by Gregg Olsen
“He kissed me last night,” she says suddenly, and gives me a worried look. “That won’t get me fired, will it?”
I laugh out loud, and she sits back with a pouty look plastered on her face.
“If that would get you fired, we’d lose half of the department.”
“But Marley said to keep it between us. I probably shouldn’t have told you.”
“No. You should have told me. I’ll keep your secret until you’re ready to tell.”
She smiles. “You’re a good friend, Megan.”
Yeah. Then why do I feel like such a bitch for pushing them together for my own totally selfish reasons? But who knows, maybe they would have gotten together anyway. Marley? I can’t believe he’ll want to keep Ronnie a secret. He isn’t a bad-looking guy, but I can’t see him scoring with a beauty like Ronnie.
“I’ve got directions to Dina’s scene.”
She touches the phone and a disembodied female voice starts giving turn-by-turn directions. I turn at Four Corners Road and soon we’re at Adelma Beach, driving along South Discovery Road at Discovery Bay. Much of the bay shoreline is seeded with everything from log cabins to multimillion-dollar estates. The GPS leads us to a deserted stretch that’s so rocky, it doesn’t qualify for a beach. We make our way on foot to the coordinates, trying not to break an ankle.
The phone announces we’ve arrived.
I’m standing in a sandy area no bigger than my bedroom. The tree trunk is easy to find. It’s three feet in diameter and twenty feet in length. It was carried by high tide onto this little section of beach and its thick roots are buried in the sand and act as an anchor. The far end of the trunk disappears into the water. I climb over it and find the carving. It’s been gouged into the wood with a sharp blade and is the size of the mouth of a coffee mug.
The all-seeing eye.
Ronnie snaps a close-up of it with her phone. I climb back across and look out into the bay. She says what I’m thinking.
“The body couldn’t have been here very long. If the tide could bring this monster in, a body would have been pulled out when the tide went out.”
“Good thinking,” I say.
I look at the pictures. Dina’s body was on this side of the trunk. Spread out in the same way as the other bodies, about five feet from where the roots stretched out. I don’t see any drag marks in the picture. I drag a boot across the moist sand.
“She was dumped here after high tide,” I say. “She had to have been found within hours. The coroner estimated she’d been dead for no less than twenty-four hours.”
“So where was she killed?” Ronnie asks. “Where was she being kept before he dumped her here?”
“Clay said she had very faint scuffs or scrape marks on the skin of her knees and elbows. I didn’t see anything in the autopsy report about carpet fibers, did you?”
Ronnie shakes her head.
We clambered over a hundred feet of sharp rocks to get here. I wonder if the body was recovered by boat.
“Did the report say how the body was recovered?”
Ronnie looks back the way we came.
“I doubt they carried her out. Roy was the one who spotted her.” She started nodding her head. “I know what you’re thinking. Roy loaded her on his boat. He pilots the Integrity. It has a rough deck. That could have caused the scuff marks.”
My job is safe. That wasn’t what I was thinking at all. That wasn’t even a possibility. The marks were only on her knees and elbows. Unless she crawled around on the deck, it couldn’t happen. But it could have happened if she was confined in the trunk of a vehicle while she was alive. Or in a house with carpeting.
“Where were the scuff marks?” I ask. School is in.
She thinks only a moment, to her credit. “It couldn’t have been on the Integrity. The marks were made while she was alive. Carpeting. There’s no carpeting on any of our boats.”
“Where do you find carpeting?” I ask.
“A house.” She snapped her fingers. “And the trunk of a car. But she would have had to have been alive to get the marks. Maybe it was when she was kidnapped? She was transported in the trunk of a car.”
“My guess is that the marks came from carpeting in a room where she was being held,” I say. “It was a carpeted room, so probably not a basement or a toolshed. I know that doesn’t limit the location much.”
“But if we get a suspect, we know what areas to search for evidence,” Ronnie says.
