The Girl in the Woods

by Gregg Olsen

  Jennifer indicated a pair of school pictures on the wall. Ruby looked like her mother with long blond hair and sapphire blue eyes. Micah was a handsome boy with dark, medium-length hair that he wore parted in the middle. Like his sister, he could be a teen model.

  “They went to a friend’s house,” Jennifer went on. “With all that happened here, they needed some space.”

  “Their stepfather just died,” Kendall said.

  “They weren’t that close,” Jennifer said. “I wanted them to be, but you know, you just can’t make a blended family because you want one.”

  “How old are they?” Kendall asked. “What school do they attend?”

  Jennifer sipped her coffee and closed her eyes again. “Ruby is seventeen. Micah is sixteen. Irish twins. They both go to South Kitsap.”

  “Last names?” Kendall asked.

  “Roberts.”

  Kendall was surprised. “Mr. Roberts adopted them?” she asked. “That’s a little unusual. At their age? I thought you said they weren’t close.”

  Jennifer pushed the other cup and water bottle aside and made a place for her own cup. She looked toward the window, its frame filled with the blossoms of a pink dogwood tree.

  “Teddy loved that tree,” she said. “He couldn’t wait for it to bloom. I’m so happy that he saw it.”

  “Yes, it is beautiful,” Kendall agreed, “but tell me about the adoption. Just so I can make sure I get everything correct in my report.”

  Jennifer swallowed. “Oh yes. Your report. Their daddy died years ago. They were little. And, well, when I found Teddy he wanted to be a father so much. He’s been alone forever. That’s the military for you. Anyway, when we enrolled them in school, I told Ruby and Micah to use Roberts for their last name.”

  Kendall opened a little black book and started writing. The homicide investigator was an obsessive note taker and Jennifer was giving her plenty to remember. Birdy made a mental note to say something about the “incontrovertible beauty” of Kendall’s detailed scribbling when they left the Roberts’s place.

  “So they weren’t officially adopted by Mr. Roberts?” Birdy asked.

  Jennifer sighed. “Oh no. I lied, I guess. I just wanted them—for us—to be a family. I won’t be in trouble for having them do that, will I?”

  Jennifer’s phone rang and she looked at it.

  “My daughter,” she said. “I know she’s very upset. Can I take this?”

  “Of course,” Kendall said.

  Jennifer reached for her phone and started talking on her way to the kitchen.

  “The police are here, honey . . .”

  Birdy and Kendall looked at one another.

  “I want to know what happened to the first husband,” Birdy said.

  Kendall nodded.

  “Me too.”

  They both waited in silence, listening to bits and pieces of the conversation Jennifer was having with her daughter.

  “. . . I took a Xanax . . .”

  “. . . they say this is routine . . .”

  “. . . pizza sounds fine . . .”

  “. . . I don’t know.”

  “. . . don’t worry.”

  When she returned, Jennifer looked more upset than she had when the detective and forensic pathologist first arrived.

  “My daughter Ruby,” Jennifer said, taking her place in the recliner. “I don’t know how we’re going to get along without Ted. I don’t work. I don’t have any source of income. With him being sick we were barely hanging on. What are we going to do?”

  “I’m sorry,” Kendall said. “The Red Cross might help with some emergency assistance.”

  Jennifer looked around as though she was lost. Maybe she was?

  “Your church?” Birdy offered. “Mr. Roberts’s other family members?”

  Jennifer shook her head. “No, we don’t go to church. Ted didn’t get along with his family. They didn’t want him to marry me. I don’t know why. All I did was love him to death. He was my everything.”

  The irony in what she just said was lost on her. She drank her coffee and watched the breeze blow the dogwood blossoms, making them flutter like a thousand pink butterflies.

  “I don’t have enough money in the checking account to pay for a funeral,” she went on. “What am I going to do?”

  It was all about her right then.

  Birdy already knew the answer, but she couldn’t resist the question.

  “Does he have life insurance?” she asked.

