by Gregg Olsen
“Seriously?” Carter asks, trying to contain his overt disgust.
“It wasn’t like that,” Sam says. “She didn’t see anything. We were careful. We put her in front of the TV and did our thing. I’m not a pervert. Neither is Luke. He’s a horndog, but last time I checked, it isn’t against the law to have sex with someone who wants to have sex with you.”
“Were you in love with Luke?” I ask.
Sam rolls his eyes. “No. I liked him,” he says. “He could be fun. Adventurous. He’d tell me about things he liked to do and some of it was pretty wild shit. I went along with it. I’m pretty vanilla when it comes to sex. But not Luke. That guy was up for anything.”
Up for anything. The phrase takes me back to the Tomlinsons’ apartment when I noticed the scarred bedposts.
Yes, he was.
After I escort Sam Underwood back to reception, he makes one final plea for me not to tell his folks about what he does when he’s not manning the drive-through window at McDonald’s.
“Sam,” I say, “if this makes its way into court and the prosecutor needs you for his case in chief, then there’ll be no negotiating the point. You’ll have to testify. If you testify, then you probably should give your parents a heads-up.”
“They won’t understand,” he says.
“Times have changed,” I remind him.
“Everywhere but here they have,” he says, heading out to the parking lot to his rusted-out Toyota.
I know what he’s saying. Aberdeen and, by extension, Hoquiam have stayed pretty true to their conservative roots when it comes to social mores. It has nothing to do with politics; it’s more because of the very nature of the work that most of the men do to support their families. Manly work. Lumber. Mill. Seafood. Fishing. My dad was of that ilk. He was for the workingman, but that man had better not be “light in the loafers.”
I find Carter in his office. He looks just as taken aback as he did when Sam first disclosed his relationship with Luke.
“I don’t get it,” my partner says as he crunches the empty bag of chips that he purchased from the honor system box in the break room. “I really don’t. Luke doesn’t give a crap about where he sticks it. Just as long as he can stick it.”
“That seems to be about right,” I say.
He leans back in his chair. “Gay. Straight. Bi. Trans. I don’t get what anyone is anymore.”
I sit down across from him. It’s been a long day. A confusing one too. “Seems to be a moving line, for sure,” I say.
Carter tosses the bag of chips into the trash can in the corner of his office. A satisfied look takes over the confused one for just a flash. “Don’t people know who they are and stay in their own lanes?”
“I’m no expert,” I say—a major understatement, as I haven’t had sex for years. “Could be that Luke is just a horndog. Or maybe he’s pansexual.”
Carter looks completely confused. “Pan what?”
“Pansexual,” I say. “That’s just a clinical way of saying that a man or woman could be attracted to anyone regardless of gender.”
Carter shakes his head and goes for another bag of chips.
This man needs a meal, I think.
“The world is getting so mixed up,” he says. “I’m not judging. I really am not. I just don’t know where the regular guy fits in these days. Seems like everyone has to be something special.”
“You’re special,” I tease just a little, “in a predictable, completely binary way. I like that about you, Carter. I never have to worry. I always know where you’re coming from, and I never have to guess where we stand. That’s a good thing.”
He smiles, and a look of relief comes over his slightly haggard but handsome face. “Yeah,” he says, “I guess it is.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Friday, August 25
Carter is at his desk moving papers around with those big baseball-mitt hands of his. Country music, my least favorite genre, plays softly in the background. He’s switched to chai tea, and the perfume of the cinnamon and nutmeg infuses the space with spice. The wrong aroma for that kind of music, I think.
At the same time, it covers the smell of cigarette smoke.
“You look beat,” he says.
“Seriously?” I ask. “That’s what you’re going to say to me?”
He looks down. “Sorry. I just meant that you look tired.”
“Tired is no better than beat,” I say. “But, yes, I am tired. I’m still having problems sleeping.”
“You need to see someone about that,” he says, clearing a spot for me to sit without having to peer over a mountain of papers.
I ignore his suggestion, well-meaning as I’m sure it is. Sleep deprivation is somewhere at the bottom of my list of problems, which are headlined by my sister, my father, and the case. I choose to focus on the case.
“Six minutes,” I say. “That’s how much extra time Luke had on his drive from McDonald’s to WinCo.”
“Okay,” he says. “Six minutes. That’s not a lot of time.”
“Listen to six minutes of country music and it seems like an eternity,” I say.
He turns off the music.
“An extra six,” he says. “What of it, Nic?”
I’m not sure, but I know that it doesn’t add up.
“Something happened on the way to WinCo,” I say. “Something delayed him, Carter. There are some lights, but he’d have to have missed every single one.”
“They are timed on that stretch,” he says, looking a little more interested now.
“That’s right,” I say. “He could really only miss one. That’s not a six-minute delay at all.”
“He stopped,” Carter says. “That’s what you’re thinking.”
I stand up. “Correct. Get your keys. You’re driving.”
“Where to?”
“McDonald’s to WinCo.”
“I could use a sausage McWhatever,” he says.
Despite his greeting that I looked tired, I don’t tell Carter that he’s wrong about that and that he’d be better off ordering an egg-white McSomething.
