by Gregg Olsen
“Look, I know you’re a good mother. I know you have issues. Look around. You have to see what others see. But between you and me, I’d at least make an attempt to clean up the outside appearance of this place. You are just asking for someone to come here and take away your daughter.”
Tess got ready for work and made the early morning drive to the prison, but once she arrived, she could barely keep it together. She started to cry. She pretended to focus on one of the dozen sad African violets she’d been trying to revive on her desk by the window facing the sunny south side of the prison yard. She’d never considered herself a plant person, but she’d found the violets in the “free” section at Home Depot in Gig Harbor and was determined to give them a second chance with some TLC and the right amount of sunshine.
Amanda Watkins, a co-worker, noticed something was wrong and approached her.
“I don’t think all the fussing in the world will make that thing bloom again,” she said.
Tess looked up. Her eyes were leaking tears, but she said nothing.
“This isn’t about the plant, is it?” Amanda asked, inching closer.
“Darby’s missing,” she said, looking around to make sure they were alone in the prison’s records office. They were. “I don’t know where she went.”
“You’ve got to call the police,” Amanda said.
Tess turned her eyes downward. “I’m afraid,” she said, though that was only partly true.
Amanda pulled at her shoulders. Amanda was a tall woman, a little uncomfortable with her height. Her nest of unruly silver hair, almost like fine wire, didn’t help her cause to be smaller. It had a mind of its own, and that was always upward. In her fifties, she was still in search of the right look. None of her clothes fit right, and the sweater she was wearing was a case in point.
“Something could have happened to Darby,” Amanda said, giving up on the sweater.
“I know,” Tess answered. “But in case she’s run off, I don’t want to lose her.”
“Some freak might have her.”
“You don’t think I’ve already considered that?” Tess asked.
Amanda shook her head. “Considering where we work, I’d hope so. Call. Call now.”
“There’s something you don’t know about me,” Tess said.
Amanda put her hands on Tess’s shoulders once more and stared into her eyes. “I know. We all know.”
Tess let the tears fall. It was a silent cry, the kind that only allows tears to roll over cheeks and onto the floor. Quiet. No trembling lips. In many ways, the silent kind is the most heart wrenching of all the countless ways people show their hurt and grief.
“It’s all right,” Amanda said. “Call. Go home. I’ll cover you here.”
Tess went for her jacket, one of a hundred she had collected from garage sales, department store clearance centers, even one from an open box left at the Goodwill drop-off in Port Orchard.
“Everyone knows?” Tess asked. She looked so hurt, so ashamed. Her eyes filled with more tears. “I didn’t know that. No one has said a thing to me about it. This whole time?”
Amanda hugged her friend.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Darby matters.”
“I know. Going home now.”
Amanda watched Tess as she turned around to leave. People had laughed and talked about her behind her back for years, but they respected her too. She was so capable, so amazingly confident about how to handle things in the records office. It seemed impossible that she could be the kind of woman who lived in a pigsty. One time, Amanda and another co-worker looked up Tess’s address in the computer at work and drove by her house in Olalla just to see it for themselves.
Amanda hated that she had done that. It was a small betrayal of someone she admired. She never told her and she wondered now if she had if Tess would have confided in her about her daughter’s disappearance.
On her way home from the office, Birdy stopped at Walmart to pick up some clothes for Elan who’d arrived with nothing more than what he was wearing and a smartphone. Guessing the teenager’s size, she selected a couple pairs of jeans and some graphic T-shirts. She nervously picked up some boxer briefs after asking a young clerk what a teenage boy would probably prefer to wear. She selected a plain black backpack and added some toiletries into the cart. She didn’t care if he was trying to grow out a wispy chin beard. She hoped that razors would give him the hint that the look wasn’t appealing now. Maybe in a year or two.
She’d talked with Summer. While the conversation was brief, it wasn’t as strained as it might have been. Summer said that Elan had been acting out and missing school and was having a hard time. When Birdy pressed her for more about the underlying cause of whatever it was that was making him difficult, Summer balked.
“No one can do anything right. You’ll see. You might think you can. Good luck with that. I bet you throw him out by the end of the week.”
It was a challenge. Birdy could feel it.
“How’s Mom?”
“As mean as ever.”
“How’s Cal?” she asked about Summer’s husband.
“Look, Birdy, you see how you can deal with Elan and I’ll do what I can here.”
“I’m worried about you.”
“That’s nice.” Her voice was tinged with sarcasm.
Birdy resisted the urge to shoot back, and it was a good thing.
Summer amended what she’d said. “I mean, I appreciate it. I have to go. Working nights at the casino.”
Birdy had texted Elan a few times during the day, but only got a few cryptic responses.
Her: How was school?
Him: Sux.
Her: Going to get you some clothes on the way home. We can shop for more this weekend. You can’t wear the same thing two days in a row.
Him: I do at home.
When she arrived home, she was surprised to smell something cooking that wasn’t pizza.
