by Gregg Olsen
The serial killer’s traveling kit.
The Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez, screwed up his string of fourteen murders in the L.A. area when he was traced to a Toyota stolen from some restaurant goers in the city’s Chinatown. It was, Sam thought, a stupid move. If Ramirez had kept his focus, he’d have been able to keep his string of murders alive.
No killer likes to be told when they are finished doing what they do best.
Aileen Wuornos, who took it upon herself to rid Florida of purported philandering husbands and male abusers by killing the men she picked up for sex, was another one who could have prevailed if she hadn’t been so careless with her associated crimes. She was traced to a stolen car belonging to a dead man. Pawnshop receipts for victims’ belongings were mottled with her fingerprints.
Kill for sport or to make a point, not for money, stupid bitch!
So there he sat, thinking of what he might like to select from his smorgasbord of murder. What would be the most memorable way to steal the life from someone? What would fuel his desires? How would it play back when he remembered? Would it make him hard? Or would it merely frustrate him because there were not enough aspects to conjure a decent erotic fantasy?
Who would it be?
Chapter Thirty-one
October 8, 9 a.m.
Port Orchard
Lighthouse publisher Tad Stevens scurried out of his occasional office and stood under the YOU AUTO BUY and LET’S GROW REVENUE banners that had been plastered on a nearby wall to motivate the long-suffering advertising staff.
“People, I need your attention. People, I need your attention now.”
Mr. Stevens, as he insisted on being called, was the owner of the half dozen small papers that made up the struggling chain that caught the ad revenue and news crumbs that the Seattle papers apparently deemed too insignificant. Mr. Stevens was a remarkably neat man with a small frame, soul patch on his chin, and rimless glasses that held the DG logo of Dolce & Gabbana at the right temple hinge. He lived alone with his two Pomeranians, Hannity and Colmes. Editor Charlie Keller, for one, insisted that everyone in the newsroom show the publisher respect.
“Whenever he’s in the office, be nice,” Charlie had instructed them. “When he’s gone, you can call him dipshit if you like.”
No one had a problem following Charlie’s lead.
“People, no one likes the idea of capitalizing on tragedy. But that’s what papers do better than any entity other than maybe police departments and the medical profession,” Mr. Stevens said.
Let’s not forget the lawyers, Serenity thought.
“We have a golden opportunity to kick some ad revenue and readership butt, team.”
Golden opportunity? I’d like to kick someone’s butt, she thought some more. But it isn’t a reader’s or an advertiser’s.
The publisher went on, his enthusiasm swelling: “It appears a serial killer might be at work right here in our own backyard. We’ve got the dead woman in Little Clam Bay and what’s her name…the brush picker.”
Jesus, do you have to be gleeful? Two women are dead. This isn’t the biggest thing to hit Port Orchard since the Wal-Mart went in.
Serenity wanted to say something but stayed quiet. Not something she was particularly good at, either.
“We need to be tough,” he said. “We need to own this story. We need to sell our expertise as the local paper with its hand on the pulse of a major case. If this serial killer case gets the kind of traction I’m thinking, we’ll be able to sell photo rights to media outlets across the country.”
He looked over at Serenity but didn’t say her name.
“There will be opportunities for all of us. TV interviews. Maybe even a book. But our focus now is claiming this as a Lighthouse exclusive.”
Next he lowered his impeccable DGs and looked over at Travis Janus, the backup sports reporter who also did the paper’s Web site.
“TJ, let’s think out of the box on this. We need to enrich the content that we have up now. I’d like to see photos and docs pertaining to the case. If you need content to connect the dots, Serenity will help out.”
Serenity nodded, but knew that TJ wouldn’t ask her for anything. The Web was his bailiwick. He didn’t take advice from anyone. Supposed computer experts never do.
“You see this?”
Steven Stark, sweaty from his early-morning run from their place to Manchester’s boat launch and back, handed Kendall the morning’s edition of the Lighthouse. Cody was at the table waiting for a pancake and Kendall set down the spatula.
