Beneath Her Skin

by Gregg Olsen

  Starla edged a little closer, drawing him over by the teacher’s resource room, where it was quiet.

  What does she want now?

  “You doing okay?” she asked him.

  “I’m fine,” Colton said, “but what about you? Are you doing all right?”

  She was full-on Starla just then. She smelled good. Her eyes were done up in such a way that they looked anime-big. “It has been really hard,” she said. “My mom mentioned to me that Sandra dropped off Katelyn’s laptop for you to hack.”

  The reason. Starla was ten times more efficient in getting to the point than she had been in middle school, Colton thought.

  “Yeah,” he said. “She did.”

  “Were you able to get into it? You’re pretty good at that kind of stuff.”

  Colton knew she was using him again, yet he still blushed a little. Why did she have that effect on him?

  “Thanks. I guess. But yeah, I was.”

  “Really.”

  “Yeah. Really.”

  Starla inched a little closer. She looked concerned, interested. She was kind of good at that, and just maybe had a future in movies. Make that TV.

  “What did you find out?” she asked. “She was pretty messed up, wasn’t she?”

  Colton thought a moment before answering. There was always a risk in telling Starla something. Information was her currency. Gossip. Truth. Whatever she could use, she did. She was, Colton knew, an info-parasite.

  “Messed up, maybe,” he said. “But not half as much as the SOB who was sending her those taunting emails.”

  He wanted to tell her that the sick SOB who sent them was her mom’s boyfriend, but he didn’t.

  “Wow,” she said, her eyes no longer as large, but shuttered a little as if she were concentrating on something important. Or as if she were trying to narrow her focus on Colton to see just what it was that he knew. “That’s totally scary.”

  Colton brushed past her. “Yeah.” He didn’t look back at her anime eyes. He just went to class, letting Starla think about what he’d found on her dead friend’s hard drive.

  Moira Windsor ate a couple of mint-flavor Tums she had fished out of the Paradise Bay house’s medicine cabinet. She had eaten too much. Too fast. She heard the ping of a new email being delivered and quickly returned to her computer.

  From: S. Osteen

  To: Moira Windsor

  RE: Farm to table article

  Ms. Windsor, I got your email about the farm-to-table story you’re doing. I’d be glad to assist you in any way that I can. I see buying local food as a key to our future longevity on this planet. Please feel free to call me or email me if you’d like to meet. I live near the Bremerton Airport.

  Moira picked up her phone and tapped out the telephone number provided. After a few pleasantries and some confirmation about what she wanted, Savannah Osteen invited her to come over.

  “When can I come? I’m kind of on deadline.”

  “Anytime,” Savannah said. “I work out of my home.”

  Moira pounced. “How about today?”

  Savannah paused, thinking it over. “Today’s fine,” she said.

  “How about now? I’m not doing anything and I can be there in half an hour. I was thinking it would be a nice day for a drive.”

  “Partly sunny days like this are a treasure this time of year,” Savannah said. “Sure, come on over.”

  She provided directions and the address, and Moira was out the door.

  About the time the Port Gamble High School students were looking for their second latte of the day, pathologist assistant Terry Morris made a run to the Albertson’s store on Mile Hill Road for maple bars, because he loved those better than anything and could easily eat two on his morning drive to the Kitsap County Morgue. He didn’t care how sticky his fingers got, because he could just lick them clean in the parking lot. Who cared if anyone saw him? He wasn’t a people person, which is why he selected a career in the coroner’s office. He’d figured he might be a dead-people people person.

  That sticky, sweet maple bar run took longer than he’d planned. Terry wasn’t good at planning, period. He wasn’t really good at being the pathologist’s assistant either, but he’d been hired and was on three-month probation. He was already getting the vibe from Dr. Waterman that he wasn’t exactly winning her over.

  He tossed his greasy bakery bag into the trash by the morgue’s back door and looked inside through the window.