This girl is quick on the uptake. But she won’t be sticking around after the case is finished. She’s on rotation and only has today left. Then on to somewhere, maybe Records or Dispatch or riding with a sworn deputy on patrol.
“Pull up the next location,” I tell her. “Crane isn’t far away.”
“Are Clay and Larry going to join us?”
“They’re busy,” I lie. I don’t want anyone going to our possible witnesses before we do. It can be hazardous for their health. For example, Qassim Hadir. We started looking for Boyd and his roommate, and they’ll both end up dead before we find them.
Forty-Seven
I follow State Route 20 and turn north onto SR-101. Ronnie’s GPS leads us to Crane, a small unincorporated town of about a dozen households. I thought we were lost twice before we found a row of houses with a view of the water. Margie’s home was a neat little bungalow with a handicap access ramp and lots and lots of yard gnomes and potted plants.
The man who answers the door looks to be in his nineties. A woman in a wheelchair behind him is older, or maybe I think so because of the wispy white hair that barely hides her scalp. They are Mr. and Mrs. Ivy. They didn’t know Margie Benton—had never heard of her—and the neighbors on both sides of them had only been there for a couple of months. The Ivys, like most of the elderly I’ve encountered on this job, invite us in for coffee and maybe to stay and talk for a few hours. I decline the invitation.
“Let’s go to the Alibi and see if anyone there remembers her,” I tell Ronnie. “No point in talking to the neighbors.”
We’re in Port Angeles in fifteen minutes by skirting SR-101 and sticking to backroads. It’s almost noon. Our choices for food are McDonald’s, Wendy’s, or the Asian Buffet. I drive past the Port Angeles US Border Patrol building and turn in at Wendy’s. We eat in the car. Ronnie has pulled up a map of Port Angeles.
“Where did you go to college?” I ask to be polite.
“Washington State University. My dad wanted me to be a lawyer and join his practice.”
“But you went into law enforcement. Why?”
“I couldn’t represent someone that I believed to be guilty.”
It’s a straight answer. I had her pegged for one of those rich kids that tried too hard to show that they weren’t entitled or privileged. Her wardrobe screams privilege. I can’t afford her footwear. But, like her, I’m not in this job for the money. I’m in it to find and end the assholes who prey on other people. The killers. The rapists. Kidnappers. Like her, I could never represent anyone like that. Unlike her, I don’t want to arrest them. I want them gone permanently.
“How about you, Megan?”
I don’t answer.
“Let’s see what we can find at the bar.”
The Front Street Alibi is located between Baskin Robbins and the Wok. Parking is on the side. It’s just after noon and the lot is almost full. A karaoke stage is in the back, the bar and kitchen are to my left, seating is to the right. A sign over the bar says, “Happy Hour All Day.” That’s why there were no parking spaces left. The place is full, and everyone is drinking and talking loudly.
There are two bartenders behind the bar. One is a male who looks to be underage. The other, a female, is in her forties or fifties with a beer belly peeking below her midriff peasant blouse.
The woman asks, “What you having?”
I show her my badge. Ronnie, thankfully, has worn civvies today. She takes out her reserve deputy badge case and shows it to the bartender.
“What are
you having?” the woman asks again. “Lots of badges come in here. Most of ’em this time of day. Drinks are on the house for cops.”
“We’re not here for a drink,” I say. “I’m looking for someone.”
“Ain’t we all, honey,” she says.
Ronnie pulls out the picture we found in Larry’s file on Margie Benton.
“Do you know her?” I ask.
She barely glances at the photo and then back to me. “What do you want with Marge?”
“So you do know her?”
“Yeah. I knew her. She’s dead. What’s Jefferson County want her for?”
“You knew her when she worked here?”
She nods and swipes at the bar with a clean white towel. “She’s been dead going on two years now. What’s this about?”
“I’m looking for the bastard who killed her,” I say.
She stops wiping the bar top, looks me in the eyes, and stretches her words out, “’Bout goddamn time.”
