by Gregg Olsen
“Sheriff called your partner and gave her the information on the victim. Knowing Ronnie, she’s got a stack of papers for you when you get back to the office.”
She’s not my partner. She’s a reserve deputy.
“She’s good like that,” I say.
“Well, what do you need first? The house or the perimeter?” she asks. “We haven’t finished inside the house, and Jerry just took the body. I can tell you what I found outside.”
It must have been a task to collect the body.
“Zip. No sign anyone came in from the trees behind the house. I checked the windows and the ground under them. No way of telling if anyone was looking in a window, but there are no pry marks. Same with the doors. The front door is unlocked. No sign of a forced entry. I looked from the street and from the trees and there isn’t a good angle to see if anyone was upstairs. Also, there are room-darkening shades in both the master and guest bedrooms. The guest bedroom shades are closed. The master bedroom you saw.”
“Signs of a struggle?” I ask.
Mindy says there weren’t any. Everything was pristine.
“No scuffs in the carpet like she’d been dragged. The only thing I found was a puddle of something wet just inside the bathroom doorway. I almost didn’t notice because the toilet was right there, but it smelled like urine. I touched it with a glove and did a very scientific test. I sniffed it. It was definitely urine. I took a sample and I’ll check it later. I’m thinking she was grabbed there and her bladder emptied. I found clothes in the clothes hamper. There weren’t any blood or urine stains on them.”
I fill her in on Weena’s story. “I just told Sheriff Gray she said she smelled the stink and came in the house. In fact, she saw the body. Her dog was with her and it was lapping up the blood.”
“I’ll check for dog hairs,” Mindy says.
That gives me another question for Rowena Perkins. I’ll have to make another trip to see her.
“Do you think she was going to get a shower when it happened?” I ask. I had almost stepped in it. It was insignificant at the time. I chalked it up to being water from the tub.
“I’m almost certain,” Mindy says.
“The bloody smears on the bathroom tile were all leading to and from the tub. Was there a lot of blood inside the tub? I didn’t look.”
Mindy says something to one of the techs and picks up where she left off.
“There were bloody footprints in the tub, Megan. The body appears to have been skillfully skinned. I would guess a taxidermist or a surgeon. They know their way around anatomy and a scalpel. The crime scene techs will check the bathtub drain with a scope to see if there’s anything trapped. They’ll take swabs too. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find some hair that isn’t the victim’s.
“But, Megan, there’s no way the bloody footprints belong to the victim. I checked the shoes in her closet and she wears a size eight. The prints on the floor seem small but they’re so blurred it’s hard to tell. Sheriff Gray has her Washington driver’s license and she was five feet ten inches. Her killer is much smaller.”
It was as bad as I thought. “So you think she must have let her killer in? Or it was someone who had a key?”
“Looks like it, Megan. Was she a friend?”
“No,” I lie. “I think I met her once when I was going to school. Name sounds familiar.”
My denial sounded weak even to me.
“You’d better be careful. People don’t just take random shots like that and leave it to be found unless they’re disturbed.”
She was right.
“I heard Sheriff Gray on the phone. So the woman who called the police lied about being in the house.”
“She was afraid she would be a suspect.”
“Sheriff said she’s about eighty years old and frail looking.”
“Rowena Perkins likes tea spiked with Johnnie Walker and puzzles of half-naked firemen waving a hose.”
“Who doesn’t?” Mindy says with a laugh. “Maybe they got in a fight over the puzzle.”
I think it would be more likely over the Johnnie Walker, but I keep that to myself.
Nine
I have to talk to Dr. Andrade’s office to find out when the autopsy will be, but I don’t think he’ll talk to me. During the last case, I called him at home in the middle of the night. I needed to know his findings. He hung up, then called me back and hung up on me again. I’ll have Ronnie call him. She’s my weapon. She’s beautiful, red-haired. Men can’t resist her. Women want to be her. Not me, though.
