by Gregg Olsen
“Mom did,” Laurna had reminded her.
Carrie gave her a knowing smile. “Touché.”
That was the week before the accident.
It was the last time they spoke… Sisterhood is one of the world’s most impenetrable bonds. It can only break if a husband’s mother has something to say about it.
I get up and give Ms. Volkmann some water from a small table behind us. She takes it and starts drinking. I know she’s weighing what she’s about to tell me.
“Honestly,” she goes on, lingering on the word that liars have the hardest time saying with any volition, “I didn’t think much of what she wrote. It was the same kind of teenage angst Carrie and I reveled in when we were her age.”
“What did she write?”
“The usual. I wish my mom or dad would die in a car crash. That kind of thing.”
Her eyes widen some. She wants to say more. I want her to, too.
“All right, it seemed more like a list of ways to get rid of her folks. Not just I hate the world. I made a photocopy. Gave the entire book to the detectives in Port Angeles.”
She pulls a piece of paper from her purse and hands it to me.
She’s right. It is a list.
There are a dozen methods listed, detailing the different ways that Ellie could get rid of her parents. Some have stars against them. Some have been crossed out. It’s like she was trying to decide the best way. Her thought process, fantasy or not, seemed to err on the side of less violent murders. Poison was a possibility. It had a star. Overdosing on drugs also was underlined.
Drowning in a boating accident was the clear favorite. Two stars and two underlines.
She drew an arrow to combine the overdosing and the boating accident.
“It’s what happened,” Laurna says.
I scan her eyes. I think she might be right. I replay things I heard and saw. I think about how Sarah touched her brother, so tenderly. Too tenderly, I remember thinking. I remember the yelling that Ruth reported hearing the night after the memorial and how she told him to go back to bed. And how he leaned in to whisper in her ear. Something else struck me as odd: The first time I saw Joshua he was wearing the Miller beer T-shirt, and the next time she was wearing it.
But if that is Ellie, where is Sarah Wheaton?
I ask Laurna if I can duplicate her niece’s note, and she follows me to the copy room. While the old machine flashes to copy, I make plans to drive out to the Wheaton place.
“Are you staying in town?”
“At the Seaport Inn,” she says. “My husband and I. Hans thinks I’m being silly about all of this. Out of my mind, he repeated all the way here from Wenatchee. You don’t think I am, do you, Detective?”
I don’t know.
“Grief is powerful,” I tell her. “I also know sincerity when I see it. I’ll check it out. I’ll call you at the Seaport.”
She grasps my hand and squeezes. “Thank you. I wouldn’t bother you if I wasn’t so sure. My sister and her husband weren’t perfect, though they did the best they could.”
“No one’s perfect, but how do you mean?”
“Hudson was super strict. Wouldn’t let Ellie date. Talk to boys. Grounded her when he caught her. Carrie just let that happen. I guess she didn’t want for her daughter what she’d had for herself. She was pregnant when they married. She was seventeen when she had Ellie. Hudson was the other half of the equation, of course, but he really put the blame on her.”
Thirty-Three
After Laurna departs, I do what everyone does when they want to find out more about a potential date, a neighbor, or a teenage girl with a serious hatred for her parents. I track Ellie’s digital footprints on Facebook, Instagram and even TikTok.
I couldn’t get into her TikTok, but the other social media usual suspects are an easy enough pathway to find more information.
Ellie Burbank’s Instagram feed is not private and is filled with mostly those hook-armed full body shots or the duck-lips pose that girls are certain makes them look sexy. I study the photos. There is no denying that the face on my laptop looks an awful lot like Sarah. The head shape, facial features are right. Hair color is off, but I’ve had a fair amount of experience dyeing my hair. The other thing that strikes me is the amount of makeup. Where Sarah favored the no-makeup look, Ellie is a true believer in heavy application. No light touch for her. Her eyelids are pink and gold hues with glitter, and her lashes are blue and long enough to leave mascara trailings on the face of her phone when taking a selfie.
It could be her.
Her aunt would know better than I do, I think. Or maybe the tragic loss of her sister hurt Laurna to such a grave degree that she’s looking for a reason, or someone, to blame.
My pulse quickens a little as I read a post Ellie Burbank made last year.
My parents are so phony. Everyone thinks that they are good people. They go to church and act all perfect. If one of their friends knew the truth, they’d never talk to them again. I feel like a dumbass for ever looking up to them.
I scroll through others, more benign in content. Posts about her dreams or her crushes, mostly Bieber and Drake and a couple about Halsey. I scroll more and see rants about being homeschooled and how she’s so lonely being stuck studying in the kitchen with only one hour a day internet time.
I look at the timestamp on the posts. They were all uploaded between seven and eight p.m.
At least they let me do this without their eyes all over me. I know they have a net nanny or something like that on my laptop. I know how to empty my history, leaving just a few things that won’t tip off my feelings for them. They won’t let me have a smartphone. Ha ha.
Two things cross my mind. I wonder how it was so easy for me to get into Ellie’s Facebook page if she was so smart about keeping her parents out? Had she changed her privacy settings? And when?
