by Gregg Olsen
“I’ve thought about it,” Kendall said. “But I really don’t see how a psychic and a former cop can swoop into Port Orchard and unlock a puzzle that hasn’t been solved by top-notch investigators right here in this office. I’m not saying me. I haven’t worked the case. But others here have.”
“Have you looked at the press kit?” Juliana asked.
“Just doing that now. Before your call.”
“That’s awesome. I’m glad about that. Take a moment to review the section called ‘Lost, Now Found.’”
Kendall fanned out the glossy pages.
“I see it,” she said.
“Good. You don’t have to read it now, but once you start you won’t be able to quit until you finish. There are three Pandora case studies there in which she solved the unsolvable. No offense, Detective, but don’t slam something just because you’re unfamiliar with it.”
Kendall didn’t like being lectured by anyone, but she let it pass as she skimmed the promo materials in front of her. There was no use in fighting it. There was no way she could wriggle out of taping Spirit Hunters.
“I’ll read them later,” she finally said. “When are we doing the interview?”
“Pre-interview tomorrow,” the producer said. “That’s with me. Then the real interview with Wyatt is the next day.”
“Okay. Do you want me to call you?” Kendall asked, completely trapped.
“Nope. Let’s just set a place and time.”
“A place?”
“Yes, Detective. I’m in town. Staying at an adorable B and B in Southworth, Swallow Heaven. Couldn’t find anything I liked in Port Orchard.”
“The Comfort Inn is nice and convenient,” Kendall said, finding herself in the role of Port Orchard booster. She hated when people made slights against the town that had always been home. It was not upscale, but decidedly working class. Its views were of the shipyard in Bremerton, not some huge snow cone view of Mount Rainier. Port Orchard was never going to be like nearby Gig Harbor with its quaint waterfront lined with boutiques and restaurants. It was, however, something that a lot of other communities weren’t.
It was welcoming to new people.
“Oh, I didn’t see that on TripAdvisor,” Juliana said. “I only go four stars and above. Not that I can actually afford a five-star in a major city. The show doesn’t have that kind of dough.”
“I see,” Kendall said. “In any case, I don’t want to do it at my office. And like I said, I’m very, very busy.”
“That’s fine. How about a restaurant? You have to eat, don’t you?”
Kendall did, of course, but she also had Cody to think about. She’d need to get him from school, get him settled in, and see if Marsha, his regular babysitter, could cover.
Plus there was another fact that this TripAdvisor snob might have a problem with. She didn’t mention her son. That was none of Juliana’s business.
“Not a ton of choices here,” she said.
“Just looked online,” said Juliana, clearly a multitasker. “How about Cosmo’s off Sedgwick?”
Kendall knew the place well. Steven liked the restaurant’s five-cheese ravioli. Cody liked buttered spaghetti noodles.
“Fine,” she said.
“Tomorrow at six. The crew is coming to town as we speak and I’ll have to babysit them to make sure they get done what they need to get done. We have a show to put on.”
Kendall didn’t like that last sentence at all. A show. It made what happened to the Frazier family so trivial. Their daughter had gone missing and while there was great mystery about it, it was hardly entertainment.
Nor should it be.
“I’ll see you then,” Kendall said.
“Bye, Detective. Oh, one more thing. If you want to bring your son, Cody, that’s quite all right.”
Cody’s name being mentioned surprised her a little.
“How did you know I have a son?” she asked.
Juliana laughed. “It doesn’t take a psychic to find out things like that anymore. I Googled you.”
The line went dead.
Kendall sat there feeling sick to her stomach. She didn’t want to do the show. She didn’t want Roger and Brit Frazier, Katy’s parents, to get their hopes up either. Pandora wasn’t going to bring them closure.
At least she highly doubted that.
CHAPTER THREE
Kendall Stark and the county’s forensic pathologist Birdy Waterman met in Kendall’s office to cue up the videotape that the FBI had recovered from prison surveillance cameras. The pair were still in the midst of a cross-training program designed to improve the work and perception of the offices of the Kitsap County sheriff and the coroner—the result of a blunder that still had many embarrassed and angry.
