by Gregg Olsen
“Hayley, you ask her,” Taylor said, pushing her sister into the room.
Hayley stepped forward and waited in silence for everyone to turn her way.
“Jett, my mom and dad want to know if you want to go Trick or Treating with us this year.”
A smile immediately eclipsed the sadness of her face. “Sounds like fun. Do I have to dress up?”
The girls laughed and looked at each other.
“You don't have to go to the doors,” Taylor interjected. “You just have to drive us around from neighborhood to neighborhood.”
“I see,” she said. “Sounds okay to me, but on one condition. I get every Baby Ruth you guys collect.”
“Fair enough,” Hayley said.
Val and I knew that Hayley hated anything with nuts in it. Taylor, however, was none too happy about the arrangement.
“How 'bout every box of Good 'n Plenty?” she suggested.
Jett looked serious. “Nope. Baby Ruths. Nothing else. You should be glad I don't want the Hershey bars and Butterfingers, too.”
Taylor put her hand out. “Deal.”
“Planning early,” I said, “just like their mother. Valerie shops for Christmas in August.”
“July,” Val corrected.
Jett ate dinner with us and kidded the girls that she was going to make sure they went to Renny Ann Quinn's house first.
“Maybe she's giving out something with raisins in it.”
“You're gross!” Hayley said, as milk threatened to come out her nose.
Jett laughed. We all did. We needed a little laughter around the house.
After Jett left, Valerie corned me at my Mac. I thought she was going to tell me to come to bed. At least I hoped that she was. Instead, I got a compliment. Sort of.
“Love You to Death is really good,” she said.
Her words were fine, of course, but there was something in the delivery that seemed flat, like an e-mail, devoid of true emotion.
“But what?”
“Since you ask, you need more about Jett. She's a better rooting interest than Raines, really. She's troubled. She has a sense of humor. She's young. What do her friends say about her? Her mom? Her sister?”
I took my hands off my keyboard and cradled my chin against my knuckles.
“She doesn't have any friends. I never talk about her to her sister or her mother, unless they bring her up, which they seldom do. I told her I wouldn't say much because she's afraid they'll think she's cashing in.”
“You need more about her, Kevin. When it comes to making this book stand out in the true crime market, she's the one to do it. She's the one.”
Val had good instincts, and I knew she was right. I had to learn more about all of these women. Deeper, below the surface. Connie, Jett, Janet. The mother/daughter connection was appealing to true crime readers, most of whom were women.
But even as I considered the Carter ladies and sifted through my Love You to Death notes and timelines, I couldn't help but think of another woman, another mother. June Parker and her grisly murder never faded from my thoughts. Just who killed her? And why? Finally, because it's all about publicity, anyway, was my stalker involved?
Chapter Thirty-three
Monday, September 23
It had been awhile since I'd felt compelled to Google anything on the internet. Googling had started to make me feel bad about myself, my life, even my potential stalker situation. I felt shame for feeling celebratory about having a stalker when I read several magazine articles (almost always titled with snips of the Police classic creep-along classic song, “Every Breath You Take”). Sure, there was some kind of ego boost in having a stalker, but some of the objects of idolatry ended up in the worst possible way.
Like dead. Famous. But still dead.
I shook the toner cartridge again—hoping Val wouldn't get all over me for not having a dark enough font that would indicate I hadn't heeded her advice about being professional—and printed out the latest chapter of Love You to Death.
I wrote on the faint first page: Will buy new toner cartridge tomorrow. Promise. —K
♦
Love You to Death
PART NINE
DANNY PARKER WAS LED DOWN the back corridor to the same interview room in which he had been questioned when first arrested. He wore bright orange coveralls and plastic sandals with dingy white socks, standard issue at Pierce County. On his back was silk-screened Property of CCJ. Danny's wrists were cuffed but his legs were not shackled. Jailers could not find the extenders that would allow leg clamps to fit humanely on the inmate's hefty ankles. Raines waived their use.