  Jennifer’s demeanor shifted. “Oh yes,” she said, her mood brightening a little. “I completely forgot about that. Yes, through the military. I think he has some supplemental too. I should start looking for that paperwork.” She got up and started for a cabinet across the room.

  “That should help,” Birdy said, locking eyes with Kendall.

  Jennifer, her back to the women, sifted through some papers. “I’ll have to file a claim, won’t I? I don’t know how to do that.”

  “It isn’t difficult,” Birdy said. “Once we clear the case, you’ll have the documents you need. Despite what you might have read or heard on the news, the one thing the government can be counted on is paying out when those who served have died.”

  “That’s a huge relief,” Jennifer said, turning around. “I’ll find the paperwork later. Now I have to just take all this in.”

  That random discussion on insurance over, Kendall refocused the interview back to the time of Ted Roberts’s last breath.

  “You told the paramedics that he’d eaten breakfast,” she said. “And he didn’t feel well.”

  “Yes. French toast with orange marmalade.”

  “He was upstairs?”

  Jennifer fluffed her hair, apparently still damp from a shower.

  “Yes, he’d been too weak lately—too drunk if you want the ugly truth—to come down to eat,” she said.

  “He was a heavy drinker?” Birdy asked.

  Jennifer’s eyes fluttered. “There’s no use lying. I wouldn’t have married him if I had known. I’ve had bad experiences with other men who drank too much.”

  Birdy was looking for medical facts to weigh against her own findings. “Was he treated for alcoholism?” she asked.

  Jennifer ran her French-manicured fingertips through her long hair. “You have to admit you have a problem in order to get help.”

  They talked a while longer, but Jennifer was oddly vague on her timelines. It was possible it was due to stress. That happened all the time. One time when Kendall asked a distraught mother the birthdate of her child, the woman couldn’t even come up with the right month.

  Molly O’Rourke lingered between her house and the Roberts place. She had come off her shift at the convalescent center and gone two doors down to the neighbors who watched her dog Candy during the day. Lena loved animals, but her husband Sam was a grouch and wouldn’t let her have a pet of her own. To appease his wife, he reluctantly agreed that Lena could watch Molly’s dog a couple of days a week. The two women joked they had the first dog-share program in Port Orchard, maybe even in America.

  When Lena answered the door it was evident that something was wrong. Her face was awash with concern and anxiety. She was not one for dramatics. She was a straightforward type who’d worked in the county clerk’s office for decades before retiring. Serving the public makes one straightforward. She called it survival mode.

  “Is Candy all right?” Molly asked.

  “She’s fine,” Lena said. “She’s with Sam. But you missed quite the hubbub this morning,” the neighbor said.

  Molly loved that dog and was instantly relieved. The feeling was a flash.

  “What happened?” she asked. “Did those tweakers at the end of the block get busted again?”

  Lena dismissed that notion. “No. I think Ted Roberts died. That bitch finally did him in.”

  Those words were a sucker punch to the gut. Molly gasped. She nearly doubled over.

  “What happened?”

  Lena’s eyes
misted up. “The ambulance came a little after Kathie Lee and Hoda came on the Today show. I was walking Candy and saw the whole thing. They came with the sirens blaring and, well, they left quietly. That’s not a good sign when they leave without lights and sirens. Means they don’t have to hurry to where they’re going.”

  Molly was shaking. She felt a chill, but the air was warm.

  “Are you sure it was Ted? Maybe one of the kids OD’d or something?”

  “No,” Lena said. “I’m sorry. I know you were close to him. I liked him too. He offered to take me kayaking one time, but I thought I was too old for a new hobby. Sam thought so, anyway.”

  Molly remembered the same offer once. She regretted declining it at that moment more than ever.

  The neighbor went on. “After the ambulance left, the three of them—bitch and brats—got in his car. She was back a half hour later. Alone. Probably dropped off the kids somewhere.”

  Lena’s husband came up behind his wife with Candy.

  “Sorry about your friend,” Sam said.

