by Gregg Olsen
“That would be wonderful,” Emily said, thinking that the very idea of “refreshments” seemed out of place when she wanted to dig in and see what Mandy Crawford’s best friend was holding back.
Five minutes later, Samantha’s mask of charm failed her as she took a seat in the principal’s office at Crestview Elementary to face Emily Kenyon. She looked irritated and in a hurry. She carried her purse and coat as if she planned on leaving the building after she was done talking with Emily. The housekeeper had told her that Samantha volunteered for the “entire day” at the school.
“I’ve told you everything I know already,” she said.
Emily ignored the chilly reception. “Good morning, Samantha.”
Samantha caught herself, and tried to find her good manners. “I’m sorry. Good morning, Sheriff Kenyon.”
“I am sorry to bother you, but you might be our only hope in Mandy’s case.”
Samantha fidgeted with the big Chanel clasp of her purse.
Emily smiled inwardly. Figures. It’s real. She has a housekeeper, too.
“What help do you need? You’ve got her husband locked up already.”
“Yes, I know. He still has to be tried and convicted.”
“Look, I’ve told you all that I can. All that I know.”
Emily fastened her eyes on Samantha’s. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. Do I need a lawyer or something?”
The answer was a bizarre non sequitur and it jarred Emily. “Why on earth would you need a lawyer?”
Samantha continued to open and close the clasp. Over and over. “I feel like everyone’s pushing me, pressuring me.”
“Everyone? What do you mean?”
“I just want to be left out of it. OK?’
“You know something, don’t you?”
Samantha shook her head. “No. I don’t.”
“Samantha, why is it that I don’t believe you? Is it about Mandy’s affair?”
“You are harassing me. I don’t know why. Leave this alone. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You do. You saw something when you visited her that day, didn’t you?”
“You don’t understand, Sheriff. I can’t tell you anything more.”
“Why can’t you? She was your friend. Don’t you want to make sure that her husband gets what’s coming to him?”
Samantha looked away. A row of bright yellow school buses had converged out front. The morning kindergartners were going to line up soon to be taken home.
“I loved Mandy. But this isn’t about her anymore. OK? Please just leave me alone. Please, I’m begging you, Sheriff Kenyon.”
“What do you mean, isn’t about Mandy? Are you all right?”
Heather Jonas opened the door with two cans of Diet Coke, but before she could say a word, Samantha stood up and started for the door. “I’ve said more than I should say. Please. Let it go.”
“Is everything all right?” Ms. Jonas asked, stepping out of Samantha Phillips’s way.
Neither Emily nor Samantha responded as they trailed out the door. No response was needed. Things were clearly far from all right.
Emily stopped Samantha as she opened the driver’s door of her Volvo wagon.
Samantha looked up. Tears were streaming down her face.
“Look,” she said, “I got a call right after Mandy disappeared. The person told me if I didn’t keep my mouth shut about what I knew, my kids would die.”
“Oh, Samantha, who was it? And what is it that you know?”
Samantha got into the driver side and reached in her purse for a tissue. She was sobbing and her tears made it hard for her to see anything in the car’s dark leather interior.
“I really don’t know who it was. I don’t know anything. Mandy was having an affair, but I don’t know who it was. She wouldn’t tell me.”
“Was it Mitch who threatened you?”
“No. No. It wasn’t him at all.”
“Are you sure?”
She dabbed at her ruined eye makeup. “I’m sure, Sheriff. The caller was a woman.” She turned the ignition. “Please,” she said, “I’m begging you. Keep me out of this. If I knew something I’d tell you. I promise. I’d like to kill the bastard and the bitch who’ve made me feel like Cherrystone is no better than L.A. or Chicago.”
Emily drove back to the office, nearly out of breath from the shock of Samantha’s disclosure. Who was it? Was it Tricia Wilson? Who and why would anyone threaten Samantha with the death of her two little children?
Were all roads leading to Tricia Wilson?
Her cell rang.
“Hi, babe.” It was Chris on the phone, calling from the drive back to the airport for a flight to Seattle after checking things out at the bank in Spokane. “Tried you earlier. How’s your day going so far?”
“Hang on.” Emily searched for a spot to pull over. Frozen snow crunched under her tires as she pulled into a parking place in the Mayfair Market lot. “You tell me how the bank went first,” she said.
“Is this like ‘Show me yours, I’ll show you mine’? We’ve already done that.”
Emily ordinarily would have laughed and teased him back, but she was still reeling. “I’m processing my talk with Samantha.”
Chris didn’t catch the anxiety in her voice. Emily could hold it inside and she chose to do so just then.
“OK,” he said. “Bottom line here is that Mitch Crawford has never been a customer of the branch that sent the cash to Tricia Wilson. Absolutely not. I got it from the woman who works the circle.”
“The circle?”
“Yeah, the customer circle. It’s a bank thing. Don’t ask.”
“So, if the money came from there, someone else paid off Tricia, right?”
“Yeah. We just don’t know who. What about Samantha?”
“All right. I don’t think she’s a liar. She says she was threatened. She’s a mother. Once she told me of the threat, she’s not going to protect some creep.”
