by Gregg Olsen
Why in the world would she defend him?
Jason knew and he answered right back. “I know you have some history with McConnell.”
Jason was right, of course. He could read her well. He could see the shame she felt in her own judgment. He saw how compromised she’d been over this whole thing.
She looked at him. She didn’t say the words, but she hoped her look was clear enough. Let’s talk about this later.
Jason got the point. He looked back at Steffi.
“Are you going to be all right?”
“Yeah. I guess so. I feel bad about Mr. Crawford.”
Emily nodded. “If he’s innocent, he’ll be let out soon enough.”
She told Steffi that Gloria would take her statement, but that she and her deputy had to leave.
“Donna’s waiting for me at Miller’s Marsh Pond. I’m going there. She texted me an hour ago.”
Jason stood and put on his coat. “Not without me, you’re not.”
Emily smiled, a forgiving smile. She wished that she’d been a better mentor. Jason Howard was a great deputy and had always deserved her respect. “Of course not. But you’ll take your own car and keep a distance away.”
“Emily, I don’t know about this,” he said.
“I do. I think she’s about to tell me what’s really going on and I want to hear it.”
“You’re making it sound personal.”
“It is. But not about me. This is for Mandy and her baby.”
“You think she’s behind the threat to Samantha Phillips? The payoffs to Tricia?”
Emily smiled. “You’re good. Those things crossed my mind about ten minutes go.”
“Right behind you,” he said.
Chapter Sixty-eight
Miller’s Marsh Pond, outside of Cherrystone
It was early March and the snow had finally gone. Spring had begun to emerge. Cattails were sending up new green spikes and the willows along the edges of Miller’s Marsh Pond where Dan Fletcher and his kids had discovered Mandy Crawford’s body just after Christmas were popping with green buds. Emily had felt a shudder of horror at the sight of a half-frozen corpse wrapped in a sleeping bag, but the chill had faded now with the realization that she’d been wrong the entire time.
Mitch Crawford probably wasn’t the killer. She edited her thoughts. Mitch Crawford was innocent.
Emily parked the Crown Vic next to Donna Rayburn’s BMW.
She recalled how Steffi had said the man had a pickup the night he came in for coffee.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jason’s cruiser as he parked fifty yards away.
As she walked down the path, the light dipping low behind a grove of alders draped with new catkins, Emily wondered how she could have been so stupid. How she had wanted to believe something about Mitch Crawford so onerous, so unforgiving, that she’d trapped herself. Camille had pushed hard, of course, but the blame wasn’t hers alone. Emily was the investigator. She had been in pursuit of a killer to avenge a woman’s and a baby’s deaths.
This case went too far too fast. It was like we just wanted it to be Mitch. So neat. So much easier.
It wasn’t Donna she saw at the water’s edge. When she saw him, everything crystallized. Emily remembered the monograms on the guest towels in his mountain cabin in Idaho, at his big house in Cherrystone. She remembered how she shopped for a tie tack with the letter M because Cary hadn’t wanted any jewelry unless it was personalized in some way.
“Why wear anything if it doesn’t say something about you?” he asked her back then when they were dating.
All of it was from a time she wished she could sift from her memory.
Cary McConnell was facing the water. He turned around when he heard Emily approach, as her steps echoed softly on a boardwalk weekend fisherman had laid over the sodden path. She kept one hand close to her gun, its cold barrel reminding her of the danger of the moment.
“There’s nowhere for me to go, Emily,” he said. His eyes were red. He might even have been crying before she got there.
“You can come clean, Cary.”
He turned away from her and looked at the water, dotted with ripples of gold. “No. No, I can’t.”
“You can. Tell me. What happened with you and Mandy?”
He answered, with his back still toward her. “It isn’t so hard to figure out. You are pretty smart. Not smart enough to avoid getting involved with me, though.”
She chose her words carefully. “That was awhile ago.”
But I was smart, she thought, I dumped you.
“What happened with Mandy?”
“It was stupid. She was the wife of my biggest client. She was lonely. I was lonely. It was wrong, I know that.”
