by Gregg Olsen
“Holy crap,” Hayley said. “What’s she talking about?”
Taylor shook her head. “Dunno, but let’s ask Dad.”
As they went downstairs, they could hear their mother and father talking by the kitchen sink in slightly hushed tones. Valerie had just gotten home from filling up the car. She hadn’t even removed her coat. Her face was ashen, her eyes pinched together in worry. Kevin, who had his back to his girls, noticed Valerie’s eyes track the twins as they entered the room.
“Hi, girls,” he said, turning to face them. He wasn’t a very good actor, but he tried valiantly just then. He put on a smile. “Great dinner tonight. Mom and I were just talking about how you both are giving her a run for her money when it comes being Top Chef around here.”
Taylor held up the e-mail. “That’s not what you’re talking about, Dad,” she said.
He looked at the paper. “Where did you get that?”
“She picked it up from the printer by mistake,” Hayley said.
Taylor spoke up. “Mom, Dad, what is this woman …” She looked down at the paper. “What is Savannah Osteen talking about?”
Kevin took the paper and pretended to give it a cursory read. Its contents were already burned into his memory. If a radio game show host called just then and asked for a word-for-word recounting of the “worst letter you’ve ever received” for a $10,000 prize, Kevin would be able to start spending the cash right then.
Instead, he lied.
“I don’t know,” he began, clearly struggling before gaining some steam. “Nothing. She’s a nut. I get letters like this every day from people who want to marry me or want to kill me.”
Valerie studied Hayley and Taylor. It was clear that Kevin’s blame on a crazed fan was a complete failure.
“Girls, I think we should all sit down for a moment and talk,” she suggested.
Taylor glanced at their father, who was still muttering about the crazed fan. “I agree, Mom. Let’s talk.”
Hayley joined her sister and peered at their father, who now looked embarrassed and a little irritated.
Valerie led them to the old pine kitchen table, finally peeling off her coat and setting it along with her purse and keys on an empty chair.
“I’ll go first,” she said, while Kevin, paper now folded discreetly in half, slid into a chair next to her. It was happening so fast, he wasn’t exactly sure what his wife was going to say.
Valerie began by reminding the girls of their short stint as subjects for the University of Washington study.
“We’ve mentioned that,” she said, “remember?”
The girls nodded.
“We were exceptional, right?” Taylor said.
“In every way, of course. Just like me,” Kevin said, meaning it, but also trying to lighten the mood in the kitchen a little. “And your mom, yes, let’s not forget her.” Ordinarily, he didn’t mind tension, because it was a great motivator—but not when it came to his family. His attempts to smooth things over fell completely flat.
Valerie went on to talk about the protocol for the study, how excited they’d been to have the university learn more about language development by studying the girls.
Hayley smiled a little. “We did say some crazy stuff, didn’t we?”
Taylor cut in. “Yeah, remember ‘levee split poop’?”
A look of recognition came over Hayley. “I’d forgotten that one. That was one of our classics.”
“So what’s with this Savannah?” Taylor asked, guiding the conversation back to the e-mail she’d accidently retrieved from the printer.
“I didn’t have my training back then,” Valerie went on, “but looking back now, I can clearly see that she had some serious emotional problems.”
“Very unstable,” Kevin added. “She just kind of fell apart on us. She was supposed to come back to do more follow-up sessions and she just vanished. Quit the program. The university. We never heard from her again.”
“As I recall, neither did the university,” Valerie said. “You made multiple calls there, didn’t you?”
Kevin nodded.
“What happened to her?” Taylor asked.
“Who knows? With the kind of work your mom and I do, we probably know better than any family around that the world is full of misfits, tortured souls, and the wholly unbalanced,” Kevin said.
“Why is she talking to Moira Windsor?” Hayley asked, knowing the answer.
Kevin looked away. “Moira’s writing an article and wants info on you two.”
Taylor spoke up. “So, what does that have to do with Savannah?”
