by Gregg Olsen
My stepfather was a good guy. Decent. Yet still a mystery.
Why would he take us on? There had to be something wrong with a man who would carry such a burden as to live on the run with my mother, me, and later, Hayden. I loved him in the way that one loves a trusted pet; one who might bite you, so you never get too close. He was solid. Caring. Yet he wasn’t my dad. He was Hayden’s dad. My stomach roils as I think of him nearly pinned to the floor of the kitchen with a knife, like some moth specimen in biology class at South Kitsap. I want to cry for him right now. He deserves that much, but I don’t.
I can’t think of anything but my biological dad and who he was. He was not dog-tag material. He was not the hero. Far, far from that. He was the villain, the worst, most despicable kind ever. The feeling that overtakes me right then as Hayden sleeps in the seat next to me is a mix of sadness, anger, and confusion: If I’m not the daughter of a hero, but the daughter of a killer, then what kind of person am I?
I sit motionless for a very long time. I almost don’t know the girl on the recording, what she’s thinking, where she’s going. How she plans to use that gun. It’s scary. Even though she’s a stranger to me, I know she is still deep inside me. I don’t blame her for what she’s about to do. I wish that I had one of Maxine’s cats right now. I’d hold it in my arms and tell it how much it means to have someone you can depend on. I’d pet it softly and take in the purrs, the motor-like sounds that would reassure me that there was more good to the world than the evil that seems to surround me.
I pour another tepid glass of wine and head for bed, hoping that slumber will give me relief from what I know is about to come.
Not from the Wheaton case.
I can handle that.
It’s what the tapes are about to disclose.
Who I am.
Twenty-Two
Warrant in hand, I don’t drive alone to the Wheaton place. I bring Bernadine Chesterfield, a social worker and victim’s advocate, a fixture at the county before I arrived. She’s in her late forties with bright red hair and eye shadow that I seriously think would scare off a victim. It’s an iridescent blue. Or is it purple? Pink? I honestly don’t know what hue it is or why she wears it with such abandon. She talks about her son in the Coast Guard. Her daughter lives in Portland crafting beeswax candles.
“I always knew that my beautiful little dreamers would do great things someday.”
“You are so lucky,” I tell her.
Okay, serving our country in the Coast Guard carries real honor, but beeswax candles? I think.
She goes on a bit more and then stops as we pull off the highway and head up Snow Creek Road.
“Confession, Megan.”
“Go on,” I tell her.
“There’s some weird stuff going on out here. Gives me the willies. Like Deliverance. Do you know that old movie?”
I shake my head.
“You should stream it. Seriously, you never know what you’ll find far away from town. Out here.”
“In the middle of nowhere?”
“Exactly.”
We pass Dan Anderson’s place. Yeah, I think, you never know what you’ll find.
I review what we’re doing. I do this because Bernie, as she likes to be called, is something of a loose cannon. She likes to play cop as much as she seems to enjoy her court-appointed duties. She also has a strange effect when comforting a victim; it’s almost like she’s enjoying her role too much. Like she’s getting off on the misery of someone facing the worst conceivable outcome after a tortuous wait, bouncing from hope to the inevitable reality of what’s really happening.
“Sarah is underage and we’ll need to consider that,” I say. “She’s scared about what might have happened to her mother and father. This will crush her. Joshua too. He’s mature but still, he’s only nineteen. The implications of their mother’s murder will not be lost on either one. While we are looking for their dad, we are not naming him a suspect. He’s a missing person.”
“A person of interest?” she asks.
I shake my head. “Let’s avoid the terminology, all right?”
She gives me a cool look, her eye shadow only adding to the effect. “Fine, though if they bring it up, our victim’s advocacy code says to always tell the truth. Never lie or trick the victim. That’s your job.”
I ignore her little snipe.
“Deputies Davis and Copsey will meet us there. They’ll work with me on the search. You’ll be there for the kids, all right?”
“Fine, but I have had some police training, you know. I could do more.”
Bernie brings up her extensive training all the time. Really. All the time. She had one class at the academy in Burien. It was one class!
“What you’re doing for the victims is far greater than anything I could do,” I say.
Stay in your lane, I think.
“I think you’re right,” she says, as we pass the cruiser with the deputies. “There really is nothing more important than lifting up the hurt and demoralized. It’s really who I am.”
Inside, I roll my eyes upward.
“I told them to wait on the road,” I say. “We’re going in first.”
Sarah is picking blueberries, and Joshua is burning trash in a burn barrel: a practice the county has prohibited for a decade or more. The folks of Snow Creek do what they need to do to get by. Going to the dump or, God forbid, having trash pickup doesn’t cross their minds.
Joshua looks over and joins his sister as they approach the car.
“You know something, Detective?” he says.
Sarah sends silent tears down her cheeks.
“I’m afraid we do,” I say.
I turn to Bernie and introduce her.
“She’s here to help you. We both are.”
“What do you know?” Joshua repeats.
“Let’s go inside,” I say, nudging them toward the front door.
My words unleash Sarah’s tears.
“Mom’s dead,” she says. “Dad killed her. Didn’t he?”
