The Girl in the Woods

by Gregg Olsen

  The state somehow managed to keep the Doggy-Style investigation out of the press—it was beyond embarrassing for the institution and its new superintendent. That meant that Missy Carlyle was only fired. She easily could have been charged with inmate abuse. Brenda could have pushed for it, but she didn’t.

  “She has something on Missy and that could come in handy one day,” Amanda had said at the time.

  As the women faced each other in Amanda’s sons’ room, they could only wonder if that time had come.

  “You’ve got to tell the detectives,” Amanda said. “You have to tell them about the letters now. Do you still have that one you showed me?”

  Tess nodded. “And the one after that.”

  Tess’s eyes widened. “There was another? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because I was afraid you’d make me report it. I didn’t want to be the subject of any kind of scrutiny,” Tess said, hesitating as if the words were stuck in her throat. “You know, Amanda, I didn’t want people to know who I was.”

  “You mean how you live?” Amanda asked.

  Tess still couldn’t stop her face from going red with the shame that had consumed her for so many years. Even in the presence of a close, trusted friend.

  “Right,” she said, looking away. “I didn’t want to call attention to myself. The social worker from the county said that if I didn’t get my act together, I could lose my daughter. She’s all I have.”

  Amanda put her arms around Tess. The irony in her friend’s words was heartbreaking. It had happened. She had lost her daughter.

  CHAPTER 15

  The call came in at 7:02 a.m.

  The operator at the Comm Center in Bremerton dispatched an ambulance after confirming the address and assessing the need. The woman making the call said that her husband had been ill for quite some time and had become unresponsive. She identified herself as Jennifer Roberts and her husband as Ted Roberts.

  “Please no lights and sirens,” she said, her voice oddly flat. “There’s no point in it. He’s dead.”

  “I need you to check and see if he’s breathing,” the operator said. “Can you do that? Can you check for a pulse?”

  “I did. Nothing.”

  “Jennifer, please stay calm. I need you to do what I’m asking until help arrives. All right?”

  “I am calm. And it’s no use. Ted’s deader . . .” her voice trailed off to a distracted mumble.

  The operator couldn’t quite make it out, but she had an idea of what the woman had just said.

  Ted’s deader than a doornail? Who says that about her husband?

  The operator finished the call and picked up the next line, this time a fire called in by a neighbor in a housing development in Silverdale. The caller was unsure, but thought the family was on vacation and no one was inside. The fire department was on its way.

  And yet with all the drama that comes with her job, the call with Jennifer Roberts hung in the young woman’s memory, the way one or two a week did.

  Deader than a doornail? Who says that at that particular time?

  A paramedic team led by Danny Ferry filed a report that accompanied the body to the Kitsap County morgue:

  Upon arrival, at 09:07, the respondent, Jennifer Roberts, 43, indicated that her husband, Ted Roberts, 42, had expired shortly after she served him breakfast. She was angry that we’d used sirens. She said that she’d requested no sirens. She led us upstairs to his bedroom and told us he had been ill for the past six months and attributed his declining health to alcoholism and emphysema. She could not provide any additional information. She asked when she could have the body returned to her. Transported deceased to the morgue. Arrived at 09:35.

  Paramedic Ferry, with his small, compact stature and bright red beard, looked more like a cereal box leprechaun than the lifesaver he often was. Birdy was in her office to receive the body.

  “Something definitely hinky about this one,” he said, handing over his notes.

  Birdy set down her coffee. “How so?”

  “Most of it’s there. But the one weird part on this one was that his wife couldn’t name his doctor. She said she’d have to look it up.”

  “She was probably too distraught,” Birdy said.

  Danny scratched his beard. “Distraught isn’t the word. This lady was all over the map, I’m telling you. All over it. She cried. She laughed. She didn’t know which end was up, and then she offered me a cup of coffee like I’d come over for a visit. Weird.”

