by Gregg Olsen
Shelly called Dave at his job in the summer of 2003 to say she was worried. She might have been a little panicked too. She tried to make arrangements to drop Ron off at a homeless shelter in Aberdeen. Ron wouldn’t hear of it. He flatly refused.
It was like she was stuck with him. She wanted him gone. He’d become more than she could handle.
During the call, Shelly said Ron had attempted suicide by jumping from the limb of one of the alder trees.
“What happened?” Dave asked.
“He said he was trying to kill himself.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” she said. “He knows how serious we are about taking him to the shelter.”
Dave didn’t have much feeling for Ron either way. He was mostly concerned about having him around Tori in his underpants all the time, or how Ron’s presence weighed on Shelly.
Shelly laid more groundwork.
“He said he couldn’t cope with leaving and wanted to do everyone a favor and end it all,” she went on. “Said he was sorry. ‘I’m such a burden and my life is such a failure. I’m starting to burden you, Dave, and Tori. I don’t know what else to do.’”
Ron had been lying on a bench on the back porch for a couple of days. Shelly had been feeding him whiskey while telling Tori that he was sick, yet making promises that he was going to get better. Tori wanted to believe her mother. But those feet. They were so swollen he could barely move them.
“I’m taking him to Mac’s tomorrow where he can rest a little,” Shelly told her.
“All by himself?”
“He’ll be fine. Won’t you, Ron?”
Ron was weak and drunk. He managed a slight nod.
“Are you sure, Mom?”
“I’m going to check on him every day. Don’t worry.”
The next morning, when Tori woke up, she noticed Ron was nowhere to be found.
“Where is he?” she asked her mom.
Shelly looked right at her. “I took him to Mac’s this morning.”
Tori’s window was over the driveway—a gravel driveway that didn’t allow for anyone to sneak in or out without making a distinctive and loud crunching noise.
“Oh,” Tori said, knowing a lie when she heard one. “I didn’t hear you leave.”
Ron had been gone for a few days, and Tori and her mother were sitting on the sofa in front of the TV.
“You can’t tell anyone about Ron,” Shelly said.
Seriously, Mom?
Tori didn’t have a clue what part she couldn’t tell. The list had to be a hundred pages long.
“What?”
Shelly gave Tori a stern, almost threatening look.
“If you tell anyone, especially Sami, I’ll disown you. I swear I will. I’ll shun you for the rest of your life.”
That was a threat.
The room became very quiet.
“I wouldn’t say anything,” Tori said. She didn’t ask her mother why she had singled out Sami. Sami never spoke ill of their mother at all. At least not to Tori. Sure, she said that their mom was weird, but whose mom wasn’t a little weird to a teenager?
“Tori,” Shelly said, “if the cops come around, I need you to tell them that Ron left and is living in Tacoma.”
Tori swallowed hard. It was a lie. A big one.
“Okay, Mom,” she said. “That’s what I’ll say.”
Once that was settled—as big a fib as it clearly was—Tori noticed a change in her mother’s personality. Shelly became kinder toward her. She was back to being her mother’s Turtle Dovey. She made nice meals for the next few days. She didn’t force Tori to strip and reveal how her body was changing.
Yet whenever Tori asked about Ron, she’d be dismissed.
“He’s fine,” Shelly would say.
Tori pushed a little. “I want to see him.”
“He’s resting. He needs rest, Tori.”
“Okay, but I miss him.”
“He’s fine,” Shelly insisted. “I see him every day. Sometimes twice a day. I’ve been going over there every morning at seven to take him food and check on him.”
Tori could have started her own list of her mother’s lies right then. Ron wasn’t going anywhere. He was stuck at Mac’s. As for her mother taking care of him? That was another lie.
“I never once heard her start the car and leave in the morning,” Tori later said. “I would have heard her. Besides that, she’d never get up that early for anything or anyone. My mom slept in because she’d been up all night.”
Tori asked about Ron every day.
“Why do you keep asking about Ron?” her mother asked.
