Now That She's Gone

by Gregg Olsen

  “He’s stable?”

  “Yes.”

  “Has he said anything?”

  “No, his note pretty much says it all.

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Have you notified his wife?”

  “No,” the doctor said. “I’ll leave that up to you. I figured you’d want a crack at him before the media and family—not necessarily in that order—find out.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Wyatt Ogilvie had set his name up for a Google Alert. The automated missives didn’t come into his email account as often as he’d hoped when he’d done so, but he felt that as long as he was generating some kind of notice now and then he was still a celebrity. Often the mentions were merely the TV guide indicating that Spirit Hunters was on that evening, perhaps a line or two about the episode. A few times there had been some snarky comments online about how Pandora was the undisputed star of the show and that he’d been cast only because they needed “a doofus to move along the story line.”

  That morning, as he sipped a particularly strong cup of hotel French press coffee, the alert appeared in his email box. From its headline alone, he knew he was in for trouble. He set down his coffee to read. It was from Radar Online, a popular gossip and news site—though the editors didn’t seem to have a true handle on which was which—that left him reaching for some low-dose aspirin.

  PSYCHIC PANDORA LEAVES

  SPIRIT HUNTERS FOR BRAVO

  The website indicated that Pandora, who was in the midst of a major FBI case, was leaving her old gig for one that would feature her solving “classic true-crime cases that have baffled investigators and left victims’ families to cope with the unknown—in some cases for decades.” JonBenét Ramsey—with interviews featuring the dead beauty queen and her late mother from “the other side”—was the first installment. Filming was to begin at the start of the following month.

  “I’ll miss my friends at Spirit Hunters,” she was quoted as saying. “They’ll always be a part of me.”

  Part of me? Miss them?

  “That psychic bitch,” Wyatt said as he flipped down the top of his laptop and looked at his face, now very, very red, in the floor-to-ceiling mirror adjacent to the table where he sat, basking a moment ago, now feeling sick to his stomach.

  He threw on some clothes, not even trying to look the part of the TV star who in that very moment he knew was ebbing away. Pandora was the star. He knew that. He’d lied to himself over and over. He lied to his own mother when she asked him over for dinner one time if Pandora had the gifts she proclaimed so surely on the show and in interviews. Maybe he was a doofus after all. It was possible that he was doomed to failure from the very beginning, seduced by the woman’s charms and promises that he’d ride her coattails into a development deal with HBO. She’d promised that over and over. If he’d play along with her. Follow her lead. Do what he was told. She’d see that they’d go far. Network far.

  All of that was bull. Just like her. He hated her. He never liked sex with her. He only slept with her to stay close.

  As in, keep your enemies close.

  He got her on the phone.

  “Hi, babe,” she said.

  “Don’t babe me. I saw the item in today’s Radar.”

  Pandora didn’t answer right away. She’d had the TV on and he could hear the volume go lower. It was E!. She was probably watching to see if her deal made the entertainment news channel.

  “What item?” she asked.

  This was how she was going to play it.

  “The Bravo deal,” he said. His tone was flat.

  “God, Wyatt, you sure jump to conclusions. The Internet is full of lies. There’s absolutely no truth to that Bravo story.”

  “So you know about it?” he asked, letting in a little emotion and trying hard not to do more than that.

  “I know everything.”

  “Really?” he asked. “Then what am I thinking right now?”

  Pandora let out a breathy sigh. “That you can’t wait to see me.”

  “Wrong,” he said, a little more anger creeping into his voice.

  “Calm down, babe. Please. You’re making me feel a little uncomfortable. I need to stay centered. It’s bad for my health and for my instrument to be challenged by hate. You know that.”

  Hate was a good word choice just then.

  “You bitch,” he said. “You’ve been lying to me for too long. First the money. Now this. We had a deal.”