  In her line of work, as in Danny’s, Birdy had seen all sorts of reactions when it came to traumatic situations. “Danny, people handle shock and grief differently. You know that.”

  Danny fidgeted for something in his pockets. A cigarette, maybe.

  “Yeah, I do. And I can tell you this lady was off the Richter scale of strangeness. Her kids too. They stood there and watched their mother like they were watching some play. Not once did either comfort her.”

  “She sounds hysterical.” Birdy turned her gaze from Danny to the paperwork. “You’ve seen people out of their minds with grief. Impacts the way others behave too. The report doesn’t mention the kids.”

  Danny didn’t like to make mistakes, even an omission. His face flashed red. “Sorry,” he said. “My bad, Dr. Waterman. A boy and a girl. High school age.”

  “All right,” she said.

  After Danny and his team departed, Birdy took care of all the intake prep work that accompanies the dead when they arrive under her jurisdiction. Getting everything ready and ensuring that things were properly documented. This was crucial not only in the possibility that a criminal case was involved—which was rare because most autopsies were not about a crime, but about a determination as to cause.

  She put on her scrubs and wheeled Ted Roberts’s remains toward the autopsy table.

  The circumstances surrounding this latest visitor to the morgue would have raised the eyebrows of even the most inexperienced forensic pathologist. Ted Roberts was relatively young. He’d been ill for an unspecified period of time, but there was no certainty that he was under any doctor’s supervision. He died at home. Home deaths were always treated with the utmost caution. Beyond all of that there were a couple of things that troubled Birdy more than others. Red flags. The widow had asked for the ambulance to arrive silently.

  She didn’t want to wake anyone. Or was it that she didn’t want anyone to see?

  And she wanted to know when she could get the body back.

  That was more than a red flag. That was a big crimson banner.

  Birdy put on her scrubs and mask and went to work. She started by taking photographs of the body as it appeared on arrival. He was thin, but had decent muscle tone. A tattoo on his right bicep was of an eagle clutching a heart in its talons. It was crude, she suspected probably gotten when he was young.

  He was navy. Even his haircut suggested it. Not buzzed, but close cropped and all one length.

  She checked his eyes. Yellowish, but no petechial hemorrhaging.

  Next she cut off the pale blue pajama bottoms that he’d had been wearing when the paramedics found him. Over the next couple of hours she “sliced and diced” him, as her nephew would surely consider it. Elan had such an inappropriately direct way of putting things.

  As Birdy went about her protocol, she collected specimens for the lab. A tox screen was a given in cases in which there were no outward indications of trauma. Ted Roberts hadn’t been strangled. Stabbed. Shot. No wounds indicated he was an intravenous drug user. She examined his lungs for damage and was surprised to find that none existed. They were pink. It was doubtful that Ted Roberts had been a smoker at all.

  The widow had suggested emphysema.

  She had also suggested alcoholism.

  Despite the yellow hue of his eyes, his liver fell in the normal range for a man of his age. If he’d been a heavy drinker there would have been plenty of markers for that.

  The kidneys, however, were in dire shape.

 
For such a relatively young man, the kidneys’ condition was shockingly bad. Although more tests were needed to determine if she had been correct with a visual assessment, Birdy considered cause of death was probably renal failure. The manner? She wouldn’t put money down on it until tox analysis was completed.

  Throughout all of it, Birdy recorded her observations on tape, both video and audio.

  With the clean palm of her gloved hand she pushed the button on the CD player and listened as Stan Getz played softly in the background.

  Music made the last part easier, because it was so very sad. Birdy returned all of Ted Roberts’s organs to the body cavity. Unlike some in her profession, she put them back where they belonged. Some medical examiners—especially those in large cities who were pressured by time constraints that come with assembly line processes—stuff the organs back inside with no rhyme or reason. Birdy considered that disrespectful. No matter what had been planned for the remains—burial or cremation—the body was once a person, a creation that only a higher power could have conjured.

