Now That She's Gone

by Gregg Olsen

  “I’m going to call my lawyer.”

  “Fine. I’ve already texted mine.”

  She watched him pack an overnight bag.

  “I’ll have your other things in the yard.”

  “You are such a bitch, Brit.”

  “Whatever. I don’t care anymore. I’ve seen the truth.”

  In her hand, she held the gardener’s business card, with Pandora’s personal cell number neatly printed on the back.

  “Pandora says I have the gift too.”

  “That’s perfect. That’s just perfect,” Roger said.

  “She told me that you would kill me and Naomi if I didn’t get you out of my house.”

  “You’re certifiably crazy. You know that? Why would you listen to some phony psychic? And really, what reason would I have to kill you and Naomi?”

  “Child rapists and killers never have a reason for what they do, Roger.”

  “I’m not a rapist,” he said. “I loved Katy. What’s gotten into you?”

  She looked at him with icicle eyes. “I should never have loved you. Daddy was right about you.”

  Roger stepped closer, but seemed to think better of it. “Your Daddy is half your problem,” he said. “The other half is that you’re a messed up, pill-popping bitch.”

  “You can call me anything you want, but nothing is worse than murderer and child rapist.”

  Later, after he was gone, Brit went into the bathroom and looked at the mirror. Her rage toward him was multilayered. She wondered how it was that she fit into his vision, his house, or even his life. He was the same age, but he looked younger. He had a career that made him the star of whatever he was doing. She had that too. She tried to, anyway. She didn’t tell people that helping troubled teens was more about the accolades that she garnered for doing so than for the support and encouragement she gave young people. She turned on the cold water and splashed her face. She retrieved a towel from the vanity and blotted her face. Brit knew that she was no longer young. No longer the beauty she knew she’d been. There was no denying that the lines on her face had deepened over the last few years. She tried Botox, but it left her vacant looking, and she valued the intensity of her presence.

  Her girls. That’s all she had. Katy and Naomi. And now, in every sense, both were gone. He’d taken them from her. He’d done the unthinkable with Katy.

  Stupid.

  Stupid.

  Stupid.

  And Naomi, she could barely look at her.

  Brit opened the medicine cabinet and surveyed a junkie’s dream. All of the bottles had her name and doctor on them, but some of the prescriptions had belonged to others. She collected pills from the purses and jacket pockets of the girls and boys who’d come to the coffee shop. It didn’t matter what they were—Adderall, methamphetamines, or any number of painkillers.

  She could swallow the lot of them right then and there and show Roger just how angry she was. Leave a note that his raping and murder of their daughter had driven her to it. That he’d confessed to her before she took her own life. That would show him. That would make the world see that she had never loved him, never wanted to be a part of the jewel box he’d built for them.

  Brit held a bottle of painkillers. It was a confetti-like mix of pills, most of which she could identify. Some not so much. She worried that they were too old, or if the cocktail of pills would make her vomit, kill her, or merely leave her brain-dead.

  Brain-dead, she decided, wasn’t such a bad option after all. Roger would be stuck with her at least in a small way forever. She knew that he’d foist her off on a nursing home and never visit her, but she’d still be there breathing and reminding him of the ass that he’d always been.

  Brit set the bottle on the counter. She realized that, more than hate, she felt the need to punish him. She found a reason she should go on living. Revenge.

  She pulled herself together, and, fully composed, punched in the numbers of Pandora’s personal cell phone.

  “Pandora, this is Brit.”

  “I’ve been expecting your call.”

  “Thank you for everything. I mean, it was an impossible night. Really, really hard.”

  “Truth is never easy, Brit,” Pandora said. “You feel it though, don’t you?”

  “I do. I mean, I do.”

  “You know what I’m really getting at, Brit. You feel the truth of the words I said, but also those within your own understanding about what happened to Katy when she disappeared.”

  “I don’t know. I think so.”

  “You are sensitive, you just are not fully in tune with your spirit guides. Listen to them, like you listened to me last night.”

  “I’m trying. I need your help.”

  Long pause.

  “I don’t know what more I can do to help you.”

  “I need to see you again.”

  “I don’t do private consultations anymore, Brit. I’m sorry, my time is just too valuable and as much as I’d like to help you find out what happened to your daughter. . .”

  “I can pay you.”

  Pandora let Brit’s words linger.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “I don’t want to embarrass you. But I don’t think you could afford it. Very few can.”

  “Please, I’m begging you. I need your help. I’ll pay whatever you need. I have to find out where Katy’s body is. I have to find her so that my husband can go to prison for the rest of his life, where he deserves to be.”

  “My plane leaves tonight. I’m packing now.”

  “Can you stay another day?”

  Long pause.

  “I don’t know. Like I said, my fee is probably beyond your grasp. No offense. No judgment.”

  “I have money.”

  “I charge twenty thousand dollars for a private.”

  Long pause.

  “I can get that for you,” she said.

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right to charge you, but I can’t make exceptions. You can understand the demands on my time, with the show, the other one in development and the skin-care line, Vanish, that I’m so busy with now.”

