The Girl in the Woods

by Gregg Olsen

  Birdy put her arm around Tess’s shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said. “What happened to Darby was not your fault. You could have had a spotless home, lived in a hermetically sealed Lucite box, with not a speck of dust, and it still could have happened. Murder can happen to anyone. It absolutely is not your fault.”

  Tess mouthed the words “thank you” and that faraway look returned for a beat.

  “Tess, I know someone you need to see.”

  “I can’t see anyone,” she said. “I can’t even tell Amanda.”

  Birdy sifted through her purse and retrieved a business card. It was for a woman named Deanna Clarke who ran a grief group out of her home in South Colby, a couple of miles from Port Orchard.

  “See Deanna,” she said, giving Tess the card. “She’ll help you. She had terrible guilt over a tragedy of her own. Not like yours, but with a similar outcome. You need to talk to someone. You have paid dearly already and no one could torture you with more pain than you’ve poured all over yourself.”

  “I caused the accident,” Tess said.

  “I understand.”

  “Shouldn’t I go to jail? I work at a prison where people have done far less damage than I have and they are serving time.”

  “See Deanna,” Birdy repeated.

  After Darby’s mom left, Birdy let her imagination take her inside that Honda Civic with the Moreaus on the night of the accident. She let herself believe that Tess and Brad had only argued. Maybe Tess even gave him a shove, in the heat of the moment. She didn’t allow herself to think what might have truly occurred the night Brad and Ellie Moreau died. She would always wonder if Tess had grabbed that wheel and steered the car into that shoulder, killing her husband and two-year-old. If she knew for sure, then as an officer of the court she had the sworn duty to report what she knew.

  But she didn’t. And she wouldn’t. No one had suffered more than the woman who would forever be known as Tess the Mess.

  CHAPTER 39

  Missy Carlyle was loading her Jeep when Detective Kendall Stark and Deputy Gary Wilkins pulled up in a county cruiser. The house was the envy of the neighborhood—neatly painted white, a red metal roof, and a garden boasting every kind of blooming flower. A hedge of red azaleas was the showstopper, but not right then. That day, it was the mountain of belongings on the lawn, dumped in a haphazard fashion. It looked more like court-ordered eviction than a breakup, which is what it was.

  It had been the worst day ever. The love of her life had thrown her out. The love of her life had lost her job. There would be no wedding at Snoqualmie Falls Lodge. There would be none of the dreams of raising a family together some day. Every bit of it had been rubbed out by an incident so strange, Missy never really understood how it had transpired in the first place.

  Missy, her muscles sore from packing and her heart broken, thought back to that first moment.

  She’d been making her rounds through the prison pet program when she saw Brenda Nevins cleaning dog brushes in the big stainless steel sink. Brenda had her back to Missy and was humming some tune. Missy moved in closer. In doing so, she startled the inmate.

  Brenda turned around suddenly and accidentally—or maybe on purpose—sprayed soapy water all over her T-shirt. She wore no bra. That was pointedly obvious. She laughed at how ridiculous she looked.

  Ridiculously sexy.

  “A wet T-shirt contest,” she said, looking down at her breasts. “Do you think I have what it takes to be a winner, Officer Carlyle?”

  There was no denying that she was beautiful. Missy should have known better. She should have known that Brenda Nevins was beautiful like a bouquet of nightshade. It started with her helping to dry off the inmate. And then a kiss. How did that happen? In her mind, as she sat there remembering it, she could only come up with one phrase and it could not be more lame.

  “One thing led to another . . .”

  When Missy played it over and over in her head later—the wobbly dog-grooming table, the frenzied sex atop it, the inability to stop until Tess Moreau caught them in the act—she couldn’t come up with the reason why it had gone that far.

  While Gary lingered by the cruiser, Kendall walked over to Missy.

  “Connie didn’t call the sheriff on me, did she?” she asked.

  “Millicent Carlyle?” Kendall asked in her official voice.

  Missy looked at all of her things, spread out like a tornado in the Midwest.