  Molly took her dog and convulsed into tears.

  “I knew this was going to happen,” she said, sputtering around to look over at the Roberts house a few doors down. “I’m going to call the sheriff. I’m not going to let her get away with this. She was doing something to him. I know it.”

  “You going to be all right?” Lena called out.

  “No. I’m never going to be all right,” Molly said, though not to anyone in particular. She was on her way home, crying and holding her dog. “I let this happen. I let her do whatever she was doing to him. Something was so wrong over there. He was practically catatonic last time I saw him.”

  Molly went home and waited with Candy clutched in her trembling arms. She stood outside and looked over at the window behind the dogwood tree between her house and the Roberts place. She knew the car parked in front was a county vehicle by its plates. She was hoping that someone was there to do the right thing because she had seriously screwed up. She’d had her chance. She knew something was wrong.

  Birdy and Kendall left a now sobbing Jennifer Roberts and went toward the car. Molly scurried over.

  “Are you the police?”

  Kendall didn’t correct her. “You look upset,” she said, “Ms.?”

  “Molly O’Rourke. I live next door. I knew this would happen. I just knew it.”

  Birdy looked up and saw Jennifer in the window.

  “Why don’t you meet us at the sheriff’s office?” she said, giving Kendall a sideways glance.

  Jennifer was watching.

  “I have to feed Candy, my dog, and then I’ll come down.”

  “Ask for me, Detective Stark.”

  Molly went back inside.

  “She looked scared,” Birdy said as they drove back up the hill.

  “I don’t blame her,” Kendall said. “There is something very off about Jennifer Roberts.”

  CHAPTER 17

  “I don’t know why I can’t stop crying,” Molly O’Rourke said, as she took a chair in an interview room at the Kitsap County sheriff’s office.

  “It is completely understandable,” Birdy said, gently touching the younger woman’s shoulder. “You’ve had a bad shock.”

  Kendall gave the young redhead with the suddenly blotchy complexion some water and a box of tissues. Both were needed.

  “It isn’t that,” Molly said. “I’m sick about this because I knew this was going to happen. I let it happen. This really is my entire fault. Ted did not have to die.”

  “What is it, Molly?” Kendall asked. “What are you thinking that you’ve done?”

  Molly dried her eyes. “I’ve had the feeling for a long time. But the other morning when I left for work, I just knew. I just knew something was going on. I should have called the police, but I didn’t. I don’t even know why.”

  Birdy and Kendall exchanged glances. It was crucial that Molly told them what she knew from her perspective, not with the benefit of anything they had learned so far from talking to Jennifer or the paramedics.

  “That’s an early start,” Kendall said.

  The young woman said she had to be at the convalescent center by 5:30 a.m. and that it took her at least twenty minutes to get there.

  “So what did you see? What troubled you?”

  “I was standing out there with my dog so she could do her business and I noticed the lights go on in the bedroom upstairs. Candy was taking her sweet time—like the little brat always does.”

  “It was dark?” Kendall asked.

  “Right,” Molly said. “Not yet five a.m.”

  “All right, then what happened?”

  “The lights were on for a while, I don’t know . . . a few minutes, and then they went off.”

  Kendall narrowed the focus. “What was so unusual about that?”

  Molly shifted in her chair. “Well, I knew that Ted didn’t get up to go to the bathroom. He was practically bedridden. I figured he’d had some kind of episode and woke up Jennifer and she went to check on him. She’s a pretty lazy person so it had to be some kind of major commotion for her to get out of bed.”

  “Maybe it was as simple as that,” Birdy offered. “That he needed some help with a bedpan.”

  Molly didn’t think so. “This is kind of embarrassing,” she said. “I really don’t know why. At the center, a lot of residents wear Depends at night. But I don’t know, I still think of Ted as being so vital,” she said, choking up, then pulling herself together. “I saw Jennifer unloading groceries last week and I couldn’t help noticing that she had a package of Depends.”

  “You notice a lot of things,” Kendall said.

