CHAPTER 26
Jack Welch lived on a street much like Allie’s—single-family houses in a middle-class neighborhood with modest yards and foliage. Cars parked along the curbs left barely enough room for a single vehicle to pass. People in these homes weren’t supposed to have sons and daughters hooked on heroin. The junkies were supposed to be downtown, living in dark alleys and abandoned buildings, sleeping on soiled mattresses amid garbage and rodents. Del thought again of what Celia McDaniel had said, about the epidemic, about the drug cartels plowing their pot fields and planting poppy fields, and about the easily obtainable opioids. He thought about the counselor’s statement that addicts now were good kids from good families, and easy pickings for those cartels. It made him shudder.
At 5:30 p.m., dusk had descended over the neighborhood and a light wind rattled the leaves of the trees in the front yards. Faz parked the Prius to the south of a concrete walk and shut off the engine. He and Del sat watching a yellow, two-story A-frame house. Lights inside the house indicated someone was home.
Del spit a spent sunflower shell into a cup. It made him feel like he was twelve again, playing Little League baseball. A friend had told him that he’d lost thirty pounds eating sunflower seeds when he watched TV, rather than potato chips and Oreos. Del saw the pack of seeds at his sister’s and decided he’d give it a try. He was pleased to find that the seeds weren’t like the seeds he’d eaten as a kid. Those were a single flavor—salted. These seeds were barbecue flavored, but Stevie said they also had cracked pepper, ranch, and others.
Faz looked over at him. “You’re still on that diet, huh?”
“Just watching what I eat,” Del said, cracking a seed, his gaze on the house.
“Smells like barbecue in here.”
Del held up the bag. “They got ranch and dill now too.”
“Terrific. I hope the birds in the backyard appreciate them.” A moment passed. “Did you call that prosecutor?”
Del spit the shell of a seed into the cup while staring at the house. “I did.”
“So you’re going to see her again?”
“I saw her last night,” Del said.
“Last night . . . You worked last night.”
“She met me after work.”
“No kidding. How’d it go?”
“It was nice.” Del spit another shell into the cup. “She brought prosciutto and salami, French bread, a little cheese.”
“You’re killing me. Really?” Faz said.
“Really.”
“Where’d you go?”
“My place.”
Faz nodded, a grin on his face. “Good for you, Del.”
“Yeah. We’ll see where it goes.” It had gone well—easy and comfortable. Del had been worried, but Celia had made it clear she had no expectations other than his companionship. He’d been able to relax and enjoy the evening.
“What?” Faz asked.
“What?” Del said.
“Something bothering you?” Faz asked.
“No.”
“You don’t seem all that excited about it.”
Del blew out a breath. “I don’t know. It’s just . . .” He kept his gaze on the home. “It’s been a long time, you know.”
“Since you dated?”
Del looked at Faz. “Since I slept with anyone.”
“Oh,” Faz said. A beat passed. “Hey, it’s like riding a bike.”
“Yeah, but I mean, what if the bike gets a flat?”
Faz gave him a look. “Did that happen?”
Del shook his head. “No. No, nothing like that.”
“You worried about it?”
“I don’t know. I mean . . . Yeah, I guess maybe I am.” He was. He hadn’t slept with anyone since he and his wife had separated.
“Listen. They got all kinds of pills now. If it’s an issue, you talk to the doctor.”
“You ever have that happen?”
“Me? Hell, I’ve been married twenty-eight years. What’s the line from that movie? ‘I get hard when the wind blows.’”
“Eddie Murphy—48 Hours.”
“Listen, don’t worry about something that hasn’t happened yet. It hasn’t happened yet, right?”
Del shook his head. “I’m just talking hypothetically.” He set down the cup of spent seeds. “Come on. Let’s go see if Jack Welch is home.”
“Hold on,” Faz said.