  “I know, but I’m desperate. When can you see me?”

  Long pause.

  “I have to change my tickets and rebook this room.”

  “Tomorrow then?”

  “All right. Fine. I’ll help you. Only because I care about you and Katy.”

  “Thank you, Pandora. Thank you.”

  Pandora hung up and looked at her lover as he flipped through a magazine.

  “That was Brit Frazier,” she said.

  “Figured.”

  “Sometimes I think you’re the psychic,” she said. “You nailed that one. You were so sure she’d want a private consultation.”

  “You do the heavy lifting,” he said. “I just call it like I see it. Nice job on the fee, by the way. I bet she had to think long and hard about that number.”

  “Sure, it was a gamble, but really some of this bores me so much that I don’t mind risking the occasional no.”

  “What are you going to tell Juliana? You know, the reason for the delay in your return flight. She’ll be pissed.”

  “She’s stupid and I don’t care one thing about what she says. Without me, there is no show. They can like it or lump it. I’m so over being used by our two-bit network to make money when all they give us is crap.”

  “I agree, babe. But I think you’ve got something half wrong here.”

  “Really?” she asked. “What would that be?”

  “I think I have some skin in the game here too. It isn’t all about you and your gifts. I have a certain amount of star power all my own.”

  She rolled her eyes upward and let out an exasperated sigh. It was over the top, like her reactions on the show.

  “I have more Twitter followers than you’ll have in a lifetime,” she said. “Don’t ever confuse your past notoriety as an indicator of your value to the network or me. Without me you are a washed-up cop in search of ano
ther TV show or a self-published book.”

  “It was indie published,” he said, correcting her.

  Pandora smirked. “Whatever,” she said. “You’re nothing without me. Juliana’s nothing without me. And as long as we keep her in the dark about our special arrangements with show guests, we’re good.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Lynn Overton had been crying. No wonder. Her child had overdosed and died—a child with whom she’d been working to make amends. She wore a blue sweater, jeans, and a pair of fuzzy slippers. She smelled of alcohol.

  “I thought you might come by,” Lynn said, her speech slightly slurred.

  “Oh, Mrs. Overton, I’m so sorry,” Kendall said.

  “Thank you, I appreciate that. I don’t think anyone understands how I feel right now. I loved her,” she said, letting Kendall inside and leading her to the kitchen.

  “I know you did,” Kendall said.

  They sat at the table. A Kit-Cat wall clock above them moved its pendulum tail. Lynn drank from a coffee cup, but didn’t offer her visitor any coffee.

  “What happened?” Kendall asked.

  “I don’t know,” Lynn said. She swallowed more of what she was drinking. “I really don’t. She had everything to live for, Detective. Everything. She had a husband. A baby. I don’t know what it could have been that would push her over the edge.”

  “Was it the TV show?” Kendall asked. “I know they had planned to call her. Dredging up the past can sometimes be a terrible trigger,” Kendall said.

  “Her husband told me that she’d talked to the cop on the show, but that was over the phone. She didn’t want to do an interview on camera. She said she didn’t want any part of it. That Katy’s disappearance was too painful to revisit.”

  “It was a very dark time for her,” Kendall said.

  More of whatever was in her coffee cup passed Lynn’s lips. “Yes,” she said. “A very, very dark time. For all of the kids.”

  “When you say all of the kids, do you mean Scott and Alyssa?”

  She nodded. “Yes. After Katy went missing, everything simply fell apart. Tami starting using. The other two stopped coming around. I think everything that happened to her in her life was unhinged by that tragedy. But she was doing better. I wish they’d stayed away.”

  “Did she see them? Do you know?”

  Lynn stared into her now empty cup. “I’m not sure. Her husband said Tami told him that some old friends had called, but she didn’t think she wanted to see them.”

  Kendall’s phone vibrated and she looked down and saw that Birdy was calling.

  “I need to take this,” she said.

  “That’s all right. You can go in the study if you want some privacy.”

  As Kendall retreated from the kitchen, her peripheral vision caught a glimpse of Tami’s mother pouring some vodka into her cup.

  “What did you find out, Birdy?” Kendall asked.

  “It was an overdose. The tox screen came back on Tami’s blood. She was off the charts with heroin. Something must have really set her off.”

  “Something or someone,” Kendall said.

  The drive to the UW that time of day was faster than taking the ferry. Kendall made it there in an hour and parked in front of the house that Alyssa and Scott had given as their address.

  “What do you want?” Alyssa asked.

  “I want to talk to you,” Kendall said

  “We’ve already talked. I have a class. I need to study.”

  Kendall looked past her and saw Scott sitting on the couch looking at a video game.

  “I’m here about Tami,” she said.

  Alyssa let out an exaggerated sigh. “What about her?”

  “She’s dead,” Kendall said, watching Alyssa’s reaction. There wasn’t one. “You know anything about that?”

  “No,” she said. “I saw that she died, if that’s what you mean.”

  “I need to come in,” Kendall said. “Scott, I need to talk to you too.”

  Scott nodded and got up. “If it’s okay with Alyssa, sure.”

