Now That She's Gone

by Gregg Olsen

  Kendall wanted to say, no, that’s crap in the corner. But she didn’t.

  “She was in Port Orchard recently,” Kendall answered. “That’s where I live in Kitsap County. She was doing her show and she told us some things we didn’t know about one of our old cases.”

  Rose put her bottle down on a nest of water rings on the table in front of her.

  “What she say?” she asked, not looking up. “Say someone else was the killer? Someone else did the kidnapping or something?”

  Kendall nodded. “Yes, something along those lines.”

  Rose looked at Kendall, leaned back, and laughed. It was a hard, loud laugh; so much so that Kendall was surprised the chronic smoker had enough lung capacity for such an annoyingly sustained outburst.

  “She says that on every one of those stupid shows she’s on. Every single time. I don’t know who’s a bigger idiot, those who watch the show or the producers who put up with that ridiculous crap. Don’t you watch?”

  Kendall shook her head. “Not really. I have seen part of an episode.”

  “Look, my daughter’s a liar,” Rose said, seemingly enjoying the opportunity to toss her under the bus. “She’s a bitch. She’s my kid. I know her. I know that she’s full of crap. She’s always thought she was better than . . .” she said, hesitating a beat.

  Me.

  “. . . than everybody.”

  “I see,” Kendall said.

  Rose stared hard at the investigator. She stayed quiet a moment, like she had when she was assessing how many marriages ago she’d been hitched to Mr. Kirkowski. “Do you?” she finally asked, “I mean, you’re here in godforsaken Spokane and you’re asking me about that bitch of a daughter of mine, I’m thinking, oh no, here’s another one of those nitwits who think Carol is some kind of high priestess of truth. She’s one step above a carny, if you ask me.”

  Whatever Pandora’s mother had to say was going to be good. Good as in an interesting story to tell, but possibly nothing to help advance the investigation into what happened back in Kitsap County.

  “So, Mrs. Kirkowski, humor me—”

  “Rose, please. Didn’t like Kirkowski that much. Not my favorite husband.”

  “Fine, Rose then. Are you telling me that you know for sure she’s a fraud?”

  Rose nodded. “I need another beer. And then I’ll do better than tell you. I’ll show you.”

  Pandora’s mother got up and went toward the kitchen, leaving Kendall in the squalor of the living room amid the feces and the trio of cats, who now had apparently thought that it might be more fun for them to cuddle up on the lap of the visitor. Kendall was all but certain that one of them was going to spray on her. She used the tip of her toe to push away an aggressive tabby as he backed up toward her. She was intrigued by Rose and her venom-soaked discourse on her daughter, but in reality—at that moment—an interview with an inmate in the worst prison she could think of would be more pleasant than sitting in that pretty-on-the-outside-but-rotten-on-the-inside-residence on Spokane’s famed South Hill.

  “Sure you don’t want a cold one?” Rose called over her shoulder as she fished around the back of the fridge for some beers.

  “No, I’m good,” Kendall said, pushing another cat away.

  “Out of coffee,” Rose called out.

  Another cat, another gentle toe-kick. “That’s all right. I’m fine.”

  Finally, Rose returned with two beers.

  “Brought me a second,” she said. “I call it my standby.”

  Actually, Kendall thought, that’s your third . . . at least that I know of.

  “You said you could show me,” Kendall said.

  Rose drank. “Show you?”

  “Yes. Show me something that proves she’s a phony.”

  Rose nodded and set down her beer. “That’s right. I did. Hang on, whatever your name is.”

  “Kendall Stark,” she said.

  “Right. Kendall.” Rose was on the other side of the room, pulling a box of papers and some photo albums from under a pile of unlaundered, cat-hair-drenched clothes. She took a seat next to Kendall and opened the first album.

  Kendall looked down at a photo of what appeared to be a magician and his assistant. The woman in the photograph was blond and slender. Her eyes glimmered in the black-and-white image. She stood next to a big box and a man in a black tuxedo, smiling broadly, who was motioning her to get inside. An enormous handsaw was in his grasp.

  “Is that you?”

