Last Dance, Last Chance

scores of people who understand that sometimes good does overcome evil, and there can be happy endings.
    And Debbie Pignataro changes the station whenever “Last Dance” comes on the radio.

T here are sadistic sociopaths whose entire focus is on the destruction of other human beings—even though they appear to be ordinary citizens. Some of them are rich and famous, and some are everyday working people, but in all of them, the masks they wear are completely perfect, and therein lies the danger.
    Every murderer in the stories that follow is a repeat offender, so entrenched in destroying the lives of others that it is easy to believe they would never stop of their own accord.
    Some of them were blocked by detectives and the justice system.
    Some simply grew too old to be dangerous.
    And some died.

The Accountant
    T his story begins a very long time ago—more than fifty years have passed since it began—and it continued for decades. One of the smartest detectives in the Seattle Police Department was a young man when he first met the killer, and he was long past retirement as the story kept unfolding, layer after layer, as if it would never end. Austin Seth is well over 80 now, but he has an impeccable memory, particularly when he is asked about the case that began on July 10, 1948. Of the scores of homicides he solved, this case is the one he remembers the best.

I n Seattle, it is often rainy in July. That hasn’t changed in 54 years. Rhododendrons, impatiens, and hydrangeas thrive, but tomatoes and strawberries sometimes rot on the vine as the Emerald City grudgingly lets go of spring and plunges into summer. August is usually the only month you can count on to have more than three consecutive days of sunshine.
    On that long-ago Saturday morning in July, it was warm and sultry, the air humid from a recent rain. A young man who lived in the northeast section of Seattle was taking a shortcut across vacant lots to the bus stop at E. 65th and N.E. 35th in the Ravenna district. There were a lot of vacant lots in Seattle in 1948, although today they are few and far between. Wild blackberry vines, bindweed, and straggly clover grew in tangles wherever builders weren’t constructing new houses to meet the post–World War II demand. The bus commuter trotted across the clear spots between the verdant weed patches.
    The sandy clay soil dipped in spots, leaving hollows, ditches, and rutted trails that were now filled with leftover rainwater from a Friday night storm. He leaped over a water hazard, and, as he did so, glanced down to be sure he’d cleared a ditch. His heart constricted and his breath caught in his throat as he wondered if his mind was playing tricks on him. Late as he was, he had to turn back and look more carefully.
    When he did, he was sorry he had. There was a woman lying there motionless, facedown, in the ditch. It looked as if she was naked beneath the sweater-jacket that had been tossed carelessly over her pale white flesh.
    All thoughts of catching the next bus vanished as the man ran to the nearest house and pounded on the door. He asked if he could use the phone. There was no 911 in 1948; indeed, one man per shift—Harmon Ensley on this First Watch from four until noon—handled all the emergency calls that came into the Seattle Police Department, as well as the ADT bank alarms. It seems impossible now, but it worked just fine then. Ensley could direct patrol cars into a crime scene as deftly as any air traffic controller and keep up a constant patter as he did so.
    In those days, there was a captain overseeing the Homicide and Robbery Unit, and all the homicide detectives were designated lieutenants. “We didn’t get any extra pay,” Austin Seth recalls, “but we had the rank. It gave us a little more persuasive power if we needed it.”
    On the morning of July 10, patrol officers from the north end’s Wallingford precinct were the first to reach the scene. The spot where the woman lay was only a half block off a well-traveled boulevard, Sand Point Way, but it still seemed isolated. Officers Henry Redick and J.B. Small were followed by the commander of the precinct, Captain Art Chaffee.
    The witness who led them to the ditch hadn’t known if the woman was alive or dead when he called, but the Wallingford officers could see that she was dead; her face was under a few inches of muddy water. She would have drowned if she’d been unconscious when she was thrown or fell there. Maybe someone