by Gregg Olsen
“I had a cat. A white Persian named Devonshire,” Brenda said. “That cat loved me no matter what people had done to me. She was everything to me. You know what happened to Dev?”
“No.”
“My uncle Kent gave her away to a Mexican family.”
“Why’d he do that?”
“Because I loved that cat and he said the cat gave him the creeps.”
Janie felt sick. Her own life was so similar to Brenda’s. After that first encounter, there were others. Each time, Brenda moving closer and closer. It was like a cold shadow falling on her, so slowly that Janie didn’t really know what was happening. It was as if Brenda knew exactly how to draw her in. How to make her feel that she—and only she—really understood her.
“Why do you think you work in a prison, Janie?” she said.
“I didn’t start out with that as a dream. It happened.”
“Nothing happens. Everything is orchestrated by people. You and those around you. Think about it. Why a prison?”
Janie thought a moment. “I guess I wanted to do something good for society. I wanted order.”
“Not quite. Get real, Janie. You wanted control.”
“Control?”
“Control because you had none growing up. I didn’t either. But look. I’m on one side of the walls and you’re on another.”
“Maybe. Maybe that’s reaching a little.”
“I don’t think so. I wanted control too. My path was different. I killed those in my way.”
Janie didn’t bring up Brenda’s child. She couldn’t rationalize how an innocent could be in anyone’s way. The men, maybe. Though she knew that there were other alternatives. She could have just left them.
“Killing people isn’t the answer, Brenda. It’s barbaric.”
“Holding people in prison for doing what’s natural is barbaric, Janie.”
“Maybe so. But it’s the law.”
Brenda changed the subject. “I like your hair.”
It started like that shadow. Brenda would dig into Janie’s life and Janie would feel that the serial killer inside the walls that she controlled was the only person who really understood her. Brenda was brilliant. No one who knew her or studied her could say otherwise. But she was also funny. And what seemed to matter more as time went on, Janie Thomas felt that Brenda knew her better than herself. She had tapped into her heart, brain, soul. She made excuses to spend more and more time with the inmate, offering her an assignment working in her office. None of the other women trusted or liked Brenda Nevins, but none could say anything about it. Janie Thomas was in charge of their paychecks and their futures. With more potential cutbacks coming from the state’s Department of Corrections in Olympia, none dared breathe a word of any concern. When Janie returned home to Erwin every night she found herself in the boring life she’d invented for herself—a control mechanism. What had been comforting was now stifling. What had made her feel calm and safe now agitated her.
How could Brenda Nevins know her better than anyone? Better than her husband? Her son? How was it that at this middle part of her life that she’d finally found a soul mate?
Janie Thomas wasn’t a lesbian. She’d never even thought of being with a woman. Or another man for that matter. The connection with Brenda was deeper than sex. In fact, sex was something she was certain would never be part of their special bond.
How could it be? She was Brenda’s captor, not her lover.
“Your husband won’t want you back. The ladies in the prison will eat you alive when you end up in a cell. That’s where you’ll be. You know that, don’t you, Janie?”
Janie didn’t answer right away. Her mind raced over the events that had led her there and what she was certain was about to follow. Brenda was right.
“No one would want me since I’ve been with the likes of you,” she finally said.
“Oooh, I like it when my little prison mouse gets real tough,” Brenda said, tightening the cords around Janie’s wrists. “That’s a side to you I didn’t see coming and it makes me want to laugh.”
“I don’t want to live anymore. I don’t care what you do to me.”
“In time,” Brenda said. “Did you ever wonder how we came to this moment, Janie?”
“A million times.”
“Did you know that it was Missy who brought us together?”
“Missy Carlyle?” Janie looked confused.
Brenda smiled. Her blinding white teeth seemed menacing. Like a tiger’s. “Yes, our little Missy. She took pictures of your personnel file and gave them to me. Carried them in her pussy.”
“She didn’t have access,” Janie said, though now feeling the connections being made. Her own psychological evaluation had revealed some of her own trauma growing up. The parallel story lines of their lives were a fabrication, a road map created to suck her into Brenda’s world. “You didn’t have a Persian cat, did you?”
Brenda shook her head.
“An uncle who raped you?” Janie asked.
“Actually, it was the other way around. I seduced him when I was fifteen. I worked him over good. I got money. A car on my sixteenth birthday. A new car, not a used one. The sex was lousy, but I didn’t care. I called his dick my joystick, but I never got a thing out of it. I knew then that I had to use what God gave me if I was going to get out of that godforsaken hellhole alive and make something of myself. I was never like the other girls.”
“I don’t expect you were,” Janie said, her voice suddenly weak with the kind of despair that comes with the realization that everything that she’d thought was true had been built on a lie.
Brenda lifted a straight-edge razor she’d collected from Chaz Masters’s bathroom when she did her “shopping” after killing him.
“You’ve served your purpose,” she said.
