by Gregg Olsen
“It will do her good,” Shelly insisted.
Sami was glad Kathy was coming inside. The woodstove was always going. Its radiant heat would help her, she was sure. Kathy had been suffering in isolation in the pump house for weeks. Maybe months. It was hard for the girl to keep an exact time frame on the things her mother did. The abuse was erratic—a moving target that kept everyone on edge.
“Okay, Mom.”
Kathy moaned with each step as they helped her across the lawn, then into the house, through the living room to the bathroom, adjacent to the master bedroom. Hideous bruising marked her body, and her skin hung in folds from extreme weight loss. She’d lost more than a hundred pounds since she’d moved in with the Knoteks. Gone were the comments from Shelly about how “terrific” Kathy looked now that she was slimmer.
Shelly acted as if the shower was a big treat, which it was. Kathy hadn’t been allowed to use indoor plumbing in months. Her “baths” had been bleach straight from the bottle and water from the hose.
“This is going to be nice, Kathy,” Shelly told her friend. “Warm water will make you feel better.”
Kathy made some unintelligible responses. In a strange way, it seemed to Sami that she was grateful for the shower. When it became obvious that she wasn’t going to be able to stand, Shelly switched tactics and changed plans for a bath. She started the water.
As they tried to get Kathy into the tub, she slipped, and the glass shower door came unhinged and fell from the track, crashing to the floor. Glittery pieces of tempered glass scattered. Kathy was crying, and Sami tried to keep her from getting hurt, but she’d rolled around into the glass and cut her abdomen and legs.
Long after, the memory of what she saw that day brought tears to Sami’s eyes.
“It’s hard,” she said, going back in time. “I just try not to picture her, but I see her. It’s hard. So many bruises everywhere. All from my mom. She was just a big, giant bruise.”
Sami felt the vibe in the room shift. By then Nikki had joined the three of them. Shelly was piling on the kind words and the loving touch of a good friend.
“Everything is going to be okay, Kathy,” she said, her eyes meeting her daughter’s.
Sami could tell that at that moment her mom was scared. Shelly was carrying on as if trying to convince Kathy that all would be fine when she knew full well there was no turning back. Kathy needed to go to the hospital, though Shelly insisted that she could help her.
Cure her.
Save her.
“We’re going to keep you in the house now, Kathy,” Shelly said. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Kathy slurred her speech. It seemed that she agreed with Shelly.
The three of them helped Kathy to the toilet, where they tried to stop the bleeding with towels and toilet tissue.
Nikki left in tears, shaken to her bones. The next time she saw Kathy, her mother had done what she could to stop the bleeding. Some of the cuts still needed medical attention.
“My mom had wrapped a thick bandage around her. I don’t think she was bleeding a lot, but she should have been taken to the hospital and had stitches.”
Nikki told Shane what had happened, and Shane flipped out.
“She needs to go to a hospital,” he said. “This isn’t right. We all know it.”
Dave had been working on an extension of the laundry room at the back of the house. It was a small space, unfinished. Unlike the pump house, it was heated and dry. Shelly set up a twin mattress with a pillow and some blankets. She tucked Kathy into the bed and told her that everything was going to be fine.
It was a lie. Sami thought she could detect a look in Kathy’s eyes.
Fear. Disbelief. Confusion.
Not long after the Knoteks moved Kathy into the laundry room, the girls and Shane helped her into the living room to watch TV. She was unsteady on her feet, and it took a kid on each side to help. They sat her on the couch while Tori’s cartoons played on the TV. Kathy was awake, though not lucid. Sami gave her one of Tori’s toys, a small plastic telephone with two cords that snapped together. Kathy held the cords with her bruised fingertips but couldn’t manage what a three- or four-year-old was proficient at doing. She tried over and over, never able to connect the pieces. The kids took it all in. They knew at that moment that there was something wrong with Kathy’s brain.
Later, Sami found a two-by-four plank to put across the bed at waist height so Kathy could grasp something and pull herself up. She nailed it to the room’s exposed studs on either side of the bed. Almost immediately, Shelly told her to take it down.