“I like Uncle Ron.”
“Well, he’s fine and you need to stop asking all the time.”
Tori persisted.
“I want to see Uncle Ron.”
“Okay,” Shelly finally said. “Fine. But I’m too busy. He’s too busy. Maybe in a day or two.”
And then the good times, the meals, the I-love-yous ended.
Shelly enlisted Tori in doing the chores while Ron was gone. Weeding, feeding the animals, organizing the kitchen—whatever he had done, Tori was told to take care of it. All of it. All to her mother’s peculiar satisfaction too.
“I wish Ron was here,” Shelly told Tori. “He’s so much better at doing the chores than you are.”
When Tori didn’t clean the dog kennel to her mother’s satisfaction, Shelly told her to crawl inside, then she locked the door.
“That’ll teach you! How does it feel to be treated like your precious puppy? You stupid asshole! You think a dog likes lying in his shit? How do you like it? Shit! Shit! You are so fucking lazy, Tori!”
Tori stared at her mom through the wire bars of the kennel. It crept into her thoughts that maybe she deserved this. Maybe she hadn’t done a good enough job? Her mom was always so sure.
“I’m sorry, Mom!”
Shelly turned on the hose and sprayed her until Tori was soaked to the skin in cold water mixed with dog feces.
“So fucking useless!”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
It was about time. Sami had been surprised and pleased when Shelly had called out of the blue to say she’d finally decided to allow her little sister, Tori, to come up to Seattle and spend a few days with her. It was the first time ever.
The three met for dinner at the Olive Garden in Olympia, a good halfway meet-up spot. Right away, Sami noticed something was terribly wrong with her mother’s right hand. It was badly swollen. Her thumb was more than twice its normal size and looked as if it might even be out of joint.
“You need to go to the hospital,” Sami said.
Shelly appeared to shrug it off. “Seriously, Sami. I’m fine.”
She wasn’t. Throughout the meal, Shelly was short with the staff. She was on edge. She didn’t look well either. Shelly had always prided herself on her looks, but she’d gained weight and her hair was a mess. It seemed she’d lost some teeth too.
“She looked crazy,” Sami recalled. “She was agitated, all over the place. Something was going on.”
On the drive back to Seattle, Sami had two surprises for her little sister.
“Tonight, you’re going to try sushi for the first time. I’m taking you to Bento’s in Greenwood.”
Tori made a face. “I’m not sure about that,” she said.
Sami gave her a smile. “You’ll love it.”
“What’s the other surprise?”
“We’re going to see Nikki tomorrow.”
All of a sudden, Tori was panic-stricken. She was not only terrified of seeing her sister for the first time in seven years, but she didn’t want to carry the burden of defying their mother. Her mother had spent years telling her what an evil person Nikki was, how she was selfish and cared about no one. That she was the worst sister ever.
“No. I don’t want to see her.”
“She loves you,” Sami said. “You know that, right?”
Tori really didn’t. “I guess,” she said. “
But I don’t want to tell Mom.”
Sami gave her a reassuring smile. “You’re going to see her no matter what you say.”
The sushi was a middling success. Tori managed a California roll just fine, but nothing else. Inside, she was in turmoil. She could barely sleep that night, she was so nervous about seeing Nikki again. What if Nikki didn’t like her? Nikki had been such a huge influence in Tori’s life—taking care of her, playing with her. And then poof! She was suddenly gone, and made out to be a terrible person by their mother. Tori had had no idea that Sami and Nikki had stayed in contact over the years.
But the prospect of seeing Nikki was only part of what kept Tori up that night. She also worried about what was happening with Ron back home. She’d pondered that throughout the meal at the Olive Garden, listening to their mother lie to Sami about him moving to Winlock or Winthrop or Tacoma. She knew that he was too weak to go anywhere. He probably needed to be in a hospital.
Maybe, she hoped, her mom would take him to one.