SERIAL KILLER STALKING KITSAP?
The story with Serenity Hutchins’ byline ran at the top of the front page and featured two photographs. The first appeared to be Skye Hornbeck’s high school photograph; the other was one of the images that Tulio Pena had provided for the feature story that ran after his girlfriend, Celesta, was reported missing.
“She makes a reasonable case that the two are connected,” Steven said.
“Oh, she does, does she?”
“I’m just saying,” Steven said, taking a seat at the table.
Kendall started to read while the pancake on the griddle began to burn. Serenity noted how the women were of approximately the same age, on the petite side, and both wore their hair long.
“She’s describing half the county,” Kendall said, looking up at Steven. “I thought that was a stretch. But that’s not where she won me over.”
Kendall read on as the Lighthouse reporter indicated that the fact that both dead women had been butchered in too similar a fashion to ignore. She’d interviewed a profiler who lived on the Internet and offered no real credentials but was always handy with a quote. The article concluded with an over-the-top line that made Kendall wince and her husband laugh.
“Boston had its Strangler. New York had Son of Sam. Are we being plagued by the Kitsap Cutter?”
Steven got up from his chair and flipped the burning pancake.
“She’s trying to sell some papers,” he said. “Nothing more, I’d wager.”
Kendall put the Lighthouse on the counter and squeezed some syrup on Cody’s short stack.
“Only one problem, honey,” she said, hesitating a little. “We’ve never released the extent of Skye’s injuries.”
“Wasn’t she there when the body was pulled from the water?”
She put the plate in front of her son and watched for a second.
“Want Mommy to feed you?” she asked. Sometimes Cody didn’t want any help. This, it turned out, was one of those mornings. He took the fork and started to eat. Kendall looked back at Steven, who was flipping another pancake.
“What was the problem, Kendall?” Steven asked, obviously curious.
“Serenity was there at the crime scene, but she couldn’t have seen what Dr. Waterman and I observed during the autopsy. We’ve never released the information about the cuts to her breasts.”
“Then how did she know that?” he asked.
Kendall set down her coffee. “That’s what I’d like to find out.”
Kendall Stark shut her car door with so much force, she actually slammed it. Josh Anderson, snuffing out a cigarette in the parking lot of the Sheriff’s Office, winced from twenty yards away. His startled look was the only good thing that had happened since her husband pointed out the lead article in the newspaper.
“Did you tell her about Skye Hornbeck’s wounds?”
Josh looked as blank as he could. “Tell who?” he asked.
Kendall crossed her arms and stared at him. She kept her voice calm, but there was no mistaking how she felt. “Don’t bullshit me, Josh. Did you tell Serenity Hutchins about the condition of Skye’s body?”
He shook his head. “No. Why would I?”
“Because you think she’s hot for you. Or something like that. The older you get, the more stupid you get.”
Josh took a step back. He’d never seen Kendall so heated.
“Look, I never told anyone about that,” he said.
She jabbed a finger at him. “Like I’m going to believe you? Look, I know you’ve been seeing her. What is she, twenty-one?”
“No. I don’t know. I haven’t told her anything.”
Kendall knew that her face was red, but she didn’t care.
“We look really stupid, you know.”
“Is that what this is about? Looking stupid, Kendall?”
Kendall turned to go inside. He was partially right, of course.
“Don’t even go there,” she said. “If we have a serial killer, then we have bigger worries than anyone’s ego. That includes yours and mine.”
Josh followed her inside, but Kendall was too angry to say anything more to him. When they found their offices, she shut the door. A blinking red light on her phone indicated a message. She dialed the code for her voice mail.
The voice was familiar.
“Detective Stark, is it true? Did this Kitsap Cutter kill Celesta?”
It was Tulio Pena. His voice was in shards.