  Good, Dr. Waterman wasn’t in there hacking away through the first autopsy of the day.

  Terry was late for the autopsy of a burn victim from a house fire in Bremerton. But not too late, he thought, since it hadn’t started.

  He was glad he had those maple bars. Hanging around a smelly corpse might kill his appetite for lunch.

  He went upstairs, where Dr. Waterman and the county office administrator were conferring about something in the kitchen. Terry scurried past to put away his things, wiping his hands on his trousers along the way. He hoped she didn’t notice he was late.

  But she did.

  “Glad you made it into work today,” Dr. Waterman called out from the kitchen.

  “Car trouble,” he lied.

  “I have some things bagged and ready for shipping to the state crime lab,” she said. “Please get them processed and meet me downstairs in the autopsy suite. Everything’s on my desk. Let me know if you have problems managing that, all right?”

  What a hag, he thought, though he didn’t say it out loud.

  “No problem, Doctor,” he said, thinking that a real doctor would be helping living people, not literally picking their brains. But, hey, that was just him.

  He found four bags labeled with the case information for Robin Ramstad, a gunshot victim found in a wooded area outside of Port Orchard. The incident was before his time, which was just fine with him. Terry didn’t know much about it, and, frankly, didn’t care.

  He started boxing up the evidence for shipping when Dr. Waterman called out again.

  “Heading downstairs,” she said. “See you there when you’re done.”

  Terry scowled inwardly. He hated how passive-aggressive she was. She was always telling him what to do. She was so bossy.

  It didn’t occur to him that she was bossy because she actually was his boss.

  “Be right there,” he said, shoving a fifth bag into the box, before sealing it with strapping tape and signing the chain-of-custody paperwork.

  He rushed downstairs, his hands still sticky and his annoyance still in full force.

  What escaped him was that the fifth item, a Ziploc bag containing a pregnancy test wand, had nothing to do with Robin Ramstad.

  Chapter Forty

  There was no getting around it. Starla Larsen wanted everyone out of her way. She practically stiff-armed the kids in the hall as she rummaged in her hobo for her cell phone. The look of determination and pure venom in the cheerleader’s eyes would have made a two-year-old cry for her mother. Teenage girls at Kingston High School? Pretty much the same result. Starla was just that scary right then as she hurried out the door and over to a hedge of evergreens near the bridge that served as the school’s entryway. Her heels stuck in the mud, and that only made her madder.

  “Look,” she said into her phone, her eyes nervously scanning the scene. “This thing went too far, and I’m afraid someone is going to call me on it.”

  Starla turned her back to the school courtyard filling up with the onslaught of kids as they meandered toward the cars in the lot. She faced the hedge and listened to the person on the other end of the line. Her lips were a straight line, and her eyes narrowed in anger. In that moment, maybe for the first time in her life, no one would have said Starla Larsen was beautiful. Maybe not even reality-TV pretty.

  And since she was so pissed off about what the other person was saying, she probably didn’t care what anyone thought about her appearance just then—likely another first-time occurrence.

  “Don’t tell me
that it wasn’t our fault. I already know that. I never wanted anything like this to happen. I’m putting the blame on you!”

  Starla pressed the phone tight to her ear and balled up her other fist. If a kitten had the misfortune to walk by, she might have stomped on it with her four-inch heels. She was that irate.

  Whoever was talking to her didn’t have the opportunity to say much. Starla, it seemed, was on a roll.

  “The biggest mistake I ever made was to trust you. If this goes any farther, you’re the one who’s going down for this. No excuses! I have too much to live for and I’m not about to have you F it up!”

  She lowered her phone and turned around.

  Taylor and Beth were coming toward her.

  “Starla,” Beth said in that direct way of hers, “you look pissed off. Someone steal your pom-poms?”

  Starla barely looked at either girl as she retracted her heels from the muddy grass, making a sucking sound that only served to make her angrier.

  “Don’t even go there, you emo-freak,” Starla said, her voice as controlled as possible. She said nothing else and never looked back.