“We don’t know what happened,” I tell her, looking over at the world’s worst victims’ advocate. She isn’t saying anything. Just standing there letting me deliver the bad news. Seriously, I think. This is how you answer your calling? Really? Like a statue?
We take seats at the table Merritt made.
“I’m really sorry, but the DNA samples we collected confirm that it was your mother who was out on Puget Sound logging road north of here.”
Joshua stays stoic. Sarah not so much.
“How did she die?” he asks.
“We’ve only started our investigation, Joshua. In fact, we have a warrant to search the property,” I reply.
I hand the paper over to Joshua and he skims it.
“You think our mom was killed here at home?” He touches his sister’s shoulder. “We’d have heard something, right?”
Sarah, still sobbing, doesn’t respond.
“The search warrant is for your father’s workshop,” I say.
Joshua gets up from the table. “I’ll show it to you.”
Sarah, who has been silent, save for her tears, speaks up.
“Our father was an asshole, Detective,” she says. “If Mom was murdered it was he who did it.”
Her out-of-nowhere candor startles me.
I prod for more. “What do you mean?”
Sarah dries her eyes on her shirt sleeve and pushes her long braid over her shoulder. “Our dad wasn’t the man he pretended to be. He was an abuser. He was the kind of man who thought love meant hurting someone. Our mother lived with it. We all did. She never fought back. Not really.”
Joshua shoots darts at his sister.
She doesn’t seem to care. “They are going to find out, Joshua. They are going to find out that our father was a piece of shit. We know it. Mom knew it. I was surprised that Aunt Ruth showed up here. He’d told her that she was going to rot in hell for the way she treated her husband. Running around. Slutty like a com
mon whore. He called her a Mary Magdalene reject. His favorite was calling Mom Ida-Ho or Ida-Whore. When Mom pushed back, he just laughed and said he’d cut off another toe.”
I’m glad I’m sitting. Bernie, on the other hand, looks like she’s at her own birthday party.
“I thought it was a mowing accident.”
Joshua’s eyes are riveted to his sister. “Don’t do this, Sarah.”
“Josh,” she says. “We have to. Dad killed Mom. You know it. Detective Carpenter knows it.”
“Please,” he says. “Don’t.”
She looks at him with the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen.
“Too late, brother. I already did.”
Twenty-Three
The judge was very specific, as he or she must be. I’m a stickler for following the rules of law. I don’t want to be the person who screws things up on a technicality. We asked for a broader search of the property, the Chevy, of course, but the mention of the hammer keeps our focus on where tools might be found.
I lead the deputies, armed with cameras, into the barn. It’s a peculiar space because it doesn’t appear that it is in much use for an off-the-grid family. There’s a single stall with a milk cow and a few Sussex chickens. One is a broody hen and she stays put on her clutch of eggs as we pass by.
“This isn’t a one bite of the apple, guys,” I say. “I want to wallpaper our office with of all the photos you take. We might see something later that we miss right now. It happens.”
“We got it, Detective Carpenter,” Deputy Copsey says.
It enters my mind just then how much I like the sound of that. There’s no sarcasm, no phoniness in his voice. I am a detective. I am going to solve this case.
My eyes are lasers. I absolutely will not miss anything.
“Davis,” I say, looking up at the hayloft, “check out every square inch. Run your fingertips through the straw up there. Be careful. Tell yourself that you will be the man who solves this case.”
Davis is younger than me. He has black hair and a mustache that screams Seventies porn star or cop. Cop, I think. His gut hangs over his belt. He’s earnest and a total pleaser.
“Yes, ma’am. On it right now.”
I give Copsey a smile. He gets it. At least, I think so. I’m too young to be a ma’am.
“While your partner is poking around up there,” I say, “let’s check out the shop.”
“Sounds good,” he says as we leave the barn. Copsey is older, hard to say how much. Maybe five years. No more than ten. He’s a strawberry blond with biceps that are barely contained by his uniform. He speaks with a slight lisp that I find charming.
Merritt’s woodworking shop is in an aluminum Quonset hut. Its form reminds me of the arching ribs of a chicken carcass. My mother wasn’t much of a cook, but whenever she made her favorite—and no one else’s—she started by simmering a whole chicken in a pot with onions and carrots. And, yes, her chicken and dumplings smelled so good. Her dumplings never came out of the pot tender. Always hard, like little doughy rocks.
Like her heart.
Merritt’s shop is filled with the odor of cedar and fir. Balsam, I think. It’s like one huge potpourri bag that I wish I was able to give to Maxine. I can’t, of course. The thought that passes through my mind is only good, not snarky. I liked Maxine. I didn’t like how her place assaulted my olfactory senses.
I tell Copsey to search the north side. I note a flattened area on the floor, an imprint of something that had been there a long time.
Carpet?
“I’ll start here, on this end. We’ll meet in the middle. Seriously, Deputy, if the hammer we’re looking for is anywhere on the property, it will be here.”
“Got it, ma’am.”
“Please,” I say. “No more ma’ams.”
“Yes, sir,” he says.
I keep my mouth shut and wonder if I should grow my hair longer. Or maybe slather on the peacock shadow.
