The Girl in the Woods

by Gregg Olsen

  Kendall didn’t let up. “Were you jealous too? Jealous of all that time?”

  “A little,” she said. “I kidded her about it. It wasn’t anything creepy if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “Did you have any contact with Brenda after you left the institution?”

  A long pause. The wheels were turning, grinding. It was almost audible.

  “Some,” Missy said. “Not much.”

  Kendall stood and paced a moment. She just let Missy stew. It was a good technique. Always give the subject time to trip themselves up.

  “She wanted you to seek revenge, didn’t she?” she finally asked.

  Missy didn’t deny it, which disappointed the detective a little.

  “Something along those lines,” Missy said. “Brenda was crazy. She is bat shit crazy. I told her not to bother me again.”

  “How was she able to call you?” Kendall asked.

  “I gave her my phone number.”

  Kendall looked surprised. It was a slightly exaggerated look, meant to rattle.

  “Really? Why on earth would you give a convicted killer, your former lover, your phone number?”

  “I know this sounds bad,” Missy said, struggling to get her words out. “It is disgusting to me too. But at the time I was enamored with her, I guess,” she said, looking up at the ceiling as if there was something interesting up there. “Infatuated. Stupid. When I look back on it, I can’t even imagine that I could have felt anything but disgust for her. It makes no sense. My involvement with her doesn’t define me.”

  “A jury probably will think otherwise,” Kendall said.

  “I didn’t do anything,” Missy said.

  “Yes, you’ve said that. When was the last time you talked to Brenda?”

  Missy put her elbows on the table and put her face in her hands. “Please don’t tell Connie.”

  “When was the last time you talked to her?”

  Missy stayed quiet. “Yesterday. She called me to say this was all about to come out. She called me to warn me.”

  The detective opened her folder and pulled out the letter that Tess had first given Birdy. She slid it over the table to Missy.

  She looked down at it.

  You took from me. I’ll take from you.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “You tell us.”

  “I’ve never seen this before,” Missy said. “I have no idea what it is.”

  Kendall pounced. “I’ll tell you. It’s the message Brenda had you relay to Tess Moreau.”

  Missy was reeling right then. “Honestly, I don’t know anything about this. I’ve never seen it before in my entire life. I don’t have a clue about what it is, who it was meant for, who made it. I’m not involved in any of this. That’s why I’m here.”

  “That’s part of why you’re here,” Kendall said. “The other part is this.”

  She passed over a photograph of the black plastic bag that held Darby’s remains.

  “Can you identify this?” she asked.

  Missy’s eyes studied the photograph. It was of a heavy-duty black plastic sheet with a bright yellow drawstring tie.

  “It looks like a trash bag?” she said, almost as a question.

  “Have you ever seen it before?” Kendall asked.

  Missy looked up. “This one? Or any in general?”

  “We know you’ve seen this one, Missy. We know it because your palm print was recovered from it.”

  “Okay, I’ve touched this bag,” she said. “What’s the big deal?”

  Kendall went in for the kill—her favorite part of any interview.

  “The big deal is that this is the bag that you stuffed Darby Moreau’s body into before you dumped her in Banner Forest,” she said.

  Missy blinked back. Those words had come at her with such force. It was like a blow to the chest.

  “I never did,” she said. “I never did!”

  Kendall stayed calm. “Where were you the night of March twenty-second?”

  Missy thought a second. Fear filled her eyes.

  Or maybe something else?

  “I was with Connie, I guess,” she said.

  Kendall’s next questions came at Missy with a snapping sharpness. Not a beat between the answer and the next question.

  “Connie doesn’t remember seeing you until after nine.”

  “That’s right,” Missy said. “I went out and did some target shooting.”

  “Out in Banner Forest?”

  Missy looked up, then down.

  Was she making up a story? Was she scared?

  “No,” she said. “At the range. At the Gig Harbor Gun Club. I’ve been a member there for years.”

