by Gregg Olsen
Like they do and will always do for Starla.
“No one,” Mindee said, tilting her empty glass to indicate that Starla had better fill it. “That would be too over the top.”
Starla shook her head and took the glass. “Like this isn’t?”
“We want to teach her a lesson, don’t we?”
“Yeah, but what lesson is she going to learn from going to Seattle and finding that her fake boyfriend doesn’t exist?”
“The best kind of lesson, Starla. The kind she won’t ever forget.”
As the memory replayed, Mindee steadied herself before getting out of her car and going inside.
This was, she was sure, the worst day ever.
She had no idea just how bad it really was.
STARLA CORNERED HER MOTHER in the kitchen. In doing so, she effectively blocked Mindee from the refrigerator and the wine that was beckoning the frazzled hairstylist from behind the shut door. Mindee wasn’t happy about that, but Starla didn’t care. They were in big trouble, and it seemed it was getting bigger all the time. Mindee had just returned from the police station, upset and shaky.
“Mom, we’ve got a colossal problem here, and I want to know how you’re going to fix things.”
Mindee tried to push her daughter away. “Me? How am I going to fix this? This whole thing is your fault. You wanted me to make Katelyn pay.”
Starla’s blue eyes were cold even when she was merely miffed. This time they shot out a stream of liquid nitrogen.
“You can’t be serious, Mom,” she said, standing her ground. “You know damn well that you came up with the idea to make her a fake boyfriend. And then you wrote that creepy note: ‘Watching you.’”
Mindee took another step, and there was barely room to do so. Refrigerator magnets and the bric-a-brac they held fell to the dingy floor.
“Do not use foul language with me,” she said.
Starla would not back down. It was as if someone had substituted lesser quality pom-poms and tried to trick her.
“Like, really? After all you’ve said and done, you’re going to blast me for my language? I’d laugh if I wasn’t so mad at you already!”
Mindee managed to wriggle away. “Exactly how would you have me fix this?” she asked, once more eyeing the fridge door.
The question was a fair one. What exactly could she do? Jake was in a holding cell for something he didn’t do. Katelyn had been very fragile. And it was true that she might be dead because of how they had e-mailed and taunted her over that stupid beer-and-cigarette photograph she handed over to the principal for revenge. What had seemed like only a pinprick of revenge had turned into one enormous gash.
“You know, Mom,” Starla said, looking for words that would hurt and resonate, “I used to think you were pretty and stupid; now I’m thinking you’re just pretty stupid.”
Mindee, however, remained stone-faced. Her daughter was at least a little bit right.
“I have to tell the truth. The whole truth,” she finally said, starting toward the door.
Starla stopped her mother. “The whole truth?” she asked. “Wait a sec. Not the whole truth.”
Mindee knew what Starla was getting at. Starla in a very real way was Mindee’s creation, the girl she wanted to be. The girl other girls dreamed of being. She’d put everything she had into Starla, and she wasn’t about to pull the plug on her ambitions.
“Not everything. Don’t worry. I’ll take the blame here. I’ll leave you out of it.”
“Even if you have to go to jail?” Starla asked in a manner that both suggested a possible outcome but also a kind of contract between the two. She’d seen her mother cheat her no-good boss, Nicola, out of tips a time or two. She’d seen how she’d once told Jake she was going to visit a sister in Tacoma—when the truth was that she had no sister in Tacoma but rather an old flame she sought to rekindle.
As Starla and Mindee gathered their things, Teagan appeared in the doorway. He was visibly upset by the conversation coming from the kitchen, the latest in many from which he was routinely excluded.
“I heard what you were talking about,” he said.
“Fine,” Starla said. “Then you’ll know what not to talk about. We’re going to the police. Mom screwed up big-time and she’s going to do what’s right. For once.”
Mindee hooked her purse on her arms. She looked weak, ready to crumble.
“Yeah, your sister is right,” she said.
Teagan stopped her. “But it isn’t right for you to take all the blame.”
