by Gregg Olsen
Me: I felt angry and hurt and I wanted to take her pain away but I didn’t know how.
I shut the tape player off again. I thought about my own mother. Did she see me as a bad girl? A wild girl? Did she even think about me? I remember the picture Monique had of Leanne. The one where she was sitting on a massive driftwood log at Point Defiance Park. Leanne was looking over her shoulder at the camera with a wary and somewhat shy expression. I’d found an identical picture on the wall in Alex Rader’s home office, along with other pictures of the ravaged dead body of Leanne. Those were some of the photos I’d left in Monique’s safekeeping, to be turned over to the authorities. Those were the photos that Michael Rader now had.
I’ve finished almost half a bottle of Scotch. I put the tapes and player away. I take the gun and put it on the nightstand by the bed. I hope I can sleep.
Before I drift off into a slightly drunken slumber, I text Ronnie to meet me early tomorrow.
Twelve
The office is quiet as I wait for Ronnie. She should be here any minute. I’ve been here since 5:00 this morning. I take another look at the file on Monique’s homicide.
Her photo stares at me. She was a beautiful woman. Her kindness showed in the DOL photo even with their effort to make you look lifeless.
The second page blows me away.
Monique has a police record. Among the usual traffic citations—ignoring red lights, ignoring traffic signs, ignoring traffic officers—were two misdemeanor charges for trespassing and disorderly conduct. This is a woman who wouldn’t say poop if she had a mouthful. At least, she wouldn’t have back when I knew her.
But did I really know her? I didn’t take the time. I used her to get information. I used her for her connections to get me accepted into college. I used her money to keep going while I was searching for my missing mother.
I never had a reason to check for a police record. My own record, if I were ever caught, would be off the charts compared to hers. I have killed. Outright. Without regret.
The next pages are police reports for the trespassing and disorderly conduct charges. None of these had gone to court. Charges were dropped. I wouldn’t expect any less. Monique had friends in high places. She’d somehow managed to get me into college without me having graduated from high school. Someone had doctored my records for her and I enrolled under an assumed name, complete with fake IDs and a diploma.
One trespassing charge is a little more serious than the other. She broke into an apartment and was caught inside. The apartment belonged to a recent parolee, a man who had abducted and raped a twelve-year-old girl. The report didn’t say what she was looking for. Probably evidence of other crimes.
Reading between the lines, I can imagine a judge giving her the benefit of the doubt and scolding her not to do it again. The man whose apartment she broke into was a scumbag. She was a prominent figure. A public figure. She was well known for her work as a violent crime victims’ advocate.
Ronnie included some news articles too. The scumbag had kidnapped another little girl while he was on parole. He didn’t kill the girl but he was convicted and went back to prison. A second article said he was killed by another prisoner. Prisoners have daughters and wives and sisters too. They don’t take well to child molesters or child rapists.
I stop reading. We’ll need DNA to prove the body is Monique, but I have no doubt it is. But why was she here? I wonder if she sold her own house and was checking out Port Townsend as a place to move. But she was always more organized than that. She would have found what she wanted first and then sold her house in Tacoma. Her house was beautiful, and I can’t imagine her wanting to live in Port Townsend. Of course, that house was huge for one person to live in.
I flip to the next page and find the answer.
Ronnie checked several real estate broker sites and Monique’s Tacoma house wasn’t up for sale. Ronnie searched the county records for the deed and the house was still in Monique’s name. Ronnie checked the deed to the rental house and turned up the Donaldsons’ name and a current address in Sarasota, Florida. She even included a website photo of the retirement community where they lived. In the margin were the telephone number of the HOA and the Donaldsons’ direct line. Ronnie wasn’t lying when she said she was bored to death.
