Victim Six

by Gregg Olsen

  “I know,” Brent said, pulling away from his wife. He’d composed himself by then. “It means that she’s gone. It means that she’s dead.”

  Before Kendall could say a word, Deana let go of her husband’s hand and pushed away from the table.

  “We’ve read the papers. We know that there’s some kind of freak out there.”

  “That’s an enormous leap, Ms. Wilson,” Kendall said.

  Deana gulped. “Then where is she?”

  Kendall told her the truth. “We don’t know.”

  “Please find her,” Deana said.

  Kendall nodded. “We’re doing everything we can.”

  After leaving the Wilsons’, Kendall returned a call that Josh had made to her while she was inside delivering the news. He told her he’d received word from the state crime lab in Olympia. They’d expedited the forensic exam.

  “We’ve got a whole lot of nothing on the car,” he said. “The interior is devoid of any prints, any blood, anything at all.”

  “Not even a trace of Paige?”

  “Right. They found one thing and one thing only. On the steering wheel they picked up some latex particles.”

  “Gloves?”

  “You got it.”

  Kendall braked to a stop to allow a family of Canada geese to walk across Beach Drive to the water. “That tells us plenty, doesn’t it, Josh?”

  “Yeah—that the perpetrator is careful.”

  “We knew that. It also tells us the worst possible news. If we’d thought for one second that Paige might have run away, that’s out the window. No teenager is going to wipe her car, vacuum it out, and wear gloves while she’s doing it.”

  “Nope,” he said. “No teenager’s going to vacuum her car—period.”

  The geese safely out of the way, Kendall drove the winding road past the veterans’ home and toward downtown Port Orchard.

  “You know it, and I know it, Josh. Paige Wilson is the fifth victim.”

  “Probably, Kendall.”

  “We have to find her before we’re too late.”

  Josh let out a sigh. “We both know that if time hasn’t already run out, it will.”

  Kendall first broached the subject of a pattern to the killings with Steven after Cody had been put to bed that Friday night. The dates associated with the case nagged at her. She sat on the edge of their bed with an eighteen-month cat calendar that she’d purchased for her mother but had never given her because it would only remind her that she didn’t know what day of the week it was most of the time.

  She marked the dates that the Cutter’s victims had vanished, or were believed to have vanished. Every one had been on the far left of the calendar—a Sunday.

  “Don’t ask me,” Steven said. “I’m an ad salesman, and I’ll buy just about anything.”

  She smiled at him and knew that he was right about that.

  On Saturday morning she went looking for Josh, whom she knew would be in the office. Despite the fact that he now had a girlfriend, he did not have much of a life. She found him once more by the coffeepot in the break room.

  “Josh, there is a pattern here,” she said, pulling him aside.

  He poured an avalanche of dry creamer into his cup and followed her.

  “How so?”

  “Sundays. All of the vics disappeared on a Sunday.”

  She held out a sheet with the dates highlighted.

  March 29 (Celesta)

  April 26 (Marissa)

  September 26 (Skye)

  January 31 (Carol)

  He looked interested but unconvinced. “I thought that Skye disappeared on a Saturday,” he said.

  Kendall nodded. “Right. But maybe she wasn’t actually captured by the killer until Sunday. His day.”

  “Are you thinking something religious here?”

  “No. There’s nothing that this creep has said to anyone, left at any scene, to suggest he’s a religiously motivated killer. I’m wondering if it’s simply because it’s convenient for him to capture his vics on weekends.

  “Because he’s not working.”

  Kendall set down her calendar notes.

  “I’ve thought that through. I’m thinking that Sunday is the day he captures them, but he really needs Mondays off. Monday is the day he gets himself together for the workweek. Since his killing has been intermittent, I’d say he doesn’t get every Monday off.”

  “I hate Mondays,” Josh said.

  If she was correct, Kendall knew that she could add another name to the list: Paige. She went missing on Sunday too.

  Chapter Fifty-six

  April 5, 4 p.m.