  “I know I told her I’d get out right away,” she said. “But it is a lot harder to sift through our stuff to determine what’s hers and what’s mine.”

  “We’re not here about that,” Kendall said as Gary joined her.

  Missy looked relieved and then concerned. She planted her feet in the lawn next to her boxes and crossed her arms.

  “You’re not here to evict me?”

  “No,” Kendall said, glancing at Gary. Two kids were riding their bikes in a circle in front of the house. This would be done in as quiet a manner as possible. No need to get anyone hurt or excited. The detective moved her blazer to show her gun, but she didn’t even graze it with her palm.

  Missy caught the movement of the fabric and knew what was coming.

  “Millicent, please put up your arms,” Kendall said. “I want you to do this slowly.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “I’m being arrested? What happened with Brenda was a long time ago. There were no charges. It was handled as a personnel matter.”

  Gary drew his gun and Kendall led the high school janitor over to the Jeep.

  “Put your palms on top of the vehicle and spread your legs,” she said, wishing there were a better, less unseemly way to provide the same instruction.

  Connie Mitchell came running out of the house across the front lawn.

  “What’s going on?” she asked. Her eyes were open wide and full of fear.

  Missy, handcuffed behind her back, turned and shot Connie a very hurt look.

  “How could you?” she asked.

  Connie had no idea what she was talking about. “I didn’t do anything!”

  Kendall watched Missy while the two women argued about broken dreams, betrayal, and how they’d never, ever forgive each other.

  “Why am I being arrested?” she asked.

  “Millicent Carlyle, you’re being held on investigation of the homicide of Darby Moreau.”

  Connie screamed. It was a scream without any words, and the two little kids riding their bikes looked over and pedaled away as fast as they could. They’d lingered because it was exciting to see a cop car in the neighborhood, but the scream let out by Connie Mitchell was bloodcurdling.

  “I didn’t kill anyone,” Missy said, spinning away from the Jeep. She almost fell, and Kendall steadied her.

  “We’ll talk about it at the department,” Kendall said.

  “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. I sure didn’t kill that girl.”

  Connie lunged at her lover. “How could you? She was just a kid.”

  “Do you know anything about this, Connie?” Kendall asked.

  “She was jealous of all my students. She was. She never wanted me to spend time with them. I told her that those kids were like we’d been. They needed someone to listen to them. I never thought . . .”

  Connie burst into tears, unable to complete her sentence.

  “Take a few minutes,” Kendall said. “We’d like to get a statement from you.”

  “Anything,” Connie said. “I loved Darby. She was such a sweet, beautiful girl.”

  “I didn’t do this,” Missy said. “You know me, Connie.”

  Kendall looked back at Connie, who wouldn’t even look at the woman she had planned to marry.

  “Yesterday, I knew her, detective. Today, I have no idea who that woman really is.”

  She walked toward the perfect little white house, holding her stomach like she was going to vomit. As Gary head-checked Missy and slid her into the car, Connie turned around one last time.
She held the image of her lover for a second but directed her remarks to Kendall.

  “Tell her I’ll call our lawyer for her.” She looked at the belongings on the lawn. “I’ll put her things in storage.”

  “All right,” Kendall said.

  “But nothing else,” Connie said. “I don’t want to see her, talk to her, no matter what happens. My life has been ruined. I don’t have a job. I don’t have a future. It was like I let the devil inside my life. I was such a fool. Brenda Nevins? She had a relationship with a monster? She murdered a young girl? What does that make me?”

  “What she did doesn’t define you,” Kendall said.

  “No?” She started back toward her door. “Tell that to Tess Moreau. Darby would still be alive if I hadn’t been involved with Missy. They’d never have met.”

  Kendall knew that her next line was supposed to be something about how the actions of others have no reflection on the people around them, but she just couldn’t go there. If Connie and Missy hadn’t become lovers, Darby would never have been in danger. Kendall wondered if the truth was even darker than that. Could Missy have taken the job at the high school only to find an opportunity to seek revenge for Brenda? If that had been the case, Connie had been duped. She had lain down with the devil.

