Beneath Her Skin

by Gregg Olsen

  “We’ll see about that,” she said.

  Jake stepped up to the bars of the holding cell. “No, you will. The ‘inappropriate relationship with a student’ that got me fired was because I gave money to the kid and his mother. Their house burned down. They had nothing. I wrote ’em a few checks. It was against district policy because I didn’t go through channels. That’s why they fired me.”

  “I’ll need to verify that,” Annie said, turning away.

  “You’d just better,” he called out.

  Annie stopped and did an about-face. “Okay, if it wasn’t you, then who was tormenting the girl next door?”

  Jake looked in her eyes and shook his head. “I have no idea,” he said. “Your information is crap.”

  Even though she was wearing a silver mini and her go-to strappy heels, Mindee Larsen couldn’t turn a single head with her good looks as she arrived at the Port Gamble Police Department. Forget that it was the dead of winter and such a getup was so, so wrong. But the truth of the matter was, no one was looking at Mindee because she was hot, pretty or anything like that at all. They watched her every move because she was the girlfriend of the man in the holding cell, an Internet stalker who’d pushed fifteen-year-old Katelyn Berkley to the brink, and then coldly shoved her over its cruel edge.

  Chief Garnett led Mindee to her office. It was a comfortable space, as police chief offices go. The walls were decorated with citations and S’Klallam tribal artwork. Behind her was a bookcase full of case files—perfectly ordered and complete. Most crimes in Port Gamble were property crimes, and those were usually solved in short order.

  Annie knew Mindee quite well, at least on a professional basis. It was Mindee who did the chief’s hair—color and cut. From the very beginning, the chief had liked Mindee. She liked her over-the-top sense of style. She didn’t consider herself a Native American version of RuPaul, but if Annie had the body for a silver mini she’d be shopping at Forever 21 instead of Lane Bryant at the mall.

  If only.

  “Annie, just so you know, Jake could not have done this,” Mindee said, planting herself in a visitor’s chair across from the chief.

  The chief offered her some coffee, but Mindee declined.

  “I just bleached my teeth and they’re still a little porous,” she said.

  “I know you care for Jake,” Annie said. Coming from any other cop, the words might have felt condescending. Not Annie Garnett. With all that she’d been through to get where she was, Annie never forgot what it felt like to be on the sad side of things.

  Mindee nodded and searched her purse for a tissue.

  Just in case.

  “I love Jake, yes, I do,” she said. “After Adam left me… I don’t know what I would have done without him in my life.”

  “Understood,” Annie said, her slightly deep voice resonating a kind of calmness that was needed right then. On occasion, Mindee could be a bit of a train wreck and she needed to be handled with some care. “You know why he’s here. And since you’ve come in, I’d like to ask you some questions, all right?”

  “He didn’t do anything,” she said quickly and decisively.

  A deputy passed the open doorway. When she caught him looking at her exposed thigh, Mindee brightened a beat. Finally someone noticed how sexy she was. What more did she have to do to get any attention around Port Gamble?

  “How does he get along with your kids?”

  “Fine. He gets along with them just fine. Okay, maybe they have some issues. But nothing out of the norm.”

  “What kind of issues?” Annie asked, her voice soft but unmistakably authoritative.

  Mindee crossed her legs and pushed the balled-up tissue to the edge of Chief Garnett’s desk. The hairstylist was signaling that she was moving on and the conversation wasn’t going to last much longer.

  “Just issues,” she said. “You know… the kind any kids have when a new man comes into their mother’s life. He didn’t try to be Adam. But as far as Starla and Teagan could tell, he was a replacement for him. Which he wasn’t.”

  “All right. Did you ever see him do anything inappropriate?”

  The word inappropriate hung in the air. It was the word law enforcement used instead of the more, well, appropriate word sleazy.

  “You mean around me?” she asked.

  “Yes, but also around your kids, around Katelyn?”

  Mindee shook her head adamantly. “Never!”