Del kept his gaze on the house. He thought for sure Faz would ask for details about the remainder of his night with Celia McDaniel. She’d stayed—Del wasn’t about to send her home at four in the morning, but they hadn’t slept together, though there had been some physical contact. They’d shared the same bed.
“You’re going to let me take the lead, right?” Faz asked.
Del looked at him. “What? Yeah. No worries.”
“Del.”
“I’m good, okay? You can take the lead. I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine. You look on edge.”
“No, I was just . . . I’m fine. Okay? How long have I been doing this? Let’s go see what he has to say.” Del pushed out of the car.
A leaning white picket fence surrounded an oak tree and small patch of lawn. A grass-and-gravel driveway ran along the left side of the property. At the back was a two-story garage with a window over the garage door. A staircase rising along the north side of the building indicated someone lived in the second story. Faz caught up to Del as he stepped through an opening where the gate to the picket fence had once swung, but the gate now leaned up against the trunk of the oak tree. To Del, the damage to the gate looked like more than wear and tear. It looked like someone had kicked the gate off its hinges.
Del climbed three wooden steps to the front door. The porch light, a bare bulb, was too bright for the overhead socket and emitted an annoying buzz. He heard the television from inside and smelled something cooking. He knocked.
A young girl pulled the door open. Small, with straight blonde hair down her back, she appeared to be nine or ten, about Mark and Stevie’s age. Del took a deep breath. As much as he wanted to wring Jack Welch by the collar, this was a family—probably one that had suffered as much as Maggie and the twins.
“Hi,” Faz said. “Is your mom or dad home?”
The little girl turned her head and yelled toward the interior of the house. “Mom! There’s someone at the door.”
A woman came quickly from the back of the house. She had a dish towel in hand but wore business attire—cream slacks, black pumps, a blouse. Given how quickly she’d come to the door, she probably had admonished the little girl about opening the door to strangers. Good kids from good families, Del thought.
When she saw Del and Faz, the woman came to an abrupt stop. She looked as if she’d started to melt. Her body sagged, her shoulders slumped. She dropped the towel. Her face took on a deeply pained expression.
“Go to your room and read,” she said to the little girl in a voice so soft Del almost couldn’t hear her.
The girl didn’t argue or ask questions. She’d been through this before. She disappeared down the hall. The woman waited to speak until she heard a door close. She approached them, tentative, her arms wrapped around her. “Is he dead?” she asked.
Del and Faz hadn’t even had the chance to show the woman their identification and badges. “Are you Jack Welch’s mother?” Faz asked.
She sighed. “Yes. I’m Jeanine Welch. Are you here to tell me my son is dead?”
“No,” Faz said. “We just want to talk with him.”
She let out a held breath. Her knees folded and she stepped back, collapsing onto a coffee table.
“Are you all right?” Faz asked.
Jeanine Welch exhaled another deep breath and squeezed her eyes shut, as if light-headed or fighting a headache.
“I take it your son’s not home?” Faz asked.
“No,” she said, her head still lowered and her voice soft. “He’s not.”
“Do you know where he is?” F
az asked.
With another breath she looked up at them. “What?”
“Do you know where he is?”
“He called me at work earlier today. He said he’d be home. I don’t know what that means. He didn’t come home last night.”
“May we come in?” Faz asked.
“What is this about?” the woman asked.
“Allie Marcello,” Del said.
Her brow wrinkled. “From school?”
“Yes,” Del said.
The woman’s eyes shifted between Del and Faz. “What about her?”
“She overdosed,” Del said. “She’s dead.”
“I know,” the woman said. “I went to her funeral. I saw you there,” she said to Del. She sounded defeated but managed to stand. “Why do you want to talk to Jack?”
“We’d like to ask your son what he knows about her death,” Faz said.
“Do you think he had something to do with Allie’s death?”
“We think he might have information related to her overdose,” Faz said.
The woman digested that for a moment. Then she said, “Come in.”
