by Jon Mills
About five minutes later, when she was beginning to think he’d forgotten about her, the storm door creaked open as he brought out a tray of coffee. He set it down on a table and handed her a cup.
“Help yourself to milk and sugar.”
He sighed deeply as he sank back into the rocker and noticed her looking at the book. He smiled and showed her the front cover. Psychology and the Criminal Mind.
“Was it hard to hand over the badge at the end of your career?” she asked.
“Thirty-two years. I miss it every day.”
“Is that why you tipped off the Peninsula Daily Times about the abduction attempt?”
He wagged his finger. “So that’s what you’re here about.”
“Do you have a police scanner?”
“A scanner? Please. When would I have the time to listen to that? I might miss my work but retirement is better. So no.”
“So you have someone on the inside who feeds you news?”
He chuckled and eyed her with amusement. “Something like that.”
“From Blackmore or County?”
He put on his glasses and eyed her over the top of his coffee. Instead of answering her, he said, “Heard about your mom. Sorry.”
She dipped her chin ever so slightly. “Thank you.”
“I remember you. You were a lot younger. How do you like being a cop?” he asked.
“It has its moments.”
He chuckled. “That it does. You know there was a saying at our department. They took it from the Seals.”
“The only easy day was yesterday,” she said before he could say it.
“Ah, so I see our east coast friends have embraced it too.”
“I think it’s doing the rounds,” she said smiling before taking a sip of her drink. “Why? Why are you still involved after all this time?”
He shrugged. “I dealt with a lot of cases but there was something about your brother’s case that never sat right with me. I was called in to assist assuming we’d find a body in a matter of a week or two. In cases I’d dealt with before they were dead within the first twenty-four hours. When your brother’s shoe and jeans showed up on Kyle Harris’s property, I put forward that it was possible that whoever had taken him was doing it as a means to draw attention away from himself.”
“No one listened?”
“By the time we found that evidence, five years later, they were already knee-deep in a theory that Harris had taken the kid. An army of investigators couldn’t have swayed what was going on behind the scenes. Well, you know that… with the Swanson case and all.”
She nodded.
“Unfortunately these things get away from us and finding that evidence was like hitting a home run, only problem is back then we didn’t have the means to test it the way we could now.”
“And so why hasn’t anyone done retesting?”
“It’s a closed case. They don’t want to draw out skeletons from the closet or admit they placed an innocent man in prison. It’s bad for business.”
“So you believe he is innocent?”
“Of abducting your brother, I do, of what occurred before that, I don’t know. But I know it played a huge factor in where they put their efforts. I’m afraid Kyle Harris was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and with his history with the law and sexual assault accusation — you do the math. Are they going to chase after fourteen other people who were nowhere in the vicinity at the time or build a case around Harris?”
“You said fourteen. There were seventeen people of interest at the time. My mother had scratched out fourteen of them.”
“Leaving, three, that’s right.” He smiled. “Your mother had good things to say about you.”
“You met with her?”
“Numerous times. She was a great help after I lost my wife six years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Ah I knew it was coming. Cancer. Creeps up. She beat it the first time around but fate had other plans.” He shook his head and took another sip. “Anyway, she’d bring me these apple pies.”
Kara smiled.
“Ah, you know the ones.”
“She loved her pie,” Kara said.
“Anyway, she never let up. We talked at great length about the case. Her discussions with Kyle Harris and the three men.”
“Did she ever speak to them?”
“She had plans to. I think she might have called them. I saw her about two weeks before she passed away.”
“Did she ever say who she suspected? Or was there anyone you suspected?”
“I suspected a lot of people, unfortunately I didn’t have the time or the resources to dig into their past like I do now and even now I’m limited. But I have my connections.”
“In Clallam County? Wouldn’t by any chance be Noah Goodman, would it?”
He smiled. He mimicked zipping his lips. “I don’t want to get anyone in trouble. Let’s just say that I believe he’s still out there. Once in a while I did a favor for your mother and got things moving along but for the most part I’ve remained hands off.” He took another sip. “I’m getting too old for this. My wife, Jules, used to remind me when I was veering off track.”
“How long were you married?”
He sucked air between his coffee-stained teeth. “A long time. I never forgot an anniversary.”
“How did you manage it?”
“What?”
“Staying together. It’s rare.”
“Jules was rare. Most women would have packed their bags and left.”
“Did she work for the department?”
“Nope. She was an attorney. Maybe that worked in her favor as she knew the pressure I was under. We made it work and I guess you could say she wasn’t high maintenance.”
That got a smile out of Kara.
“Just saying. There’s a lot of ladies out there that are very needy. My gal wasn’t.”
“That she let on.”
He laughed. “Ah now you’ll have me chewing that over for the next week.”
It as quiet as they drank their coffees.
