Shocking True Story

by Gregg Olsen

  I pleaded with her to tell me more. I hadn't a clue about what she was talking about. She seemed distant, oddly out of sync with the moment.

  “Until what?” I asked. “Until what happened, Jett?”

  She stiffened and stared hard at me. It was the first time in several minutes that I felt us connect. For a second, hope returned. I thought we'd be able to talk this out.

  “Until you made him kill himself,” she finally answered. “Think about it, Kevin. Think about writing some of those ugly things that you do and then going on television and telling the world trash about someone's mother. Melinda was Austin's mother. She was not a saint, but she wasn't trailer trash either.”

  I reached a hand out in compassion. “You're wrong. You need help,” I said softly. “Let me help you.”

  The wild, tormented look returned to her brown peach pit eyes and she spun around and pressed the knife against Hayley's slender, pale throat. I heard a muffled scream from Valerie and I watched Hayley stiffen as she tried to pull her neck away. She couldn't move far enough. The bridge rail held her captive.

  The knife glinted in the cold, faint light of the November night.

  “You have been through so much,” I said. “Let my girls, let Val go, please. It doesn't have to be this way. You don't have to end up like your mother and your sister. Think about it. Think about where they are and why they are there right now.” I was begging Jett, but she was unresponsive. I implored. I urged. “Think of them.”

  “I hate them....” Her eyes met mine as she spoke.

  I thought I saw a tear in her eyes. Was it the cold air? Was it emotion? If she were feeling something, it would be a start. It would mean that she could be reached.

  “I know that's not true, Jett.”

  “You don't know anything. My mother sent me away after she made me—” She stopped and twisted the knife.

  My adrenalin surged. I was so afraid for my daughter that I nearly panicked. What to do? If I jumped at her, Jett might drive the knife into Hayley's throat.

  Jett hated me. I could see it in her eyes. She had the look of a person who had not one iota of time for me. I started talking. “Made you what?”

  “It doesn't matter. You don't care. All you want is book material. Isn't that right, Val?” She turned to Val and studied her terrified eyes. “Isn't that what you told me? Let's see. Your exact words were something like, 'Kevin sees tragedy and murder the way others see new stock offerings.'”

  Val made another muffled cry and shook her head. Her eyes were terror. But I knew that Jett was repeating her words with absolute accuracy. It was true that sometimes I had viewed the world that way.

  “What did your mother make you do?” I asked.

  “Do you see a TV movie here, Kevin? Do you see dollar signs again?”

  I shook my head. “Please, tell me, Jett, what did your mother make you do?”

  A tear fell from her eye. Then another. “My mother got my dad drunk the night he died...my mother made me go out on the bridge.”

  For an instant, sympathy mixed with fear. I knew what she as going to say. The other figure that the witness had seen that night in Timberlake was Jett's mother. A car was running. The exhaust sending a soft plume of white into the air. It was Connie, who had set up her husband. Jett had been used as a tool.

  “I'm so sorry. You were so young, you were so abused.” My words were meant to calm her, to win her over, though the effect was the opposite. “It wasn't your fault.”

  She wiped her eyes on her coat sleeve. The Jett who had planned to kill me was back. She had pulled herself together. She would not falter. I could see that she had been fighting for control. And if I had hoped that her confession would ease her mind, soften her heart, I was wrong.

  “I want you to climb to the top of that tower, Kevin,” she said. “You're gonna jump. You're sorry about your career. You're sorry that your shitty books aren't Number One.”

  I looked at the tower. A thin cable ladder dangled from the top. It seemed miles above us. It seemed to connect with the moon.

  “But I can't,” I said.

  Jett moved the knife. It was a flickering motion, like an annoyed picnicker ridding herself of a fly. Hayley made an unintelligible cry and tried to move away. But there was nowhere to go. A smear of blood ran down the length of the blade and oozed along the edge of her green, now sliced, pickle leotard. Valerie screamed a muffled wail from behind her taped gag. Hayley's eyes were broken glass. Taylor's fingers were pink and white against the green railing; her eyes were glued to her sister and the bloody knife. Fear had contorted her face. It was the face of sheer terror.