“The FBI actually gave you something?” Birdy asked. “I think I’ll faint.”
“Don’t faint, Birdy,” Kendall said. “It’s a total bone toss. But yes. They know that we don’t have jurisdiction on the Nevins case and they want to play nice. You know, in case they want to blame us for something later.”
“When was it recorded?”
“At seven p.m. the night before the guards and staff noticed that Janie was gone.”
“And Brenda too.”
“Right. Brenda too.”
“Where did Erwin Thomas think his wife was, anyway?”
“That’s a good one, Birdy. She told Erwin that she was attending a U.S. Council of Prisons conference in Philly. The subject was helping inmates achieve their full potential once they leave prison.”
“That is good. Our government at work.”
“This time the government gets a pass on stupidity. There was no conference. I checked. Not in Philly. Not anywhere.”
Birdy’s dark eyes flashed. “That means that Janie went willingly, didn’t she?”
“More than willingly,” Kendall said. “You’ll see.” She swiveled her computer screen, pressed PLAY, and joined Birdy on the other side of her desk where they could watch the video clip at the same time.
The images were black-and-white and slightly grainy, but certainly clear enough for any viewer familiar with the women to identify them. Brenda wore dark pants and a white top. Janie had on a skirt and patterned blouse. Glasses hung on a chain around her neck.
“It just occurred to me now, but what’s Brenda doing in Janie’s office, anyway?” Birdy asked.
Kendall looked at her drafted partner. “Special privileges, I’m told.”
“Of all people in the prison,” Birdy said. “Brenda Nevins? She should have a tattoo on her face that says ‘Get the F Away from Me.’”
Kendall half smiled. “I know. It’s utterly crazy that anyone would give her any special privileges whatsoever.”
“But someone did. Her,” Birdy said, tapping her fingertip on the screen.
“Yes,” she said. “She was the only one who could.”
“Do we need popcorn?” Birdy asked. “I’m hungry.”
“You’re always hungry. And no, we don’t. Not unless you want to puke it up later. Just watch, okay?”
“Sufficiently intrigued, Kendall.”
The images unspooled across the screen. At first it was as Kendall admitted when she called Birdy to join her for a screening—“A whole lot of nothing, but wait until the third act.”
When the third act came it was everything that she’d promised.
“What’s Janie doing?” Birdy asked.
Kendall looked at her friend. “She’s taking off her clothes.”
Birdy made a face. “I can see that. But . . . oh crap, she’s not . . . Yeah, she is.”
“Right,” Kendall said. “She is.”
“I can’t get a man to do that to me,” Birdy said.
Kendall glanced at her friend. “That’s borderline TMI.”
“I’m just saying,” Birdy said, turning her head a little to improve her viewing angle. “Just saying.”
“You sound like a teenager,” Kendall said, still riveted to the video,
even though it was her third viewing.
“Blame that on my nephew, Kendall. Elan’s influencing me more than I’m influencing him.”
The clip went on with Brenda doing what she was extremely proficient at—writhing in ecstasy. Tossing her head back. Running her fingers through her beautiful hair.
“How is it that I can barely get a date and Brenda can turn these women like it’s nothing?” Birdy asked.
Kendall let out a short laugh. “I have no idea.”
“At least you’re married, Kendall.”
Kendall almost said “for now” in response, but she held her tongue. She wasn’t going to go there. Not until she heard something definitive from Steven. Why doesn’t he call? What is he up to?
The video finished and Kendall looked at Birdy.
“Well?” she asked.
“I hope that Janie pulls herself together before Brenda decides that she’s no longer worth the trouble,” Birdy said.
“I figure Janie has the shelf life of an already ripe banana.”
“I hope Janie’s family doesn’t have to see this.”
“I’m almost glad that it’s not our case just because of that,” Kendall said. “I wouldn’t want this played in a Kitsap County courtroom either.”
Kendall’s landline rang and she picked it up.
“Really?” she said, looking at Birdy with a strange expression on her face. The caller did most of the talking. “All right. I’ll bring Birdy. She’s with me now. I see. All right.”
“What was that all about?” Birdy asked.