“I know how to cook, but you wouldn’t know that,” Elan said. “You don’t really know anything about me.”
Birdy didn’t take the bait. “I brought you these,” she said.
He took the bag and peered inside. “Thanks. You know it’s true, don’t you?” he asked.
“That I don’t know you?”
“You don’t know who my father is, do you?”
Birdy changed the subject. “Let’s eat. Smells good. What is it?”
“Lasagna,” he said.
“That’s impressive.”
Elan shrugged a little. “I don’t know how good it will be. All you had was ground turkey, which I don’t like that much.”
The lasagna was good and Elan was right. She really didn’t know him. But he knew her. He’d Googled every case she’d worked on. He asked thoughtful questions. He was very, very good at that.
Answering any she had for him however was not his strong suit.
She let her first condition pass. She’d find out what was troubling him and what brought him to her later.
“Where’d you learn to cook?” she asked.
“I could say that Mom’s drunk all the time and I had no choice, but that’s not really the truth. I worked last summer on a boat cooking for the crew. I can make pretty decent lasagna.”
“You can. What else?” she asked.
Elan laughed. “That’s pretty much it, Aunt Birdy. I lasted two weeks.”
Getting to know him was going to be a very good thing.
The rain had turned to ice pellets the week after the previous Christmas season. A small dark car parked outside of the house and its driver watched the figure through the window. At first, just a girl. Then her mother. The images were fleeting, but unmistakable. They were taking down the Christmas tree. Adrenaline pulsed and fear rose up. The driver held an envelope and deep inside seethed with rage for what had to be done. Too much was at stake, too much had been lost already. Over and over the voice on her cell phone spoke in a biting and harsh manner.
“You do this
or I’ll ruin you. Don’t you even think about defying me! You, remember, are my bitch.”
“I don’t want to do it,” the driver said.
“I don’t want to kill you. But that’s the way life goes.”
CHAPTER 7
Birdy Waterman stood at the front of the line at the latte stand in the Kitsap County administration building, a mammoth structure that faced west to the shipyard and beyond to the Olympics. Birdy normally didn’t go there for coffee—the coroner’s office had a kitchen with a refrigerator, stove, and coffeepot. That sometimes the refrigerator held errant body parts while waiting for exam was of no matter. It was an old house. That the coffeepot had broken, however, was a big concern. She needed that third cup.
She looked down at the paper on the counter and read while she waited.
The Kitsap Sun had a screamer of a headline across the top of the daily’s front page:
HUMAN FOOT FOUND IN BANNER FOREST
A girl on a field trip with her class from Olalla Elementary School made a grisly discovery Wednesday when she found a human foot just off one of the main paths in Banner Forest, a county park between Port Orchard and Olalla.
The foot did not belong to any of the students on the trip, according to district spokesperson Julianne Starr.
“All of our students are fine and accounted for,” Starr said. “A few were traumatized by the discovery, but no one has been injured. We have made arrangements for a counselor to be at the school to help any students who might have needs related to what happened on the field trip.”
The foot was collected and transported to the county morgue.
Four years ago a man walking his dogs in the park was viciously attacked by a black bear. County officials indicate that there have been no recent bear sightings. The location has also been the habitat of cougars.
Banner Forest remains closed pending a thorough search.
“Hi, Kendall,” Birdy said, looking up and noticing the detective joining the queue.
Kendall smiled in her direction. “Birdy, what are you doing over here?”
“No coffee, no autopsy,” the forensic pathologist said, more for effect than the reality of what she was saying. Actually, there was no pile of bodies waiting for her back at the office. A pile of paperwork, yes. Birdy knew the importance of paperwork, but she’d almost rather dive face first into the rancid depths of a body cavity than deal with the most tedious part of her job.
“Got a call from a woman in South Kitsap,” Kendall said. “Says her daughter has been missing.”
“How long?”
Kendall pulled out her frequent coffee drinker card and the barista stamped it.
“A few days,” she said.
“How old?”
“Sophomore at South.”
Birdy lingered as the barista handed Kendall her tuxedo mocha.
“You still drink those?” Birdy said.
Kendall took a sip. “You still drink drip?”
“I’m a traditionalist, Kendall,” she said. “You know that. Comes from my culture.” Birdy held a sly smile on her face. It was a reference to other training they had to do—diversity training. Birdy, being a Makah Indian, was the only non-white person in the room. Every time anyone posed a question about how people from other cultures might interpret something, the others looked at her.
They walked over by the floor-to-ceiling windows and looked over at the mountains and down at the shimmering water of Sinclair Inlet.
“Want to ride along? She’s the daughter of a local celebrity of sorts.”
Birdy took a drink. The coffee in the county admin building was superior to the stuff she’d been drinking in the coroner’s office. It might have been a good thing that the coffeepot died, after all.
“I didn’t know we had any celebrities around here,” Birdy said.
“Very local,” Kendall said. This time she smiled.
“All right, Kendall. I’m game. You drive.”