  “If I do, will you let them go?” I pleaded.

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  I looked at my girls, my wife, trapped on the bridge with a young woman who I had befriended because I needed her help. I had used Jett, too. I had done so to make my story better, easier to write. I had invited a monster into our lives so that I could be Number One. I hated myself. It was that hate that propelled me up the first rung, then the second and third. I stopped and looked out at the water at a tugboat towing a log boom chugged in from the south, its yellow lights eyeing me like a cat in a wood pile. I wondered if I jumped—if she told me to jump—I wondered if I'd survive. Only a very few ever made the leap and lived. My face pressed against the inch-thick cable and my knuckles were frozen.

  I heard a noise and dared to look.

  Chapter Forty-five

  Early Morning, Friday, November 1

  A logging truck rolled onto the bridge, moving eastbound from the peninsula. Its silky-beamed headlights stretched the entire length of the span. I could see the truck was loaded with a full haul of Douglas fir logs, barreling down the right hand lane. Its weight vibrated the grilled surface and its weight-borne noise cut through the stillness of the night air.

  “Hurry up,” Jett yelled. “I've got places to go, things to do!”

  “You won't hurt my family? You won't hurt them?”

  “If you do what I say, I will let them go. If you don't, Val will watch me throw her precious twins over the side. Mrs. Parker wasn't the first time I've killed someone.”

  “What?”

  “That idiot fan of yours, Jeanne Morgan. I poisoned her, too. No stroke there. Stupid medical examiner. I got all the information I could out of the cow.”

  I remembered the cat purse at Jett's. It was Jeanne's. She had five freaking cats!

  “Now move it!” Jett screamed.

  I was slow because I was scared. I could have used another pair of hands to pry my own off the cable.

  “The truck's lost its steering!” I called out. In the instant Jett turned to look, I jumped down on top of her and she screamed. Val lunged for the young woman and kicked her in the back of the legs, knocking her down. As I tried for the knife, Jett sliced through my coat. I felt a sharp pinch, then the warmth of my own blood, wet against my skin. Val and I were in a frenzy. Jett was screaming at us and Taylor and Hayley were trying to break free from their silvery bondage.

  Jett got back on her feet somehow and I lurched up higher on her, balancing our torsos against the iced railing. She leaned backwards, her butt on the rail. Again I reached, holding my body against hers for leverage. I wanted that goddamn knife! The water rushed through the channel. In a second, our eyes met. Hers were no longer the sweet innocence of youth, but a dark, empty stare. I could see her slipping backwards over the edge of the rail.

  I hated that bridge. I would never take it again. I would ride the ferry or I would stay on the peninsula for the rest of my life.

  “Jett, grab my hand,” I said. The knife fell from her fingers, and I watched it disappear into the black below. Val, her hands now fully free, pushed me out of the way.

  “Don't! Don't help her, Kev. We'll never be rid of her...She'll never go away and leave us alone.”

  Her words startled me. The tape was gone from her mouth. I stared. Val had never said a harsh word about anyone in the
nearly twenty years that I had known and loved her. Never had she been pushed so far. Never had her children been threatened. My wife's eyes were cold. She pulled me away from the rail, away from the young woman who had been a friend the day before.

  I stepped back.

  “Fuck you!” Jett screamed. “Fuck all of you!”

  I surged forward and pushed.

  Then she was gone. It took almost ten seconds, though it seemed longer, before we heard her splash into the inky waters of the Narrows. Ten seconds and she was gone. Val and I went for our girls. They looked so tiny, so fragile. Neither cried; neither said much as we undid the tape and walked off the bridge. We were fine. We were going to be all right.

  All of us.

  No one said a word about Jett's fate. No one lamented her loss, least of all me. Serial killers, be dammed. I had finally met someone I didn't like. It was the girl who knocked on my door with a story that I was certain would bring me everything I had ever wanted. It almost took everything I had.