“Please make it quick,” Janie said. There was no fight in her. No purpose in fighting. To fight Brenda while she was tied to a bed was to enrage evil and make the ultimate punishment even greater. Her eyes stayed on Brenda’s, away from the blade. The last thing Janie saw was her own reflection. She closed her eyes and waited for her life to ebb into the mattress.
“Goodbye, my meek little prison mouse,” Brenda said.
CHAPTER FORTY
Pandora sat in the chair while the technician at the satellite TV station attached a microphone on the inside of her black sweater. She had done her own makeup that morning and asked if she looked all right.
“This is hi-def,” she asked, “isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” a voice in her earpiece said. “Pretty much everything is hi-def these days.”
“Tell that to the producers of my show,” she said, facing the lens of the camera while the young man named Jerry adjusted everything.
“Cable’s pretty cheap, you got that,” he said. “Earpiece comfortable?”
She nodded.
“You’ve done satellite before?” Jerry asked.
“A time or two,” she said.
“Great, then you know that you’ll need to look directly at the camera,” he said.
She looked at the lens. Someone had hung a Post-it note with an eyeball on it, and underneath it had written with a ballpoint pen: Look Here.
The voice called into her earpiece.
“This is New York again, can you hear me all right?”
“Yes,” she said. “Loud and clear.”
“Can you say your name and how to spell it, how we should identify you on the graphic?”
“Pandora. P-A-N-D-O-R-A. Psychic and author.”
Jerry excused himself for the control room.
“Got it,” she said into the air, toward the lens.
“All right. The talent is Les, one of our top reporters.”
Pandora shook her head. “I thought I was going to speak with Diane. I don’t know any Les.”
“He’s great,” the producer said. “You’ll like him. Diane’s on assignment. We’re doing this live-taped and she’ll intro the piece when i
t airs tomorrow. All right, Pandora?”
Pandora made an exasperated face, which was certainly seen by New York.
“Five seconds,” the producer said.
“Pandora, this is Les. Can you hear me all right?”
“Crystal clear,” she said, adjusting to her circumstances.
No Diane Sawyer. Damn!
“Great. I’m going to put together a package with some graphics and photos to introduce the piece, so don’t worry about that. Let’s get started on the interview. If you want to stop at any time and rephrase that’s fine.”
“I appreciate that, but I’ve done this before. I’m good.”
“All right then, mighty fine. Pandora, it seems like your show has stirred up a hornet’s nest in Port Orchard, Washington. What’s going on down there?”
“A hornet’s nest is putting it mildly, Les. We came to do a show on a missing girl, turned up psychic evidence that a murder had taken place, and now it appears that one of our own has ended up dead.”
“That’s right. Juliana Robbins. She died just after the taping. What happened to her?”
“I’m supposed to have all the answers, I know, but I don’t. I have no idea. The sheriff here is laying all of this at my feet, but neither Wyatt nor I brought this on,” she said, holding her gaze steadily on the Look Here.
“She was strangled and the house where she was staying was set ablaze, right?” Les asked.
“That’s what we hear. I mean, we’re not getting much information. She was a part of our TV family and the detectives here have shut us out of the investigation. Stonewalled us.”
“Isn’t it true that they want your participation? Asked for you to make a statement?”
“That’s funny. Excuse me for forgetting to laugh, Les. But they are engaging in a modern-day witch-hunt, trying to insinuate that I had something to do with Juliana’s death.”
“You say witch-hunt,” he said. “That’s a pretty tough depiction.”
“Well, it is, Les. You’re right. People with the gift have been stoned, hanged, burned at the stake for centuries. It’s funny how every other special group gets the support of the free-thinking nation, but those with the gift are considered charlatans and purveyors of fraud.”
“There have been charges that you’re a fraud. I’m glad you mentioned that.”
“Les, I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Our viewers really want to know your take on the complaints of others who have been on your show.”
“I told your executive producer that I couldn’t get into any specifics on past shows. I’m all about the future anyway. My fans know that.”
“All right then. Let’s get back to the case that brought you to Washington.”
“Katy Frazier,” she said, doing an imitation of concern—the same one she used on her show. “She was sixteen when she went missing four years ago. My guides told me that she’d been molested and murdered by someone close to her.”
“My understanding is that you named her father, a prominent local architect.”
“I can’t say anything about that,” she said. “You’ll have to watch the show. I will say that, however, this is the best work that I’ve done.”
“What do you say to the families who think that you’ve capitalized on their tragedies?”
“I never come looking to hurt someone. Every person who I’ve tried to find, every crime I’ve tried to solve, has come by request of those who come to me for help.”
“So are you saying that it’s sour grapes, you know, when things don’t turn out the way they want them to?”
“A bitter pill is more like it. These loud naysayers and complainers need to get in front of a mirror and examine themselves. Evil sought them out for a reason. The price they pay now will be paid over and over until they reconcile that.”
“Pretty strong stuff.”
“The truth is strong stuff.”
“Okay, Pandora. I think that wraps up what we need. You were great. Thank you. Now, is there anything you want to add?”