I also wonder about someone who posts as “Tyra Whitcomb”. She’s the most active of Ellie’s friends, always commenting some sycophantic message of support. There are photos of the two of them, in RL, as they tend to say. She’s a pleasant-looking girl, a little heavier than her best friend, but with the same affinity for a theatrical flair with her cosmetics.
I click on her profile, though it’s set to private.
Whitcomb is not that common a surname. I search on our DMV database and find the one closest to the Burbank home; in fact it’s only three doors down.
Next, I dig up their phone number. That’s easy. Just a click away. I feel like I’m the best clicker in the world. That if there was a prize for that expertise, I’d be up for it.
I dial the number.
Troy Whitcomb answers, and I tell him I’m looking for his daughter. His voice is clipped, suggesting that he’s had similar call encounters with law enforcement.
“What has she done now? Do we need a lawyer?”
“Oh no,” I tell him. “Nothing at all. I’m looking into the Burbank case up here and I want to talk to her about Ellie.”
I hope he doesn’t know the geography of the state that well because Jefferson County has no jurisdiction in the Burbank drownings. That’s Clallam County’s domain. Most Seattle area residents don’t think beyond their immediate vicinity. Everything outside of Seattle is either the Olympic peninsula or the other two thirds of the state, eastern Washington.
“Oh that,” he sighs. “That was a tough one. Tyra and Ellie were very close.”
“That’s what I understand,” I say.
From Facebook, I don’t admit.
“I’m a couple hours away,” I say. “I have errands to run in Seattle. I thought I’d call ahead to see if she was available to meet. Tonight?”
I was lying about the errands. I just wanted Mr. Whitcomb to say yes, as though the need to see Tyra was merely a formality.
“To tie up loose ends,” I say, to fill the dead space on the line.
He’s thinking it over.
“Yeah,” he says. “I think it would be a good idea. T
yra needs some closure. This has been eating at her for a long time. Not the same girl since it all happened.”
“How so?” I ask, before quickly adding, “Besides losing her best friend, of course.”
He sighs. “The usual. Kids today have so many more chances to screw up than in my day.”
“That’s for sure,” I say, looking at the time. I have a semi decent chance that I could make the ferry from Kingston to Edmonds, just north of Seattle. That’s no easy feat, to be sure. Puget Sound traffic is a nightmare that just gets worse and worse.
“I’ll be there around eight, Mr. Whitcomb. Will Tyra be available then?”
“She’d better be,” he tells me in that clipped voice of his. “Or she’s broken curfew for the very last time.”
I grab my keys and fly out of the office, telling Sheriff that I’m heading out to talk to a friend of the missing Burbank girl.
“Not our case,” he says.
“Could be,” I tell him.
The cars are moving when I reach the ferry. Thank God. We roll on one by one, thump, thump, thump. I stay in my car, roll the window down and feel the breeze on my face as we rumble across the water. The time Hayden and I spent the night on a ferry passes through my mind. I know it’s the tapes that are pulling me backwards into the time that I tried to forget.
Thirty-Four
The Whitcombs’ neighborhood is an eclectic mix of vintage Craftsman and brick Tudor homes, all impeccably maintained with crisp-cut hedges and perennials that have been deadheaded all summer. Except for one house. Even if I didn’t have the address, I’d know that was the Burbank place. It’s dark and the lawn has missed a mowing or two. I park on the street midway between the Burbank and the Whitcomb houses. The time on my phone: 7:46. Not bad. Instead of heading to the Whitcombs’, I backtrack to the Burbanks’ old place. And by the way it is: old. Probably more than a hundred years. However, outside of the neglected landscaping, it would be anyone’s dream house. White and gray siding with black shutters and a poppy red door. As I approach, I notice what I think is a sprinkling of potpourri in the flower bed next to the red door.
Dried flower blossoms, stems, and some curlicue ribbons of various colors.
Flowers left to memorialize the family.
I touch a card with my toe, shifting away the floral debris.
With Sympathy
We didn’t know you well, but we grieve for the loss of each of you, Carrie, Hudson and Ellie.
The Neighborhood Block Watch
It’s not much of a makeshift memorial, but that might have more to do with how insular the Burbanks were and not a reflection of bad character. I shine my mini Maglite into the front window, swiping through the dim space up and down. It’s mostly empty. A few pieces of furniture, but they’ve been moved aside.
The oak floor has been refinished.
Ellie’s aunt is getting ready to sell the place.
As I make my way around the house, a woman calls over from the backyard abutting the Burbank property.
“I’ll call the police,” she’s practically spitting her words at me. “You have no right to be here.”
“I am the police,” I say. “Just following up on the Burbank case.”
She opens the gate and comes over to me. She’s in her fifties, with a slim build with brown hair cut in the ubiquitous Seattle bob. She’s wearing pale green garden gloves and carrying a small trowel.
“Let me see your ID,” she demands, her lips tight and her brown eyes looking me over as if I were a danger to the community.
I tell her who I am and show my detective’s shield.
“Okay, fine,” she sniffs. “We’ve had nothing but trouble around here when they went missing. People coming and going.”
