Just Try to Stop Me

by Gregg Olsen

  Of course he’d say that. Yet it wasn’t a completely true statement. Funerals are rife with exaggerations and lies.

  Behind Erwin was the woman he’d been seeing behind his dead wife’s back.

  Janie’s son, Joe, looked down at his phone the entire time. Kendall figured it was a distraction that he needed in order to get through the ordeal. The two sisters offered up the kind of body language—turned away, stiff in the way they perched on the pews—that indicated that they blamed Erwin for pushing Janie away and into the arms of a monster. Kendall studied the row of those closest to Janie Thomas and concluded that the death of the prison superintendent didn’t bring the grieving family together; it merely exacerbated the problems they’d all been dealing with.

  It was a cop-out to consider Janie Thomas a complete victim. After all, she chose to be with Brenda. No one forced her to drop everything and everyone in her world to find solace, excitement, and even love. No one deserved such a fate as Janie’s, but there were probably only a small handful of people at that church service who didn’t allow it to cross their minds.

  What was she thinking? Why would she throw everything away for the attention of a sociopath like Brenda Nevins?

  Kendall had an answer. She’d seen it time and again in cases she’d worked on at the county and had certainly read about in the annals of the FBI’s famed Behavioral Science Unit. Brenda was a predator and a very good one. The greatest skill a predator possessed was the ability to find the weaknesses of his or her targets. Brenda had clearly seen something in Janie that she could use to get inside the prison superintendent’s head, turn her into what she needed, and then, in the ultimate act of betrayal, end her life when she was no longer useful.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Brenda Nevins looked into the tiny lens of the laptop’s camera. She tilted her head in the light, trying to find the most flattering position. For her, it was all about finding the right angle. A little lift of her head and a very slight tilt made her look a few pounds lighter. She wasn’t fat, of course. God no. She had the best body a good diet, prison exercise, and a skillful surgeon could create.

  She fiddled with the top of her blouse, opening an extra button to show Dr. Fournier’s handiwork. She thought back to the day she’d transformed herself with the insurance money. She’d picked Dr. Fournier out of dozens of well-known cosmetic surgeons. He was based in Orange County, California, but that wasn’t a problem. Not only did she have the money, Brenda liked the idea of achieving physical perfection with the help of a man who’d likely worked on film stars. His assistant, Merle, led her into his overly chilled white marble and stainless-steel consultation office. A Twin Peaks TV show poster hung in a prominent location by the door. The art was meant to be sardonic, but Brenda saw it as further proof that her breasts were about to be placed into some very capable hands. He probably worked on one of those television stars. She couldn’t remember any of their names, but they were famous.

  That’s all that mattered.

  Dr. Fournier was in his fifties, though he was using all the tricks at his disposal to hang on to a younger appearance. He had a waxy-smooth complexion and eyes that indicated a recent lift. He wore his hair longish for a man of his age. Worse, a slight kink along the lower run of his wavy hair indicated he wore it in a small ponytail. Though thankfully not on the day they’d met. No matter what she said to him, his facial expressions vacillated somewhere along the spectrum between surprised and slightly astonished.

  “I want all eyes on me,” she said.

  “You don’t need larger breasts for that,” the doctor said. “You’re near perfection now.”

  Near had been the operative word. Near wouldn’t do it. Not even close. She’d done everything she could to get out of the almost grave-deep rut she’d been in. She’d done the unthinkable. And she was glad to have done it.

  “I like to improve myself,” she said. “Near perfection indicates there’s room for improvement.”

  “All right. Did my assistant Lee help you with the sizers?”

  “Yes, she did.” Brenda thumbed through the doctor’s “boob book” and pointed to one of the many success stories, a twenty-eight-year-old from La Jolla named Sherin. “I’ve decided anything less than a D cup would be disappointing.”

  The doctor made a slight face, though it was hard to discern what response he was trying to convey.

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “It could impact your lifestyle. Are you a runner, for example?”