  The next question was the ringer in its directness, and Annie Garnett knew it. It was the kind of question that one never wanted to ask a friend—or even a hairstylist, for that matter.

  “Did Jake touch the kids?” she asked, her eyes fixed on Mindee’s.

  The words hurt, and it was clear on Mindee’s face. It was like she stopped breathing for a moment.

  “You’re offending me now, Annie. I don’t like your tone or what your question implies.”

  Annie knew that. “Sorry,” she said. “I have to ask. It’s my job.”

  Mindee went for her purse and her keys. “No,” she said, quite convincingly. “He absolutely did not.”

  “Mindee, we have evidence that suggests Jake was stalking Katelyn.”

  She turned to leave but thought better of it. “What evidence?” she asked.

  Chief Garnett got up and faced her, weighing every movement, every single tic.

  “Emails,” she said.

  Mindee didn’t like being backed into a corner, but she didn’t blink.

  “What emails?” she asked.

  Again, there was a flat expression on Annie’s face as she said, “Sent to Katelyn.”

  “Why are you being so vague here? I’ve cut your hair for years.”

  “Fine,” Annie said. “Emails that originated from your house.”

  Even under her carefully applied dusting of Bare Minerals powder, it was easy to see that the blood quickly drained from Mindee’s face.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m leaving now. I’m going to have my lawyer get Jake out. He’s a good man. He’s no stalker!”

  With that, Mindee turned on those strappy heels and left the police department. It was a good thing that it was after work. If it had been in the middle of the day, the woman sitting in the number-two chair at the Shear Elegance salon might actually have gotten those scissors shoved deep into her eardrum.

  Mindee Larsen was fit to be tied—and not in a good way.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Mindee braced her head against the steering wheel of her car outside her house. Her world was unraveling. She remembered how the Katelyn mess had started, and she wished—no, prayed—she could go back in time to undo things. She’d been drinking that evening, and while she knew that was no excuse, it was the only one she had. She grabbed the steering wheel and let out a quiet scream.

  That day. That moment of truth. If only…

  Starla was hovering over her mother as she had pushed the SEND button.

  A little tipsy, Mindee had leaned back and sipped her wine, her glass just about empty.

  “Who are you going to get to meet her in Seattle?”

  Mindee looked over at Starla, the vision of what she’d been meant to be when she was growing up in a modest south Seattle neighborhood—before she got pregnant by Adam and was forced to drop out of college. Mindee hadn’t always dreamed of cutting hair. In fact, her dreams, both day and night, had always been of other women fussing over her.

  Like they do and will always do for Starla.

  “No one,” Mindee said, tilting her empty glass to indicate that Starla had better fill it. “That would be too over-the-top.”

  Starla shook her head and took the glass. “Like this isn’t?”

  “We want to teach her a lesson, don’t we?”

  “Yeah, but what lesson is she going to learn from going to Seattle and finding that her fake boyfriend doesn’t exist?”

  “The best kind of lesson, Starla. The kind she won’t ever forget.”

/>   As the memory replayed, Mindee steadied herself before getting out of her car and going inside.

  This was, she was sure, the worst day ever.

  She had no idea just how bad it really was.

  * * *

  Starla cornered her mother in the kitchen. In doing so, she effectively blocked Mindee from the refrigerator and the wine that was beckoning the frazzled hairstylist from behind the shut door. Mindee wasn’t happy about that, but Starla didn’t care. They were in big trouble, and it seemed it was getting bigger all the time. Mindee had just returned from the police station, upset and shaky.

  “Mom, we’ve got a colossal problem here, and I want to know how you’re going to fix things.”

  Mindee tried to push her daughter away. “Me? How am I going to fix this? This whole thing is your fault. You wanted me to make Katelyn pay.”

  Starla’s blue eyes were cold even when she was merely miffed. This time they shot out a stream of liquid nitrogen.