The next pages are a shock. One page is a photo of Leanne Delmont and a news article of her murder. Another page is a copy of a news article about Monique’s work as a crime victims’ advocate. The last page is a photo of the youngish woman I saw in the shattered picture frame on Monique’s bedroom dresser. It’s a graduation photo, and the caption reads something about Gabrielle Delmont and mentions a son, Sebastian. Michael Rader told Monique he would find and kill Gabrielle if Monique didn’t confirm that I was alive and tell him where I was staying. I need to find Gabrielle. Ronnie hasn’t included any information on her other than the photos. I hope that doesn’t mean there is nothing to be found.
I rake the papers into a stack and shut the folder. Why was Monique in Port Townsend? Why that particular house? Is that important? It had a view of the bay. It’s semi-private. She didn’t make friends, according to Mrs. Perkins. She didn’t invite Mrs. Perkins into her house. Is that important? Was she keeping a low profile? I had experience with that, of course. Was she trying to find me? She must have had some reason to come here. Maybe she saw my picture in the paper. If so, why didn’t she come to the Sheriff’s Office in Port Hadlock? Someone had taken the picture of me there.
Could it have been her?
Ronnie comes in carrying two cups of coffee and a bag with bagels. “Morning, boss.”
“Never call me that,” I say, but not in a mean way. After all, she brought coffee and bagels. “I’m not your boss.”
I am your supervisor, however, so you can suck up all you want.
She sits at my desk and I check my coffee. Just the way I like it. With caffeine. Lots and lots of caffeine.
“I’ve been going through the info you collected yesterday. Good job.”
She smiles and blows the steam across the top of her cup. Ronnie drinks candy coffee. Latte, Frappuccino, whatever. Usually with whipped cream on top. Today she’s living dangerous and it looks like real coffee.
“Thank you. Marley wasn’t in the lab yesterday. I think he was home sick, but they expect him in today. I held on to the evidence.”
“I need you to do something else this morning.”
“Okay,” she says. “Shoot.”
I tell her.
Thirteen
Sheriff Gray is in early too. He looks like he had a rough night. I imagine everyone that was at the scene yesterday must have had nightmares. Just thinking about it sends a shiver through me.
I head for his office and close the door behind me. “I want to take Ronnie with me today. I’m going to Port Orchard to see someone.”
Sheriff Gray cocks an eye at me but doesn’t ask who I’m going to see. He knows I want to keep it quiet and he’s giving me room.
“She’s on light duty, Megan,” he reminds me. “She’s still got a bum wrist.”
“I need her,” I say.
He’s surprised, kind of, but he doesn’t ask me why. He knows she is a hard worker and smart.
“You can have her, but don’t get her hurt.”
Like I would let her. She can do that all by herself. She’s been hurt before. It’s part of the job.
“I promise.”
“And check in with me every hour. In fact, have Ronnie call me every hour.”
He doesn’t trust me. I wouldn’t, either.
“I’ll tell her.”
Yeah. Right.
I leave the cigarette butt and other stuff with Nan. I give her the request form to give to Marley and tell her he’ll be in this morning looking for us.
“Where will you be if he asks?” Nan asks.
“It’s none of his business,” I say. Or yours, I think. I know Marley will be disappointed that Ronnie isn’t here, but I think he’ll have f
un asking about the panties.
We leave before Nan can burn me to death with her death star glare.
“Where to first? Port Orchard?” Ronnie asks.
I start the car and glance up in the trees to see if my stalker has taken up position. There’s no one.
I asked Ronnie to do some more digging into Gabrielle’s background. She found the picture of Gabrielle and her son while she was doing a search for Monique. But she only copied it because she thought the woman and Monique looked so much alike. I never knew Gabrielle’s last name. I assumed it wasn’t Delmont because she had a son.
Ronnie had done what she called “dumpster diving” and found marriage records for Gabrielle and a birth certificate for her son. Sebastian Wilson was born around the same time that Leanne Delmont was murdered by my biological father. Gabrielle’s husband had died when the boy was six months old. She graduated from Portland State University and moved to Port Orchard. Ronnie found an address but the phone number was no good.
