by Gregg Olsen
Mrs. Delmont says, “It’s been a long time since Leanne was taken from me, but it still hurts deeply. I try to keep busy. I try to help, but in my mind I still see my Leanne and her father on the sailboat, smiling, having the time of their lives. She went missing from the marina and I play that day over and over.”
I assure her that she’s not alone, that all homicide survivors feel that way. But as the words tumble from my lips, I notice her face tighten. I was trying to be thoughtful, but it came off as condescending. I quickly came up with a lie.
I tell Mrs. Delmont my sister Courtney was murdered. That I grieve for her every day. I don’t tell her that I don’t really have a sister. That Courtney is my mother and she’s not dead. I’m trying to find her.
Dr. Albright asked me: You told her that you had a sister and she was murdered?
I said, I guess.
Why did you use your mother’s name when you spoke about a sister? Dr. Albright asked.
I see where you’re going with this, I told her. I was mad at my mother for the lies, the betrayal, but I didn’t wish her dead. Even though I was on the run, I was trying to find her. To save her.
I remember now how Dr. Albright gave me that non-judgmental look that she is so good at. Letting me decide what I’d had in my mind and in my heart.
You’re safe here, she said. You can say anything you want.
I told her how Monique’s face relaxed and she rested a hand on my knee. Mrs. Delmont said, “Well then, we’re in a sisterhood of unending grief.”
I remember that I didn’t want to be in any such sisterhood. Who would? For my part, then and now, I wanted to be in the sisterhood of vengeance and retribution. All of her fundraisers, all of her talk show appearances, haven’t added up to anything. Not really. As long as a killer breathes the same air as we do, a victim’s family is never free.
Nineteen
I was in her kitchen a very long time ago. It still smells of the almond cookies she served me before she knew the truth about me. I see a plate on the kitchen island with half a dozen store-bought almond cookies on it. I try one. Stale. I eat the rest of it and another. I put a couple in my blazer pocket for later and save the rest for Ronnie.
Monique was old school. People her age grew up sitting around kitchen tables, having meals as a family, talking about school or other interesting things that had happened or will happen, playing board games. After Hayden’s short visit I’d broken down and bought a smart TV and watched an old show a few nights ago. In it the mother wore dresses with short, puffy sleeves, a ribbon tied at the waist, lipstick, eye makeup, stiff but perfect hair with half a can of hairspray on it. She never said anything catty. Never argued with her husband. The kids were as perfect as they could be.
And yet I know that beneath perfection sometimes lurks something very disturbing.
I sit at the kitchen table. Magnets hold a calendar on the refrigerator. Monique had been marking days with a big X. The marks ended three weeks ago. There was nothing else to indicate why she was doing this. I take the calendar and flip through it. The only things she’s marked are hair appointments. No doctors. No birthdays. Nothing. I don’t keep a calendar in my place for this very reason. I don’t want anyone violating my privacy.
Ronnie comes into the kitchen. “There’s nothing in any of the bathrooms. If she has a brush, she took it with her. Same for any kind of medicine. I can tell you that she touched up her own roots but that’s about it. No toothbrush, either. Except for one in the packaging in the drawer. Did you find anything in here?”
I don’t tell her I’ve been lost in the past.
“Nothing yet. You go through the cabinets in here and check again. I’ll go to the bathroom and double-check. Then we’ll check the other rooms. If she left something telling us why she went to Port Townsend, it’s likely to be in the kitchen, bathroom or great room, and I didn’t see anything in there.”
“Me either,” Ronnie says. She begins checking the drawers I haven’t looked in. “Look at this,” she announces, holding a pink sheet of paper. It’s a carbon copy of a car rental agreement.
“I guess I know why we didn’t find a car at the scene now,” I say, and call Mindy’s phone.
Ronnie hands me the rental papers. I put the call on speakerphone so Ronnie can listen.