  Key Peninsula

  It was Saturday afternoon, and an Almond Joy was calling her name from the newsroom’s vending machine. Serenity Hutchins was poking around her desk for some spare change when she answered her sister’s call.

  “I need you,” Melody said, in tears. “Can you come over?”

  Serenity looked around. The newsroom was quiet. She was working on a background piece about Paige Wilson, the missing teenager.

  “Now isn’t the best time,” she said.

  “It’s about me and Max,” Melody said. “Something terrible has happened. I need you.”

  Serenity stopped searching for quarters. She had never been close to her sister, but she adored Max. Melody sounded completely out of sorts.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “This isn’t the kind of thing I can talk about on the phone.”

  “Well, give me an idea. I’m on deadline here.”

  “I’m terrified, and I need my sister.”

  The despair in Melody’s voice moved something in Serenity’s heart. She longed for a genuine connection with her sister.

  “I’ll be there in an hour.”

  “Don’t tell anyone,” Melody said.

  The Castiles’ gate had been left opened. Strange, Serenity thought, but a nice change from the usual inconvenience nevertheless. She loathed the damn gate, the faux cameras, and the motion detection lights that her brother-in-law had installed at the entrance to the property. She drove up the curving, rutted gravel driveway and parked in front of the garage.

  Melody, dressed in dirty blue jeans and a cream-colored sweater, met her by her car door.

  “Serenity, thanks for coming,” she said, each word an anxious gulp. “I really needed you, and you’re here.”

  Serenity got out the car and embraced her sister. Melody had never been much of a hugger. Now, however, Serenity could feel her sister’s arms pulse as they wrapped around her shoulders. When she pulled back to look into Melody’s face, Serenity expected it to be wrought with emotion.

  Yet Melody’s eyes were devoid of expression.

  “What is it?” Serenity asked. “Where is Max?”

  “He’s in the house,” Melody said. Her body was shaking and she made crying sounds, but nothing came from her eyes. Not a single teardrop.

  “Where’s Sam?” Serenity looked around the yard, then turned to her sister again. “What’s going on? What did you want to talk to me about?”

  “Serenity,” Melody said, “I want out of this marriage…. I’m worried about Max. His father, you know, isn’t quite right.”

  No argument there, but Serenity didn’t say so.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Melody went on.

  “You get a lawyer, that’s what you do. What happened?”

  “I’ll show you,” Melody said. “Let’s go inside. I think I know what happened.”

  Serenity expected her sister to lead her to the front door of the house, but instead Melody started in the direction of the mobile home.

  “What’s in there?”

  “I think that’s where it happened to him. I think Max was abused.”

  Serenity felt her pulse quicken as they went down the moist dirt pathway through a stand of black bamboo.

  “Oh, God! Are you sure?”

  “I’m not sure. But I think you can help.”

 
; “I’ll do what I can, of course.”

  They walked down the moist dirt pathway.

  Melody put her hand on Serenity’s shoulder, pushing gently as they went up the steps. “I found something. I’ll show you.” She opened the Fun House door so Serenity could go inside ahead of her. The interior was dark. Serenity noticed right away that the front windows had been covered with aluminum foil.

  “I saw this done once in a pot-growing operation in Kingston,” she said.

  A hand reached from the darkness and pressed a smelly cloth over her nose and mouth.

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  April 6, 9:50 a.m.

  Port Orchard

  Kendall Stark hung up the phone and turned to Josh Anderson. He’d assumed it was a media call into the Sheriff’s Office about the possibility of the Kitsap Cutter’s fifth victim, Paige Wilson. Kendall had used words like “off covering the beat” and “big story that needs care.”

  She looked hard at him. “That was Charlie Keller,” she said. “He’s worried about your girlfriend.”

  “What about her?” Josh asked, popping a starlight peppermint into his mouth.

  “Says she didn’t show up for work this a.m. He even went to her apartment. No one’s there.”

  He crunched the candy. “She’s a big girl.”

  “When did you see her last?”

