Chapter 29

Bellingham, Washington

Friday, March 6, 2020

Knowing I had Ben and Sandy backing me up on going through the interview transcripts, it was easier to face up to the ones

Yolanda had sent me overnight—the ones where people had agreed to second interviews.

But before I did so, I thought about the logistics involved. Yolanda’s study covered all of King County. So far all our cases

had originated inside Seattle’s city limits. With that in mind, it made sense to limit our examinations to deaths that were

Seattle-centric. Before I opened any of Yolanda’s emails, I sent one of my own to Ben and Sandy as well as to Elena Moreno,

letting them know that from now on we would focus on Seattle cases only. To my way of thinking, narrowing the scope of our

investigation would automatically reduce the workload.

My mother died of breast cancer when I was in my early twenties. Now that I’m so much older, I’m surprised by how often the words she said to me way back then resurface in my head. Only a few minutes after telling my mini task force that we could probably ignore cases occurring outside Seattle’s city limits, I remembered Mom telling me time and again that “pride goeth before the fall.” I took a hit on that score as soon as I started reading through Yolanda Aguirre’s next interview, file number 143.

That one was with a woman named Felicity, the widow of one Xavier Jesus. Xavier, age thirty-six, had died of a fentanyl overdose—delivered

by means of a vape pen—on August 14, 2016, in Kent, Washington. Yolanda gave me Felicity’s phone number, indicating that she

was eager to speak with me.

Prior to calling Xavier’s widow, I quickly reviewed her initial interview. Her husband’s body had been found next to the railroad

tracks in Kent’s warehouse district, where he had worked as a forklift operator. Kent may be inside King County, but it’s

well outside Seattle’s city limits.

When I had initially flagged the file, I had done so because of the commonality of the crime scenes between the two incidents.

Although miles apart, both bodies had been found in close proximity to railroad tracks. Now I saw that, like Jake Spaulding’s,

Xavier’s fatal fentanyl overdose had been administered by means of a vape pipe. And the similarities didn’t end there.

According to what Felicity had told Yolanda, there had been several instances of increasingly violent physical confrontations between her and her husband in the months prior to his death, during some of which law enforcement had been summoned. Xavier had been taken into custody on three separate occasions, but as the mother of three young children, Felicity had never gone through with pressing charges against him, although she had filed for a divorce the week prior to her husband’s death.

Although Felicity admitted that her husband had often become violent when he was drinking, she had insisted that he had never,

to her knowledge, been a drug user of any kind—no marijuana, no cocaine, no crack, and most definitely no fentanyl. That was

not unlike Matilda Jackson’s claim that Darius Jackson hadn’t been using at the time of his death.

In addition, Felicity claimed that Xavier loved his kids and would never, ever have committed suicide and certainly not by

using a vape pen filled with fentanyl. That was the only reason Felicity had agreed to speak to Yolanda in the first place—she

was convinced that Kent PD and the King County Medical Examiner had gotten her husband’s manner of death all wrong. The vape

pen detail hadn’t leaped out at me while I was bingeing my way through files the previous weekend, but now, knowing Jake Spaulding

had also died of an overdose delivered via a vape pen, the connection was stunning.

At that point I picked up my phone and dialed her number. “Ms. Delgado?” I asked when she answered.

“Yes, who’s this?”

“My name’s J. P. Beaumont.”

“You’re the man Yolanda Aguirre said might be calling about Xavier?”

“Yes, I am. I’m looking into several overdose deaths that may have been mishandled. I’m wondering if that might also be true

in your husband’s case.”

“Thank God,” she murmured fervently. “Maybe someone will finally believe me.”

“I’m hoping someone will believe me, too,” I told her. “I’m finding that the cases in question have several things in common.”

“Like what?”

“Prior to their deaths, all the victims were involved in numerous domestic violence situations in which calls were made to

911.”

“I definitely made some of those,” Felicity admitted. “When I called, though, I simply wanted Xavier out of the house long

enough to sober up. I never wanted him arrested because I didn’t want him to lose his job. But like I told the cops, my husband

may have been a drunk, but he never used drugs. And he wouldn’t have killed himself, either.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Xavier hardly ever went to Mass, but he was raised Catholic, and he would never, ever have committed suicide. Even though

I had filed for a divorce, he wouldn’t have done that.”

“So you had filed?”

“Yes,” she said. “I had to. The last time we got in a fight, he hit me so hard, he broke my nose. My daughter was seven at

the time, and she called 911. That’s when I made up my mind. I couldn’t let my kids grow up seeing their father act that way.

That very day I went to court and got a protection order. The day after that I filed for a divorce.