  “You can’t be serious, Mom,” she said, standing her ground. “You know damn well that you came up with the idea to make her a fake boyfriend. And then you wrote that creepy note: ‘Watching you.’”

  Mindee took another step, and there was barely room to do so. Refrigerator magnets and the bric-a-brac they held fell to the dingy floor.

  “Do not use foul language with me,” she said.

  Starla would not back down. It was as if someone had substituted lesser quality pom-poms and tried to trick her.

  “Like, really? After all you’ve said and done, you’re going to blast me for my language? I’d laugh if I wasn’t so mad at you already!”

  Mindee managed to wriggle away. “Exactly how would you have me fix this?” she asked, once more eyeing the fridge door.

  The question was a fair one. What exactly could she do? Jake was in a holding cell for something he didn’t do. Katelyn had been very fragile. And it was true that she might be dead because of how they had emailed and taunted her over that stupid beer-and-cigarette photograph she handed over to the principal for revenge. What had seemed like only a pinprick of revenge had turned into one enormous gash.

  “You know, Mom,” Starla said, looking for words that would hurt and resonate, “I used to think you were pretty and stupid; now I’m thinking you’re just pretty stupid.”

  Mindee, however, remained stone-faced. Her daughter was at least a little bit right.

  “I have to tell the truth. The whole truth,” she finally said, starting toward the door.

  Starla stopped her mother. “The whole truth?” she asked. “Wait a sec. Not the whole truth.”

  Mindee knew what Starla was getting at. Starla in a very real way was Mindee’s creation, the girl she wanted to be. The girl other girls dreamed of being. She’d put everything she had into Starla, and she wasn’t about to pull the plug on her ambitions.

  “Not everything. Don’t worry. I’ll take the blame here. I’ll leave you out of it.”

  “Even if you have to go to jail?” Starla asked in a manner that both suggested a possible outcome but also a kind of contract between the two. She’d seen her mother cheat her no-good boss, Nicola, out of tips a time or two. She’d seen how she’d once told Jake she was going to visit a sister in Tacoma—when the truth was that she had no sister in Tacoma but rather an old flame she sought to rekindle.

  As Starla and Mindee gathered their things, Teagan appeared in the doorway. He was visibly upset by the conversation coming from the kitchen, the latest in many from which he was routinely excluded.

  “I heard what you were talking about,” he said.

  “Fine,” Starla said. “Then you’ll know what not to talk about. We’re going to the police. Mom screwed up big-time and she’s going to do what’s right. For once.”

  Mindee hooked her purse on her arms. She looked weak, ready to crumble.

  “Yeah, your sister is right,” she said.

  Teagan stopped her. “But it isn’t right for you to take all the blame.”

  “Let Mom handle it,” Starla said, trying to untangle mother and son. “You can come with us or you can stay here. You choose.”

  Teagan put on his jacket, his gloves and his hat.

  The same things he had worn that night.

  Teagan despised his family, but doing the right thing seemed like a step toward something better than the direction in which they’d all been going since his father abandoned them. He’d been unable to sleep, pay attention in class or do anything whatsoever. He needed to come clean. He needed to save himself.

  Because he couldn’t save Katelyn.

  Teagan looked at his mother, his eyes welling with tears and the muscles in his throat so taut he could barely speak.

  “Mom,” he said, “there’s something you should know.”

  God knew where Hayley was, though Taylor had no doubt who she was with. Colton, of course. It was always Colton. Her mom was in the master bedroom working on her least favorite task in the world—paying bills. Her father was in his office Skyping with a spiky redhead with a bird-beak nose, who insisted she was the daughter of Richard “Night Stalker” Ramirez.

  As if that were something worth telling the world about. Jeesh! Anything for fame.

  Taylor poured herself a glass of water and sipped it at the kitchen table. A digital clock made to sound like an analog clock ticked away the seconds as she thought about Jake’s arrest, Katelyn’s death and the reporter from the North Kitsap Herald who seemed to lurk around Port Gamble like a crime groupie.

