by Gregg Olsen
“Must be pretty important, Nicole. We’re in the middle of turning the Tomlinson case upside down.”
I start for the door.
“My father’s taken a turn,” I say. “I need to see him.”
It’s a bit of a lie. There’s something I need to tell him, but I fear I’m running out of time.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Monday, August 28
At the branch off Pacific Avenue, I ask the girl behind the counter to take me to the vault. She smiles and I follow. Madeline, as her name tag proclaims in block letters, is wearing all black with a single gold chain around her peg neck. Her voice is soft as a feather, and she walks on sapling legs. She and I make small talk as she leads me to the entrance of the safe-deposit vault and punches a code. I wonder how many people face their darkest future while chatting about a break in the weather.
Madeline thanks me for being a customer of the bank and turns to leave.
I hold up my hand. “I’ll need a witness for my signature,” I say.
“I’ve never done that,” she says, “but I think I can do it.”
“You’ll be fine,” I say.
Madeline looks a little excited. I smile in her direction. She looks like she is at the start of a marathon. So ready to help.
I turn my key and slide the box from the wall and carry it to the table in the center of the room. The lid slides off easily. What I need is right on top of things that I’ve kept to remind me of things that I’ve done. My Lucky Eagle casino card pokes out a little, but I don’t touch it. It’s bright red like an ambulance’s warning siren. I feel something inside my stomach, but I’m unsure of what it is. Sick, maybe. My gambling-addiction counselor told me to keep a few items from my worst times.
“You might need the jolt to your memory one day. In every addiction case outside of gambling, I tell my clients to obliterate every trace of their old lives: liquor, drug paraphernalia, porn DVDs, and the like,” Melissa Tovar said early in my treatment. “Those things will come at them in the course of their daily lives, but not so with a gambler whose drug of choice is a casino, where the activity is centered in a specific location. Keep a reminder so you don’t ever, ever forget how in trying to be a winner you lost everything you had.”
I take out the envelope that holds my last will and testament, made here in Aberdeen when I returned to care for my father with power of attorney. I had Emma to think of then. Everything I had, small as it was, would go to her. I never addressed any of my personal wishes for her. It just seemed wrong at the time when I was lying about her mother’s death.
To her.
To my lawyer.
To myself, even.
From my purse I retrieve a pen and a slip of paper with the verbiage that I copied from a legal-advice website.
I can do this. It’s the right thing to do.
While Madeline looks around the dark space punctuated by stalactites of halogen light, I write out the words in a space on the last page. The young bank teller starts to watch as I lean over the broad walnut table to change my will. I take in some air. This feels good. Feels right. In the final line, I write in the name of the person I wish to raise Emma Marie Sonntag in the event that something happens to me.
Carter Wilson Hanson.
I look over at Madeline, and she immediately joins me at the table. I sign my name, write the date, and then hand the pen to her. She’s young and fragile, but she writes her name with a strong flourish. Somehow that emboldens me a little. I think that if this updated legal document finds its way into court, she’ll be a strong advocate for the authenticity of my signature.
I look at my phone. It’s 12:30. Carter’s back from lunch by now. He’s dependable like that. Dependable is what Emma will need. I head to his office.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Monday, August 28
I watch Carter as he pores over the Tomlinson case file sprawled out on his desk like the aftermath of a tornado—shards of the case everywhere. Photos, interview notes, and a time line appear to converge randomly but in fact are carefully ordered. Carter is a deep thinker. He processes each piece of evidence and looks for the places that can be linked to reveal what actually happened to Ally Tomlinson. Not just what people say happened but the truth of it all. He doesn’t see me at first, and I almost use that as an excuse to just leave without telling him what I’ve done.
Or what I might have to do.
He looks up and sees the concern on my face. He reads me so well, and that, I would admit to no one, scares me a little.
“You okay?” he asks. “Case is okay, right?”
I step inside, close his office door, and take a seat. The pictures of his children flank him like a Sears portrait studio backdrop, a kind of realism that isn’t really all that real. I know that he loves them. I know that if he could have any kind of a do-over, it would be to keep his marriage intact, his family together.
My heart beats a little softer.
“Is your dad okay?” he asks.
I shake my head. “No, it’s not that. Dad’s fine. Case is fine.”
He neatens up some of the paperwork that held his rapt attention before I came into his office. Everything about that moment tells me that I’m doing the right thing. That I’m making the right choice to speak to him now. He asked about me. About my father. About the case too, but it wasn’t only about the case. He cares about me. I know that.
“I changed my will.”
His eyes sear into mine. He’s looking deep inside.
“I don’t follow,” he finally says.
“Carter,” I continue, “I named you as Emma’s guardian if something happens to me.”
He gets up from his chair.
“What are you talking about? Are you sick?”
I shake my head. “No, I’m not sick.”
“Well, then you’re crazy,” he says.
“Not crazy,” I say. “Just being practical.”
I don’t say anything for a beat and neither does Carter.
“You barely know me,” he says, though I know he doesn’t really mean it.
“That’s a lie, Carter. I know you better than anyone. I trust you more than I trust anyone.”