Chris understood, at least he said so. “All right. I’ll talk to you tonight when I’m back in Seattle.”
“I love you,” she said.
“Back at you.”
Before pulling away, Emily hit the speed dial for Camille’s private line.
“Camille, it’s me.”
“Yes? Do you have something so soon?”
Emily could feel the lift in Camille’s voice. “No. Hold on. I have until five. Here’s what I know. Bank employees confirm that whoever made the transaction—and remember this is without a warrant, thank you—it was not Mitch Crawford.”
“We need a warrant, of course. Cary McConnell will be all over this. He smells blood like a shark.”
“Don’t I know that,” Emily said. “Based on what we know, Mitch didn’t pay off Tricia.”
“Who else would do that? Who else would tamper with a witness?”
Emily was surprised at the prosecutor’s question, but she answered it anyway.
“The only person I can think of is someone with a whole lot to lose. Someone with more to lose than Mitch.”
The line was silent for a second. “Who?”
“I don’t know. I wish I did. I also talked to Samantha Phillips. This thing is bigger than just Tricia Wilson’s bank account.”
Camille paused. “How do you mean? You think Samantha’s involved?”
“No. No. She’s frightened. Someone threatened her after Mandy’s disappearance.”
“Threatened her? Why? How?”
“Her kids. Killing her kids if she talked.”
In her mind’s eye, Emily could see Camille’s face just then. Anger turned her face a shade of pink. A vein on her temple had likely risen to the surface of her otherwise flawless skin.
“That goddamn Mitch Crawford’s a complete snake!”
“Cammie, it wasn’t Mitch. Sam said it was a woman.”
“What kind of woman would threaten another’s children for that monster? Darla?”
&nbs
p; Emily liked Darla and saw her as a young woman who’d already figured out that she’d made too many mistakes. “I don’t think so. She’s not the type.”
“Tricia?”
“Could be. Or someone else.”
Chapter Sixty-one
Garden Grove
Michael Barton’s meeting with his long-lost Sarah never took place. It had been planned. It had been dreamed about, at least by him, since the day they’d been separated. But two days before Michael and Olivia were going to catch a flight to Seattle, a call came from a woman whose voice Michael did not know.
“Mr. Barton?”
“Yes?”
“This is a hard call to make. One that I don’t want to make.” The woman was on the verge of tears. Her words were held tightly in her throat before each emerged, one at time in a staccato sequence. “You were my daughter Sarah’s biological brother.”
The word “were” caught him off guard. He knew something was wrong. He spun around his office, and stared at the window.
“Is Sarah all right?”
“She’s dead.”
It was such a cold and thoroughly devastating way of relaying such horrific news. No preamble. No “I regret to inform you” or something along those lines. Just a quick cold She’s dead.
Michael could feel the air escape his lungs. “What are you talking about?”
A beat of silence. An audible gulp of air. Then the words: “Sarah took her own life.”
Michael stood and steadied himself, his free hand against the glass of the kitchen window. He looked out. Danny and Carla were playing on the swing set. An orange tree’s waxy green leaves fluttered in the wind. “What do you mean? What happened?”
The woman on the other end of the line was doing her utmost best to convey the most difficult news. Her voice splintered as she spoke. “She hanged herself in her bedroom closet here at home. I thought you would want know.”
Want to know? She’s my little sister!
If the woman were telling him in person, he’d lunge at her just then. He’d grab her by the bony neck and snap it like a peppermint stick.
“But why?” he asked. “Why did she do this?”
“We aren’t sure. The police found some things on her computer. She was distraught. She’d been rejected by some sorority at Cascade last year.”
“Why would she care about that?”
“You probably don’t know this. But Sarah had a way of hurting herself. When she was eleven she set fire to her playhouse and was seriously burned on her face. She had many surgeries, but the doctors could never make her exactly as she was. She had severe scar tissue on the right side of her face.”
Michael, of course, had no idea. She’d sent photos, but they’d all been flawless.
“She never told me,” he said, his own words choked with emotion.
“She wanted you to be proud of her. She was so pleased, I want you to know, so very pleased that you’d come back into her life. She was going to change her major to information technology at Cascade because of you.”
He noticed his grip on the phone was so tight, he needed to tell his brain to lessen his grip. “She told me. She seemed so happy.”
“She was. Until those girls at Beta Zeta got through with her.”
“What happened? She was my only sister.”
She was also his only link to his past.
The woman stopped, catching her breath. Maybe drying her tears.
“The police found some e-mails from the rush committee at the sorority. They made some cruel remarks about our daughter. They said she wasn’t pretty enough. She wasn’t BZM.”
The code puzzled him. “I don’t understand. Come again.”
“Beta Zeta material.”
Michael was reeling just then. He wondered if he was screaming at the woman, or if their voices were low and quiet, appropriate for the office.
“This is so stupid. So senseless.”
“I know. But, Mr. Barton, these are the times we’re living in. There are no happy endings any more. Not even for a little girl left with her brother at Disneyland.”
