Victim Six

by Gregg Olsen

  “Why would someone do that?”

  “That’s your question to answer, but the truth is, Kendall, we never really know what triggers the darkest and the unthinkable. The killer could have picked up a rolling pin because it was handy or because using one in such a vile way held some meaning for him.”

  “Like he hated his mother,” Kendall said.

  Birdy put the report back in the envelope. “That’s one possibility, I suppose.”

  “Obvious as it is.”

  “Right. Remember the murders in Spokane ten years ago? I know this is a bit before your time. They called him the Grandma Killer?”

  Kendall searched her memory. “Yes,” she said. “I think he killed four women, all elderly.”

  “Yes,” she said. “The media—and my colleagues in law enforcement—were all but certain he was targeting older ladies because of some anger against them or some sexual compulsion. A classic rage killer.”

  Kendall was unsure where the conversation was going, and the look on her face signaled the pathologist to wrap it up.

  Which she did.

  “Point being, the killer wasn’t targeting older women because he was attracted to them. They were simply random picks based on opportunity. They’d spent months profiling a killer they thought had a granny complex for nothing.”

  “He was just lazy, right?”

  Birdy nodded. “That’s right. So what I’m getting at is, I don’t think that our Kitsap Cutter has anything against his mother per se. I think we’ve got a man who is an opportunist and is looking for women he can control, defile, and do with as he pleases. And there’s one more thing. I’m all but certain that our killer has an accomplice.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Some alleles were picked off the paint chips. They don’t match each other. They come from more than one person.”

  “Is the Cutter a killing team?”

  “That’s my guess. Of course, it might merely mean there was trace from the grandma who owned the old rolling pin. DNA, like fingerprints, is not time/date stamped.”

  Kendall Stark parked her child-fingerprinted SUV in the lot behind Bay Street in an oil-stained lot that looked out over Sinclair inlet at the Navy ships across the water in Bremerton. The Olympic Mountains, rugged and bare of snow, were an awe-inspiring backdrop. She glanced at the moored ships, gray and enormous, like whales lazing, and then proceeded to one of the antique stores that lined much of Port Orchard’s downtown thoroughfare. She was on the hunt for classic kitchenware, items that had once lovingly helped to prepare meals, but now had been used for the unthinkable.

  Most stores had “a little of this, a little of that,” but one seemed the most likely place to learn more. It was Kitchen Klassics, a hole-in-the-wall shop, just steps away from the library, a popular tavern, and a bail bondsman’s office that were the three busiest places on the main drag of town.

  Adam Canfield, a man who wore a cardigan and a bow tie every day of the year, nodded at Kendall as she came inside, ringing the bell. He set down his supersized mug of black tea and lit up with recognition.

  “Hi, detective,” he said, brushing back a lock of prematurely salt and pepper hair that hung foppishly fringed on his suntanned brow.

  Kendall had known him since high school when they worked on a production of Brigadoon. She’d been Fiona; he was a set decorator.

  “Adam, I’m on a mission, and I think you’re the one to help.”

  “A case.” He raised an eyebrow. “The case?” he asked, without saying the obvious.

  She smiled at Adam. He was complete gossip, but an effective one when it came to feigning confidence. He should have been an actor.

  “I can’t talk about the specifics,” she said. “But I’m hoping you can help.”

  He moved his tea aside and leaned on the glass case that served as a counter, his elbows sliding a little.

  “I’m here for you,” he said.

  Kendall described the color, size, and age of a particular kitchen item.

  “I’m thinking a handle on a cook’s tool.”

  Adam resisted the urge to offer up some kind of innuendo. “Red or red with a white underglaze?” he asked.

  She pondered the lab’s report. “Yes, there was a white underglaze.”

  “Good, that makes it more interesting,” he said. “And more valuable. Follow me.”