  Again, the overly long and strange laugh.

  “Hell, no,” she said, when she finally came up for air. “It’s my bitch of a mother. She never cared two cents for me and my sister, Alice. She was all about being a goddamn star!”

  Kendall leaned closer to get a better look, the smoky air clinging to Rose’s terry robe like a smelly, brittle shell. She pulled away.

  “She was a magician’s assistant,” she said.

  Rose tapped the page with her nicotine-stained finger and then turned the page.

  “Among other things,” she said, her tone softening a little. “Yeah, she was.” She pointed to the next photograph. It showed her mother on what looked like a Western TV show.

  “Gunsmoke,” she said. “She was a part-time actress and a full-time whore on the set there. At least that’s what one of my dads told me about her years ago. She was always trying to make it. I wouldn’t live that life for nothing. I just wanted to get away from show business. As far away as possible. That’s why I’m here in Spokane. Can you think of a less glamorous place than this hellhole?”

  “It’s not so bad,” Kendall said, almost feeling sorry for the woman. “You live in a lovely neighborhood.”

  She couldn’t say anything about the house, but she bet the Tudor and the Victorian residents had some choice words to say about the house that separated the two of them.

  “Whatever,” Rose said. “I was stupid to think I could run away from my past. I literally thought that by living here I could raise my little girl to be, you know, something normal. But my mother wouldn’t allow that. No. Not at all.”

  She turned the page.

  On it was a picture of an old woman crouched over a crystal ball. On the wall behind her was the name Pandora.

  “Is that your mother?” Kendall asked.

  Rose nodded.

  “Yeah,” Rose said, her voice a little softer than it had been. “She had a little career going for a time. Some TV. That stupid magic act in Reno. Nothing huge. She was always leaving and telling me and Alice that her big break was about to happen and she’d be a big star. Bigger than Marilyn Monroe, if you can believe that. Well, stupid us, we believed her at first. Forgave her for missed birthdays, Christmas, and all that other crap that she insisted wasn’t really as important as being a star. To her. That was what she wanted. We hated her. Alice, believe it or not, more than me. Mom was such a liar.”

  She paused and regarded her beer, took a sip, and then pointed back to the photo of the fortune-teller.

  “That’s what she ended up doing. She was playing to an audience of one in a hole-in-the-wall in Hollywood as Madame Pandora, the Soothsayer to the Stars. I hated my mother so much for that. I hated her even more when she filled Carol’s head with the idea that she too could be a famous star, this time on TV, that she could be psychic.”

  Kendall didn’t know what to say. It was a pathetic story and Rose was living proof that her mother’s neglect was generational, born from experiences foisted upon her.

  “I’m sorry,” she finally said.

  Rose closed the book.

  “You don’t need to be sorry,” she said, though not convincingly. “I’m not. I’m glad the little bitch is gone from here. I don’t have to watch her implode, like my mother did. I don’t have to listen to someone say crappy things about her at the hair salon. If they do, I just try to shrug it off.”

  Kendall doubted that. Rose Kirkowski was not the kind of woman to do damage control for her daughter. Not one iota.
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  “Like your mother, your daughter is very ambitious,” Kendall said.

  “Not even close. Carol would sell me into sex slavery if that meant she’d see her name in lights. She’d screw me over every which way but Sunday. Probably Sunday too. My mom filled her head with ideas. Carol moved out of here and in with Mom when she was sixteen. I’ve only seen her four times since. That’s right, four freaking times. My mom was a bit player at heart. Carol is heartless. There’s a difference. I mean, growing up I felt sorry for my mom. I vowed I would never do to my kids what she did to me.”

  “But she turned on you. Why?”

  “Because . . .” her voice trailed off. “That’s a good one. I don’t like talking about it.”

  Kendall used the five words she hated to trot out. “But you can tell me.”

  Those words always felt so disingenuous. Even though she was there to gather evidence and the subject always knew that, it suddenly turned the conversation to something personal. It was as if by using those words it was only “between you and me” and it wouldn’t go further.

  Which was always a lie.

  “I guess so. You have kids?”