“Hi, Megan,” Mindy says. “How are you? Oh, you ask how I am. I’m fine. It’s nice to know you still call even when you don’t need something.”
“I called with business if you don’t mind. Then we can have drinks later and you can criticize me for being a bad friend.”
“So, what can I do for you?”
“You didn’t identify a car belonging to the victim at the scene, did you?”
“No. We got her license plate number from DOL but we haven’t found the car yet. It’s a new Cadillac. Do you need the number or have you found the car?”
“We’re at Mrs. Delmont’s house in Tacoma. Her car is in her garage. But I can tell you what you should be looking for.”
“I’ve left the scene but I can go back.”
“That would be great.” I don’t trust the crime scene guys that were there to let me see what’s in the car. Mindy will FaceTime me and show me everything. “We might be a while here.” I read the plate number and vehicle description off to Mindy.
“Got it. I don’t remember seeing a car like that near there. So don’t get your hopes up.”
“Mindy, if you find it, can you get me on FaceTime and—”
“I’ll show you everything before I call Humpty and Dumpty to collect the car.”
“Is that what you’re calling our fabulous crime scene guys?” I ask.
“They were actually rude to me,” Mindy says, and she sounds miffed. “I’ve never had anyone not share a crime scene with me.”
“Be sure you tell the sheriff. He’ll tie a knot in their tails. Besides, one of them was rude to me as well,” I say. “Let’s cut their tires.” This gets a giggle out of Mindy. “Also, I need you to look for the victim’s cell phone.” It feels strange referring to Monique as “the victim.” But that’s what she is. Another victim I would have to avenge.
Mindy is very sharp. “You know we didn’t find her cell phone, or any other phone, for that matter. So you must have a different phone in mind. I’m guessing she had two phones or someone else’s phone.”
“You should have been a detective,” I say, and give her the phone number for the burner. “I think she called her daughter from it a day or so before she was murdered. The victim had been getting crank calls, or at least that’s what she told her daughter. If you can find the phone, it might give me some clue to who else she was calling recently. She only had the new phone about three weeks.”
“Any idea why she was up our way?” Mindy asks.
“Not yet. We’re in her home in Tacoma trying to find something for a DNA comparison.”
“Got it,” Ronnie says. She’s holding a coffee mug up and pointing to lipstick smears on the rim of the cup.
It’s the same color I remember Monique being fond of. Now we have two ways of identifying the body.
Twenty
Before we leave the enormous house, I go through the upstairs rooms. Ronnie has searched the bathrooms already, but I go back through those like I’m trying to see if she missed something. I know she hasn’t but it keeps her in her place as my assistant. Then I feel bad about thinking that. I’m her teacher.
In the bedroom I find Monique’s address book containing the members of her advocacy group. I can hear Ronnie in another bedroom, so I go into the hall as if I just came from the bathroom. I call to her. She comes out in the hall with a look of disappointment on her face. “Can you check this room with me?”
“There’s nothing in the bedroom. I even searched under the mattress.”
“You check the closet. I’ll look under the mattress here.” The address book is on the shelf in the closet. She finds it right away and flips through it.
“
I’ve got an address book.”
“Good work,” I say, and she hands the book to me. “We should be able to contact some of her friends and see what she was up to.”
“Where to now?”
“I’ll drive while you start calling people in the address book. Start with the ones in the advocacy group.”
“What if they ask why I’m calling?”
“Tell them Monique is dead. We suspect foul play. Don’t tell them what really happened, but you’ll need to ask what she was doing in Port Townsend and if anyone wanted to hurt her. So you’ll have to tell them she’s dead.”
“That sucks,” Ronnie says.
“It’s going to be on the news in a little bit anyway,” I say.
We get in the car and Ronnie gets on her phone. “You’re right.” She shows me the screen. Monique’s name is already on the news stations.
My phone rings.
It’s Mindy.