When the three Knotek sisters gathered at Duke’s Seafood & Chowder House on Seattle’s Lake Union the next day, it was, for Tori, like encountering the most amazing woman she’d ever seen. Her sister Nikki was twenty-eight, all grown up. So beautiful. Poised. She even smelled wonderful.
Seeing her big sister for the first time in years, Tori would later say, was the biggest deal of her life. Even after she’d been bombarded by the lies that her mother flung to keep the estrangement intact, Tori knew right in that instant that she had missed Nikki with all her heart.
“You are so beautiful,” Tori told her.
“So are you.”
Sami pulled the sisters together. She was the middle girl, the one who had lived on both sides of the divide.
No one talked about how terrible their mother was during the meal. Or how misguided their father had been. They all just reveled in this moment of reconnection and reunion.
“Remember, Tori,” Sami said. “We don’t have to tell Mom. This lunch with Nikki can be just between us. Understand?”
Tori agreed, though she knew that was easier said than done. Their mother had a knack for digging into all corners of their lives to find things they’d prefer to keep private. With Shelly Knotek, there were no secrets.
Except her own.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
It was after two in the morning on July 22, 2003, when Dave’s phone rang and woke him up at the jobsite on Whidbey Island. He’d been sound asleep, and it was hard to make sense of the call. It was Shelly, of course. Not normal Shelly. Not demanding Shelly. This Shelly spoke in a halting, weary voice.
“You need to come home,” she said, her voice rising a little. She was speaking quietly.
“What’s going on?” Dave asked, suddenly very much awake.
His wife danced around the subject.
“It’s not good,” she said. “We got something going on here. It’s about Ron.”
Dave didn’t ask his wife of fifteen years for any specifics just then. They’d been together long enough for him to know that no one asked Shelly for more than she was willing to reveal. She told him that Tori was going to spend time with Sami in Seattle, and that she needed Dave in Raymond as soon as he could get there.
Dave had been home the previous Sunday, and he’d seen Ron recovering from what he and Shelly had insisted had been a fall from a tree. His finger might have been broken in the fall, as well. Dave also recalled that Ron’s feet were bandaged, and there were burns on his head and chest from an accident Shelly said he’d had when burning brush in the yard. There were bruises too. Lots of them. Again, all purportedly from some accident.
At Shelly’s urging, Dave had again told Ron that he needed to move out, but the man had refused to vacate Monohon Landing. One time Dave offered him cash, $270, to leave town, but Ron was steadfast in his refusal. He didn’t want to leave Shelly.
“You need to get the hell out of here, Ron,” Dave said, raising his voice to make a point.
Ron had refused to go. His only comeback was that he’d hurt or kill himself if he had to leave.
Dave was in hot water with his boss for one thing or another and didn’t dare ask to leave the job to get back down to Raymond.
“I can’t make it home until Friday,” he told Shelly. Friday was a long way away.
Despite Shelly seeming nervous and upset, she didn’t balk at the delay.
“She never told me he was dead,” Dave said later of his wife’s early-morning call. She didn’t have to. “I knew it. I knew why too.”
His gut reaction was correct.
Ron was indeed dead.
Shelly claimed to have found him dead on the back porch. She noted that there had been a heat wave and he’d taken to sitting out there to let the fresh air circulate over his wounds. She told her husband that she worried someone might blame her for all those wounds—all the burn marks, cuts, and bruises across Ron’s body.
Shelly insisted she’d tried to revive Ron before realizing he was gone. Once she accepted that he was dead, however, Shelly had dragged Ron’s corpse to the pole building and shut the door. There, she dressed him in clean sweatpants—clothing that she’d refused to let him wear when he was alive—and put the body into a couple of sleeping bags. Next, she removed all the camping gear from the top of the freezer, opened the lid, and put the body inside. She returned the camping gear to the top of the freezer, arranging it so that no one—especially Tori—would know that any of the gear had been moved. Shelly considered every detail.