  Kendall Stark and Birdy Waterman had grown close over the Darby Moreau case. They had started it together in the woods of Banner Forest with the discovery of the foot. They’d joked about the ridiculousness of the cross training, but in the end, neither would say that it hadn’t had its benefits.

  Deputy Wilkins had gone ahead to process Missy while Kendall called the forensic pathologist.

  “We arrested Millicent Carlyle. I’m on my way back to the office. Gary’s processing her and then we’ll see if she’ll talk.”

  Birdy, who was reviewing lab reports on another case, set the papers aside.

  “That’s a relief,” she said. “A huge one. A sick case that is. Killing a girl for revenge. Missy is as much of a sociopath as Brenda Nevins.”

  “I’m not sure. I’m sure she’s a sociopath, but there is an alternate theory. It came from Connie Mitchell.”

  “Oh God, she was there? I feel so sorry for her.”

  “Me too,” Kendall said. “She knows about Brenda Nevins. She just found out. But she doesn’t seem to know about how twisted all of that was. She was in the process of booting Millicent out. Her stuff was on the lawn.”

  “What’s her theory?”

  “She said that Millicent was extremely jealous of Darby and how much time and attention she was getting from her.”

  “Missy saw the girl as a rival?”

  “Think so.”

  “But Darby wasn’t gay.”

  “Maybe Millicent didn’t know that.”

  “Have you notified Tess about the arrest?”

  “That’s really why I’m calling. I don’t want to lose momentum here and I don’t want to send someone who doesn’t know her to go tell her.”

  “Say no more. I’ll do it.”

  “You sure?” Kendall asked.

  “On my way now,” Birdy said.

  Birdy straightened her desk, grabbed a light jacket and her purse. Tess Moreau had been in a shambles when she’d seen her last. Birdy hoped that Tess would summon the courage to call the grief counselor she’d recommended. Tess had lost everything, but she could start over. She was barely in her forties. No matter what people had done, Birdy always believed in second and third chances. Sometimes behind bars. Sometimes out in the world. People could still do good things. The human race was not a total loss, though sometimes it seemed that way.

  CHAPTER 40

  It was late in the day, but there would be no waiting until tomorrow to talk to the woman arrested for the murder of a sixteen-year-old girl.

  The news that Millicent Carlyle was in custody for Darby Moreau’s murder was known only to a small number of people inside the sheriff’s and county prosecutor’s offices in Port Orchard, but Kendall Stark had no doubt that this particular case would explode in the media. For some reason, lost on her, lesbian love triangles were a red-hot media commodity. Add in the Brenda Nevins connection, and it would no doubt be the biggest case in Washington State history since, well, since Brenda’s case and before that, the Green River Killer’s murder spree.

  An assistant county attorney named Jill Goodwin arrived for the interview that would be held in a small, windowless room in the jail. Her boss had put her on notice that with all eyes soon to be on Kitsap County, there could not be one “gnat’s-eyelash-size screw-up.”

  Jill, an unusually dour woman with motorcycle helmet hair and lips that wouldn’t know a smile if it had been spray-painted on her face, kept her mouth shut except for two questions.

  “Have you been Mirandized?” she asked Missy.

  Missy looked tired and scared. “Yes, I know my rights. I worked in law enforcement.”

  Jill gave a quick nod. “You’ve waived the right to counsel, and you understand the consequences of that?”

  “Yes, I do,” Missy said. “And I didn’t do this. For the record.”

  Dour Jill looked over at Kendall.

  “Go ahead. I’m satisfied,” the assistant county attorney said.

  Kendall ran down a list of items that were so benign in nature that if an observer watched unaware of the circumstances behind the meeting, they’d come away with the impression that Kendall was conducting a job interview.

  In answer to the basic interview questions, Missy said she’d been born in Silverdale. She was one of three children of a shipyard worker and a nurse at Harrison Hospital in Bremerton. After high school, she knew she wanted out of Kitsap County so she enlisted in the navy. After that, she worked at the prison.