Rowena Perkins is waiting for me at her front door. I follow her through to the kitchen, but I decline tea this time in favor of a shot of Johnnie Walker. It burns going down but I need something to keep from screaming at her.
“You’re still not telling me everything, Mrs. Perkins.” I use her formal name to let her know I’m not playing around.
She sits with her hands in her lap. Age spots mottle the backs of her hands, and her knuckles are dry and red. I don’t think hand cream will help this late in the game.
“I knew you’d be back,” she tells me. “You strike me as a very smart girl.”
I liked being called a girl much better than being called “ma’am,” but flattery will get her nowhere. “What didn’t you tell me?” I look around and there’s no sign of Gonzo. I imagine he’s outside watering the lawn.
“When I saw the body, it shocked me. I must have screamed, because Gonzo yelped and then the poor dear puddled on the floor.”
“He peed on the bathroom floor?”
“He’s old and I must have scared the bejesus out of him. It’s not his fault. I shouldn’t have taken him in there.”
You shouldn’t have been in that house.
“I understand,” I say. “I’ll tell my crime scene guys so they know it’s dog urine.”
Her eyes well with tears and then the dam breaks. In between racking sobs she asks, “Are you going to take Gonzo into evidence? I don’t think I can be without him. He’s all I have since my Stevie passed ten years ago. He’s my family. I just don’t know what…”
I feel my own eyes tearing up. Her son seldom contacts her and she is obviously lonely. I can relate. I’ve had little contact with Hayden and I miss him. The dog is Rowena’s only friend. The dog and the bulging fireman.
“Rowena, no one is going to take your dog. No one will bother Gonzo or you. I promise.” I give her a card with my phone number at the office. “If you have questions, you can call me. If you think of anything else, call me. I’ll try to come back and tell you what I find out. How’s that?”
She stands and wraps me in a hug and weeps. Her emotions come from the horror of what she saw. She weeps because she’s all alone and because I’m kind to her.
I ask one more question.
“Did you notice anything else unusual while you were in that house? When you walked through the bedroom?”
I’m wondering if she saw the two pictures of me laid out on the bed. Especially the laminated one.
She shakes her head.
“Did you see anything on the bed?” I need to know.
She looks at me like I’m stupid. “I was drawn to that smell. That’s all I saw, except for Gonzo doing what he… you know.”
As I drive back to the office I call Mindy.
“It’s dog pee, isn’t it?” I say right away.
“Yes. It’s dog urine.”
“She said her dog ‘puddled’ on the tile because she screamed and scared it.”
“Got it. Thanks.”
“I’m going to the office.” I don’t need to tell Mindy to call if she finds anything. I disconnect and watch the road play out. What I saw in that bathroom will stay with me forever. That my photo was found on the bed will give me nightmares. Someone knows that picture and the one of me leaving the sheriff’s office are the same person. Sheriff Gray picked up on it right away.
Ten
I park in the same place as I parked when the picture was taken.
I look around for the spot where the photograph was snapped. I remember the angle and make my way toward the firs and cedars that ring one side of the parking area. Here, I think, is the place where the photographer likely stood.
The ground is thick with fir needles. I kick some of them around. There’s no telling exactly when the picture was taken, but it couldn’t have been more than two weeks ago. The toe of my boot shoves some of the debris around and I’m about to give up when I see something red flash. It’s a Camel cigarette butt. The red lipstick is fluorescent red.
Who would wear this grotesque color?
The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office is a no-smoking zone within fifty feet of the building. I take an evidence bag from my blazer pocket and use it to retrieve the butt. I’ll give it to Crime Scene to have tested and compared with what they found at the scene. It’s more than a long shot and I might have to use my secret weapon, aka Ronnie, to get Marley Yang, the supervisor of the state crime lab, to run the test for me. Marley has a thing for Ronnie. She thinks he’s cute in a nerdy way and has gone out with him a few times. Marley drops by the office two or three times a week, using any excuse to see her.