  Kendall let out an annoyed sigh. “That’s your alibi?”

  “I told you I didn’t do anything,” Missy said. “I had no reason to.”

  Dour Jill spoke up.

  “Seriously, Ms. Carlyle? I’ve made a list of about five reasons why you would have done this—and frankly I hope you do get a good lawyer. Our office much prefers to beat the good ones. And we’ll win this. I only see one upside for you.”

  Missy didn’t say a word.

  Dour Jill cracked something similar to a smile. It was a mean one, but a smile nevertheless.

  “At least you and Ms. Nevins can get reacquainted. Maybe they’ll let you work in the prison pet program. From reading Detective Stark’s report I see that you’re experienced with dog grooming.”

  Kendall never liked Dour Jill until that moment. In that single utterance the assistant DA capped off a perfect interview. The case was totally in the bag.

  Or so she thought.

  CHAPTER 41

  Birdy’s heart began to race when she arrived at Tess Moreau’s home in Olalla. Cars were everywhere. There were at least ten of them lined up along the road. And they weren’t part of the hoarder’s collection of things.

  Something’s wrong here.

  She jumped out of her red Prius and hurried toward the house worried about Tess, but halfway there it began to occur to her that nothing bad had happened to Darby’s mother. Nothing at all. Something, however, was happening to her house. Four enormous tarps had been spread out in the yard like mammoth picnic cloths, flat and smooth. On each one was an easel holding poster board signs made with big bold red markers. One read KEEP, another GOODWILL, a third read DUMP, and the last one read SELL.

  Tess was standing next to the one that said DUMP.

  “I think that pressure cooker could be fixed,” she was saying in a slightly animated voice. “I think I should keep it.”

  A woman in shorts and a striped tank top stood there, holding the pressure cooker.

  “Do you know where the lid is?” she asked. Her tone was firm, but there was a perceptible measure of kindness in her voice. Whoever this woman was, she was there on a mission, and she knew that the person between her and her goal was the homeowner.

  “It didn’t come with a lid,” Tess said. “I got it from a yard sale. Gig Harbor, I think. Maybe Port Orchard. I bet I could find another lid and then make it just perfect.”

  “Right,” said the woman in the tank top. “I have no doubt about that. But, really, Tess, are you ever in the rest of your life going to do that? I’m looking for a little honesty here because there are seven other pressure cookers that I know about and this is the worst of the lot.”

  As Tess was about to answer, she caught the sight of Birdy.

  “No,” she said. “You’re right. I’m not ever going to do it. Put it in the DUMP pile.”

  “Good girl,” the woman said, tossing the worthless kitchen appliance onto the largest of the four heaps that were growing by the second.

  “I didn’t expect to see this, Tess,” Birdy said.

  Tess smiled faintly. “To be honest, I didn’t either.” Her voice trailed off into the din of all that was going on around her.

  “What’s happening here?” Birdy asked, taking it all in. “I mean, besides the obvious?”
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  Tess took a breath. “I’ve been sleeping in Darby’s room the past few nights,” she said. “You know, just to be close to her. The sheets still smell like her.”

  “That’s a beautiful way to be close to her,” Birdy said.

  Tess agreed. It was. “When I woke up yesterday, I felt her talking to me. I didn’t hear anything. I’m not crazy.”

  Birdy moved closer and held out her hand and Tess took it. She gave it a gentle squeeze. “Of course not,” she said.

  Tess looked around. Birdy could be trusted. She understood Tess’s pain in a way that none of the others doing the work around there really could. Birdy hadn’t endured the trauma that Tess had, but Darby’s mom knew that the Kitsap County forensic pathologist cried with a dozen other moms who had.

  “I felt her tell me, ‘Mom, let go. Let go of everything. I’ll still be with you.’ ”

  Birdy squeezed Tess’s hand. “She’s always with you.”

  Tess’s eyes fluttered. “Yes, Brad and Ellie too.”

