Victim Six

by Gregg Olsen

  Trevor pedaled toward the entrance to the woods, then turned down a pathway that looped through part of the forest before joining the road near the airport. His heart was pumping as he went up a little rise, his wheels cutting into the coffee-black soil, his iPod on shuffle mode. He stopped to catch his breath at the top of the rise and took a drink of water. A breeze fanned the beads of sweat on his face.

  He noticed a tangle of long dark hair draped over some old deadfall and assumed that horseback riders had been through the area.

  As he took another sip, his eyes returned to the clump of hair. It was shiny and fine.

  Too fine for horsehair.

  He got off his bike to get a closer look.

  It was a considerable clump, maybe fifty strands. It looked remarkable not only for its silkiness but also for the violence with which it had been removed. It was held together on one end by what looked like small patch of skin.

  Jesus, he thought, recalling the article about the missing brush picker, Celesta Delgado, who had been featured in this latest edition of the newspaper. That brush picker must have been attacked by a bear. I’m getting the hell out of here.

  But before he did, he took out his cell phone and punched in three digits: 9-1-1.

  Kendall Stark looked down at the tuft of hair on the steel table in the center of Kitsap County’s mini crime lab, a cinderblock-walled room that had the vibe of a sinister high school chemistry lab. The lab, with both rudimentary and sophisticated forensic science equipment, was the central location where all evidence was processed. On the far wall was an old aquarium used for superglue testing for latent fingerprints; black and infrared lights that could pinpoint the location of blood or semen on a garment; and a series of images that showed various blood-spatter configurations. In the event that something required more refined analysis, it was dispatched to the labs operated by the state in Olympia or even to the FBI.

  Kendall turned the clump of hair with her latex-gloved fingertip and reached for a tape measure. The strands were fifteen inches long and held together by a tag of human skin that had dried to pliable leather. Human Naugahyde. She rotated the sample once more under the flat overhead light.

  “That the bicyclist even found this is a bit of a miracle,” Josh said, entering the room. “Has he been checked out?”

  “He’s clean. Just sharp-eyed,” Kendall said.

  “Our dogs turned up nothing more? Just this?”

  “That’s right,” she answered. “Nothing else.”

  She put the sample into a clear plastic envelope and fixed a bar-coded sticker with a name and case number to the bottom edge of the packet.

  “Off to Olympia,” she said. The state lab was already running a DNA test against samples recovered from Celesta Delgado’s hairbrush and toothbrush.

  “Must have been a knock-down, drag-out there in the woods. You know, a place so remote no one could hear her scream,” Josh said as he followed Kendall into the hallway.

  “At least two people must have heard her scream,” she said. “Celesta and her abductor.”

  She was right, of course.

  Where was Celesta Delgado?

  “Call for you, Serenity. On two.”

  Serenity Hutchins nodded at Miranda Jacobs, who commanded the phones outside the editor’s and sales director’s offices for all it was worth. Miranda, who never knew a day when a low-cut top and short skirt weren’t appropriate for the office, was the gatekeeper, the story fielder, the person with the heads-up on anything worth buying out of the Lighthouse’s classified section before it even found its way into the paper.

  Serenity set down her coffee and answered the blinking light on her office desk phone. She pressed the earpiece to her ear by lifting her shoulder.

  “Article’s a little thin on the facts,” came a husky voice over the line.

  “Most are,” she said. “Which one are you talking about?”

  There was a short silence. The caller moved something over the mouthpiece, sending a static crackle sound into Serenity’s ear.

  “The one about the brush picker.” Another silence. Another muffled noise.

  Serenity let out a sigh. She’d been a reporter long enough to know that readers always expected more than deadlines sometimes allowed. It wasn’t as if there was any real information in the article, at least not anything that she could have really screwed up.

  “Can I help you?” she finally asked.

  “No, you can help yourself.” The tone was unpleasantly cold.

  “How’s that?” she asked. “Did I make an error in the story?”

  “Not an error of the kind you’re probably imagining. An error of omission, that’s all.”

  Serenity could feel her blood pump a little. “Just who is this, please?”

  A slight hiss, then: “I’m the one who could tell you everything that happened to her.”

  His words came at her with the unmistakable air of authority, and they jolted her a little. Everything. That. Happened. To. Her.

  Serenity looked around the room, trying to catch eye contact with someone—anyone. Miranda Jacobs had her face glued to her computer screen. No one else was in the newsroom.

  “You’re an asshole to make a crank call like this. And I don’t care if you’re a subscriber.”

  The voice on the phone laughed. “Oh, I’m not, Serenity. I’m a fan of your work. I just think you could use a little more depth in your reporting. Maybe I could tell you what happened. Like I did the other night.”

  Serenity banged her stapler on her desk and finally caught Miranda’s eyes. She got up from her computer and started toward the young reporter.

  “Who are you?”

  “One who could tell you everything,” he said.

  Her face was flushed by then. “Then start talking. Tell me what you think I should know.”

  But the line went dead.

  “Hello? You still there, creep?”

  Miranda was standing in front of Serenity’s desk by then. “What was that all about? Are you okay? Did that guy say something awful to you?”