Kevin looked at Valerie. She wasn’t answering, so he did. “You know that the ten-year anniversary is coming up,” he said. “We’ve talked about that.”
There was no need to say what anniversary. In the Ryan household there was always … IT.
VALERIE: I have a conference in Port Townsend Thursday and Friday … crossing that bridge only makes me think about IT.
TAYLOR: Tell me about how you and mom stayed by our sides at the hospital after IT happened.
HAYLEY: Even though I have no memory of IT, every time a short bus goes by I wonder about IT.
KEVIN: IT almost cost us everything.
“Someone at the Herald probably tipped off Moira about the anniversary and the tragedy of Katelyn’s death. Linking all of you together, though none of it is related whatsoever,” he said.
“Talk about someone trying to capitalize on a tragedy,” Taylor said, looking at her father. Despite the seriousness of the moment, it was a playful poke at her dad’s true crime writing.
“Thanks for that, Tay,” he said.
“What video is Savannah talking about?”
“She taped you girls,” Kevin said. “You know that. I asked the school for a copy after she quit, but they never got back to us.”
Valerie smiled as a happy memory crossed her mind. “Yes, we wanted it because we didn’t have the money for a video camera back then. It would have been nice to have. You girls were so tiny.”
Kevin suggested a slice of Dutch apple pie, like it was some worthy distraction from the conversation that was really going nowhere. Hayley got up to get the plates.
Taylor looked at her mother directly, without saying a word. She was playing the old chicken game, a stare-down, just to see what she could read in her mother’s eyes. Valerie turned away first.
Later that night, Hayley and Taylor talked through the outlet cover.
“I hate it when they lie to us,” Hayley said in a soft whisper.
Taylor rolled over to get closer to the outlet. “No kidding,” she said. “I felt like calling them on it.”
“Me too. We’re going to have check out Atlanta Osteen,” Hayley said, deliberately using an incorrect first name.
“Savannah,” Taylor said.
“Whatever,” Hayley went on. “I hate it when parents name their kids for the states the moms got pregnant in.”
“It’s a city.”
“Okay,” Hayley said. “I hate when parents name their kids after cities too. Geographic names are just plain dumb.”
“Remember how we had four Dakotas in fifth grade?”
“Good night, Taylor.”
And though they were joking a little, both girls felt very uneasy about what had transpired that evening—the e-mail, the discussion with their parents. There were things about their own lives that were foreign to them. Undeniably, there was some irony to all of that. On separate occasions, Colton and Beth had remarked about how open-minded their parents were. Hayley and Taylor knew there was an invisible wall there too.
Some things were hidden behind a curtain. But no more. Not if they had any say in it.
WHEN WORD GOT AROUND to everyone else in Port Gamble (thanks, Beth!) that Jake Damon had been picked up in conjunction with the death of Katelyn Berkeley, tongues wagged in the way they do in small towns where everybody has an opinion about someone else’s business. Jake had few fans to begin with. Most
people were sure he was nothing but a male gold digger, though with Mindee Larsen, he was surely digging in a depleted mine. Although she never told anyone, her husband, Adam, had disappeared with more than the remnants of a fraying marriage. He’d taken more than $100,000, which had been her inheritance from a distant and very, very rich uncle.
Sandra Berkley went up to Katelyn’s bed, where she’d been sleeping for the past three days, and called her husband to let him know that Jake had been arrested. Harper was staying in a Kingston motel, saying he needed some space to sort things out.
“Are they saying he killed our daughter?” he asked.
“No. They really won’t say why, only that he’s been arrested. I’m not sure.”
“Should we go down there?”
“No, the police say not to. They say they are working on things and the gossip around town is way out of hand.”
“I hated that guy.”
“I know.”
“I miss you,” he said.
“I miss our daughter,” she said.
Sandra hung up and thought about what Dr. Waterman had disclosed. AB blood? That was not the most common of blood types. She knew someone who had that type.