  The young woman looked up, a little defensively. “Our houses are very close together.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” Kendall said. “I mean that you’ve been observant. I appreciate that. You were really fond of Ted, but you obviously don’t care much for Jennifer.”

  “You wouldn’t like her either,” Molly said. “I don’t see how anyone could. She was such a conceited liar. She once told me she was a runner-up to Miss Arizona. I Googled the pageant’s website and there was no Jennifer listed in the past thirty years. She didn’t know how to tell the truth about anything. When she came up here, she told me she was pregnant. She said she’d gotten pregnant on her wedding night.”

  “But she only has a teenage son and a daughter,” Birdy said. “We saw their photos.”

  Molly nodded. “Right. They are nice enough kids. But about the baby. I kept wondering about it. At first, I thought that she was going to be one of those pregnant movie star types that barely shows and then has the baby and they are suddenly back in a bathing suit. She kind of took care of herself like that.”

  “But what about the baby?” Birdy asked.

  “I don’t think there ever was one. I think Ted thought there was one, for sure. He told me one time that he had some very bad news. He said that Jennifer had a miscarriage. He was devastated.”

  “I’m sure he was,” Kendall said.

  “Yeah, but guess who wasn’t? I went over there with some mums that I thought were pretty and a card and told Jennifer that I was sorry for her loss. She thanked me and was nice about it, but the next day was garbage day. I took my trash to the street, you know, next to the Robertses’ and do you know what I saw?”

  “No,” Birdy said. “Tell me.”

  “Well, their can’s lid wasn’t down tight and I noticed some stuff sticking out. I thought that I should shut it because if the raccoons got into it, then I’d be the one that had to clean it up. The wind always blows stuff into my yard. You know what was sticking up, holding the lid up?” she asked, not waiting for Birdy or Kendall to answer. “That potted mum. Jennifer had just thrown it out. I only gave it to her the day before. I opened the lid and the card was there too. She didn’t even open it.”

  It was cold, but neither Kendall nor Birdy said so.

  “What about Ted’s health?” Birdy asked. “W
hat do you know about it?”

  “Nothing. I mean, honestly, I don’t know what was wrong with him. He was fine until she showed up. Seriously. At first he complained of stomach cramps and she put him on some special raw foods diet, but it didn’t seem to work. She told me about that. Said it was all the rage down in Scottsdale. I didn’t know anything about it, but I did watch him get better, then sicker, then, well never better again.”

  “What did he or she say was wrong with him?” Birdy asked.

  She pondered the question before answering. “God, there were so many stories. One time she told me he had stomach cancer. I asked who his oncologist was—I’m not exactly really in the medical field, but I wanted to be a nurse—and she said it was someone in Seattle. I Googled that too, but couldn’t find anything.”

  “I seems like you were very suspicious,” Kendall said.

  A look of recognition came over her. Molly had heard that before. “That’s what my mom says. She thinks I’m overly dramatic. But I was suspicious. One time I kind of confronted her about it. I said that Ted looked really bad and I worried that he might die.”

  “How did she react?” Birdy asked.

  The memory brought Molly to tears again. “I’m sorry,” she said, taking another tissue. Her eyes were red; her face was suddenly very white. “I think I’m going to throw up,” she said.

  “Can you make it to the restroom?” Birdy asked.

  Molly gripped the armrests of her chair. “It’ll pass. I’m just upset. Give me a second.”

  Kendall slid the wastebasket a little closer to Molly. Just in case it was needed.

  Molly acknowledged the gesture by holding up her finger, indicating just a second. She could get through the interview with a little more perseverance.

  “When I confronted her, she just looked at me with those weird blue eyes of hers and said, ‘there are worse things that could happen.’ It was like Ted’s dying was expected and meant nothing to her. It was after that . . . it was after that . . .”

  “Go on, please,” Kendall said, pushing her a little. “I know this is unbelievably hard.”

  “I should have called nine-one-one,” Molly said. “I really should have.”