“This is more than an ethical violation, Cary. Mandy’s dead. What happened?”
Cary looked over the water, now cast in the yellow light of a very late afternoon. “She wanted to tell her husband. She wanted to be with me. Jesus, I didn’t want that. I told her to stick with Mitch. Let him think the baby was his. She kept telling me that she didn’t love him, that she could make a life with me. Right? Like I could give up my biggest client for her and that baby.”
It was the first time he mentioned the baby.
Emily inched a little closer. She wasn’t afraid. “What did you do, Cary? Tell me what happened.”
“It was stupid. She made me mad. I don’t like to be pushed. She kept pushing. She even started to call Mitch and tell him. I couldn’t have that. I put my hand around her neck. She clawed at me. But I had to shut her up.”
For the first time, Emily noticed the barrel of the gun that Cary pulled from his coat pocket. She hadn’t expected that and she took a slight step backward. She pulled her own gun.
“Drop it,” she said. “You don’t want to do that.”
“You don’t know what I wanted. I wanted you, remember that? I loved you, Emily. If you hadn’t broken up with me, none of this would have happened.”
“I’m sorry. I wish things could have been different.”
It was such a hollow lie that she was sure he could see right through it. But it was the first thing that leapt to her mind. Promise the potential suicide anything. Stall for time. Time might save a life.
“You’re a good man,” she said. Again, another lie, one so egregious she nearly choked on her words.
The barrel of the gun moved slightly.
“I’m garbage. Everyone says so. I couldn’t even manage to cover up my own mess.”
“But you did a good job. You paid off Tricia, didn’t you?”
A near smile came over his face. “That was pretty good, wasn’t it?”
“Brilliant. Now, please set down the gun.”
A flock of ducks flew overhead, and for a second, Emily moved her eyes from Cary. In that very instant, he pulled his arm from his body and in one rapid move pointed the weapon at his face.
“No!” she screamed.
A gunshot sounded, and blood spatter sprayed over a stack of firewood someone had assembled like a giant Jenga game. Cary slumped to the muddy ground.
“You shot me!” he said.
Jason was right behind Emily, a curl of smoke drifted from the nose of his Cherrystone Sheriff Department issue.
Cary writhed in agony. His shoulder had been pierced by Jason’s bullet. A cleaner shot had never been fired. Emily picked up Cary’s gun, its handle gleaming with engraved lettering: CAM. She put it out of reach.
“Where’s Donna?” she asked. She was cool, direct. She meant for the son-of-bitch coward slumped in front of her to give her an answer. “Tell me. Now.”
Cary’s eyes were ice. “You think I will tell you?”
“Don’t mess with me, Cary! Where is Donna?”
Cary put his left hand on his right shoulder as blood oozed through his wound. He struggled to pull himself together as if he’d just been stung by a bee.
“You’ll find her when the time is right. Like the others,” he said.
<
br /> Cary’s words took Emily’s breath away.
Like the others? Mandy? Donna? Who else?
“Ambulance will be here in five minutes,” Jason said.
Emily looked at Cary, then at Jason. “Tell them no need to rush. Maybe he’ll bleed out.”
Cary McConnell just smiled.
Two hours later after gunfire sounded across the waters of Miller’s Marsh Pond, Chris Collier showed up at the sheriff’s office in his rental car. He was agitated, sweaty. Cursing the airline for its delays, the rental car company for putting him in a car that smelled like an ashtray. That was small stuff, of course. The real reason his blood pressure soared was because he hadn’t been where he’d wanted to be. With Emily. To make sure she was safe.
He’d picked up most of the information on the shooting from talking to Gloria on the drive from the Spokane Airport.
“Jason picked Cary off in the shoulder just as he was about to blow his own brains out. Jason’s too good of a shot if you ask me,” Gloria said. “Idaho police are up at the cabin, but no sign of Donna.”
“Emily’s OK, isn’t she?”