“I was scared to death. I didn’t have a job or any money. I ended up having to go to the food bank just so I could feed my

kids. I was starting to think that if he showed up at the house, maybe I’d take him back, but that’s when the cops came by

and told me he was dead—that they’d found his body by the railroad tracks. Later, when they told me he’d committed suicide,

I tried to tell them they were wrong—that Xavier would never do such a thing—but nobody listened to me.”

“So what did you do?”

“I got a job working nights as a cashier at a Circle K. My mom comes over and sleeps at the house so someone is there with the kids while I’m at work. I don’t make very much. I’m able to pay the rent and buy food, but there’s never anything left over for extras.

“At the time Xavier died, school was about to start. The kids needed clothes and school supplies, and I had no idea how I

was going to pay for any of it because he had taken off without leaving me any money. That’s when someone from the M.E.’s

office came by to drop off Xavier’s personal effects, including his wallet. There was money in that.”

My heart skipped a beat. “How much money?”

“Almost three hundred dollars.”

“You didn’t mention that in your interview with Yolanda Aguirre,” I suggested.

“No, I didn’t,” she agreed. “I was too ashamed.”

“Ashamed? Why?”

I heard her sigh. “I decided to use that money—Xavier’s money—to buy the kids’ school stuff, so I went shopping at Target.

I knew exactly how much money I had and was careful not to go over that amount. But when I got to the check stand, the clerk

held up one of the hundred-dollar bills...”

“Hundreds?” I asked.

“Yes, there were two hundred-dollar bills and some smaller ones in the wallet. They added up to $288.”

“What happened then?” I asked.

“The clerk said she couldn’t take the money because it didn’t have a security strip, and she thought it was counterfeit. She

said I’d need to pay by credit card.”

“What did you do?”

“What could I do?” Felicity replied. “I didn’t have a credit card, so I took the money, left everything I had picked out either in the basket or on the check stand counter, and walked away. I cried all the way home. How could Xavier have gotten involved in passing out counterfeit money? Did I even know him?”

“Do you still have those two hundreds?”

“Of course I do,” she said. “I didn’t dare spend them. I was afraid someone would end up accusing me of trying to pass counterfeit

money.”

“It’s not counterfeit,” I told her. “It’s legal tender, but it’s old. Still, please don’t spend it. I’m reasonably sure your

husband was murdered, and that whoever is responsible has killed four other people as well, because in all those cases two

mysterious hundred-dollar bills were found among the victims’ personal effects.”

“Four other cases?” Felicity repeated. “Really? Does that mean Xavier was murdered by a serial killer?”

As a general rule, it takes three victims for someone to graduate to serial killer status. Xavier Delgado’s death meant we

were now two over that grim milestone.

“Yes,” I agreed. “I believe your husband was quite possibly the victim of a serial killer.”

The next words out of Felicity’s mouth took me aback. “Thank you,” she whispered brokenly. “Thank you so much!”

I was truly mystified. “Why would you thank me?”

“Because of my mother-in-law,” she said, “my kids’ nana. She’s a good Catholic. She believes that suicide is a mortal sin

and that anyone who commits a mortal sin without repentance goes to hell. She’s convinced that Xavier committed suicide because

I had filed for a divorce. The last time she spoke to me was at his funeral.”

I heard the genuine relief in her voice, but I needed to put the brakes on what she might say to anyone else.

“Please, Ms. Delgado,” I pleaded, “I can tell how important this is to you, but whatever you do, don’t discuss any of what

I’ve told you with anyone else, including your mother-in-law. As far as law enforcement is concerned, your husband’s case

is closed, and so far so are the others. I’m doing my best to get them reopened, but if word of what I’m doing gets back to

the killer, that person might be able to get away.”

“Will you call me when you know for sure?” Felicity asked. “You promise?”

“Cross my heart,” I replied. “You may not be the first person I call, but I promise I’ll be in touch.”

“Thank you,” Felicity breathed. “Thank you so much.”

“You’re welcome,” I told her.

After ending the call, what do you think I did next? I fired off a group email to Ben Weston, Sandra Sechrest, Yolanda’s hardworking

intern, and Yolanda herself.

Hey, guys, when I’m wrong, I’m wrong. Please disregard my previous message. I’ve just now located another possibly related

case. Number five is an overdose death designated suicide that originated in Kent, which is well outside the Seattle city

limits.

I’m a great believer in the idea that where there’s smoke there’s fire. With five cases that I’m now reasonably sure are connected,

I suspect there are probably more—no telling how many. So let’s not take our foot off the gas pedal. I want to get whoever

did this and hold them accountable.

As I pressed send, a thought occurred to me about pressing gas pedals. My aging Mercedes has a gas pedal, but what about all those electric cars out on the road these days? If they don’t have gas pedals, what do they have? Accelerators maybe? Will gas pedals end up going the way of the buggy whip, right along with standard transmissions?

Yes, indeed , I told myself. J.P., old boy, you really are getting up there!