Water's Edge: A totally gripping crime thriller (Detective Megan Carpenter Book 2)

by Gregg Olsen

  I take a breath and silence fills the empty space.

  “But you don’t know if he’s the killer.”

  “Yeah,” I say, quickly adding, “I mean, no. I’m not positive he’s even the father. And if he is, it doesn’t necessarily mean he killed her. Or had her killed. He needs to be in prison. Or a loony bin. But I want to see him take responsibility for at least ruining this girl’s life.”

  “Like yours was ruined by your biological father.”

  “It’s not the same,” I say.

  “Isn’t it?”

  I continue to bounce my thoughts and feelings off Dr. Albright’s indestructible and nonjudgmental wall of professionalism. I still have one more thing to talk about, but I can’t. It’s the most troubling thing of all and it has nothing to do with these murders. It has to do with my past. More specifically, someone from my past. Someone I can’t identify. Someone who may mean me harm.

  I say goodbye, promise to call more often, and hang up.

  I lean against the wall of the building, listening to a bell ringing far out in the bay, seagulls screeching and squabbling. The sounds are soothing. The email I received right after I saw Dan the last time wasn’t soothing at all. It was like a slap in the face. Unexpected. Painful. A blur.

  I had just finished working several murders in the secluded area above Snow Creek, far from where Leann’s body was found. I was feeling pretty good. Things had turned out well. I had time to check my emails, as I usually do many times a day, hoping there is one from Hayden. There were more than a dozen new emails, none from my brother. I started to delete them when one caught my eye and sent chills down my back.

  The subject line said, “It’s you, Rylee.”

  Rylee wasn’t a name many people knew I had used. The sender’s name was one I didn’t recognize: “Wallace.” When I opened it, I couldn’t breathe.

  Someone knew where I lived. What I did for a living.

  More distressingly, I realized, they might know what I had done.

  A voice next to my ear makes me jump. It’s Ronnie. She’s eerily quiet sometimes.

  “Megan, the detective from Kitsap called again. Have you made a decision yet?”

  “We’ll have lunch in town and then go,” I tell her. “Call him back and see if he’s free later this afternoon.”

  Twenty-Eight

  The Ajax Cafe sits in a historic building on North Water Street, which separates the town from the southern end of Port Townsend Bay. The seating is a charmingly riotous mishmash of different sizes, colors, and shapes of chairs and tables. Overhead is a centipede-like row of hats for which there seems no restriction, from cowboy to beret to sequins to garden-variety felt. It looks as if someone has gone berserk at dozens of garage sales. Yelp says, and I agree, the food is excellent. I have a Port Hadlock Haddock Burger. Ronnie has a tiny side salad. I have a large Hadlock Vanilla Gorilla Milkshake. Ronnie has water.

  My waistline hates her.

  We are just getting back on the road when Cass calls from the Nordland General Store on Marrowstone Island.

  I answer. “Cass, did you get them?”

  “Sure did. What do you want me to do? Anything to put these bastards away.”

  “I’ll see if Lonigan can pick them up. Did you touch them?”

  “I had to. How do you pick something up without touching it?”

  “That’s okay. You put them in separate paper bags and put B and T on the bags like I asked, right?”

  “That’s what you told me to do,” she says. “I’m not a dumb broad; I just play one on TV.”

  I laugh. I really like this woman. “I’ll get back to you, or Lonigan will pick them up. Keep them safe.”

  She promises.

  “What is Lonigan picking up and taking to the crime lab?” Ronnie asks as I put away my phone.

  I don’t want to tell her. Or ruin her perception of professional investigations where everything is done perfectly. But she deserves to know, since she will hang alongside me if it goes bad.

  “Plates, forks, and soda cans.”

  “Are they from this case, Megan?”

  “Yes. And no.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I had Cass collect the stuff after Joe Bohleber and Jim Truitt ate. She might have told them she was giving away free slices of pie and soda today. One-time offer to boost business.”

  Ronnie gives me a knowing look. “She might have, huh? What a coincidence. And she just happened to mark the bags B for ‘Bohleber’ and T for ‘Truitt’?”