  “Oh, Wyo, must you be so dramatic?” she asked in that cool way she’d perfected over time. It was a demeaning affect that she’d managed about once a taping—usually targeted at some poor mother or father torn up about a dead child. Pandora’s cold streak was an icicle aimed with precision at the heart. She would always feign that she’d been misunderstood, but she hadn’t been. Her fans loved it. It was her duty, she once told Juliana, to give her fans what they wanted.

  “If you’d saved this kind of passion for the show,” she said, “we’d probably have better ratings.”

  Wyatt had heard enough. “We’re done,” he said, before hurling a threat. “I’ll take you down so fast you’ll wish you’d never met me.”

  Pandora laughed into the phone. “I already wish that, Wyatt. Every time you’re inside me.”

  Wyatt cut her off and immediately punched in Kendall Stark’s office number so hard that he almost cracked the glass of his phone. He took a deep breath. Pandora was crazy. Certifiable. Mean-spirited. Not so great in bed, either. He was calm—or trying to be. As the line rang, he played Pandora’s betrayal over in his head. Trying to see how a seasoned investigator who had tangled with the worst criminals anyone could face off with could get things so wrong.

  A beat later, Wyatt got Kendall’s voice mail. It was just as well. As calm as he was trying to will himself to be just then, he was furious and needed the drive to chill.

  “I’m coming over to talk to you,” he said. “Pandora’s decidedly not the real deal. I guess you probably already know that. At least I hope you do.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Wyatt Ogilvie held out a memory stick. “You need to watch this,” he said.

  Kendall took it. “What’s on it?”

  “You need to see for yourself.”

  She inserted it into her computer. “Where’d you get it?”

  “Juliana uploaded it into our show’s Dropbox the night she died. She didn’t really upload it. It’s an automatic upload.”

  “How did you get it?”

  “The three of us have access to it. Me, Pandy, and Juliana. It’s where we share the details of the case so that Pandy can look like a real psychic and the executive producers in New York can speak to the media with a straight face.”

  “I see,” Kendall said.

  “Click on video 295,” he said.

  Kendall did just that.

  The video started with the familiar face.

  “I’m Juliana Robbins and I’m about to score the biggest interview of my life. Background now. Last night a segment aired on KING TV in which I talked about my experiences with Spirit Hunters. It was the local-girl-makes-good kind of story. Anyway, after it aired I got an exciting call. A totally unexpected call.”

  She waited a beat, like the producer that she was. She knew the value of the pause.

  Kendall glanced at Wyatt. The TV detective sat with his arms folded, his eyes on hers.

  “Brenda Nevins,” Juliana went on. “She called. Yeah, that Brenda Nevins. The serial killer who abducted the prison superintendent and who has the local cops and the FBI in a dither because they can’t find her. Well, I found her. Or really she found me. She wants to tell me her side of the story and I’m totally down with that. In fact, I know this is make-or-break time for me and my career because outside of Princess Kate, I’d say Brenda Nevins would be the biggest ‘get’ in the world.”

  Kendall looked over at Wyatt.

  “Get means biggest score, interview-wise,” he said.

  Ken
dall nodded as the screen blipped to black, then started up again. It was a wider shot this time. Juliana had changed to a different outfit. The camera was positioned behind her back and was facing Brenda Nevins.

  Juliana asked her to identify herself, which Brenda did. The effect on her face indicated that she was in her element. Reveling in the opportunity to speak her mind. Share her story. Give the other side.

  Or something along those fuzzy media lines.

  “Brenda, the whole world is looking for you,” Juliana said. “Where is Janie Thomas? And what have you done with her?”

  “Oh, Janie’s fine. She’s my sweet little prison mouse. We’re in love. I don’t know how long it will last. We don’t see eye to eye on everything.”

  “Where is she?” Juliana asked.

  “Safe. She’s safe. And remember, Juliana, you know I won’t give you details like that. This isn’t about having the police find me, is it? Aren’t we here for symbiotic reasons?”

  “Parasitic,” Wyatt said, “is more like it.”