  “I don’t know. Saturday morning, I guess. Hey, we’re not exclusive.”

  Kendall shook her head. “Not that you seem to care, but I’m guessing that she’d rather be dead than have her editor write ‘Is Paige Wilson Victim Five?’”

  “You’re right about that,” he said. “She’s all about the big story.”

  “Keller says she said something about going out to her sister’s place.”

  “Her sister is a piece of work. Good. Glad to know that she’s helping her.”

  “Aren’t you worried?”

  “Kendall, what’s the big deal?”

  “The big deal is that a woman who links all of our victims has gone AWOL. I’m guessing, Josh, you’d care more about her if you hadn’t slept with her.”

  Josh’s face went a reddish shade. Kendall’s words had stung. “I care,” he said. “We had a bit of an argument on Friday. I just figured she was cooling off over the weekend.”

  The little boy with the dark, knowing eyes watched quietly as other children in the classroom took out well-worn crayons and started to follow the instructions of Sally Marshall, their teacher. Inside, he seethed.

  “I want you to think about your favorite things,” she said.

  “Like our dog?” another boy asked.

  No one who saw Ms. Marshall would think she was anything but an elementary school teacher. A plain brunette, she never failed to wear the kind of cutesy attire that would appeal to small children. That Monday morning she wore a pair of iron-creased jeans, a white blouse with a Peter Pan collar, and a vest with an appliquéd tic-tac-toe board. The X’s and O’s were attached with Velcro.

  “A picture of your puppy would be wonderful, Patrick, but how about a picture of your dog and you together?”

  “I’m not a good drawer of people,” he said.

  “Do your best. That’s what we all should do.” She hovered over a few of the kids before moving to the next row. The kids up front—Patrick, Jared, Ashton, Sonata, Mimi, and Gabrielle—were her favorites, and the other kids knew it.

  Throughout the classroom, little hands began to draw. Some rendered images of family vacations. Mickey Mouse, or the approximation of some happy little rodent, appeared on at least two. Some girls drew rainbows and horses.

  “After we finish,” the teacher went on, “we’ll have one of the class moms take them to laminating, and that way we can use them as placemats.” She stopped at Madison Foster’s desk. The little girl was drawing the picture of a house with a pointed roof, a brick chimney, and a row of fir trees.

  “Maddie, that’s lovely. Where is that place?”

  Maddie, a sullen girl with missing front teeth and a slept-on ponytail, looked up, her hand still moving the black crayon as she colored a curlicue of smoke.

  “Ms. Marshall! That’s my house!”

  The teacher put her hand on Maddie’s shoulder. “Oh, of course it is!”

  The truth was far from the depiction on the paper. Maddie lived with her mother and four brothers in a single-wide mobile home at the end of a long driveway from the main road. Half the time there was no heat, and for sure there was no chimney. No row of fir trees. Just a front yard littered with appliances, a Frigidaire graveyard.

  The teacher heard one of the boys in the back laughing, and she turned around. Jeremy Wagner was standing next to Max Castile’s desk and pointing.

  “What’s that? You’re gonna be in trouble, Max. Here comes the teacher.”

  Max looked up and threw his crayons to the floor, sending them rolling down the aisle. He flipped over his paper.

  “Max, what in the world?” Ms. Marshall put her hand on her hips. “Why did you do that?”

  Max didn’t say anything, but Jeremy jumped right in.

  “Ms. Marshall, Max drew a gross picture!”

  “Max, may I see your paper?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “You can’t. I don’t want to get in trouble.”

  “Let me see it.”

  Max, a boy never given too much emotion, started to cry. His tears only seemed to fuel Jeremy’s rant and the growing interest of other kids in the classroom.

  “Max’s in trouble! Max’s gonna get a talking-to. Nasty picture. Nasty!”

  Sally Marshall tugged at the corner of Max’s paper and eased it off his desk. She flipped it over and let out a gasp.