  I nod.

  “And Lonigan is taking them to Marley for DNA comparison with DNA collected from Leann’s case?”

  I nod a second time. “I called Marley about the rape kit. He agreed to run it. We’re going to have the DNA from the other two cases compared with Leann’s.”

  “Wow! I did my rotation through the crime lab and they are always backed up the wazoo. Marley really agreed to compare all three?”

  Now I give Ronnie a knowing look before speaking.

  “He will if you ask him nicely.”

  She grins.

  Next I call Lonigan. “Detective Carpenter here. You on Marrowstone?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Same as yesterday and the day before.”

  “Can you do me a huge favor? I’ll owe you a meat loaf dinner at Cass’s.”

  “What’s the favor first?”

  I tell him. He doesn’t balk. I don’t even have to pay up. He gets his food comped at the Nordland General Store.

  “I’ll take the bags to the crime lab after I’ve had my meat loaf.”

  “You need to ask for Marley Yang.”

  “Yang, huh?”

  “Is that a problem?” I ask.

  He doesn’t hesitate. “I guess you don’t need the stuff processed right away.”

  I can tell he’s familiar with Marley and doesn’t care for him.

  “I’ll give it to him personally, but I don’t have any paperwork. He’ll want me to sign for it.”

  “Tell him I’ll bring the paperwork today. And don’t sign anything.”

  I put the phone away to find Ronnie giving me a quizzical look, but she doesn’t ask me anything. I can see the wheels turning, but they’re not getting her anywhere just yet.

  I watch the scenery go by. I think about my “date” with Dan tonight. I don’t have any new clothes. Not my style. Clothes. I think of what Ronnie and Mindy said about the clothes left lying out on Leann’s bed at her cabin. She was an attractive young woman. She would probably turn heads in a potato sack. And yet she’d tried on at least three outfits.

  God knows, I don’t have a lot of experience with dating, and the only thing I know about fashion are the things I’ve seen on TV or picked up around my old college dorm. Three outfits indicates she was really trying to impress whoever she was going off to see. That makes me think of my date again. And Dan. Should I try to impress him? He already seems impressed or he wouldn’t be trying to keep in touch. But where did he expect this to go? If he just wants me to sleep with him, he won’t have to break my arm. But what if he expects more? He may want me to share things about my past with him. I can’t. I haven’t even shared a lot of my past with my own brother. I told Hayden only what he needed to know. So how much do I want Dan to know?

  “Earth to Megan.”

  I’m driving on autopilot and our turn is just ahead.

  “I’m thinking.”

  “About tonight? Your date?”

  “No,” I say in such a way that she not only knows otherwise but also knows that I don’t intend to talk about it.

  We follow the coast of Puget Sound to State Route 104, cross the Hood Canal Floating Bridge, past Port Gamble to Northeast State Route 104, and then to the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office substation in Kingston.

  The Kingston office is a one-story building, wood-sided, with a wood-shingled roof. There’s minimal parking. I pull into a spot marked “Sheriff’s Office Only.” There are two other spaces. Both empty
.

  “This is where he said to meet us, right?”

  Ronnie takes her phone out. “Kingston office. Should I call him?”

  I notice a boy’s bicycle leaning against the front. “Maybe that’s his police vehicle.” I get out and she follows me to the front door. I twist the knob.

  “Hello. Anyone home?”

  No answer.

  Inside is an empty yawning space, no private offices. No interview rooms. There isn’t even a counter separating the front from the two desks that have name plates on them. I can hear a copy machine running somewhere and I follow the noise just as a man wearing faded Lee jeans and a purple University of Washington T-shirt stretched tightly across his chest emerges.

  He holds out his hand. “Detective Clay Osborne.”

  His grip is strong and grinds the bones in my hand and I try to give the same back.

  Never show weakness.

  “Detective Megan Carpenter,” I say.

  “Reserve Deputy Ronnie Marsh.” Ronnie holds her hand out and looks him over.