“Why?” she asked. “It helps her.”
Shelly gave Sami a look.
“You don’t understand,” she said, treating Sami’s act of kindness as some kind of silly mistake. “Kathy is lazy, and she needs to get stronger. You’re enabling her, Sami. We want Kathy better, right? She needs to get better on her own.”
Sami didn’t argue with her mother. She knew Kathy was extremely ill, not lazy. “She couldn’t walk. She’d fall down, stand back up, and then fall down. Her equilibrium was all messed up. She had no teeth. Her hair had fallen out.”
One day after school, Sami waited until her mother wasn’t looking and went into the laundry room. She knelt next to the bed and put her hand on Kathy’s hand. It felt cool.
“Kathy,” Sami whispered, “I came to see if you are doing okay.”
Sami pulled up the blanket and adjusted Kathy’s pillow. Kathy gurgled but didn’t really respond. Her eyes looked at Sami’s and seemed to track her. Other than that, nothing.
“Kathy,” she repeated. “Can you hear me?”
Kathy nodded and her eyes rolled backward.
Sami started to cry.
Something’s really wrong here. Kathy needs help.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Dave Knotek had been driving for God knew how long to get home from Whidbey Island. A ferry. The freeway. Seattle traffic. The 101. It had taken forever. He was wired on a gallon of coffee and a fistful of No-Doz. His mind was in that foggy state where things didn’t always make sense. He was more stressed out than ever. Shelly had renewed her complaints about money and how hard it was for her to manage the kids and Kathy.
And Kathy.
Dave knew about the bath incident that had lacerated Kathy’s abdomen and legs. Shelly said she’d fixed her up and that she’d be as good as new. He doubted that.
As he arrived home after the long drive in July 1994, he heard a sound coming from the laundry room that was like nothing Dave had ever heard in his life. He knew it wasn’t an animal, but it didn’t sound entirely human either. It was a soft moaning punctuated by a peculiar gurgling sound.
“What’s that noise?” he asked.
Shelly, who was getting ready to go pick up Nikki from the Sea Star Restaurant in Grayland where she worked washing dishes, seemed unconcerned.
“Oh, it’s Kathy. She’s fine. She’s resting.”
“She doesn’t sound fine.”
Shelly ignored Dave’s remark and called out to the girls. “Sami! Tori! Let’s go!”
“What’s going on around here?” Dave asked. On his last visit home, he’d remarked to his wife about the decline in Kathy’s condition. One side of her face had started to droop a little. She was also bruised. It didn’t appear that she was tracking what he was saying or even able to hold his gaze. He’d put his finger in front of her face, but her eyes had failed to follow the trajectory of his movements. She’d needed help standing up, and even staying standing. Her balance was off.
“She’s getting better,” Shelly had insisted.
Now, Shelly and the girls left to get Nikki, leaving Dave standing there baffled. Shane did dishes in the kitchen.
More guttural sounds from the laundry room brought Dave to Kathy, who was lying in the makeshift bed Shelly had fashioned earlier that summer. The hot July air filled the small room.
Dave leaned in close to Kathy. She had vomited, and th
e sounds coming from her indicated she was choking. The smell was nauseating too, and Dave’s heart pounded so hard he was all but sure he’d have a heart attack. Kathy’s eyes rolled back into their sockets. She was struggling to breathe. She was mostly motionless, slumped over, emitting pitiful little noises.
“What’s wrong with her?” he called out to Shane, grabbing Kathy by the shoulders and shaking her. She was listless.
Shane stood statuelike, terrified. “I don’t know.”
“Jesus,” Dave said, looking up at the boy. “This is bad.”
And it was. Very bad.
“Kathy?” Dave raised his voice a little. “Are you okay? Kathy, answer me.”
Kathy gurgled some more, and Dave started to panic.
“She’s not breathing, Shane!”
Dave dropped to his knees and somehow managed to get Kathy on her side. He started to clear the vomit from her mouth. There was vomit in her nose too. He scooped it out with his fingers.
