Now That She's Gone

by Gregg Olsen

  She knew that not because anyone told her, especially not Kendall, but because she’d stalked the school through the Web.

  Kara opened the bag and inhaled the heady scent of cinnamon and sugar.

  “They smell divine,” she said.

  Brenda leaned in and whispered as though it were a trade secret. “My recipe calls for a dash of almond extract,” she said.

  “I got a whiff of that,” Kara said. “You’re so thoughtful.”

  “And you’re so busy. I won’t take up any more of your time.”

  “No worries. But before you leave, please log in here.” She tapped a finger on a visitors’ sign-in sheet.

  Brenda took the pencil and signed: Whitney Nevins.

  Kara Watanabe did have a million things to do. She’d been frazzled since the day started. She was running on bad staff-room coffee and needed a boost before the bell rang and the lunchtime pandemonium ensued. She went over to the cubby where she’d placed the small bag of cookies that Cody’s aunt had left behind and set one little cookie on a paper napkin. She was just about to take a bite when student teacher Reeta Anne Marvell scurried inside. Reeta was overly dramatic, overly ingratiating, and overly helpful.

  Just flat out overly.

  “Ms. Watanabe,” she said in her one-speed fast voice, “two boys in C pod are having a fight in the boys’ bathroom and I just can’t get them to come out.”

  “Did you go in there?”

  “No. It’s the boys’ room.”

  “Yes, you said that, Reeta. But did you know that they are just children and you can go in there if there’s cause for concern?”

  She shook her head. “That wasn’t part of our training at the university. Not at all. It would be a major red flag if a woman went into the boys’ bathroom. I mean, like a scandal almost.”

  That was Reeta in a nutshell.

  “It wouldn’t. But fine, I’ll go break it up,” Kara said, barely registering the exasperation that she’d felt from nearly the second Reeta came into the office. She picked up the bag of cookies.

  “You watch the desk. I’m going to break up the fight, then deliver this to Cody Stark.”

  “I don’t have the training to run the office.”

  “Reeta, you do. A trained chimp could do it. And sometimes behavior like yours makes me think that this place is no better than a zoo.”

  “You’re mean,” Reeta said.

  “I don’t mean to be. Just sit tight and I’ll be back.”

  Reeta Anne Marvell was a stress eater. Big-time. She looked over at the snickerdoodle on the paper napkin Kara had set next to the sign-in sheet

  It was just sitting there. Just waiting for her. Reeta reached over and took a bite. Sugar powdered her chin and she wiped it off. She was going to have only one little bite. She didn’t think one bite would matter. But it was so, so good. She took another bite. And then another.

  God, this is a really good cookie.

  She felt a twinge of something. Guilt, probably. That had to be it. Then she felt a little warm. In the space of a single minute Reeta found herself clutching the counter and fighting to breathe. Her face was bright red. Redder than the school mascot, the American Beauty Rose.

  Something’s happening to me. Something’s not right at all. I don’t know what it is . . . I don’t have the training for this.

  She disappeared behind the counter grabbing the paper towel, the sign-in sheet, and Ms. Watanabe’s telephone down with her.

  Her fingers somehow managed to dial 911.

  Dixie Simpson had come off a break in which she’d managed to negotiate a deal on a used car on Craigslist, call her mother, and proofread a coworker’s résumé. The thirty-two-year-old brunette with the ice-blue eyes was the best communications specialist in the Comm Center’s office in Bremerton. She took satisfaction in her job and never missed a day of work.

  That morning had been slow. Two crank calls, a fire, and a woman who was stuck in her car at the Port Orchard Fred Meyer parking lot. Routine and boring. She liked things to keep moving. It wasn’t that she craved the drama of the calls, but rather she just wanted to be on the line whenever anyone needed help.

  It was 11:32 when the call came through.

  “Comm Center,” Dixie said. “What’s your emergency?”

  No one answered. Dixie checked the data line and saw that the call was coming from the offices of the Cascade School.