“Brad James says I have a visitor.”
“He’s getting on my nerves, Kendall. He asked me to speak to a kindergarten class at Mullinex Ridge about autopsies. As if I could or would do that. What’s he making you do?”
“Beside that stupid TV show, Spirit Hunters?”
“Besides that.”
“He says I have a visitor. Someone who I need to see even though it’s not really related to any case I’m doing.”
“That’s weird. Who is it?”
“Deirdre Holloway.”
“Name doesn’t ring a bell,” Birdy said. “Who’s that?”
Kendall stood. “Brenda Nevins’s mother.”
“I want to go too,” Birdy said.
“I thought you would,” Kendall said, heading out through the doorway. “She said no. Will only talk to me.”
“I thought we were a team,” Birdy teased as she departed for her office.
“We are,” Kendall said. “For better or worse.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The woman’s eyes were familiar. They had the same coloring and shape as someone with whom Kendall had spent some time. They were older, wiser. And no doubt much, much kinder. Wearing a long, almost-black blue dress and a flowing, flowery pashmina over her left shoulder, held in place by a Tiger-eye clip, Brenda Nevins’s mother would get looks no matter where she was. She was beautiful with high cheekbones accented by a nearly imperceptible touch of makeup. PR guy Brad James had made it very clear.
Brenda Nevins’s mom is coming to talk to you. Says she has something important to tell you. You, and only you.
“I’m Deirdre Holloway,” she said.
Kendall smiled at her. It was weak smile, meant to disarm and inspire interest in the woman.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she said as she met her by the reception desk of the Kitsap County sheriff.
“I can see that you are judging me,” the older woman said.
Despite the fact that she’d arranged the meeting, Deirdre Holloway was defensive. Kendall was all but certain that when it came to her daughter as a calling card, she’d had her share of rebukes and censures.
“I’m not,” Kendall said.
Deirdre fussed with her pashmina. “I understand. Obviously I didn’t do a very good job raising her, did I? If I had, we wouldn’t be here.” Her voice trailed off before she added a quick and sad postscript to the truth of her words. “And I would still have a grandchild.”
Kendall led her to a conference room—a nicer one than the one she usually took suspects or witnesses to. It probably wasn’t easy being the mother of a serial killer. In fact, she knew it couldn’t be. Brenda Nevins had finally achieved what she’d long sought—notoriety on a grand scale. She’s vowed she’d do so. Promised detractors. Cajoled the police and jailers over the course of her various stretches of incarceration. In running off with Janie Thomas, Brenda had unleashed a veritable media frenzy on the Kitsap Peninsula. There wasn’t a parking lot that didn’t have a satellite truck looming above the pickups and SUVs. She was out there. Somewhere.
“I’m sure you did the best you could, Ms. Holloway,” Kendall said. “Some things are beyond anyone’s control. I’m sure you know that by now. At least I hope you do.”
Brenda’s mother sat down and pulled out a crumpled tissue.
Kendall shot her a sympathetic glance.
“Allergies,” Deirdre said. “Not going to cry, if that’s what you were thinking. I’m all cried out. Have been for years.”
Kendall had read the files about all that Brenda had put her single mother through. The drugs. The running away. The men. And, of course, the murders. Kendall had seen so many mothers and fathers left to cope with the aftermath of destruction left by their progeny. None could hold a candle to Brenda’s swath of destruction—which, of course, put Deirdre Holloway in a category of her own.
“You said you thought you could help,” Kendall said.
Deirdre refreshed her lipstick. “Yes,” she said, returning the black and gold tube to the open jaws of her purse.
“You’ve talked to the FBI, haven’t you?” Kendall asked, already knowing the answer. They all had. Birdy had. The sheriff had. Kendall—as the last member of law enforcement to have a sit-down interview with the notorious killer—had a three-hour interview with two special agents and a stenographer. The FBI had pressed her hard as if she was supposed to know more about the plans that Brenda had been hatching with Janie Thomas. But she hadn’t any information. Not really. The interview was a little on the awkward side, with Kendall pushing back as they fired their questions.
STATE’S ATTORNEY DAN WILSON: So you made a kind of connection with her, isn’t that right?
