by Gregg Olsen
“You can’t do it to me again. You need to be a man now.”
“I am a man,” he said.
“You’re acting like a loser. I want to be with a winner.”
“I can’t do it. I couldn’t do it then. You know that. I’m not like you.”
She let out an exasperated sigh. “What’s that supposed to mean? I’ve given you everything I have, my heart, my soul, and you have failed me time and again. I don’t know why I bothered to fall in love with you. I wish I didn’t. I wish that I’d fallen in love with a man who would protect me. Save me. Take care of me.”
“I don’t know.”
Tori seemed exasperated, possibly a little bored. “You will. Parker, your fingerprints are on the gun used to kill your father. Your hair is on that ski mask.”
“It isn’t my hair,” Parker said. “It’s his hair.”
“It is, baby. I had to do something to make sure that you’d stay strong and fight for me.”
There was a long silence.
“Parker?”
“Yeah, you did that to me?” His voice was shaky. He wasn’t a man after all.
“Pull yourself together, Parker. Are you listening to me? I did it because I love you. I love us.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Kingston
It was late, the time of day when Mike Walsh wanted nothing more than to go home to his little house in the woods, feed his cat, and watch some reality-show trash. The reality-show TV schedule was key. Those shows that reminded him that not only were there others to save out in the world, there were many who could not be saved. On the bulletin board facing his computer screen was a bumper sticker that riffed on the motto of AA, an organization that had helped save his own life.
ONE SOUL AT A TIME.
He heard footsteps and a knock on the door.
“Come on in, Susan,” he said. “ ’Bout ready to leave for the night.”
The door lurched open. “I’m not Susan.”
“Son, do I know you?”
Parker stood still, his eyes dark and lifeless, the kind of eyes that refuse to divulge or betray any emotion. His hands were tucked inside the front pockets of his Western Washington University hoodie.
“I’m new. Are you Pastor Mike?”
“That I am,” he said, looking down and noticing that the teen was rocking slightly on his heels. Was he drunk? High? Nervous? All three? “What can I do for you?” Pastor Mike smiled. It was a wide smile, but a jarring one. His teeth had been damaged by years of drug abuse. They were more gray than white. In the illumination pouring in from a solar tube skylight, it was clear that his skin had been ravaged, too—pockmarks long since healed dotted his cheeks.
“Will you pray with me?” the teenager asked, as he started to cry.
Pastor Mike felt the surge of emotion that comes from seeing a person in need make that step to the Lord.
“Let’s pray side by side in the Lord,” he said.
Parker didn’t say anything as Pastor Mike led him from his office out to the sanctuary. Its pink-hued fir woodwork cast a warm glow, even as the darkness fell in the woods that framed the Quonset hut church.
They both knelt down. The pastor closed his eyes and folded his hands, but Parker didn’t. He needed to see what he was doing. He wanted to hold that hunting knife. His hand shook as he gripped it. The minister was deep in prayer.
The prayer was for him.
Parker knew that he needed it. He also knew that what he was doing was the only way he could ensure that his dreams come true.
That he would be with her.
“I need you to stop that.”
“I’m praying for you.”
“I don’t want you to do that.”
He showed the blade.
“What are you doing with that?”
“Lie on your stomach.”
Pastor Mike shook his head. “You don’t want to do this. You don’t need to do this. We don’t have much money, but you can have what we have. It’s yours.”
“Get on your stomach now.”
His eyes now filled with the solid black of his pupils, Pastor Mike complied.
“Hands behind your back.”
He did so.
Parker unspooled the bright red duct tape from the pocket of his hoodie. He climbed onto Pastor Mike’s back and started to bind him. It surprised him that the man on the floor didn’t fight.
Didn’t he want to live? Had his own dad gone so willingly, too? Was it that easy to take a life?
“Why are you doing this? There are other ways to make money, son.”
Parker was doing his best to follow the plan but the walls were closing in on him. Fear was taking the place of the excitement of the moment.
“This isn’t about money. This is for love. And I’m not your son. My piece-of-shit dad is dead.”
Parker plunged the knife into the side of the minister’s neck. Blood immediately started to shoot forth. It was a darker red than he imagined. Like the color of the wine that Tori had shared with him the first time they’d made love in his father’s bed.
Parker pulled back and then shoved the knife into the minister’s side, then again. And again.
The room was turning red.
“I’m sorry. But I have to do this. You are in the way.”
Mike tried to speak, but he couldn’t. He was choking on his own blood.
“Help me,” he said, the words sputtering from his bloody lips.
“Jesus will help you. Jesus loves you,” the teenager said, without a bit of irony in his voice. He suddenly felt strong, empowered. He stood up and looked himself over. He was clean. There was blood everywhere, but not a drop on him. It was as if God had been watching out for him. For his love. For his soul mate.
All of this was meant to be.
As the syrupy pool of red spread over the floor, Parker stood there. Scared, happy, excited, and proud. It was all good. He was the man that she needed him to be.
The money pouch from the week’s collection sat on the pastor’s desk.
What he did was for love, not money, but the teenager grabbed the pouch anyway.