The bartender’s name is Missy Johnson. Not surprisingly, she knows Detective Larry Gray. She knows him very well. Missy confided in us that she knows Larry is married, but he’s a smooth talker. She tells us she met Larry after Margie was found murdered and he came around asking questions. He had been an infrequent customer before that, but he became a regular. At least three nights a week until closing, and then he was a regular at her place.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she says. “Larry’s a great guy. But I don’t think he cares about his job. Not even a little. He’s just riding out his time to retirement.”
“What do you know about Margie’s murder?”
She looks around the bar, then back at me. “I’ll tell you what I told him, and that was a while back, so stay with me.”
Margie used to tend bar with Missy. They were great friends. Margie was well-liked. Maybe a little too much. She had a regular following, but then, that’s not unusual for a bartender. Except Margie got pregnant by one of her customers about three years back, had the baby at home, and gave it up for adoption. The adoption was kind of under the table. According to Missy, Margie needed money and she didn’t need a kid. She said they disagreed on that, but they stayed friends until Margie got knocked up again.
“She was pregnant when she was killed. But you already know that. I think she was maybe four or five months along. She didn’t know whose it was or even when she got pregnant. We really had a falling-out when she told me she was going to give that one away too. She already had a young couple interested. She was a bitch; not to speak ill of the dead. She didn’t mind giving the baby up. She was only sorry that she wasn’t getting more money.”
Now I knew why Larry hadn’t worked any harder on the murder.
He figured Margie wasn’t worth the effort. The idea made me sick. She wasn’t just a hooker, as Larry called her. She was a baby factory.
“Do you know of any regular who had a problem with Margie?”
She shakes her head. “Someone who might kill her? Nah. Everyone liked her, like I said. I don’t think anyone knew about her selling babies, though, except me and maybe Roy Martin.”
Ronnie grips my arm. I’m startled.
“Roy Martin with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office?” I ask.
Ronnie eases her grip, and we exchange a brief glance.
“Yeah,” she says. “Boat captain or something. He was in here all the time up until after Margie was gone. I asked Larry one time; I said, ‘Larry, how come that good-looking Martin don’t come in here anymore?’ He tells me that Martin was the one that found Margie’s body. It got to him pretty good, I guess.”
Ronnie probably can’t imagine her hero hanging around a bar like this in another county.
“Did Roy know Margie?” I ask.
“Yeah,” she says. “Like I said, he was in here all the time. He was one of Margie’s regulars. I don’t think he was sweet on her or anything, but she always waited on him. He’s a real jokester. Kept us all laughing.”
Superhero. Stand-up comedian. Boat captain. Roy is a deep man.
“Do you have an idea who might have done this?” I ask.
Missy goes back to wiping the bar. She lowers her voice.
“Don’t get mad,” she says. “I don’t know anything for sure.”
“But…?”
“I think it was a cop. I know you all get a bad rap lately, and I don’t mean no disrespect, but that’s what I think.”
I question her in more detail, but she really doesn’t know who. Just cops in general. She thinks that based on a few things. Like the fact that Margie’s flings were almost always with cops. Margie hinted that her first baby was adopted by a cop family, but would never say who. Margie laughed about being pregnant a second time and claimed the cops were keeping her in business. She never said who the father might be. Missy didn’t think Margie knew for certain. And she figured that if Margie was with that many married cops, she would have a lot of dirt on some of them. Margie was greedy enough to sell her own kids. Was she capable of blackmail too?
Forty-Eight
We sit quietly in the Taurus, digesting what we’ve just been told. It fits my theory. It doesn’t prove anything, but my gut is telling me to pursue it. Missy refused to name any of the cops who frequented the bar. She said Margie flirted with all of them because they were good tippers.
I believe one of them is also a killer.
Ronnie is upset.
“So Detective Gray lied to us,” she says.
“Everybody lies,” I say.
Even me.