  “Wow, she looks like crap,” Taylor said, stating the obvious.

  “I almost feel sorry for her,” Beth said. “She’s really going through something. Maybe she hates her highlights.”

  Taylor tugged at Beth to get to the bus for the ride home. “I have no idea what’s up,” she said, in what she knew was a big lie.

  Savannah Osteen lived in a log cabin in the middle of wooded acreage near the airport. While the location was indeed remote, the mosquito-like buzzing of private planes could be heard overhead as they dropped lower for landing. The aircraft was an audible reminder that even in the woods, there are people hovering, watching. Savannah’s cabin wasn’t one of those Daniel Boone affairs, all mossy and drafty, but a decidedly modern one with a steep roofline and made of perfectly peeled pine logs. Anchoring it from the ground to the sky was a river rock chimney that looked like it might even be made of real rocks. Which it wasn’t, of course.

  Moira Windsor edged her pewter compact car under a gnarly grove of cedars that formed a canopy, nearly blacking out the late afternoon sky.

  “Moira?” a voice called out.

  Moira turned in the direction of the voice. “Savannah?”

  “Yes. I’m back here, in the aviary.”

  Moira followed the sound to a large, fenced pen with a ten-foot-high ceiling of chicken wire. Inside, a woman in her late thirties was huddled next to a wooden crate. Suspended above the crate was a heat lamp sending an eerie splash of orange over its contents.

  Savannah motioned for her to come inside the pen.

  “Dumb idea to raise pheasants in the middle of winter,” she said. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  Moira unlatched the gate and walked over. She bent down a little and looked inside at a dozen or more small birds huddled in one disgusting mass and pretended to be interested.

  “They’re pretty,” she said. “I’m sure they’ll be all right. Spring will be here soon enough.”

  “I hope so,” Savannah said, looking up at her visitor and smiling. Up close, she was a pretty woman with corkscrew hair that was more gray than brown. She wore slim-fit jeans; a heavy, tan Carhartt jacket; boots; and a pair of garden gloves with the fingertips nipped off.

  “Let’s go inside and talk about farm to table, and I’ll tell you how my pheasants fit into that scenario,” she said, lowering the heat lamp a little. The birds peeped loudly and scuttered from the light.

  “Oops,” Savannah said, raising the lamp a touch. “Don’t want to cook them. At least, not yet.”

  “No, not yet,” Moira said, acting as if she was excited, though she couldn’t care less. She wanted to talk about something completely different from these disgusting birds. Besides, farm to table made no sense to her. Everything she ate came from a box or was shrink-wrapped.

  The place was spotless, which surprised Moira. She figured an old hippie—if that’s what Savannah was—would be a grungy pack rat with recycling stations in every room and ugly eco repurposed items like a bucket made into a lampshade. But the house wasn’t. Instead, it was clean and bright with furnishings upholstered in creams and grays.

  After Moira removed her boots and jacket, she could see that Savannah was neat, maybe not exactly stylish, but not some Boho wannabe with a trashed-out house. A coil of silver chains swirled around her toned neck. Ten silver bangles ran up each wrist.

  Savannah offered coffee, not herbal tea, which also surprised Moira. There was no small talk about sustainable resources, the dire situation with South America’s rain forests. They engaged in some casual chatter before Moira made a confession of sorts.

  “I lied to you on the phone,” she said, once they settled at the kitchen table, a large Douglas fir crosscut topped with quarter-inch-thick glass.

  “You’re not from the paper?” Savannah said, her tone indicating some skepticism and maybe even a little understanding.

  “Not exactly,” she said and looked away.

  “Blogger? That’s okay. I understand.”

  “No, I actually am from the paper. I’m just not doing a farm-to-table story.”

  Savannah perked up a little. She didn’t seem alarmed, only a little interested.

  Moira wondered if there was marijuana in the coffee. This woman is so calm. I could be an IRS agent or a serial killer and she wouldn’t bat an eye.