Kara continued. “She was convinced the cases of the four boys were related and that he was going to take another one.”
“That’s right. You see, the problem I had was trying to understand the motive. Purely sexual? Did your brother know the individual? Had he been watching him in the previous weeks? I’ve been through them all.”
“And?”
“I think it’s something more than sexual gratification, otherwise we would have seen an increase in abduction attempts. As you know, these kinds of offenders can’t keep their urges under control. Once they’ve got away with one and had a cooling-off period, they are right back at it again. Five years is too long. There’s something more to this than sex.”
She could tell it frustrated him.
“So what can you tell me?”
“Like I told your mother. He’s a resident in one of the five counties though my money is on Clallam. Charlie was his first. I’m sure of that. The abduction attempt that occurred prior to Charlie’s was…”
“Him warming up.”
“Exactly. And every five years the same pattern emerges. A boy is taken on Halloween.”
“Washington State Bureau has to have made the connection?”
“They have someone looking into it but you know how it works. There is only so much they can throw at it, and when the leads go cold, so does the case. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s sitting on some hard drive just waiting for someone like yourself to crack it open.”
“I don’t get it,” she said. “Okay, in Charlie’s case they think they have the individual but no one has been charged with these other four boys. They must have suspects?”
“I can give you the name of the guy who was involved in overseeing it but don’t expect miracles. As you know, thousands of kids go missing every year, Kara. There is only so much they can do before they run up against a wall.”
“And so what ar
e they waiting for? They want him to take another one?”
He reached for a pack of smokes on a side table and tapped one out.
“Usually. All four of the boys’ cases had the FBI and State involved but it dried up. I wish I could say there was more they were able to figure out but they did what they could. All I can tell you is I think our guy lives in Clallam.”
“Why Clallam?”
“If Charlie was his first, which I believe he was. They start where they are comfortable, then branch out.”
“To avoid detection.”
“Exactly.”
“And so the bureau has been focusing on the other four counties.”
“You got it. With all the circus and bad PR surrounding your brother’s case, no one wants to go near it. But like I said to your mother if they can figure that out, they might just able to figure out the other boys.”
“And stop him before Monday?”
“That’s asking a lot.”
Kara finished the rest of her coffee and sat there shaking her head. She thought he’d have answers for her but he didn’t know any more than her mother did. She fished into her pocket for a scrap of paper with the three names.
“What about these three: Ray Owen, Seth Leonard, and Darryl Clayton? From what I can tell they were never interviewed but were considered persons of interest. Especially Seth Leonard for his past behavior with minors and Darryl for his likeness to the suspect sketch at the time of Charlie’s abduction.”
“They weren’t brought in for questioning but off the record, I went and spoke with them back in 1991.”
“Any connection between the three?”
“None. Ray Owen’s mother vouched for him on the night your brother was taken, Seth didn’t have an alibi and according to witnesses, people said they saw a dark brown and white station wagon in the area at the time. He was driving one back in those days. It was an ’82 Pontiac Bonneville. The problem is Kyle Harris never saw the vehicle, only the headlights through the trees that night.”
“And Darryl Clayton?”
“You don’t want to go near him. The guy is a loose cannon, liable to shoot you. Anyway his wife, Nancy Clayton, and her brother Edwin Brewer vouched for him.”
“But they could have been lying.”
“That’s what I said.” He lit his cigarette and blew out a plume of smoke before coughing. “Welcome to the Charlie Walker case.”
Chapter 15
She hated therapists. For the first three years after Charlie was taken Kara was shipped around to various ones like a child that couldn’t fit in. It wasn’t that the therapists weren’t good at the job, or even that they refused to work with her; she was just impossible to work with. She took ownership for that. Opening up as a teenager was hard enough as it was, but discuss the abduction and she clammed up.
On the way back to Blackmore that afternoon, her mind drifted to those days. The sound of a ticking clock. Waiting for them to walk in. The barrage of questions. How does that make you feel? Then repeating her answers back to her. All they wanted to do was get her to talk about her experience. At first she said nothing and would just squirm around in the chair, twisting her long hair between her fingers, waiting for the hour to be up, and when that didn’t seem to piss them off — enough to tell her parents that they weren’t making progress — she would walk around, picking up items in the office, dropping them and generally acting out. It was usually small things like knocking over their coffee cup, or snapping gum that irritated them, all of them except one — Lloyd Benson. It didn’t matter what she did, she could never get a reaction out of him.
He just kept saying the same word over and over again: “Interesting.”
Looking back on it now she felt embarrassed by her behavior. But that was her way of dealing with it. Wherever she went she felt like she was under a microscope. Even the teachers treated her different. “Oh that homework? It’s okay. Do it whenever you can.”