  Alyssa made an irritated face. “Come in then,” she said. She looked over at Scott. “You dummy. Can’t you just keep your mouth shut?”

  The three of them stood by the doorway.

  “You should just tell her,” Scott said.

  “I will not,” Alyssa said. “It isn’t right. Just leave it.”

  “What?” Kendall asked. “What isn’t right?”

  “I know you think I’m the biggest bitch ever, Detective. I really don’t care. I’ve never cared about what anyone thought of me.”

  “I don’t think that, Alyssa,” Kendall said, in what amounted to the biggest lie she’d told anyone since she told Grace in the records department that the jeans she was wearing didn’t make her look fat. “What are you holding back?”

  Just then Alyssa collapsed onto a chair and started sobbing. It was loud, showy, and it was unclear to Kendall what it was that she was doing.

  “I’m sorry. I should have said something sooner. I really should have. We both should have.”

  “It’s okay, baby,” Scott said, now comforting her.

  “What should you have told someone?” Kendall asked.

  “About what Tami did. I’m not surprised that she killed herself. She was living with a heavy, heavy burden.”

  “What burden? Go on, Alyssa. This is very, very important.”

  Alyssa gulped some air. “She killed Katy. She told me she did. She said she was jealous of her and that she just wanted to make her suffer a little but it went too far. I didn’t know what to do. Katy was gone. Tami was completely crazy. I kept my mouth shut.”

  “We both did,” Scott said. “We both knew what Tami had done and what she was capable of.”

  “What happened? What did she do to Katy? Where is Katy?”

  “I never asked. I didn’t want to know. When Katy never came home, I knew it was true. That was enough for me.”

  “Tami had a guilty conscience,” Scott said.

  “She really did,” Alyssa added, mopping her tears with her shirtsleeve.

  “You’re going to have to return with me to county,” Kendall said.

  “Why? We didn’t do anything,” Alyssa said. “I have a class to go to.”

  “Me too. I have the same class.”

  Kendall stayed firm. “You need to come. You need to make a statement. I’ll follow you.”

  “But what about our class? Our professor will fail us,” Alyssa said.

  Kendall didn’t care. The girl had bigger problems than failing a class.

  “I’ll write him a note,” she said.

  “What good will that do us?” Alyssa asked.

  “It will buy you some time to make up the work.”

  It would also buy Kendall some time to think about the two lovebirds—the two lovebirds with two dead friends.

  It was going to be a very busy afternoon. Brad texted Kendall that Pandora had decided she’d come in for an interview.

  I’m sorry about this. Really I am, he wrote.

  Not as sorry as Kendall was.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “I know you don’t agree with my methods,” Pandora said as she faced Kendall for the first time since that night at the Frazier place in Manchester.

  “That’s an understatement, Carol.”

  Pandora smiled. “You’ve done some homework. Good.”

  “Considering what a few clicks of the mouse can come up with, I’d hardly say it was an arduous task,” Kendall said.

  “Look, haters hate. Lovers love. I’m a lover. Not a hater,” Pandora said.

  “Is that T-shirt on your website? If so, I missed it.”

  “No. But it’s not a bad idea. Catchy. I just might run with it.”

  “What are you? Some kind of a human wrecking ball? Do you go around and look for the vulnerable? People you can take advantage of?”

  “No. I go around and clean up the messes left behind by the likes of y
our Detective Mayberry. You know that he botched the case. I know it. The world will know it when the episode airs.”

  “It won’t air, Carol. Our DA is going to file an injunction. I’d be surprised if the Fraziers don’t file a civil case against you and the show.”

  “I love the idea of an injunction, especially one that won’t be able to halt the production of the show. The more publicity, the better.”

  “You like publicity. Don’t you?” Kendall asked.

  “I like to make money, Detective. Publicity is like revving up a cash machine.”

  “You really sicken me,” Kendall said, doing her best to try to cope with the anger that welled up inside of her. She didn’t like that woman one bit. She wouldn’t give her a drink of water if she were in the middle of a desert begging for one. Not if she was the last human being on the planet. The world didn’t need the likes of someone like Pandora.

  “You’ll have to do better than that to make me mad,” Pandora said. “Remember, I’ve already got what I wanted. I’ve produced Katy’s killer—something that you and your department failed miserably at. Say whatever you want about me. I hope you choke on your sour grapes.”

  Kendall laughed. “You are something else.”

  Pandora smiled. “Yes, that I am. Now tell me what you want from me before this interview or whatever you call it slips any lower.”

  The words “as long as you are around there’s always a new low” passed through Kendall’s brain, but she didn’t say them.

  “Fine,” Kendall said, eating her words. “Let’s focus on the show and what happened that night. Was it planned? Did you set out to call Roger Frazier a child molester and killer?”

  “I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re trying to imply.”

  “Get real, Carol.”

  “Stop calling me that. Carol doesn’t exist anymore.”

  “All right, Pandora. I want to understand.”

  “People who deal in logic can never understand what they cannot see, Detective. It is absolutely impossible.”

  “Try me. Humor me.”