by Gregg Olsen
“I wasn’t issued any yet,” she says.
My fault. I should have asked this long ago. I’ll make sure we fix this today.
“I have an extra on the back seat. Put it on over your shirt.” I don’t really have an extra, but technically she’s still on light duty and isn’t supposed to be out in the field. If she gets killed, Sheriff Gray will be pissed at me.
Ronnie looks at me. “You aren’t wearing any.”
I’m tougher than you, I think.
“I have some in the trunk,” I lie like the expert I am. My mother taught me this. I didn’t learn how to sew or cook or iron. I learned how to lie. Thank you, Mom. This skill seems to come in handier than the others anyway. I can always follow a recipe to cook. Not so with telling a believable lie.
Ten minutes later, Ronnie has slipped on the vest and tightened the straps. We see a sign:
Historic Humes Ranch Cabin
5 mi.
And another sign:
ELWHA River Trail
3 mi.
Ronnie is on her phone, of course. “The Humes Ranch Cabin was built in 1900 by William Humes. He was on his way to the Klondike but liked the area along the Elwha River so he and his brother settled there and built the cabin. It’s three miles from the Silent Ridge trailhead. Maybe we can stop by there on our way back to the office?”
I don’t say it, but I’m thinking, Maybe. If we’re still alive.
Forty-Five
I turn into the parking area for the trailhead and back into a space. There is one other car with no occupants in sight. I saw a couple of dirt roads angling off of the main road on the way but there are no signs or mailboxes. I imagine if anyone lives out in the sticks like this, they use a P.O. box in town.
I get on the radio and have Dispatch run the Oregon license plate of the other car in the lot. It comes back to someone with an Oregon address. It’s not stolen. I have Dispatch run the name for wants and warrants. No warrants and the license is clear. The plates come back to the correct vehicle.
“What now?” Ronnie asks.
“Wait here.” I get out and look around. Nothing but forest for as far as I can see. No noise that would indicate a human presence. I get back in the car. Damn. I didn’t really think it would be this easy, but I’m not looking forward to the long drive back. Still, I decide to check some of the side roads for signs of recent traffic. Maybe there are campgrounds or cabins that are unmarked?
I pull out.
“We’re going to check some of the side roads. You watch your side and I’ll check this one.” And look for someone holding a sign that says, “I’m a serial killer.”
I drive down one bumpy dirt side road after another and all roads end at a turnaround. I’m on my fourth road, if you can call a path of tire ruts through the grass a road, when I hit pay dirt. I slow and see a stump of a 4x4 wooden post that’s been sawed off six inches above the ground. This must have been for a mailbox or a sign marking the campsite.
The bark-and-cream-colored motor home is set back a couple of hundred feet from the road. The color blends with the trees and is almost hidden by towering red cedar and pine trees. If anyone is inside, they have seen me. So now I have two choices. I can drive on as if I’m out for a ride on a deserted side road in the middle of nowhere. Or I can stop down the road a piece and go to the door. If it’s not Rader’s place, I can tell whoever answers that I’m a lost hiker and ask for directions to the trailhead. If it’s Rader, I can ask for directions to the Monroe Correctional Complex and expect some fireworks. But I’m not really dressed like a hiker. I regret not getting Ronnie body armor before I left the office. But I’m here now and I don’t want to risk losing him.
“I’m going to check it out,” I say. “Stay here and cover me. If there’s shooting, call for backup.”
“I’m not staying here,” Ronnie says, getting out. “You don’t even have a vest, Megan. Do you?”
Okay, you go in front of me. Human shield.
“I’m going to knock,” I say. “Get back in the car. It’s an order.”
I hope he is smart enough to believe that we wouldn’t come to get him by ourselves. I hope he doesn’t know that I’m not that smart.
Ronnie stays with the car and I question my sanity as I walk down the rutted path that leads to the motor home. I’m extremely calm given the fact I might come face to face with a man who wants to kill me. The only downside of this is that if he’s home and I have to shoot him, Ronnie will see it all.
