by Gregg Olsen
“Maybe I could find a place out near you?”
“Are you a stalker or just looking for cheap real estate?”
He winked at her. “Oh, a stalker, for sure.”
Emily knew that she’d once used Jenna as an excuse to forestall talk that she and Chris should be something more than lovers. There had been very good reasons for the delay of her own personal happiness. Jenna was sixteen when she’d been traumatized by the bizarre events that led her into the web of a serial killer. That crime had brought Chris and Emily back together after having been partners on the Seattle police force earlier in their careers. She loved Chris, there was no doubt about that. Loving him, however, meant carrying that old burden.
But Emily also knew that Jenna was right, that Chris was good for her, and she for him. Listening to a twenty-two-year-old never seemed like a good idea, but Emily knew her daughter never failed when it came to wanting Emily to find the joy in her life that had eluded her since she and David divorced.
Why don’t I allow myself happiness? Love?
Chapter Seventeen
At twenty-two, Cherrystone Reserve Deputy Ricardo Gomez was a techno-geek who knew his way around computers like Emily Kenyon knew her way around motherhood and blood spatter evidence. In a very real way, his high-tech prowess was a curse. Whenever anyone had problems with their home PCs, it was Ricky who’d get the desperate call for troubleshooting.
Sometimes he’d even be asked to come over to make a house call. Doctors didn’t make house calls, but a guy who knew the difference between byte and bite me did. He often wondered if anyone had heard of a help-desk phone number, but he never said no. He’d graduated from Cascade University with Emily’s daughter, Jenna, and went looking for a job before going back to school for a master’s degree in knowledge management and criminal justice. He’d been hired on a one-year contract to work with the software company to move the Cherrystone Sheriff’s office from paper to paperless.
Ricky looked like anything but a nerd. He worked out three days a week, kept his longish black hair styled, and wore dark jeans and a sport coat every day. He was handsome, with brown eyes and teeth so white they almost glowed.
Since Ricky was trained and had been deputized, he fit within the standard protocol for chain-of-evidence rules. That was good. Cherrystone couldn’t afford an outside lab to go over the Crawfords’ laptop computer. After all, they’d barely had enough dough for a year-end holiday celebration. Emily had Ricky in mind when she needed someone to take a look at the computer that Mandy Crawford used before she vanished.
“You won’t find anything on it,” Mitch Crawford had said as he watched Emily and Jason Howard carry it off on the Friday after his wife disappeared. “We’re pretty good about wiping out most of the websites we visit, no cookies saved either. We’re not going to be victimized by some crook trying to steal our information by spying on us. We use CompuClean every Sunday on an automated cycle.”
Emily felt like saying something along the lines of “how convenient,” but she held her tongue.
Nevertheless he must have read her mind.
“Well,” Ricky said when Emily handed off the laptop, “it’s not exactly the latest and greatest.”
Emily knew he was right. The laptop was at least seven years old, which made it nearly a relic as such things go. It was the size of a small attaché case, not one of the slim little notebooks that students and executives have made the day’s status quo. She told Ricky how Mitch used a program to lessen the risk of spyware.
“Or so he told me,” she said, her tone sardonic at best.
“I can poke around. Give me an hour or so and I’ll pick the low-hanging fruit. If I think there’s more there, and I can’t get to it, I’ll let you know. I’m not going to try to play superstar info finder here. Let’s leave that to someone with real experience. OK?”
“Fair enough,” she said. She watched as he booted up the machine and started clicking through the icons on the desktop. “I’ll leave you to your work. Come and get me if you find something.”
“Sheriff Kenyon?” Ricky Gomez stood in the doorway of her office, with the look of a man who’d won a drawing for a new car or maybe a trip to Hawaii—excited and satisfied.
Emily looked up from her paperwork. “What is it?”
“I think you’ll want to see,” Ricky said, barely able to contain his excitement.
“You’re not a good poker player, are you, Ricky?”
He laughed. “No one thinks so.”
Emily set aside her papers and followed Ricky to his office at the end of the hall. It wasn’t much of an office. Before he moved inside with a telephone and cables that ran from four computers, it had been an employee smoke break room. It still smelled of it, years after the ban on smoking in the workplace. His mom brought in a faux Oriental rug to cozy up the gray and white speckled linoleum floor.
It was a thoughtful attempt, but the big sink behind Ricky’s desk let it be known that this office wasn’t an office in its former life.
Emily peered over Ricky’s shoulder as he navigated the Crawfords’ desktop.
“Check this out,” he said, clacking at the keyboard and looking up at the sheriff at the same time.
“Here are her favorites, not really erased by the file cleaner,” he said.
Amanda’s favorites on her Internet navigation tab were an odd mix of household management websites and scrapbooking resource pages that she hit routinely as she downloaded stencils and design ideas. Emily could see that Amanda hadn’t finished the template for the Christmas scrapbook that she’d ordered online.
“Looks like she hadn’t done anything since Halloween,” Emily said.
“That’s right,” Ricky said, pointing out that the cache, the location in computers where information is stored for faster downloading, was empty.
