Victim Six

by Gregg Olsen

  Kendall’s eyes landed on the poster that the Kitsap Crime Stoppers had made, with its lovely photo of a beaming Celesta Delgado. It offered a one-thousand-dollar reward.

  A life was worth more than a thousand dollars, she thought.

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll see you in an hour.”

  “Can’t wait,” the caller said.

  She found Josh Anderson chatting with a young woman who worked logging evidence in the property room. She was laughing a little too loudly to be discussing business, so Kendall felt no compunction about interrupting.

  “Ride out to Mason County with me?” she asked.

  Josh turned away from the woman, and it was obvious that she was only too glad for the break in whatever story he was telling. She returned to the work she had been doing before Detective Anderson showed up.

  “Sure. What’s up, Kendall?”

  “Delgado.”

  He studied her face. “Not so good, huh?”

  Kendall shook her head. “I’m afraid not.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  April 20, 10:30 a.m.

  Shelton, Washington

  The Shelton, Washington, Chamber of Commerce likes to brag that the city of more than eight thousand is the “Christmas Tree Capital of the World.” In fact, the town has always been about trees, Christmas or otherwise; for a century, it exported logs and lumber, long before firs festooned with tinsel were thought of as a commodity.

  The city is quintessential small-town Pacific Northwest, with past glories based on once-abundant natural resources now supporting attempts to coax tourist dollars. Every spring, the past is celebrated with the annual Forest Festival, with food booths, logrolling, and chain-saw competitions.

  It was the festival that reminded the people that Shelton, Mason County, had been established on the southernmost edge of Puget Sound for a purpose. Smoke still curls from the Simpson Lumber Company’s mill. Old-timers and current employees take a deep breath whenever possible. They know the plume smells like house payments, new cars, and kids’ college educations.

  The last time Kendall Stark had been to Shelton was the previous January, when she attended a candlelight vigil for a little girl who’d been raped and murdered by her neighbor, a registered sex offender still at large. Kendall had gone with her sister and some friends, not because they knew the little girl, but because her story had been so heart wrenching that they simply couldn’t stay away. She came in her street clothes, of course. She didn’t want to attract attention; she just wanted to hold one of those cheap, drippy candles to tell the world that Rikki Jasper would not be forgotten. Kendall remembered how she’d looked at the crowd and wondered if the perpetrator was among them.

  Thoughts, she was sure, that also consumed the law enforcement officers who oversaw the case.

  Kendall parked the SUV in a visitor’s spot in front of Mason General Hospital on Mountain View Drive, the city’s hospital and morgue. Moments later, after a receptionist buzzed him, Detective Bernardo Reardon came for the Kitsap County homicide investigators. He was a tall, thin man, with a Fu Manchu mustache and dark plum-pit eyes. He smiled broadly as he walked toward the sitting area, where Kendall and Josh had been waiting on some upholstered chairs next to a dying philodendron and a surly receptionist who was busy chewing out her boyfriend.

  “Look,” the receptionist was saying, oblivious to her visitors, “there are plenty of other fish to fry around here…”

  Bernardo rolled his eyes. “Welcome to Mason General Hospital and our morgue. Come on back,” he said, and they followed him to a private room where friends and family waited to identify the deceased. It was stark and empty, and smelled of alcohol-based cleaner.

  He motioned for the pair to sit, and tapped his fingertips on his file folder.

  “The vic was found by some birdwatchers at the Theler Wetlands,” he began.

  The Mary E. Theler wetlands were at the head of Hood Canal, an elbow of salt water that protruded into the rugged interior of Kitsap, Mason, and Jefferson counties. A favorite of day-trippers and bird-watchers, the saltwater marsh just outside Belfair was traversed with a web of elevated boardwalks. Kendall, Steven, and Cody had been there several times, with Cody tucked snugly into his father’s backpack, back when nature walks seemed to hold his interest. Sun on his face. Birds in the water. The movement of the reeds along the shore.

  It was a lovely place to visit, and, apparently, to dump a body. At least, a killer thought so.

