content warnings: domestic violence, murder.

I recently related the tale of how I met a murderer IRL, before he did his misdeeds and died sad.  In another post I have mentioned the murder and attempted murders that transpired in my last apartment complex.  Got one more brush with true crime, which I shall presently illustrate.

The last place I lived with somebody other than my boyfriend was in Everett, Washington, living with my father.  This was during the last of my time in art school, the era of the messed up pants.

I actually loved that area.  It was a mid century -lookin suburban feel, tho considered downtown-ish, on top of a huge hill.  Just over the hill was a view of Puget Sound, just north were some plain but pleasant old brick buildings, just east down the hill were a few places to eat and get groceries, plus a transit center with only a touch of racist graffiti (“all faraners must go home or be hunnt”).  The streets felt clean, the skies were often blue, and the blustery winds felt elemental.  It was far enough north there was more snow than Seattle gets too.  Just my memories, possibly distorted.

This was the last place I ever saw the first boy I loved too, in those random moments of our lives when our paths crossed, as he was working for the navy and drinking half a box of wine a day.  Melancholy low key hangout, then vaya sin dios.

Me and my father were living in a shotgun shack at the place where the pleasant little houses gave way to ramshackle creepiness above the fast food joints.  There was a “basement” which was too exposed to be of real use.  Everything we made the mistake of storing in it was covered in mildew and rat droppings.  But the owner was low key and the place was uncluttered.  Life was lonely in a way that’s easy to romanticize.

My room faced the alley behind the house and one time I was awakened by the sound of tweakers breaking the window of my dad’s van to steal his painting equipment.  I ran out shirtless and yelling, and scared them off.

Another time somebody sent a jacked-up bb thru our bathroom window, shattered the glass window of our shower.  The shattering unfolded in slow motion, radiating from the site of impact before total collapse.  It sounded like a glacier melting in summer.  Just malicious mischief, zero priority for cops, tho it would have been trivially easy to find which neighbor’s house it came from.

Very near the end of our time there, a young couple moved in next door, to another property owned by the same guy as our shack.  They seemed a little squirrely, but affable.  He was a veteran fresh out of a war, she was somebody I never met, though my father had some brief interaction with them.  Recalling my last murderer was also a vet and the stats on spousal murders, you might see where this is going.

Soon we moved out.  I got the last of the cheap studio apartments in Seattle before those ceased to exist (no rent control so when it was done being cheap i was done with it), my dad used a bit of an inheritance to buy a trailer and go help with cleanup in Katrina.  That venture didn’t end well; my dad had atrocious business sense.

So neither of us was anywhere near there when it happened, but my dad found out (probably from our former landlord) the very day after we moved out, the young lady’s body was found in the same dumpster where we took out our trash.  That’s all I ever heard of it.  Don’t know if it even made the news.

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