Figures it would be in Port Orchard. Most everything bad in my life happened there. It’s where Rolland, my stepfather, was murdered. It’s where I had to fake my own death and flee. I don’t think I look like that girl anymore but I’m not anxious to ever go back there.
“I talked to Crime Scene and they didn’t find a cell phone yesterday,” Ronnie says as we get on the road. “No phone service at the house, either. No cable. Nothing. Don’t you find that strange?”
I did, but I didn’t want to get into it. “We need to get Monique’s phone records for her home in Tacoma, cell phone, anything.” I don’t tell her I have the phone numbers memorized. “Also phone records for Gabrielle’s nonworking phone. Maybe she and her mother talked recently.”
“I already sent a subpoena,” Ronnie says. “The records should be waiting for us when we get back. I asked for a hard copy and they’ll send it to my phone too.”
Anxiety seizes me as I think about returning to Port Orchard. I’m not too worried about someone recognizing me, but Caleb still lives there, as far as I know. I would have tried to look him up if I hadn’t brought Ronnie along. Caleb knows what I did, what I’m doing now, and what name I’m going by. I can’t risk him calling me by my old name, Rylee. Not in front of Ronnie.
“I’ve never been to Port Orchard,” Ronnie says.
That’s good. Make this your last trip, I think.
“I visited when I was a kid,” I tell her. “Not much to see.”
She’s on her phone and starts telling me all the touristy attractions. I let her rattle on. Nothing new there. I don’t want to go back to those days. Or to the town, for that matter.
“We could have called Detective Osborne to see if the address is still good,” Ronnie says.
“What?” I haven’t followed anything she was saying for about twenty miles now. “You mean Clay?”
“He owes us. We solved his last big murder for him. Besides, I think he’s kind of sweet on you.”
Clay is a sheriff’s detective for Kitsap County. He’s a hunk but I don’t need anyone being “sweet” on me. I’m having enough trouble doing my job; processing my confrontation with my brother whom I hadn’t seen for years; and pursuing a relationship with Dan Anderson. I met him during a homicide investigation in Snow Creek.
Gabrielle’s last known address is near Veterans Memorial Park, and we’re almost there before I relax my grip on the steering wheel.
“Are we going to Tacoma after this?” Ronnie asks.
“Maybe. I need to talk to Monique’s neighbors.” I still say “I.” I’m used to working alone. Ronnie doesn’t seem to notice that I don’t always include her, but I’m working on it. If I don’t, she’ll have to get over it.
Ronnie is looking at her phone. “Tacoma has the highest violent crime rate in the state. Two hundred thousand people, and the violent crime rate is almost a hundred people per hundred thousand.”
I give her a glance that says “So?”
“Mrs. Delmont may have pissed someone off with her victims’ advocacy work.”
“That’s what we’re here to find out.”
“Oh. Is her daughter involved in the victims’ advocacy group?”
Shut up, please, I think.
“We won’t know until we talk to her,” I say.
I highly doubt Monique would ever mix her only daughter up in that group.
“Turn left here,” Ronnie says. “It’s two blocks and then a right.”
I don’t say anything but I know exactly where I’m going. I lived in Port Orchard once.
I can’t tell Ronnie that. In fact, I can’t tell anyone.
Fourteen
I drive and Ronnie rides shotgun with a phone glued to her hand. It would be okay, but the phone case is Hello Kitty. Last month it was unicorns and rainbows. I follow Ronnie’s GPS directions to a modest one-story house. All the homes on this block are fronted by a narrow ditch with thick shrubs and greenery with only a walkway separating each property. So much for privacy. This one is covered with vines and hidden in shrubs, except for a set of concrete steps leading to the front door with no porch, just a concrete pad. Only the front entrance and top half of three windows are visible from the street.
“Doesn’t look occupied,” Ronnie says.
She’s right. The windows don’t have curtains or blinds. But we’re here now.
Ronnie follows me across a wooden footbridge that leads to a sloping walk made of crushed red brick. I stop in the tiny front yard and listen and smell. Nothing but a pleasant scent of earth and honeysuckle that has climbed the right side of the house to the gutters.