There are deep, wide tire tracks where the motor home was backed in, but they look old. There are several more narrow tracks, from car tires, criss-crossing the wider tracks. He’s brought a car too. Sensible. The motor home has been there awhile. A canvas rollout shade is extended by a door with a small set of metal steps. There is a small foldout picnic table and one stadium chair next to the side of the motor home. A charcoal grill is near this. No garden gnomes or lanterns strung up that would indicate an older couple. There are waffle-soled prints from heavy boots around all of this. The boot prints lead to the back of the motor home and I follow them. This is where the car was parked but it is gone now.
I look at the door and the top edge of the motor home to see if any cameras have been set up. Nothing. If I was a killer on the run, I would have set up some type of warning system. I look back along the path. I’ve left boot prints in the softer dirt. My boots are size six. His are size eleven. Maybe he does have an intruder system: shoe prints.
And I’ve just left the intruder alert for him.
I go back to the car and Ronnie gives me a questioning look.
“I think this is the place,” I say. “Looks like he has a car and has gone somewhere. Maybe getting supplies?”
Maybe killing another victim.
“What do we do now?” she asks. “Should we have Clallam County try to locate him? There aren’t many towns between here and Port Angeles. Or do you want to go back through some of the little towns ourselves and hope to spot him?”
Neither. I open my car door and find a leaflet on the floor. One of the church groups left it under my wiper blade one night. My soul needs saving but not today.
“Wait here,” I say, and go back to the motor home. This time I step off to the side of my previous shoe prints, being careful not to leave another set.
I stick the leaflet in the crack of the door where he’ll be sure to see it. If it’s not Michael Rader’s motor home, the occupant won’t think someone was snooping around. I then circle around the motor home, staying on the already bent grass. There are no windows or doors on the back side except for a driver’s-side door. There is a large window at the back but it has heavy shades drawn. I would have to jump up to look in any of the cab windows.
I go back around to the door with the steps and knock. I wait and knock again. No answer, and I detect no movement inside. I use a trick I’ve learned from one of the patrol deputies. I begin knocking with the side of my fist on the door and keep the pounding up for a full minute. I wait thirty seconds and start again, this time beating even harder for several minutes. This usually causes some type of response. Last week I served a robbery warrant in Port Hadlock where I used this technique. The guy, even knowing he had the warrant issued for his arrest, came to the door and yelled, “WHAT?”
There’s no response and I look at Ronnie. She’s been watching to see if there’s any movement. She shakes her head and holds her hands up at shoulder level. I don’t know if she’s saying What are you doing? or Nothing has moved. Either way, I can tell she’s expecting me to come back to the car, but I have a different plan.
I try the door latch and it doesn’t give. There is a metal tent peg on the ground by the grill. I stick the point of it in the crack by the latch and pry open the door.
I don’t have to look back at Ronnie to know she’s about to shit her pants. I’m committing a burglary. I don’t know if she will ignore this, but I don’t care at this point if it helps me find Michael Rader.
&n
bsp; I draw my weapon and announce “Sheriff’s Office” loudly for Ronnie’s benefit and then open the door. I peek inside quickly toward the front and again to the back. No one shoots. I go in.
The motor home is more tricked out than Ronnie’s place in Port Townsend. Michael has some money, for sure. There’s not many places to hide in the back except for a bathroom. I check up front, crouched, gun out. No one is hiding. I crack the bathroom door enough to see if someone is inside. It smells of something strong and I know the smell but can’t place it. I’ll get back to it.
I call Ronnie on her cell.
“What are you doing?” she asks. And rightly so.
“Just keep a sharp eye out. If you see that I’m getting company, honk or call me back.” I hang up before she can say anything.
I put on latex gloves and go to the cab to look for anything identifying the owner. The visor above the driver’s seat has what I’m looking for. Vehicle registration. The motor home is a lease vehicle. I look in the cubbyholes and glove box. There is one pay stub. Monroe Correctional Complex. For Michael Rader. It’s seven months old. He made good money, but not enough to buy this luxury motor home. I’m guessing that, new, it would go for at least $300K.
