Page 17 of Den of Iniquity

“Mrs. Jackson?” I inquired. “I’m J. P. Beaumont.”

“Welcome,” Matilda said. “Thank you so much for coming. Do have a seat.”

She pointed me in the direction of a love seat while Margaret hovered in a doorway that most likely led to the kitchen.

“Can I get you something?” she asked.

“No, thanks. I’m good.”

“All right,” Margaret said. “I’ll leave you to it.”

The recliner had been in a laid-back position. Now Matilda pressed the button and raised the back until she was seated upright before she spoke again.

“I really appreciate your coming,” she said. “Bellingham’s a long way from here.”

“Not that far,” I told her. “It’s a little over ninety miles. At this time of day there wasn’t much traffic.”

Between the time I had first spoken to Matilda and now I had done some online research and learned that in 2018 a total of 403 overdose deaths had been recorded in King County, approximately a third of which were attributed to fentanyl. In hospital settings, the drug has important medical uses, but out on the streets, it’s a killer. In terms of how Darius Jackson died, he was far from alone.

I pulled out my notebook. In private, I’m proficient with my iPad, but out in public, I find the old tech of pen and paper often makes the people I’m speaking to feel more at ease.

“Tell me about your grandson,” I said for openers.

“Darius was right-handed,” Matilda said.

That was a strikingly odd reply. In answer to that question most people will reply with a description of someone being kind, or the sort of person who would give you the shirt off his back, or a hard worker, or a good neighbor.

“And why is that so important?” I asked.

“Because I finally got my hands on the autopsy report,” Matilda answered. “The drawing shows that the needle mark was on the inside of his right wrist. If Darius was shooting himself up, he would have used his right hand to do it, not his left.”

That got my attention. It was something so basic that even a rudimentary investigation should have disclosed that striking discrepancy.

“Did you point that detail out to any of the detectives on the case?”

“What detectives?” Matilda asked. “Two of them showed up that first morning and told me he was gone—that he’d been found dead. At the time, I hadn’t even gotten around to reporting him missing. I still thought he had spent the night with Gina.”

“Gina was his girlfriend?” I asked.

Matilda nodded. “Her name is Gina Riding. Her real name’s Virginia, but she goes by Gina. She’s a young widow with three little boys. She and Darius met at Bible Study and really hit it off. Darius was crazy about her, and he adored her kids. In fact, he had told me in the October before he died that he was makingpayments on a diamond engagement ring he was planning on giving her for Christmas.”

“But he died on Thanksgiving.”

“Yes,” Matilda agreed regretfully. “Gina was even more devastated by his death than I was.”

Had there been any kind of investigation at the time of the incident, Gina would have been at the top of the detectives’ lists of potential interviewees as well as potential suspects. Now she was at the top of mine.

“Do you have contact information for her?”

Matilda replied by reaching over to a cluttered side table and collecting a small notebook of her own. As she thumbed through it, I could tell that her left hand had been more seriously impacted by the stroke than her right one had.

“Here it is,” she said, after which she rattled off both a phone number and an email address. “She’s a nurse who works nights at Harborview, so you’re better off sending her a text or an email. That way you won’t risk waking her up when she’s trying to sleep.”

As I mentioned earlier, fentanyl has medicinal uses and is often found in hospital settings. It was feasible that a nurse might have been able to access doses of the drug without having to go looking for it out on the street.

“How was Darius and Gina’s relationship at the time of his death? Had there been any quarrels or disagreements between them?”

Matilda shook her head. “Absolutely not,” she declared; then, giving me a piercing look, she added, “Are you saying you think Gina might have had something to do with this? If so, you’re a damn fool!”

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