“Janet's been crying real hard,” the prisoner said as soon as he sat down. “Isn't she gonna get to go home to see Lindy soon?”
Raines shook his head. The young fat man was as dense as he was wide.
“Don't you get it? She's going down. You're going down. You both conspired to kill Cameron.”
Danny Parker's good eye was downcast. He fidgeted nervously in his seat and intermittently licked his lips. “That's what you say,” he finally muttered.
“Son, I want you to listen very carefully. We want to help you. We want you to help us. We know that you are...dyslexic and, you know...disadvantaged...we know that you were tricked.”
Danny's face brightened. “I was just gonna fight him. It was my idea. I wanted to.”
“Was it your idea to kill Paul Kerr, too?”
A worried look edged his soft, doughy features. “Paul's dead?”
Raines shook his head emphatically. “No. No. He's not dead. But we know that you were behind a plot to kill him, too. Deke Cameron's buddy from the veneer plant, Jim Winston, told us everything.”
His eyes went dull and Danny once more stared at the tabletop. Sweat surged from his temples and he reached up with his cuffed hands to brush the annoying wetness from his cheeks. He asked for something to drink. Nervousness had dried his lips to nearly cracking. Raines motioned the two-way mirror for the observing officer to retrieve a soda.
When the Sprite came, the prisoner spoke.
“I guess I can tell you what you want to know. See no harm in it. It wasn't Janet. It was her mother that was behind all that stuff with Kerr. And she had a good reason for it. Janet would never do anything like that. I swear she wouldn't. She wouldn't harm a spider.”
And as he told his story, Raines pondered the same question over and over: How dumb can these guys be?
-
CONNIE CARTER HAD NO BETTER LUCK in coming up with the money for a hit man. She was growing exceedingly desperate, even looking through her sofa cushions for spare change. She begged her boss at the bar for extra hours, but times were slow and he could barely afford to keep her on as it was. She even had a garage sale one Saturday afternoon.
Her white-blonde hair disheveled like a used Q-tip, Connie was a mess. Bitterness had consumed her. She hated the entire Kerr clan. She hated Deke for letting them down. Jim Winston was a loser. They all were. Nothing was going her way.
She was pacing on the floor of her living room when Janet and Danny returned from dinner at McDonalds.
“Shit. Shit. Shit,” Mrs. Carter said, her booze-soaked Dixie cup bouncing off the fireplace screen and rolling off the hearth. “We have got to do something. We have got to stop Paul from abusing Lindy.”
“How'd the garage sale go, Mom?” Janet asked.
“I got forty-three bucks and a sore back from sitting in a goddamn lawn chair while Timberlake's idiot-poor tried to get everything I put out for free. I priced the terracotta pots at a quarter apiece and one woman said she'd seen them at another sale for five for a dollar. Mine were too high. A nickel too high!”
Janet popped open a beer and handed it to Danny.
“I told Danny what was going on.”
Connie sighed. “As if he could do something to help us!”
Janet smiled warmly at Danny. She stood and put her arms around his thickset shoulders and buried her face into his che
st.
“As my future husband,” she cooed, “I think he's willing to help put our new family back together.”
Danny nodded like a spring-necked car toy in a rear window.
Connie poured another drink and held up her paper cup.
“Welcome to the family, Danny.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Carter,” he said, beaming.
“Please call me Mom.”
“Okay, Mom.”
Connie Carter put her feet up on her dusty coffee table and alternated her cigarette drags and sips from her cup. She smiled sweetly and spoke as she inhaled, holding in the smoke from her Camels as though she were smoking a joint.
“I'll tell you what I'll do,” she said, nodding at her eldest daughter. “If you pull this off, Danny Boy, I'll pay for your wedding in Las Vegas. I'll pay for everything, including champagne and the honeymoon suite.”
Janet jumped up and hugged her mother. “Oh, Mom, I knew that you would accept Danny. I just knew it.”
“Mrs.—” He snipped his words and corrected himself. “Mom, I will be a good father to Lindy. I will take good care of Janet.”