Starla Larsen did.
Sandra remembered how Katelyn once remarked on it when she and Starla had typed their blood in middle-school biology. They were cleaning the grills in the restaurant and Katelyn had wanted to talk about Starla.
“No one else in our class had AB, Mom. Only she did. Doesn’t it figure?”
Sandra wasn’t sure what her daughter was getting at. “How so?” she asked.
“She’s so special, Mom. Everything about her.”
chapter 43
HIS HAIR SLICKED BACK WITH A SHELLACKING of hair gel, Jake Damon sat on a concrete cot in one of two holding cells set up in the back of the Port Gamble Police Department. For a man arrested on charges that he’d had an outstanding DUI—a man who was likely the stalker of a teenage girl—he was remarkably composed.
“You need anything?” Chief Annie Garnett, a S’Klallam tribe member, asked.
“Just an apology,” Jake said.
“I was thinking about a candy bar or something,” she said.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” he said. “You’ll see.”
“You have a history, and we have the IP addy tying you to the e-mails and chats sent to Katelyn,” Annie said.
“IP addy? I don’t know a thing about that. What history?”
“Bellevue,” Annie said. “We’re getting the personnel papers about your dismissal.”
Jake blew up, his neck veins popping like roots under blacktop. “That? You think that’s some big deal that got me canned?”
“It involved an inappropriate relationship with a student, Jake.”
Jake regained his composure a little and shook his head. “Boy, are you going to look stupid.”
Annie had heard that before. So far she’d never looked stupid.
“We’ll see about that,” she said.
Jake stepped up to the bars of the holding cell. “No, you will. The ‘inappropriate relationship with a student’ that got me fired was because I gave money to the kid and his mother. Their house burned down. They had nothing. I wrote ’em a few checks. It was against district policy because I didn’t go through channels. That’s why they fired me.”
“I’ll need to verify that,” Annie said, turning away.
“You’d just better,” he called out.
Annie stopped and did an about-face. “Okay, if it wasn’t you, then who was tormenting the girl next door?”
Jake looked in her eyes and shook his head. “I have no idea,” he said. “Your information is crap.”
EVEN THOUGH SHE WAS WEARING A SILVER MINI and her go-to strappy heels, Mindee Larsen couldn’t turn a single head with her good looks as she arrived at the Port Gamble Police Department. Forget that it was the dead of winter and such a getup was so, so wrong. But the truth of the matter was, no one was looking at Mindee because she was hot, pretty, or anything like that at all. They watched her every move because she was the girlfriend of the man in the holding cell, an Internet stalker who’d pushed fifteen-year-old Katelyn Berkley to the brink, and then coldly shoved her over its cruel edge.
Chief Garnett led Mindee to her office. It was a comfortable space, as police chief offices go. The walls were decorated with citations and S’Klallam tribal artwork. Behind her was a bookcase full of case files—perfectly ordered and complete. Most crimes in Port Gamble were property crimes, and those were usually solved in short order.
Annie knew Mindee quite well, at least on a professional basis. It was Mindee who did the chief’s hair—color and cut. From the very beginning, the chief had liked Mindee. She liked her over-the-top sense of style. She didn’t consider herself a Native American version of RuPaul, but if Annie had the body for a silver mini she’d be shopping at Forever 21 instead of Lane Bryant at the mall.
If only.
“Annie, just so you know, Jake could not have done this,” Mindee said, planting herself in a visitor’s chair across from the chief.
The chief offered her some coffee, but Mindee declined.
“I just bleached my teeth and they’re still a little porous,” she said. “I know you care for Jake,” Annie said. Coming from any other cop, the words might have felt condescending. Not Annie Garnett. With all that she’d been through to get where she was, Annie never forgot what it felt like to be on the sad side of things.
Mindee nodded and searched her purse for a tissue.
Just in case.
“I love Jake, yes, I do,” she said. “After Adam left me … I don’t know what I would have done without him in my life.”