  ♦

  TWO DAYS LATER life in PORT GAMBLE was normal again. At least everyone in the Ryan household pretended it was. When a body washed up on a beachfront neighborhood in West Seattle, I hoped it was Jett's and it would be ruled a suicide—like her father's had been so many years ago. I never said a word about that night. Not even to Martin Raines. And though, a week after it happened, the paper identified the victim as a transient from Tacoma, I still said nothing.

  I was sure Jett Carter was dead, fish bait for the octopus that lived among the wreckage of Galloping Gertie, the first Narrows Bridge.

  No one needed to know that my family had been out on the bridge the night Jett met her maker. Every family has its own little secret.

  The Ryans would always have theirs.

  ♦

  MY MESSAGE LIGHT WAS TWINKLING when I came inside to warm up from a frosty November morning raking up a bronze mountain of maple leaves. They had fallen in a heavy, wet heap from a neighbor's tree onto my driveway. Die, tree, die, I thought as I came in from the cold. My back ached and I cursed the fact that I had blisters on my fingers. Each stroke of my keyboard would smart. I slid into my chair and pushed the play button.

  It was Raines's voice.

  Kevin, Jett Carter was a wacko; a psycho! Goofier than her mother and her sister, if you can believe that. She was involved with a nut job at Maplewood who blamed one of your books for besmirching his mother's name. He told everybody that Melinda Moser from Murder Cruisewas his mother. Funny thing, his real mother...let's see, her name is...Suzetta Jarvis...doesn't blame you for anything. You never wrote a word about her. She loves your books, by the way. Read every one of them. Her favorite was that one you wrote about the bank robber that fell in love with the teller and went cross country robbing banks. Sounds great. Get me the title on it. April wants to read it, too. Hey, how's Love You to Deathcoming along? Some gal from Hollywood called. Name's Monica Maleng. Wants the rights to my story. Doesn't that beat all? Call me.

  Unbelievable. I almost laughed out loud. Jett had been used. I had been set up. Everyone had screwed up. Up. Up. Up. What goes around, as they say, truly does come around. The worst of it was that I hadn't written a book about a bank robber in my life. Raines was referring to The Cash Romance...written by the other true crime writer with the Ryan surname. Jett's boyfriend had been a bigger nutcase than his girlfriend.

  I organized the sheaf of papers that made up the book I had been writing. I was moving on. I didn't care one bit about Monica or Love You to Death. I'd given up the story.

  I had an even better one to tell.

  “Val,” I said as I dumped the chapters for Love You to Death: The Positively Shocking True Story of Murder, Obsession and a Wedding in Vegas into a file-box tomb, “our ship's about to come in. This is the ticket, honey. I feel it. I really do. If this one doesn't work, swear to God, I'm giving this up.”

  I feel it.

  Behind my back were crossed fingers and a half-melted blue Mr. Freeze, retrieved from behind a bag of year-old taquitos. I sat behind my computer screen and started to type.

  Valerie put her hand on my shoulder and I stopped.

  “Not now,” she said. “I want you to look at this instead.”

  She retrieved her drugstore reading glasses, put them on, then handed me a copy of the classified ads.

  “What's this?” I asked, knowing full well that she was putting me on hiatus.

  “I circled some possibilities for you,” she said, pointing to a page covered with red circles. “Let's give the writing thing a rest, all right?”

  EPILOGUE

  I LASTED AT THE HARDWARE STORE JOB until I could take it no more, until Valerie knew that whether or not I made it as a best-selling author, I was a better person at writing than I was at selling garden supplies. And so I wrote. Every word was true. Except the ending, of course. I left out the part about the little push, of course.

  When my ship came in it was more of a dinghy than a yacht, but at least it did make it to port. Eight months after the Halloween that Jett Carter came to our home in Port Gamble, Trick or Treating with a Ginsu knife, Shocking True Story was completed for Toe Tag Books. Shocking was a slightly fictionalized “account of a true crime that brought unspeakable evil to a true crime writer's front door” (the back cover copywriter's words, not mine). Advance word was strong. The best of my career. It appears that Toe Tag is behind the book for once.

  Just maybe I'll make someone's best-seller list this time.

