Page 44 of Den of Iniquity

I had macular degeneration by then, you see, and could no longer drive. I had to count on Greta to get me out to the grocery store or to the doctor or even to the beauty shop. I needed her help too much to disregard what she said, so I went along with the program, and that’s how I ended up living here. Greta suggested it because it’s only for people fifty-five and over, and Loren was too young.

Yolanda:Wait, about getting groceries and taking you to the doctor? Couldn’t Loren have done the driving?

Alma:He never got his license. He couldn’t read well enough to pass the test.

Yolanda:Was the no-contact order still in effect at the time Loren died?

Alma:Of course. We didn’t dare disregard it, because I didn’t want Loren going back to jail, but I didn’t want him living on the streets, either. I had promised Harold on his deathbed that I would look after Loren, and I did. When Loren was let out of jail, I had one of Harold’s friends track him down. I rented a room for him in a house with several students from Seattle Pacific University. It was down near the Fremont Bridge. That way he had a roof over his head, but he wasn’t too far away, either.

One of Harold’s old friends runs the Fremont Inn, a joint where Loren and his dad used to go for lunch. I set up an account there so Loren could stop by and have a bite to eat and something to drink. Once a week, I’d call up the owner and put the bill on my credit card. After Loren died, when Greta found out about that—about my renting a room for him and paying his food tab—she was absolutely livid. I didn’t think it was any of her business.

I stopped reading momentarily because all of a sudden my homicide investigative sensors had switched into high gear. Loren’s death had been ruled accidental. Had there been any kind of investigation, questions should have been asked about anyone with ongoing issues with the victim. Clearly his sister, Greta, had a decades-long beef with him, and she would most likely have been a primary person of interest.

One of the customary lines of inquiry in homicide investigations is to follow the money. How much of Greta’s insisting that Alma file domestic violence charges against Loren and obtain the protection order had been out of concern for Alma’s well-being, and how muchof it had to do with protecting Greta’s future financial interests? The fact that she had been outraged that Alma had continued to pay Loren’s bills suggested that maybe her anger could have had more to do with preserving her mother’s money than it did with keeping her from physical harm.

And then there was the matter of the email I had received from Greta earlier that day. In 2018 when Yolanda had been conducting her familial interviews, Greta had refused to participate. Now here she was volunteering to meet with me. Why? More than once in my career as a homicide cop, I’ve had perpetrators attempt to insert themselves into investigations to find out what was going on. And why did they do that? To find out how close we were to discovering their personal involvement in the crime. Was that what was happening here?

Yolanda:How are things between you and Greta now?

Alma:Prickly. I never imagined myself in assisted living, and I don’t really like it, but they have vans to take people where they need to go, so I don’t have to rely on Greta for a ride anymore now that she’s barely speaking to me. That’s the thing that breaks my heart. When I lost Loren, I didn’t just lose one child. In actual fact I lost all three of them.

Yolanda:I’m so sorry.

Alma:Me, too.

Yolanda:If you don’t mind, I’d like to return to the time Loren died. He passed away on Saturday night but wasn’t found until Monday. Were you aware that something was wrong and that he’d gone missing?

Alma:Oh, I knew he was missing all right. I always called the Fremont Inn first thing on Monday morning to pay Loren’s billfor the previous week. George, the owner, told me the last time Loren showed up was on Saturday. He never stopped by on Sunday at all. As soon as I heard that, I knew something was wrong.

Right away, I tried to call and report him as missing, but when the 911 operator asked me when was the last time I’d seen him and I told her several months ago, she practically laughed her head off, especially when she found out that he was missing from a bar rather than from home. So when those two detectives showed up on Monday afternoon to tell me that he was gone, I wasn’t surprised in the least.

Yolanda:What kind of interaction did you have with law enforcement back then?

Alma:Not very much. The next time I saw anyone was when someone from the M.E.’s office turned up to drop off his personal effects—the things they found at the scene—his phone, his wallet, and his father’s Elks Club ring. Those are the only remnants I have of him. I keep them in my jewelry case. As for everything else? There wasn’t much. His roommates brought me a garbage bag filled with what they’d emptied out of his room. I don’t know why they bothered. The only things he owned were some secondhand clothes that he’d picked up from Goodwill.

Yolanda:Was your son known to use drugs?

Alma:Absolutely not. He drank beer and had the occasional shot of tequila, but hard drugs? No way. He had mental health issues all his life, and he hated taking medications of any kind. I tried to tell people that at the time—that the idea of his dying of a self-injected drug overdose was a total joke—but nobody was interested in hearing what I had to say. After all, I was only his mother. What did I know?

Yolanda:Any final thoughts?

Alma:Only one. No matter how Loren died, I still hold Greta responsible. If she hadn’t stuck her nose into things that were none of her business and forced me to get that so-called protection order, none of this would have happened.

That was the end of the interview, but with those last words, Alma Gregson had lit a fire under me. One way or the other, she had held her daughter responsible for Loren’s death. I now believed, as Alma had, that her son had possibly been murdered, although, at the time, everyone else, including Greta Halliday, had been happy to go along with the theory of an accidental death.

But something had changed on that score. Greta hadn’t been willing to be interviewed by Yolanda Aguirre earlier, but now she was willing to talk to me. How come? Was it possible that my poking around in the case was cause for concern on her part? For most people an M.E.’s death certificate designations of manner of death—undetermined, accident, or homicide—are nothing but so many words on paper. But that’s not true for perpetrators—the person or persons actually responsible. For them a change in designation from accident or unresolved to homicide can make all the difference, with the ultimate possibility of their spending the remainder of their lives in prison. Was that what was fueling Greta Halliday’s sudden change of heart?

Suspicions are one thing; proof is another. As of now, I didn’t have nearly enough evidence to justify reopening any of the cases. The only way forward would be following the money on Loren’s death, but that would have to wait for a while—at least long enough for me to pack up and deliver Caroline Richards’s cigarette butts to the FedEx office. I wanted them on their way to Lulu Benson in Omaha without any further delay.

Chapter 21

Sammamish, Washington

Tuesday, March 3, 2020

Ten o’clock the next morning found Hank Mitchell, Sarah, and me driving down I-5 through a mixture of sleet and rain. Mr. Bean was at home, spending the day with their cleaning lady, so Sarah had the back seat all to herself. She took full advantage of the situation by stretching out full length from one door to the other.

After my trip to FedEx the previous afternoon, I had called Greta Halliday. Turns out she’s a real estate agent who had been working an open house at the time. Since Tuesday was her day off, we’d made an appointment for onep.m.My next call had been to Hank, letting him know that the lift he needed to retrieve his restored Shelby would be somewhat sooner than either of us had expected.

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