“Let Mom handle it,” Starla said, trying to untangle mother and son. “You can come with us or you can stay here. You choose.”
Teagan put on his jacket, his gloves, and his hat.
The same things he had worn that night.
Teagan despised his family, but doing the right thing seemed like a step toward something better than the direction in which they’d all been going since his father abandoned them. He’d been unable to sleep, pay attention in class, or do anything whatsoever. He needed to come clean. He needed to save himself.
Because he couldn’t save Katelyn.
Teagan looked at his mother, his eyes welling with tears and the muscles in his throat so taut he could barely speak.
“Mom,” he said, “there’s something you should know.”
GOD KNEW WHERE HAYLEY WAS, though Taylor had no doubt who she was with. Colton, of course. It was always Colton. Her mom was in the master bedroom working on her least favorite task in the world—paying bills. Her father was in his office Skyping with a spiky redhead with a bird-beak nose who insisted she was the daughter of Richard “Night Stalker” Ramirez.
As if that were something worth telling the world about. Jeesh! Anything for fame.
Taylor poured herself a glass of water and sipped it at the kitchen table. A digital clock made to sound like an analog clock ticked away the seconds as she thought about Jake’s arrest, Katelyn’s death, and the reporter from the North Kitsap Herald who seemed to lurk around Port Gamble like a crime groupie.
She texted her sister and waited for a reply. Nothing. For the first time, she noticed a copy of her dad’s magazine called Justice; it was open to an article about weapons.
Taylor sipped her water, her eyes gliding over the glossy pages. She was just about to dismiss the rag, thinking Vogue was so much more interesting, when a headline leaped out at her:
All thoughts of haute couture dropped away, and a dark feeling swept over the fifteen-year-old. She could feel the hairs on the back of her neck begin to rise. There was something wrong about those words—something that wasn’t the least bit funny. The letters appeared to pulsate on the page.
Taylor shifted in the kitchen chair. Her heart rate started to accelerate. She could feel something happening, a feeling that drew her eyes to the article for further scrutiny.
Taylor finished her water and reached for a pen and the cube-shaped notepad next to the kitchen phone that only rang with robocalls around election time. No one ever called a house phone anymore.
GUNS: THE KEY TO JAIL
The words shifted and moved across the small square of paper. Taylor had experienced that before, but never with such velocity. The movement was so fast that it almost made her sick. It was as fast as a merry-go-round at nanospeed, a spinning bottle in Truth or Dare whirling in a blur, or the wheels of an overturned car spinning in a ditch.
The frenetic movement was probably necessary. So much was at stake.
The words that formed were unmistakable, and suddenly Taylor knew what happened to Katelyn.
She just knew.
Jake. He’s not guilty.
guns: the key to jail
Jumping from her chair, Taylor looked up at her mother who appeared while all that was happening on the square of paper.
“I thought you might find that article interesting,” Valerie said, her words oddly tentative. “I left it there for you.”
Taylor pushed herself from the table and headed
for the door.
“Thanks, Mom,” she gasped.
Valerie reached for Taylor’s shoulder, but missed.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Nowhere,” Taylor said, her eyes catching her mother’s briefly. “I don’t have time to talk. There’s something I need to do.”
SHE RAN AS FAST AS SHE COULD. Cold puffs came from her lips like a steam engine. Taylor Ryan wasn’t sure what she was going to say or what would greet her. But she had to get to the Larsens. The Larsens’ car disappeared down the dimly lit street just as Taylor reached house number 21.
A voice came from behind her: “What just happened here?”
Taylor spun around. It was Hayley and Colton.
“Where were you?” Taylor asked, eyeing her sister warily. “I texted you four times today.”
Hayley pulled her coat closer and fanned out her scarf. “Studying,” she replied.
Taylor resisted the urge to roll her eyes just then. “Whatever,” she said. “The Larsens have gone to the police station. I just missed them.”
Colton shifted on his feet, taking a slight step away from Hayley. It was as if he were trying to show that whatever their relationship was, they were not one of those joined-at-the-hip couples who clung together like handbills tacked on telephone poles. A little space between them was just fine.