They entered and closed the door. The front room was quaint but tired. A worn couch and chair faced a television. The couch had a blanket on it and an open newspaper. Del wondered if the woman had slept there, waiting for her son to come home; a similar blanket and newspapers had lain across his sister’s couch many recent evenings. Magazines lay scattered across a coffee table, along with an unopened newspaper still in its plastic sleeve. The woman quickly cleared the couch and used the remote to shut off the television.
Del and Faz sat. She dumped the blanket and newspapers behind the couch and picked up the dish towel. “Sorry for the mess,” she said, moving to the chair.
“You should see my house.” Faz smiled politely. “When my son was home it looked like a tornado ran through it.”
She slumped into the chair.
“Why did you ask if your son was dead, Mrs. Welch?” Del said, gently prodding her.
She shrugged, then sighed. She looked to be fighting tears. “I’ve been expecting a call or knock on the door for some time.”
“What’s he addicted to?” Del asked.
“Heroin,” she said. “For about a year now.” She shrugged again and blotted the corners of her eyes with the dish towel. “I can’t control him. I’ve considered kicking him out, but . . . he’s my son. I worry about my daughter, about his influence on her.”
“You said he didn’t come home last night?” Faz asked.
“No,” she said.
“Do you know where he stayed?”
“I don’t know where he goes anymore.” She looked and sounded tired. “I’ve given up trying to keep track of him.”
“He still lives here, though?” Faz asked.
She shrugged as if to say, What am I going to do? Then she nodded. “Yes. He lives above the garage.”
With time to consider her, Del realized Jeanine Welch was still young, probably Maggie’s age, early forties. She was also attractive, tall and thin, her hair the same color as her daughter’s but cut shoulder length. She carried herself, though, as Maggie carried herself, as if burdened by a huge weight, one that had shaved years off her life.
“He’s in a band,” she said. “They practice there . . .”
“How did you find out about the heroin?” Faz asked.
“I’ve found things in his room. Syringes, spoons.” She shook her head. “He started smoking pot in the eighth grade. It got worse from there. I think others in the band may have got him started on the heroin.”
“Did you know Allie well?” Del asked.
The woman nodded. “Pretty well. She’d come over here every so often to listen to the band and they’d all go up in Jack’s room above the garage. She was a nice girl, Allie. It was so sad, what happened to her.”
“What about Jack’s father?” Faz asked. “Is he around?”
She smiled, but it had a sad quality to it. “Depends on what you mean by ‘around.’ He gets the kids Wednesday nights and every other weekend. Jack stopped going about a year ago and now his father can’t force him so it’s just my daughter.”
“How long have you been divorced?” Del said.
“Seven years,” she said.
“Do you know Jack’s group of friends?” Faz asked.
“Some.”
“Do you know who’s supplying him with the heroin?” Faz asked.
She shook her head. “No. Like I said, maybe the band, but it seems it’s everywhere now.” Her voice cracked but she caught it. “I don’t know what more I can do. If I kick him out . . . then what?” She took a moment to regroup. “But I had to get him out of the house, at least . . . for my daughter.” She blotted her eyes again. Then she asked, “Why do you want to talk to him about Allie?”
“We believe Allie took a very potent form of heroin. We’re trying to find out where it came from,” Del said.
“Do you think Jack gave it to her?”
“We just want to find out what he knows,” Faz said. “Do you have access to Jack’s room above the garage?”
“I did, but he put a lock on the outside. I asked him to remove it, but . . . I don’t know the combination.”
Del leaned forward. “Has your son ever overdosed?”
“Twice,” she said without hesitation.
“Recently?” Del asked.
“The last time was about a month ago. His friends . . . They brought him to the hospital and they treated him and let him go. They said they couldn’t keep him.”
Faz said, “Does your son have a cell phone?”
“Yes,” she said, sounding somewhat confused by the question.
“Is it his phone or did you purchase it for him? Is it your plan?”
“It’s a family plan.” She chuckled. “Jack doesn’t have the money to afford to buy lunch at school.”
