by Gregg Olsen
“I’m very sorry that I don’t know my nephew and niece better. I can make excuses, but I want you two to know the truth.” She holds her breath. “Your father kept us apart too. He didn’t… didn’t want her to be close to anyone. I’ll miss her every day. Just like I have the past six years.”
Ruth Turner looks at her sister’s body, bends down, and pulls a frilly blue bachelor’s button from the shroud.
Her lips are tight and she’s trembling.
“May I?” she finally asks.
Joshua nods and watches as his aunt drops the blossom into the open grave.
We stand there silently, then Eve does the same, so does Sarah. We all do.
Joshua sends a shovelful of loose, loamy soil over the flowers in the symbolic grave. Then another. He goes faster and faster. A strange jolt of mania has taken over his body. Two… five… six. Again, his sister intervenes.
“That’s enough,” she tells him. “Put down the shovel.” He does as he’s told, and I think it’s a somewhat strange dynamic. She’s younger, but she is the dominant of the two.
She takes the shovel and scrapes soil onto the now-disappearing collage of flowers.
“Bye, Mom,” she says, now kneeling and pulling a flower from her hair. “Our hearts are broken. Don’t worry. We’re strong like you. We’re fighters too.” She drops the daisy on to the empty grave they’ve made.
I look at Sheriff. He’s rolling his tongue over what I’m sure is his missing filling.
“I’m going to tell them to leave,” I say, indicating the TV crew.
“Yeah, tell them to get lost.”
A news reporter with flawless skin, shiny dark hair, and a distinctly cocky prance in his walk, comes at me. A camerawoman follows.
“Jake Jackson, KING TV,” he announces. “You’re the detective on the case.”
He’s wearing makeup already. This is going to be one of those “live from the scene” type stories. This was big. In the past when there was some interest in something happening here, they’d have one of the kids from the high school shoot the video and then—at their own expense—drive it to Seattle. Now just about everyone with a smartphone is doing the same thing.
Before I answer, the camerawoman chimes in.
“She’s Millie Carpenter, Jake. God, you are embarrassing.”
He turns red under his makeup. I don’t correct her because I like the results of her mistake.
“I’m afraid we’ve no comment about this case. It’s an ongoing investigation. We’ll update what we can when we can.”
“Was the killing related to a particular belief system?” He points to the orchard. “Wheaton buried in a shroud.”
“In the ground,” adds the dimwit with the handheld.
“Look, you’re going to need to leave now. This is private property.”
“Ms. Chesterfield said we could be here.”
Of course, she did.
I show my badge. “I outrank her.” I look over my shoulder at Sheriff. “And he outranks all of us. Please go.”
I hear him say something about just doing his job, and she chirps as they turn to pack up: “Does that mean we’re not going to that restaurant?”
Everyone is inside the house now, except for Ruth’s daughter.
“Hi,” I say.
Eve gives me a weak smile.
“Can I sit?”
She indicates the place next to her.
“I guess you heard me complaining about Sarah.”
“I didn’t take it as complaining, just disappointment.”
“Right?” she remarks. “When you’re raised like an inmate, you want a real connection with anyone outside of your home. When we were little Sarah was mine. My lifeline.”
“I’m sure she feels the same way.”
“Maybe. Maybe she does.”
“It’s a very hard day for all of you,” I tell her, patting her knee.
“Yeah. That’s the truth.”
Ruth says she’ll see me before she leaves the next day. I give Bernie a look, a glare really. The others I hug and tell them that our duty to find out who killed their mother is an extension of their love for her.
“Find her killer,” Ruth whispers, as she pulls her niece and nephew close to her. “Find Merritt.” Joshua’s eyes widen. Sarah inches slightly to the fan that had been used to pull the scent of her mother’s remains.
Just how much wintergreen can a person breathe and still survive?
Twenty-Eight
“They keep coming, Amy,” Regina says cuddling in bed with her wife.
“You keep us safe.”
“You really think so?”
“Yes, babe, I do.”
Even after the fight. The really bad one.
Even then.
Even now.
Regina looks at the ceiling and Amy’s hand rests on her shoulder.
“I never should have tried to stop you, Amy.”
“I know you did it because you love me. I forgave you long ago.”
Regina’s tears flow. She tells Amy that she hoped this day would never come. She never imagined trying to protect their own privacy; getting rid of the man’s body.
“Seen his kids up that road a few times over the years,” Regina remarks.
As Regina mixes rat poison into a bowl of water, she thinks back to the big fight and how it all started. It was the fall before the last. Back then, Amy barely spoke to Reggie. And when she did it was only one subject.
“I don’t want to live here for the rest of my life, Reggie. We agreed it was for a few years. Great. Fine, but, babe, that was a dozen years ago. I want to move on.”
Reggie ignored the remark for the longest time.
Amy finally spoke up.
“You are making me do something that I don’t want to do.”
That got Reggie’s attention.
Amy was full of resolve, but she’s crying anyway.
“I don’t love you like I did, babe. I want out. I want a divorce.”
Regina’s eyes bulged and she dove for Amy.
“You can’t leave!”
