Beneath Her Skin

by Gregg Olsen

  “We’re going out of town to spend some time with my dad’s family in Portland.”

  “That’s nice,” she said. “Your mom going too?”

  “Yeah. She’s pretty freaked about it, but my dad’s got a plan.”

  Katelyn smiled. “I like your mom.”

  Colton appreciated Katelyn just then. He could tell that something was troubling her, but no matter what it was, she still had it within her to be kind to someone.

  Hayley texted again.

  Hayley: Try team Edward. Just a wild guess.

  Colton: lke twilite?

  Hayley: LOL. Yes. Mine wz team Jacob. Don’t tell any1!

  Colton: About team Edward?

  Hayley: About me & twilight. That wz a long time ago.

  * * *

  Hayley looked up from her phone and faced her sister.

  “I don’t like lying to Colton,” she said. “Not at all.”

  Taylor nodded. “I know.”

  The two of them sat on the floor in Taylor’s room, obsessing about Katelyn and what her mother had wanted to find on her laptop. Both girls knew the password as if it were their own. Somehow, when they touched the laptop, the password had imprinted on their minds.

  “I just didn’t want him to struggle too much,” Hayley said. “Sure, he likes a challenge and he can do anything when it comes to computers. But, you know, we can help out, so why not?”

  Taylor got up to fish a sweater from her bottom drawer. The walls of her bedroom leaked cold air like a crab pot leaked water, and she was freezing.

  “Agreed,” she said, pulling out a gray oversize sweater with pilled, stretched-out sleeves and a couple of missing buttons. It was a favorite cast-off of her dad’s that she could never part with. “Totally.”

  “Your sweater needs a shave,” Hayley said.

  Taylor shrugged, and then put on a wicked grin, teasingly, of course. “I was thinking the same thing about your nasty legs,” she said.

  * * *

  Colton typed in the suggested password and… nothing. He thought for a moment and figured that if TEAM EDWARD was Katelyn’s password, she probably would have used a numeric sequence to make it less obvious.

  That was easy to guess too. He typed in TEAMEDWARD23, the number for the Berkleys’ house. He’d used his own house number tagged on the end of plenty of passwords over the years. It was always easy to remember.

  The computer rumbled softly and the screen opened wide, baring all of Katelyn’s secrets.

  Got it, he thought.

  No illicit software had been needed after all, and that made Colton feel a little better about what he’d been asked to do. It was one thing to password-crack a dead friend’s computer; another to enlist a skanky Internet tool to do the deed. It seemed cleaner somehow to do it with a guess-and-go technique. Less criminal. Hayley had given him more than half of what he needed and that brought a smile to his face.

  Colton: success. Now wot?

  Hayley: Copy her hard drive. Everything. I’ll explain l8r.

  Colton: ???

  Hayley: Katelyn wz in trouble. She’s dead because of it.

  Colton: WTF?

  Hayley: Explain l8r. Promise.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Birdy Waterman, Kitsap County’s forensic pathologist, had burned her tongue on coffee that she’d microwaved a minute too long. She looked out of the window of the green vinyl-floored kitchen on the main floor of the coroner’s office. The old house, which had been converted to the county morgue, probably had an impressive view of the Olympic Mountains to the west. Trees and the Kitsap County Courthouse now stood in the way. She was swishing cold water in her mouth when her annoying assistant Terry Morris told her that a woman was there to see her.

  “She’s in a bad way,” he said, sculpting his short faux hawk. “Wants to talk.”

  Dr. Waterman swallowed the water and pushed her disposable cup into the swinging lid of the kitchen garbage can. Without another word from Terry, she knew that it was the mother of a victim. Mothers can never let go. Fathers were different. Not all of them, of course, but most accepted scientific findings for what they were—clinical facts. Moms didn’t.

  Dr. Waterman didn’t recognize the woman.

  “I’m Birdy Waterman. Can I help you?” she asked.