  “What’s your emergency?” she repeated. She could hear some movement, but no direct response. She repeated her question.

  “Help,” came a gasping voice. “Help me.”

  “Are you injured? Talk to me.”

  Another gasp and the noise of the phone being slammed onto the floor.

  Dixie’s adrenaline pumped and she swiveled in her chair, catching the eyes of her supervisor, Megan.

  She muted her mouthpiece. “I can’t get a handle on this call,” she said to Megan. “Coming from the Cascade School. Someone’s there, but this lady’s badly hurt. Maybe a shooting or something?”

  Megan did her own swivel and immediately notified the Kitsap County sheriff.

  “Not sure what’s going on. The caller can’t speak. A woman, we think. Something’s really wrong there.”

  Kendall hurried into the evidence room and made a beeline for Janie Thomas’s personal effects. Besides her clothes, there was a bindle containing her eyeglasses, four dollars in change, and a keychain. Kendall’s heart pumped when she looked down at it. The keychain had already been processed. She signed the evidence receipt, put the keychain in a separate bindle, and hurried over to Birdy’s office. Birdy was wrapping up a phone call with the school. Elan had been tardy the last couple of days and they wanted to know if there was trouble at home.

  “I’m new at this parenting thing,” Birdy said. “Maybe you can give me some pointers, Kendall.”

  “I’m like every other parent making it up as I go along,” she said. “I don’t want to be unhelpful, but I came over here as quickly as I could to tell you that I just got off the phone with Brenda Nevins.”

  “Crap. She called you too.”

  “Yeah. She’s the biggest attention whore in the history of the world.”

  “Copy that,” Birdy said. “What did she say?”

  “She wanted to know if we’d found the shark and the bird.”

  “She wants credit for everything, doesn’t she?”

  “That’s an understatement. She wants the world to know that she’s arrived. That she’s the best at what she does, which is killing.”

  “Why didn’t she want to be a chef or something?”

  “No kidding. She dropped a little hint that we might have missed something with Janie’s case. And Birdy, I’m really worried. Tell me I shouldn’t be.”

  “What was it?”

  “I brought it.” Kendall opened the bindle and held out the keychain.

  “Crap,” Birdy said, moving to her feet.

  “Tell me I’m overreacting.”

  “I don’t know. When it comes to Brenda Nevins there is no overreacting.”

  Kendall looked down at the brass-colored keychain. It showed the figure of Wild Bill Hickok next to a bucking bronco. Underneath the image were the words “Wyoming’s Legendary Cowboy Museum.”

  “I’ve been there,” Birdy said. “It was one of the few times we left the reservation when I was a kid. Mom had relatives in Wyoming. We stayed in a tent for two weeks. Not the worst time of my life, but in the top twenty.”

  Kendall smiled. It was a grim smile, but a smile nevertheless. “I’m in the top twenty of mine right now,” she said, not saying it was all about Steven and her marriage, but thinking it.

  “I’m not a huge fan of Detective Wyo, but I’d better warn him,” Kendall said. “He’s next on Brenda’s list.”

  “He’s probably in his top twenty worst times too,” Birdy said. “I feel sorry for him.”

  Kendall started for the door. “You feel sorry for everyone.”

>   Birdy acknowledged her friend’s assessment. Kendall was right. She did.

  Kendall’s phone was dead, so she used her office landline to reach Wyatt Ogilvie.

  “What’s up, Detective Stark?” he asked. “You looking for more dirt? You’re in the wrong place for that. I should have kept my mouth shut.”

  “Wyatt, you could be in danger,” Kendall said. “I think Brenda has a hit list and you’re on it.”

  “What makes you say that?” he asked as he turned on the speaker function of his phone.

  Kendall didn’t care.

  “She left a message with your name.”

  “Oh, did she now?” he said.

  “This is fantastic, Wyo,” Pandora said, chiming in with her all-too-familiar opportunistic glee.

  “Do you mind, Pandora?” Kendall said. “This doesn’t concern you.”