  She texted her sister and waited for a reply. Nothing. For the first time, she noticed a copy of her dad’s magazine called Justice; it was open to an article about weapons.

  Taylor sipped her water, her eyes gliding over the glossy pages. She was just about to dismiss the rag, thinking Vogue was so much more interesting, when a headline leaped out at her. All thoughts of haute couture dropped away, and a dark feeling swept over the fifteen-year-old. She could feel the hairs on the back of her neck begin to rise. There was something wrong about those words—something that wasn’t the least bit funny. The letters appeared to pulsate on the page.

  Taylor shifted in the kitchen chair. Her heart rate started to accelerate. She could feel something happening, a feeling that drew her eyes to the article for further scrutiny.

  Taylor finished her water and reached for a pen and the cube-shaped notepad next to the kitchen phone that only rang with robocalls around election time. No one ever called a house phone anymore.

  GUNS: THE KEY TO JAIL

  The words shifted and moved across the small square of paper. Taylor had experienced that before, but never with such velocity. The movement was so fast that it almost made her sick. It was as fast as a merry-go-round at nano speed, a spinning bottle in Truth or Dare whirling in a blur, or the wheels of an overturned car spinning in a ditch.

  The frenetic movement was probably necessary. So much was at stake.

  The words that formed were unmistakable, and suddenly Taylor knew what happened to Katelyn.

  She just knew.

  JAKE. HE’S NOT GUILTY

  Jumping from her chair, Taylor looked up at her mother who appeared while all that was happening on the square of paper.

  “I thought you might find that article interesting,” Valerie said, her words oddly tentative. “I left it there for you.”

  Taylor pushed herself from the table and headed for the door.

  “Thanks, Mom,” she gasped.

  Valerie reached for Taylor’s shoulder, but missed.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “Nowhere,” Taylor said, her eyes catching her mother’s briefly. “I don’t have time to talk. There’s something I need to do.”

  * * *

  She ran as fast as she could. Cold puffs came from her lips like a steam engine. Taylor Ryan wasn’t sure what she was going to say or what would greet her. But she had to get to the Larsens. The Larsens’ car disappeared down the dimly lit street just as
Taylor reached house number 21.

  A voice came from behind her: “What just happened here?”

  Taylor spun around. It was Hayley and Colton.

  “Where were you?” Taylor asked, eyeing her sister warily. “I texted you four times today.”

  Hayley pulled her coat closer and fanned out her scarf. “Studying,” she replied.

  Taylor resisted the urge to roll her eyes just then. “Whatever,” she said. “The Larsens have gone to the police station. I just missed them.”

  Colton shifted on his feet, taking a slight step away from Hayley. It was as if he were trying to show that whatever their relationship was, they were not one of those joined-at-the-hip couples who clung together like handbills tacked on telephone poles. A little space between them was just fine.

  “Jake’s going down, big-time,” he said.

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Taylor said.

  Hayley studied her sister right then. She telegraphed something, and if Taylor had wanted to, she probably could have grabbed the feeling. Instead, she started walking.

  “I know Jake is a creep, but I don’t think he did this,” Taylor said.

  “Did what, specifically?” Colton stopped, and the girls did the same. On the sidewalk in front of the Timberline, they huddled, acutely aware they’d just passed Katelyn’s house.

  “Killed Katelyn,” Taylor said, her voice almost a whisper. “He didn’t do it.”

  The disclosure had Colton’s interest. He cocked his head, and his dark eyes flickered as he asked, “And you know this because… ?”

  Hayley looked on, but stayed silent.

  “I just know it. I can’t say how, I mean,” Taylor replied, pausing to find the right words. She knew that, whatever her reasons, whatever the source of what she knew, he wouldn’t be able to understand. No one would.

  “I just don’t think he did it.”

  She could have said she was certain he didn’t do it, but certainty coming from the pages of a magazine seemed too lame to share—especially a magazine as dumb as Justice. Besides her dad, who reads that anyway?