  Serenity shook her head. “It was that crank caller. Said he knew more about the missing brush picker out in Sunnyslope.”

  Miranda searched Serenity’s eyes. “You sure he was that crank?” she asked. “You look scared.”

  Serenity relaxed a little and set down her phone. “Just a little unnerved. Did he call in on the eight hundred line?”

  Miranda nodded. “Afraid so. Creepy and cheap.”

  Calls coming through on the toll-free line were untraceable on the phone console’s ID.

  “I wish those guys who get their rocks off calling in to the paper with bullshit theories about things would just get a life.”

  “Did he have a theory on the girl?”

  Serenity shrugged. “I think so. He said he could tell me everything.”

  “Everything that was in the paper, I’ll bet. And, sorry, but you know there wasn’t much in there. No offense.”

  Serenity hated Miranda a little more just then. The Lighthouse wasn’t the Washington Post, but she didn’t have to rub it in. She worked there too, for goodness sakes.

  “Maybe you should tell the Sheriff’s Office?” Miranda suggested.

  Serenity thought about it for a moment. “I suppose I could, but I really don’t have anything to tell them. We all get crazy calls.”

  “That’s the truth.”

  Miranda went back to answering the phone.

  Outside of Gleeson’s Grocery, one of those locals-only mini-marts that was Key Center’s primary gathering place, was a bulletin board. Before the Internet and even before the local paper started a Key section, the bulletin board had been the primary vehicle for yard boys filling in the long days of summer, loggers looking for extra work as homeowners sought to improve their views of slate-gray Puget Sound, and house-cleaners in search of “mobile home or mansion” clients.

  The boy and his father went past the bulletin board without so much
as a sideways glance.

  Inside, Gleeson’s was packed with DVDs on one wall, a “hot case” of fried foods on the other, and a small bin of produce, mostly of the kind that kept well: onions, potatoes, and head lettuce. The rest of the store was laid out like a bowling alley, with long, narrow lanes and shelves of canned goods on either side.

  Dan Gleeson smiled at the man and the boy, a warm look of recognition on his face.

  “Haven’t seen you in a blue moon.”

  Sam Castile smiled. “Been a while. Nice to have some time off. Me and the boy are going out on the boat.”

  “Weather’s been rough lately.”

  “Yeah, it has.”

  Dan looked at Max, who stood silently beside his father. “What can I get you? Turkey jerky? Healthy stuff, you know.”

  Sam answered for Max. “Nope, we want the nastiest, greasiest corn dogs you’ve got rolling around that hot case of yours.” He looked at his boy; the kid was smiling ear to ear.

  A girl behind the cash register rang up the sale as the store owner handed over a couple of corn dogs and packets of yellow mustard.

  The man’s eyes landed on the counter. Light-blue flyers were stacked next to a pink one that advertised a food drive at the fire station later that week.

  “The girl’s dad brought those in. Said I’d hand them out. Posted one on the bulletin board too.”

  Sam’s heartbeat quickened, but he didn’t show a trace of concern. “Never a dull moment around here.”

  “You got that right.”

  He took a flyer and promised to post it. The headline was in big handwritten letters:

  Have You Seen Her?

  “Look familiar?” Dan Gleeson asked.

  Sam shrugged and started for the door, his son trotting after him with a mouthful of nearly incandescent yellow mustard and batter-dipped hotdog. “The young pretty ones all look alike to me.”

  “That they do.”

  As he got in his vehicle, he noticed the blue flyer on the bulletin board flapping in the chilly breeze off the water.

  Have You Seen Her?

  He had.

  No matter what she told Josh Anderson or Charlie Keller, Serenity decided that it was in her best personal and professional interest to hold back one little tidbit of information from both detective and editor. She didn’t feel particularly great about the lack of disclosure, but the tradeoff seemed worth it somehow. The anonymous caller had confided a detail that was tantalizing for a young reporter hoping to make a name for herself—and looking to find a way out from this dead-end job. What he had revealed was etched in her memory.

  “I popped my cherry on another girl,” he’d said.

  Serenity, at home at her kitchen table with the TV playing in the background, set down her pen. Was it truth or lie? Exaggeration or fact? The caller was hard to read with complete certainty. His voice was husky, foggy.

  “What do you mean ‘popped a cherry’?” she asked, although she was familiar with the expression meaning to lose one’s virginity. But this man hadn’t really been talking about sex: although he’d described what he’d done to the dead girl, it had been about violating her.

  His pleasure, it was clear, was her pain. Her death was his orgasm.

  “Done it before,” he’d said. “Will most likely keep doing it. Until I get it right, Ms. Hutchins.”

  His words blasted a chill down her spine. He said her name, and it startled her. Of course, he’d sought her out, dialed her number. Wanted to tell her. Even so, that he had used her name to conclude the conversation seemed so personal.

  Ms. Hutchins.

  The pervert was slightly polite, which unnerved her even more.

  Chapter Sixteen

  April 19, 1:15 a.m.

