The Girl in the Woods

by Gregg Olsen

  “But you waited and you lied,” Birdy said.

  Tess started to shake. “I waited because of this.” She got up from the piano bench and pointed all around them. “I know what people think of me. I know you know.”

  Birdy looked directly at Tess. “No, I don’t know.”

  “Crazy lady. Tess the Mess. Pig Woman. I am not deaf.”

  Birdy looked over at Kendall. She had heard of Tess the Mess, but she didn’t realize it was her. It didn’t seem it could be. Yes, the place looked like a terrorist had let off a bomb in a department store, but the woman standing in front of them was so put together.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Birdy said, a lie that she was happy to make.

  “I didn’t want people to say what I felt they would say,” Tess said.

  This time Kendall spoke. “Which is?”

  Tears puddled her eyes. “That I lost her here in the house.”

  “We’re not saying that,” Kendall said. “We know you didn’t. But we do need to figure out where she’s gone.”

  “How about her father?” Birdy asked. “Where’s he?”

  Tess tried to mop her eyes with the back of her hand. “Buried up at the cemetery in Port Orchard with her sister. That’s where.”

  Birdy blinked. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know.”

  Kendall turned to Birdy. “A terrible accident on Highway 16.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Birdy repeated.

  “It has been a long time,” Tess said. “Long enough for some people to forget, but not so long that I don’t think about them every day.”

  For the next half hour they talked about the missing girl. She played tennis on the JV team. She wanted a horse. She kept a journal. She had lots of school friends, but none who came to her house—for reasons that neither Kendall nor Birdy needed amplified. Darby was the quintessential good girl.

  “Here’s a recent picture,” Tess said, handing over a photograph that showed a pretty blond teenager next to a chestnut mare. Her fingers gripped the reins.

  “She’s beautiful,” Kendall said.

  Birdy took the photo. “Yes, very pretty. Did she always do her nails?”

  Tess nodded. “Yes, fingers and toes.”

  “Can we see her room?” Kendall asked.

  “Of course, but be prepared for a big shock.”

  “What’s that?” Birdy asked.

  “She doesn’t take after her mother,” Tess said. “It’s at the end of the hall on the left.”

  It was a jarring experience, both women would later say, when the mother of the missing teen opened the bedroom door.

  The walls were painted white. Cream-colored linen curtains pressed with accordion pleats hung over the sole window in the room. A bed with a plain white comforter was pulled up tautly and a pair of pillows in pink cases sat in squared off uniformity.

  “I told you she didn’t take after me,” Tess said.

  Birdy turned around. “That’s all right. I don’t take after my mother either and I turned out all right.”

  Tess smiled weakly. “Thanks.”

  Kendall moved deeper into the space. “There are worse things than being a collector, Ms. Moreau.”

  “I see your daughter loved pink,” Birdy said, looking at the pillows.

  Tess’s gaze tracked the forensic pathologist’s. “The singer and the color, yes.”

  Kendall indicated a small white and gray purse. “Is this her purse?”

  Tess shook her head. “No. She really didn’t carry a purse. I found that at the Goodwill on Friday and gave it to her. I don’t think she liked it. She didn’t like most of the things I gave her.”

  Kendall looked inside the empty purse.

  “Were you two getting along?” she asked.

  “Oh yes,” she said. “She didn’t run away, if that’s what you’re getting at, detective.”

  “Just asking,” Kendall said. “Tell me about her behavior in the last week or so.”

  Tess looked confused. “What do you mean?”

  “Was she happy?” Kendall asked.

  “She is a teenager,” Tess said. “She was happy once an hour and miserable the rest of the time.”

  Kendall pushed for more information. “Did she have boyfriend issues?”

  “The only issue was that she didn’t have a boyfriend.”

  “Well she is only sixteen,” Kendall said.

  “At sixteen, these days, you might as well consider yourself a loser or a spinster if you don’t have a boyfriend.”