  “You left the prison under less than ideal circumstances,” Kendall said.

  Missy knew what was coming. She shifted her frame in her chair.

  “That’s putting it mildly,” she said. “But yes.”

  “You were involved with an inmate.”

  “You know I was.”

  “Who was it?”

  Missy looked down at the table. The admission was a painful one, not for what she did—which was bad enough—but for the person she’d been involved with.

  “Brenda Nevins,” she said.

  Dour Jill looked over at Kendall. Apparently, she hadn’t read the arrest warrant. She started skimming it as fast as she could. She chugged down the words and each bite was more bitter than the first.

  More unbelievable.

  Kendall pressed on. “Tell us about your relationship with Ms. Nevins.”

  Missy studied the fake wood grain on the table. “Do we have to go down this road? This is very embarrassing.”

  “You can quit any time, Ms. Carlyle,” the assistant DA said, though she was caught up on her reading and was on the edge of her seat hoping that Missy would continue.

  Missy opened a water bottle set out for her. She took a big, long gulp.

  “I had a sexual encounter with her and I was put on leave,” she said, twisting the plastic cap back onto the top of the bottle. “After an internal review, I was released from my job.”

  “Back up,” Kendall said. “You had a sexual relationship with an inmate. How did it come about that you were caught?”

  Missy looked at Kendall. “Tess Moreau. An encounter. She saw us and reported it.”

  “That made you really angry, didn’t it?” Kendall asked.

  “It made me ashamed,” she said. “It made Brenda angry.”

  Kendall was in dog-with-a-bone mode. Her element. She’d often thought that being a trial lawyer would have been a fun job, but catching the bad guys had its perks too.

  “How angry?” she asked.

  “I’m not going to lie,” Missy said. “Brenda wanted revenge. She missed an important TV interview. At the time, she was all about being a TV star. It was everything to her. She would have killed Tess if she could have. Really, I think she could have.”<
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  Kendall pushed on. “Did she threaten Tess?”

  “I don’t know,” Missy said. “Not to her face. I really don’t know. I don’t know what happened after I left as far as Brenda and Tess.”

  “So you suffered no consequences from dismissal from your job?” Kendall asked. “No criminal charges? No write-up to follow you to a job as a janitor at South Kitsap?”

  Missy stared hard at the detective. This hadn’t been fun and games and she knew that it wasn’t going to be.

  “I lost my job,” she said. “That was a serious consequence.”

  “How did you get hired on at South Kitsap?”

  “I saw an ad in the Kitsap Sun and I answered it.”

  Kendall rifled through a pile of papers in the folder she’d brought into the conference room.

  “Is this your application?” she asked, showing it first to Dour Jill, who then passed it over to Missy.

  Missy glanced at the paper. “So?”

  “You don’t mention your employment at the prison,” Kendall said. “Do you?”

  She looked away, embarrassed. “I left it off. I didn’t lie about it. If they’d have asked about the gap, I would have been truthful. I’m not a liar.”

  Kendall pushed again. “Come on, Missy. You got that job at South because Darby Moreau went to school there.”

  Missy sucked down more water. “Are you thinking that I took that janitor’s job so that it would be near the kid of the woman who turned me in? You think I was stalking her?”

  “Don’t you think it is an amazing coincidence?” Kendall asked.

  Missy was angry, but she tried to hold it inside. “That’s all it is. I didn’t even know who she was until after I started dating Connie.”

  “That would be Connie Mitchell, Darby’s art teacher?” Kendall asked.

  A softness came to Missy’s face. “Right,” she said. “Connie.”

  Kendall set Darby’s sophomore class photo on the table. “Connie spent a lot of time with Darby.”

  Missy kept her eyes on the photo, then she looked over at Jill, then back to Kendall.

  “She wasn’t inappropriate with her, if that’s what you’re getting at. But, yes, she did. She said she and Darby had similar life experiences and she wanted to help her. Connie was just being Connie. She’s a really good person.”