  A man with an old rusted wheelbarrow dumped a load of magazines onto the DUMP tarp.

  “We’re going to need someone to haul this one pretty soon,” he called out, as the familiar yellow edges of National Geographic magazines slid into an avalanche of beautifully rendered images of exotic places and people.

  Tess looked nervously toward the growing debris pile, but she didn’t say a word about it. She’d collected those National Geographic magazines because she thought someone would want them. No one ever did.

  “My friends from work,” Tess said. “They came.” She started to tear up. “For the longest time, I thought, you know, that no one really could care about me. Considering who, or what, I was. A hoarder. But my friends from work, well, they think I matter. That despite how I’ve lived, I am something. They’re here, Birdy. Amanda, all of them. I’m going to get my life back in order.”

  Birdy hugged Tess and felt a genuine joy. Tess Moreau had taken that first step. It was a mighty one too. Birdy had come there with the other piece of what could hold her back—the not knowing of what had happened to Darby.

  “Can we talk privately?” Birdy asked, as prison co-workers did their best to sort out those four primary categories, holding off on things that were of value but maybe not needed in a household that was overloaded. Fourteen Crock-Pots, many still in their boxes, were too many. But only Tess could decide if the number should be one or two.

  “You didn’t come to help,” she said. “You came for another reason, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, let’s step away from here.” They walked toward the barn, where they had first talked when Darby’s disappearance had brought Birdy and Kendall to that hoarder’s mess on Olalla Valley Road.

  The entire time they made their way down to the barn, Tess braced herself. She knew what was coming. She felt it in her bones.

  “Did you find out who killed her?” she asked.

  Birdy scanned Tess’s already very sad eyes. “Yes, we think we did. This is preliminary, but you don’t need to read another thing in the paper or see it on TV and be the last to know.”

  Tess started to shake a little, but she wanted more than anything to honor Darby with the strength that her daughter had always said she possessed. She didn’t drop to her knees and scream at the sky. Not this time.

  “Who was it?” she asked.

  Birdy held her by the shoulders. “We’re pretty sure it was Missy,” she said.

  Tess just stood there, still, while the breeze of a spring day blew past the barn, filling the air with the smells that come with horses and goats and compost.

  “Brenda put her up to it,” Tess said.

  Birdy gave a quick nod. “Yes, that’s what we think.”

  “Has she been arrested?” Tess asked.

  “Yes, about an hour ago,” Birdy said. “She’s being questioned as we speak.”

  The sound of kids playing ball down at the ball field wafted through the air. The daffodils were up all over the pasture, the site of a former bulb farm. Everything was the same as it had been before Darby vanished. And yet, as Tess stood there, she knew that things would never ever be the same.

  “It’s not really over, is it?” she asked.

  Birdy watched as a duck landed clumsily on the pond. “No, it won’t be for a long time,” she said, “but one day you will wake up and you will know that your daughter is at peace with her sister, with her father. And one day, a long, long time from now, you’ll all be together again.”

  Tess hugged Birdy and whispered in her ear. “Thank you. Thank you for all you’ve done for me and my baby.”

  They went back toward the house, along a pathway that was no longer constricted by the odds and ends that Tess had collected over the years.

  As if she needed a bit of a release from the reality of Birdy’s revelation that her daughter’s killer had been caught, Tess started toward the DUMP pile. Her gait was slow at first, but with each step velocity increased. With movement of her feet, the memory of what had been taken came at her in a flood, as the debris pile grew skyward. So much and so very fast.

  She was not strong. She was not worthy. She was a woman who had lost everything. Now, they were taking more from her. More than she wanted them to take.

  “Not that! None of that!” she yelled.

  The man standing there looked like he’d been shot at. His face was frozen. Stunned.

  “Sorry! What?” he said, stepping back as Tess pushed past him.

  Tess was frantic. “That’s my daughter’s artwork! That is part of her! You can’t ever, ever get rid of that! Birdy!”