Amy pushed back hard. Regina was stronger, tougher and equally full of resolve. She wasn’t going to stop until she got what she wanted. “You aren’t going anywhere. You love me. You said so.”
“I did. Really, Regina, but it was a long time ago.”
“You little liar,” Regina growled as she went for Amy’s neck.
In a flash, Amy grabbed a knife from the counter, and swung it wildly, before ramming its tip into Regina’s eye. Blood squirted and Regina screamed at the top of her lungs.
“What did you do to me?”
“Sorry. Sorry.”
“Never leave me. Not ever.”
Somehow, they’d managed to fight their way across from one room to the next. What started in the bedroom had moved them to the kitchen. Blood gushed from the spaces between Regina’s fingers as she pressed over the agony that was her right eye.
However, Regina’s reflexes were sharp. She knocked the knife out of her wife’s hand and threw herself on top of her.
“You said you were mine forever.”
By then, Amy could no longer speak. Her eyes, wide open, began to bloom blood as the capillaries burst. Regina’s hands tightened around her neck. She wanted to stop. It’s impossible. It’s the kind of thing for which there was no turning back.
Regina stared at the ebbing life force. It’s like a beautiful, nearly invisible vapor that curls above before vanishing out the window.
“You’ll never leave me.”
“I would never leave you,” Amy insisted. “I love you, Regina. I’m sorry.”
Regina sat awhile, thinking. Her eye. She couldn’t go to the hospital. She made her way, nearly stumbling as she walked, to the bathroom. She took off her clothes, took a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and washed herself in the outdoor shower.
She tried not to cry. It hurt so much. Without a nanosecond of delay, Regina stepped away from the wate
r, leaned back and poured the contents of the bottle into her eye socket. She screamed louder than she ever had in her life. Foam collected in her where her eye had been and she poured more, again and again.
Always with a scream.
That’s when the idea came to her.
Amy doesn’t say a single word while she watches Regina mix the powdery and crystalline poison she’d used to kill the barn rats. She’s sitting up in bed, and when Regina sits next to her, Amy reaches out and touches her tenderly. She holds the juice glass with the poison; they stare straight ahead.
Regina cries from her single eye.
Amy trembles.
“I am sorry,” she whimpers.
“I know.”
“I love you, Regina. Always have.”
“Always will.”
Twenty-Nine
I can’t face the tapes right now. I can’t face going home. I think of returning Dan Anderson’s call, but that would make me feel like a jerk for not phoning sooner. So, I don’t. Instead I drive to the waterfront, to the bar, The Tides, a place Mindy and I frequented back in the day. I miss seeing her. Hayden too. My list is short.
I’m feeling sorry for myself and I know it.
My focus and my brain and yes, my emotions, should be aimed solely on the case.
I don’t know any of the staff at The Tides. I’ve hit the point in life where I’m nearing that middle part where no one sees you anymore. Service at a bar or restaurant is slower. Talking with the waiter or anyone is nonexistent. Unless I’m willing to dress a little more provocatively, I’ll always be a Soup-for-One girl.
The Tides is authentic, not one of those chains that brings in some buoys and floats with netting that had never seen seawater. It’s a converted warehouse at the end of the dock. It’s painted blue and features a broad white and navy stripe on its awning over the door. The Tides is spelled out in thin pieces of driftwood.
I go inside and find a seat. It’s next to a massive saltwater tank with a school of clown fish and others I can’t name. It soothes me as I watch the fish twirl and turn in the bubbling water. One of the fish, shaped like a disc, is iridescent blue in color. Instead of thinking bachelor’s buttons, my mind goes straight to Luminol.
I wonder how the lab tests are going. Maybe they’ll surprise us with a sudden heroic burst of energy, but I have my doubts.
A waitress asks if I want a drink.
I order a G & T.
“Still serving dinner?” I ask.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Ma’am again.
She drops off the dinner menu and, a few minutes later, my drink. First things first, I take a big sip of the cocktail that I have long thought synonymous with summer. It’s lime. It’s crisp. It’s the drink I suspect one day will be my downfall. I know tonight I’ll have two and still want another.
When the waitress returns, I tell her the New York, medium rare.
“Corn or grass fed?” she asks.
“Grass.”
“Baked or fried?”
I can’t do this all night, so I tell her everything she needs to know. “Baked, the works. Salad, bleu cheese, another drink.”
I end by looking at my phone. Rude, I know. I’m not sorry. A text message from Sheriff is brief, but it’s the first thing that has made me smile today.
Called Bernie’s boss.
I give him the thumbs up emoji. I almost send the heart emoji, though I don’t want things to get weird with him. Not that he’s ever been inappropriate. Not by a longshot.
I have a few texts from people in town telling me I did a good job on TV.
I wonder what they think would constitute a poor job. All I did was look hostile as I told the reporter to get off the property. And yes, I showed my badge, but honestly why does that have to go viral? It wasn’t like it was my gun.
Thank God for that.