  A little time. A little care. Dignity restored.

  She stitched him up and notified Kendall Stark.

  “I don’t have all the answers,” she said, “but the case that came in this morning looks like a probable homicide.”

  “Nice way to start the day, Birdy. Are we talking Ted Roberts?”

  Birdy was surprised.

  “Did you know him?” she asked.

  “Oh no,” Kendall said. “But someone who did called 911 five minutes ago and you’ll never believe what she said.”

  Birdy liked the sound of that.

  “Try me,” she said.

  “She said Ted Roberts was murdered.”

  That was good.

  “Who was it who called?” Birdy asked.

  “Don’t know. Didn’t give a name. It was a female. Young. Want to come to meet the widow?”

  Birdy put Kendall on speaker so she could set down her phone and finish what she was doing when she called.

  “I thought we were done with cross training, Kendall,” she said.

  “You know you love it,” the detective said. “Pick you up in five minutes. Unless you’re too busy to come along. I understand your compulsion to make your reports a thing of incontrovertible beauty.”

  Birdy looked at Ted Roberts, naked as the day he was born.

  “Let me put a sheet on Mr. Roberts and roll him into the chiller. I also need to change. I’ll be ready in four.”

  “How can you be ready that fast?”

  “I’m younger than you,” she said.

  “Two years.”

  “Detective years are like dog years, Kendall.”

  Kendall laughed. She wasn’t about to argue that one.

  Four minutes later, Birdy slid into the passenger seat of Kendall’s white Ford SUV, one that was in bad need of a good washing.

  “Incontrovertible beauty?” she asked. “Where did that crack come from?”

  Kendall smiled. “You liked that, didn’t you?”

  “Not at all. It seemed a little like a dig.”

  “Not meant that way, Birdy. In fact, quite the opposite. A friend of mine in Seattle complained about a pathologist’s report on a rape-murder over there. Thought it was part of a serial and the pathologist blew it by not detailing the defensive wounds. Didn’t write them up. And sure as hell didn’t photograph them for court. Said she wished the pathologist’s report were as good as the ones we get over here. Called your work a thing of ‘incontrovertible beauty.’ ”

  Birdy liked what she heard, but she made a face anyway.

  “Oh, Birdy, that’s a compliment,” Kendall said.

  “I guess so,” she said. “Makes me sound like a perfectionist control freak.”

  Kendall smiled as they drove down Sidney toward the Roberts’s residence. “And, in case you’re wondering, that’s why I like working with you so much.”

  On the way their conversation turned to the Darby Moreau case.

  “Tess called me this morning,” Kendall said.

  Birdy could barely sleep the night before because she felt so sick about what Tess was going through. “Oh God, that poor woman,” she said. “I already know the answer, but how is she?”

  Kendall’s face held a grim expression. The lightness of their banter evaporated. The air in the car felt heavy and sad.

  “Tess is a mess—sorry, I didn’t mean it that way.” Using the words Tess and mess in the same sentence was a cruel reminder of the insults hurled at the woman for the way she lived. “She is upset. She thanked us for helping her last night. Getting her friend to take care of her was a good thing. She said that Amanda stayed up with her all night. They talked about Darby and what might have happened to her. She wants Darby’s body back so she can have a memorial service. And, more than anything, she cried and cried.”

  Getting the body back was not going to be anytime soon, which Birdy knew would only compound the agony.

  “We get sad cases all the time,” she said, “but this one just seems worse than so many of the others. Not that we can measure someone else’s hurt. But if we could . . .”

  “Tess had been through so, so much. But that’s not what I wanted to tell you. She’s remembered something that she thinks might be helpful.”

  Birdy hadn’t expected that. “What’s that?”

  “She didn’t say. Wants to tell you. She knows that you don’t judge her and that you care.”

  “We both do,” Birdy said.

  “I know, but that’s what she wants, and given all she’s going through right now, I think it’s a reasonable request. We can go see her after we pay a visit to Mrs. Roberts.”