  Adam led Kendall between rows of old appliances and dining sets to a large locked case. Inside were crocks loaded with rolling pins, potato peelers, and tools with purposes unknown to the Kitsap County investigator. Adam unlocked the case and reached for a rolling pin with cherry red handles.

  “Made only one year, 1938, in Germany,” he said, giving dough roller a spin as he handed it over.

  Kendall stopped the whirling pin. “What happened?”

  “Company went TU,” he said. “The war, Jewish company, Germany.”

  Kendall rotated the pin. The dowel was not stationary like some rolling pins, but inside ball bearings turned the cylinder. It glided over pastry like a vintage Ferrari, smooth and with style.

  “I see,” she said.

  “Retails for about $400. You can have it for $375.”

  Kendall handed it back. “Thanks, Adam. But I’m more interested in who else might have wanted one of these.”

  He locked the case. “I’ve sold a couple since I’ve been in this location. Highly collectible, this stuff. Few people appreciate something so simple, so rare. “

  “How are your records?”

  Adam grinned. “They suck, but I could do some digging.”

  A while later, Adam Canfield was on the phone. Kendall was sitting in her office with Josh Anderson going over the minutes of the last task force meeting, taking their lumps and wishing they’d been able to put an end to the Kitsap Cutter case before things had spun out of control.

  Even more so.

  “Hi, Kendall, er Detective,” he said, correcting himself.

  “Hi, Adam,” she said, “have you got some good news for me?”

  “I don’t know if it’s good news. But it is news. I dug through the files. God, I wish I made enough dough to hire a full-time bookkeeper. It isn’t easy being in retail, you know.”

  “I’m sure, Adam. What did you find out?”

  “Three names: Katrina Dodson, Melody Castile, and Veronica—she likes to be called Ronni—Milton. All of them have purchased something in that old line I showed you.”

  She wrote down the names. Something seemed so vague, and she asked him about it.

  “My records are lousy. Lou-zee. I don’t know what they bought. You’ll have to ask ’em. Kat and Ronni live in Port Orchard. Melody’s out on the peninsula.”

  Josh Anderson’s eyes flashed recognition at one name on the list, and when Kendall hung up, he wasted no time telling her what he knew.

  “Melody Castile is Serenity’s sister. She’s one of those collectors, big-time. About all she does. I’ll run this one down.”

  Kendall didn’t have a great feeling about Josh “running down” anything when it came to Serenity Hutchins, but she agreed. She’d follow up on the other two vintage kitchen collectors. She always did two-thirds of the work when she and Josh worked a case together, anyway. Why should the Cutter be any different?

  Josh Anderson pulled the cork from the slender neck of a wine bottle, sending a nice pop into the air.

  “You’ll get a kick out of this,” he said to Serenity as he poured some wine into the last two goblets that his wife had left when she packed up (his first wife, not his last wife). The pair were holed up in his condo in Bremerton, taking in the view of the moonlight water and a passing pleasure boat.

  Serenity tasted the wine and nodded in approval. It was a crisp chardonnay that she favored, and Josh knew it.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “You mentioned your sister being a kitchen junk collector.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Among other things.”


  He nodded. “Yeah, among other things.”

  Condensation clung to her glass, and she wiped it away with a paper napkin.

  “Her name came up today on a list of buyers of stuff that may be related to the case.”

  Serenity wasn’t sure what he was talking about, but she didn’t press for details right then.

  “My sister’s a little loopy and her husband is a creep, but since my folks died they’re pretty much all I have,” she said.

  He drank some wine. “You don’t mention them much.”

  “We’re not close. Sometimes I wish we were,” she said.

  “I know how that goes.”

  Chapter Thirty-six

  October 22, 3:30 p.m.

  Key Center

  Max Castile had begged for months to be Indiana Jones for Halloween. At first Melody had been surprised by the choice. It seemed to be a character out of her own childhood and an unlikely candidate to inspire the imagination of a child of today. She had her sister to thank. It was an Indiana Jones video game that Serenity had given Max for his birthday.

