Victim Six

by Gregg Olsen

  “Been out on the Saltshaker?” Serenity asked. “Or is it too cold now?”

  The Saltshaker was Sam’s pride and joy, a thirty-five-foot Sea Ray cabin cruiser that was more than twenty years old. Sam had babied it in every possible way. He hosed it off. Waxed it. Redid the galley and the head, and put in new vinyl on the seat cushions that served as a banquette at the dining table.

  “Every now and then. Half the time alone. You know your sister.”

  She poured herself some iced tea. “Yeah, she always hated the water.”

  “Maybe I can get you to come aboard sometime?”

  “I’m a little like Mel that way. Probably the only way.”

  Sam laughed. “I get what you’re saying.”

  “What’s up with that?” she asked, changing the subject.

  “What?” He tried to follow her line of vision, but didn’t catch what she was talking about.

  She pointed to a mobile home tucked behind the trees.

  “Oh, that. Been here forever. Just didn’t have the sense to have the previous owners tow it away. Wish we did. A damn eyesore.”

  Serenity grinned. “Fits in with the sketchy neighborhood. No offense.”

  The barbecue splashed some fire, and Sam jumped backward a couple of steps.

  “None taken,” he said. “We like the seclusion of the place. Some people pay a premium for it. For others it’s all they can afford.”

  Serenity knew what he was talking about. It was the perfect last sunny day of the season.

  At least, she thought so.

  Sam Castile had seen that look on his wife’s face before. Cold. Bitter. Pissed off.

  “She got him a goddamn video game,” Melody said.

  Sam turned down the blanket on his side of the bed. “Your point?”

  “Jesus, Sam. She’s supposed to be educated. Doesn’t she know that Max will end up a big, fat, stupid couch potato if he hangs out in front of the TV screen playing when he should be doing something better?”

  He peeled off his underwear and T-shirt. “She was trying to be nice.”

  Melody knew what was coming. She went for the bottom drawer of her dresser and, from a stack of twenty identical undergarments, pulled out a filmy, frilly bra and panties. “She knows how I feel about this stuff. She doesn’t care. Never has. She just does what she wants.”

  “Lighten up,” he said, now running his hand over her small breasts. “We do what we want, too.”

  Melody was about to make another cutting remark about Serenity but didn’t. Her tirade just then had been a lapse in the kind of control that she needed. She could hate her sister, be jealous of her. She could think anything she wanted. But she wasn’t in control. She never had been.

  “I want to play now, babe,” he said. “Been a long day.”

  She knew what he wanted, and she rolled over onto her stomach. There was no love in their lovemaking. It was more of a punishment, an endless poking and prodding. A game in which she was always the defeated and he the victor.

  Everyone gets what they want, she thought. Everyone but me.

  Only once since her life became dark and completely undone had Melody Castile reached out to anyone for help. She had phoned Serenity and asked if she’d meet her for lunch at the Shari’s just off Highway 16, near the first Port Orchard exit.

  “What’s the occasion?” Serenity asked after the hostess had seated them in a window booth looking out at the highway. “My birthday isn’t for six months.”

  Melody wore nineties-style pale blue jeans and an olive sweater. She never had anything new. She looked old, tired. Even her hair, which had been the true marker of her beauty, was dull, pulled back in a loose ponytail held together with a scrunchy.

  Who still wears scrunchies? Only my sister, that’s who, Serenity thought.

  Melody ordered coffee and a slice of strawberry pie. Serenity ordered apple. She thought no pie without a top crust was a real pie.

  “You look like shit, by the way,” Serenity said.

  “Thanks, I needed the compliment. You always know what to say.”

  Serenity could see that her sister was troubled. Her eyes stayed fixed on the traffic blur outside. She wanted to tease her more, kick her a little when she was down. There hadn’t been too many times in childhood when the balance of power had been in her favor. They were sisters in name only. Serenity had longed for something closer, something that approximated a genuine bond. She’d given up on that.

  If Melody was waving a white flag just then, Serenity didn’t see it.

  “So what’s up? Is it Mom?”

  Melody set her fork down and looked at her sister. “No. It isn’t. It isn’t Max. It isn’t you. It isn’t Sam. No, really. This is about me.”

  “And how you’re stuck out in the country, wasting your precious years?”

  Serenity knew the words were harsh, but she’d already let them out of her mouth.

  Melody reached for her purse. She pulled out a twenty and put it on the table.

  “Never mind,” she said, edging toward the end of the booth.

  “Mel, I’m sorry. What did you want to talk about?”

  “Nothing. It’s all right. Never mind.”

  Melody Castile knew that she was alone. It had happened so slowly that there was never a point at which she could have stopped it. Alone. And if she was sleeping with the devil, then she knew just what that made her.

  With satellite dishes affixed like mushrooms on rooftops around the residential neighborhoods of Vancouver, getting a feed from U.S. TV networks was no longer the challenge it once was. In the years of rabbit ears and roof- or tree-mounted antennae, it was a lucky family who could pick up Seattle TV stations. Despite the fact that satellite TV brought in the possibility of picking up L.A. or New York TV, old habits died hard. Certainly, Cullen Hornbeck could watch anything he wanted, but he still stayed fixed on Seattle’s venerable KING-TV for its evening news broadcast. Since he traveled to Seattle a couple of times a month on business, it made perfect sense to stay current on the goings-on down there.

