Chapter 23

Bellingham, Washington

Tuesday, March 3, 2020

By the time I left Seattle PD, a few minutes before five p.m. , it was raining pitchforks and hammer handles. I was soaked to the skin before I made it back to the parking garage. When

it came time to pay the piper there, I was left with a severe case of sticker shock. When did parking in downtown Seattle

get to be so expensive?

In the not-too-recent past, if I’d found myself in Seattle at that hour of the day, I would have called Mel and let her know

I’d be spending the night in our condo at Belltown Terrace. Since that ship had sailed, I now had no option other than heading

home to Bellingham.

Dogs don’t count as second express lane travelers, so there was no way for me to use that lane as I headed north. At the closed express lane entrance at Cherry and Fifth, however, I learned there was a multicar pileup north of Forty-Fifth. In other words, all northbound traffic was going to be a nightmare, and the pouring rain made it even worse. It took me close to two hours to make it from downtown Seattle to Everett. I was on the north side of that and partway through Marysville when my phone rang with Unknown Caller listed in caller ID. I started to let the call go to voicemail, but then, thinking whoever it was might be one of Yolanda Aguirre’s interviewees, I went ahead and picked up.

“J. P. Beaumont here,” I said.

“This is Detective Elizabeth Byrd, with Liberty Lake PD,” the caller informed me. “My former partner, Ron Wang, gave me your

number. Would now be a convenient time to talk?”

In good weather and decent traffic, driving time from Marysville to our home in Fairhaven takes an hour give or take. This

time the GPS was saying I’d arrive at my destination in an hour and a half, a little after nine p.m . As far as talking on the phone was concerned, I had all the time in the world.

“I’m driving north on I-5,” I told her. “Talking now is fine. Shoot.”

“Ron gave me a call earlier today. He said that after speaking to you, he thought he remembered that somewhere in the Jake

Spaulding file, one of the witnesses had mentioned something about seeing a homeless woman hanging around the Hitching Post

on the night in question.

“Today I went back through the file, and Ron was right. One of the witnesses is a guy named Matt Barr. When asked if anything out of the ordinary had happened that night, he complained that a homeless woman with a loaded grocery cart had been hanging around the bar’s front entrance when he parked his truck. Some how the woman lost control of her cart, and it rolled off the sidewalk and nailed the front bumper of his truck. There wasn’t that much damage, but he was pissed about it.”

Another homeless lady? I thought, as a wave of gooseflesh ran up my legs.

“Were you able to locate her?” I asked.

“We tried, but no dice,” Detective Byrd answered. “If she was hanging around the parking lot that night, there’s a possibility

that she might have seen what went on. Officers didn’t see any sign of her when they were out doing the neighborhood canvass,

and by the time the crime lab got back to us with that female DNA profile from the door handle, she had disappeared into thin

air.”

“Did the witness give any kind of description of her?” I asked.

“White female, maybe five one, and heavyset. He said he’d put her weight at around a hundred fifty pounds. Matt also indicated

that she had short, curly white hair. She was wearing ragtag clothing and a pair of ratty tennis shoes.”

I was excited. Maybe now we were getting somewhere. In the grainy food bank video, the female walking with Darius Jackson

had appeared to be white with light-colored hair. This description was certainly a match to that, and I told Detective Byrd

as much.

“Would it be possible for you to put me in touch with your witness?” I asked.

“Possibly,” she answered. “It might be better if I gave him your number.”

“Absolutely,” I said. “Feel free. Tell him he can call me any time.”

Amazingly enough, half an hour or so later, just as I was passing the first Mount Vernon exit, my phone rang again with another unknown number, but this one indicated the location was Liberty Lake. Matt Barr maybe?

“Hello,” I answered.

“Is this the private eye Detective Byrd told me about?”

I did my best not to grit my teeth. The term “private eye” offends me. It reminds me of all those old-time Mickey Spillane

paperback books with dead blondes on the covers. I’m an investigator, not an eye, but there was no need of my mentioning that

pet peeve to my caller.

“Yes, it is,” I answered. “My name is J. P. Beaumont. And yes, Mr. Barr, I’m definitely interested in speaking to you. I’m

taking another look at Jake Spaulding’s death and was wondering if you could tell me anything more about the homeless woman

you saw outside the Hitching Post on the night Mr. Spaulding died.”

“Other than the fact that the old bat’s overloaded shopping cart messed up the front bumper of my brand-new pickup truck?

Pissed the hell out of me. She didn’t even bother saying she was sorry.”

“What else can you tell me about her?”

“Not much more than I told the cops at the time. Five one or two, overweight, older—late fifties or early sixties, short,

curly white hair. She was dressed in sweats and wearing a hoodie, which was surprising given it was almost the middle of July

and hot as hell. Grubby tennis shoes. That’s about it.”

“You didn’t notice any distinguishing features?”

“Well,” he allowed, “now that you mention it, there was one thing. When she came to retrieve her damned shopping cart, she

reached out to grab the handle. At that point, her shirt sleeve pulled up some. That’s when I noticed she was wearing an Apple

Watch. I remember thinking, What the hell? If she’s homeless, how the hell did she come by that? They don’t exactly hand those out for free at the local food bank. And where does she charge it? Mine runs out of juice after

twenty hours or so and has to be recharged.”

“Where indeed!” I muttered aloud, but what I was really doing was stifling a vocal cheer.

We had now identified a group of four separate overdose deaths linked together by a history of domestic violence and two hundred-dollar

bills. In addition, a homeless female pushing a shopping cart had been connected to two of them, but Matt Barr’s telling detail—that

Apple Watch—was both new and incredibly significant. That’s something that would set her apart from most homeless people—something

that made her memorable. More than that, if we ever caught up with her, that watch would leave behind a trail of digital breadcrumbs

almost as revealing as those from a cell phone. It would tell us where she had been and when. Having that might also give

us access to her contacts as well as her text, email, and call history.

“You’ve provided me with some really important information, Mr. Barr, and I can’t thank you enough,” I said, trying hard to

rein in my exuberance. “I really appreciate your getting in touch. It could mean a lot.”

“You’re welcome,” Matt said. Then, after a moment he added, “I didn’t really know the guy personally—Spaulding, I mean. Supposedly

he’d just gotten out of prison after serving time for something or other. I’ve been told he’d had quite the reputation around

here for being a bully back when he was younger, but when I saw him in the bar, he didn’t seem to be causing trouble or doing

anything out of line, so maybe the time he spent in the slammer did him some good. Maybe he learned his lesson.”

“It’s possible,” I said to Mr. Barr, but inside my head I was muttering, But not bloody likely .

If Jake Spaulding had had a chance to live a little longer, I expect that eventually he would have gone right back to being

the same kind of jerk he’d always been. In my experience, most of the time, once a bully, always a bully. That’s usually not

something being sent to prison will fix.