  She took out her mother’s old Singer sewing machine and worked day and night at the kitchen table, taking one of Sam’s work shirts and reducing it in size for her little boy to wear. She’d found an appropriately beat-up fedora at the Gig Harbor Goodwill that smelled of someone’s grandpa.

  Max had found the whip.

  “Mom, I love you,” he said, holding up the small black riding crop with a silver skull at its knob end. “This is so cool.”

  The whip was not part of the costume she was making but had been among the toys that she and Sam employed in the Fun House.

  “Where did you get this?” she asked, her voice a controlled scream.

  Max looked confused and then burst into tears.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I thought you got it for me, Mom.”

  “This is not for you,” she said, taking the whip back.

  The little boy ran from the kitchen. His mother did not follow. She didn’t know what to say or whether it was worth making any more issue of it.

  She turned the machine on and started sewing.

  Melody Castile had been the star of Sam’s little productions nearly since the time they were first together. At first it made her feel uncomfortable, doing the things that he insisted turned him on. When it came to lipstick, he wanted her to wear bright red, not muted shades of brick and persimmon. Candy Apple was the color he desired on her lips. He wanted her to wear crotchless panties that he purchased off some Frederick’s of Hollywood–type site on the Internet.

  “For my all-access pass,” he said when he gave her the sheer underwear with the slit on the front panel.

  Sam’s requests escalated over time. No longer did he seem to be content to make her over into his version of sexy. He had her do things. Oral sex in a bathroom at the Space Needle. Allow him to slip his fingers into her vagina while they waited in the drive-through line at the Port Orchard Starbucks. Each time she acquiesced, the line moved closer toward the sordid.

  “Baby, I need you to put this on and be my dirty little bitch.”

  He handed her a short dress, pale blue: it looked like the kind of garment a flower girl might wear at a summer wedding.

  “No panties, bitch,” he said as she dressed.

  What is this game? Why am I doing this?

  “I want you to put this inside of you, bitch,” he said, handing her a clear Lucite dildo. She’d never seen it before. It was enormous, shiny, like a phallic icicle. God only knew where he’d purchased it. At one of those seedy sex shops near the Navy base in Bremerton? Or in Tacoma at that suburban-style superstore, Castles? There, a credit card and a taste for the wild side could get a customer Jenna Jameson’s vagina or Johnny Wadd’s penis made of rubber or silicone with a starburst on the package proclaiming that it was dishwasher safe.

  “Get on the bed,” he said, pushing her slightly, as his digital camera started to whir.

  It wasn’t just that his voice was demanding: It was more that she wanted to please him. Melody knew that men sometimes needed something more than the usual. She wanted to help him, to please him. So she obeyed.

  He took off his pants and underwear but not his shirt or socks as he stood before her. He almost never took off his socks when they had sex. Yet, she had to be devoid of all clothing and jewelry, down to her wedding band. It was what he preferred.

  “Legs up. Spread your legs, bitch,” he said. “Higher.”

  He held out his camera.

  “But you can’t take sexy pictures of me, baby, if you can’t see my face,” she said.

  She didn’t tell him that she’d spent a half hour on her hair and makeup, thinking that the sexy pictures he had in mind were more Playboy than Hustler. She was a pretty woman who didn’t need a heavy hand with the lipstick or blush, but he liked her to “paint it up” a little. She’d even put a little foundation on the thin white stretch marks she carried after childbirth.

  He laughed. “Bitch, I don’t care about your face.”

  She looked a little hurt, and he seemed to respond to her concern.

  “I want to show these to my friends. If they see your face, they’ll know it’s you. Then they’ll hit on you. I don’t want that.”

  She relaxed a little.

  “Good, bitch. Now, put it in!”

  Later she would think back to this moment, wondering if she’d crossed over to a dark and dangerous side. Was this her turning point? If she’d said no to the photos, the dildos, the leather straps, the chains…would things be different?