  Kendall couldn’t agree more.

  “That’s right,” Juliana said. “What have you been up to? Can you talk about that at all? Even generally?”

  “Some people would say I’ve been a very naughty girl,” Brenda said in a moment that Kendall was sure would make America’s skin crawl when the tape went viral, as she was certain it would.

  “Naughty? How?”

  “Oops, I did it again.”

  “Did what?”

  “Snuffed out a life.”

  “Did you kill Superintendent Thomas?”

  “No,” Brenda said. “I killed a man.”

  “What man?”

  “A horny bar owner. I really don’t want to say more about that. All right, Juliana?”

  “Let’s get back to that later,” Juliana said.

  “Let’s not. Let’s just say that we did.”

  “Fine. Let’s not. Let’s focus on what’s going on with you right now. How are you surviving?”

  “I’m doing just fine. I’m having fun. No one will catch me. And I’ve just started. After being in prison, I feel that I can finally breathe, and it feels great being on the outside.”

  “I’m sure it does,” the ambitious producer said. “But you’re not really free. You’re in hiding.”

  “Not forever. Just for now. I’m only seizing the moment. I’m trying to make myself the best that I can be. Remember I got caught once before. I don’t intend to get caught so quickly this time.”

  “You were caught for the murder of your husband, your child, your boyfriend,” Juliana said, her voice a little shaky.

  “She seems scared,” Kendall said, pausing the video.

  “Yeah,” Wyatt said. “She probably knows that she’s sitting across from a monster right then and that there is no one else at Swallow Haven to hear her scream.”

  Kendall pushed the PLAY button.

  “Yes, I did those murders. But I’ll do more. I’ve already mapped out my next victims and I intend to get the respect I’m due. Being good at something isn’t enough. You have to be proficient. The best. The one that everyone remembers. The one that parents tell their children to fear.”

  “I guess so,” Juliana said, now standing.

  “Is the interview over?” Brenda said, now standing.

  “Yes. Thank you. You should probably get going so you don’t get caught.”

  Brenda smiled. “I won’t get caught.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Two things,” she said. “The FBI and those hopeless gals from Kitsap County are not smart enough.”

  “You said two things. Is that two things?”

  Brenda shook her head. “No, that’s one.”

  Juliana leaned in. “What’s the other?”

  Brenda focused her eyes on the camera just then, then back to Juliana. “The other is to never leave a witness alive,” she said.

  Kendall watched with horror as Brenda flung herself at Juliana. Brenda’s hands throttled Juliana’s throat. Juliana clawed at her attacker and the two of them went down on the floor, out of camera range.

  “You stupid bitch!” Brenda screamed out. “You are making me very, very angry.”

  “Get off of me!” Juliana said.

  More screams.

  “I’m getting off on you,” Brenda said, laughing at her own play on words.

  There was more noise, thrashing and screaming, and then silence. When it was over Brenda stood up and dusted herself off. She looked at the lens, winked, and then disappeared out of view.

  Kendall, breathless from what she’d seen, turned off the video.

  “There’s more,” Wyatt said.

  Kendall nodded and pushed PLAY.

  “Fast-forward.”

  “All right,” she said.

  Brenda appeared on screen with a gas can. A beat later there was a whoosh of light. The clip was over.

  “Pandora screwed me over,” he said. “She’s a fraud. I guess we’re both frauds,” he said. “But I’m done. I wanted you to know how it was that she could come up with what happened to Chaz Masters. She also bilked Brit Frazier out of twenty K. Pandora is nothing but a grifter.”

  “Tell me something I didn’t know,” Kendall said.

  Wyatt shrugged. “Sometimes when you’re in the TV bubble doing a reality show you forget what’s real. Like who you are.”

  “You know that keeping this evidence will likely lead to obstruction charges.”

  “I brought it to you,” he said.

  “I know. I’ll do my best, Wyatt.”