  “Right,” Birdy said, cutting in. “Things have changed.”

  “Is this her backpack?” Kendall asked.

  Tess reached for it, but Kendall held on to it. “Yes, her old one. She had several. I couldn’t stop finding new ones for her.”

  “I’d like to look inside, if that’s all right with you.”

  “I got that one from a yard sale in Burley,” Tess said, indicating that it was fine for the detective to open it. “One of the things she actually liked. It was brand new with the tags.”

  Kendall dumped the contents of the REI backpack on the white laminate top of the teenager’s spotless desk. A navy blue moleskin notebook, a copy of Pride and Prejudice, a pen, two packs of chewing gum, a tin of breath mints, some makeup, a couple of tampons, and something else that caught the girl’s mother by surprise.

  A small box of Roughrider brand condoms.

  Awkward silence filled the room.

  “What does she have that for?” Tess asked, her eyes fluttering.

  Neither Birdy nor Kendall gave the obvious answer.

  “Is it possible she had a boyfriend? Maybe one you didn’t know about?” Birdy asked.

  Tess was flustered and embarrassed. Not because her daughter might be having sex, but because she thought they were so close that she surely would have confided in her.

  “No,” she said, gathering herself. “Absolutely not.”

  Kendall opened the moleskin and noted that it was only partially filled. Some of it appeared to be poetry. Some pages were filled with lists of things Darby needed to do on various days.

  Missing were a couple of items no teenager ever went without.

  “Do you know where her phone is? I don’t see it here.”

  Tess, still upset over the condoms, looked around.

  “No,” she said. “No. She never left without it. That phone was superglued to her hand.”

  “Keys too?” Birdy asked.

  “She doesn’t drive yet, and we never lock the front door.”

  When those words tumbled out of her mouth, all three women had the same thought. They wondered if Darby hadn’t left willingly or if she’d been abducted from home. If there had been a struggle anywhere in the house—other than her room—there would be no way of knowing.

  “We’ll need to talk to her friends,” Kendall said. “Teachers as well.”

  “Her best friend is Katie Lawrence,” Tess said.

  Birdy looked down at the bed and picked through the makeup that had come from the backpack. A bottle of pink nail polish called Car Nation held her attention.

  “We should take that along with the notebook,” the forensic pathologist said. “If that’s all right.”

  Tess didn’t answer with words, just a slight gesture that it was all right to do so. By then she was in another world, considering what she might have missed, wondering if something terrible had occurred under her own roof and if the mess that had been her life since her husband and child died had somehow helped to obscure the truth.

  “We’ll need her hairbrush too,” Birdy said.

  “I watch TV,” Tess said, snapping back into the moment. “I know why you want that. Have you found Darby?”

  Kendall faced the worried mother as she stood on the outskirts of the cyclone of her household debris and looked her straight in her eyes. “No. No we haven’t found anyone.”

  It was at once a lie and the truth. A body hadn’t been found. O
nly a foot.

  When they got into the car and backed away, Birdy turned to Kendall.

  “Why didn’t you tell her?” Birdy said.

  “Because we don’t know who that foot belonged to.”

  Birdy kept her eyes on Kendall’s. “I think we do. We just have to confirm it.”

  “Then confirm it, Birdy. Until then, we aren’t going to tell a mother that her daughter has been butchered by some maniac.”

  “No. I don’t expect we would,” she said.

  Birdy watched as the house faded from view and the pastoral beauty of Olalla Valley took over the scene. Daffodils jumped from the black earth along the roadside. A goat nibbled at some foliage by someone’s front door. A school bus pulled out in front of them.

  “What happened to Darby, Kendall?” she asked.

  Kendall slowed down as the yellow bus with its flashing lights, now dimmed, pulled over to let cars pass.

  “I don’t know.”