  “No,” she said. “Not a runner. I move slow enough to make sure that I’m not a blur. I want to be seen.”

  Thinking back and somewhat caught up in the memory, there was more irony than the Twin Peaks poster, from that encounter with Dr. Fournier. She was now a runner. And while Brenda Nevins craved the spotlight, she did not want to be found.

  She checked her makeup, pushed RECORD, and started talking.

  “Hi everyone. It’s me. Brenda Nevins. God, do I even need to introduce myself? You know me by sight, don’t you? And if you don’t, well then I guess you’ll find out why someone has directed you here. So, here goes. I’ll be video blogging from time to time and checking my stats for viewing to make sure that I’m keeping your interest. I mean, why wouldn’t you be captivated by me and how I’m getting along after poor Janie’s death? Janie was like a bottle opener for a twist top. Useful—no girl wants to break a nail opening a beer—but ultimately if you can snag a man you don’t need to open anything on your own. Except maybe . . .” she gave the camera a come-hither smile, sure that she had her viewer hooked in that sexy train-wreck way she’d imagined her show. “You know what I mean.”

  Her eyes wandered over the screen as she tried to maintain a kind of newscasters’ approach, facing the camera and yet not being completely zombie eyed. She wanted to look alert and sexy.

  “Okay, guys,” she carried on, “today I want to talk about Janie Thomas. Remember her from the last video? She’s dead now—and I know I might get some haters after me, but honestly, I did the world a favor. Janie was a complete loser. A total bore. She was all over me because I gave her some attention. If you’re thinking about sex, then that was part of it. But really, not that much. Janie liked me because of how I made her feel. I listened to her pathetic backstory. It was blah, blah, blah. Poor me. Sad me. Lonely me. Man, was that girl messed up. And, yeah, she was in charge of me and the other inmates. Honestly, I don’t get our country half the time. They have someone like Janie bossing around someone like me. Really? Really? Who can get the job done? Me. Who can be ruthless to move the needle in the direction that makes sense? Me. Not her. Not her at all. Oh God, all she could do was whine about her childhood, her husband, and her son. She couldn’t wring one ounce of joy from her pathetic existence. Her husband didn’t pay any attention to her. And yes, Erwin Thomas, if you are watching—and I know you will watch—Janie knew all about you and that woman that you’ve been seeing. I wonder if Sandra Sullivan’s husband knows about you too.”

  She paused as though she’d spoken out of turn and was embarrassed.

  “Oops, my bad,” she said. “I guess he knows now. I told Janie to tell him, but she was too weak. I can’t imagine just sitting back and letting something just happen to you. Pretending to be passive and unaware is fine as a strategy until you dig in and plan your attack. Janie never got the memo on that. She just kept hoping things would get better. Hoping is for losers. I’ve known that since I was twelve. Hoping is what you do when you have no power to do anything at all.”

  Brenda stopped to think. Janie was gone. Her husband had been trashed. Now, son Joe was about to feel the betrayal of a mother who’d been sucked into a deadly game—a game that she’d lost.

  “How she agonized over filling out Joe’s college entrance papers, including his essay. What was it? Oh yes, now I remember. ‘Living Authentically When Others Pull the Strings.’ Just wow. Really. How anyone with the flimsiest B average could write something so close to the bone would be beyo
nd me. Janie was so worried that you’d get found out, Joe. She thought she was helping you and, if you ask me, you were lazy enough to let her do the heavy lifting. She did that for you. For your father. And what did she have for herself? Nothing, that’s what. You’d think that a kindred spirit like me would have been what she’d been looking for all her life. You think she found me? That’s a big laugh. I found her.”

  Brenda tilted her head back and rolled her shoulders to release some tension. She returned her gaze to the lens.

  “In some ways I miss her,” she said. “A little. I really do. She could rub out the soreness in my neck better than my last lover. Janie tried so hard. She wanted to please me. God, she tried. Kind of funny when I think about it. As if I’d ever care about her. And, get this, the irony of the whole thing was that she thought she was in charge of me. That out of the mess she’d made of her life, having the keys to the cellblock made her think she was in control. I pulled the strings. I did. I always have.