I start at the cab and move to the back, searching cabinets, under mattresses, under the built-in stove, the bathroom. I find no weapons, ammunition or any gear. There are men’s clothes and a pair of Wolverine boots in the back bedroom, where the curtains are drawn shut.
I go to the bathroom again. The smell is strong but not unpleasant. Then it hits me. Almonds. I look in the cabinet under the sink again and find a container the size of a round Morton Salt box. The label identifies it as rat poison. I take the container out and don’t have to sniff it to recognize it as the source of the smell. There are granules in the sink and on the small countertop. Mixed in with this are black seeds that remind me of apple seeds.
I notice the top is not pushed down securely. I pop it open and inside I find a dozen or more small syringes. One is loaded with some type of thick, dark liquid. Either Michael is a diabetic or he’s mainlining cyanide.
I take a bag out of my pocket and collect a loaded syringe. I take another bag and collect some of the rat poison from the container and another bag for some granules and seeds from the countertop. Before I leave the motor home I look around to be sure I left the place as I found it. I don’t see anything to collect for DNA comparison but remember a piece of some type of fruit or vegetable I didn’t recognize in the refrigerator. It is cut in half and in a plastic bag. Part of it has been bitten off. I put that bag inside a bag of my own. Then I go outside, use my blazer sleeve to wipe my footprints from the metal steps. I open the grill lid and see something has melted on the grate. I pry it loose. It’s melted plastic with a needle on one end. A syringe. I collect it and head back to my car. It’s in the trash so fair game as far as evidence goes.
Forty-Six
We get back in the car and I show Ronnie what I’ve found.
“Let’s go to the crime lab. I want Marley to tell me what all of this is and see if he can get DNA from the mango- or avocado-looking thing.”
“That’s not either of those things,” Ronnie says, looking at the bag with the fruit in it. “It has seeds like an apple.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” I say. If this stuff is what paralyzed Monique, and if the DNA matches any found at the scene, he’s as good as caught. Anything that happens when I find him will be legal. I’ll make sure of that.
I give Ronnie the lease information for the motor home. It’s leased out of Seattle. Long term. Lease-to-own. She calls the lease agency and they have the same address in Silent Ridge. The woman she talked to said Michael made a substantial up-front payment, in cash, of more than half of the cost of the vehicle. That explains their lack of a background check to verify the address is real.
I call Sheriff Gray and explain what we’ve found.
“Tell me you were in there legally,” he says.
“Of course,” I say. “The door to the motor home was open and I was concerned for his safety. There are bears in those woods and they frequently find their way indoors. I was doing a welfare check.”
It’s lame, but he doesn’t question it.
“I need you to contact the sheriff in Snohomish again and find out exactly what went on with Michael Rader,” I say. “Ronnie found out the motor home is leased but he paid over half of it down in cash. It’s a luxury motor home.”
“I see.”
“And when I looked in the bathroom to see if Rader was alive, I smelled a chemical that I thought to be cyanide. Rat poison was in view.” After I opened the cabinet, that is. “And there were syringes sticking out of a container of rat poison. One of the syringes was loaded. I’d like to know what the chemical is that was found at the autopsy.”
“Sorry,” Sheriff Gray says. “I should have told you. Nan found the lab report on your desk.”
Of course she did.
“There was a chemical in it that Yang identified as cherimoya. It’s made from the seeds of a fruit. The fruit is supposed to be very tasty and is edible, but the seeds are poisonous.”
“Are the seeds black? About the size of apple seeds?”
I hear him flipping through some pages. “Yes. Yang sent me a picture of the fruit and the seeds. You want me to send it to your phone?”
“Please. I found some type of fruit in the motor home that I didn’t recognize and the seeds in the fruit were the same as some that I found in the rat poison container.”
Just then my phone dings. I pull up the photos. It’s the fruit and the seeds I collected.
“That’s exactly what I found,” I say.
“The report doesn’t say anything about cyanide, Megan.”