I can barely hear her over the clamor of demanding voices. The reporters have smelled fresh roadkill and they’ll pick the carcass clean for days, given the nature of the murder.
“The car has been towed already. I was cruising around and a deputy stopped me. I told him what I was looking for and he said he towed the car away from the marina lot yesterday. It was parked almost in the water.”
“The phone?”
“I found the phone under the mattress. One of the crime scene guys fingerprinted it for me and I have it with me. It’s covered in black powder but it doesn’t look broken.”
“We’re coming back to the office. Can you meet us there?”
“Hang on a minute,” she says to me. Then I hear her say to someone: “If you want a story, you need to go to The Tides and talk to Deputy Jackson. He found an important piece of evidence and a witness.” I can hear the clamoring increase in volume and Mindy repeating herself until the background noise stops.
“You didn’t,” I say.
“Yes, I did.”
“We don’t have a deputy named Jackson,” I say.
“By the time they find out there’s no deputy or witness there, I’ll be back at the office.”
“Slick. See you there.” I hang up.
Ronnie looks concerned. “Mindy won’t get fired, will she? I mean if the reporters complain to Sheriff Gray.”
“Mindy isn’t a deputy. She’s a contract worker. Sheriff Gray will tell them he will talk to her and that’ll be the end of that.”
“Cool.”
“Ronnie, you should never do that. You could be fired.”
“Okay. I promise.”
I look over and she’s got her fingers crossed. “Start calling those people,” I say, and we pull out into traffic. I hope we get lucky with one of them.
Twenty-One
Rylee and her red-haired detective friend had somehow gotten to Gabrielle’s house ahead of her. Ronnie. That’s the redhead’s name. Before they left, a big guy, he looks like a cop, came and is left guarding Gabrielle. She could kill him with one of her knives, and then do Gabrielle, but that isn’t in her plan.
Her plan is to make Rylee suffer. She’s begun that already. Tick, tick, tick.
And now there are other places to go, people to kill. Still, she would have enjoyed seeing the look she cut off of Gabrielle’s face.
She told Monique that she killed Gabrielle but it was a lie. She only said it to see the horror it caused, payback for the help Monique had given Rylee. Michael Rader threatened Monique several years ago. He told her he would kill her remaining daughter if she didn’t tell him if Rylee was still alive. Monique confirmed to him that the bitch was still breathing; not only that, he also recovered all the photos Rylee had taken from Marie’s house. According to Michael, there were enough photos to fill a wall. A shrine to his victims. A wall of memorabilia that could potentially put Alex in prison or get Michael a death sentence. She warned Alex about that. But Marie had more control over him. Marie was his motivator. But Marie was dead.
She watches the detective sitting on the porch with Gabrielle. She knows he’ll be fucking her before the night is over. That’s how policemen are. It isn’t a bad thing. Just reality. Watching them together, doing something as simple as sitting on the steps, drinking, not even talking, brings back a flood of memories of her time with Alex. The little time he could give to her. She appreciated every second. She hadn’t always been so happy. So safe.
She conjures up an image of his face. His dark eyes were so intense. That was what had attracted her to him. The kindness behind his tough exterior was what made her fall in love with him. He saved her from the streets. Took care of her. Gave her a safe place to live, food, money, whatever she needed or wanted.
She didn’t want much back in those days and she needed very little. After all, she’d subsisted on next to nothing in her native El Salvador. Her mother and father and brother were killed by the FMLN guerrilla faction for not joining them during the twelve-year war with the junta government. Her brother and father were killed in a hideous fashion of skinning them alive in public as a lesson to anyone that opposed them. Her mother was repeatedly raped before she was beheaded. She herself was raped and discarded by the guerrilla fighters. Left alone at the age of thirteen as an example. No work. No one dared take her in. All were afraid. She was going through garbage or taking the occasional half-eaten MREs the soldiers had stolen from the US-trained troops of the junta government and offered to her for her favors. She had done plenty of favors, but still she almost starved.