There are a bevy of galvanized storage bins on Copsey’s side.
We search by grid, first sweeping every inch in a methodical manner. We take photos too. Not of everything. Copsey also uses a metal detector. I didn’t think to bring one. I make my way around a couple of chairs and a table, works in progress, toward the wide workbench that runs the length of that side of the hut. Merritt Wheaton might have been a monster, but it was clear that he was a very neat one. An array of tools hangs neatly on hooks against a pegboard. He’d outlined with a Sharpie each tool.
In the row of hammers, I note several with the distinctive claw that the coroner indicated was the cause of death.
One in particular draws me close. As I lean over the bench, an errant nail cuts through my clothing.
“Shit!”
Startled, Copsey looks up from the hovering head of the metal detector.
“You okay, Detective?”
I grimace as I touch the tear in my shirt. Thankfully, it didn’t puncture the skin. My father’s DNA would really confuse this crime scene.
“Okay.”
“Gotcha,” he says.
I fumble with my phone to turn on the flashlight app. Its tiny beam is all that I need to be sure.
Blood.
A few strands of hair too.
“I think we’ve found our murder weapon, Deputy.”
Copsey ambles over as I put on my latex gloves and take the hammer from the pegboard. Davis joins us too.
I turn the hammer in the light. It is unmistakable. The long blond hairs wrapped around the picks of the hammer are the same color as Ida Wheaton’s. There are a million ways to kill someone. At that moment I cannot think of a worse one. I almost say a prayer, but I don’t pray. If I did, it would be simple:
Dear God, let the first blow from that motherfucker be the one that killed his wife.
Copsey holds out a large brown paper bag and I carefully place the hammer inside.
“Holy crap!”
It’s Joshua. He stands in the entrance. He looks like he’s about to crumble.
“He really did it. He beat Mom. Didn’t he?” His eyes are red, and he’s obviously been crying. “He killed our mom here. Right here.”
Bernadine appears and puts her hand on the teen’s shoulder.
“Let’s go back inside, Joshua. Let me help you and your sister.”
I lock eyes with her and nod. Her iridescent lids shutter. I can tell she’s within a beat of crying too.
I tell the deputies to secure the scene. We’ll get a tech over here to see what story Luminol will tell us.
Inside the house, Bernie and the kids are in the living room. Joshua, who’s calmed considerably, moves from a recliner to the sofa. Sarah has pulled herself together too. She’s sitting on the floor, her back leaning against the sofa. Bernie sits across from them, like a sympathy Buddha, if there were such a thing.
My eyes glide over all of them. “I’m really sorry.”
Bernie unfolds her arms. “It’s a terrible tragedy,” she says. She’s about to say more, but Joshua cuts her off.
“You’re going to find him, right?” he asks, his tone more hopeful than angry. “He really needs to pay for what he did.”
“We’ve got a BOLO all along the West Coast. His picture. Everything we have on him. This will likely hit the news tonight and I expect social media will follow suit. Everyone will know he’s out there and we have reason to believe he’s dangerous.”
“What about Mom?” Sarah asks. “We want to bring her home.”
“The funeral home will take care of things.”
“No,” Joshua says, “no funeral home. Home. Here. She wanted a green burial. We all do.”
I’d never heard of anyone doing green burial and I ask him for details. Joshua tells me that the body—not embalmed—is wrapped in a mushroom-spore-infused shroud and is deposited just below the surface of the ground. It’s watered daily during dry months—which is where we are now—and as the body decomposes, it nourishes the soil. I can see the appeal, but I don’t think it wo
uld be for me. I don’t like the idea of being food for mushrooms.
Actually, I don’t like mushrooms at all.
It’s a texture thing.
“Would you like me to notify your Aunt Ruth?” I ask. “Or do you want to call? I know she would want to be here for her sister’s memorial service.”
“She can come, of course,” Joshua says, “but there’s no big service.”
The space above the sofa catches my eye.
“You got the photo reframed.”
“Just new glass,” Sarah says, shifting her gaze to the portrait behind her. Her eyes land there only a second before looking away like she’s seen something terrible. “And a lot of good that we fixed it. I’m going to burn it in the trash barrel after you leave. Can’t stand looking at our dad.”
I tell them what will happen next, how a crime technician team will be out and go over the scene with a chemical that illuminates blood.
The two exchange looks.
“I know it’s hard,” I say. “I know all of this is a shock and there will be more to come. It will get easier. That might take a long, long time.”
“We know,” Joshua says. “It just the idea—”
Sarah jumps in as her brother buries his face in his hands. “It’s the idea that our father killed our mother. Right here. All the time we were waiting for them to come home, we collected eggs, milked Noelle… all the time we were in the place where it all happened.”
“I’m so sorry. The forensic exam will give us more answers. Some of those will be painful. But we need to know what happened,” I go on. “I need you both to stay clear, all right?”
Joshua, now looking up, nods.
“Ms. Chesterfield is going to stay with you while all this is going on, then she’ll make a recommendation to the judge regarding you, Sarah.”
Bernie gives the girl a warm, reassuring smile.
I already know what her recommendation will be.
Twenty-Four