The comment further confirmed Del’s conclusion that Jack had used Allie for her money. “So the phone bill is in your name.”
“Yes. Why do you ask?”
“We’d like access to Jack’s text messages and Snapchats,” Faz said. “We’d like to find out who he’s been talking to—who his supplier is.”
“What can you do about it?”
“Shut him down,” Faz said. “They’ve had multiple overdoses recently and we’re trying to keep that number from increasing.”
“My God,” she said softly.
“We’re concerned that more people could die unless we can find out the source of the drug. Can you get access to Jack’s phone?”
“I suppose so,” she said. “I’ve never done it before though.”
Del rattled off a ten-digit number.
“That’s Jack’s number,” she said.
Del pulled out a folded sheet of paper authorizing the phone company to release Jack’s cell phone records and handed it to her. She looked at it a moment. “I don’t—”
Del handed her a pen. “It just allows us access to Jack’s cell phone, to determine who he is communicating with.”
She took the pen, considered the document briefly, and scribbled her name. Then she handed both back to Del. He gave Faz a subtle nod. They had what they needed. Faz handed Jeanine Welch a business card. “We’d like to talk to your son. It’s not our intent to embarrass him, or you, by picking him up at school. If he comes home, that’s my number.”
The woman leaned forward and took the card. “Can you lock him up?”
“What’s that?” Faz asked.
“Can you arrest him? Put him in jail? Maybe he can get some help. I don’t know, maybe it will scare him enough to get help. I don’t know what else to do.” She sounded very much like Maggie. “Every time the phone rings or there’s a knock on the door . . . I expect it to be someone coming to tell me my son is dead.”
CHAPTER 27
Tracy pulled to a stop outside a brick apartment building on King Street near the train station in Pioneer Square. Acco
rding to a DMV search, Leah Battles lived in one of the units. At six stories, the building was one of the tallest in the area. Most were one and two stories, with an assortment of shops and restaurants on the street level. Bars, music venues, and art shops attracted many of Seattle’s young, along with a number of its homeless and mentally ill. Early evening, music filtered from one of the stores and people walked the streets, some on their way home from work, others looking like they were getting a jump on the upcoming weekend.
Earlier that afternoon, Tracy had met with Rick Cerrabone, Sandy Clarridge, and Kevin Dunleavy. They’d expressed concern over the news about the missing videotape. Dunleavy explained that the Navy’s senior trial counsel had called to advise that they had been unable to locate the video, and that they were proceeding with an ethics inquiry against Battles. He explained that, depending on the outcome of that inquiry, a court-martial for dereliction of duty could be imposed. He also said Battles no longer represented Trejo, and that they were awaiting the preliminary hearing officer’s determination on probable cause to continue holding him. Dunleavy explained what everyone in the room understood. If the PHO punted and King County reasserted jurisdiction, they faced similar problems bringing an action against Trejo. In a superior court, the standard to convict was beyond a reasonable doubt, a much more stringent threshold than probable cause. Without the videotape, their case had become significantly weaker. Tracy got the sense from the discussion that it was unlikely the powers that be would take back jurisdiction, though no one in the meeting said that out loud. She understood their reasoning. Why put your head in the lion’s cage if you knew it was going to be bitten off?
Tracy pushed out of her car and approached the apartment building’s overhang. The night air had a bite to it, though not nearly as cold as earlier that month. Antique streetlamps lit the dampened sidewalk, and the air had a musty smell of impending rain. She located the name Leah Battles on the apartment registry and pushed the buzzer. No one answered. She tried again with the same result.
“You looking for a restaurant recommendation?” Battles climbed off a bicycle in attire similar to what she’d worn to the jail the night Trejo had been booked. She pointed. “Good idea to wear that gun, though this neighborhood isn’t too bad.” Battles sounded out of breath. She removed her bike helmet. Her dark hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail, her cheeks flushed.
Close to Home (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 5) Page 19