“She’s been through worse. You know that better than anyone. She’s tough. She made me call Jenna and fill her in on everything, of course. She didn’t want her to worry in case the news started churning out stories about the shooting up at the pond.”
Gloria said that Emily was holed up with Camille Hazelton and the investigators from the state were on their way to make sure that Jason Howard’s shooting of the suspect was clean.
When Chris arrived at the sheriff’s office, Gloria was on the phone. She waved him past her, mouthed “media,” and rolled her eyes. He poked his head in Jason’s office to thank him, but he was gone. When he turned around, Emily was right behind him. Without a word, she melted into Chris’s arms. Emily didn’t cry, but she could feel his strength and it soothed her, making her feel that as horrific as the day had been, it would not always be that way.
“He said there were others, Chris. I think he killed someone besides Mandy and Donna.”
“I know,” he said, letting her go so he could look into her eyes.
“You know?”
“Oh, Emily, I tried to get ahold of you all afternoon.”
“I saw your calls.”
He told her about Irv Watkins’s beloved DVR and how he’d recorded a TV magazine show’s segment on Belinda Harriman’s murder.
Emily’s eyes flooded just then. “I remember that case. She was found at Phantom Lake, wasn’t she?”
“Yeah, in a sleeping bag,” Chris said, pausing to let the words sink in. “Em, in the background of the video you can clearly see Cary, putting up posters. He was a law student back then. The police questioned him. They just liked the boyfriend better for the crime.”
“They convicted the boyfriend, didn’t they?”
“Yes, he’s still in prison.”
Within hours, the media swooped in on Cherrystone to cover the story of the crooked lawyer and the client he’d almost defended right into a date with the gallows. Mitch Crawford had retained a new lawyer by then, threatening all the players in the saga with a lawsuit “the likes of which Cherrystone had never seen.”
Emily tried to stay out of the fray as much as possible. Certainly a killer was captured, but there was nothing to be gleeful about. It wasn’t justice at all. Just a twisted end to a very sad saga. She felt sickness in the pit of her stomach when the Idaho police investigator said they’d found Cary’s pickup a half a mile from the cabin. She wondered if hidden in the grooves and spaces around the rivets were pieces of Mandy. Her DNA. Her hair. Her blood. Or Donna Rayburn? What about her? She knew that no matter how many times he might have detailed that truck, something would be there that would scream to the world that Mandy had been back there. Heaped like garbage, wrapped in a cocoon.
To be hidden away in a frozen pond.
I like hauling stuff around on the weekend, he’d told her.
She thought of how Cary had touched her. How they’d made love. How he told her that she was beautiful, sexy, smart. How he wanted to possess her. A shiver went down her spine.
Instincts, Emily, she thought. Trust your instincts.
She took a deep breath. She’d be OK. She was strong.
Emily didn’t know that someone had come to Cherrystone with a dark payback plan that could cost her everything.
Chapter Sixty-nine
Garden Grove
Olivia Barton had never been a stupid woman. No one could say so. But as the hours melted she thought back to the moment of truth, the time when her life’s lessons–forged brilliance should not have been dimmed by her love for Michael Barton.
What happened the morning her husband left for the Pacific Northwest weighed on her. It was an anvil on a chain around her neck, choking her, reminding her that what she had with Michael Barton might have been nothing more than an illusion. It was like a slice of the skin, an opening so wide and bloody that it would never heal. She played it over and over.
Late again! The truck from St. Vincent’s would be at the Bartons’ later that morning, after Michael left for the airport. On the corner of the bed sat Michael’s suitcase, opened, packed with everything but toiletries. While he showered, Olivia carried a stack of old kids’ clothes to some boxes he had set aside for the charity collection in the garage. She’d meant to be more organized and was grateful to get the things out of the house and into the hands of someone who could use them.
Olivia had always taken great care with Danny and Carla’s hand-me-downs. She’d been through hard times with her own family growing up, and knew how much a little boy or girl would appreciate that what they’d been given was truly a gift and not someone else’s garbage. Her mother told her that a decent person knew the difference between giving something to someone who needed it, and boxing up junk no longer wanted.