He walks around the desk and sits on its edge, knocking a pencil holder to the floor.
“You need to tell me what’s going on, Nic,” he says. “Wills? Guardianship? That’s big.”
“Nothing is more important to me than Emma,” I tell him. “And I have no idea what Stacy really wants. If she’s here to push my buttons and then be gone, fine. But I don’t know. I really don’t.”
“Emma is her daughter,” he says.
“Biologically, yes. But just because she gave birth to her doesn’t mean that she can come in and out of her life anytime she wants.”
“Actually, it kind of does,” Carter says.
“She’s a monster,” I say, a tit for tat that I immediately know sounds juvenile.
He leans closer. I can feel tears come, but I don’t let them fall.
“That’s probably entirely true,” he says, putting his hand on my knee. It’s a gesture of compassion, but it feels strange. “But so what? The worst people on the planet can raise their children because they are the kids’ parents. That carries more weight in our society than just about anything. You know that, right?”
My mind flashes on Sabrina Travis, a four-year-old girl from Bellevue who was abused by her stepfather in the worst ways one could possibly imagine; even now, years later, I cannot fathom how these impulses coalesced in his dark mind. I told the DA that Sabrina’s mother was culpable because she was in the house when these things were happening to her daughter: she saw things, I was sure, and she’d chosen to ignore them all. I lost that battle. The DA insisted he needed the mother for the case against the stepfather.
“She’s bad,” he told me while I stood there getting angrier and angrier, “but not that bad.”
After the stepfather was incarcerated for a laundry li
st of crimes against Sabrina, the girl with the saddest eyes I’d ever seen was returned to her mother. Turned out that Sabrina’s mom was no better than her stepdad.
But she was the mom.
That’s the trump card that any cretin can play.
Sabrina’s mother was arrested for child abuse and sent to prison. She claimed that everything was a big misunderstanding.
“She’s my daughter,” she repeated over and over. “I would never, ever hurt my own little girl.”
Carter leans back a little. He’s opened the door to let me tell him what’s really going on.
“I know all of that, Carter. I also know that Stacy is the kind of person who would stop at nothing to get what she wants. If I tell her that she can’t have Emma as long as I’m alive, she’ll look for a way to remedy that.”
“Has she threatened you?” he asks.
I shake my head. “Not in the way that you’d understand. Or anyone, for that matter. Stacy doesn’t have to say the words to convey a message. In fact, she’s too smart for threats. She’s a doer. She just makes up her mind and goes for whatever it is she wants. Money. Her husband’s fortune. Anything at all.”
Carter changes the subject.
“I’m honored, really I am,” he says, “that you’d want me to take care of Emma. But I don’t have much of a track record. I’m not even much of a father to my own kids. I see them twice a month.”
He’s treading water.
“I know that, Carter,” I say, this time letting my eyes do the searing. “I also know that you would move mountains for your kids. Look at me. I don’t have a lot of choices here. And even if I did, I’d still pick you. I need to make sure that Emma has an advocate—one who won’t let me down. Won’t let her down.”
“You can’t really think that your sister would try to kill you,” he says.
“I’m sure she would if that’s what it came down to. I’m just trying to plan for a very uncertain future. It gives me a little shred of peace of mind that you will make sure that Emma is safe and cared for, because I know the kind of man that you are. You’ll make sure she’s loved.”
Carter laces his big hands behind his neck and brings his forearms together as he bends downward. I see the hint of a tattoo on his upper arm for the first time. It looks like an eagle’s talons. He’s never mentioned it.
“I don’t know, Nicole,” he says. “I don’t think this is a very good idea.”
I wait for his gaze to return to mine. This time I touch his knee.
“It’s the only idea that I have right now,” I say.
He nods. “All right,” he says. “You need someone to trust. I’m here.”
“Yes, that someone is you.”
“Right.” He mutters the word to the point of it being so soft, it is nearly unintelligible.
“Trust is everything,” I say.
“You’re telling me everything, right?”
“Yes,” I lie.
I can’t tell him everything, of course. I just can’t. To say much more will bring tears, and I don’t want to cry. I need to be strong for Emma. I want to hold her and to tell her goodbye, but in a way that doesn’t seem permanent.
Though it could be.
I am strong. I really am. But I know that I don’t have it in me to tell her goodbye.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Monday, August 28
It’s late afternoon, and the sky is slate. My hands shake as I sit in my car. I foolishly grip the steering wheel harder to steady myself. My knuckles pop. I can’t let this feel like a goodbye, but that’s how it does feel right now. I look up at Carrie Anne’s house. I teased her the first year that I brought Emma here because she still had her Christmas lights up. She flicked my comment aside good-naturedly, as I’d meant it to be harmless ribbing.
“Look,” she told me at the time, “when you have as many kids as I do, you cut corners wherever you can. Every December I feel like I’m ahead of the game because those silly lights are already up.”
I breathe in deeply and head up toward the front door.
Carrie Anne answers.
“You’re early,” she says, looking at her omnipresent phone. “Emma’s in back playing badminton. She’s getting the hang of it.”