  With the advance dollars from Shocking True Story, Valerie finally had her lovely light brown hair highlighted with blonde and we had our sofa recovered with a charmingly bland fabric (stain-guarded, of course). Best of all, Val got a new car; one with air conditioning and cruise control. The girls got braces and a new cat.

  When it came to hope for Big Money, I remained full of unbridled optimism. When my agent telephoned one afternoon to announce MTM Enterprises wanted to make a TV film offer for the rights to Shocking True Story, I could hardly contain my enthusiasm.

  According to the agent, enthusiasm was definitely in order.

  “We're talking Mary Tyler Fucking Moore's company,” she said.

  I flashed to Mary in the WJM newsroom, to Rhoda, to the whole gang. All of a sudden Joan Jett's guitar-fueled remake of the sitcom's theme music percolated through my head, but the words were new.

  Who can turn the world on with his books?

  Who can take a nothing case, and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile?

  It's you, man, and you should know it...

  Crime is all around, don't need to waste it

  You can have the List,

  Why don't you take it?

  You're gonna make it after all...

  Things were looking up for everyone in the Ryan household. Taylor and Hayley finished sixth grade at the top of their classes and with a new best friend to fight over. It turned out that Renny Ann Quinn had stopped picking her nose over the summer and turned out to be surprisingly cool.

  ♦

  OH, AND WANDA-LOU WEBSTER... as if I had somehow had a hand in creating a literary monster, kept reeling in the big bucks and calling me every now and then to thank me. Thank me? I could see right through her. She was only rubbing it in. When she switched genres to romance, I rejoiced. I was certain that Wanda-Lou who had no idea what romance was, would flop in the field. I was wrong, of course. Her first effort hit Number One. Wanda-Lou dedicated Wicked Lover to the “Ryan family for the love and support they showed during my darkest hour.”

  I also understood the concept of someone rubbing salt into a wound. Nobody did it better than Wanda-Lou.

  After it was all over, the players in Love You to Death fell into three categories: dead, missing or stagnant.

  Connie Carter and I traded Christmas cards and talked on the phone a few times. She had told me she had no idea Jett had been such a bad girl. Really? A killer, a veritable maniac, was more like it. Connie blamed the folks at Maplew
ood. I wondered why it was that she couldn't grasp the reality that she had played a role in sending her daughter on the downward spin that landed her in the institution in the first place. After all, she forced her kid to push her father off a bridge.

  Connie remains at Riverstone with more than a decade left on her sentence. By the time of our last conversation, she had taken a lover, a black woman named Deelite. Apparently, she wasn't too old to “go lesbian.” Her days are spent berating her daughter and washing dishes in the cafeteria. All of her appeals have been exhausted. When she called after New Year's to see if I could come see her, I told her I'd try as soon as I can. But there was no need to rush.

  I have until 2023.

  Janet Lee Kerr Cameron, of course, still resides in a prison cell, where she is expected to remain until she is fifty. Though she plans another appeal, she is without an attorney. She ballooned to almost two hundred pounds after she lost her zipper post. She took a new position with the grounds crew, but after she got caught having sexual relations with another inmate behind a beauty bark pile, she was sent to the Hole. She and Deke have petitioned the state for a trailer visit, but as of this writing, it had not been approved.

  Deke Cameron still sets off metal detectors, as he most certainly will for the rest of his life. Pierce County Courthouse security guards have nicknamed him Leadbelly. Deke says he still loves his wife and will wait for her—even if the wait is a quarter of a century. He had her name tattooed on his chest under Love Hurts. The tattoo artist had a hard time doing Janet's name—it was not easy to tattoo a fleshy gunshot scar.

  Others tainted by the Love You to Death saga have not fared as well.

  Paul Kerr finally went under the knife and had an unsuccessful operation to have a ping pong ball inserted into his scrotum. His body rejected the foreign object and gangrene set in. Most of what he had in the first place was saved. He and his wife Liz separated when he went on a major drinking binge; Lindy, now in elementary school, is in foster care. The foster family has offered to adopt the girl, but Janet will not give her consent.