  It had now been two weeks since his daughter went missing. He’d seen her face in the crowds at the local market. He’d heard her voice over the loudspeaker at the airport. He’d tricked himself at least twice a day into believing that she was all right and it was her finger that was tapping him on the shoulder when no one was there at all.

  He splashed some Crown Royal over a couple of cubes of ice. More, he thought.

  Another splash.

  He rolled the smooth, sweet alcohol in his mouth and down his throat. He could feel the slight burn of the whiskey as it sent a shock wave of warmth through his body. The ice crashed against his lips as he swallowed more.

  The anchorwoman, a striking blonde who’d been on the air since he was a teenager, announced the next story.

  “They are calling her Jane around the morgue in Kitsap County, but they know that’s not her real name. The county coroner is hoping that someone watching this broadcast can help identify her…”

  The TV showed a body of water, and a reporter, a black male in a puffy orange vest that made him look more road improvement worker than journalist, started to speak.

  “Two Port Orchard boys skipping school two weeks ago found her floating right here in Little Clam Bay.”

  Cullen poured another shot, keeping his eyes fixed on the screen. When Skye’s Siamese cat, Miss Anna, rubbed against him, he ignored the impulse to pick her up.

  “She was young, in her twenties. She was wearing—”

  Cullen set down the glass, missing the tabletop. The tumbler shattered, and Miss Anna ran for a place under the table.

  The clothes look as though they could be Skye’s. The age is right too.

  His heart raced. He disregarded the broken glass and stared at the TV.

  “…the young woman’s injuries were so severe that a forensic artist was brought in to re-create what she might have looked like in life.”

  A woman
identified as the coroner came on the screen. Birdy Waterman held up a drawing. Cullen felt relief wash over him. The image was all wrong. The girl in the rendering had a kind of vacant stare. She wasn’t vibrant and full of life.

  Of course, he told himself right away, she was dead.

  “This is an artist’s representation of what our victim might have looked like. It isn’t a photograph of her,” Dr. Waterman said. “If you are missing someone who approximates this image, please contact the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office.”

  The blond woman came back on and read a phone number. Without even thinking, Cullen Hornbeck wrote it down.

  It can’t be her. She isn’t dead. She just can’t be.

  It passed through his mind that he might not have the courage to dial the number. Not knowing still meant hope.

  Chapter Thirty

  October 7, 10 a.m.

  Port Orchard

  Kendall Stark and Josh Anderson fielded the calls after the story featuring the Little Clam Bay victim rendering ran in the Lighthouse and on TV. Calls came in fits and starts throughout the morning and into the afternoon. Sometimes it was clear that the person on the other end of the line was heartbroken or an attention seeker. Sometimes a little of both.

  “Looks like a girl I worked with at the Dinners Done Right on Bethel Avenue.”

  “My sister has been missing for two years. Might be her.”

  “My aunt.”

  “Best friend from high school. I think.”

  “My daughter.”

  There were dozens of such calls. But only one had some information that promised some real potential.

  It was from a man in Vancouver, British Columbia.

  “Was the blouse a Trafalgar?” he asked. “My daughter’s missing. I saw that the girl you found was wearing a green blouse.”

  Kendall looked at the list of clothing found on the victim.

  “Sir,” she said, “how long has your daughter been missing?”

  “Three weeks yesterday,” he said. “Is it my daughter that you’ve found?”

  Kendall could hear the man’s heart shattering.

  “I don’t know. But the blouse is a Trafalgar. Can you come to Port Orchard?”

  Kendall had seen the all-consuming look of loss on the faces of others who’d sat in the waiting room, next to the array of magazines on a glass-topped side table. The magazines were well worn but barely read. They were brought in by thoughtful staff members, the address labels neatly removed with scissors. Cullen Hornbeck sat slightly stoop shouldered, as if the air had been let out of his body and he’d refused to take in any more oxygen. His eyes were black buttons, unblinking and sad.

  “Mr. Hornbeck?” she asked as she stepped into the room. “I’m Detective Stark.”

  He stood and extended his hand.

  “Yes, I’m Cullen.” He looked around, catching the eye of the only other person waiting to see law enforcement, a gray-haired woman with a peeled orange and a People magazine. The woman went back to her reading.

  “Thank you for seeing me,” he said.

  “Of course, Mr. Hornbeck. We’ve already sent for your daughter’s dental records. We should have them this afternoon.” She looked at her watch. “Or they could be here even now, waiting in the coroner’s lab for log-in.”

  She motioned for him to follow, and the pair meandered through the lobby, behind the receptionist’s desk, past several unoccupied cubicles. She opened a door and led him inside a grim little room with two chairs and a black metal table.

  “Coffee?” she asked.

  “No, thank you, Detective.”

  “All right, then.”