A little cash could come in handy on the trip that would take him and Tori to their new lives. A little money was always a good thing.
Something wasn’t right. Laura Connelly knew teenagers either took inordinately lengthy showers—or none at all. But after Parker returned to Fircrest from a day at the skateboard park in Port Orchard, he’d taken a half-hour-long shower. He also loaded the washing machine and washed his jeans, T-shirt, and underwear. Clean was good, of course, but such devotion to helping around the house was out of character.
“Honey, what is it?” she asked Parker when she found him holed up in his bedroom. He was in bed, facing the wall.
“Leave me alone, Mom.”
“Parker, did something happen today?”
“No. Nothing.” He pulled the covers up over his head.
Laura stood there a second, wondering if he’d been having trouble with his girlfriend. She’d considered asking Parker if he wanted to invite the girl over for dinner, but she doubted he was in the mood for that. When he said he wanted to be left alone, she didn’t doubt it.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll have some dinner for you later.”
“I’m not hungry, Mom. I’m going to sleep.”
When his bedroom door shut, he lifted the covers. Despite toweling off after his marathon shower, he was damp again. Sweat collected on his chest and beaded in the small of his back. He felt a wave of nausea come over him. He rocked himself, like a baby, gently and slowly.
He remembered what Tori said to him the last time they made love. “You will never understand the lengths people will go for true love until you do what needs to be done to keep us together. I’ve done it. I will never let you down.”
“I love you, Tori,” he said, as tears came to his eyes. Laura Connelly paced in the kitchen. She put his dinner into the refrigerator and wondered what she
could do. She had worried nonstop about Parker after Alex’s murder. She had suggested counseling, but he’d insisted that he was working through it on his own. She assumed that, whoever his girlfriend was, she was a good listener. He needed that. Laura couldn’t reach him. She couldn’t seem to get him to open up to her.
She went to the laundry room and unloaded the dryer. As she folded her son’s clothes, she considered if she’d been a good-enough mother. Had she given him what he needed to get through a difficult time?
“I love you, Parker. I want to help you. It seems you are drowning here. I’m your mother, your lifeline. Give me a chance.”
For the first time, she noticed a small vinyl pouch tucked into the bottom of the hamper. She picked it up and read its faded label.
LORD’S GRACE COMMUNITY CHURCH
Where did this come from? she thought, as she unzipped it.
It was a packet of one- and five-dollar bills.
Where did this come from?
Her heart rate picked up. She zipped it fast, like closing it quickly would make the whole thing disappear.
Parker, what did you do?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Tacoma
The headquarters of the Tacoma Police Department was tucked amid strip malls and chain restaurants on a bleak stretch of South Pine, not far from the Tacoma Mall. And if it is true that all police departments have their own vibe, Tacoma’s was unique in its very blandness. One in Arizona could pass for a Mexican restaurant and one in Florida had a stream running through it that made it seem like a tourist attraction. Aside from the fact that the building was built and operated with green technology, Tacoma’s distinction was the fact that its Fleet Services division was housed in a renovated Costco warehouse store.
That’s right. A Costco.
One woman arched her brow while looking at the new three-story building that loomed above the old warehouse parking lot.
“I remember when I could get a hot dog and a Coke here for a buck fifty. I guess they must be dispensing justice in economy size here now,” she said.
Eddie Kaminski chugged a tepid Mountain Dew in his cubicle on the second floor. Included among his many lifestyle changes after his wife dropped him was giving up coffee. It wasn’t good for him, and sipping tea seemed a bit fey for a police department’s must-have machismo. That the soft drink he was swilling was nothing but a citrus, caffeine-stoked version of coffee without the brown color wasn’t lost on Kaminski. He simply saw the drink as a small but necessary step away from a java habit that left him jittery and anxious.
“Like using a nicotine patch to wean a guy off smoking,” he told Lindsey when she caught him chugging the sweet stuff after a run along Ruston Way.
“Dad, that’s dumb,” Lindsey said. “There’s tons of sugar in that and as much caffeine as a couple of cups of Charbucks.”
“Maybe so. But it’s one third the price.”
“It’s gross, and price isn’t everything.”
You sound like your mother, he thought, but he didn’t say it.
While he waited for Darius Fulton to show up, Kaminski tidied up his desk. The neighbor had seemed cautious on the phone.
“What I need to say to you needs to be said man to man.”
The choice of words was peculiar.
A half hour later, he met Darius in the lobby. When they shook hands, the detective noticed that Darius’s hands seemed clammy. The weather outside was cool, unseasonably so. Sweaty hands usually meant nervousness or anxiety.
“Let’s talk in an interview room upstairs,” Kaminski said.
Darius nodded. “The lot was full. So I left my car in a one-hour visitor’s spot across the street. Is that going to be enough time?”
“That depends on what it is you have to tell me.”
The interview room was as impersonal as could be, purposely so. It was, like all good interview rooms, set up to keep distractions to the minimum. It wasn’t an unfriendly place, just decidedly blank. Slate blue carpeting, nothing on the wall, blue molded chairs, and a mirrored viewing window.