  “Everything about Wyo concerns me. Bravo might want him too. And just so you know, I really don’t like how you tried to manipulate Wyo and turn him against me.”

  Kendall seethed, but held it together. She was calling him out of a sense of duty, not because she cared about the man.

  “Whatever you two have going is twisted and sick and probably, actually unequivocally, unethical,” she said. “Maybe illegal. That’ll be for someone else to decide. And really, Pandora, stay of out this. You don’t know what you’re doing. You never have.”

  “Look, bitch, just because you have a badge doesn’t mean you can boss me around.”

  Kendall ignored the psycho psychic. Disregarding Pandora was the only thing she could think to do. “Look,” she went on, “I’m warning you, Wyatt. She’s very dangerous and your life could be at risk.”

  She was talking about Brenda, but she felt the same way about Pandora.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  Birdy Waterman retreated to the green linoleum-tiled kitchen for a cup of coffee. The new offices for the coroner had experienced some construction delays, and while she loved new technology and all the bells and whistles that had been built into her autopsy suite, she’d miss the house on Sidney Avenue. It was old, decrepit, and completely behind the times. Yet it had history and she always loved that. She looked out the window toward the back parking lot between the coroner’s office and the other county buildings. All had been built for their ascribed purposes—the courthouse, the jail, and the sheriff’s department. The house on Sidney had been drafted into duty.

  Her mind went back to that long trip to Wyoming when she was younger. Her sister, Summer, and she were close back then. Booze, jealousy, and envy hadn’t supplanted their genuine bond of sisterhood.

  Neither had the birth of Elan.

  They sat in the backseat of their father’s old Ford the whole time from Neah Bay across Washington, the Idaho Panhandle, through never-ending Montana to Wyoming with nothing but the rustic and rugged western landscape to entertain them. Their mother, Natalie, paid little attention to her daughters—she was always focused on herself. That would never change. When they arrived in Wyoming to camp with a horde of cousins, it was their father who insisted they see the famed Western art museum.

  “Not Makah,” Mackie Waterman said, “but our people nevertheless.”

  The museum was massive. Birdy remembered taking in all the paintings, the collections of Plains Indians artwork and the stories told by the docent there. All of it provided a connection with the other Native American people whom she’d seen portrayed on TV, but who seemed so foreign in culture and art. The Makah were people of the Pacific Ocean, shellfish gatherers and whale hunters. The Plains people commanded a vast world of countless acres of rolling grasslands, horses, and bison. They were the Indian people that everyone knew.

  Birdy and Summer each bought a seed-beaded bracelet that spelled out the name of the city.

  She nearly dropped her coffee cup just then. She was a blur as she ran from the kitchen to her phone. She dialed Kendall, but it went to voice mail.

  “Kendall! Call me! The museum isn’t just in Wyoming! It’s in Cody, Wyoming!”

  Brad James kept the sheriff’s radio on instead of background music as he went about trying to figure out if he could weather the storm he’d created with the Spirit Hunter debacle. He’d set up two K9 officer visits to local schools, an occurrence that usually brought in a measure of good press in the local weeklies. He’d been foolishly ambitious and knew it. He’d burned a major bridge with both Kendall Stark and Birdy Waterman—allies who were needed and specifically requested by media all the time.

  Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

  He stopped what he was doing—looking online for a new job—when he heard the code for a potential school shooting. A jolt ran though his body and he jumped from his chair and ran down the hall to find Kendall.

  He knew what school Cody attended.

  She looked up from her work and glared at him.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  “Kendall, I just heard it on the radio. Something’s going down at Cody’s school.”

  “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  “I heard it on the radio. A possible shooting at the Cascade School.”

  Kendall felt for her gun and grabbed her keys. A second later, she popped the siren onto her SUV and was barreling down the road. Her heartbeat was like a drum inside her. Pounding in her head. Telling her that Cody was all right. That all the kids were okay. That Brad James had screwed up again. And yet, she knew he hadn’t. The dispatcher had sent a patrol deputy to the scene. She called in too.

  “I’m en route,” she said. “I know the school. Is SWAT there?”