Connie nodded. “I know. Now, we've got a wedding to plan and a problem with the ex-husband to take care of, right?”
-
THE WORDS THAT CAME TO MARTIN RAINES'S mind would not be uttered by the detective. What a dumbshit. What a sucker. The scenario of hard-drinking Connie and her no-good daughter pulling the wool over the behemoth with an IQ of a slow-witted fourth-grader was more than appalling. It was heartrending. Raines also wondered about the fascination the Carter women had with Las Vegas. It was their glitzy dream. The end-all. Danny Parker was the third husband or potential husband to be pointed in the direction of a Las Vegas wedding. Before getting into what, if anything, Danny had done to try to kill Paul Kerr, Raines just had to ask something.
He slid a second Sprite across the table.
“Did it ever occur to you that Lindy might not be abused by Paul?”
Danny took a moment to collect his thoughts, then a look of satisfaction came over him. It was as if he had just come up with the cure for the common cold. He had the answer.
“Of course she was abused,” he said. “I saw the bloody panties, myself. With my own two eyes, I did. Janet had them in a Ziploc bag and kept them in the freezer. She said she was going to use 'em as evidence at her custody hearing.”
“But there are no records, Danny. There are no records of any kind of abuse of the Kerr girl.”
Danny looked vacant again.
“What do you mean? I heard Janet talking to you guys on the phone. She told you everything. I even dropped her off here when she had to give you the statement about the stuff he was doing to their daughter.”
Detective Raines threw his hands up in the air. He could not hide his escalating skepticism.
“Danny, no one here has any record of abuse on Lindy Kerr. No one. Janet never came here. She never called. Danny, think. Danny, don't you think it was odd that if a report was made that Paul Kerr would still have unsupervised visits with his daughter?”
“No,” he said flatly. “Janet and Connie told me that Lindy went to see doctors at Pac-O after every visit. You all were looking for more stuff, evidence, I guess. You just didn't do your job, that's all. You just couldn't find it after the first time.
Raines let out a big sigh of exasperation. “We would never let a child remain in a dangerous environment when there was physical evidence to back it up.”
“But the panties. Wouldn't they be evidence?” he asked.
Raines nodded reassuringly. The young man across the table was stupid and in love. In the annals of crime, there had never been a more dangerous combination. Raines urged Danny to continue with his story.
-
THE NIGHT AFTER THE CARTER WOMEN welcomed Danny into their family, the young couple drove out to Paul Kerr's house and parked the Escort hatchback off the road in the same spot Jim Winston had parked. They smoked and watched while Paul and Liz went inside after feeding their dogs.
“That bitch will never be a mom to Lindy,” Janet said.
Danny let his arm slide around Janet's shoulders. “Right. Never.”
“None of that,” she said, disentangling herself. “None of that until after we do the job...and after we're married.”
Danny was embarrassed. He had never had a girlfriend before. He had gone too far and he was sorry. He put his hand in his lap and told Janet that he was willing to wait.
“I've been kind of saving myself, too,” he said softly.
Janet turned away and watched the lights go out. “We need to sit tight and wait. Then you'll need to go inside and shoot Paul in bed.”
She drew a sketch of the mobile's layout. It had two bedrooms. Lindy's room was in the far back end by the bathroom, and the master was up front, off the kitchen.
“What about Liz?” he asked.
“Shoot her if you have to, but she's no threat to us. She hasn't adopted Lindy and she'd never get custody of her. If she gives you the slightest reason, I give you permission to waste her too—”
Janet stopped talking and reached over to Danny's hand. She parted her legs slightly and set his hand in her crotch.
“I want you so bad,” she said. “I can hardly wait to make love with you. I'm so horny.”
“Me, too,” he said.
Janet snapped her legs together like a clamshell and Danny yelped. “After we're married in Vegas,” she said. “We'll love each other. We'll have this special bond, knowing what we did for Lindy.”