“Jake’s going down, big time,” he said.
“I’m not so sure about that,” Taylor said.
Hayley studied her sister right then. She telegraphed something, and if Taylor had wanted to, she probably could have grabbed the feeling. Instead, she started walking.
“I know Jake is a creep, but I don’t think he did this,” Taylor said.
“Did what, specifically?” Colton stopped, and the girls did the same. On the sidewalk in front of the Timberline, they huddled, acutely aware they’d just passed Katelyn’s house.
“Killed Katelyn,” Taylor said, her voice almost a whisper. “He didn’t do it.”
The disclosure had Colton’s interest. He cocked his head, and his dark eyes flickered as he asked, “And you know this because … ?”
Hayley looked on, but stayed silent.
“I just know it. I can’t say how, I mean,” Taylor replied, pausing to find the right words. She knew that, whatever her reasons, whatever the source of what she knew, he wouldn’t be able to understand. No one would.
“I just don’t think he did it.”
She could have said she was certain he didn’t do it, but certainty coming from the pages of a magazine seemed too lame to share—especially a magazine as dumb as Justice. Besides her dad, who reads that anyway?
chapter 45
UNDER THE WATCHFUL EYE of Annie Garnett and the stony faces of his mother and sister, Teagan Larsen slumped into a chair across from the Port Gamble police chief. The boy who wanted nothing more than to be the man of the house after his dad left suddenly dissolved into tears. If the thirteen-year-old had been on the cusp of adulthood a moment before, all of that was gone.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m really, really sorry.”
Mindee was crying too. She’d set all of this in motion, and the outcome had been devastating to everyone involved.
“Honey, this is my fault,” she said.
Starla didn’t say a word. She’d seen enough cop shows to know that every utterance she made could be used against her. Starla didn’t intend to go down with the ship. She, more than anyone, had something greater to lose.
My brother is a loser. My mother, a damned hairstylist. A secondchair stylist at that!
Chief Garnett patted Teagan on the shoulder, not so much to comfort him but to keep him focused on what he had to say.
“Teagan,” she said, “I need you to tell me what happened.”
Teagan looked up with flooded eyes. “It was an accident. I swear it was.”
“Do we need a lawyer?” Mindee asked. It was the first indication that she knew that whatever it was that had transpired in Katelyn’s room was potentially the subject of a criminal investigation. Apparently, it had slipped her mind that they were sitting in the office of the Port Gamble police chief.
“Up to you,” Annie said, somewhat coolly. “We can get to the truth either way. Teagan, what do you want to do?”
“I want to talk,” he said. “I want to tell Mr. and Mrs. Berkley that I’m really, really sorry. That what happened was my fault, but it was an accident.”
His word choice was interesting: an accident, but his fault.
Annie waited for Teagan to look up. There seemed to be no guile in the boy’s damp eyes just then. Whatever he was about to disclose was going to be the painful truth.
Every rotten detail.
“Then you need to tell us what happened, okay?” Annie asked.
Mindee spoke up again. Her eyes were puffy from her own tears. Her voice creaked a little with the emotion of the moment. She had so much to answer for right then, but now it was her son’s turn and she was worried.
“Are you absolutely sure he doesn’t need a lawyer?” she asked.
“If it was an accident, there’s no need for it,” Annie said.
Mindee turned to Teagan, who up to that moment had barely looked at his mother or sister. When he did, there was no doubt what he felt about either one of them. He’d been living his life alone in house number 21. Starla was caught up in the wonderland she’d created of her own life, and her mother had dragged Jake Damon into her bed. Everyone was so busy doing whatever it was they’d wanted to do to make themselves happy. Teagan had been left to his own devices.
He’d always liked Katelyn. A lot.
Teagan looked at the chief. “I used to think that maybe, you know, if we were both the same age we’d hook up. Be boyfriend and girlfriend.”
Teagan took a gulp of air.