“I expected that,” he said. “That’s one of the chief benefits of CompuClean—the software company calls it their Cache-Out tool.”
He clicked over to the e-mail folders, showing Emily that the inbox was empty. So was the sent box. He checked her trash can. All were a big zero.
“Ricky,” Emily said, “I thought you found something.”
“Hang on. I need to give you the background. Learned that in class last year. You need to see the process.”
Emily liked Ricky all the more just then. He was doing things by the book, not trying to tease her with a buildup for crucial information that might never come.
He clicked his cursor onto Mandy’s personal folders. Most of them, he pointed out, dealt with her scrapbooking hobby. He went through each file, text, and images. Most of the images were pictures of another woman—a sister, maybe, and her children. She had recently populated a template called “Before You Were Born” with images of herself, Mitch, and their house at 21 Larkspur.
“She was getting ready for something good to happen,” Emily said.
“I guess. But here’s what you’ve been waiting for. He found a text file that easily could have been missed. It was labeled: Next Phase. He clicked on it, and his eyes met Emily’s as she began to read, simultaneously, reaching for her phone and dialing Camille’s number.
If anyone is reading this message, I am probably dead. My name is Amanda Crawford. My husband is Mitch Crawford. Whoever you are, you alone will know my fate. You and my husband. Mitch said he’d kill me if I left him. He’s said it so many, many times. I’ve wanted to leave for a long time. I’ve wanted to find my way out of this mess.
Having a baby was not done to placate him, to make him love me, or feel sorry for me when he beat me. But for a little while, I thought that maybe he would change. He seemed to. When I found out that I was carrying a daughter, I told him that it was a boy. I did this to save myself and my baby. He only wanted a son. Anyway, if you’ve read this, then you know I didn’t find a way out. Mitch will be very careful when he kills me. But he will make a mistake.
Please don’t forget about me. You are my—and my
baby’s—only hope. Please tell my parents that I wish I could have told them what was happening, but after the first time, he said if I told anyone what he’d done to me, he’d kill them, too. He has a boat. If he finds me and kills me, I’m all but certain that he’ll dump me in the water. Mitch doesn’t like to get his hands dirty.
Amanda Lynn Crawford
“Can we authenticate this?”
Camille Hazelton looked up from the single laser print that Emily had brought from her offices in the sheriff’s department.
The prosecutor had been in the middle of an employee-recognition event that included a chocolate cake and certificates of achievement for “going the extra mile” when Emily called with the news of Mandy’s note. Emily caught her eye through the window of the conference room where the Cherrystone government support staff had gathered in their grim little celebration. When Camille’s eyes met Emily’s, she gladly bolted—cake in hand—for her private office.
“I love my people, but I hate those events,” she said as she shut the door. “I can tell by your face that this is good, isn’t it?”
“Better than good,” Emily said, with a satisfied grin she didn’t even try to hide.
The letter was only three paragraphs, but it said everything Mandy Crawford had needed to say.
It pointed an accusing finger squarely at her husband.
“Of course, we can’t say for sure if she wrote it,” Emily said, sliding into a seat next to the heavy oak desk that had been the county prosecutor’s since 1910 when it made the front page of the paper under the headline: PROSECUTOR GUILTY OF EXTRAVAGANCE. A framed copy hung on the wall.
Camille slipped her chic Vera Wang reading glasses down the bridge of her long nose. “But we know that it was on Mandy’s computer. We know that for certain.”
“Yes.”
“What else was on the computer? Is there more?”
“No.” Emily shook her head. “Nothing relevant. A few scrapbooks in progress.”
“Zilch?” Camille said.
“That’s right. Mitch says he and Mandy cleaned the PC on the Sunday before she disappeared.”
“And he left this there? Seems a little sloppy, don’t you think?”
Camille was right, of course. But Emily had known plenty of criminals who’d thought they were so smart that their arrogance, their unbending belief in their own invincibility, were the keys to their eventual downfall. It was as if always being told they are smart, handsome, pretty, funny, and brilliant left no room for introspection. To doubt themselves. A lack of tendency toward doubt meant a tendency for errors.
“They all make mistakes,” she said.
“Can your tech guy say when the message was written?”
Emily had already considered that. She knew that time-dating any computer file was an issue. “That’s a problem. Just like we can’t say if Mandy wrote the letter for sure—you know, anyone could have—we can’t say when for sure. Microsoft Word automatically dates this kind of a doc, so a good defense lawyer can question all of that.”
“This is good, Emily. But good isn’t enough for an indictment. We need more.”
“Don’t I know that,” she said.
Emily left Camille’s office and went past the conference room where the employee party had been. The room was empty, but the big chocolate cake, half gone, called to her. She looked around and ducked inside. She cut a piece, and put it on a floppy paper plate.
Ricky loves chocolate, she thought. Good work deserves a little something sweet.
Even though a surge of adrenaline that came with the discovery of the note from Mandy lifted Emily, she still couldn’t get past the grief she felt when she thought of Mandy and her baby. Certainly, an arrest, a trial, and hopefully a conviction would do nothing to bring her back. Justice in a murder case was not only about punishing the killer. It was for the family, the friends, and the community in which the victim lived. But unlike, say a rape case, or a violent assault, there was no payback coming from the victim.
