Beneath Her Skin

by Gregg Olsen

  Next, the cutting and the sawing. The noise of a human body being violated by steel is horrendous—even for those who do it every day. The saw Birdy Waterman used emitted a noise somewhere between a Sears electric carving knife and a small chainsaw. Some medical examiners pipe music into their autopsy suites, turning them into hell’s concept of a downtown after-hours club. Way after-hours. Others turn up the volume on their playlists during the internal exam. Not Birdy Waterman. She hummed a little and watched her assistant’s green eyes turn a little greener.

  “Some fractured ribs here,” she said, indicating faint lines where the bones had mended.

  “Abuse?” Terry asked, peering over the pathologist’s shoulder to get a better look.

  Dr. Waterman shook her head. “Medical history from the father says that Katelyn was in a bus accident when she was five. No other hospitalizations.”

  Katelyn’s heart and other organs were removed from her body, weighed, measured and examined.

  What Birdy Waterman saw confirmed her suspicions. Katelyn Berkley’s heart had stopped beating because of trauma resulting from the electric shock.

  “So is it a homicide?” Terry asked. “Accidental death? Suicide?”

  Dr. Waterman raised the plastic shield that had kept the spatter of blood and tissue from her face.

  “The girl had emotional problems,” she said, indicating the scars from the cuts the victim had made on herself. Most were old and faded, but some were quite new. “And while it is highly unlikely that she tried to kill herself with the espresso machine, it appears that’s what happened.”

  “So how are you going to rule?” Terry asked.

  Dr. Waterman took more photos and removed her green latex gloves and face mask, which were splattered with brain matter and bone chips.

  “Accidental,” she said. “The police saw no evidence of foul play at the scene to indicate homicide. And the parents don’t need to live with the added heartache of wondering what they did wrong—even if they did something wrong. She’s dead. It’s over.”

  She started toward the door of the shower and dressing room.

  “You can close. No staples. Small stitches, Terry. She’s a young girl. I don’t want the funeral home to think we do the work of a blind seamstress. Katelyn…” She paused and looked at the paperwork that came with the body. “Katelyn Melissa Berkley deserves better. She’s only fifteen.”

  “So? She’s dead,” Terry muttered under his breath, hoping the woman with the sharp scalpel and soft heart didn’t hear him.

  But she did.

  “I’ll remember that when I see you on my table,” she said.

  If there was a case to be made for waiting out the geekdom that is middle school before writing someone off as a complete loser, Colton James was Exhibit A. During the summer between middle school and high school, Colton had morphed into something of a hottie.

  Colton was one-sixteenth S’Klallam, the native people who’d lived in Port Gamble when it was called Memalucet. He had tawny skin, a mass of unusually unruly dark hair and the kind of black eyes that looked almost blue in the sunshine. He’d been the skinny boy who dragged the girls to the edges of Port Gamble Bay in search of crabs, oysters or anything else that might be good to eat. He joked that he did so because he was Native American, but really it was because his parents didn’t always have much money. Colton’s dad, Henry, was an Inuit fisherman, often in Alaska for the season, and his mother, Shania, was a woman who suffered from agoraphobia. She almost never left the house. People whispered that Shania James was a hermit and that she was lazy and too fat to do anything.

  None of that was true, of course. The truth was far more sinister. Shania had been carjacked in a Safeway parking lot in Silverdale when Colton was two. With Colton secured in his car seat, the man who held Shania captive did things to her that she never talked about. Not to the police. Not to her family. At least, not that anyone had ever heard. Only the Ryans had a clue that Shania had been the victim of a violent crime; once, when Kevin was mowing the lawn, she had called over to him from the window.

  She had held a copy of his book, Innocence Delayed, and waved it at him.

  “You got it right, Kevin.”

  “What’s that, Shania?”

  “The author’s note in your book. That’s what. Sometimes people can’t get over things done to them. Dr. Phil is wrong. We can’t always get better.”