  South Colby

  She was naked, running through the deep green of the forest. Overhead, she could see the contrails of a jet scratching the powder-blue sky. Could the people in the plane see her? She ran faster, her arms working like pistons as she propelled herself up an incline between a hemlock and a fir. Where to hide? Who could help her? Sweat oozed from her pores, and she ran faster and faster. Would she have a heart attack? Would she fall to the ground into the black mud, be sucked into the mire, lost forever? The woman was screaming as loud as she could, but it was for naught. There was no one to hear her screams. At one point she dared to look behind her, and she could see the form of a man rushing toward her.

  “Help me! Help!”

  “Babe, what is it?”

  Kendall shot up in their bed; her husband had turned on the light and was putting his hand on her drenched shoulder.

  “Oh,” she said, realizing where she was. Who she was. “Oh, Steven, it was so real.”

  “A bad dream?”

  She sat on the edge of the bed, looking out across the black waters of Yukon Harbor through the window, its antique glass rippling the view.

  “Yes. I was running from someone.”

  “You’re safe now.”

  She blotted her face with the sleeve of her robe. “I know, but it was so real.”

  “Just a dream,” he repeated.

  Kendall knew he was correct, of course, but she didn’t tell him the part of the dream that seemed so troubling, so very disconcerting. It wasn’t that she was running from someone. She wasn’t herself in the dream at all. Kendall was sure that the woman in her dream was Celesta Delgado.

  “I’m going to get some water,” she said, heading toward the door.

  As the tap ran, Kendall thought of the woman she would never meet. Coworkers at Azteca adored her. The owner of the brush shed had not one single harsh word for the young woman. And, of course, Tulio Pena had insisted from the very beginning that something very dark had occurred that afternoon in the woods. The clump of hair all but confirmed it.

  She drained her glass, set it next to the sink, and went back to the bedroom, stopping only for a moment to check on Cody. She wondered if her son’s mind ever conjured up such frightening images as she just had. Were his dreams empty, blank? Was autism a cocoon that kept a person buffered from the pain of the world around them?

  Is it better to know fear, she asked herself as she pulled up the covers next to Steven, who was fast asleep, so that you can appreciate love and the safety of those around you?

  In her job as a detective, Kendall had seen terror and its opposite over and over. She wasn’t sure if she had the answer to her own question.

  The row of flowering cherry trees had dropped a blushing blanket of snowing petals on the ground outside the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office. Several cars circled the front of the building trying to find a place to park in response to TV reports that a Navy aircraft carrier was coming into Bremerton that morning. A small group of people, Kendall Stark among them, gathered to observe the ship as it came into view. She stood with coffee cup in hand, feeling rushed and tired at the same time. She wore tan slacks, a crisp white shirt, and an ice-blue sweater, her hair a little more spiked than she liked, given a night of slumber interrupted by the dream of the frightened young woman.

  Later, Kendall would recall the dream, wondering if it had been something more than the workings of a mind trying to solve a problem.

  Serenity Hutchins, clunky old newspaper-issue Nikon camera in hand, nodded at Kendall as their paths crossed in front of the Kitsap County Administration Building.

  “Here to take some shots of the carrier?”

  Serenity smiled. “That and whatever else they tell me to do. Jesus, I know Keller won’t run this story anyway—not if there’s some major breaking news about a missing llama in Olalla or something.”

  Kendall retuned the smile. “Nice job on the Delgado story.”

  “Thanks. Any update?”

  Kendall shook her head. “I’ll let you know. But between you and me, nothing.”

  “I got another call from the weirdo the other day, saying he knew something. I called Josh—Detective Anderson—about it.”

  “I heard,” Kendall
said. “I’m sorry that you’ve been getting those. It can be very upsetting. I know.”

  Serenity slung the camera strap over her shoulder. “Our jobs are sort of alike in that regard, Detective.”

  Kendall sipped her coffee as they walked toward the front door of the Sheriff’s Office building, pink petals swirling underfoot.

  “You’re right. We both want the answers to the really hard questions, don’t we, Serenity?”

  The reporter raised her camera to take a shot of the fading cherry blossoms.

  “Yes. But in my case, I have to take on whatever my boss says is important.” She looked at her watch. “Like the new dry cleaner opening up on Bay Street. I can’t afford to dry-clean anything on my salary, but off I go.”

  Serenity Hutchins was like any other person in Port Orchard, Kendall reflected: she was doing what she needed to until that big break came.

  As Celesta Delgado had.

  A few minutes after returning to her desk, Kendall’s phone rang.

  The caller identified himself as Bernardo Reardon, a detective with the Mason County Sheriff’s office. He prattled on for a few moments in the congenial way cops do before cutting to the chase.

  “You might want to take a drive over here,” he said. “I think we might have found your missing brush picker. Or rather, what’s left of her.”

  The last words pierced her heart.

  What’s left of her.

  “What makes you think it’s our missing woman?”

  “Height, weight, age—it’s all good. Of course, it could be someone else, but if so, no one’s reported this lady missing.”

  “I see. Decomp?”

  “I’ve seen a lot worse. But like I said, come on over and take a peek. We’re about done with processing what we can.”