Envy ec-1

by Gregg Olsen

  Sandra pushed the laptop aside, took a big gulp from her drink, and began to cry. Hard. A veritable river of tears. She rested her puffy, red face in her hands and let out a guttural scream. At that moment, she realized that she was, now and forever, alone. She dropped her hands, which were clenched hard against the comforter.

  “Katie! Why did you do this? Why?”

  Of course there was no answer, and as drunk as she was, Sandra Berkley knew there couldn’t be one. As she picked up her glass for the last swallow, something caught her attention. It was on the floor, next to the bed. For a second, Sandra thought it was the handle of a toothbrush.

  No, maybe a digital thermometer.

  She dried her eyes on the sleeve of her blouse and extended her arm to reach it.

  Her heart started to race faster.

  What was that doing in Katelyn’s room?

  She held it close to her blurry eyes to make sure she was seeing correctly.

  And she was.

  It was a pregnancy test wand. Sandra couldn’t believe her eyes. Maybe it wasn’t a freak accident after all? Had Katelyn killed herself because she was pregnant? Sandra was reeling by then. She wondered why her daughter hadn’t come to her, hadn’t asked her for help. She clutched the wand like she could choke it away in her fingers. It was so unreal. So unexpected. So very, very shocking. She didn’t even know Katelyn was having sex.

  She was only fifteen! What is the matter with these kids today? Can’t they wait to have sex until they get their driver’s license and can go somewhere? Like what Harper and I did when we were sixteen?

  chapter 31

  HAYLEY RYAN AND COLTON JAMES WERE IN HIS BEDROOM—with the door open—as the teenager with a mass of dark hair proudly demonstrated an app that he’d finished programming the night before. Although Colton had been up all night, his energy level was completely unfettered. The app might not be a million-dollar idea, but it was definitely a viable one. He was hoping to make enough to buy a new car. Maybe he could convince his mom that the car she never drove could be traded in too. He was thinking big, and Hayley was suitably impressed.

  “It is a simple idea,” he said, “using existing police-scanner information that’s already out there on the Net. I had to link up with a bunch of guys with servers in their basements. That was kind of tough, but I managed. I think they think I’m a lot older than I am.”

  Hayley sat on a stool next to Colton’s ginormous computer screen. She inched herself a little closer than necessary to see, but that was only so she could be close to him. He smelled delicious. Like Colton.

  “How does it work?” she asked, brushing a stray blond lock from her forehead as she leaned a smidgen closer—close enough to brush against him a little. Sure they were dating, but nothing other than a once-a-week make-out session had transpired between the pair. She wanted to go further—not as far as they could go—but it just didn’t seem like they were there yet. She liked everything about Colton, but she wasn’t convinced she was in love with him.

  Hayley wasn’t sure what that kind of love really felt like. She tried to dissect it in the analytical way that she did with a lot of things. She tried to measure her feelings for Colton against the feelings she had for her mother, father, and sister. Of course, those feelings weren’t the same kind of love, and she accepted that she’d know when the time was right and if the feelings she had were of the depth needed for the most intimate experience she could imagine. She’d dreamed about it more than once, especially after they’d kissed the first time behind the twin 50,000-gallon water towers on the edge of Port Gamble’s business district. She could still feel his lips on her from that encounter. All other kisses would be measured by the first one. She was glad Colton had been the boy of her dreams.

  Colton flashed a big, white smile. “Users select the location that they want to keep tabs on. It allows them to listen in as the police, fire, and other emergency responders chat in a monotone about people and their messed-up lives. I’m not kidding about messed up. Seriously messed up.”

  Hayley was interested. “Like what?”

  “Like a guy was in trouble because his wife or girlfriend kicked him out of the house with nothing but his cell phone.”

  “So what’s the big deal?” she asked.

  “I mean nothing,” he said, laughing. “Dude was butt naked.”

  Hayley laughed too. “Okay, that is messed up.”