  “That’s all for now. More later. I promise. Probably should have a name for my show here, don’t you think? I’ll think on that. You too. Use the comments feature below. And if you know something nasty about someone, please post it here.”

  Like a seasoned YouTuber, Brenda pointed a lacquered nail downward to indicate the Comments field. A pause to make her point, and then she turned away from the camera. The screen went to a checkerboard block of other Internet distractions.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Kendall Stark didn’t expect anything from Jonas Casey, so when he showed up in her office with a couple of lattes she was caught off guard.

  “Peace offering,” he said.

  She thanked him and took the coffee drink.

  “I guess it would be wrong of me to refuse the olive, or rather, coffee branch,” she said.

  He smiled and slid into the visitor’s chair across from her. A framed photo of Cody and Steven taken on their front porch faced him from the credenza, but the FBI agent didn’t comment on her family.

  “Look, we both know that Janie Thomas is a kidnapping case,” he said.

  Kendall pulled the green stopper from the plastic lid and took a sip. Caffeine, she hoped, would kill the throbbing headache that started about the time Brenda Nevins came into her life.

  “We don’t,” she said. “Not really. As for what we really know is that—at least initially—Janie went with Brenda willingly.”

  “Yes. Agreed. Initially.” He took a drink. “But that’s not how things ended, wouldn’t you agree?”

  She couldn’t argue with that. Janie didn’t expect to die, though she might have been willing to die for her lover’s freedom. But it didn’t happen like that.

  “Is the coffee the peace offering?” Kendall asked. “Or is there something else?”

  He gave her his incredibly disarming smile.

  “Right. Something else. Something I want you to think about.”

  He was probably playing her the same way he played other women who couldn’t deny that he was handsome and magnetic. Still a jerk. But his looks and charisma somehow mitigated his true personality.

  “What’s that?” Kendall asked.

  “We traced—and I’m using that word very loosely—the upload on Brenda Nevins’s YouTube channel.”

  Kendall could feel her heart rate quicken. She’d been hoping for someone to tell her where Brenda was, how far she’d gone, and, more important, what it would take to catch her.

  “Go on,” she said.

  “Like I said, loosely. Our guys in the lab—and that’s no slam, this time it is a couple of guys—determined that Brenda Nevins uploaded her video in Iceland of all places. That didn’t seem right.”

  “No,” Kendall said. “How could she get to Iceland? She doesn’t have a passport.”

  “She couldn’t, of course. We checked to be sure. Dug a little deeper into the code and determined that it had bounced from Qatar to Spain and then over to Iceland. We checked again, and Brazil was added to the mix. You get the idea?”

  “I’m not a computer expert,” Kendall said. “But yes, I get that someone is helping her do what she’s doing. And that someone knows a thing or two about untraceable IP addresses, servers, and the like.”

  The FBI agent had cut himself shaving that day, and a piece of tissue clung to a spot just above his Adam’s apple.

  Kendall fought the urge to pick at it.

  “That’s right,” he said. “And by the way, I’m not an expert either. I only act like I know what I’m talking about so I can get what I need to get and then find what I need to find.”

  She liked him for admitting that. He didn’t have to.

  “So where does this leave you,” she said, quickly amending her words, “leave us?”

  “You’ve dug into the Nevins case as much as anyone,” he said. “You probably have a feel for who might be able to help her with something as sophisticated as to upload files in a way that could not easily be traced. Not even by the FBI.”

  “No,” she answered. “There isn’t anyone. The people who knew her before prison are scared of her. None of them want a thing to do with her. I bet most of them sleep with a gun under their pillows.”

  “That fearful of her?”

  Kendall set down her coffee. “No,” she said, “that hopeful.”

  He cocked a brow. “Hopeful?”