“What are we looking for?” he asks.
“The likeliest places Luke Tomlinson might have hit the ‘Pause’ button on what he was doing—and why.”
Carter eats his biscuit while he drives from McDonald’s. My eyes scan every inch of the drive, looking for a place that might have been a stopping point.
“He could have pulled over to the right anywhere along here,” Carter says. “Ally might have been fussing or something.”
I know that’s possible, but I don’t think it’s what happened.
“He would have said so,” I say.
“Not if he wanted to make us believe that he’d forgotten her. That she’d fallen asleep.”
He’s right about that. Everything Luke has said was likely a lie.
I indicate the signage that lines the street.
NO PARKING ANYTIME
“He’s not going to risk having one of our traffic guys writing him up when he’s on his way to kill his daughter,” I say.
“Makes sense,” Carter says. “I mean, about as much sense as any of this case does. Sick SOB.”
Carter likes to let his vitriol loose now and then. It’s healthy. Healthier than that biscuit he’s just demolished.
“Pull in here,” I say as we approach an abandoned Red Apple Market, somewhat ironically a victim of the customers syphoned off by the new WinCo. A sign pasted inside one of the windows indicates what comes after a grocery store dies.
NIRVANA POT PALACE
“Not another,” Carter says.
I want to say that the marijuana industry has grown like a weed since Washington State made recreational pot legal. But I don’t. Some puns are best unuttered.
“I guess so,” I say.
Carter stops next to a row of gigantic dumpsters, each overloaded with the debris of a failed business. We get out and look around—for what, I’m not sure. Finally, I look upward
.
Next to the first dumpster is a sign courtesy of American Security Services with a warning that I consider wrapped up in hope:
SMILE! YOU’RE TRESPASSING AND
YOU’RE ABOUT TO BE PROSECUTED.
I do what a sign tells me to do: I smile. Carter does the same.
By the time we return to the office, the unfortunately acronymed American Security Services has left a message that they have recordings from the site backed up on a server.
I call back right away.
“We’ll need a subpoena,” the office manager says so half-heartedly that I know I could probably push her into giving them to me right away. I don’t. Process and procedure have become more important than doing the right thing.
“All right, then,” I say. “We can get you that.”
Carter heads out for a “walk,” which I know is his code for a smoke. I pack up my things. I’m calling it a day too. I need to see my sister. Once and for all.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Friday, August 25
Crap. I see Mia Tomlinson standing in the parking lot of the Aberdeen Police Department. She’s staring hard in my direction as I look for Carter on his smoke break. There’s no smile of recognition when our eyes lock. Just the cold, hard stare of someone who is completely angry. Something tells me it isn’t about her husband or her dead baby.
“Detective Foster,” Mia says as she hurries at me, “I should report you for harassment. In fact, I think I’ll do that.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mia,” I say.
Her teeth are clenched in anger. “I know you’ve been asking questions about me.”
“That’s my job,” I say. “I’m trying to figure out what happened to Ally.”
“You know what happened to her,” she says, refusing to break the lock she has on my eyes. “Luke left her in the car. That’s the end of it. You have no business talking to my coworkers and neighbors and God knows who else about me and my life. I’m the victim here.”
“Let’s talk about it inside,” I say, motioning to the door.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Mia says. “I want you to back out of my life. My job is very, very important to me. I won’t sit still for people like you to come along and shame me for going to work after Ally died.”
Trevor must have broken down and told her what he said to me.
“No one is trying to shame anyone,” I tell her. “Your job is important to you. Mine is too. I’m only trying to get to the bottom of this so that we can move on with the knowledge that we did everything we could.”
Mia is not buying a word I’m saying.
“Trevor is a damn liar. He’s still mad at me because I turned him down at the hospital Christmas party. He asked me out. What a freak! He’d do anything to pay me back. Little creep.”
“He didn’t mention any of that,” I say.
“Why would he? He’s a dirtbag. The hospital is full of people who act like they care about others, when they only love the drama of everything going on around them. He’s short, bald, and fat. He’s a loser.”
“That might be true,” I say, “but since you’re here, let’s put all of the cards on the table.”
“Ask me anything, but then this stops. I won’t talk to you without a lawyer. Not because I have something to hide but because you annoy me.”
Sorry but not sorry.
“Trevor said that you didn’t like being a mom,” I say.
Mia goes ballistic, an affect that seems suited to her.
“Really?” she asks, though it’s more of a statement than a question. “Are you going to give that any weight? He’s a jealous prick. I loved my daughter. She was everything to me. I didn’t plan on getting pregnant, but when it happened, I was glad that it did. Ally was a dream come true.”
“Trevor said that you called Ally an alien,” I say, studying her angry face.
She puts her hand up to flick me away. “I did,” she says. “She looked like an alien when she was born. It was a joke. All kids look a little funny when they come out. Look at the coneheads in the nursery in the hospital. Babies don’t come out of the chute looking like an Honest Company advertisement, Detective.”