“Take a seat,” Kaminski said. “Need anything? Water?”
“You really drink that crap?” Darius said, indicating the can of Mountain Dew that the detective carried with him.
Kaminski smiled. “Long story. But, yeah. Want one?”
“Pass. Water is fine.”
Kaminski retrieved a bottle of Dasani and a notepad.
“You said something was bothering you when you called me.”
“Right.”
“And what is that?”
“This isn’t easy. I feel pretty stupid. And it might not be anything. But you know I’ve been thinking a lot about what happened over at Tori’s place.”
Tori’s place. The words resonated in an exceedingly familiar way.
“You have? Good. You should. You, Ms. Connelly, and the shooter are our only witnesses.”
Darius nodded. “Yeah, that night.”
“Have you remembered something new?”
Sweat collected above Darius’s eyebrows. “It isn’t that. It’s, well . . .”
An attractive female officer walked by the sliver of a window in the door and Darius used the pleasant visual distraction to stop the conversation. His eyes met Kaminski’s and, if he had expected some kind of vague semblance of male bonding, it was not the right time or place.
Not in the middle of a murder investigation, for sure.
“Dude, get to it,” Kaminski said. “What are you trying to tell me?”
Darius looked down. His eyes were awash with worry. “I don’t want to get involved in this mess. But I don’t think I have any choice. I’ve weighed the implications of my silence and, well, I guess I have to come out with it.”
The detective set his pen down. His eyes fixed on the man on the other side of the city-issue, Formica-topped desk.
“You involved in this?” he asked.
Darius waved his hands as if pushing away the accusation. “Oh, hell no. Not at all.”
“Then what is it?”
“I had an affair with Tori. I mean, it really wasn’t an affair. We messed around a little. Only once.”
If Eddie Kaminski or any other cop had a five-dollar bill for every time someone said whatever they had done was “only one time,” they’d be on the beach in Maui with a mai tai and a beautiful babe at his side.
“Can’t say as I blame you,” Kaminski said. “She’s easy on the eyes.”
Darius nodded. “Tell me about it. I mean, yeah, she is, and that’s probably the biggest part of it. You know, look at me, I’m not young. I’m not really handsome, though I looked a lot better in my day. I’m just a big fool.”
“You aren’t the first, and you won’t be the last. Tell me, if it only happened one time—”
“Yes, that’s what I said.”
Kaminski leaned back; he hadn’t been trying to push the guy, but it was clear that’s how he’d taken it. “Okay. Tell me.”
“She invited me over to help her with some bogus project. She gave me the look, you know.”
“The look?”
“The look—I’m lonely and you’ll do.”
Kaminski took a drink. “Yeah. I know it.”
“We ended up having sex right then and there, but that was it. I wanted seconds the next day—like a dumbass thinking all of a sudden I had something some woman wanted other than my wallet.”
Darius talked about how they’d met at the lecture at the museum, how she’d told him that her husband hadn’t been paying attention to her.
“She flat-out said she wanted some fun, no strings.”
“But you wanted more. You wanted a repeat.”
Darius looked away, briefly.
“Yeah, but she didn’t,” he said. “End of the story. I thought you’d want to know. You know, in case she tried to pawn herself off as the poor widow. Missing her man.”
“I get that. I need to know something else. I need you to be straight with me.”
“I have been.”
“Maybe so.”
“No maybe. I have been.”
They talked about the specifics of the crime scene, a subject of keen interest to Kaminski.
“Are you remembering anything different about that night?”
“Look, I resent what you’re trying to imply.”
“Not trying. Just asking.”
“No, nothing different. She arrived on my doorstep bloody and crying, and I called nine-one-one.”
“Did you kiss her?”
“What kind of a question is that?”
“Just asking, remember.”
Darius Fulton’s face went white, then red. “No, I did not. She was hurt. I called for help. Your guys came.”
The detective leaned closer, pushing the limits of the man’s personal space. “Did you have anything to do with her husband’s death?”
“Hell no! That’s why I’m here. I knew that if the word got out that I tapped her, I’d be on the chopping block.”
“Tapped” her? It was like an old man using a younger person’s vernacular. It didn’t fit. It made him look older and more foolish. As Kaminski saw it, the move on the woman across the street was probably as much about being still in the game as it was about having sex. Darius hadn’t wanted to be left behind, thrown away.
It was a scenario that mirrored his own. Though he had a ten-year cushion, he was damned if he was headed that way.
“I’m going to need to write this up,” Kaminski said. “You’re going to need to sign it.”
Darius Fulton nodded.
“Yeah. I’ll sign it. But this isn’t going to be in the papers, is it?”
Kaminski shook his head.
“Not hardly. Last time I looked it was legal to mess around with a neighbor’s wife. Tacky, sure. But, yeah, totally legal.”
Lindsey Kaminski knew her father didn’t take care of himself when he was deep into a case. She remembered when growing up that she and her mother had more than their share of meals without him. He’d be out on a case, at his office, and, at the end of his marriage, away in some bar drinking too much.