  Colton’s mom, Shania, appeared in the doorway. She was a pretty woman with dark hair like her son and the S’Klallam Indian lineage that she could trace back to the days before Port Gamble was known as Memalucet. Though she seldom left the house, she never failed to dress up for the day as if she was going to the office or even a casual lunch out. Her clothes were almost all in earth tones. The only concession to glitz was the entwined ropes of liquid silver that wrapped around her neck. Colton confided to Hayley it was to hide a jagged scar, something his mom never, ever talked about.

  “Colton?” she asked, her dark eyes heavy with concern. “Katelyn’s mom is here. She wants to talk to you.”

  Hayley’s mind stumbled a little on what Shania James just said. It was true that Sandra Berkley was Katelyn’s mom, but, she wondered, if there was no daughter anymore, was she still a mom?

  Colton and Hayley followed his mother down the hallway.

  Shania lasered her eyes on her son and in mime-fashion mouthed the words: “She’s been drinking.”

  Duh.

  Sandra was a disheveled mess plunked down on the sofa in the front room. Her hair needed brushing, maybe even washing. She wore skinny jeans and a black cardigan sweater. On her feet were slippers, not shoes.

  Yet it was what was sitting in her lap, gripped tightly by her chewedto-the-nub fingertips, that commanded Hayley’s full attention.

  Katelyn’s laptop.

  “Hi, Mrs. Berkley,” Colton said.

  “Hi,” Hayley echoed.

  Sandra glanced up at the teenagers, then back down at the laptop. She locked eyes with Hayley briefly.

  Hayley recalled the incident in Katelyn’s bedroom. She felt uneasy.

  “Hayley?” Sandra asked, never sure which girl it was and in that moment not really caring. “Colton. I’m sorry, Colton,” she said, her voice soft and a little unsteady. “I know this will sound stupid.”

  The teakettle whistled from the kitchen.

  Shania looked at Sandra with the compassionate eyes of someone who’d seen her own share of pain.

  “Sugar and milk, if I remember?” Shania asked, turning to leave her son and his girlfriend alone with the mess of a woman who’d come calling.

  “Yes,” Sandra said, managing something of a smile.

  That Shania recalled how Sandra liked her tea was a reminder of how they’d been close once, when their children were babies, and before the incident at the Safeway.

  Shania left the room and Sandra held up the laptop.

  “Colton, I want to know what’s inside this thing,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, though he knew the answer. Her daughter was dead and she wanted to know more about the child that she’d lost. Most parents would probably do the same thing.

  “I don’t think I could do that,” he said. “It seems kind of private.”

  “I don’t want you to read what’s in her laptop. I want to do that. I want to know everything I can, but I don’t …” She trailed off, trying her best not to cry.

  Her obvious pain made Colton feel uncomfortable. He hated seeing anyone cry, especially another kid’s mom.

  “You need the password, right?”

  Sandra nodded. “That’s right.”

  “You want me to hack it?” Colton said. “Seems kind of wrong to me.”

  “What’s wrong is that Katelyn’s dead,” she said.

  Shania returned with a couple of teacups on a tray. The smell of chai perfumed the air.

  “You two want anything?”

  “No, thanks, Mrs. James,” Hayley
said. “I’m heading home now.”

  Colton took the laptop and followed Hayley to the back door, as she slipped on her jacket and they went outside. Though he was barefoot and wore only jeans and a Green Day T-shirt, he didn’t seem to mind the chill. Hayley pulled her zipper up to her neck, bracing herself for the onslaught of the cold winter air.

  “Okay,” he said. “That was weird.”

  “Yeah, she looks terrible.”

  “I’m not really a hacker, you know that, right? People think because I’m playing with my computer all night that I could crack the Da Vinci Code.”

  “You’ll figure it out,” she said.

  “I guess I can try.”

  A large flock of Canada geese flew overhead, honking as they headed away from Port Gamble. Hayley wondered for only a second if Katelyn was somewhere up there too, watching, hoping, urging someone to tell her story.

  Hayley looked around before planting a kiss on Colton’s cheek.

  “I have faith in you,” she said.

  “Nothing like a little pressure.”

  She waved at him and walked across the now snow-crunchy yard between their houses. Hayley knew Katelyn’s password, but to say so would be too hard to explain to the boy she really, really liked.