  “Is Moira your real name?” she asked.

  “Yes, yes, it is. I’m sorry. Do you want to see my driver’s license?”

  Savannah shook her head. “No. But tell me exactly why you are here?”

  Moira took a deep breath and started to tell her about Katelyn’s death and how her editor had told her that Katelyn was in the terrible crash on the Hood Canal Bridge.

  “You remember it? The one that killed the driver and four little girls?”

  The look on Savannah’s face clearly indicated that she did. Actual words weren’t necessary. But the former language researcher answered anyway.

  “Yes, I remember it very well.”

  Just then, the air in the room thickened considerably. Moira Windsor knew whatever words she chose next would likely make or break the interview. In that moment, it was clear to both parties that what they were talking about was far bigger than merely an update on an accident and the lives of the survivors.

  “I saw your posting on the Kitsap Kalamities site,” she said, waiting.

  Savannah sipped her coffee. “Yes. I’m sure you did.”

  “It was an interesting comment,” Moira said.

  Savannah set down her cup and looked out the window toward the aviary. “I knew I shouldn’t have posted it. I even emailed the site owners and asked if they’d remove it.”

  “They didn’t, you know.”

  Savannah nodded. “Right. They didn’t. That’s really why you’re here.”

  “What did it mean?”

  “It meant that I’d had too much ouzo,” Savannah said, somewhat sheepishly. “Greek dinner party in Seattle and… I don’t know how I got home and, even worse, how I managed to type that comment. I’m not denying that I did it, because I did.”

  Moira kept her eyes on Savannah. “I know you did,” she said.

  Savannah turned her attention back to her coffee and took a sip.

  “What did you mean by it?” Moira asked again.

  Savannah took a breath and faced the reporter. Her face was grim.

  She’s going to talk. Good. Tell all.

  “I was a researcher years ago, for the linguistics lab at the University of Washington,” she said, now fidgeting with her fingertips deep within the back of her tangle of hair.

  Moira flipped open her reporter’s notebook.

  “I don’t think I want you to write about this,” Savannah said.

  “About what?”

  “About what I’m going to show you.”

  For some reason, uncl
ear to her just then, Moira’s heart started to race. She was not a woman given to much fear, but, right then, she felt some.

  “Are we in agreement?”

  “Yes,” Moira said, knowing that she was being completely deceitful.

  Savannah had trusting eyes, and Moira felt sorry for her. She knew that Savannah was going to give her something she considered precious. She also knew that the woman wanted to. She wouldn’t have put that comment online, with or without too much ouzo, if she had wanted to hold it inside forever.

  “You were saying?” Moira said, prodding.

  “Yes, I was saying that I was doing a study on early talkers at the U. I was a field research assistant. My job was to tape children in their home environment.”

  “Those children who, what, spoke at a very young age?”

  Savannah nodded slowly. “Right. As early as six months.”

  “I don’t think I started talking until after I was almost two,” Moira said, feeling a little stupid for the admission.

  “Many kids don’t. But in order to better understand how the brain develops and what external forces shape speech, we were sent out to record children who exhibited the propensity for early speech.”

  Moira wanted to write it all down, but this disclosure was all off the record. She prayed right then that she’d remember everything Savannah Osteen was telling her.

  “So the Ryan twins, Hayley and Taylor, were in the study?” she asked.

  “Yes, Hayley and Taylor.” Savannah paused, and it looked like she was going to cry, but somehow she appeared to shake it off and recompose herself. “They were beautiful little girls, really sweet. And smart too. Smart beyond their years, no doubt.”

  “It sounds like they were gifted,” Moira said, thinking of her sister Maizey, who was in the gifted program for six years and really wasn’t—as far as she could tell—any smarter than she.

  “More than gifted,” Savannah said, leaving the words to dangle in the air.

  “You said something was scary about them. That you weren’t surprised they survived the crash.”