From his reflection in the window, Michael Barton observed something he’d seldom seen on his own face. A slight shimmering stream ran from each eye.
What was that?
Michael’s affect was oddly flat when he told Olivia that Sarah had committed suicide. He sat at the breakfast table, swirling the orange pulp in the bottom of his glass. He was casual. Unconcerned.
“You and the kids are the only family I need,” he said.
She put her arms around his shoulders. He was stiff.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” Olivia said. “I know how much you wanted to have her in your life.”
“That’s OK,” he said. “I’m pretty busy, you know. Don’t really have time to get everything done that I need to do anyway. I’m making a list.”
Olivia kissed him on the forehead. She didn’t know that the list he was making had the names of three young women. Three young women that he was going to make sure paid the price for the wheels they set in motion.
For taking his sister away forever.
Chapter Sixty-two
Everyone has a quirk. For some, the habits are hidden, undetected for a lifetime. The fat woman who eats like a bird throughout the day, but at night sneaks into the freezer for a carton of ice cream. Or the dentist who waits for his patients and staff to go home so he can take a hit off the nitrous tank. Or the mom who sips a passable California chablis in the afternoons as her toddler sucks on the plastic straw of a juice box. Some are less apparent. Almost all have a root cause—pain they seek to diminish, or memories they seek to cloud.
The pantry in the Barton house always smelled like the laundry detergent aisle in the supermarket. No matter how much Irish Spring soap Olivia carted home, Michael always seemed to ask for more. It was, she thought, the only obsessive behavior that he engaged in and she figured it was harmless enough. After all, it was soap.
When they first got together, like all young couples, they couldn’t get enough of each other. Showering together in the morning after sex or just plain having sex any time of day fueled their desire for each other. It was during that first shower together in his apartment before they married that she noticed that the scent of her lover was the green-and-white striated bars of soap. She made a joke of it, by aping the Irish lilt of the old slogan from the TV commercials of her youth.
“Ah. Irish Spring! Ladies like it, too!”
“I guess, I really, really like it,” Michael said as he lathered her up, the water splashing through the shower curtain as the two of them huddled near the hot water to keep warm.
What he didn’t tell her, what he couldn’t tell her, was why he liked it so much. The green soap was his salvation. He sometimes used a bar of Irish Spring every two days. He’d let it soften in a deep soap dish that he’d rendered useless by most accounts—he’d plugged the drainage holes with plumber’s putty so it would hold water. By doing so, it became almost a jelly on the underside of the bar. That allowed him to rub the soapy paste over his body, particularly on his chest, armpits, and genitals. He knew he was compulsive about it, and that nothing else seemed to meet his needs. Just that soap.
Irish Spring had been the only soap that masked the smell of his own male body. Michael had been teased in junior high and high school about not participating in a team sport. He couldn’t. The sweaty smell of a locker room, the musky smell of another male body made him nearly convulse in spasms of nausea. He took up running, then swimming…then he gave up on all sports. He refused to disrobe and shower with the other teens in gym class. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to play sports, be with the guys, it was just that whiff of maleness that made him ill.
Irish Spring was the only thing that erased it.
His mind had been imprinted with the smell of Mr. Hansen’s body as he unzipped his fly and slid his pants to his ankles in the Corvette.
“Get down on me. Be a good boy
,” he’d said. “I want you to drink it all gone this time.”
It was a musky scent of cotton boxers, sweaty body parts, and, after his work was done, semen. He could barely breathe as he did what the man told him in a voice that seemed to know absolutely no gentleness whatsoever. Just do it. Satisfy me, cowboy. Get it done. I’ve got things to do now.
When the phrase “comfortable in his own skin” became common in the late 1990s, Michael Barton almost wanted to laugh at the very concept of it. He couldn’t stand the smell of his own skin. Before he was able to rein in some of his compulsion, he used to scrub his skin so hard that he left track marks on his thighs and stomach. A couple of times he even bled.
This is stupid, he thought. What happened to me in that garage with that freak doesn’t define me.
He learned to bathe with a gentler hand. He learned ways in which he could get even.
It doesn’t own me.
Deep down, he knew it did.
The morning Michael’s impulses could no longer be subdued by logic flashed through his mind. The morning had been cloaked in a veneer of ordinariness that easily masked his rage. His intentions. And yet, he knew it was the point of no return. He was getting ready for the flight out of town. Olivia poked her head into the shower and was nearly overcome by the scent of Irish Spring. She caught a soapy glimpse of her husband’s muscled torso, creamy clouds of soap rolling down in the hot spray.
“God, honey,” she said, “you think you could switch to Dial or something sometime?”
It was a joke, of course.
Olivia knew that her husband had his hygiene quirks. She knew that he’d have that scent on him when he was lowered into the ground.
We all have our quirks, she thought. At least, my man is a clean one, a decent one. Who could ask for anything more?
“I wish you didn’t have to go,” she said, handing him a towel.
“That makes two of us.” He wrapped the towel around his waist and faced the mirror to shave. “I’ll only be gone a couple of days. Just long enough to get in and get out.”