Twenty-Two
Ronnie hit pay dirt with one of the phone numbers in the address book from Monique’s house. Mr. Bridges was a widower; his wife had been killed in a carjacking. A witness said it was two young women who came up to Mrs. Bridges’ car while she was stopped at a light a block from the hospital where she worked in the ER. The same one where she would be pronounced dead ten minutes later. The witness was in the car behind her and said one girl ran into the street waving her arms like she needed help. Mr. Bridges’ wife, being a nurse, started to open her door and was yanked out by the second girl, stabbed, kicked and the car was taken. The witness was so shocked, she didn’t notice the license plate and was unable to give an accurate description to police when they arrived.
Mr. Bridges joined the advocacy group when he saw it on the Internet and made friends with Monique. Monique had dozens of names in that book and I have no doubt all the stories will be full of needless violence and death.
“His number comes up once on the burner Mrs. Delmont had,” Ronnie says. “A week ago he said she called him to give him the number in case someone had an emergency. He was like her second-in-command, and if one of them couldn’t reach her, they would call him.”
“He’s a pretty frequent caller on her personal cell phone too,” I say. “Once or twice a week, and the calls lasted thirty minutes or more. I’m glad she found someone for comfort.”
“Yeah. It must be horrible to have your daughter murdered. Mr. Bridges told me that’s why she started the victim’s group.” Ronnie’s quiet and I think I see tears form in her eyes.
“Makes you appreciate our sad little lives, doesn’t it? She was helping with morale and maybe financial support, pushing police departments to do deeper investigations, hounding city officials. But we’re tracking the assholes down. We bring peace to them.”
“Yeah, we do.”
“Did she tell Mr. Bridges she was in Port Townsend looking for an old friend that she thought needed her help?” I ask.
She nods her head. “He said it’s not unlike her to do something like that. Sometimes a couple of people in the group will travel to wherever they’re needed. Monique always footed the entire bill. I asked him if she rented a car to do this. He thought that was unusual.”
“Does she always get a burner phone for these things?”
“I forgot to ask. I’ll call him back.”
“Not necessary. If it was unusual for her to rent a car and not tell him more than what she did, I thi
nk we can safely say it wasn’t normal for a woman her age to buy a burner phone, or even know to do it.”
“He made it sound like she was afraid for her friend. He blames himself for not insisting he come to help her. I think he was a little more than her second-in-command.”
I do too, but I’m really glad that she finally came out of her shell enough to trust another man. I haven’t fully done that yet. I once thought I could with Caleb, but when he found out what I’d done to my bio-father and watched me take down another killer, he was sickened. He will always associate his minor part in that with me. I destroy monsters, but I’m a monster to Caleb.
Dan Anderson is the closest thing I have to a boyfriend, and we’ve only been out a couple of times in the last month. I don’t know why, but my gut is telling me to call him to see if he’s okay. If he’s also been getting crank calls.
“Mindy is going to go through the rental car. Are you still calling people from the advocacy group?”
“Yeah. I’ve only got a few left. Then I’m going to call Gabrielle and see how things are there. Do you want me to check in with Clay and see if she told him anything she didn’t tell us?”
I don’t know why, but I tell her I’ll call Clay. Maybe I don’t want her doing all of my work. Maybe I don’t want her getting involved with him and hurting Marley’s feelings. Marley is more important to us. To me. Ronnie goes back to her desk, and Sheriff Gray motions for me to come in his office.
“Shut the door,” he says. I take a chair in the corner. He leans back in his chair and it doesn’t screech. The WD-40 I left on his desk has done the trick. He looks at me for a long time. I keep his gaze and sit still. I’m good at waiting. I’m good because I’m ready for him to try and talk me off the case. Not going to happen. Not even if he gives it to another detective.
He reads my expression, sits forward and lets out a deep sigh.
“You’re not going to give this one up, are you?”