  Kendall parked her SUV in front of the white and blue house at 511 Camellia Street.

  “Let’s see what the grieving widow has to say,” Kendall said with a smile. “She probably won’t like or trust either one of us.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Jennifer Roberts wore a crisp white top and dark-dyed blue jeans, expensive ones, not the dreaded mom jeans that other women of her age still wriggled into when they felt the need for a competitive advantage. Jennifer didn’t need to do any wriggling whatsoever. She was magazine thin. Jennifer’s eyes were so blue that when Birdy first saw her standing in the doorway, she’d have sworn those eyes had been enhanced by tinted contact lenses. A sideways glance, however, indicated they were real, the color of aquamarines. Her hair was a shade too light of blond to look natural, but there was no denying that the widow was lovely.

  She also seemed frazzled and sad.

  “Why are the police involved?” she said after Kendall made their introductions.

  “Sheriff,” Kendall said, correcting Jennifer. People always thought the police and the sheriff’s department were interchangeable. “We investigate cases like this. Routine procedure.”

  Jennifer wrapped her arms around her chest and started to tear up. “There’s nothing routine about losing the man you love,” she said.

  Birdy waited for a tear to roll and Jennifer blinked hard.

  Down one went.

  “I’ve examined your husband,” Birdy said, her eyes full of sympathy. “In order to complete my report I need to follow up on some things you told the paramedics.”

  Jennifer indicated she understood and motioned for the women to come inside. They followed her to the living room with its massive flat screen and a brown leather recliner positioned front and center. Next to the recliner was a small end table with an empty water bottle. Next to the water bottle, a coffee cup. Over the fireplace was a sunset scene from the American Southwest, all pink and orange with the silhouette of Pinnacle Peak. The view of the water and the Olympics from the window couldn’t have been more different.

  “Ms. Roberts,” Kendall said, “we need to go over what happened this morning. We’ll also need some background about your husband.”

  Birdy wanted background about Ms. Roberts as well, but this was Kendall’s investigation.
r />   “Coffee?” Jennifer Roberts asked. “I have some cookies too.”

  “None for me, thank you,” Kendall said.

  Birdy shook her head, declining the offer.

  While Jennifer went to get herself coffee, the two women looked at each other, telegraphing in that way they could—since cross training—that something was very extraordinary about this woman and her behavior.

  Danny, the paramedic, was spot on.

  “Her husband died a few hours ago and she’s offering cookies? Why not hold a party?” Kendall said, her voice a low whisper.

  Birdy didn’t say anything, but she was thinking the same thing.

  When Jennifer returned she sat in the recliner and rested her hands on the armrest. Her blue eyes snapped shut.

  “I can still feel his presence here,” she said, her eyes still shuttered. “Teddy, how I love you.”

  Awkward silence filled the room. Birdy and Kendall exchanged glances.

  Jennifer’s amazing blue eyes opened.

  “We’re sorry for your loss,” Birdy said.

  Kendall asked Jennifer for some background information. Ted Roberts’s widow got teary again. She talked about how she and her husband had met online. She lived in Arizona and couldn’t imagine leaving the sunshine, pool, and margarita scene for soggy, rough and tumble, Port Orchard.

  “But when you are in love you go where your heart leads you,” she said. “I can’t say that I regret it. Teddy was an amazing husband, lover, father.”

  “How long ago was that?” Birdy asked. “When you moved up here?”

  “Longer than a year ago,” she said. “I’m terrible with dates. If you asked me what day of the week this is, I probably would get it wrong. I live in the now. Always have.”

  “The paramedics said you have a couple of children,” Kendall said.

  Jennifer nodded. “Ruby and Micah, from my first marriage.”

  “We might need to talk to them,” Kendall said.

  “Oh, I don’t know about that. So upsetting to them.”

  “You understand,” Kendall persisted, “as part of wrapping up our investigation.”