  “A son.”

  “I wish I had a boy. Boys are nice to their mothers. Girls, well, they just turn on you when they graduate from T-shirts to bras. There’s no putting the genie back in the bottle after that.”

  “What happened with Carol?”

  “My mother. That’s what happened to her. She put her through a kind of boot camp to fame. She had a few friends in the business—don’t ask me how—I’d have thought everyone she screwed back in Hollywood would have been dead by now—and she made some calls. The son of one of her friends with benefits or whatever you want to call it had a production company and they were looking for someone to play a medium in search of justice.”

  “Spirit Hunters.”

  “Right. That piece-of-crap show. Anyway, the producers there wanted her to play a medium who solves crimes.”

  “Sounds like a great concept, I guess.”

  “Right. NBC had a show like that. But this one was different. A so-called reality show. The show was far from reality. It is a complete sham. They tell her what to say. She even wears an earpiece so that they can feed crap to her when she’s sitting around acting all knowing.”

  “I guess I’m not surprised,” Kendall said. “I can see them feeding her words.”

  “Yeah, but there’s more. The producer in charge was molested by her father so she has it in for every man on the show. She told Carol that whenever the story line can work it in, the target of the show needs to be the dad.”

  “So they know all of this ahead of time?”

  Rose nodded and finished her beer. She was on to number two, or three, depending on where the counting started.

  “Yeah. Spirit Hunters, what a goddamn joke. That anyone believes it is beyond me.”

  “Can I take a picture of the photo of your mom? The one as Pandora?”

  “You’re not going to sell it to the Globe, are you?”

  Kendall shook her head. “No, for the case.”

  Rose hesitated, regarding Kendall, and then opened the book. Kendall took out her phone and snapped a couple of photographs. When Rose wasn’t looking, she took a picture of the cats and mess all around her. The first one was for the case; the second was to remind herself that law enforcement was sometimes very dirty and not at all glamorous work. She’d show that one to Birdy, who occasionally said that it looked like it was fun to go out interviewing people.

  “At least your people can answer your questions,” Birdy had said.

  “Yours answer too, though not with words.”

  As Kendall got up to leave, Rose dropped a bit of a bomb.

  “Just so you know,” she said, “my mother and my daughter are cut from the same cloth.”

  “I gather that,” Kendall said.

  “There isn’t anything Carol wouldn’t do to keep moving up the charts, or the fame ladder, or whatever. I mean nothing. It’s in her DNA.”

  “What exactly do you mean, Rose?” Kendall asked.

  Rose lit another cigarette by striking the match on the rough edge of the beer bottle.

  “I mean, she’d kill someone and go have a big breakfast afterward. That’s how she’s wired. If you’re here because of the show, that’s one thing. But I read Radar and the Enquirer online and know about the producer who got off’d in your little burg of Port Orchard.”

  Rose was surprisingly well-informed, Kendall thought, though her sources weren’t the best. She’d never brought up Juliana’s death. Not once. The whole time Rose Kirkowski had known about it.

  All about it.

  After leaving Rose Kirkowski’s smelly house, it passed through her mind that there was a great irony to the sweet-smelling name of Pandora’s mother. The house stank to high heaven.

  So did the family.

  In her car, Kendall checked her phone, while two boys played in front of the Tudor. Two missed calls. One from Birdy. One from Steven. Kendall didn’t want to talk to him just then and it bothered her that she felt that way. She was hurt, angry, and unwilling to hash out the same thing over and over. If he didn’t want to come home, so be it. She’d figure things out. She dialed Birdy.

  “How’s the Inland Empire?” Birdy said upon answering.

  “The what?”

  “That’s what they call Spokane now. Or at least that’s what they are wanting it to be known as.”

  Kendall grinned. “Really? I thought they called it Spokevegas.”

  “That too,” Birdy said. “How did go with Rose Kirkowski? I’m dying of curiosity here. Before I saw it on the Internet, I didn’t think Pandora had a mother,” Birdy said. “I thought she crawled out of some primordial ooze somewhere dark and inaccessible to normal beings.”