“She’s not breathing!”
Dave was shaking as he tried to perform CPR. He worked on her for a long time, maybe as long as five minutes. He did chest compressions too. But nothing helped.
Later, he’d recall what he was thinking at the time.
“I know I should have called 911, but with everything that had been going on I didn’t want the cops there. I didn’t want Shell in trouble. Or the kids to go through that trauma . . . I didn’t want this to ruin their lives or our family. I just freaked out. I really did. I didn’t know what to do.”
Kathy remained unresponsive. Dave struggled to lift her, but she was too heavy. Somehow, he managed to attempt a Heimlich maneuver. Nothing worked. He didn’t know how long he tried to save her, but it was futile. Shane became agitated by then, talking about how fucked up all of this was. He and Dave locked eyes and then they just sat there in a stupor, not really knowing how to handle the situation.
Everything had indicated an ending like this was possible, but in the moment, it didn’t seem real.
Kathy Loreno was dead.
Dave called the Sea Star to see if he could catch Nikki or Shelly at the restaurant, but they already were in the parking lot. The kid who took the call got Shelly to come back inside.
The girls remembered Shelly looked white when she came back to the car.
“Is Kathy okay?” Sami recalled asking her mother over and over on the drive home. Shelly stayed unusually quiet and wouldn’t even look in the direction of her middle girl. She kept her eyes on the road. “She’s fine.”
Nikki knew something terrible had happened.
She just didn’t know what.
When they got home, Dave immediately yanked Shelly aside, telling the kids to give their parents a moment to discuss something very important. The girls and Shane lingered in the living room for only a second before, in a firmer tone, he told them to go upstairs and watch TV.
“She’s gone,” he told Shelly when the kids left the room.
“What do you mean ‘gone’?”
Dave pulled her closer. Shelly needed to grasp what he was telling her.
“She’s not here no more! Shelly, Kathy’s dead. Go look.”
Shelly pulled back. With an exasperated and perplexed expression on her face, she made her way to where Kathy’s body lay on the mattress in the airless laundry room. It was as if she didn’t have any idea why Kathy might have died.
The kids huddled in Nikki’s room. They could hear something going on downstairs—arguing, yelling. None could hear exactly what their parents were saying.
“You stay here with Tori,” Nikki finally said to Sami. “Shane and I are going to find out what’s happening.”
Sami was crying by then. Something was really wrong.
Nikki and Shane snuck down the stairs and through the living room. Dave and Shelly were outside arguing in the yard, so they went into the little room where Kathy had been staying. It was dark, and they didn’t turn on the light.
Although Shane knew what was going on, he didn’t say anything to Nikki at the time. They called out Kathy’s name, but she didn’t answer. Shane pushed her foot, but nothing. Finally, he picked up her arm and dropped it. Her face was still. Puffy. Bruised. Completely lifeless.
“Yeah, she’s dead,” he said. “She’s really dead. Holy fuck.”
Nikki was terrified. She was shaking when she and Shane crept back upstairs and told Sami.
“Sami started freaking out,” Nikki remembered. “Really. She loved Kathy so much.”
Shelly, hearing the commotion, went to comfort Sami and then returned downstairs. A minute later, she was back.
“She came back and said, you know, get in the car . . . my mom was actually being nice at that time, telling us that it would be okay. And we can’t let anyone break our family apart,” Nikki recalled.
“We need to call an ambulance,” Shane said.
“We aren’t going to do that.” Shelly’s eyes narrowed. “There’s no point. She’s gone.”
The house was in complete turmoil. The kids were hysterical. Shelly was crying too. She alternated between letting everyone know that everything would be all right and sobbing her eyes out. Dave was bawling as well. His nerves were beyond frayed, and his chest thumped like a jackhammer.
It ran through his mind just then that he should have put his foot down.
But he hadn’t. And he didn’t now.
Instead, Shelly packed up the girls for a motel near Westport.