Kendall felt a kind of sickness wash over her. It was the feeling that came from letting down someone who had depended on her. She could blame Josh for leaking information to Serenity. She could even blame him for insisting that Celesta’s murder had been the result of a turf battle over floral greens. She could even tell herself just then that she had done the best she could.
But that was a lie.
“I want you to call me,” he said. “I want you to tell me that you are still trying to find who killed Celesta.”
Kendall hung up and drew a deep breath. She dialed Tulio’s number. Her heart was heavier than the anchor her father had used to lock their boat into a fishing spot on the east side of Blake Island when she was a girl.
“I’m so sorry,” she began, “that you had to read that in the paper…”
As she spoke to Tulio, she had no idea that things were about to get worse.
Margo Titus had done her job and the outcome was what she’d prayed for: an identity revealed. She put away the files that she’d accumulated on the case. It was always a great relief to store the bits and pieces she’d used to help find out who was who. While the vacant-eyed Janes looked on, Margo’s eyes landed on the autopsy photo. For the first time she noticed a series of very faint red impressions on the victim’s neck.
Skye Hornbeck’s neck, she corrected her thoughts.
She dialed Kendall’s cell number.
“I was just thinking of you, Margo,” Kendall said. “I meant to call. I’m guessing you heard the news.”
“It isn’t about that. They don’t always end this way. I’m glad that this one worked out.”
“Me too.”
They talked about the case, the cause of death, the fact that Kendall had been in touch with Skye’s father.
“I don’t know if it is anything,” Margo finally said. “I was looking at the photos, and I noticed marks on her neck. I don’t know if you have a serial up there or a onetime psychopath, but he might have taken a trophy.”
Kendall, pulled the photos and began flipping through them. “A necklace?”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“Her father mentioned one.”
“If the killer took it, he took it without unclasping it.”
Kendall saw the series of faint red marks in one of the autopsy photos.
“I see it.”
“Of course, I could be wrong. But I worked a case in Red Bluff where the perp kept all his vics’ brassieres in a laundry bag under his bed. One in Oklahoma City kept his vics’ earrings.”
Kendall Stark stood in line behind the other county workers looking for their caffeine buzz. She’d had a restless night with Cody and the case. The press accounts fueled by Serenity Hutchins hadn’t helped, either. She wasn’t sure right then what was weighing most heavily on her mind. Her son didn’t—or couldn’t—use words to indicate that the Inverness School had been a stunning disappointment for him too. It was hard to gauge a shift in his awareness. At times, he showed no emotion whatsoever.
Kendall, who didn’t favor a foundation for her makeup, applied some concealer under her eyes. Her hair was in need of a cut or a double-dose of hair product. She didn’t look good, and she didn’t need anyone to tell her so. What she needed was that mocha.
She felt an abrupt peck on her shoulder, and she turned around. It was Serenity Hutchins.
“I know you don’t think much of me,” Serenity said.
Kendall let out a sigh and knew she’d lost her place in line. There was no way they were going to have that conversation right there. She indicated for Serenity to follow her to a table by a large window filled with the view of the inlet. They sat facing each other.
“It isn’t about you. It isn’t personal,” Kendall said.
Serenity was upset, but it was unclear right then if she was angry or embarrassed. She’d gone after Kendall, but she seemed to pull back a little.
“I’m doing the best that I can,” she said. “I’m trying to get at the truth.”
Kendall knew better than to say what she was thinking, but she couldn’t stop herself.
“Look, I just don’t like your methods, Serenity.”
“My methods?”
Kendall allowed a slight glare of condemnation to zero in on Serenity’s unblinking eyes.
“Yes, your methods. I really don’t want to get into it. Can we leave it alone?”
“No. We can’t. I have a job to do too.”
Kendall looked out the window. “Fine. We all do.”
Chapter Thirty-two
October 15, 9 a.m.
