Chapter 11

Bellingham, Washington

Saturday, February 22, 2020

The need to strategize about meals on a daily basis wasn’t the only change brought about after adding Kyle to the mix of Mel’s

and my way of life. Our bedroom boasts a completely acceptable master bath, which includes a double vanity and an amazing

shower. In reality, the en suite bath is mostly Mel’s domain. In the past, for everything other than showers, I had used the

powder room. With Kyle present, I no longer felt comfortable hotfooting it between our bedroom and the powder room in my skivvies.

We’d also learned that private conversations often needed to happen in our bedroom. Which is why Mel waited until we were

on our way to bed before putting in her two cents’ worth on our dinnertime discussion regarding Phyllis and Lindsey Baylor.

“I’m really curious about what happened there,” she said. “What kind of a case would have been important enough to put someone like Phyllis into Witness Protection?”

“Maybe something drug related?” I suggested. “Or, more likely, cartel related, but good luck prying any information about

that out of the US Marshals.”

“Maybe you don’t have to,” Mel said.

“What do you mean?”

“Forensic genealogy has caught up with a lot of bad guys in the last few years,” Mel suggested, “but maybe it’s caught up

with the US Marshals Service, too. Maybe it’s time you gave Lulu Benson a call.”

Have I mentioned that there are times when Mel Soames is nothing short of brilliant?

Lucille Benson, aka Little Lulu because she’s barely four ten, is a recent addition to TLC’s collection of volunteer cold

case investigators. The Last Chance was created years ago by a woman named Hedda Brinker. Frustrated by the fact that her

daughter’s homicide had gone unsolved for decades, she decided to use her winnings from a huge Powerball jackpot to create

an all-volunteer cold case squad to tackle abandoned cold cases for the benefit of other grieving families.

When it came time to set TLC in motion, she had called on a guy named Ralph Ames to handle all the organizational details

and to make sure any residual funds were reinvested to cover ongoing expenses. Ralph is also the guy who brought me to TLC

in the aftermath of my forced retirement due to the dismantling of the Special Homicide Investigation Team. Ralph first came

into my life when I met and married my second wife, Anne Corley. Anne died on the day of our wedding, but Ralph and I have

remained friends ever since.

Like me, Ralph is getting up there in terms of age, and he’s recently handed over the reins for overseeing TLC to his son, Rafe, who, not surprisingly, is also an attorney and who happens to live in Denver, the location of TLC’s headquarters. By way of introducing Rafe to all the folks involved—a group made up of retired detectives, prosecutors, and forensic folk—earlier that year we had all, spouses included, trekked to Denver’s Brown Palace for a meet and greet where Mel and Lulu had hit it off like gangbusters.

Lulu and I are about the same age, and we both grew up with Little Lulu comics, which were the only comic books my mother allowed in our apartment. While my friends read Superman and Batman , I was stuck with Little Lulu . Mel is fifteen years younger than I am and never saw one of those comic books, but when we told her about Little Lulu’s

pal, Tubby, and his clubhouse plainly marked “NO GIRLS ALLOWED,” she got the picture.

Lucille Benson had entered the “boys only” world of law enforcement much earlier than Mel. After graduating cum laude from

the University of Nebraska with double majors in Chemistry and Microbiology, she had gone to work in Nebraska State Patrol’s

Crime Lab. Her first day on the job, she was taken to task by the director for wearing a miniskirt to work, something he said

would serve as a distraction to her fellow criminalists—all of whom happened to be male. The next day she had shown up in

a pair of cut-down overalls and tiny work boots. Turned out that costume was deemed to be a distraction as well. Shortly thereafter,

everyone working in the lab, male and female alike, were directed to wear knee-length lab coats. Once that happened, whatever

was worn underneath was no longer an issue.

Relating that story made Lulu and Mel instant pals. Mel, too, had her own set of law enforcement hazing stories from a somewhat later generation, giving the two women a good deal in common. Despite Lulu’s somewhat problematic introduction to the crime lab, she had hung in there. By the time she retired some forty years later, she’d been the director for the previous ten. In retirement, rather than reading books or traveling or gardening, Lulu had set her sights on tracking down her family tree. Eventually she had succeeded in tracing her roots on both sides of her family as far back as the sixteenth century in the UK. One of her distant ancestors had actually been on board the Mayflower .

But then 2018 came along when cops in California used DNA and forensic genealogy to finally bring down the Golden State killer.

Suddenly something that had been little more than a retirement hobby for Lulu Benson morphed into a crime-fighting tool. Just

like that, she was ready to take everything she had learned about genealogy and go back to work.

TLC didn’t come looking for her. She went looking for them. She had introduced herself to Rafe Ames about the time he was

taking charge and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. She’d be willing to join forces with TLC and bring several other retired

criminalists along for the ride if TLC would spring for a full-fledged laboratory equipped with the latest in DNA profiling

equipment.

Most of the cold cases that come to TLC as a last resort are there because the homicides in question had occurred in jurisdictions

with limited funds and even more limited investigative resources. Not only is DNA testing expensive, it takes time—lots of

it. Wait times on active cases may seem frustratingly slow, but for cold cases, they’re downright interminable.

Knowing Hedda Brinker would approve, Rafe agreed to spend a big chunk of her Powerball fortune to purchase an appropriate lab location. He then set about filling it with the latest and greatest DNA processing equipment. Most of the people at TLC are volunteers, but to have a properly certified lab whose results would stand up in court, it was necessary to actually hire qualified personnel to work there. That was a far more complicated task than anyone had anticipated. Months later, it still wasn’t up and running—which meant Lulu wasn’t, either. It occurred to me that if she was sitting around twiddling her thumbs, maybe she wouldn’t mind taking on a side gig, even if it wasn’t exactly TLC’s cup of tea.

“Great idea, Mel,” I said, giving her a good night kiss as she settled down beside me in bed. “I’ll give Lulu a call first

thing Monday morning.”