  Birdy got onto the tarp and helped Tess sift through the trash to retrieve some drawings, sketchbooks, other things that were Darby’s that somehow got into the wrong pile.

  “It’s all right, Tess,” Birdy said. “We’ve got it. It was just a mistake.”

  Tess looked at the man, a small fellow who worked at the mailroom at the prison. He was still in shock.

  “I’m sorry, Tess,” he said. “I didn’t mean anything by it. Really.”

  Tess pulled herself together. “Oh, Kenny, I know it was a mistake,” she said, embarrassed by the spectacle of her actions. “I’m sorry I lost it. I’m fine now.”

  “I really am sorry,” he said.

  Birdy and Tess carried the artwork back into the house.

  “What happened out there?” Amanda asked, as they came inside.

  “It’s all right,” Birdy said. “Something got mixed into the wrong pile. That’s all. All fixed now. We don’t need to worry about anything more.”

  Amanda, who had been sorting enough Tupperware to fill the back of a pickup truck, smiled with a knowing look on her face.

  “It’s getting late,” she said. “We’re going to wrap it up for a while. We’ll start up fresh in the morning.”

  “Good idea,” Birdy said.

  She followed Tess down to Darby’s spotless bedroom. They set the artwork on the bed.

  “She was very good,” Birdy said, admiring the drawings.

  Tess smiled. “Yes, she was.”

  Birdy peered down at a charcoal rendering of a forest clearing. A deer and a fawn grazed in the foreground. The fierceness of the artist’s technique surprised her. There was power, energy. It was bold and striking. She thought of Darby and her diary and the sweet yearnings of a girl. This sketch held a kind of raw power that was at odds with that personality. It was beautifully rendered, though. That couldn’t be denied. The girl had a very special talent.

  “I love this,” she said.

  “She didn’t draw that one,” Tess said. “Another kid at school did. It is good, though. You can have it.”

  She handed it to Birdy.

  “Oh, I couldn’t,” Birdy said, pushing it back. In doing so she noticed an inscription on the bottom.

  You don’t know you’re beautiful

  Under that inscription was a name.

  Micah

  “Did you know this boy?”
Birdy asked.

  Tess didn’t. “None of her friends ever came by,” she said. “I think I told you that. Not even Katie.”

  “Sorry,” Birdy said. “I remember. Did she ever talk about him?”

  “I guess a little. Not much. She said he was cool or something like that. Just some boy from Arizona. I think she liked him, though. You know she was sixteen. She was a girl. I think she might have liked him more if she’d had a normal mother.”

  “Oh, Tess, you have to stop that,” Birdy said. “You have to quit piling on the guilt like it’s some of the things you’ve collected here. More and more. Deeper and higher. You know it isn’t going to get you anywhere. You know that in your bones, don’t you? Tess? Don’t you?”

  Tess looked down at the paintings, sketches, and the drawings. She sifted through them, arranging them the way she’d had them before Kenny took them out to the DUMP pile. The room was white and the artwork was full of life and vigor.

  “Right,” she said. “I know it is the truth just as you say it. I really do. I called Deanna Clark as you advised and am in grief group already. I’m working on the accepting my life as it is, but it’s rough.”

  “I was going to ask you how it was going with Deanna, but I already see that it has helped you.”

  “I owe you, Dr. Waterman,” Tess said. “I’ll never forget what you’ve done for me.”

  Birdy could feel tears coming and she wanted no part of that. It had been a sad, tragic, difficult case all the way around. She was grateful that Tess was doing better.

  “I gave you Deanna Clark’s business card,” she said. “That’s all.”

  Tess refused any tears. She simply wouldn’t allow it right then. She was stronger. “Much more than that,” she said, her words now even and full of resolve. “You gave me a compass.”

  Amanda poked her head in and interrupted the pathologist and the mother of the dead girl in the woods.