  “Screw Dr. Phil,” Kevin said.

  Shania gave a slight nod of agreement. She closed the window and disappeared into the house.

  Colton had always been the boy next door, literally. Hayley and Taylor never knew a summer’s day when they didn’t chat with Colton, get into some harmless trouble at the Port Gamble General Store or sleep out under the stars.

  He in his yard; they in theirs.

  And then all of a sudden he seemed to have grown up. Both Hayley and Taylor noticed it. The girls found themselves attracted to him, a quasi-brother or sidekick at best, in a way that was unsettling and peculiar.

  One day when he was out in his backyard washing the old Toyota Camry that his mom never drove but couldn’t get rid of, Colton called over to Hayley. She’d just come home from the beach in a tangerine bikini top and faded denim shorts, all sticky and smelling of sunscreen. Her hair had lightened, and the bridge of her nose was sprayed with brand-new freckles.

  “You want to help me dry?” he asked.

  She didn’t want to, but because he had his shirt off, she’d found reason enough to cross the yard and pick up a chamois.

  It turned out it was more buffing than drying, but Hayley didn’t mind. She stooped down low and started on the wheel well.

  “I was thinking,” Colton said, his teeth all the more white as they contrasted with his deeply tanned skin, “maybe you would want to go out sometime.”

  “You want to go out with me? What do you mean out?” she asked.

  “Out.”

  “You mean like on a date?”

  “Call it whatever. But, yeah,” he said, now crouching close to her. “What do you think?”

  What Hayley really thought was that it was strange. She liked Colton. She always had. Taylor liked him too. They’d even talked about how he’d changed and looked older, stronger and sexier, which trumped all previous feelings they had had that he was like a brother to them.

  “What about Taylor?” she finally asked.

  Colton laughed. “I’m not into that.”

  Hayley narrowed her blue eyes. “You’re not into what exactly?”

  “Never mind. I was asking you out. Just you and me.”

  Hayley wanted to drop the chamois and rush home to ask Taylor if she minded. She hoped she wouldn’t. She knew she might. Her mind was reeling.

  “Yes, I would like that,” she said. “When?”

  He smiled broadly. “How about tomorrow night? Want to see what’s playing in Poulsbo?”

  Hayley didn’t answer right away. The only movies out were dumb romantic comedies, but she didn’t want to turn Colton down.

  Colton immediately caught her vibe. “Nah, never mind. There’s nothing but trash out. Let’s bag the movies and do something else.”

  In that moment, Hayley Ryan really saw Colton James as someone more special, more in sync with her than just about anyone she could name.

  “It’s a date,” she said, turning her attention to the car but watching Colton in the reflection of the shiny hubcap. Her thoughts were a jumble just then and she couldn’t make sense of her feelings. There was no doubt she was jubilant over the fact that he had asked her out, but as she touched the car and moved the chamois in small circles against the chrome, she felt tiny pricks of sadness in her fingertips.

  What was it, she would always wonder, about that car that made me feel that way?

  The night Katelyn died, Hayley thought about that feeling she’d had back when they were polishing the Toyota and planning that first date. The energy that came to her was similar to something she was
feeling now.

  She also thought of Colton, whom she texted the minute she heard the news about Katelyn. He was in Portland with his dad’s relatives and wouldn’t be home until the day after school started. His mother had to be coaxed out of the house for the trip.

  Hayley: thinking of Katelyn. Sad, sad, sad.

  Colton: sorry. What happened?

  Hayley: not sure. No one really knows. Suicide? Accident?

  Colton: sux

  Hayley: miss u

  Colton: u2

  When Taylor caught Hayley texting Colton, she just rolled her eyes.

  Sometimes those two were just SO annoying.