At first it felt like a dream come true. A few tears and she could be excused from a class. An outburst and she was given a free pass. Why wouldn’t she? She was Charlie Walker’s sister. That kid has to be screwed up, she’d hear them say.
That’s why when her father had booked the appointment to see Benson, she wanted to cancel — the very thought of a million and one questions made her want to gag. Not long after moving to New York she’d stopped going to see therapists, even though her parents encouraged her. Instead, she decided popping pills like Zoloft was easier.
Even though it had been over twenty years since she’d been to his office, she still knew the way. She could have driven with her eyes blindfolded. She knew the exact number of turns, the bump in the road four houses down from his, and the aroma of pine as she made her way closer to the edge of Olympic National Park, to a small community called Elwha. It was located just off U.S. Route 101, not far from Port Angeles.
It was a majestic-looking home that doubled as his place of work. Most of it was made from glass, with stone and iron finishing. The attention to detail was astonishing. She referred to it as “The Glass House.” When her parents first took her there back when she was fifteen, she thought she was going to end up in another stuffy room full of encyclopedia-sized books crammed together, and sit across from a sniffling woman peering over her glasses. It was far from that. It often reminded Kara of a secluded resort nestled away at the edge of the National Park. It was located at the end of a road, a good mile from any other neighbor, and had zero drive-by traffic. Outside lush landscaping with year-round colors was spread out over eight acres. The guy even had a stream running through his backyard, three ponds and a manmade waterfall. It offered peace, privacy and tranquility, Lloyd said.
It was strange how places could make her feel like a kid again.
She climbed the stone steps that wound up to his door. She ran her hand over the iron railing and got a flash and a memory of telling her mother to take her home. She didn’t want to go through it, not again.
After ringing the bell, she waited, feeling less anxious, more annoyed that her father took it upon himself to push her in a direction when she was old enough to make the decision for herself.
When the thick wooden door opened, she was greeted with a warm hug. His demeanor was always disarming. She glanced at his hair. A full head of thick black hair swept back like someone in their twenties. He was one of the lucky few that managed to hold on to his, even though there were silver flecks now at his temples.
“So good to see you again, Kara. Come on in.”
The immediate smell of lemon furniture polish brought back memories of her multiple visits.
“It’s been a long while,” he said guiding her through to his study. It was spacious with floor to ceiling windows, and blinds that were partially opened to let in warm bands of summer light — except today dark clouds had drifted in blocking out what little sun there was. The hardwood floors were rich in color, a deep red that had come from the redwood forests of California. The gas fireplace was on, tongues of fire flickered behind two single brown leather chairs. Set back from those was a large mahogany table, the same one that had been there since she was a teen. Positioned tidily on the table were a Mac computer, four books, an analog clock and a lamp. The two walls either side of the room were the same. They were jam-packed full of books but they weren’t like the type found in the stuffy offices she’d been stuck in prior to meeting Lloyd. These were biographies, non-fiction and the works of the greats, like Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, William Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde. Often he would quote from them to get a point across, it’s what made him stand out from the academics who regurgitated what had been taught to them. In some ways that’s what intrigued her about him. He would go off on tangents about life, and the human mind, then in an instant wrap it up with a point that made what she was feeling make sense.
That morning he was wearing grey pants, a dark waistcoat, a white shirt and a burgundy tie. He had a sense of fashion even l
ate into his fifties, and carried himself with an air of confidence that only came from understanding the human psyche.
“You’re looking well,” he said in his usual upbeat manner.
“Ah, you’re too polite.” She pointed to her eyes. “Come a bit closer and you’ll see I have a few lines around the eyes that weren’t there since last time.”
He chuckled. “Don’t we all.”
She took a seat.
“Coffee? Tea?”
“Actually, I’m all caffeinated out for the day. Trying to cut back. Gives me the jitters.”
“Right. You don’t mind if I do?”
“By all means.”
He pivoted and crossed the room to a small cupboard, which he flipped down to reveal a silver espresso machine. She crossed her legs and scanned the shelves absently.
“How’s your father?”
“He’s back to working on his vehicle.”
“Good. It will keep his mind off things.”
“That’s what he said.”
Lloyd glanced at her with a warm smile. “You’ve been through a lot. All of you. How are you holding up?”
She twisted a necklace around her neck that her mother had bought her when she got married. Her thoughts went to the basement, to the wall, to every conversation she’d had since she’d arrived.
“I’m coping.”
“Still taking medication?” he asked as he poured out his drink.
“Zoloft.”
“Does it help?”
“It keeps me from losing my mind if that’s what you’re asking.”
He brought his cup over, and took a seat. She fixated on the cup. It was small, the kind used for tiny espressos. It reminded her of those that were used in a kids’ tea party. He took a sip and leaned back. For the first ten minutes, the conversation was small talk then it shifted.