  “Yeah,” Kendall said, “hopeful that they’d be able to shoot her in the head if she came for a visit. Believe me, there’s no welcome-home celebration from anyone who ever knew her before she became famous for killing.”

  “You’ve talked to some of her,” he let the word hang in the air, while he thought of the best way to rephrase it, “let’s call them, mentors.”

  “Just one,” Kendall said. “Jerry Connors is a non-player here. He’s an older, male version of Brenda Nevins. Backed into a corner, warehoused, and still looking for the wrong kind of attention.”

  “She managed somehow,” he said.

  “She’s pretty smart,” Kendall said. “I have to call our IT guy here at the county once a month. I’m notorious here for screwing up my password and needing a reset. Ten letters, two special characters, numerals. And, right, don’t ever write it down. It’s getting ridiculous. But Brenda’s wired differently. Maybe she could figure it out.”

  “It’s pretty sophisticated stuff,” SA Casey said. “And I’m about like you. Give me the days when my dog’s name and last four of my Social were good enough.”

  Kendall laughed. “Tell me about it. Those were the days.”

  When he got up to leave, Kendall wanted to ask him how tall he was. He must have been at least six-four, but that was a question that would imply interest, and she didn’t have any in him. Besides, she was married and very much in love with her husband, Steven.

  “I don’t think any of us should underestimate her intelligence,” she said.

  He gave her a look.

  “We never underestimate at the bureau,” he said.

  “Of course not,” she said. “I’m just thinking that she’s the kind of brilliant person that knows how to use people in ways that the rest of us can’t really fathom. Janie gave up everything, literally everything, because Brenda got her to that point. She found a way to get someone to do what she needed done.”

  SA Casey lingered in the doorway. “She wanted to make those videos,” he said.

  His head was three inches from the top of the doorframe. He was definitely taller than six-four.

  “And more importantly, she wanted to keep making them,” she said. “She wanted the world to see all that she could do. How beautiful she is. How clever. How talented. She sees no distinction between fame and infamy.”

  The FBI special agent took in every word. Kendall Stark might have been a detective for a small county in the middle of nowhere, but her assessment on Brenda Nevins was close to the briefing he’d been given when he got the case. “Grandiose narcissist” was the label given to the woman who’d seduced
and then murdered a prison superintendent.

  Among a deadly list of her victims that included a TV producer, a bar owner, and a student teacher, were her husband, and her baby.

  “She needed someone to help her make those videos,” he said.

  Kendall stood to walk the special agent out of the convoluted hallways of the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office—though it was clear he’d had no problem navigating his way to her office with that so-called coffee branch.

  “Right,” she said, still thinking. “Someone who knew the ins and outs of media, computers, services, and video.”

  “Someone,” SA Casey said as they made their way down the hallway, passing the evidence room and records offices, “she could dispose of when the time was right.”

  He was right. Brenda’s helpers had the shelf life of lettuce.

  “Brenda Nevins sees everyone as an object,” Kendall said. “No one is a person when she lays her eyes on them. All exist as merely something to be used by her.”

  “Whoever is helping her doesn’t know that,” the agent said.

  “And when they finally figure it out,” Kendall added, “I’ll bet it will be too late.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  As a thunderstorm pounded the airspace over Port Orchard, Erwin and Joe Thomas sat in the lobby of the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office. Hanging above the receptionist’s desk and console was a shiny steel image of salmon swirling around as though they were in the constant motion of the freedom of a river. There was a bit of irony there, of course. The fish-shaped figures were fashioned in a circle, chasing each other, going nowhere.

  Janie Thomas’s husband and son were in the same steely limbo.

  A rumble of thunder pulsed through the lobby, and the receptionist looked up from the magazine she was reading.

  “We don’t get many storms like these,” she said. “Almost scary.”

  The visitors and Kendall Stark looked over at her.

  “Yeah,” Joe said, “I had a kid down the hall from my dorm room that had his bass cranked up so loud that the first time I heard it I thought it was a thunderstorm. Pretty dumb, huh?”