I sit there in my kitchen, while revisiting the saddest memorial I’ve ever attended. It wasn’t only the flowers from the shroud floating downward into the darkness of an earthen hole, or even the small number of people who came to remember Ida Wheaton. It stirred more memories. Like the tapes. I thought of how Hayden and I never got to pay our respects or grieve for our stepdad at his memorial. In fact, it only crossed my mind just now that he’d probably been buried in Potter’s Field. No service. No friends. No family. Just a kind of nothingness, an extension of the life we’d lived since I was little.
Thirty
Ruth Turner is waiting at my office when I arrive the next morning. She’s dressed in a long-sleeved blouse with a high collar; her skirt is cut below the knee. I take her to my office where she marvels at all the “papers” I have.
“Your work looks so busy,” she remarks before amending, “That came out wrong. You look busy.”
I offer coffee. As expected, she declines.
No caffeine is allowed by order of her husband, no doubt.
“Where’s Eve?”
“In the car. Too shy to come in.”
She wasn’t that shy yesterday, I think. She was upset, but she was articulate and direct when she talked about her feelings of being hurt by her cousin’s indifference.
“That’s too bad,” I finally say. “Tell her I enjoyed our talk yesterday. She’s a very smart young woman.”
Ruth’s wintergreen scent is so muted I can barely detect it. She sits staring at me, silent, and shifts her eyes to the window behind me. Then back.
“Ruth, what’s going on?” I ask.
“I wish I knew.”
She hesitates, and I prod her gently.
“Can I have some water?”
I pour her some from the Brita pitcher on my desk.
“I don’t know how to say this, but something is wrong. I think those kids are a mess. They need someone to look after them. They won’t come to Idaho with me. My husband said it would be okay.”
“The county will provide services,” I remind her. “They’ll have someone to look after them. I promise.”
She nods. “I think they might need more help than a weekly visit by a case worker.”
I push a little. “What are you getting at, Ruth?”
She finishes her water like she’s just run a marathon. She crosses her arms and pulls in.
“Tell me what you observed, Ruth. We can help.”
She finally speaks. “I don’t want those two separated; I just want you to pay extra attention to them.”
I don’t know what she means so I let silence fill my office. I’ve pushed her enough. I’ll let Ruth tell me what she wants to tell me when she’s ready.
Finally, she does.
Her hands are folded now on the table in front of her.
“At first I thought that Sarah was a little off, when she didn’t seem to recall anything that she and Eve had done as children. They were close. She’d just found a way to block out memories, good or bad.”
“Eve and I talked about that,” I say.
“She told me. I felt it too, Detective Carpenter.”
I drink my coffee and remind myself not to interject again or we’ll never get to where we need to go.
“After everyone left,” she goes on, “we talked awhile outside and made s’mores at the big firepit. We all went to bed. Eve and I stayed in the master bedroom. Eve fell asleep almost immediately and I just lay there, staring at the ceiling and wondering how any of this could have happened.”
She sat there across from me, collecting her thoughts.
“I heard crying coming from the hallway. It was soft and plaintive. It was a kind of whimper and I couldn’t put out of my mind that she’d cried so quietly, so privately, during the service. She was letting it out, trying hard not to wake anyone.”
“It is a lot to hold inside,” I say.
“Right,” Ruth goes on. “Well I might as well be straight about it and stop beating round the bush. When I opened the door and looked out in the hall to see if I could help Sarah…”
She pauses, looks at me.<
br />
“It was Joshua. He was pretty much naked and lying on the floor crying. It was one of those things where you don’t know if you should get soaked or wait for the storm to pass by. Well, then I heard another door open and a voice whisper. It was Sarah.”
I lean closer and set down my cup. “What did you hear her say?”
“I’m not sure. At least one hundred percent, but I think I heard Sarah whisper through the crack of her door… ‘I’ll smash your hand with a hammer’.”
“Why would she say that?” I ask.
“I don’t know. I shut the door and I heard Joshua’s door open and close. After that, nothing. Like I said, she’s a little off, but he’s not doing much better. He was in the fetal position on the hallway floor, buck naked. He was crying like a baby and she was haranguing him with some nasty threat.”
“They’ve gone through more in the past week than most of us do in a lifetime, wouldn’t you agree?”
Ruth tilts her head. “Yes, but I don’t know if they can really help each other. He was crying, and she was telling him she wanted to smash him with a hammer. You need to check on them, please. That case worker of yours was completely useless. Kids told me she spent all day reading magazines she brought from home. She said she was too busy when Sarah asked her to help her with the egg gathering.”
I tell her that I will be extra vigilant insofar as her sister’s family are concerned.
“I promise to find the best case worker we can get, and I’ll personally check up on them as often as I can.”
She gets up and awkwardly reaches over so we can embrace over my desk. When we can’t quite do it, we both laugh, and I go to the other side of the desk. I smell her wintergreen and we hug like we know each other, like we are bonded forever.
Murders can do that.
“We’ll find him, Ruth,” I say as I let her go.
“Detective, one more favor,” she says, looking embarrassed. “Remember, only call if it is an absolute necessity. If you capture or kill my brother-in-law, just mail me a note. I like getting mail.”
She starts to cry, and I inch her out the door and wave at Eve, who cheerfully returns the gesture.