  “It hurts,” she said.

  “Oh, bitch, that’s good. That’s how I like it. That’s how you like it too.”

  She lay back on the bed, feeling sore and ashamed. Whatever questions she had about what they were doing stayed unasked.

  A few days later he came home from the shipyard, beaming. She was in the kitchen.

  “I showed your pictures to some of the guys,” he said, cornering her in the kitchen while she prepared dinner. He spoke in low, conspiratorial tones. It was as if they’d done it together as a team. She’d felt she was just an object under his direction. But he seemed to suggest more. Your pictures. It made her feel good. “I didn’t tell them it was you, just some bitch I photographed.”

  There was pride and excitement in his voice, and it stirred something in her. It was dark, nasty, and wrong on every level, but she wanted more. She wanted to make him happy.

  “I’m glad to be your hot bitch,” she finally said, sliding her pink top up to reveal her breasts, still round and lovely even after having had a child. “Pinch me hard.”

  Sam complied, taking her nipples between his rough, callused fingertips and twisting as if he were turning a stuck cap on a ketchup bottle. He could feel her tense up in pain, and it aroused him. She reached down and grabbed his crotch, feeling the power of her own.

  “Good girl,” he said, twisting her harder.

  “Yes, I am.” Tears rolled down her face, and her knees buckled. “I’m a very good girl, Daddy.”

  He kissed her, his breath smoky and sweet from a beer he’d had with his friends.

  “I want you to put it in me,” she said, almost pleading.

  “My bitch wants it bad?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said.

  “Real bad?”

  “Yes, Daddy, yes.”

  He took his hands off her breasts and smacked his palms against her shoulders, sending her backward into the counter. A dinner plate fell and shattered.

  “Only I say when!”

  She pulled herself up as their son, Max, entered the room.

  “Mom, what happened?” he asked, looking first her, then at his father. “Dad?”

  Sam turned away, and Melody gathered herself. “We’re fine. Mommy just slipped. Dinner’s ready in five minutes.”

  Max stood in the doorway for a beat and then went back to watching TV.

  “Good, bitch,” he said, his voice a whisp
er. “You know just what to do.”

  Melody Castile dreaded the encounter for more than a week. Her husband had rented a motel room in Tacoma a couple of exits south of the mall. She got a babysitter and had her hair done at the Gene Juarez Salon, a big splurge.

  “I like your hair that way. Special occasion?” the sitter, a neighbor girl, asked as the couple was headed out the door.

  “Any time with my husband is special,” she said, feeling her heart beat a little faster under her blouse.

  “When will you be home tomorrow?”

  “Early afternoon. There’s a frozen pizza you can fix for lunch.”

  The conversation was mundane, constructed on what had to be said. What was an acceptable bedtime? Which snacks were okay, and which were verboten. The conversation with the sitter was a part of the deception that had started to overrun their lives. Soon everything was a lie. What they did. Who they were doing it with.

  Except for their love. That would always be grounded in truth. And fear.

  She told herself over and over that it was like going out on a double date, except there would be three of them. He had promised that the guy was “clean” and “in good shape” and that “he thinks your pictures are hot.”

  His name was Paul. He was in his late thirties, divorced, no kids. He’d made the remark that swinging as a single would be a better use of his free time than trying to find another woman to settle down with. Women are heartbreakers, she sensed he was thinking, although she also sensed that he’d never admitted to Sam or anyone that his heart had been broken.

  Melody remembered little of the encounter, and what she did recall came to her in pieces like the colors of a kaleidoscope, moving, turning, never really fitting into any identifiable shape. Her husband tied her up and took pictures as Paul penetrated her in every orifice. Repeatedly. After he could no longer maintain an erection, he used the neck of a champagne bottle that he’d brought along “to get us all in the mood.” Sam put down the camera and let Paul take photographs of her while he “tickled” her nipples with the tip of a hunting knife.