“Understood,” Annie said, her slightly deep voice resonating a kind of calmness that was needed right then. On occasion, Mindee could be a bit of a train wreck and she needed to be handled with some care. “You know why he’s here. And since you’ve come in, I’d like to ask you some questions, all right?”
“He didn’t do anything,” she said quickly and decisively.
A deputy passed the open doorway. When she caught him looking at her exposed thigh, Mindee brightened a beat. Finally someone noticed how sexy she was. What more did she have to do get any attention around Port Gamble?
“How does he get along with your kids?”
“Fine. He gets along with them just fine. Okay, maybe they have some issues. But nothing out of the norm.”
“What kind of issues?” Annie asked, her voice soft but unmistakably authoritative.
Mindee crossed her legs and pushed the balled-up tissue to the edge of Chief Garnett’s desk. The hairstylist was signaling that she was moving on and the conversation wasn’t going to last much longer.
“Just issues,” she said. “You know … the kind any kids have when a new man comes into their mother’s life. He didn’t try to be Adam. But as far as Starla and Teagan could tell, he was a replacement for him. Which he wasn’t.”
“All right. Did you ever see him do anything inappropriate?”
The word inappropriate hung in the air. It was the word law enforcement used instead of the more, well, appropriate word sleazy.
“You mean around me?” she asked.
“Yes, but also around your kids, around Katelyn?”
Mindee shook her head adamantly. “Never!”
The next question was the ringer in its directness, and Annie Garnett knew it. It was the kind of question that one never wanted to ask a friend—or even a hairstylist, for that matter.
“Did Jake touch the kids?” she asked, her eyes fixed on Mindee’s.
The words hurt, and it was clear on Mindee’s face. It was like she stopped breathing for a moment.
“You’re offending me now, Annie. I don’t like your tone or what your question implies.”
Annie knew that. “Sorry,” she said. “I have to ask. It’s my job.”
Mindee went for her purse and her keys. “No,”
she said, quite convincingly. “He absolutely did not.”
“Mindee, we have evidence that suggests Jake was stalking Katelyn.”
She turned to leave but thought better of it. “What evidence?” she asked.
Chief Garnett got up and faced her, weighing every movement, every single tic.
“E-mails,” she said.
Mindee didn’t like being backed into a corner, but she didn’t blink.
“What e-mails?” she asked.
Again, there was a flat expression on Annie’s face as she said, “Sent to Katelyn.”
“Why are you being so vague here? I’ve cut your hair for years.”
“Fine,” Annie said. “E-mails that originated from your house.”
Even under her carefully applied dusting of Bare Minerals powder, it was easy to see that the blood quickly drained from Mindee’s face.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m leaving now. I’m going to have my lawyer get Jake out. He’s a good man. He’s no stalker!”
With that, Mindee turned on those strappy heels and left the police department. It was a good thing that it was after work. If it had been in the middle of the day, the woman sitting in the number-two chair at the Shear Elegance salon might actually have gotten those scissors shoved deep into her eardrum.
Mindee Larsen was fit to be tied—and not in a good way.
chapter 44
MINDEE BRACED HER HEAD against the steering wheel of her car outside her house. Her world was unraveling. She remembered how the Katelyn mess had started, and she wished—no, prayed—she could go back in time to undo things. She’d been drinking that evening, and while she knew that was no excuse, it was the only one she had. She grabbed the steering wheel and let out a quiet scream.
That day. That moment of truth. If only …
Starla was hovering over her mother as she had pushed the SEND button.
A little tipsy, Mindee had leaned back and sipped her wine, her glass just about empty.
“Who are you going to get to meet her in Seattle?”
Mindee looked over at Starla, the vision of what she’d been meant to be when she was growing up in a modest South Seattle neighborhood—before she got pregnant by Adam and was forced to drop out of college. Mindee hadn’t always dreamed of cutting hair. In fact, her dreams, both day and night, had always been of other women fussing over her.