  “Thanks. I really am not the buffoon you see on TV, you know.”

  Kendall knew there was a grain of truth to his personal assessment. He wasn’t all bad. She’d leave that designation to Brenda Nevins and Pandora.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Roger Frazier sat up in bed and shifted his body away from Kendall Stark, who stood near the doorway. Tubes ran from a saline bag overhead to his left arm, which was folded over his right. His eyes never once met Kendall directly. They stayed fixed on some crows toggling over the body of a dead rat in the hospital parking lot. The disgraced architect’s mouth stayed clamped shut. He didn’t want to see, didn’t want to talk, and almost certainly didn’t want to breathe right then. Roger had been denied the end that he’d sought for himself. His last creation was not a building or fancy home, but had been his death, and even that had been a complete failure.

  “Nurse,” Kendall said, “can you give us a few minutes?”

  The nurse, a middle-aged woman with hair the color of driftwood—and about as stiff—nodded.

  Kendall approached the bed. She held the note, now in a plastic sleeve, and spoke once more.

  “Mr. Frazier, you had us all fooled. I feel like the biggest idiot in Port Orchard. And that’s saying a lot,” she said, trying to shake some words from his frozen mouth. “I never once believed you had been sexually abusing Katy. I thought it was some kind of sick suggestion made by the show. Something for ratings.”

  After what seemed like a long time, after the crows took wing and went to ravage elsewhere, he finally looked up. His eyes were red and his skin very pale. He looked like he’d been through a war zone, and in a way he had. But the damage he’d done to himself at the end of it all was by his own hand. Kendall wasn’t sorry for him. It was, she thought, the coward’s way out.

  “I didn’t molest her,” he said.

  “It says you did,” Kendall said, holding the note to make sure he knew she had it. “Not specifically, but a jury wouldn’t have a hard time seeing this as an admission of guilt. Why don’t you just own up to it?”

  His eyes stayed on her. “I didn’t do it.”

  Kendall moved a little closer. “Cowards use suicide,” she said. “You did it, but you didn’t want the world to know that you molested and murdered Katy.”

  He looked back at the empty parking lot at the dead rat.

  He was a rat.

  “Beca
use I didn’t,” he said softly.

  “Let’s try this another way, all right?” Kendall sat in the window seat facing the bed. “When did you start molesting her?”

  “I told you I never did that. I wouldn’t do that. I loved my daughter very much. It was me and her against the world.”

  Molesters always say that, Kendall thought. So typical.

  “Why did you try to kill yourself?” she asked.

  “Because of you,” he said. “Because of everyone.”

  Kendall blinked. “What have I got to do with it?”

  “You’re like everyone else,” he said, staring her down. “It’s how you look at me now. You look at me in a way that I’d never experienced before, with revulsion and hate. I see it in your eyes right now. You think I’m a monster. My secretary of fourteen years, someone who knew me, quit because she didn’t . . . how did she say it . . . didn’t want the stink of the likes of me on her clothes.”

  His eyes welled up a little but he wouldn’t let that first teardrop go. He was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a crier. Not even when it might have been okay to be one.

  When Katy first went missing.

  “I’m doing my job,” Kendall said, almost feeling sorry for the man. “I have to consider that you might have done it.”

  “Even when the bearer of the news is some phony psychic from a TV show? One that just comes to town to make trouble for the sake of higher ratings? You, like everyone else, gets sucked into the idea of it and in no time at all the idea becomes reality.”

  Kendall pushed the plastic-ensconced paper at him. “Your note,” she said.

  He nodded, still fighting the tears. “My note,” he repeated.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s just a note about the facts,” he said, still looking at her.

  Kendall pushed a little harder. “The facts,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said. “The facts are that I’ve lost everything. All of my clients. All of my very good friends. Even my high school reunion asked that I not come this year because I would be a distraction. I used to be someone, Detective, now I’m a distraction, a pariah. I’m never going to be who I was before. Never again.”