  No one, certainly no teenager, was normal or felt they were. Everyone wore a kind of mask that kept people from really seeing what—or who—was inside. Katelyn did. Starla did. And as she walked to her own back porch, Hayley Ryan knew that she and her sister kept things secret too. She didn’t grasp all that they were or what they could do. She knew that even people she cared about—her father, her mother, Colton James—probably never could comprehend it.

  After all, it happened to her and her sister, and they couldn’t understand it.

  chapter 32

  COLTON JAMES’S BEDROOM was one of three in house number 17, a light-yellow one-story with a low roofline that might have had one of the best views of the bay in Port Gamble, but otherwise was not so special. The house wasn’t even really that old, having been barged over by the lumber company from Port Ludlow in the 1920s. His parents had the largest room, the one closest to the only full bathroom in the house. The other bedroom was used by his mom as an office. It had floorto-ceiling shelving overloaded with catalogs that she’d collected in the years before the Internet became her lifeline to the outside world. Shania James, not surprisingly, did most of her shopping via catalogs. The UPS man and the FedEx lady had made so many trips to the Jameses’ house that both had been to Colton’s birthday parties, family barbecues, and other gatherings.

  If one hadn’t noticed that Shania James stayed in the house ninetynine percent of the time, they’d never have thought there was anything strange about her.

  Colton’s own room was organized chaos. His often-away fisherman father had installed Peg-Board above the teenager’s desk. Wires were coiled on hooks, and jars of teeny, tiny computer components hung above the workspace. Colton seldom used those things anymore; they were left over from the days when he built his own computers.

  That was then. Now he was all about apps. While he was sure that Steve Jobs would bring him on to Apple one day—any day—he focused on coding, design work, and learning the business of being an entrepreneur at age fifteen.

  To see him hunched over his computer at night, Coke can at the ready, Cheese Nips open and available for serial consumption, was to witness a boy’s true intensity. Code was beautiful to Colton. It was elegant. It was nearly a living, breathing thing.

  And yet, Colton James was no geek. He was fit, handsome, and could actually talk to adults while looking into their eyes. None of that “are you talking to me or the floor?” for Colton.

  Colton’s screen saver was a picture of him and Hayley that Taylor took on her phone when the three of them were out on his father’s boat, the Wanderlust. The quality wasn’t the best, but the look in Hayley’s eyes was priceless to him. It was, he was sure, the look of a girl who really got him.

  He scooted his keyboard aside and set Katelyn’s laptop on the desk. He was plugging in the power cord when his phone buzzed.

  HAYLEY: BREAK THE DA VINCI CODE YET?

  COLTON: JUST STARTED. GIVE ME 10 SECS.

  HAYLEY:

  Katelyn’s laptop whirred on and Colton put on some music while he waited for the log on window to pop open. Colton didn’t like the idea of cracking Katelyn’s password so her mother could do some postmortem eavesdropping on her life. Yet, he’d seen the tears in Sandra’s eyes, the longing she had for what was never coming back, and he knew he had no choice. Password cracking was never really that easy. He knew a kid in school who used jailbreak software to crack his mother’s password so he could get into the system and disable the Net Nanny tool that he’d found so humiliating.

  “I’m not doing anything that bad,” the kid had said. “Looking at porn is normal. It isn’t like I’m paying for it on their credit card. It’s free. They’re like porn Nazis.”

  Colton thought about the last time he’d seen Katelyn. It was in the school cafeteria. She was sitting alone, looking over at the group of Buccaneers cheerleaders and the second-string players who couldn’t manage a ride off campus. Starla was there, the center of it all.

  “Hey,” he had said to Katelyn on his way to the trash can.

  She nodded.

  “You got plans for the holidays?” he asked.

  When he played back the conversation he knew that it was a lame attempt to engage someone he no longer really knew.

  “Grandparents are coming over. Nothing great. You?”

  “We’re going out of town to spend some time with my dad’s family in Portland.”

  “That’s nice,” she said. “Your mom going too?”

  “Yeah. She’s pretty freaked about it, but my dad’s got a plan.”

  Katelyn smiled. “I like your mom.”

  Colton appreciated Katelyn just then. He could tell that something was troubling her, but no matter what it was, she still had it within her to be kind to someone.