  Slumped in a small, steel-framed, plastic-upholstered chair across from the receptionist’s impeccably buffed counter, the boy with tousled hair, brown eyes, and the shrunken countenance of a kid in trouble just stared at a map of the states. It was decorated with a border of presidential portraits that ended with William Jefferson Clinton. All matted fur and cheap yellow marble eyes, the school mascot, a stuffed lynx, gave him the evil eye.

  It was not as good as the hunting trophies his dad had hung in the log house. Not near as convincingly alive.

  He wasn’t sure what the principal and Ms. Marshall were saying, but he knew it was all about him.

  And the voice, from the principal, was harsh, despite the attempt to keep his words low. “We need to reach his parents.”

  “I’ve tried.”

  “Obviously, Sally,” the principal said, “you’ve neglected to update the boy’s contact information with their cell numbers. People change their numbers about once a year. We’ll need to call the authorities. State law.”

  “I know,” Ms. Marshall said, her voice now brittle. “I understand protocol.”

  She emerged from the principal’s office and knelt low in front of Max.

  “Honey, we’ve tried to reach your mom and dad, but no one’s home. Do you know where they are?”

  The boy shrugged. “I dunno. My dad’s off on Mondays.”

  “Do you know if they have a cell phone?”

  He shook his head. “They have cell phones, but I don’t know the number.”

  Composed now, the teacher spoke directly into Max’s eyes.

  “Since we can’t reach your parents, we have to call the police to come in. They have people who might be able to help you.”

  “What did I do? I didn’t mean it.”

  She held out her hand. “I know. Let’s go and wait in the nurse’s office until the officers get here.”

  “Is it because of what I colored?”

  The teacher nodded. “That’s right. They’ll need to ask you a few questions about what you colored.”

  The call came into the Sheriff’s Office at 1:03 P.M. A dispatcher logged the time and routed it to the investigative unit. Josh Anderson, who had made three calls to Serenity since the morning, looked at the blinking red light and swallowed a piece of
black licorice that had made his front teeth the same color.

  He picked up, but it wasn’t her.

  Kendall watched as he scribbled a few illegible notes on a desk pad. As he always did. She’d seen him unfold an eighteen-inch paper and fight through his chicken scratches to come up with the answer a prosecutor sought. No BlackBerry notes. Not even a steno pad. Josh Anderson was too young to be so old-school.

  She looked at the pad.

  Max Castile, 8, sexual abuse. The words were circled for emphasis. She noticed another name on the paper: Trey Vedder, Port Orchard Marina.

  “Josh, what’s going on?” she asked.

  He looked up. “Teacher and principal reported a disturbing drawing. It falls under guidelines. They report, and we follow up.”

  “What did he draw?”

  Josh reached for his jacket. “Don’t know yet. Reporting teacher said was that it was sexual. I believe her exact words were ‘horrifically sexual.’ One thing you should know, Kendall…”

  “What’s that?”

  Josh looked worried. “The boy in question is Serenity’s nephew. A nice kid. I met him once.” He picked up his car keys and started for the hallway.

  “Where are you going now?” she asked.

  “I’ll follow up on the call that came in from the marina. Kid says he’s seen something ‘freaky’ down there. You handle the sex case. You handle those better than I would anyway, conflict of interest or not.”

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  April 6, 10:50 a.m.

  Key Peninsula

  Kendall Stark caught her breath when she laid eyes on Max’s drawing on top of Principal Al Judson’s desk. Judson was a stoop-shouldered man of about fifty-five with sparse white hair. He had the sour demeanor of a man with indigestion or one who longed for any other job than the one he held.

  “You can see our concern,” he said.

  “I do,” she said, meeting his gaze before looking back down at the paper.

  It was a mostly black-and-white rendering, although there were splashes of red in three places. Max, who was left-handed, had smudged some of the imagery. It showed a woman supine on what Kendall figured was a bed. The drawing, with its mix of perspective, had a kind of surreal look. Next to the woman, at the foot of the bed, was a man standing. He was holding a knife. Like the woman, he was nude. Between his legs was a depiction of a penis.