Her name is Chantelle Potter. She’s lived in the neighborhood for ten years.
“Carrie and I were pretty good friends for the first few years. Hudson was kind of a loner, but he managed to make it to the annual block party. Nice people. A little different.”
We sit on a bench.
“Define different,” I ask.
She glances back at the house, her eyes landing for a split second on the upstairs window.
“Ellie,” she finally says. “I felt sorry for that girl. She went from being part of the playgroup around here to being nearly invisible. We hardly ever saw her until the last couple of years.”
I’m not sure what she’s getting at and I say so.
“Detective,” she looks right at me, “I can’t explain it.”
“Try.”
Chantelle takes a deep breath. “I saw Ellie in the yard one night and she was talking to someone on her phone. I couldn’t help but overhear.” She stops a moment and looks at me. “I’m not the eavesdropper type. Ask anyone.”
That meant, of course, she was the eavesdropper type. My favorite type, actually, when it comes to investigating a crime. People who mind their own business, bad. People who take in every drama around them, good.
“Of course not,” I say as convincingly as possible. “What did you hear?”
“She was crying. Saying that she couldn’t wait to get out of the house and go to college. Her parents were riding her all the time. That kind of thing. She said her situation was worse than that of whoever was on the other end of the phone.”
It sounded like the kind of conversation a million or more teenagers are having at this very moment.
She goes on. “And then Hudson came out and started barking at her, telling her to get her butt into the house and to give up her goddamn phone. She threw it over into the bushes in my yard. He came over and grabbed her by the arm. It was hard, but I didn’t think it was hard enough to be abuse or I would have called you people.”
She looks over at me.
“Do you think I should have called?”
What’s done is done, I think.
“No,” I say. “You were using your best judgement. I can see that you are second-guessing yourself now. There’s no need for that, Ms. Potter.”
She gives me a look of appreciation.
An eavesdropper with a conscience, better than mere good.
“What was Carrie like?” I ask.
“Sweet. Passive. Actually, she became even submissive as the years went by. We used to have a glass of wine every now and then. One time she came over and said she’d prefer mineral water. The second time she did that I asked if she was pregnant or maybe had been drinking too much and wanted to cut back.”
“What did she say?”
“Get this. She said she stopped drinking because Hudson said so.”
I bristle inside, but don’t show it. “Like forbid it?”
“Exactly. Her words were, ‘Hudson said that I shouldn’t debase my body with wine anymore. He’s the leader of our family’.”
Leader? She sees disdain in my eyes.
Damn. She stops talking, like she’s said too much.
I encourage her to continue. “What did you make of that?”
“First,” Chantelle says, “I thought that I didn’t even know this girl anymore. I knew that they homeschooled Ellie and that they went to a fundamentalist church somewhere on the eastside. Second, I felt sorry for her. I wanted to say something, ask her how she really felt. I just couldn’t go there. I knew that my asking her anything would only make things worse.”
“Do you know anything about the Whitcombs?”
“Do I know Troy and Tyra are liars? Yes.”
“What do you mean, liars?”
“I saw Susan Whitcomb two weeks ago.”
I’m confused. And I look it.
“She didn’t die in any accident. Her husband and daughter made that up after she’d been discovered having an affair. I don’t know why they made up the story. Sympathy for the two of them, I guess. Joy in getting rid of her. She went along with it. Susan’s like that. Weak. I’d have taken him for everything he had.”
“I’m actually stunned,” I admit. “Now I know why there hasn’t been an
ything filed about her death. Nothing in the papers either.”
“Right. To hear those two talk about it they couldn’t be happier if she actually were dead.”
We talk some more. I look at my phone. I ask her if we can speak again and she gives me her number.
“Detective,” she says as I turn to leave, “I wish I could tell you more, but really…” She looks over at the fence that separates her house from the Burbank place. “After Hudson became the leader, or whatever, of the family, we no longer needed a fence. He’d fashioned an invisible forcefield between all of us.”
Thirty-Five
Troy Whitcomb answers the gleaming mahogany front door before I knock. That quick. He’s older than he sounded on the phone, around sixty, I think. His hair is nearly gone, just a gray halo of duck-down-like hairs on his crown. He’s crumpled, worn out. The bags under his eyes could hold the contents of a family’s trip to the beach.
“Did you have a hard time finding your way here?” he asks, letting me inside. “I thought you’d be here at eight.”
It’s only a quarter past eight, but I offer an apology anyway.
“You know the ferries,” I say.
He looks at me warily.
“Right,” he says. “Extremely unreliable.”
His tone is suddenly accusatory. I wonder if he’s just another of the control freaks that live on that Seattle block.
He yells up the stairs.
“Tyra! The detective is here!”
For such a beaten-down figure, his voice is surprisingly robust.
“I told her why you’re here.”
“Thank you. Is Mrs. Whitcomb home?”
“Susan is dead,” he says. “An accident.”
“Oh I’m sorry to hear that. Car accident?” I scan his face and he cast his eyes away in the direction of footsteps coming toward the stairs.
