Don’t Look Behind You

electric guitarist in musical history, died in London on September 18, 1970. It would take pages to list the honors bestowed upon him by the music world.
    Henry Lewis was born in 1942, the same year as Jimi Hendrix, and he was a longtime friend of Leon Hendrix, Jimi’s brother, and the entire Hendrix family. Henry was part owner of the small red house in Renton, Washington, where Jimi lived in his teenage years and where he played his “broom guitar” before he could afford a real one. It hadlong been Henry’s mission to keep Jimi’s legacy alive, to see that that modest house was preserved and that suitable memorials existed in Jimi’s honor in Seattle. The inside of his office was papered with homages to Jimi Hendrix.
    When the city was prepared to tear down Hendrix’s former home, Henry Lewis told the media, “I won’t let that happen. To save it, I’ll carry it on my back if I have to.”
    Lewis’s world seemed a million miles away from Renee’s.
    Renee’s life was a series of vignettes as she moved from place to place, man to man, and through lifestyles that were diametrically opposed. Henry Lewis hired her—she was always a good study and quick to learn new businesses—and he fell in love with her, much to his children’s dismay.
    Henry suffered from a bad heart, but that didn’t deter Renee; they were married in 2006.
    When Detective Ben Benson first met Renee in Henry Lewis’s office, he had yet to find out about all of her activities and liaisons over the years. If he had, he certainly would have seen the pattern emerge again and again. Renee and her mother had sought out those things and people who would keep them living in style. For Renee, that had always meant seducing wealthy men by using her beauty and her ability to be whoever she perceived men wanted her to be.
    Henry Lewis wasn’t a billionaire, but he owned a number of properties that had greatly increased in value overthe years. He wore a small fortune in gold jewelry, and there were times—as Henry told reporter Natalie Singer—that he had had his name and his fortune riding on $8 million out in bail money. He was good to his clients, tried to make them feel at ease, and trusted that they would show up on the dates their court appearances were scheduled. He even felt sorry for many of them. However, he wasn’t a patsy.
    “But they have to go to court,” he told Singer. “There are no bad hair days.”
    He was devoted to the memory of a musical giant, a dreamer who hoped to have his own museum for Jimi Hendrix someday—but Henry Lewis was also a no-nonsense man. A businessman. When he fell in love with Renee Curtiss, he placed his trust in her, although that might not have been as wise an idea as he believed it to be.
    After Henry Lewis married Renee, she and her sister, Cassie, continued to work in his bail bonds company. No one ever said that Renee wasn’t a hard worker. For a time, she seemed to be an asset, but she came between Henry and his children. She was not the kind of woman they would have chosen for their father.

PART THREE
“Jane Doe Down …”
HEALY, ALASKA

Chapter Eight
    Renee’s cousin Victoria had blurted out a question about
who
had been murdered, and that surprised Ben Benson. With the rumor that there had possibly been another homicide hanging from the Hesse/Notaro family tree, Benson contacted the Alaska State Patrol to see if they had any record of such an event.
    They had indeed. Nick Notaro, Renee’s older brother, had confessed to killing his wife, Vickie, in October 1978.
    Benson requested a copy of that murder file from the Records and Identification Unit in Juneau, Alaska. They promised to send a copy down for him to review.
    It was six in the evening on October 15, 1978, and almost full dark when the Fairbanks detachment of the Department of Public Safety—the Alaska state troopers on duty—received a report from Wayne Walters, chief of police in Nenana. A dead body had been discovered by kids sledding and picnicking at a gravel pit at approximately Mile 317 on the Parks Highway just outside Healy. Astroopers Roderick Harvey, James McCann, and Steven Heckman headed to the location given for the corpse, they didn’t know whether the victim was male or female. If it had been there for weeks or even months, it might be difficult to tell—at least at first.
    “The scene is located where there is a dirt road leading uphill from the Parks Highway on the east side of the road,” McCann