  Clay takes her hand and I see her wince. To him, I suspect, it is akin to squeezing a Nerf ball.

  Detective Osborne is in his mid-thirties, six feet something. His weight is hard to guess but it is perfect for his physique. He has thick red hair and a lumberjack’s beard. The only thing identifying him as law enforcement is the shoulder holster he’s wearing. He has an old Colt Model 1911 in the rig and sees me noticing it.

  “Are you familiar with the government model Colt .45?”

  “A little,” I say.

  The truth is I know a lot about it. Rolland, my stepfather, had a Colt M1911A1 semiautomatic. It was old army issue and was carried by soldiers in a lot of wars. My mother said my real father—who turned out to be a fictitious father—had one just like it when he went overseas. I always imagined him charging the enemy with that gun. She told me he was a hero.

  Liar.

  Clay slips the pistol from the holster, drops the magazine, and makes it safe. He does all this with practiced ease, second nature. He doesn’t offer it to either of us but holds it up and turns it so we can see each side.

  “This is actually a 1912 Colt government model,” he says. “Forty-five-caliber, magazine capacity seven rounds plus one in the chamber. The after-factory magazines hold eight plus one in the chamber. This is the original. My stepfather carried it in Vietnam.”

  The way he says it makes me think his stepfather is deceased, so I don’t ask. He puts the weapon back in the shoulder rig. “You aren’t here to talk about my gun, though.”

  “I brought my file,” I say. “What we have so far, anyway. Is Clallam County coming?”

  He sets a couple of chairs over by one of the desks and we all sit. Dina Knowles’s face is familiar to me. I notice her file open on the desk. A few of the photos from when she was found are in a neat array.

  “Larry might be a little late,” he says. “He’s trying to get his hands on the DNA results. He said he couldn’t find them in his case file, and he’ll have to get copies from the crime lab.”

  Of course. Why didn’t I think of that? The DNA results would already have been run by the crime lab. I won’t have to supply Marley with any of that. All I’ll have to give him are the DNA samples Cass collected for me.

  “You’re talking about Marley Yang, correct?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” he says. “He’s the one that did the comparison of our cases. Have you submitted DNA yet?”

  “A rape kit,” I say. “They haven’t run it yet.”

  Clay lets out a breath. “I know how that is. Took me four weeks to get them to look at mine, and then another three weeks after I found out about Clallam County’s case to get them to agree to compare them. That was about five months ago.”

  “I talked to Marley today,” I say. “He tells me they have a new machine that can run the DNA in less than two hours.”

  Clay’s eyebrows bounce. “I guess they don’t want that to get out. They wouldn’t be able to put everyone off with that ‘I’m covered up with DNA work’ routine.”

  My thoughts exactly. I think Marley is afraid the lab will be flooded with priority requests.

  Ronnie speaks up. “He showed me the machine when I did my rotation last month. It’s a fascinating and very expensive piece of equipment and he’s the only one trained to use it.”

  And he probably wants to keep it that way. I get it. Job security.

  I take the case file on Leann Truitt out of my bag.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t have a chance to copy it,” I say. “Can you do that while we wait for Larry to bring Clallam’s case?”

  “Did someone call my name?” Larry Gray says from the doorway.

  I have spoken to Larry Gray only briefly. I look at him, but I see the spitting image of Sheriff Tony Gray. Same features. Same thin hair. Same belly. Same size. The only difference is he’s five or so years younger and ten pounds heavier.

  Make that fifteen.

  “You don’t happen to be related to our sheriff?” I ask. “Tony Gray?”

  He gives a friendly shrug. “Second cousins on my mother’s side. He doesn’t claim me and that’s the way I like it.” He adds with a huge, toothy grin, “Tony’s okay. Nothing wrong with him that retirement won’t cure.”

  Thanks for nothing, I think.

  Larry is lugging a big accordion folder barely held shut with a string and some rubber bands. Clay kicks a chair out, and Larry brings over his file.

  “Clay,” he says.

  “Larry.”