“A couple of things, Les. Will you mention my upcoming book, The Heart of the Matter: My Life with the Greatest Gift? It will be out in a few months. Pre-order now on Amazon.”
“All right, will do. What else?”
“People die because they are supposed to die. It’s the balance of the earth and it cannot be changed by anyone. Katy and Juliana, while tragic to us, have moved on to a higher level of consciousness and for that we should be grateful. Maybe even jealous.”
“But Juliana was murdered, Pandora.”
“What difference does it make how someone gets there?”
Birdy pushed her chair back when Kendall appeared in her office.
“I thought you’d be coming by this a.m.,” Birdy said.
Kendall made a face. “You saw the show too?”
“Yes,” Birdy said. “I can’t say I think much of her acting, but I do think Pandora’s internal script is a particularly fascinating one.”
Kendall sat down. “She really is unbelievable.”
“To us. But to others she’s, you know . . .”
“The real deal,” Kendall said, completing the statement that had become almost a running joke. “Now she’s acting like she’s being victimized by us, or mostly by me.”
“I got that. She wants the world to believe that she’s part of some persecuted, protected class of citizenry.”
“Exactly. I didn’t know liars and manipulators were protected.”
“Only those in politics, anyway.”
Kendall laughed. It was the first laugh in a long time.
“Maybe she’ll run for office,” the detective said.
Birdy nodded. “She’d probably win.”
“I don’t know, Birdy. We’ll have to see how things shake out after our interview.”
“Did I hear you correctly?”
“Yes, at two this afternoon. She called saying that it was time to clear the air. I think she’s just coming so she can go on the news again and complain about harassment or the like. I’ll see you there, won’t I?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
BOOK THREE
KATY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Madison King thought the half-dead coffee-roasting machine that her cheap-ass boss insisted was still “good enough” had finally given up the ghost when she arrived for work at 4:30 A.M. at the restaurant in downtown Port Orchard that she’d worked at since graduating from college. Madison had wanted to get a job as a teacher, but her student-teaching experience that previous year had taught her a lesson of her own.
She could deal with the fourth graders at East Port Orchard Elementary just fine. Their parents, however, were another matter. They were either absent or so pushy that Madison was all but certain bruises would appear on her body like mini storm clouds the day after any encounter. When she dreamed of being a teacher she never considered the other half of the job—the dads who hit on her, the moms who wedged themselves into every activity, the social workers who could barely remember the names of the kids for whom they were responsible.
Opening up the Bay Street Café for the day was easy enough. She started her day early, which meant she’d end it while there was enough time in the day to chase another dream. There was a problem with that, however. Madison just wasn’t sure which dream to pursue.
The whiff of what she thought was a burned-out coffee roaster assaulted her when she parked her car behind the restaurant. She’d been fighting a cold and sniffed a little deeper.
It wasn’t burned coffee beans and motor oil. It smelled worse than that. It reminded her of the smell of burned hair and maybe something else.
Gasoline?
Madison pinched her nose and went toward the café’s back door. Movement filled her peripheral vision.
“Get!” she called as she turned toward a bunch of water rats that were swarming over something by the receptacle where several businesses along that waterfront hid their
Dumpsters from customers’ view.
Madison hated rats. When she was making her list of career options, she was sure that had never wanted to be a vet.
At least not one that ever had to deal with rodents.
As the large-enough-to-be-completely-gross rats dispersed, Madison let out a scream. It was dark and she was alone but it took only a few seconds for Tim Boyle to reach her. Tim worked at Lunchbox Express, a food truck that catered to the foot-ferry crowd that crossed Sinclair Inlet on their way to their jobs at the shipyard in Bremerton.
“Maddie, you all right?” he called over.
Madison stood still as she kept her eyes on Tim, a big guy with a red beard and two gold earrings.
“What is it?”
“Over there,” she said. “Look!”
The light was dim that time of morning, but Tim had no problem seeing what the young woman had discovered.
He didn’t know who it was, of course. But Janie Thomas had been found.
Kendall Stark stood next to Birdy Waterman as she conducted the forensic exam and autopsy of the middle-aged female they were all but certain was Janie Thomas. The smell of burning flesh filled the air of the basement autopsy suite. Janie had been naked except for a nylon bra that had melted onto her breasts and a pair of jeans, unbuttoned and pulled down to expose her blackened lower torso.
“It’s her, isn’t it?”
“All but certain,” Birdy said, swiping a light over the teeth. “She had an implant on the front tooth. Cracked it when she was fourteen.”
“Must have been a car accident or something,” Kendall said.
“Not sure about that,” Birdy said. “Records indicate several implants.”
Kendall leaned in as Birdy pointed to the right top front tooth. It was white, while the others were darker.
“Porcelain doesn’t change with heat,” she said.
Kendall thought of the time when Steven had taken them camping and had tried to heat a mug of coffee next to the campfire. The mug exploded, but when they put out the fire before they left, the shards of white sparkled against the sooty remains of the logs they’d used to build the blaze.