  “It has to be Skye,” he said. “The girl you found.” His tone was slightly demanding, and Kendall found it a little off-putting. It was almost as if he was insisting that his daughter be identified as the Little Clam Bay victim.

  “Sir, as I told you on the phone, we won’t know until we compare her dental records or barring that, DNA from your daughter. You brought her toothbrush?”

  “Yes,” he said, his eyes welling with tears. “Right here.” He pulled a bright red toothbrush clad in plastic wrap from his breast pocket and slid it across the table. “I also brought her hairbrush. I know that sometimes that can be helpful.”

  “All right. Thank you.”

  “Detective, you’ve never asked me why I know that the dead girl is Skye.”

  “You saw it on the news.”

  Cullen shook his head. “No, that’s not all of it. That’s not how I found you to call. It’s deeper than that.”

  He looked at Kendall, wondering how many times she’d been faced with a man in his shoes.

  “How is it?”

  He took a breath. “I saw her picture on the missing girls’ Web site.”

  Kendall was unsure what Internet site he was referring to.

  “Sorry? Someone put up a photo of your daughter to help get the word out that she’s missing?”

  “No,” he said. “Someone put up a photo of the body you found in Little Clam Bay.”

  Kendall had known several cases in which armchair detectives—or cybersleuths, as they liked to call themselves—had put up victims’ photos, sometimes gruesome and offensive images, with the hopes that they’d strike lightning and glean a nugget of truth from the gawkers that flock to such sites. She knew that despite the confiscation of their phones, the images that Devon and Brady took of the dead woman had been floating around the Internet like a heartbreaking calling card.

  “I have this feeling in my gut. It is like the blade of a knife stuck in so deep that it presses against my spine. I know that my daughter is dead. I know that she’s never coming back.”

  He pulled out a photograph and handed it to her.

  It was a pretty young woman wearing the green blouse.

  “She’s pretty. Very pretty.”

  “Smart too.”

  “Where’s Skye’s mother? Has she heard from your daughter?”

  Cullen shook his head. He had a hangdog expression that made Kendall want to proceed with gentleness.

  “Maybe she knows something.”

  “I doubt it. The woman only knows one thing—and that’s how to live her own life, unencumbered. She never loved Skye.”

  “I’m sure you’re wrong, Mr. Hornbeck. All mothers love their children.”

  “Look, all mothers are supposed to love their children. It is supposed to be automatic, natural. But it isn’t so.”

  Kendall looked down, feeling the man’s pain swell to the point where it was palpable. She wanted to argue with him about what Skye’s mother felt. She was sorry for her too. Her daughter was dead, and whatever had transpired between them would never get resolved.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I had no business presuming how anyone felt. That’s between them.”

  Cullen looked hard at her.

  “That it is,” he said.

  “A bay view will be fine,” Cullen Hornbeck said as the Holiday Inn Express clerk slid a plastic key card across the front desk. She was a chubby girl, a brunette with lively brown eyes that she accentuated with a heavy application of mascara. She was younger than Skye and by no means a ringer for Cullen’s daughter, but the front-desk girl’s very aliveness taunted him. Picked at him. She tilted her head as she watched the hotel’s newest guest complete the requisite paperwork. She smiled a friendly smile.

  “Canada, huh?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  He noticed that the girl wore braces and had three holes pierced into each ear.

  Skye had had braces when she was fourteen.

  Skye had two…or was it three holes in each ear? How was it that he couldn’t be sure?

  “My mom goes up there every six months to get the aspirin with codeine. Can’t get it here.”

  Cullen didn’t say a word.

  “We have free continental breakfast tomorrow at six. If you’re looking for dinner tonight, the Chinese place across the street is pretty good.
Try their rainbow pot stickers and sesame balls.”

  “That sounds good,” he said, knowing that the idea of any food whatsoever was the furthest thing from his mind.

  His hotel room door secure, Cullen threw his suitcase on the bed and turned on the shower. He turned on the TV, louder than he would need to hear it, but not so loud as to be a nuisance to the other guests. He drew back the bedspread and dropped onto the pillow. He thought of how his daughter had always felt hotel bedspreads and pillows were full of “cooties” and that no one in their right mind would touch his or her bare skin to either. Deep within the folds of the poly foam, he began to scream. At first there were no words but the guttural cries of a man who had lost everything.

  Finally, the pillow consumed his grief, keeping his words tucked inside.

  “Skye, no! Please come back to us! Come back to me!”

  Sam Castile knew the value in “mixing it up,” as he liked to call it when it came to dealing with the women he stalked, used, and discarded. The only method that was off limits was gunfire. Even the most inept police department had access to labs that examined the lans and grooves of a spent bullet. Ballistics ensured that a killer could be traced. That is, of course, if the gun could be found and matched to the killer. Certainly, he could have stolen a gun. But even that upped the ante for the risk of detection. So many killers in the Encyclopedia of Crime that he kept on the shelf with other, less useful books had been caught because they’d committed another crime.

  Ted Bundy had been pulled over on a traffic violation in Salt Lake City. He’d attempted to elude police by driving through stop signs. With his headlights off! When he finally gave up, cops found an ice pick, handcuffs, and a pantyhose mask in the vehicle.