The victim in a homicide had been silenced permanently.
Emily’s job, she knew, was to speak for Mandy. She and Camille were the only ones who could.
“I hear you now, Mandy,” she said to herself. “I only wish that I’d heard you before it turned out to be too late.”
Chapter Eighteen
San Diego
“What a bitch!”
Lily Ann Denton cursed under her breath, but resisted the urge to press her palm against the horn. She let out a gasp of exaggerated anger. Some woman in a Dodge minivan stole a parking spot in front of the Circle K just as she was about to pull in.
Did she have to do that?
Lily Ann did another loop around the tiny, packed lot and found a space. She waited a moment for the Maroon 5 song that she’d fallen in love with to finish before she turned off the ignition on her sunny yellow Cabriolet. She was a grad student on a mission. At twenty-one, gone were the days when she relied on a pretty good fake ID and eye-catching breasts that acted as a winning backup plan—if the clerk was a male.
A horny male.
After a quick lip-gloss and hair check, she got out of the Cabriolet and hurried inside the store, eyeing the clerk—good, a young guy—as she made a beeline for the cold beer case in the back of the store. She rolled her pretty blue eyes at the woman who’d snatched her prime parking spot. She had three kids with her, all clamoring for candy bars and sodas.
“One or the other, Mattie, Diet Coke or Snickers. Not both.”
Mattie, a chubby ten-year-old, started wailing and Mom gave in within a second. Lily Ann caught the little girl’s eye and saw something in it. The little girl offered up what seemed to be a little too much of a grin, a-look-what-I’m-getting countenance that said everything about who she was and where she was headed.
Nice, a little manipulator. Probably Beta Zeta material, she thought.
Lily Ann leaned closer to the clerk, waving her driver’s license like a dog dangling a bone. The young man barely glanced at the laminated card.
“Party up at campus?” he asked. He was referring to the fashion design college just east of downtown San Diego.
“Party everywhere I go,” she said.
“Hot.”
“That’s right.” She pulled a twenty from her purse and paid for the beer—she didn’t have to show her breasts or her ID, really, which made the day a pretty good one so far.
“Have a good one,” he called out.
“Always do,” she said.
The mother with the three kids observed the exchange and figured that one day whatever attributes the young woman had she’d lose them to marriage and gravity.
But she wasn’t the only one watching Lily Ann.
As she ferried her beer to her car, she didn’t notice the man standing across the street watching her. He followed her movements like she was some kind of performer, a figure to be studied. He took in her long blond hair, and watched how it bounced up and down as she stepped toward the Cabriolet.
She was lovely. Maybe the prettiest of the bunch.
He could feel his rage swell as she started to back out of her parking spot.
Off to a party. Have fun. It’ll be your last. Girls like you don’t care about anyone but yourselves.
He got back into his own car to follow her; her yellow car was like a beacon in traffic. Lily Ann couldn’t lose anyone tailing her if she’d wanted to. Girls like her, he thought, always had cars that screamed “Look at me!”
If she had known that she was being followed or that she was in danger, she might have pulled into the fire station she zipped past or the church. There were a half-dozen opportunities when she might have escaped her fate. A stop. A quick turn. A cop was writing a ticket on the side of the road, and she tapped her brakes.
She punched in a phone number on her cell phone.
“Kara, God, I almost got a ticket. Was going fifteen over on Lander and passed a cop. I swear we had eye contact.”
; “Close call.”
“I’m lucky. Hey, I got the beer.”
“Awesome,” Kara said, “I just finished my psych reading and I’m ready to party.”
“You’re always ready to party.”
“Look who’s talking.”
“See you in a few.”
Lily Ann looked in her rearview mirror. She didn’t notice the man following her. In fact, she didn’t even look at the traffic. Instead, she checked her makeup one more time. A couple of cute guys were coming to their little pre-func get-together before the party at the frat house later that evening.
The man behind her slowed, too. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it, sending a curl of smoke out of the cracked-down window. He flicked on the radio and smiled when he heard a Maroon 5 song come on the radio. He’d known through her Facebook account that Lily Ann loved the pop band.
He wondered if she was listening to them now. She was so predictable. So easy. He parked and waited and smoked, flicking out the ashes as they grew to quarter-inch points of gray. He liked to keep things neat. He even hated that he smoked in the car, but Jesus, smoking was the hardest habit to break.
Maybe even harder than killing a girl.
Lily Ann Denton was nothing to him. In fact, the more he read her online profile, the more he hated her. She posed for picture after picture, beer in hand, laughing and pointing at the camera like she was some goddamn superstar. Like she had no cares whatsoever.
He drew on the cigarette, sucking the smoke deeply into his lungs and nodding as if he was having a conversation with someone.
But the conversation was in his head.
“I hate her stupid little mouth. So tight and tiny.”
“Yeah, she thinks she’s so pretty. So special. She’s nothing. Says she wants to be a doctor or a lawyer on her Web bio.”
“She’d be lucky to need either when I get finished with her.”
“Yeah. She’ll need an autopsy, if anything.”