After all of that was done, she made the call to Dave.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
When Dave came home at the end of the workweek, Shelly told him that Ron’s body was wrapped in sleeping bags hidden inside the freezer in the pole building. Dave felt like a zombie. The idea that this was happening again was more than he could bear. He’d seen it all coming. He knew that there could be no good end for Ron as long as he stayed around Monohon Landing. He was a troublemaker, just like Shelly had said. Troublemakers, well, make trouble.
Goddamn it, Ron!
How could you do this to Shelly?
Dave struggled as he pulled Ron’s body from the freezer.
How could Shell have managed to put him in there?
She’s superhuman!
Dave never looked at the remains. He didn’t want to. Instead, he silently went about the business of doing what he’d done before. His wife’s bewildering physical strength again came to Dave’s mind when he tussled with Ron’s body and tried to slide it into a couple of black plastic contractor bags he’d taken from the jobsite on Whidbey Island. Dave shook while the bags kept slipping as he tried to get them around Ron.
Getting rid of a body did not get easier as he got more practiced at it.
He stood there in the pole building among the bric-a-brac of his life with Shelly and the girls—the old clothes, the toys they’d outgrown, the camping gear from the times when they’d done things as a family. Next to the freezer, Shelly had stacked Ron’s belongings, a tableau of his life and interests: His books on Egyptology. His glasses. The jewelry he’d proudly showed off in the days before he’d been stripped of who he was. The clothes he’d ceased to wear, because Shelly had dictated how he dressed. All piled up and ready for a quick removal.
“I tried to save him,” Shelly insisted as she lurked nearby, wringing her hands. “I did CPR, but it didn’t work. He was too weak. Oh God! I tried so hard. I’m so scared, Dave.”
He was too.
“They’re going to think we did some kind of abuse on Ron,” she said. “The police will point fingers at us.”
Dave knew she was right. And why wouldn’t they? How had they let this happen in the first place?
He told Shelly he could handle it on his own and she should go inside and get herself together. He carried Ron’s body through the back gate, fighting every step of the way to hang on to the slippery bags.
There was a single hitch, and it was a big o
ne. Pacific County was in the midst of a burn ban due to hot, dry summer weather. Dave couldn’t cremate Ron, as he’d done with Kathy. He couldn’t dispose of the ashes at Washaway Beach. On the other hand, a cremation wouldn’t have been practical, burn ban or not. The barn that had once blocked the view of the yard was gone, and a streetlamp had been put nearby, casting light over the scene. Someone could see a fire and report it to the authorities.
Dave retrieved a number-two shovel with a spade edge and a blue plastic tarp from the pole building, and like the construction worker he was, he planned out a burial pit. It would need to be three or four feet deep, with enough space to lay the body flat. He wanted to go deeper, but the earth wasn’t forgiving. It was near hardpan. The dirt went onto the tarp so that the grave wouldn’t be detected. Dave had a plan to make it look like it had always been there.
Dave placed Ron’s body on his side and shoveled the dirt over the body. When he was satisfied, he put ash from the firepit over the fresh soil. Next, he put a layer of fir branches on top.
Shelly stayed away while her husband went about the task at hand. She never wanted to be part of the dirty work.
He stood back in the dark, removed his work gloves, and studied what he’d done. It looked good, but it was only temporary. He’d need a more permanent solution. That would have to wait until the burn ban was lifted. He took the tarp to Mac’s house in South Bend and stashed it there.
As usual, even after everything unraveled, Dave defended Shelly and put no blame on her.
“I love her dearly,” he said. “There’s no way she caused any abuse on Ron or Kathy. She just didn’t call when Ron passed on. It was just out of fear of what happened in the past. And like I say, my wife worries about everything and she was just looking after her family again. She’s just being the protector that she always is. I don’t see where she had done anything wrong at all.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
Back in Seattle, Sami and Tori were coming down off the high of their reunion with Nikki. It had been the best day ever. Tori had alternately missed and feared Nikki over the years, but at that moment, she could see her mother’s manipulations for what they were. It shouldn’t have surprised her, but it did.