Four cardboard boxes were lined up next to the flawlessly organized workbench. Olivia bent down with the stack of baby blankets that she’d ironed into perfect squares and placed into separate gallon-sized plastic Ziploc bags. They were, she knew, as good as new. She imagined Danny and Carla as babies. A bittersweet smile came to her lips. She felt the surge of love that comes with the reminders of how tiny, how precious her children were.
Good memories in these blankets.
She looked around to see if there was anything else she’d be able to offer up before the St. Vinnie’s truck lumbered down the street. And there it was. A perfect candidate up on a shelf along with some paint cans, gardening supplies, and a minigraveyard of kitchen countertop appliances.
“Someone out there could use a pizza cooker more than we did,” she thought as she pulled the box from the shelf. It had been a wedding gift. Never used. Never really needed by anyone, but it was brand new and might make someone happy. She blew off a very thin layer of dust and the particles illuminated in the morning sunlight from the garage’s east-facing window fell like tiny stars to the cement floor. She looked back up at the space where the pizza cooker had been. Another, smaller box had been behind it. A picture on the side indicated that the box held a Waterford vase.
“I don’t remember getting that,” she said, aloud.
It was heavy, but not Waterford heavy. She pulled off the top and peered inside.
“What?”
Coiled like snakes were a half dozen dog collars and chains.
Olivia pushed her fingertips through the cardboard carton, moving the collars and chains to get a better view. She tilted the box toward the window to catch more light. A silver B and Z glinted from a slender cable chain. She recognized the Greek letters.
Michael stood in the doorway, proffering two steaming mugs. “Honey, coffee’s ready!”
Her back to him, Olivia slammed the lid shut and set it behind the stack of baby blankets. She wasn’t quite sure what she’d seen. She knew, however, that it was not meant to be seen. Her pulse accelerated. She spun around and put on an exaggerated grimac
e.
It was false affectation and she worried that he’d think so. He could read her so easily.
“So much to get rid of,” she said, taking a cup from Michael’s outstretched hand and willing her heart to stop pounding.
She didn’t know it, but her husband had been thinking the very same thing.
“Isn’t that the truth,” he said, his eyes moving across the garage from the box of hand-me-downs to the shelf where the pizza cooker and Waterford box had been.
The flight from LAX had been uneventful. Michael Barton changed planes in Seattle and took a midday flight that landed him in Spokane at a little after three. During his downtime at the airport, he had a cup of coffee and answered some e-mails from work and an “I miss you already” note to Olivia. They’d talk after he got settled in Spokane. He checked into the Davenport, one of Spokane’s grand old hotels, built originally in 1914 as the first hotel with air-conditioning—a monumental feat of its day. It had fallen on hard times, but had been restored in recent years to its former luster. Uniformed bell captains and front-desk clerks were back in force.
The Kmart on Spokane’s South Hill had one of those parking lots that covered about ten acres, though one or two would have sufficed even on the busiest shopping days of the year. On a rainy day, all slick and wet, it was a black sea anchored by a pier of blocky buildings outfitted with a giant red K.
Michael Barton parked his rental car farther from the front door than necessary and walked inside. Despite the season, he wore dark glasses. He wore a hooded sweatshirt that made him look like a Unabomber wannabe. He wore the getup so that he wouldn’t be noticed, couldn’t be identified. Past the Martha Stewart collection, past Jaclyn Smith, and on to the store’s well-stocked hunting section. There, he picked out a Camillus Buckmaster’s blade with a gut hook.
The nearly eight-inch blade looked serviceable enough.
“Need a whetstone?” the clerk asked, a roly-poly man with a walrus mustache and failed hair plugs.
“Is it sharp now?” He twisted the high-carbon stainless-steel blade in the flat light of the store. A nice glint deflected light into the clerk’s eyes. He looked back down at a little card extolling the virtues of the blade: Precision skinning is guaranteed. Hairsplitting sharp! No meat-souring “accidents” with this superstar blade at a chorus line price.