  “We’ve got a touch of decomp going, so be ready for that,” he said, looking mostly at Kendall. “I can still smell her from here. Anyhow, she matches the description of your missing brush picker. Pathologist has already swabbed and examined for trace, but like I said, she’s a mess.”

  Josh jangled the change in his pocket, a habit that he had whenever he was bored or a little anxious. “Sounds good. Where do you guys break for lunch around here?” he asked, more concerned about his stomach than the dead girl they were about to see.

  Kendall shot him a look, but he deflected it by mouthing, “Low blood sugar.”

  “Logger’s Bar and Grill is always good,” Bernardo said, opening the door to the morgue.

  He handed the Kitsap detectives face masks but wasn’t fast enough. The scent of the dead surged forward, and Kendall felt her stomach stir. She shot a cold stare in Josh’s direction.

  “How could anyone even think about lunch? Now or ever?”

  Reardon responded first: “Detectives, one word of warning: our victim has no hands.”

  The dead woman had been laid out in a dark blue body bag, which was split open like an oven-roasting bag to keep the putrid juices from spilling out onto the table, and to the floor. Long dark hair curled around her face and the nape of her neck. Even in that condition, it was clear that the victim had once been a pretty young woman. Her eyes were half-open, seemingly staring upward at the fluorescent lights overhead.

  Kendall thought of her dream of the woman running through the darkened forest the night before. What had the woman seen before she ended up on that table, so far from home?

  Bernardo peeled back the edge of the plastic body bag obscuring the victim’s arms.

  “The other one’s the same,” he said, indicating where her hand had been excised from her wrist.

  “Looks pretty clean,” Josh said, bending closer to get a better view. “That’s what the pathologist said. No hesitation with the cut here. This wasn’t some mad, frenzied stab job, but a clean cut.”

  Kendall didn’t dare turn away, although it passed through her mind that no one should have to see whatever the monster had done to the woman she knew had to be Celesta. She didn’t use her name. It seemed easier to call her “the victim” or “the body” when the trio went about their business.

  “Can I see the victim’s other arm too?” she asked, her voice slightly muffled through the mask.

  “Suit yourself,” Bernardo said, walking around to the other side of the table. “Just as ugly.”

  “Did your pathologist indicate if the victim was alive when this injury was incurred?”

  The clinical talk was the best. Kendall plucked the words out of a textbook when she really wanted to say “Did she suffer?” or “Did the sick, twisted piece of garbage who did this to her do it after he killed her?”

  “Postmortem. Almost a hundred percent sure.”

  The answer brought a little relief.

  “Did you find the hands?” Josh asked, stepping closer to get a better view of the injuries to the body.

  “Nope. And believe you me, we looked. Don’t want some kid feeding a bag of day-old bread to some ducks to turn up a finger or something.”

  “When you say your pathologist indicated no hesitation, are you suggesting someone with unusual skill?” Kendall asked.

  “Hunter, butcher, surgeon. You know, the kind of people who know how to move a blade.”

  Kendall looked over at Josh. “Logger or maybe brush cutter?”

&n
bsp; Detective Reardon shrugged. “Could be. But one twisted perv, for sure.”

  Josh spoke next. “Any other injuries?”

  “Pathologist says the girl was likely raped and tortured. Vaginal and anal tearing. Some ligatures on the ankles too. Hard to say about the wrists, for obvious reasons.” He indicated a crescent of darkened skin on the body’s right breast.

  “Looks like some damage inflicted on the vic’s breasts,” he said, pointing. “Almost a perfect half circle, like a big hickey.”

  Kendall felt a wave of nausea work its way from her stomach, but she steadied herself.

  “How long has she been dead?”

  “A week, maybe less.”

  “Celesta Delgado,” Kendall said, finally saying her name, “has been missing for more than a week.”

  Josh broke his gaze at the corpse and looked at Kendall.

  “Maybe she was kept somewhere?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  April 20, 1:30 p.m.