South Kitsap County, Washington
A long gravel and mud road led to the parking lot and then a wide path followed a steep embankment to the pristine sandy beach at Anderson Point. The location was not for the infirm or the underexercised. It was so difficult to get to, and, despite its status as a county park, it had very few visitors. It was almost always deserted. Lovers came to have sex behind a burned-out cabin, hidden from view by a three-foot barrier of silver-gray beach grass, all blades bent away from the surfside. On the hottest summer days, mothers took their little ones there to dig in the sand and collect bleached-out clamshells while they listened to music on iPods or read the windswept pages of a paperback novel.
Mostly the park was empty, beautiful, and quiet as God had intended it to be. Mid-October brought a blast of cold air off the Colvos Passage, but that didn’t stop the diehards who jogged from the parking lot to the beach. On October 15, an early-morning jogger made his way down to the water, running the switchbacks at a better clip than he would be able to do later when returning to his car. Everyone, especially joggers, knew that the trip down to the beach was much easier than the steep climb back to the parking lot. He crossed over the grass-tufted dunes and faced out over the narrow passage that separated Kitsap County from Vashon Island. He heard a seal bark and watched some seagulls battle over something good to eat fifty yards down a beach strewn beautifully with grass, wood, pebbles, and, finally at the water’s edge, sand the consistency of cake sugar. The gulls were making such a ruckus that the jogger altered his course and worked his way down the beach, heading south. The tide was out a little, and his running shoes stamped the sand. He breathed in the air and was about to turn back when he noticed seagulls screaming at each other as one tried to fly away with its prize. Whatever it was, the bird dropped it and it fell to the beach.
Jesus, what’s that? he thought.
The jogger walked closer and bent over to get a better view. Was it the leg of a hapless sea star? He pushed at the object with the tip of his dirty blue running shoe. It was slender and wrinkled, with a tapered end and a tattered one. He nearly jumped out of his skin.
A human finger.
As he spun around with his back to the sound and dialed 911 on his cell phone, he noticed a cacophony of gulls twenty yards away, near a neat pile of driftwood. He made his way toward the squawking birds, as a tugboat passed a half mile d
own Colvos Passage.
This isn’t happening, he thought.
Cradled between two parallel logs was a human body.
A woman.
Nude.
Although he strained to see exactly what he was looking at, the jogger took a step backward, his heels sinking in the sand.
The 911 operator answered and he coughed out the words, “I found a human body, I think. Out here at Anderson Point.”
“You think so?”
“I know so, it’s just that…well, I found most of a human body.”
The corpse was missing more than a finger.
“This lady has no head.”
Over on the Key Peninsula, Melody Castile was lost in her thoughts again. She turned over her purse and let its contents fall onto the bleached maple kitchen table. A few coins rolled to the floor, but she paid them no mind. Nor did she take a moment to view the mini photo album that she carried wherever she went. Inside were the incongruent, nearly Betty Crocker–inspired photos of her with her husband and little boy. She fished through the brushes, the tissue, the car keys—everything that she carried with her—in search of the waterproof mascara that she was just sure was there.
And then she found it. She pulled the cap from the top to expose the slender wand and applicator. The makeup had been in her purse for some time—since the previous summer when she swam at the Gig Harbor YMCA.
Good, she thought, seeing that there was plenty of the dark pigment left. This should be perfect. She considered a coppery-red lipstick too, but dismissed it out of hand because she knew that her husband didn’t like the messy way lipstick sometimes transferred.
The oversize chest freezer in the Fun House was in the very back of the old mobile home, behind the false wall that allowed a modicum of discretion and security. Even if some kids wandered in to find out if it was a good place to get in trouble, they’d never find the mattress or the freezer.
Just boxes of things that weren’t worth bothering with.
It was a gruesome gathering. Kendall Stark, Josh Anderson, and Birdy Waterman stood over the headless corpse in the basement of the Kitsap County coroner’s office. Even Josh, who’d never missed an opportunity to make an off-color remark, was silent. The acrid scent of the deteriorating tissue and seawater was only too familiar.