  “No need for SWAT,” the dispatcher said. “Woman in the office had a heart attack or a seizure or something.”

  Kendall relaxed a little. Not that she didn’t care about the woman. She probably knew her. She was just grateful that her son was safe.

  “Is she all right?” she asked.

  “Looks bad. Paramedics from the fire station are there.”

  When Kendall pulled up to the school, she could see the logjam of people around its pristine entrance. There were a few kids, some people from the neighborhood, and the whirlwind of activity that comes with a paramedic team. She threw her car into park, wrenched the brake into position, and jumped out. Inside, she felt the kind of urgency that comes when any mother feels that her child is in danger. It’s a kind of pleading pain that drives the mother closer to the danger, like a heat-seeking missile that had been launched into enemy territory. No real mother ran from trouble. Kendall was also there as a public servant. She felt for her shoulder holster.

  There.

  Seeing Kendall, Kara Watanabe ran over to her. For a woman in her sixties, she was fast.

  “What happened?” Kendall asked, seeing the unmistakable look of horror on Kara’s usually calm face.

  “Student teacher collapsed,” Kara puffed. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her. She seemed fine a half hour ago.”

  “No shooting?” she asked.

  “God no. Whatever gave you that idea?”

  It wasn’t a what, but a who. Kendall didn’t tell her it was the PIO from the sheriff’s office. Brad James had muffed it again. He’d sent her bolting through traffic to get there because the circumstances warranted it. There was no gun violence.

  “Are the kids all right?” Kendall asked.

  A mother Kendall had seen at a school meeting ran over to Kara.

  “Where is Cinnamon?” the mom asked, her voice dripping with desperation.

  “She’s fine,” Kara said. “She’s in the classroom. All the kids are fine. It was just Reeta that passed out.”

  Passed out. It was more than that. It was swift and decisive.

  “Is Reeta all right?” Kendall asked.

  Still out of breath, Kara kept her eyes on Kendall and shook her head. “Kendall, I think she’s dying. She might even be gone. I don’t know what happened. I don’t. A seizure or something.”

  The other mother stepped away, taking
in the scene.

  Kendall and Kara pushed back toward the front door where the paramedics were preparing Reeta for transport. The blank stare in the young teacher’s eyes and stillness of her body indicated Reeta was not going to make it.

  A paramedic shook his head in Kendall’s direction. He didn’t need to mouth the words or call over to her.

  “She was fine,” Kendall said, pulling Kara into the conversation. “Kara Watanabe is the office administrator. She was just with her.”

  Kara stared to crack a little just then. She’d been unflappable for most of the dramas that come with working at a school, but this felt too close to home. “Yes,” she said, her lower lip trembling as she tried to remain composed, “I left her in the office and she was okay. I mean, I don’t know if she has any medical issues. If she does, they would have been confidential anyway. I’m thinking she didn’t because the teachers that do have, you know, something wrong with them have to take meds in the nurse’s office. I never saw her do that.” She pivoted and faced Kendall. “She was fine when I left her. I had to run those cookies that your sister-in-law made over to Cody.”

  Kendall thought she misunderstood. She didn’t have a sister-in-law.

  “Kara, what are you talking about?” she asked.

  “Whitney,” the older woman said, her words now mixed with tears. “She came with some snickerdoodles for Cody.”

  Kendall’s eyes flickered. “Steven was an only child,” she said, her tone stiff, but her voice louder than it needed to be.

  Kara completely lost it. The recognition of what might have happened became so clear just then. She pressed her hand to her stomach. She felt sick.

  “I . . .” she said, her words now coming in the smallest bits, the syllables standing alone and away from each complete word. “I did something wrong, didn’t I? Whitney was so nice. She knew all about you and Steven. I didn’t . . . I’m so sorry.”

  Kendall grabbed Kara’s shoulders. “Where are the cookies?”

  Kara flinched. Kendall’s grip was strong and while she didn’t shake her, there was an implicit promise to do so if she didn’t answer quickly.