  Sandra Berkley was as she had been in the James’ living room—a disaster. Her hair, disheveled. Her makeup, scrawled on, not applied carefully. She was thin where she should have had some fullness to her face. She was puffy where the contours should have been more sculpted. It was the face of a mother who’d lost her baby.

  Dr. Waterman had seen that so many—too many—times before.

  “Can I help you?” she repeated.

  “I hope so,” Sandra said, anxiously looking for a place to sit. Her knees shook just then.

  “Let’s go into my office,” Dr. Waterman suggested, gently placing a hand on Sandra’s bony shoulder as she led her to what had once been a bedroom but now functioned as her office. In addition to the louvered closet doors along the farthest wall, the ceiling light above her was the only other remnant of the office’s original purpose. It was a glass fixture etched with figures of cowboys and their spinning lariats. It had been a child’s room.

  “I’m sorry,” Dr. Waterman said, moving things aside to clear more space across her desk, “I didn’t get your name.”

  “Sandra Berkley. My daughter was Katelyn.”

  Of course. Even though she’d only seen her laid out on her autopsy table, there was no mistaking the resemblance.

  Dr. Waterman nodded. “I’m deeply sorry for your loss.”

  Sandra started to cry. “Thank you.”

  “Can I answer some questions for you?”

  The words sounded flat, and not at all helpful, which was not the forensic pathologist’s intention. It was merely the fact that no words could ever seem right. There was not a damn thing she could do for that woman. No one could.

  Finally, Sandra spoke. “Was my daughter pregnant?”

  A little caught off guard by the question, Dr. Waterman shook her head. “No, I would have noted that. It would have been in my report. Our exams are very, very thorough.”

  Sandra winced a little, squeezing tears from her eyes as she reached for a tissue from a box on the doctor’s desk. Then she dug into her purse and pulled out a Ziploc bag containing the pregnancy test stick.

  “I found this in her room. I thought… maybe that’s why she might have killed herself… because she didn’t want to disappoint me…” Her words trailed off into more sobs.

  Dr. Waterman gently pushed the tissues closer.

  “Mrs. Berkley, that wasn’t it at all. I examined your daughter. As I recall it didn’t appear that she was sexually active. Your daughter was more than likely still a virgin.”

  Sandra stopped her tears. “Then why would she have this?” she asked, waving the wand once more.

  A somewhat startled Dr. Waterman shook her head. It was a very, very good question.

  “No idea,” she said. “Maybe she and her boyfriend messed around and thought she might be pregnant. I don’t know. Kids are funny. When I was young, I almost believed you could get pregnant from a French kiss.”

  “If she had a boyfriend, her father and I never met him.”

  You wouldn’t be the first mother who had no idea what her daughter was doing when she was out of your sight, Dr. Waterman thought.

  “I know that none of this is easy and there’s nothing I can do to make you feel better,” she said.

  It was all she could say.

  Sandra Berkley stood. She was sad, hurt, and mad at the same time.

  “I will never feel better again,” she said.

  “I understand, Mrs. Berkley. Really, to the best of my ability, I do.” Dr. Waterman reached for a tablet and a pencil. She jotted down a phone number. “I know an excellent grief counselor in Poulsbo. Maybe you could talk to her? It might help.”

  “I don’t want
to talk to anyone,” Sandra said, her voice louder than needed. “I want my daughter back. I want to watch her graduate from high school. Go to college. Get married.”

  Birdy Waterman let her go on. Nothing short of an AK-47 could halt the mother of a dead teenager as she grieved for all that had been lost.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  She may have been fueled by vodka or it might have been only the enormous sadness of her loss, but Sandra Berkley made a beeline for Katelyn’s phone when she got home from the Kitsap County Morgue. How could I not know my own daughter? How could it be that she didn’t tell me?

  First on the list was Starla Larsen.

  It didn’t ring and went immediately to voice mail.

  “Starla, this is Sandra, Katelyn’s mom. Call me back when you get this.”