“When I saw those notes Jake was writing to her—at least I thought it was Jake—it made me so mad. I mean, he already had my mom and then he was going to steal Katelyn away from me too. Forget that.”
“Steal her away?” Mindee said, now touching her son’s shoulder. “She wasn’t interested in you, Teagan.”
Teagan shot his mother a frosty look and removed her hand. “Mom, you don’t know anything about me or Katelyn or anyone. Not even your precious Starla.”
“Don’t drag me into this,” Starla said. Not surprisingly, the first words out of her mouth were meant to preserve her character in a very messy situation.
“Your pregnancy started the whole thing,” he said.
Mindee gasped.
Starla shook her head. “I’m not pregnant.”
Teagan shrugged; it was a dismissive gesture and it brought a smile to his face. It wasn’t often that Starla squirmed.
“Maybe you’re not now,” he said. “But you thought you were.”
Starla looked at her mother before glowering at Teagan.
“You’d better not be,” Mindee finally said.
“Oh, shut up, Mom,” Starla said. “I wasn’t pregnant. And I’m not pregnant.”
Annie steered the conversation away from the mini family feud.
“What about the pregnancy, Teagan? What did that have to do with anything?” she asked.
Teagan grinned a little more. In that, the worst moment of his life, he’d found something that brought a smile. “I found that gross pregnancy test kit in the trash. Mom makes me take out the garbage because I’m a boy, and the garbage is too nasty a job for a princess like Starla. Like she ever lifts a finger around the house anyway. And Jake? He never does anything but come over to hook up with my mom, so I guess he’s too beat to do anything.”
“Don’t talk about Jake like that,” Mindee said.
“Mom, do you ever hear yourself? You put Jake, Starla, anybody ahead of me,” Teagan said.
Mindee, heeding some of her own advice, kept her lips zipped.
Annie pushed a can of soda in front of Teagan and the boy took a sip.
“That’s in
teresting, Teagan, but what about the pregnancy test?” Annie asked. “What did Katelyn have to do with it? I thought you said you found it in Starla’s trash.”
“I did,” Teagan said. “I thought it was funny. I thought if I brought it over to Katelyn’s she and I could, I don’t know, get closer because we could share something nasty about Starla. I logged on to the account and read the e-mails and chats that Jake … I mean, my mom was doing. By the way, Mom, you’re really twisted to do that to her.”
Mindee’s face turned a deeper shade of red. It was a harsh statement and she’d deserved it.
“I know,” she said, stumbling over her monosyllables. “I went a little Mama Grizzly that night.”
She didn’t want to say she was a little drunk on boxed wine when she’d started the e-mailing. That would make her sound even more pathetic than she was.
“Go on, Teagan,” Annie prodded.
Teagan swallowed the rest of his drink and asked for another. His mom would never let him have two cans of pop at home, but this was the police station and she wasn’t in charge.
“My mom spent all her money for Christmas on Jake and Starla, and I was pissed off.”
Mindee unzipped her lips. “That’s not true! I got you several wonderful things.”
Apparently, it was difficult to keep them closed.
“Do you mind, Mindee?” Annie said, cutting her off once more. “This isn’t about how fair you are to your kids, but I suspect if you were fair in your attention to them none of us would be sitting here right now.”
“Yeah, Mom,” Teagan said, clearly enjoying the focus on his mother’s child-rearing expertise—or lack thereof.
“What happened next, Teagan?”
“I pretended to be Cullen Anthony and IM’d with Katelyn and told her I wanted to come see her. That I promised to come and I had a surprise Christmas present for her.”
“The pregnancy test kit?” Annie asked.
“Right. I didn’t tell her that because I didn’t want to ruin the surprise. She said her grandparents were going to leave early and I should come over at about nine. She’d leave the window unlocked. She told me how to climb up the trellis, which I already knew, because I had done it before. She didn’t know it. But I did. I guess that makes me sound like a perv, but I never spied on her. I only looked in her window when she was gone. You know, to see what she was reading or whatever so I could be a better boyfriend.”