KENDALL STARK: I don’t know what you mean. I interviewed her.
SADW: It was more than an interview; you did some pretty deep soul-searching of the subject.
KS: Soul-searching? Not really.
SADW: I see. Well, she flirted with you.
KS: She flirts with anything with a pulse. Man. Woman. Dog, I suspect. Anyone she can use. That’s what Brenda Nevins does. Don’t you have Behavior Analysis guys in Quantico? Maybe you should talk to them.
SADW: You are being evasive and we want to know why.
KS: Evasive? I’m a local cop. I interviewed her about a case in which she was, as it turned out, tangentially involved.
SADA: She was very interested in your son.
KS: I didn’t get that.
SADW: You didn’t?
KS: No. But you’ve got my attention. What do you know?
SADW: I’m sorry. This is an active investigation.
Those familiar eyes staring at Kendall held steady from across the conference table. Cool air pumped in and the AC whirled. Behind Deirdre Holloway was a large framed photo of a beloved deputy killed by a meth head the year before.
“Yes,” Brenda’s mother said. “I’ve told them whatever they needed to know. I’ve talked to them before, you know.”
“Before what?” Kendall asked.
“Before Janie Thomas.”
The detective was surprised, but she didn’t allow any emotion to register on her face. The feds never shared. They only popped into backwaters like Port Orchard to show the rest of the world they were on top of it and that the local PD or sheriff didn’t know how to investigate a serious matter like they did. In part that was true. Outside of a few major American cities, none had the resourc
es that the bureau lorded—sometimes irritatingly so—over them.
“What were they after?” Kendall asked.
Deirdre narrowed her gaze. “You don’t know?”
Kendall shook her head. “No. I don’t know.”
Brenda’s mother wiped her nose and wadded up her tissue.
“My daughter was corresponding with a couple of other serial killers incarcerated in Utah and right here in Washington.”
“Corresponding?” Kendall asked. “That’s not possible. Inmate-to-inmate mail is impossible.”
Deirdre fiddled with the pashmina, smoothing out a wrinkle that had seemed to annoy her from the moment she arrived. “You obviously don’t know Brenda as well as you think,” she answered after a delay.
Kendall had read everything she could about Brenda Nevins. She’d followed her case during her murder and arson trial. Everyone did. But as a law enforcement officer, Kendall was supremely interested in the psychological makeup of the female killer. Outside of Aileen Wuornos, who murdered her customers in Florida, and a smattering of trailer park “black widow” killers over the years, there were few women who killed more than once. Brenda not only fit into that camp, she seemed to be the only one who reveled in the endeavor.
“How?” Kendall asked. “And really, why? That is, if you know.”
As she spoke, something occurred to Kendall. Deirdre was a little like her daughter. She had a flair for the dramatic, and was all but certainly paying Kendall a visit to indulge in a little attention-seeking too.
“I don’t know,” she said, a little unconvincingly. “Not exactly. During a visit last year she told me about Connors and Reed. She said she’d managed to get correspondence out whenever someone was released.”
Jerry Connors had murdered fourteen women—mostly street girls and weekend prostitutes—in the Seattle area in the early ’90s. He wasn’t a particularly brilliant serial killer, but one who managed to elude detection for a decade because his killings were so random. The ages and races of his women were across the board.
Cecil Reed was another matter altogether. He was devious, smart, good-looking. In another time and place he might have made the shortlist for TV’s The Bachelor. While some serial killers, like Washington’s Jerry Connors, were unintelligent and unattractive (the media called him a “dolt with a dark side”), Provo, Utah, ski lodge owner Cecil Reed was handsome and cunning. He also very specific. His targets were somewhat risky: lonely-hearted widows and divorcées who were looking for love on a ski weekend that his brochure promised “would be the trip of a lifetime where everything is taken care of . . . and romance is free of charge.” Over the course of a five-year period, the handsome and evil man met six women looking for love and adventure with a penchant for torture. They were drugged, violated, and kept alive in a chamber he’d created underneath the Alpine Glow restaurant that he had managed before creating his own scheme for money and grisly satisfaction.