Then I smell it.
Ronnie crinkles her freckled nose. She does too.
“Go back to the car,” I say as I draw my .45 from the shoulder holster. A nauseating odor of decay wafts over me and I fight back the gorge rising in my throat. I think, but don’t say, dead body. Ronnie hasn’t moved except to draw her own weapon. I waste one second thinking of the sheriff’s orders and then say, “Can you go to the back?”
She nods and heads around the right side where there is more room to maneuver.
“And don’t get hurt, Ronnie.”
She doesn’t listen to me, but that should cover me with the sheriff.
I crouch and make my way beneath the windows. I’m not tall enough to look in them. I duckwalk to the front entrance. The concrete steps have a black metal railing leading up to the tiny square pad.
I give Ronnie another half minute to get in position at the rear of the house and then I go up the steps. When I reach the pad, a voice yells from behind the door.
“I’ve called the police. I’m armed.”
So am I.
I take out my badge case, flip it open and yell, “Sheriff’s Office. Don’t shoot.” Of course, I don’t have any police authority in this county, but hopefully it will mean something.
Ronnie comes running around the side of the house just as the door opens and a woman who looks just like Leanne Delmont peeks out. My heart is thrumming. For a moment I think I’m seeing a dead woman.
“Mrs. Delmont?”
“Gabrielle. It’s Gabrielle. Can I see your badge?”
I hand her my badge but she doesn’t look at it. “I saw someone in the backyard. Are they with you?”
I motion for Ronnie to come up on the steps. She does but can’t reach her credentials and hold her weapon at the same time because of her injured wrist. I say to Ronnie, “You can put the gun away.” She does and then fumbles for her badge case, almost drops it. I see her hands are shaking. I don’t blame Ronnie after the month we’ve had.
“I’m Detective Carpenter. This is Detective Marsh,” I say, and hand her Ronnie’s badge case.
The woman examines our badges and then us—carefully. “She’s not a detective. This says she a reserve deputy. And you’re not from here.”
Oh, crap!
“Yeah. You’re right. We’re from Jefferson County, but we’re on an investigation. She just got
promoted and hasn’t gotten her badge yet,” I lie. It must have been a good lie, because she hands the badges back and invites us inside.
Now that I can see her, she reminds me so much of Monique that I feel a shiver. I’m going to tell her that her mother has been murdered.
We step into her living room. There is a game box on the coffee table and a sixty-inch-screen television on one wall. The couch is well worn but expensive, leather. Maybe a gift from Mom. Almost identical pictures to those found at the scene fill the walls. There are several photos of Leanne by herself, Leanne with Gabrielle, Leanne with Monique, and the photo of Leanne on the sailboat with her father. I never knew what happened with the father. Monique never spoke of him.
There are also several pictures of a boy. The same one taken in the park: the boy on the monkey bars. It had been facedown, the glass broken, on top of the dresser in Monique’s house. There are several photos of the boy at various ages and then a graduation picture. I notice there is only one picture of Gabrielle.
She doesn’t invite us to sit down. I take the lead and sit on the couch. I pat the cushion, motioning for Gabrielle to join me. Ronnie stays by the door and remains quiet. Gabrielle looks from me to Ronnie and back to me. She sits, takes a deep breath and lets it out. “This isn’t about that god-awful smell, is it?”
I shake my head.
“This is about my mother, isn’t it? Something’s happened to her.”
I nod. “I’m so sorry.” Somehow I tell her that her mother is dead. And then she asks the question that I’d give anything not to recount.
“Did she suffer?”
I tell her no, and leave out the details. Dead is dead. Her knowing everything that I do isn’t necessary, I don’t care what they taught me at the police academy. Grief in small doses is always best. I would know. I lost my stepfather and had to go on the run with my little brother in the space of five minutes. Life doesn’t have to suck for everyone. I’ll give her more of the details if she asks.