  “Megan,” I say putting my hand out. His hand is big, but his grip is soft. Compared to Clay’s, anyway.

  “And this must be your trusty deputy, Ronnie Marsh,” Larry says as Ronnie’s hand drips through his big paw. “We’ve talked a few times. I called Yang at the crime lab. You know Marley, don’t you?”

  I nod and he goes on. “Yeah, he’s a pistol. He said I didn’t need a copy of the results because he has all of that pulled up already and is looking at our cases. He has high praise for Ronnie here. Said to tell her he’s running her case through now.”

  Her case?

  Ronnie’s case?

  “Let’s get busy,” Clay says, taking out legal-size notepads and handing them out. “Why don’t you go first, Detective Carpenter? You have the newest case, right?”

  I know his type. I know it like a fox knows a chicken.

  I will always be the fox.

  Twenty-Nine

  The Kingston, Kitsap County, substation is silent. No purr of a heating system. No ringing of phones. It’s quiet like a prayer. It occurs to me that prayer isn’t a bad idea. Finding Leann’s killer is about saving another victim. Young. Pretty. Dreaming of the future, while he lies in wait.

  I start with the discovery of Leann’s body on Marrowstone Island by Robbie Boyd; I look at the men I’ve just met. I wonder if they will be territorial or if they will understand that serial killers don’t care about wandering over various jurisdictions. Indeed, that’s what works best for them. We need to unite. Not posture.

  I keep my fingers crossed.

  “Do either of you have anything on that name?”

  “I ran him through the system,” Clay says. “I don’t think that’s his real name.”

  “Why?” Larry asks.

  “I have a friend who’s a policeman that works security at the college,” Clay says. “I had him run the guy through their files and he said they had a Robbie Boyd, full name Robert Aloysius Boyd. I had Jimmy—that’s my buddy—send me a picture from his campus ID. I compared that to the link to the Facebook page Ronnie sent. Doesn’t look anything like him. In fact, the Robbie Boyd attending school there is a black male.”

  That disclosure absolutely stuns me. I had Ronnie call the college and check to see if Robbie Boyd was supposed to have been in a class during the time we were at the scene. He was in class. But apparently it wasn’t the right Robbie Boyd. I hate being completely wrong about anything. Not a smart way t
o live. The Boyd at the crime scene could have used someone’s name and identification. It was confusing because the license plate on his crap Ford Pinto came back to Boyd.

  “He must know Boyd,” I suggest. “The license tags came back to Robert Boyd. Boyd showed Ronnie a Washington driver’s license with that name. He knew that the real Boyd was supposed to be in class.”

  Clay picks up the desk phone and punches in a number.

  “Hi, this is Detective Osborne. Is Jimmy there? Yeah, let me talk to him.” Clay holds the phone away from his ear. “I’m going to have my friend see if he can locate the real Boyd and try to round up the impersonator.”

  While we wait for Jimmy to get to the phone, I keep going.

  “State Patrolman MacDonald was the first officer on the scene, followed by Deputy Davis.”

  “‘Old MacDonald Had a Farm’ MacDonald?” Larry asks. “Did he get out of his car?”

  Interesting, I think. He knows MacDonald. “Yeah. He stayed with Boyd while Deputy Davis climbed down a cliff to secure the scene.”

  Larry grins and nods. “Sounds like him.”

  I pull out photos of my crime scene, taken in vivid color: blood red against the blue of Port Townsend Bay. Shots from the water showing the body’s position on the shore. Shots in each direction showing the limited access to the scene.

  “Have either of you heard of a strainer?” I ask.

  Both shake their heads.

  I go on: “It’s an obstacle that catches animals or people that are caught up in the current and they die because they can’t get out.”

  They clearly don’t know where I’m going.

  “Boyd has a website that talks about such things. He calls it a ‘Killing Box,’” I say as I tap my finger on the photograph. “If you notice, my crime scene is kind of boxed in. There are only a couple of ways to get to that spot, and all are very difficult. Either down a forty-foot cliff, by swimming, or by boat.”

  Larry gives me a questioning look.