  A few minutes later she tried again, with the same results. Sandra had half a mind to just go next door and confront Starla face-to-face, but she thought better of that. She didn’t want to fall apart in front of Mindee and Jake. They’d avoided her lately with the kind of sad, frightened look parents sometimes give others whose children had special needs, or had died—suicide or otherwise.

  Next she tried Hayley Ryan.

  She and her sister were nosy enough to snoop in Katelyn’s room. Maybe one of them knew something.

  Hayley was nearly done with the forensics book when she looked down at her vibrating phone. Her face went nearly white. It was as if she’d seen a ghost. In a very real way, with Katelyn’s name popping up on the caller ID, it was a ghost.

  “Hello?”

  “Hayley, this is Sandra Berkley. I have something I need to talk to you about. Maybe your sister too. I’ve tried to reach Starla, but she’s probably out running the universe.”

  There was genuine sarcasm in Sandra’s voice. Hayley liked that.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s private. Can you come and see me?”

  “Sure. Shall we come to the restaurant or your house?”

  “I’m home.”

  “Okay, what’s it about?”

  “I’ll tell you when you get here. Bring your twin.”

  Bring your twin. That didn’t sound good.

  Hayley hung up and went looking for her sister. Whatever it was, this was big. It had to be, because the last time the two of them had interacted with Sandra Berkley, she’d wanted to bite off their heads and toss them out of her daughter’s second-floor bedroom.

  Ten minutes later, Hayley and Taylor Ryan stood on the Berkleys’ front doorstep, bracing themselves from the cold and for whatever it was Katelyn’s mom wanted to say to them.

  Sandra opened the door and wasted no time getting to the heart of the matter. There was no offer to take their coats, of a warm beverage, or anything like that. Not that they’d wanted anything, but still it was wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. She’d barely invited them in when she dropped the bomb.

  “Who was my daughter sleeping with?”

  “Huh?” Taylor asked, looking at her sister.

  Hayley looked clueless.

  Sandra had planted herself right in front of the twins and didn’t step back. She was totally invading their personal space.

  “Do you know who Katie was having sex with?” she asked, her eyes fierce and angry.

  It was a look neither girl had seen from Sandra, who had always seemed so fragile.

  Hayley shook her head. “As far as I know, she wasn’t. And if she was, it was none of our business when she was alive.”

  “Or now, when she’s, you know, not alive,” Taylor said.

  Sandra’s eyes were stony. She was upset. Cold. Livid.

  “Dead is the word you’re looking for, Taylor,” she said.

  Taylor felt her face go pink. “Right. Dead. Well, we honestly don’t know.”

  Sandra was on a mission. She needed to know. “Did she have a boyfriend?” she asked.

  Hayley took that one. Taylor was unusually flustered. “She might have had someone she was talking to online.”

  “This is more than online,” Katelyn’s mother said, backing up and going toward the coat tree. She started fishing through her coat pockets.

  “Damn,” she said. “I can’t find it.”

  “Find what?” Hayley asked.

  “The pregnancy test she took,” Sandra said, now digging through her purse but coming up empty-handed. “Must have left it in the car.”

  Taylor looked over at Hayley. She didn’t say it, but she was thinking that nobody takes a test for having online sex. If people did, grocery and drugstores would be selling the kits by the cartful.

  “Look, Mrs. Berkley,” Taylor said. “We didn’t know her that well. Not like we did when we were little. But I’m pretty sure Katelyn would have told you if she thought she was pregnant.”

  Taylor’s words seemed to soften Mrs. Berkley’s features.

  “Maybe so,” she said. “At least, I hope so.”

  She opened the door, which was their cue to leave.

  As it swung shut, the twins looked at each other.

  “What you just did was very nice,” Hayley said as the pair hurried down the steps to the sidewalk in front of house number 23.

  Taylor shrugged off the compliment. “That’s not why I did it. It was the truth. Mrs. Berkley and Katelyn were close. Close enough to make me wonder what it would be like if it was just me and Mom.”