  Shelton, Washington

  Word traveled fast. Alarmingly so. Tulio Pena stood outside the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office smoking the stub of his last cigarette. The second he saw Kendall Stark, he dropped it and twisted the butt into the sidewalk.

  “Detective Stark,” he said, “was it Celesta? I heard they found someone, a woman’s body.” He was shaking and wrapped his arms around his torso, steadying himself.

  Preparing for the worst.

  Kendall shook her head. “No, Tulio. We don’t know anything.”

  “The reporter called me. She says it was Celesta.”

  “We don’t know who Mason County found. We’ll have to run tests.”

  His black eyes were wet. “I want to see her. To make sure.”

  She moved closer and put her hand on Tulio’s sagging shoulder. “Look, I know you’re hurting. But trust me, please, you don’t want to do that.”

  “Trust you?” he repeated. “Trust you? I trusted that you’d find Celesta.”

  Kendall ignored the blame in his anguished voice. “Tulio, go home. I will call you when we know something.”

  “Detective, please. Please, if it is her, promise you will find out who did this. You will find him, right?”

  Kendall wanted to give him the answer that he deserved, that all loved ones do. She wanted to tell Tulio that she would do whatever she could. She wasn’t alone in her desire to figure out what had happened. The Mason County Sheriff’s Office was working the case too. There was no way of knowing where exactly the crime had been committed, let alone by whom. Josh had insisted it was a turf war between rival brush pickers and that Celesta was a casualty. The missing hands bolstered his theory. Kendall, however, wasn’t so sure. While it was possible that Celesta had been sexually violated as a part of some ritualistic torture, it seemed unlikely.

  “Whoever tortured her and cut off her hands did it because he enjoyed it. Rape and that kind of behavior are incongruent with your idea that she was killed over a bunch of floral greens. Get real.” she’d said to Josh.

  Josh Anderson hadn’t argued, because he had no convincing counterpoint. Instead, he’d just dismissed what had happened out in Sunnyslope on that warm afternoon.

  “Whoever did it has moved on to harvest somewhere else. They don’t have a green card. They don’t leave a trail. They just fade into the woods. That’s what happened with whoever killed Delgado.”

  It passed through her thoughts, but Kendall didn’t want to say it aloud. At least not to Josh Anderson. By the time Celesta’s body had been found in the Theler Wetlands, she already doubted busboy Scott Sawyer’s story of trouble between Tulio and Celesta. And yet, there had been the purported threat. If Celesta ever touched another man, Scott said, Tulio would make her pay. Kendall had talked with others at the restaurant, friends of both, and none thought Tulio would ever hurt Celesta. He was incapable of harming her in any way, let alone mutilating the body in such a grotesque manner.

  As spring gave way to summer, a flotilla of boats gathered in Sinclair Inlet, and beach fires on the shores of Bainbridge Island sent a spray of orange light across the water. Summertime in Kitsap County was a mix of hot days tempered by rain on the occasions that most often count: Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day.

  There were no more calls to Serenity from the man who’d proclaimed the vilest of pastimes. Charlie Keller had told her to keep on the story, but there was nothing more to do unless there was some kind of break. Midnight Cassava’s case went ignored, the assumption made by Port Orchard and Kitsap County law enforcement being that she’d run away. A third jurisdiction, the Bremerton Police, filed a report about a bloodied purse being found near the Parkade.

  No one said much more about Celesta.

  Except Tulio. He and the others who wanted to know what had happened out in the woods leveled charges of class and racial bias.

  “If she were a white girl,” Tulio said in one of his weekly visits to Kendall or Josh at the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office, “you’d know who did this to her.”

  Kendall was offended by the remark and told him so.

  “Look, Tulio, don’t ever say that to me. I want to know what happened to her as much as you do. I don’t care if she’s from El Salvador or Seattle.”

  Tulio balled up his fists as though he was going to pound the desk, but thought better of it. He relaxed his hand. “Then why haven’t you caught who did this?”

  Kendall didn’t want to tell him that her partner still believed Tulio had killed his girlfriend.