Two hours passed. Janet slept while Danny watched the numbers change on his wristwatch. She told him to wake her at two a.m. Two a.m. was the magic hour. Two a.m. and he and Janet would be bound forever, headed toward the altar and the honeymoon suite. Maybe a heart-shaped bed. Two a.m. and he knew what he had to do. He nudged her and her eyes opened like they were spring-loaded.
“Now?” he asked.
Janet patted his knee, slowly swung the door open and pulled back the seat. The pistol's barrel gleamed in the creamy yellow light of a half moon. The gun had been her father's. It had a mother-of-pearl handle and, as gorgeous as it was, surely deadly. She pressed her lips against the handle, her long, stringy hair enveloping it, and kissed it almost salaciously so before handing it to Danny.
“This is for Lindy. And for us,” she said. “Now get 'er done.”
Danny lumbered up the road as quiet as his heavy frame would allow. Every snap of a stick or movement of gravel caused his heart to skip. The dogs were asleep in their kennel on the opposite side of the mobile. If they barked a little it would be all right. Dogs barked at raccoons all the time and residents that far out of Timberlake learned to sleep through the racket such encounters produced. Danny looked over his shoulder only once to see Janet, by then sitting in the driver's seat. She blew him a kiss and started the engine.
Paul and Liz Kerr were country people and as such they never locked their doors at night. Danny knew there would be no problem getting inside and finding the right bedroom. He hoped that in the darkness he wouldn't botch the job and kill Liz by mistake. He was there to kill Paul, set Lindy free from the bastard sex abuser, and cement the bond with his betrothed. Still, as ready as he thought he was, his heart rate escalated with each step toward the door.
As he crept onto the porch, a floodlight switched on and turned everything white. It was such a blast of light it almost made a noise.
The Kerrs had installed a motion-sensitive security light.
Danny nearly jumped out of his skin, discharging the pistol and turning to run back to the car. He fell on his face and scrambled for the gun as he got up to make it back. The dogs were howling and barking as if the place was being overrun with intruders. A light in the bedroom snapped on.
Janet stared stony-faced at Danny as he jumped into the running vehicle and they burned rubber to get away.
“The gun? Have you got it?”
“Yeah,” he said gaspi
ng for air.
“Did you shoot yourself? Are you all right? I swear I didn't know about that stupid light. It must be new.”
“I'm fine... I let Lindy down. I let you down.”
Janet was fuming. She held the steering wheel with all her strength. Her knuckles were white. Her face, red.
“We'll have to think of some other way,” she said, pressing the pedal to the floorboard as they drove back to Timberlake.
“Can't we let the police take care of the abuse stuff?”
She shook her head. “The police don't care about people like us. We have to handle things on our own. And, you know what, we can.”
♦
Note from Val: I got you a new toner cartridge, btw. In the backseat of my car. Sometimes, as you know, a wife has to take matters in her own hands. Good work, honey. —V
BOOK III
Jumping to Conclusions
Jaan Uhelszki for the Morton Report: Is there a song that's most you? Maybe "Bad Reputation"?
Singer Joan Jett: Well, “Bad Reputation” would certainly be right up there.
JU: Do you feel you deserve your bad reputation? Why do you think people consider you have one?
JJ: Well, I think the reason I have a bad reputation is because I'm a girl and dare to do these things that, you know, boys do.
Chapter Thirty-four
Tuesday, September 24
IT WAS AGAINST MY BETTER JUDGMENT, though I knew many doubted I had any reserve of that mental property within any of the confines of my weary brain. My agent and editor, who seldom worked in tandem, had convinced me it would be good for my career. Good for my career. I had heard that before and I knew better. At various times appearing on Nancy Grace, signing books at the bath shop, giving an interview to an insufferable radio show in the middle of a mall—all had supposedly been for the good of my career. But here we were heading to New York for a taping of the Rita Adams Show.
The producer/twit named Ashlee had struck again. This time the show was about what I was calling the Love You to Death case and the murder that ensued after the principals were jailed.