  Chapter Seven

  Moira Windsor knew that greatness was never going to come from writing for the “What’s Up” section of the North Kitsap Herald, but at twenty-three, she’d been saddled with student loans and no prospects for a better job, at least until the economy bounced back. Whenever that was supposed to happen, no one seemed to really know. Moira was also being strategic. She knew that a toehold in a real journalism position was a must in building the credibility that she was sure she could spin into a spot next to Savannah Guthrie on Today.

  A slender redhead with a nice figure that she used to her advantage, Moira waited outside house number 19, composing her thoughts before knocking on the Ryans’ front door. Even though it was freezing outside, she unzipped her jacket a little to showcase what God and a Victoria’s Secret push-up bra had given her. She peered through the six panels of rippled glass that ran alongside the solid, painted door. She pulled back and planted a smile on her face as footsteps approached.

  Kevin Ryan, wearing gray sweatpants and a ratty, stained Got Crime? T-shirt that Valerie had tried to discard by stuffing it into the bottom of a Goodwill bag more than once, swung open the door and smiled.

  A little cleavage always works. Moira had learned that technique trying to get men to reveal things that they ordinarily might not. All told, Moira had about an eighty-seven percent success rate with it.

  “Mr. Ryan? I’m with the North Kitsap Herald. I’m a huge fan. Can we talk?”

  Kevin studied her, then looked at her eyes. He’d seen that purported “huge fan” look before a dozen times. She was young, excited. Like most reporters who sought an interview, this one probably was more interested in advancing her dream of writing books than in interviewing him about anything he’d been doing.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, hesitating a moment. “I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Moira Windsor,” she said with the kind of confidence that suggested he ought to know who she was. “I’m with ‘What’s Up.’”

  Kevin never turned down a chance for publicity, but he had one cardinal rule on the subject: Never do any media unless you have a book to sell.

  “Right. Moira, I’m sorry, but I didn’t get a heads-up from anyone at the Herald that you’d be visiting. I don’t have a book coming out.”

  “I’m a huge fan of your work,” she repeated.

  “You said that already,” Kevin said as politely as possible.

  Moira fidgeted with her purse and pulled out a slim reporter’s notebook.

  “Actually,” she said, opening the notebook, “I wanted to talk to you about Katelyn Berkley. I apologize for not having the whole background yet. My editor called me and told me the basics. I’m all about research, so bear with me. Go ahead, now tell me.”

  Valerie had warned him that a reporter was snooping around, but Kevin didn’t like where the impromptu—no, ambush—interview was going.

  “Why would you want to write about her? It was a personal matter. A family tragedy.”

  Moira ignored the warning that she felt was mixed into his response. “Yes, a suicide or an accident. I get that.”

  “Of course you do,” he said. He could feel his adrenaline pulse a little, and he willed himself to stay calm. He might need her one day for publicity, but not that day, not about that subject. “And as far as I know, your paper doesn’t cover personal tragedies.”

  Moira nodded. “This one is different.”

  If Moira was going to press the point, Kevin was going to let her. “How so?” he asked, clearly testing her.

  “I think you know why.”

  He did, but he stayed firm in his refusal to say so. “No, I don’t.”

  “Katelyn was in the Hood Canal Bridge crash.”

  Kevin glanced away for a second, his awareness no longer on the annoying young woman standing in front of him but on his girls, who were just steps away from the door.

  “I guess she was,” he said. “So what?”

  “Well, so were your daughters… and now they are the only surviving children of the accident.”

  Kevin’s jaw tightened. “We don’t talk about the crash.”

  “The paper really would like to do something… you know, coming on the heels of Katelyn’s tragic death and the ten-year anniversary of the accident.”

  A child’s death plus a ten-year anniversary equaled a newspaper reporter’s one-two punch for a spot on the front page.

  “I’m sorry. Can’t, won’t, help you.”

  “I can mention your last book.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks. Please do yourself a favor and, more important, the people of this town a favor, by not pursuing this.”

  “I can’t do that, and you of all people should understand. You’ve always been about the truth, haven’t you?”