  CHAPTER 8

  South Kitsap High School sits on the edge of a ridge overlooking the Olympics to the west. For decades, SKHS had been one of the largest high schools in the state. At any time, the home of the Wolves had at least two thousand students—where most high schools in the nearby region were about half that size. It drew kids from the wealthy subdivisions such as McCormick Woods to the trailer parks south of Burley. Because of its massive student body, it was difficult for kids to find their place, their former status from junior high. A girl who’d been among the best distance runners at Marcus Whitman might not even make the varsity track team. A boy who’d been the first chair trumpet player at one junior high might find himself battling it out for second or third. Cliques were rampant.

  While being the new girl—almost any new girl—carried huge importance among teenagers, it simply wasn’t the case for the new boy. Elan Elliot was none of the things that would make him stand out from the crowd. He was Native American, but in the Pacific Northwest that wasn’t a big deal. The Northwest Indian culture had been an indelible part of the region long before casinos and smoke shops proliferated on tribal land. Seattle was named for a revered chief. Tacoma was the original name of the mountain that dominated the state like a snowball of immense proportions.

  Elan’s story traveled through the school’s gossip channels. He was a runaway. He lived with his aunt who worked in the county coroner’s office. Coming in so late in the year, there wasn’t much of an effort to size him up or get to know him. All the sports teams were winding down. He kept his head down and went from class to class. He didn’t even try to get noticed.

  The first day, the kid with the locker next to his was the only one who spoke to him.

  “Showing a little wolf pride, huh?”

  The tone was dismissive and Elan didn’t get it.

  “What?”

  “Your wolf shirt.”

  Elan looked down at the black and gray T-shirt with a stylized wolf howling at a blackened moon. “My aunt got it for me,” he said. “I didn’t even know the Wolves were the school mascot. If I did, I’d have used it to polish my car.”

  Now the kid seemed interested. “You have a car?”

  Elan threw his backpack over his shoulder. “Yeah.”

  “I’m Chase. Can I get a ride?”

  Elan shook his head. “Sorry, it’s at home.”

  Chase shut his locker. And outside of art class, that was the extent of Elan’s interaction with anyone other than a quick nod.

  The principal notified Katie Lawrence’s father that Kitsap County Detective Stark was on campus asking to talk with Katie about her friend, Darby. Katie’s dad, a fireman, didn’t hesitate. He told the principal it was fine and that he knew Kendall Stark by reputation as a good investigator.

  “I doubt Katie knows anything,” he said. “She is pretty much a loner.”

  Kendall waited in the hallway by the trophy case. She’d gone to South Kitsap herself and while not a stellar athlete, she had left her mark there. Her name was on a plaque shoved in the back of the case. She found it and it brought a smile to her face.

  WOMEN’S VOLLEYBALL CHAMPIONS

  Peninsula Division

  “You in there?” a girl’s voice said.

  “A hundred years ago, yeah. Katie?”

  The girl was taller than her friend and she walked with a slight limp, the result of a birth defect that had been corrected over multiple surgeries since she was a toddler. She had dark brown hair and light-colored eyes. Kendall led the sixteen-year-old to a small room adjacent to the attendance office. On the other side of the glass that faced out to the hallway, other kids who’d managed to get out of class meandered around, staring at them like they were a zoo exhibit.

  “This is kind of embarrassing,” Katie said, catching the eye of a girl who had lasered her attention in their direction.

  “Want me to draw the blinds?” Kendall asked.

  Katie looked warily at the scene through the window. “Yeah, I’m a background person. I don’t like to be front and center. Neither do my friends.”

  The detective pulled the cord and the dustiest mini blinds on the planet slowly unfurled. She turned the plastic wand that adjusted the space between the slats slightly, not enough to block out the world, but it offered a little privacy.

  “I’m here to talk about Darby,” she said.

  “Yeah, my dad texted me,” she said, putting her ten-pound backpack on the table in front of her. “I’m cool with whatever you want to know.”

  They both sat down on hard-molded chairs that had become ubiquitous in schools and prisons all across the country. They were uncomfortable, but easy to clean. “Thank you. Before we talk about the last time you saw her, because that could be very important, I want you to tell me about her.”