It was after ten when Shelly checked in on the girls, gave them money and some snacks, and promised she’d be back later with Shane. In the meantime, she told them not to talk to anyone. Not a single person. Not about anything that had happened at home. It was confusing, Shelly said. She was going to get some answers to see what happened. Things needed to get sorted out.
You killed Kathy, Mom, Nikki thought at the time. There was nothing to sort out. None of this was confusing. It was messed up beyond belief.
Shelly and Shane arrived around midnight.
The next morning, Shane went swimming with Tori and Sami in the motel’s heated pool. At any other time, swimming there would have been the highlight of summer vacation. As they splashed around, no one would have known why they were there or what was going on back in Raymond.
When Shelly arrived later that morning to pick up the kids, she made Nikki call the Sea Star.
“Tell them you can’t come in today,” she said. “Family emergency.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Dave Knotek went over the grim details of the situation at hand.
It played in his mind that what was happening wasn’t real at all. He told himself that he and Shelly were normal people caught up in a tragedy that would undo their family if someone took things the wrong way.
Kathy’s death had been an accident. Natural causes. No one’s fault.
He was going to have to get rid of her body.
Shelly was by his side, telling him what to do and how to do it.
Dave would later recall that he burned Kathy Loreno’s body during “graveyard hours,” without seeming to grasp the irony of his own statement. The house on Monohon Landing sat close to the road, and the firepit was only a few steps from the back of the pole building. Burning there wasn’t unusual. It’s where they burned the trash.
Dave retrofitted the firepit with sheets of heavy-gauge tin and steel “to hold the heat in” as it started to blaze. The air was a little damp that night, and it was completely dark outside. Planks from the old barn provided the wood. Though he’d never done it before, Dave knew he needed a very hot fire for cremation. Dave and Shane carried Kathy’s body to the fire, set her down, and then piled more wood on top of her. He topped the pyre with old tires and diesel fuel. Dave would later recall that he felt what he was doing had been for “humanitarian” reasons, which might’ve been the only thing that kept him on task. It was a ghoulish and horrific process. It took more than five hours to make Kathy vanish by the faint light of d
aybreak.
When morning light came, Dave looked down on the ash and bone. When it all cooled, he loaded up some Home Depot buckets and drove out to Washaway Beach, where he carried Kathy’s remains to the ocean. Knowledge he’d gleaned surfing came in handy; he knew the tides and knew that her ashes would be carried out to sea. Gone forever. He didn’t say a prayer for her; he couldn’t think of what to say. He returned to Washaway three more times. He also took some of the ashes and dirt from the firepit to Long Beach and disposed of them there.
Shelly, for her part, loaded up Kathy’s clothes and had Dave burn those too. She retrieved other things she’d taken from Kathy—personal papers and jewelry—and tossed those in the firepit. Very little of Kathy had been left for anyone to find.
The scent that permeated the air was thick and unmistakable. When the Knotek sisters and Shane returned from the motel the next day, the yard still carried the acrid smell of burning tires and diesel oil.
And the odor of something else that had burned with it.
Nikki only glanced in the direction of where her dad had set the fire.
“I didn’t go back there behind the pole building,” Nikki said later. “Shane told me what happened. We had a bunch of tires, but they were all gone now too.”
The kids went inside. Sami was still in tears over Kathy. Tori was too young to really know what happened, and the older kids focused on her. Shelly paced around the house and Dave sat slumped in a chair at the kitchen table. Bags hung heavy under his eyes. He drank coffee and smoked cigarette after cigarette.
Kathy’s death, and what he’d done to get rid of her body, was an anvil pitched on Dave’s shoulders. He knew he could never erase what he’d done. He thought of how Kathy’s family would always wonder where she’d gone, and if she was happy. He didn’t know how he’d react when he saw Kathy’s mom, Kaye, around town. What would he say when she asked about her daughter? Because of what he and Shelly had done, Kathy’s family might never have closure. It was something he thought about every second from the moment he’d begun to carry Kathy’s body to the firepit.