  Kevin Ryan nodded, his casual smile no longer in place. “Please go, Ms. Windsor. We’re all out of patience here.”

  He closed the door harder than a polite man might have done. He couldn’t help it. The ten-year anniversary of the crash was looming and with each minute passing, it brought a deluge of hurt and more confusion.

  No one knew what had caused the crash or why only three girls and one adult had survived.

  “Who was that?” Hayley asked as her father turned around.

  “Reporter,” Kevin said.

  “Why was she talking about Katelyn?”

  “Looking for a story, that’s all.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  Kevin started toward the kitchen, but Hayley’s words stopped him like a rope of razor wire.

  “When are you going to talk to us about the crash, Dad?”

  He turned around, his heart beating faster and his face now flushed. “We’ve talked about it already.”

  “Really, Dad? I still have questions about it,” Hayley said.

  “Look,” he said, clearly not wanting to have another word about it with Hayley, Taylor or probably anyone else, “can we just table it?”

  Now Hayley’s red face signaled her own frustration. “Table it for how long? Are we not going to talk about it for the rest of our lives?”

  Kevin refused to answer. Instead, he put his hand up as if the act could really just push it all away. Dads all over the world thought they could win an argument with a teenage girl. Those dads were pretty stupid.

  “Sorry, honey,” he said. “But not right now. Please don’t ask again.”

  Sometimes good needed a hand in dealing with evil. Both Taylor and Hayley knew that statement to be truer than the fact that their eyes were blue or that their dog, Hedda, a long-haired dachshund, was a bed hog of the highest order. They did wonder, however, if it had always been that way in the outside world. Sometimes it seemed that beyond the borders of Port Gamble, people were caught up in so much conflict, so much hate, incessant evil—whatever word a person would choose to call the ugly that was routinely done to each other.

  The Ryan twins had a slightly warped front-row seat to evil and the criminal justice system. As a little girl, their mom lived in a prison run by her father, and she now worked as a psychiatric nurse. Their dad made his living writing about murderers. What they unequivocally knew from their parents was that there were two kinds of evil: accidental and intended.

  The twins, and especially Taylor, could empathize with those who were accidentally evil, like the drunk
driver in Seattle who staggered behind the wheel and plowed into a group of teenagers waiting to get into a club. At least there was hope for those who were truly sorry.

  However, the girls felt no mercy for those who perpetrated evil intentionally. Their souls were dark and always would be.

  Chapter Eight

  Hayley Ryan could feel a twinge of panic as she turned into the alley that ran behind the houses on Olympian Avenue. She felt it in her bones. Her father always told her and her sister to listen carefully to what their hearts and minds might be telling them.

  “There’s a reason your hair stands up on the back of your neck,” he had said, affecting his best Investigation Discovery voice, an octave deeper, but still Dad. “It’s a warning to be careful. Trust your feelings.”

  “Hair standing up anywhere is gross, Dad,” Taylor said.

  Kevin Ryan would not be denied his point. “Maybe so,” he replied. “But survivors of a serial killer are the ones who heed the feeling and act on it. Saving your life, Taylor, is never gross.”

  Hayley smiled. It was a slightly tight grin, the kind meant to contain a more overt response, like an out-and-out laugh. She and her sister had grown up with a father who made his living telling the stories of the vilest things people do to others. In doing so, he never missed the opportunity to push advice on how to survive even the scariest, most dangerous situation.

  “See that guy in the camo jacket over there?” he asked the twins one time when the family was shopping at Central Market in nearby Poulsbo. “Say he’s a serial killer and he corners you in this parking lot.”

  Valerie rolled her eyes upward. “Why does everyone have to be a serial killer?”

  Taylor piped up. “Because they’re the best, right, Dad?”

  “Yes, the best,” Kevin said, nodding at what he knew was a tiny dig. “The best in terms of sales for books, but more important, they’re the best in making sure their victims are never left alive to tell their stories.”