn the truth about her grandson’s

death. In the process of doing that, she had given me something I had maybe lost track of in this overly virtual world—a healthy

dose of basic human empathy. Because that’s what I was feeling right that minute, not only for my particular overdose victims—the

ones who had been murdered—but also for all those other affected people—the friends and relations who would spend the rest

of their lives dealing with the absence of those who were gone.

Of course, grieving families had been there all along. I had met them time and again while working as a homicide investigator,

but what I was seeing now, up close and personal, was how mushrooming drug overdose deaths were exponentially expanding their

numbers.

I had just arrived at that uncomfortable conclusion when Mel came home. From the haggard expression on her face, I saw she

wasn’t in any better shape than I was.

She had gone to meet the arrest team wearing her full dress uniform, so the first thing she did was kick off her high heels

and drop down onto the sofa beside me.

“How was it?” I asked.

“Awful.”

“Let me guess, the wife and kids had no idea of what was coming.”

Mel nodded. “That’s right, not a clue. His wife, Alana, is utterly devastated. She didn’t even know he’d been put on leave.

As for the kids? The two boys are only five and seven. They’re from a previous marriage, so although Pritchard is their stepfather,

he’s also the only father they’ve ever known. The poor kids were horrified when one of my officers put handcuffs on him, led

him out of the house, and loaded him into the back of a patrol car. That’s something I won’t forget in a hurry.”

“The media was there, I assume?”

“In full force,” she replied, “and so was a band of hecklers. I have no idea how word got out about the impending arrest,

but it did. Within minutes of our showing up at the house, a crowd gathered out on the street, calling him a dirty old man

and a pervert as he was led to the patrol car.”

“Which made things that much worse for the family.”

“Exactly,” Mel replied. “My department has several victim advocates on staff. I was tempted to send one of them over to talk

to Alana. Fortunately she’s from here originally. By the time we were ready to pack up and leave, her mother and sister had

both arrived on the scene. I told them that if there was any way I could be of assistance, they should call me.”

“And they probably will.”

“I don’t know what I should hope for,” Mel said with a sigh. “If they call or if they don’t, it’ll be bad either way.”

She stood up and collected her shoes. “I’m going to go change,” she added. “Did you know Hank’s still here?”

“I had no idea.”

“His car’s blocking the garage door, so I parked outside, but the racket coming from inside the garage sounded like machine-gun fire.”

“That’s the sound of two drummers drumming,” I said mildly.

“I’ll say.”

She started for the bedroom, but she was still in the living room when Kyle popped his head in the front door.

“Hey, guys,” he said. “Hank’s about to head home, but he says Ellen was off today. She’s made oxtail soup along with freshly

baked bread to go with it. He wanted to know if we’d like to come over for dinner.”

I had been in and out of the Mitchells’ kitchen on occasion for a stray cup of coffee here and there, but never for an actual

meal. And although Mel had been introduced to Ellen when she had paid visits to the call center, she had never set foot inside

their home. As a consequence I was a little surprised when she replied to Kyle’s question before I had a chance to open my

mouth.

“Sure,” she said. “What time?”

“Six thirty.”

“Great,” Mel said. “Tell him we’ll be there with bells on.”

“By the way,” Kyle added, “he told me it’s fine if we bring Sarah along. Mr. Bean misses her.”

Mel is far more of a social butterfly than I am, but having just gone through that very public arrest scene, I was amazed

that she had so readily agreed to go have dinner with people who were relative strangers. With that in mind, when she went

into the bedroom to change clothes, I padded along after her.

“Are you sure you want to go to dinner tonight?” I asked.

“Why not?” she said. “I sure as hell don’t want to cook. Do you?”

We both knew the answer to that question. Eating dinner with the Mitchells was a much better option all the way around.