  “Instead of you, me, and Mom?”

  “Right.”

  “That’s a nice thought. Thanks for that.”

  “Oh, come on. Like you haven’t wondered what it would be like as a singleton.”

  Just then they noticed Teagan, loitering in the alleyway with his BB gun and a coffee can that he’d been using for target practice. Both girls thought it, but didn’t say it: Who buys coffee in a can anymore?

  “Starla home?” Taylor asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “The little B is upstairs.”

  “You mad at her?” Hayley asked.

  Teagan lowered his BB gun. “Not really. Or maybe yes. She’s always telling me what to do. Even when I’m not mad at her, I have to get ready to be mad.”

  He kicked the coffee can.

  “Aren’t BB guns illegal?” Hayley asked.

  “You going to tell on me?”

  “No. I’m just asking.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t care if they are. It’s fun to shoot stuff. One time I knocked a robin out of a tree. That was cool.”

  “Actually, that’s not cool at all,” Hayley said.

  “Whatever. I’m going inside. Come on and I’ll let you in.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Teagan knocked on Starla’s bedroom door and opened it before she had time to call out an answer. Brothers across the world routinely did that. Girls routinely got special treatment like that. No sister ever has to knock to get into her brother’s room, that is, if she’d ever want to actually go into the gross, stinkfest lair that is usually on the other side of such a barrier.

  Starla was sitting on the floor in that god-awful beanbag chair texting and listening to music. The room smelled of strawberry incense, and whoever thought that torching strawberries was a good idea was completely devoid of any good sense or scents. The only thing worse was tea rose incense, which Taylor was convinced smelled like a burning grandmother. Starla had taken to burning incense to round out what she called her “spiritual” side.

  “Hayley and Taylor are here,” Teagan announced.

  “Oh, hi,” Starla said, not looking particularly happy to see them. She reached up through her cascade of golden hair and pulled out her earbuds. “What’s going on? You two look like crap.”

  Teagan disappeared into his room next door, and Hayley and Taylor went inside.

  “What’s up is that five minutes ago Mrs. Berkley just asked us if we knew who Katelyn was having sex with,” Hayley said.

  Starla didn’t get up and the twins didn’t sit. “Oh, that must be why she’s been calling me,” she said.
r />   “So spill the beanbag,” Hayley said. “Who was she sleeping with?”

  “Sleeping with? A pillow is about it,” Starla said. “Probably a blanket.” If Starla had meant to be ironic just then, it fell flat.

  “Honestly, you don’t know?” Taylor said.

  Starla’s phone buzzed with a text, and, ignoring the two girls in her room, she went about the business of answering it. Without looking up, she said, “As far as I know she’d met that guy online but not in person. He stood her up.”

  “Right,” Taylor said. “But how come her mom found a pregnancy test kit in her room?”

  Starla looked up startled and then returned to her texting. “Beats me. I mean, maybe Katelyn was playing around more than we thought. Sometimes quiet girls are the wildest ones, right?” Turning, she specifically directed her gaze at Hayley. “How’s Colton doing?”

  Hayley smartly refused to take the bait. “Look, we thought you liked Katelyn,” she said instead. “We thought that you’d want to know how she died. If she was pregnant, she might have felt there was no way out.”

  “No way but a suicide,” Taylor said.

  Starla shrugged slightly. “That seems dumb, but maybe.”

  “Or maybe she didn’t want anyone to know because the guy that got her pregnant was someone older, someone she was protecting,” Hayley said, a little proud that she refrained from saying something snarky to Starla in retaliation for the crack about Colton.

  “But I don’t know anything,” Starla said. “I’ve got ten thousand messages to answer.”

  It was Starla’s way of dismissing them, and it worked. Taylor and Hayley turned to leave.

  Teagan emerged from his room as they were heading out.

  “You were right, Teagan,” Taylor said. “Your sister is a total B.”