Shoving more of the dry needles around reveals nothing except a PayDay wrapper and a pair of women’s black lace panties.
Eww.
I collect the wrapper. I suspect stalking is a hard job and they might have gotten hungry. But I can’t imagine someone stalking me and taking off their panties. I might have a naked stalker with a sweet tooth who smokes Camels and wears fluorescent red lipstick. I walk away and then come back and collect the panties too. If they belong to Nan, Sheriff Gray’s secretary, I’m going to bust a gut. Nan has done the walk of shame a few times since I’ve worked here.
I think I remember her wearing that shade of lipstick too.
Ronnie holds the door for me. “What were you doing out there? Did you lose something?”
“Actually, I found something,” I say, and go to my desk. I take the three evidence bags from my blazer pocket and lay them on the desktop.
“That’s the start of a joke,” she says. “A cigarette butt, a candy wrapper, and a pair of panties walks into a bar…” Ronnie giggles. It’s not funny. Well, kind of. Lately she’s started telling lame jokes. She says it’s stress relief. I guess it’s better than her incessant chatter about absolutely nothing.
“Did you run the name Sheriff Gray gave you?” I ask.
She’s holding a manila folder and lays it on the desk.
“I’ve run the name through local, state and federal databanks. And the Washington State Department of Licensing. The DOL had a license photo and I’ve made a copy of the license.”
She opens the folder and the driver’s license copy is on top. There’s a driver’s license number, the date the license was issued, the expiration date, the license class, Monique D. Delmont’s name and date of birth, a physical description, and her photo. Hard to believe that an entire person’s life can be documented on a three-by-four-inch piece of paper.
My high school photo the sheriff gave me is laminated. I wonder about that. You laminate something to preserve it. Why would someone go to that trouble and then leave it at the scene of a murder? I feel my jacket pocket to be sure the photo is still there. I panic when I don’t feel it. I check my other pockets. It’s in my shirt pocket. I don’t remember putting it there. I’m rattled. I can’t afford to be this way.
“Sheriff Gray called and said you requested me on this case. Is that okay?”
“Yeah. I mean, yes.”
She looks excited. I take a moment to steady myself for the dam burst of words that flow whenever Ronnie is excited.
“I’d be happy to work another murder case. I mean, it’s not anything to be happy about. Someone died and that’s really bad. But I can’t wait to get to work on it. I’ve already run the records from the name, but what else do you need? Sheriff Gray says I’m not to leave the office. I don’t see how I can be much help if I stay at my desk. But if he says not to leave the office, I won’t. Unless you ask me to, of course. Then I’ll—”
I hold a hand up to stop her. My head is spinning already.
“Breathe, Ronnie.” I don’t realize I say this out loud until it’s out.
“Sorry, Detective Carpenter. It’s just that I’ve been sitting around, doing nothing for so long that I think my butt is going flat. I’m so bored. And I love working with you. I hope I don’t sound like one of those, uh…”
“Ass kissers?” I say.
“Yeah. One of those.”
“Don’t worry. Someone else holds that trophy,” I say, and look toward Nan’s desk. Nan turns to me like she heard my comment. She probably did. Sometimes it seems like she has super-hearing. It helps with her super-nosiness. I notice she’s wearing the same color lipstick as that on the cigarette butt. Come to think of it, the underwear is about the right size too. Double eww!
“Do you want me to call Marley?” Ronnie asks.
I hand her the stuff I found in the woods. “I hate to ask.” I don’t really.
“If he wants me to bring it to him, is it okay if I leave the office to do that?”
I give her my blessing and she gets on the phone.
Nan may have super-hearing, but I have Ronnie.