“I’m more interested in the seeds and what’s in that syringe. We’re on our way to the crime lab.”
I hang up. I don’t drive through any of the towns on the way to the crime lab. It will take two and a half hours to get to Olympia as it is, and another two hours to get back to the office. The day will be shot. Ronnie calls Marley and puts it on speakerphone. He answers on the first ring.
“Crime lab. Supervisor Yang,” Marley says in a deeper voice than I remember him having. He knows it’s Ronnie’s phone and so he can’t resist reminding her how important he is.
“Marley, it’s Ronnie.”
“Oh. Hello, Ronnie. I was busy and didn’t recognize the number.”
She looks at me and cuts her eyes. “Marley, I know you must be super-busy, but I have some good news.”
“I heard,” he says. “You’re being hired full-time. Congratulations.”
“Oh, phooey,” she says, with a fake pout on her lips. “I wanted to tell you myself.”
“You still can. How about dinner tonight and we’ll celebrate your good fortune? My treat.”
She looks at me again. I mouth, “Go ahead.”
“That sounds nice. What time?”
They gab some more and I point to the evidence bags.
“Marley, I have a favor to ask. I know I’m always asking, but this is for a big case I’m working with Detective Carpenter and it will really help me.”
“Fire away, Detective Marsh,” he says, and I want to puke.
She tells him about the things I found in the motor home in Silent Ridge. She doesn’t tell him I broke in and searched, so that gives her extra points. He seems to hesitate and I think he might really be busy, but then she says the magic words.
“I would really appreciate it, Marley. I’ll owe you one.”
Now he doesn’t hesitate. “I’ll hold you to that, Red.”
Red? I give her a look like What the hell?
She giggles. “Dinner tonight. You pick the place. We’re on our way to the lab. We can talk about it when we get there.”
“‘We’? Who’s coming with you?”
“Megan is. She’s my training officer, you know.”
“So you’re going to
be partners, huh?” he says.
“I hope so.” She looks at me. I don’t respond. I want to say that’s not up to me. But it really is. Outside of working with temporary trainees, Sheriff Gray doesn’t make you take on a partner.
“Will you need a DNA run?” he asks.
Shit. I forgot about running the DNA. That will add an hour or two to our time if we wait for it. I nod my head.
“Yes,” Ronnie answers. “But only if it’s not asking too much.”
“I’ll make the time,” he says. I think he would eat a bowl of glass for her.
“Red?” I ask when she hangs up.
“It’s better than what he wanted to call me. He started calling me Yin,” she says, rolling her eyes. “He says I should come work at the crime lab. We would make a good team. Not going to happen.”
I don’t get it for a second, then I do and I regret it. It’s fitting. They’re about as opposite as you can get.
“You can take lead when we get to the lab. You’ve got a good connection there, Red.”
Forty-Seven
It’s a long drive to the lab, made even longer by Ronnie’s never-ending chatter. I make an excuse to let her go in by herself, and when she’s out of sight I call Sheriff Gray.
“Are you at the lab?” he asks.
“Just got here.”
“I got some interesting news about Michael Rader.”
I hear his chair squeak shrilly, a door close, then another creak as he sits down. “Here’s what I was told,” he says. I know he’s leaning back against the wall, because the springs in his chair are screaming, I give up! I’ll pay you to get up!
Like duct tape, WD-40 only goes so far.
“Rader has worked at a couple of maximum security prisons around the state,” Tony says. “He was at Monroe for the last twenty years. He came under suspicion a year ago when there was a rash of prisoners having medical issues. Such as breathing difficulty, muscle weakness, rashes, heart issues. One prisoner who was nineteen years old and in perfect health dropped dead from a heart attack. Ninety percent of these individuals were under the supervision of Michael Rader before developing the conditions. Rader was also handy with his night stick. Of the physical altercations between prisoners and staff, Rader accounted for sixty percent by himself. It was well known that if Rader was required to break up a disagreement or fight among prisoners that he was bringing an ass-kicking with him.”