  “That’s about how I feel about her too,” Kendall said.

  The boys playing catch almost hit her car, but Kendall just smiled at them.

  “So what’s the mother’s story?” Birdy asked.

  “Mother is a chain-smoking alcoholic who despises her daughter and hates her own mother even more. Says that her mom was sometimes an actress and I believe her exact words were ‘full-time whore.’”

  “Sounds delightful,” Birdy said, without a whiff of sarcasm. “I bet Christmas is fun at their house.”

  The boys went into the house.

  “I’ll send the photos later and you’ll soon grow to feel sorry for me,” Kendall said. “Anyway, she said that her mother was the one who gave Carol the Pandora stage name and, along with that, the desire for life in the spotlight. She also said that the show was far from reality.”

  “We know that, don’t we?” Birdy said, struck that Kendall even mentioned the obvious. Maybe she hadn’t been sure. It was interesting and they’d talk about that another time.

  “Yes,” Kendall said. “But there’s more. The show is a complete setup. Everyone is in on it. One of the producers—Juliana maybe—had been sexually abused by her father and wanted that to be the story line whenever there was a chance to go for it.”

  “So Roger Frazier had no chance?”

  “Right,” Kendall said. “Not against the likes of her.”

  Next, Kendall returned Steven’s call, but after five rings it went to voice mail. Her heart sank, but she tried to leave a hopeful, upbeat message.

  “In Spokane doing some interviews. Marsha is watching Cody. Wish you were home, Steven. Or better yet, wish you were here. In any case, I’m wishing.”

  Kendall looked at the time. It would be dark when she got home. She’d gas up in Moses Lake, stop at the Starbucks in Ellensburg, and get there in time to send the sitter home. She’d be beat, but the trip had been worth it.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Among the many viewers of the Today show was Debbi-Jo Patterson. Her two-year-old was up half the night and she was fueling herself with caffeine and steeping herself in worry. She had been concerned about her b
oss, the owner of the Grey Gull, when he failed to show up for work the day before. While he’d been known to extend his vacation, Chaz Masters wasn’t the type to let his staff twist in the wind to wonder when he’d return.

  Debbi-Jo rocked her little one and held him on her hip while she dialed the number for the Kitsap County sheriff and asked for the investigator handling the Brenda Nevins case.

  “That case is being run out of the FBI field office in Seattle,” Darrin, the dispatcher, said. “You seen Nevins?”

  “No. I mean maybe. She was here last week drinking Bloody Marys with my boss Chaz Masters. He’s real reliable, and well, I’m worried. He was supposed to be back to work and he’s not.”

  “All right,” Darrin said. “Let me take your number. Hang on a sec. Got another call. I’ll give you the FBI’s number when I come back too.”

  “All right,” Debbi-Jo said. She waited, but then thought better of it. She was spooked, that’s all. She hung up the phone. Maybe Chaz will turn up later that day and they’ll have a good laugh over the very idea that he was offed by some sexy serial killer.

  Yes, she thought. We’ll have a good laugh over that one.

  After her shift, Debbie-Jo dropped her son off at day care and drove down the long, winding road to Chaz’s place in the woods. She knew it was stupid and that he’d probably chew her out for being such a worrywart, but she just couldn’t help herself.

  His car was missing, but there was another in the driveway that she did not recognize.

  “Maybe his car broke down and he had to get a loaner,” she told herself as she knocked on the front door. When there was no answer, she did what most people would do. She twisted the knob and swung it open. The air was foul and the stench came at her. She knew immediately what she smelled, but she hoped it was a dead raccoon. Chaz had told her that there was a family of the critters in the attic and he’d done his best to try to get them out of there humanely.

  “Chaz? You home?” she called out as her nose pulled her to the source of the smell in the bedroom.

  Debbi-Jo let out the scream of her life. Slumped in the bed was the nude figure of the man she’d adored from afar. He was bloated, features distended. His face appeared to be wrapped in a cocoon of plastic. The only thing that told her it was her boss was the tattoo of a seagull across his chest. She’d seen the ink when a drunk patron spilled his drink and he needed to change.