  “She was cool,” Katie said, fishing for a Tic Tac. “She was into art.”

  “All right. That’s good,” Kendall said. “How long have you been best friends?”

  “Just this year. I mean, I wouldn’t exactly say we’re best friends. I’ve never been to her house or anything.”

  “Was there a reason for that?” Kendall asked.

  Katie popped a mint into her mouth. “You know the reason. I mean, we never really talked about her mom or, like you know, her situation.” The teenager offered Kendall a mint, and the detective declined.

  “But you know who her mother is, right?” she asked.

  “Duh. Everyone does. I didn’t care. I mean, why should I? Sometimes I hate my mom too.”

  The comment interested Kendall. It didn’t surprise her, however. There had been times when she had hated her own mother. It came with being a teenage girl.

  “Did Darby hate her mother?” she asked.

  Katie chomped on her mint. “Hate, I guess, is the wrong word. She felt sorry for her. Like her mom had a disease or something. Lots of kids think Darby’s mom is lazy or crazy, but Darby told me that hoarding is a disease. She hated that her mother had that disease.”

  “I see,” Kendall said. “What did other kids think of Darby? Having a mother like Tess couldn’t have been easy. Did they bully her? Did she have anyone who might want to harm her?”

  Katie thought a beat. “She was tough. She didn’t let anyone knock her down. I’ve had some problems in the past and I’m tough like that too.”

  “Did she have a boyfriend?”

  “No. She didn’t. She told me that she probably was doomed here at South to never have a boyfriend. Guys liked her okay, but she didn’t let anyone close.”

  “Let’s talk about the last time you saw her,” Kendall said.

  The girl made a face. She was good at that one—irritated. “What about it? I mean,” she said, “there wasn’t anything special. I barely saw her. She had art class last period and I think she was going to stay around with Ms. Mitchell. She was doing a lot of that.”

  “Ms. Mitchell? That’s her art teacher?”

  “Yeah. I don’t like her. But Darby did. She even went over to her house
one time. Maybe more times. She didn’t tell me much about that.”

  Kendall didn’t react to the disclosure. She knew that no kid had any business going to a teacher’s house. If that was true, Ms. Mitchell was going to be in trouble.

  “Katie, I need you to think about the past few weeks. Was there anything different about Darby? Anything out of the ordinary?”

  The bell rang and Katie got up. “Not really. Like she did spend a lot of time with Ms. Mitchell. We were supposed to meet up one weekend at Starbucks, but she didn’t show. She was over at Ms. Mitchell’s.”

  “I might need to talk to you some more,” Kendall said as the teen hoisted her backpack up onto her shoulder and started for the door.

  “That’s okay. I hope Darby’s okay. She’s really a cool girl. Never mattered to me who her mom was.”

  Kendall watched the girl with the limping gait merge into the sea of other teens in the hall as they made their way to their next period classes. Katie Lawrence had found a kindred spirit with Darby. The like-minded had found each other. They did what all teens wanted to do—blended in. As the teenagers moved down the hallway, Katie disappeared.

  But not like Darby. Darby was really gone.

  CHAPTER 9

  Birdy Waterman was good with color. She always had been. Before she decided on a career as a forensic pathologist she had dabbled in the art world. She loved painting. Watercolors mostly. One year she and her sister, Summer, painted Salish-inspired designs on scraps of driftwood to sell to the tourists who came to Neah Bay for fishing or whale watching. They sold quite a few pieces, but it felt compromising and dishonest. The hottest sellers had nothing to do with their own culture, but owed more to what was expected by those who wanted something to match a sofa or comforter cover. When she started painting with authenticity that fit how she felt, Birdy found she really didn’t like the subjective nature of the art world. Everyone had an opinion. Nothing, quite ironically, was black and white.

  Science was. Science was conclusive and incontrovertible.