“I guess not,” I say, though I remember seeing Emma at the hospital in the little crib in Stacy’s private room at Overlake in Bellevue. I had never seen anything more perfect, more beautiful, than that little pink peapod.
Carter arrives from his “walk” just then and joins us.
“Your partner is making trouble for me at work,” Mia says as he approaches. “There’s got to be a law about harassing the mother of a dead child. If there isn’t, then I’m going to start a GoFundMe page to get one going.”
“No one is harassing anyone,” Carter says.
Mia tightens her arms around her chest. “Look,” she says, “you can tell me all you want about how it is that you have to follow every stupid lead or whatever to get to the truth, but you already know the truth here. It was a goddamn accident. My husband made a huge mistake. We are suffering for it now and I suspect that we always will.”
I ignore her sanctimonious diatribe. It’s as phony as my sister’s implants.
“Your neighbor says that you barely paid any attention to Mia and that she cried all day and night.”
“Mick Hightower?” she asks.
I don’t indicate either way.
“It’s him,” she says. “It has to be him. For your information, Mick is a child molester. Seriously. A click of your mouse would have turned that up in a second. He’s angry because we told him to keep his distance and that we knew what he was. The Internet is very helpful. You should search for a few things on it now and then. Might help you solve a case, but not this one. This one’s solved.”
Then, just like that, a light switch is turned on, and Mia’s demeanor changes. It’s so abrupt, it is nearly scary.
She starts to cry. Not just a sprinkling of tears but a torrent accompanied by gale-force wailing.
“My baby’s gone. My baby’s gone! And no one is helping me. You are making everything worse. I’m counting on you. Really, I am. God, I’m so stupid. I should have known that no one gives a crap about my Ally. She’s not rich. She’s not from a privileged class of people. No one cares about us hard workers.”
A woman walking her dog past the police department runs over. She’s elderly but spry. Her eyes are black like a snowman’s. Her hands are knotted like myrtle roots.
“What are you doing to this poor girl?” she asks, moving closer to Mia.
Her dog lifts its leg and pees on the left front wheel of Carter’s car.
“Dear,” she says to Mia, “I know who you are. I’m so sorry for what you are going through. I lost a baby too when I was a little older than you. One of my twins died of a heart defect.”
“Thank you,” Mia says, still wailing.
“Instead of beating up a grieving mother, the two of you should put your efforts into putting this tragedy to bed. We’ve all had enough of this persecution of a young couple who made a mistake.”
“It’s a pretty big mistake, ma’am,” Carter says. “We’re doing what the citizens of Aberdeen hired us to do.”
I stay silent. My mistakes don’t need to be recounted here.
“That might be all well and good,” the woman says to both of us while still propping up Mia, “but at some point you have to just stop. Just stop. Let this thing rest. Let baby Ally rest.”
With that, she wraps her arm around Mia and gives her a hug.
“Stay strong,” she says as the two go their separate ways.
I tell Carter that I’ll try to catch up with him later.
“I’ve got some personal business to take care of now.”
He looks at me.
“Listen to that lady,” he says.
“Huh?”
“Stay strong too.”
I smile. I will.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Friday, August 2
5
What happened with my sister has eaten at me for more than three years. I think that secrets like mine probably cause cancer. I don’t want cancer. I want to be well. I want to do the right thing even when I know that I have done something so very wrong. I am responsible for my sister going free. I could have turned her in. Sometimes I think that I should have—that if I had, I’d be a happier person now.
I discount that out of hand, though. If I’d turned in Stacy for her crimes, I would not have Emma. And, even worse, Emma would eventually be raised by a convict-mother so vile that my own would seem like a Disney princess in comparison. I have told myself over and over that everything I did was because of Emma. It was because she deserved so much more than a rerun of my own childhood.
I lied to myself a little. Maybe a lot. I know that I took Emma to make things right for myself as much as making them better for her. I think now, when I look back, that by saving her, I was really saving me. Good God. It seems so selfish now. Calling Stacy at the hotel that night to make my demands was the scariest thing that I’d ever done in my life. It wasn’t because my sister would do me harm or anything like that—though she was capable of anything. It was because I was consigning myself to a lifetime of hiding the truth. Keeping a secret.
And yet it continues to drip, drip, drip. Even though it was out of love for Emma that I made sure she was in my care and my sister was gone, it was also the beginning of a great deception. I had to lie to teachers. Lie to friends—though thankfully there were few of those left in my life by then. I had to tell a story about a mother who could no longer care for her child and who had given her to me as an act of self-sacrifice.
In time, when people assumed that I was Emma’s mother, I let them think it. I stopped correcting them. When she started calling me Auntie Mommy, I secretly hoped that the day would come when she would drop “Auntie” from the moniker.
And now, as my dad liked to say when he could still string together his favorite sayings, the chickens have come home to roost. Like they always do. Like I knew in my bones that they would. Stacy. Stacy is back. She is here because she wants something. Not money. I don’t have that. Not Emma. She really doesn’t want her. She is back because Stacy loves one thing above everything else. She revels in the power to hurt. It’s funny how I can see things even more clearly since she’s been gone. It’s as if the threat that she would someday pop up and ruin my life was fading.