On the drive down Sidney to Bay Street and then onto Highway 16, they spoke about what was going on at home. Birdy talked about her nephew and the complications that came with his arrival. Kendall talked about how her autistic son, Cody, was progressing. They were friends, but with extremely busy lives and careers that knew no time clock. There was never enough time for catching up.
“You think the missing girl is the source of the foot?” Birdy asked.
Kendall glanced at the forensic pathologist.
“Possible,” she said.
“Right age,” Birdy said. “Close to the dump site.”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
Birdy’s focus was always about how a person died, not so much of the why. The why was the domain of detectives and prosecutors. They needed the why to prove a case. Not always, of course. But it helped.
“Except, most killers are not so careless,” Birdy said. “Killers who torture and mutilate—if that’s what this guy did—are pretty careful about where they deposit their victim’s remains.”
“I guess so,” Kendall said. She pulled off the highway and drove west on Mullinex.
“Gacy kept his victims’ bodies in the crawlspace of his house—so he didn’t run the risk of detection,” Birdy said.
Kendall turned the car toward Olalla Valley Road.
“Yes, and the Green River Killer dumped many of his victims within a few miles of his home,” Kendall said.
Birdy finished her coffee. “Lazy, that one,” she said.
“Yeah,” Kendall said. “The laziest.”
The two women meandered their way along the trail between the berms of garbage and things that would soon be garbage that led to Tess Moreau’s front door.
“Local celebrity, huh?” Birdy said softly, shooting a teasing glance at her friend.
“Well, yes,” Kendall said without a trace of irony. “Everyone knows her.”
The detective knocked. After what seemed like a very long time, a woman opened the door. What greeted them was surprising considering the surroundings. Tess Moreau was a pretty woman. Her hair was long, but not too long. She had smooth, even-toned skin, and bright blue eyes. She wore blue jeans with a slight crease as though they’d been ironed. Her top was a crisp, white blouse. If Birdy had been presented a photo array lineup of people and was asked to pick out the hoarder, she’d never have picked Tess. Her own mother, yes. Her neighbor, yes. Kendall, maybe. Tess Moreau was the epitome of neatness.
Not a hair out of place.
“We’re here about your daughter,” Kendall said, identifying herself.
“I’m with the department too,” Birdy said. There was no need to say she was with the coroner’s office. No need to sound the alarms. It was bad enough to have a detective show up, but a forensic pathologist—that was beyond what most moms could endure.
“Have you found my daughter?” Tess asked.
Kendall shook her head. “No, we haven’t, but we do need to talk to you. We need to make a report.”
Tess stood in the doorway.
“I suppose you need to come inside,” she said.
“It would be easier,” Birdy answered.
Tess looked over her shoulder, back into the cluttered space of her home.
“I already know what you are thinking,” she said.
“No one is thinking anything,” Kendall said. “We’re here about your daughter, Darby. Not your house.”
Tess opened the door wider. “Then you were thinking about it.”
“Only because you are,” Kendall said.
She motioned them inside.
Birdy wanted to say something about the Precious Moments that filled the foyer. Her mother collected them too. But not to that extent. She doubted anyone did. There were scores of them.
“I’m not the best housekeeper,” Tess said. “But I’m a good mother. No one could say otherwise.”
She bent down and moved a stack of newspapers off the sofa and indicated with a nod that her visitors could sit there. She took a
spot on a piano bench across from them. The place was musty and cluttered, but it didn’t stink. She was a hoarder of stuff; that was true. But Tess Moreau wasn’t a hoarder of animals and that was good news for her visitors’ olfactory senses.
“When did you see Darby last?” Kendall asked.
“Sunday night when I went to bed. I get up and leave for work early. Darby gets herself off to school.”
“Darby’s sixteen? A sophomore at South?”
“Yes, just sixteen.”
“Did you have any communication with her? Texts? Phone calls?”
Tess tried to calm herself. She took a deep breath. “We don’t bring our phones into the prison. Policy. Darby knows not to call me because of that stupid rule. No point in it. I did check my phone when I got out Monday, but nothing.”
“But you did get a call,” Birdy said.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Not from your daughter, from the school.”
Tess nodded. “Yes, I did.”
“Did you call them back?”
“Yes, I did.”
“What did you tell the school?” Kendall asked.
Tess’s eyes flooded. “Why are you being hostile?”
“Look, I’m not being hostile. I’m being direct. That’s my job. Now, Ms. Moreau, when you talked to the school what did you tell them?”
“I told them she was sick. I told them Darby was out sick.”
“Why did you do that?” Birdy asked, jumping in.
Tess didn’t say a word.
“All right,” Kendall said, pushing on. “You lied to the school and waited a whole day before calling to report she was missing. Is that because she’s left before? Are there problems between you and your daughter? Is there something we should know about?”
Tess’s lips tightened before she spoke. “No. No. No. That’s not why. She’s a very good girl. Mostly As and Bs. She’s never been any trouble whatsoever.”