Eleven
While Ronnie chats Marley up, I open the file she has given me. Monique’s driver’s license photo is a newer one. Her hair is shorter and seems to have lost its luster. Her face looks craggy, as if she hasn’t gotten much sleep. Of course, the DOL counter employees take only the worst side of you. Eyes half-closed. Every chin exposed. I’m all but certain they have a contest to see who can take the worst picture.
I close the folder and decide to take the file home to read. With Scotch. I don’t like invading the privacy of a friend.
Even a dead one.
I throw my purse on the table by the door, kick my shoes off and hang up my blazer. I keep the shoulder holster on. It’s become a habit after receiving my stalker’s emails. Now I have a better reason. Someone knows who I am. They know about my past. If it’s not my stalker, I have double trouble.
A bottle of Glen-something-or-other Scotch beckons. After the first sip they all taste the same, so I’m not picky when I buy it. I pour a generous amount in a plastic cup.
After my ordeal with Alex Rader, I began seeing a therapist. Dr. Karen Albright. The tapes of our sessions might hold a clue to Monique’s murder. I take the box of tapes and the tape player out of the bottom desk drawer. I’ve given up storing them in the top of the closet.
I select a tape, slot it and think back to how I ended up with these tapes of my sessions with Dr. Albright, my therapist. I recollect how Dr. Albright’s blue eyes scared me at first. Almost otherworldly. How her office smelled of microwave popcorn. How much I grew to trust her. I was eighteen when I first saw her. Defensive. Closed off like a street barricade. I had never let anyone inside, but I was smart enough to know that everything inside of me—from my experiences to my bloodline—had to be exorcised somehow. I’d been traumatized, and while I couldn’t see it in the mirror, others did. Night terrors are traumatic and uniquely embarrassing. You don’t know if anyone hears your screams.
Dr. Albright had said, “You’ll want these someday.”
I refused them at first and told her, “I can’t see that happening.”
Albright had smiled. “Trust me, you will. The day will come when listening to the tapes will make you even stronger.” She put her arms around me. We both cried. We held each other for a long time. I knew it wasn’t goodbye forever, but it was the end of therapy that had spanned a year and a half. At that time I was graduating from the university with a degree in criminology and had enrolled in the police academy in suburban Seattle.
I draw a breath, take a sip, and hit the “play” button.
Dr. Albright’s familiar and soothing voice comes out of the tiny speaker. I’m immediately back in the days when my life was rewritten, when I was
on the run, looking for my mother and the murderer who was my birth father. Karen Albright is digging very carefully into that past.
Fittingly, Monique Delmont is the subject.
Dr. A: What did you talk to Mrs. Delmont about?
Me: I talked about the article I’m supposedly writing. Then I asked about the specifics of the murder of her daughter, Leanne. Apart from her reference to Leanne and her father on a sailboat, she didn’t mention a husband. Not once in our time together. I don’t know if they’re divorced or if he’s dead. I didn’t ask. I didn’t think I could take more of the hurt the parents of dead children live with.
Dr. A: What did she tell you about Leanne?
Me: She said those were really hard times for her. She was embarrassed about some of Leanne’s choices and didn’t want the world to think she was a bad mother. She had portrayed her daughter as a selfish, indulgent girl who didn’t follow any rules whatsoever. She said Leanne was a wild girl from a privileged background and never thought of anyone but herself. Now she’s revolted by her characterization of her daughter.
I stop the tape. Leanne’s murder was attributed to Arnold Cantu, a serial killer. But I know the real killer was my psycho dad, Alex. Monique and her husband had, at first, resisted the idea that Cantu had killed Leanne because all of his victims were college students, older than Leanne. But there had been a period of time that Leanne had run away from home and stayed at a house not far from the University of Washington campus in Seattle. In other words, in Cantu’s hunting grounds. I turn the tape player back on.
Dr. A: Did Monique ever admit she could have been wrong?
Me: Yes. She finally accepted that Leanne was one of Cantu’s victims.
Dr. A: That must have been hard.
Dr. A: How did that make you feel?