For me, it’s survival. For Larry, it’s for personal gain. He doesn’t want his affair to be known. He didn’t want us to talk to Missy Johnson. I’m not concerned with his lying. I’m wondering if he messed with the DNA. Was he having an affair with Margie? Who better to mess the case up than the detective working it? He had access to all the evidence, records, and reports, and he knew who was interested and if the case had any chance of being solved. He’d tried to dissuade me from the get-go.
He said the symbol found at the scenes meant nothing. And why was he with the sheriff this morning? He and Tony hadn’t talked for years. Didn’t even like each other. Was he there gathering intel? Plus he offered to come with me this morning. Was it to make sure I didn’t find Missy? And he claimed Margie hadn’t worked at the bar for many years and said she worked the streets as a hooker. Missy Johnson said Margie worked the bar right up to her death. She didn’t know anything about Margie being a prostitute.
I feel slightly queasy, and it has nothing to do with lunch at Wendy’s. If Larry turns out to be the killer, how will I tell the sheriff? And even if it wasn’t Larry, this is a scandal that will stain everyone.
I have to tell the sheriff.
I start the car and head back to Port Townsend to Doc’s Marina Grill, where Dina worked. She’d given up a baby for adoption before she was murdered. But she’d done it through the hospital. There was no financial gain on her part. And there was no father listed. Did she know who the father was? Was she also seeing a cop? Was Doc’s a cop hangout like the Alibi?
“Megan?” Ronnie asks.
I’ve been deep in thought, driving on autopilot. I look at her.
“Do you think it’s a cop?”
Yes, I think.
“I’m not convinced yet,” I tell her. “But I guess it’s possible.”
“When we go through the hospital video, we need to keep that in mind.”
She’s right. We’ll do it tonight. I told Clay we were doing that at Ronnie’s place. He offered to come over and help. I add paranoia to the queasy feeling roiling inside me.
“Roy was sweet on Margie. You don’t think…”
I keep my eyes on the road.
“Everyone is a suspect until they aren’t,” I say. “We’ll keep everyone in mind for now. Okay?”
Captain Marvel is a suspect now. He knew Margie Benton, possibly intimately, and never offered that information to me. He found the bodies but maybe
he had dumped them as well. If he was the killer, he covered his tracks nicely. He was at every crime scene, but his Marine Patrol duties could account for that.
And then there is Clay and his boy buddy, Jimmy from Little Italy. I can imagine Jimmy as Clay’s murder sidekick. Jimmy is always clowning while Clay is more serious. Jimmy was flirty when we first met, but it was playful. Then there was the way that those two looked at each other. The way they were together. All of the victims had been raped. Those two just didn’t fit. And Clay was helpful only because I had asked for his help. He didn’t inject himself into my investigation.
“What do you think about the symbols at the scene and the way the bodies are being posed?” I ask Ronnie.
“Distraction,” she says right away. “Or maybe it has some psychological meaning to the killer like we talked about. I read that serial killers have a signature. That might be what’s going on with this guy. And there is no jewelry on the bodies. We know that Leann was getting dressed to go out. Can you imagine going on an important date and not wearing a necklace or something?”
Actually, I can imagine it. I barely put on makeup when I had my date with Dan.
We’re in Port Townsend. I turn down the street and head for Doc’s Marina Grill on Hudson Street. The street is lined with campers and motor homes and picnic benches. The view of the bay is spectacular. I’ve eaten at Doc’s a few times and the benches remind me of times when I took Hayden down to the bay and we sat on a bench like these, watching a seagull fight with a smaller shorebird over a French fry.
My heart aches for my little brother. I wonder how he is. If he ever thinks about me.
“They look busy,” Ronnie says as I see a truck pulling away from the curb. I take the spot.
“Clay has the names of Dina’s manager and the owner in the file,” I say.
Ronnie already has the names written down, of course.
“We’re going to just do like we did in Port Angeles. Let someone come to us and see if they recognize a picture.”