  Hayley texted again.

  HAYLEY: TRY TEAM EDWARD. JUST A WILD GUESS.

  COLTON: LKE TWILITE?

  HAYLEY: LOL. YET. MINE WZ TEAM JACOB. DON’T TELL ANY1!

  COLTON: ABOUT TEAM EDWARD?

  HAYLEY: ABOUT ME & TWILIGHT. THAT WZ A LONG TIME AGO.

  HAYLEY LOOKED UP FROM HER PHONE and faced her sister.

  “I don’t like lying to Colton,” she said. “Not at all.”

  Taylor nodded. “I know.”

  The two of them sat on the floor in Taylor’s room, obsessing about Katelyn and what her mother had wanted to find on her laptop. Both girls knew the password as if it were their own. Somehow, when they touched the laptop, the password had imprinted on their minds.

  “I just didn’t want him to struggle too much,” Hayley said. “Sure, he likes a challenge and he can do anything when it comes to computers. But, you know, we can help out, so why not?”

  Taylor got up to fish a sweater from her bottom drawer. The walls of her bedroom leaked cold air like a crab pot leaked water, and she was freezing.

  “Agreed,” she said, pulling out a gray oversize sweater with pilled, stretched-out sleeves and a couple of missing buttons. It was a favorite cast-off of her dad’s that she could never part with. “Totally.”

  “Your sweater needs a shave,” Hayley said.

  Taylor shrugged, and then put on a wicked grin, teasingly, of course. “I was thinking the same thing about your nasty legs,” she said.

  COLTON TYPED IN THE SUGGESTED PASSWORD and … nothing. He thought for a moment and figured that if TEAM EDWARD was Katelyn’s password, she probably would have used a numeric sequence to make it less obvious.

  That was easy to guess too. He typed in TEAMEDWARD23, the number for the Berkleys’ house. He’d used his own house number tagged on the end of plenty of passwords over the years. It was always easy to remember.

  The computer rumbled softly and the screen opened wid
e, baring all of Katelyn’s secrets.

  Got it, he thought.

  No illicit software had been needed after all, and that made Colton feel a little better about what he’d been asked to do. It was one thing to password-crack a dead friend’s computer; another to enlist a skanky Internet tool to do the deed. It seemed cleaner somehow to do it with a guess-and-go technique. Less criminal. Hayley had given him more than half of what he needed and that brought a smile to his face.

  COLTON: SUCCESS. NOW WOT?

  HAYLEY: COPY HER HARD DRIVE. EVERYTHING. I’LL EXPLAIN L8R.

  COLTON: ???

  HAYLEY: KATELYN WZ IN TROUBLE. SHE’S DEAD BECAUSE OF IT.

  COLTON: WTF?

  HAYLEY: EXPLAIN L8R. PROMISE.

  chapter 33

  BIRDY WATERMAN, KITSAP COUNTY’S FORENSIC pathologist, had burned her tongue on coffee that she’d microwaved a minute too long. She looked out of the window of the green vinyl-floored kitchen on the main floor of the coroner’s office. The old house, which had been converted to the county morgue, probably had an impressive view of the Olympic Mountains to the west. Trees and the Kitsap County Courthouse now stood in the way. She was swishing cold water in her mouth when her annoying assistant Terry Morris told her that a woman was there to see her.

  “She’s in a bad way,” he said, sculpting his short faux hawk. “Wants to talk.”

  Dr. Waterman swallowed the water and pushed her disposable cup into the swinging lid of the kitchen garbage can. Without another word from Terry, she knew that it was the mother of a victim. Mothers can never let go. Fathers were different. Not all of them, of course, but most accepted scientific findings for what they were—clinical facts. Moms didn’t.

  Dr. Waterman didn’t recognize the woman.

  “I’m Birdy Waterman. Can I help you?” she asked.

  Sandra Berkley was as she had been in the Jameses’ living room—a disaster. Her hair, disheveled. Her makeup, scrawled on, not applied carefully. She was thin where she should have had some fullness to her face. She was puffy where the contours should have been more sculpted. It was the face of a mother who’d lost her baby.