“So you took him on,” Mel said. “An economist, not a cop.”
“That’s right,” Ross agreed. “So I hired Hatcher. I gave him an office and a computer and turned him loose with oodles of information. Shortly after he started doing his study, however, Todd hit on an anomaly—a sudden spike in mortality rates among recently released inmates, one that didn’t fit inside the expected actuarial norms for that particular population. That’s his area of expertise, you see—demographics.”
“How recent a spike?” I asked.
“In the last year and a half or so. Before that, the death rates were pretty steady and followed predictable patterns. Many of those deaths were clearly age-, behavior-, or illness-related. But the dead guys in this new group are all fairly young—twenties, thirties, and forties—relatively healthy, and they all seem to have died under mysterious circumstances that aren’t necessarily homicides. Several of the deaths have been labeled simply suspicious. So I asked Todd to start looking into it. He’s been at it for only two weeks now and he’s already come up with the ones I told you about tonight as well as with the ones Mel found. You can see why I’m leaning in the direction of a cop gone bad, and if it turns out he’s someone who’s worked for me…” Ross shook his head, lapsed into a moody silence, and stared into the depths of his almost empty wineglass.
Now I began to fathom why Ross Connors was so gun-shy about news of our investigation getting out. A previous leak from the A.G.’s office had resulted in the death of a woman in the witness protection program—someone it had been his professional obligation to protect. I knew that failure on his part still weighed heavily on him, especially since it had eventually led to the death of Ross’s own wife. No wonder he was so concerned. If it turned out a serial killer with close to a dozen victims could be traced back to his administration, Ross’s days as attorney general were probably numbered. Still, it irked me to think that Mel and I were working as glorified fact-checkers for some hotshot economist.
“If we discover present or former law enforcement personnel are involved,” Ross resumed after a pause, “I’ll have to bring in the feds, no question, but I don’t want to do that until I’m reasonably sure what we’re dealing with. On the other hand, we simply must put a stop to this. Yes, the victims are some pretty bad dudes, but they’ve also served their time and paid their debts to society. According to the Constitution, even scumbags have a right to due process.”
“What about Mr. Tompkins?” Mel said.
On the surface her question was directed at Ross, but the look she sent in my direction said otherwise.
“What’s the story with him?” she continued. “Whatever it was must have happened before I came to town.”
That was true. LaShawn Tompkins had been both wrongly convicted and rightly released long before Melissa Soames turned up in Bellevue as Ross Connors’s latest addition to SHIT.
“Ask Beau here,” Ross said helpfully. “At this point I’m sure he knows far more about it than I do.”
So I told them what I knew, pretty much. I left out the part about Kendall Jackson working with me on the q.t. as far as attempting to locate Elaine Manning was concerned. If Ross needed deniability, so did Detective Jackson. After all, he still has to survive inside Seattle PD.
The problem was, the more I told the more I could see Mel didn’t like the fact that I had used Beverly’s death as a smoke screen to hide what I was doing.
“I’m still hoping maybe it is a love triangle,” I finished somewhat lamely. “Maybe, when we locate the girlfriend—”
“I hope so, too,” Ross interrupted. “But I’m not holding my breath. You can see why I turned to the two of you, though. I wanted this situation investigated with as little fuss as possible. Of all my people, you two are uniquely situated for keeping something like this quiet.”
Every time the man opened his mouth he made things worse for yours truly.
“Yes,” Mel agreed, sending yet another scathing glance in my direction. “I can certainly see why you might think that.”
I wanted to turn the focus away from us and back onto something less dangerous—like the victims themselves. “What do our dead guys have in common?” I asked. “Were any of them locked up in the same facility?”
“Todd is working on putting together a spreadsheet analysis of all that. As far as facilities are concerned, we have only so many prisons,” Ross said. “Since these guys were all incarcerated at more or less the same time, it stands to reason that some of them would have served time in the same facility. If it turns out they all were, then that’s another story.”
“The irrigation-canal victims were locked up together,” Mel offered. “They were actually cell mates up in Monroe.”