“I’m here to see you about something,” I say.
Carrie Anne sees the worry in my face, and I love her for that. She can be brassy and silly and pushy—sometimes all at once—but she is the kindest person I know.
“This seems serious, honey,” she says. “Let’s go inside.”
I don’t move. “I can’t say much. I want you to do something for me. It’s very important. I’ve made arrangements to have my partner, Carter Hanson, take care of Emma if anything should happen to me.”
Carrie Anne takes me by the shoulders. “Arrangements? If something should happen to you? Are you okay?”
I shake my head. “No. I’m fine. But I’m working a very dangerous case and there’s no telling what might happen.”
I stop myself from telling her about Stacy and the kind of person she is—about turning her in for the murder of her husband, Cy, and her gardener, Tomas Vargas. I don’t say that I knew of it ahead of time and tried to stop her. That was the biggest joke of all. Stop Stacy? Nothing stops her.
Nothing but me.
Right now.
This moment.
“You’re scaring me,” Carrie Anne says. “Really, you are.”
I know she means it.
“Police work is dangerous,” I tell her.
Being a sister, even more so.
“You need to keep Emma overnight,” I tell her, my words getting stuck in my throat. “You need to see that Carter has her in the morning. I’ve done all the legal work. Don’t worry. It might never come to that.”
“None of this makes sense,” she says.
“I know,” I say. “I just need you to do this for me. I need help here, Carrie Anne. Please.”
“Of course,” she says. “I will help. That goes without saying. But you are scaring me.”
Just then I hear Emma’s laugh coming from the backyard. I could pick it out anywhere. It starts deep in her belly and then spills out like molten chocolate cake. Bursts of energy. Sweet. That’s her laugh.
“I need to go now,” I say, feeling my eyes puddle.
“What do I tell Emma?” she asks.
I hug Carrie Anne and give her my house key. “That I love her. That I haven’t abandoned her. Make sure she knows that. That I have to do something so important that I can’t put it off another day. That sometimes we have to do things that feel wrong to others when we know inside they are right.”
“What’s with the key?” she asks.
“Shelby,” I tell her, turning away so that I don’t get any more emotional than I am. “You need to go get Shelby tonight.”
With that, I turn and go back to my car for the drive to the jail, where Carter and I are going to meet Luke Tomlinson one more time.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Monday, August 28
My stomach is still in knots from my conversation with Carrie Anne when I find Carter and Luke’s lawyer, Thom Russo, waiting for me at the entrance to the jail. I suck in some oxygen, thinking that it will make me feel better. It doesn’t.
Carter informs me that a pair of uniformed officers has picked up Mia from the hospital. He can see that I’m upset, but he cares enough about me to give me a little room. I need room. A lot of it.
“She’s claiming harassment,” he says.
“Too bad,” I say, pulling myself back into detective mode.
Thom looks like the cat that swallowed the canary. I know that Carter has briefed him and dangled the “cooperation” carrot in front of his face.
“It doesn’t change the facts of the case,” I tell Thom, before he has a chance to say anything. “Your client left his daughter in the car.”
The lawyer’s face falls a little. He’s been in the game for a long time, and as far as I know,
he hasn’t had a win lately. Being a public defender, especially in Grays Harbor County, tends to go that way.
“He wants to talk,” Thom says. “I couldn’t stop him if I tried.”
With that, we sign in and go down the hall to the jail interview room. Through the observation window, I watch Luke as he sits on the other side of a table. A guard without a trace of expression on his face stands just outside the door. We go inside.
Thom talks first. He repeats what he told Carter and me at our last interview with Luke.
“This interview is against my advice,” he says.
Thom isn’t grandstanding. He’s saying what he needs to say if Luke turns on him later and calls him ineffective counsel. I doubt that will happen. Luke’s into this so deep that complaining about his lawyer, a favorite move of many defendants, wouldn’t move the coldest, most jaded heart. Even one belonging to another lawyer.
“Luke,” I say, “we saw the video of you and Mia at the old Red Apple grocery.”
He looks down, his eyes refusing to meet ours.
“That was right after you left McDonald’s,” Carter says.
Still nothing.
Luke is hunched over the table, and I see a tear fall onto its surface. His shoulders quake. He makes no sound.
“Look,” I go on, “we know Mia goaded you into this. We know that she had something over you. Was it Sam Underwood? Were you afraid that she was going to tell everyone about you and Sam?”
Thom urges his client to answer.
“Luke, you told me you wanted to do this. You wanted to come clean. This is why we’re here. If you’ve changed your mind, we can stop. Detectives Foster and Hanson can leave you alone,” he says.
“No,” Luke says.
“No?” I ask. “No, what?”
Finally he looks up. His eyes are red, and his face is streaked with those silent tears. He’s a wreck. I don’t feel one bit of sympathy for him. He left Ally in the car. He and his wife planned it together.
“No,” he says. “It wasn’t about Sam. He wasn’t anything to me. And, really, I don’t care what the guys at work think about me when it comes to having a good time. I liked Sam for fun. Just like Rachel.”