  “Sometimes these things take time. We’ll find out.”

  “If you don’t, then I will,” he said.

  Kendall didn’t know exactly what Tulio meant, so she didn’t push as hard as she might.

  “We’ll do our job. Leave it to us.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  September 18, 8:45 a.m.

  Port Orchard

  Serenity Hutchins looked at the newroom’s old clock and let out a sigh. It was almost 9 A.M. She glanced around to make sure no one noticed her overt boredom, especially since only a single hour of the workday had passed. She checked her notes, hoping that there was something stimulating there, something that didn’t require a jolt of caffeine to get her going. There wasn’t. She had a half hour to finish her story on the delay of the road improvements that the city of Port Orchard had promised to downtown merchants in time for the holiday shopping season.

  She faced her computer screen head-on and tried to come up with a headline for her article. Then she typed:

  County Shortfall Means Grinchy Holiday

  It seemed a little over-the-top, but in her job as a reporter, writing humorous or subversive headlines was one of the few things with which she could amuse herself. Sometimes she slipped in a little inside joke. Now and then she purposely misspelled the name of an individual who’d rubbed her the wrong way.

  “Sorry, sir,” she’d recently said to an angry man she’d tussled with at a community meeting, “I have no idea how that happened.”

  The man’s first name was Bob, not Boob, of course.

  “I have an idea,” he said, irritated and puffing into his phone on the other end of the line. “I don’t like your attitude. I’d like to talk to your editor.”

  “It was an unfortunate typo,” she said, loving every minute, her fingertip hovering over the button of her editor’s extension. “Transferring you to the boss now.”

  She didn’t wait for his response: she just clicked, and away he went. Mission accomplished.

  Charlie Keller liked her, and she knew it. He’d chide her but back her up. He always did; he was that kind of editor. Once, after a heated confrontation with a churchgoer who objected to the paper’s coverage of a South Kitsap High club for teen moms, he famously told his staff, “Newspapers would be a great business if we didn’t have readers to consider.”

  Serenity didn’t want to go to the county animal shelter to do an article on the dog or cat of the week. She didn’t want to stop by St. V
incent de Paul on Bay Street to find a heartwarming story that showcased the “caring nature of our community.” Growing up she’d read so many thousands of stories in the Lighthouse that she had scarcely given a thought to the fact that real people had to compile that information. Tedious facts. Boring. So mundane and appearing so regularly, Serenity wondered if they could just retype the same old papers and send them out the door.

  From her desk, she watched Charlie set down the phone. The editor in chief was wearing his hopelessly out-of-date brown wide-wale cords and a cream-colored turtleneck that molded to his beefy chest. Unflattering as it was, it was his fall look.

  He looked more excited than angry when he glanced over the newsroom. Good. Bob, or Boob, hadn’t made him mad. He fixed his eyes on the two other reporters. One was playing solitaire on her PC, and the other was struggling with the school lunch menu: apparently, it changed just enough from week to week that it could not be cut and pasted. It had to be retyped, word for word.

  “Get your butt over to Little Clam Bay out by Manchester,” he said, approaching Serenity. “Some kids found a floater.”

  Her phone buzzed with a text message, and she looked distracted.

  “A body, Hutchins,” Charlie said, his eyes studying hers, seeing the glimmer of excitement that bad news always elicited in die-hard reporters. “A dead girl.”

  She glanced at her phone. “Going now,” she said, taking her rust-colored cardigan draped over the back of her chair, her purse, a reporter’s notebook from the office supply cabinet, and her camera. Her heart started to beat a little faster with each step. She’d heard the term floater before, of course, but the very idea that there could be a dead body bobbing in the waters of Little Clam Bay seemed—she hated herself a tiny bit for the thought—too good to be true.

  Nothing ever happens here, she thought. Except maybe today.

  Serenity took a cigarette from her grandmother’s antique case and lit up as she dodged a few light raindrops in the parking lot. Her new boyfriend smoked, so she had taken up the habit in self-defense: to protect herself from the ashtray-kiss syndrome.