Victim Six

by Gregg Olsen

  This is as good as I’m going to get with this ensemble.

  “I see you beat me to it,” Gary Wyatt said, watching the man and his young son try to hoist the yellow canoe into the back of his long-bed pickup.

  Sam Castile spun around and slapped on a quick smile.

  “Yeah, your loss,” he said. “Early bird, all that stuff.”

  Gary, a sandy-haired grandfather of six, shrugged as he lumbered over to the rear of the truck.

  “Can I give you a hand?” he said, his eyes lingering on the prize that he’d missed out on.

  Max Castile stepped back so the older man could help.

  “Sure. Bought a bunch of other stuff too.”

  The inside of the canoe was covered with a brown plastic tarp. Gary bent at his knees and started to lift.

  “Jesus, did you buy some bricks or what?”

  Sam laughed. “Something like that. Some old cinder blocks she had out back.”

  “Oh. She said she was selling as much of her ex-husband’s stuff as she could. Wonder what else she has left.”

  The canoe was now in the back of the truck, and Sam ran a nylon rope from hooks on either side of the tailgate through a steel loop on the end of the boat.

  “She’s gone,” he said. “Took off for church or something. Took the money and ran.”

  “Just my luck,” Gary said.

  Sam turned to his son. “Ready to go, buddy?”

  Max, who hadn’t said a word, nodded like a bobblehead.

  “Thanks for the help. Nice to know there are still good people in Port Orchard.”

  “No worries. Have fun with the canoe.”

  Sam waved as he pulled away slowly, watching Gary as he went back to his car.

  It was Carol Godding’s sixty-two-year-old Kitsap Sun paperboy who noticed that something was wrong. Three days worth of Suns crammed the bright blue plastic paper tube affixed below Carol’s mailbox. He remembered how she’d mentioned she was heading to Southern California for a few weeks and figured he’d got the dates wrong. He pulled out the newspapers and put them in the backseat of his car. Next he called her number and left a message.

  “Ms. Godding, call me when you get back to town. I’ll start up the paper lickety-split.”

  Several days passed, and no one else noticed she was gone. The Goddings had not fostered ideal relations with their neighbors. Dan had waged war with the people on both sides over a wall of prolific Leyland cypresses that he’d planted to create some privacy but ultimately blocked others’ views of the golf course.

  Carol had apologized for the less-than-neighborly attitude of her husband and tried to make amends. But by then battle lines had been drawn, and she was considered to be a bitch married to an asshole. It was a stigma that, despite her kind and outgoing nature, she couldn’t shake. When she volunteered at the community garage sale to raise money for the Port Orchard food bank, she got the cold shoulder from the women in charge. As a result, no one cared enough about Carol to notice if something was amiss.

  There were no second chances in McCormick Woods.

  Kirsten Potts was called “The Enforcer” or “The Landscaping Nazi” behind her back. Kirsten didn’t care. In fact, when she first heard of the moniker she only feigned indignation. To her, backbiting and fear brought results. She lived in McCormick Woods because she liked the orderliness of a neighborhood with strict covenants. She wasn’t really supposed to patrol the streets of the development, looking for bushes that needed to be trimmed or lawns that needed to be mowed. She’d been told several times by the homeowners association president that they were “not to seek out infractions like a police force but to wait for neighbors to bring things to our attention.”

  Kristen didn’t care. She routinely drove around McCormick Woods with a camera, a ruler, and a wary eye. She’d been watching the Godding place for the past week. The Goddings had been on her radar for years after the Leyland cypress brouhaha, but they’d kept the place in tiptop condition. Lawn edged. Pines trimmed poodle perfect. The fountain in front never foamy. She’d heard gossip about the Goddings from the committee after Carol started writing the homeowners’ dues from a new account. Dan’s car was gone too.

  The yard was looking shaggier and shaggier, and Kirsten Potts decided action was the order of the day. She rang the bell; no answer. She knocked as loudly as her tight little fist could pound.

  She leaned close to the sidelight next to the door, but the house was quiet. She went around to the garage, noticing the sorry state of the lawn.

  Jeesh! Talk about letting a place go to seed! she thought.

  Kirsten Potts didn’t consider herself a snoop. Snoops almost never do. She felt an urge to try the side door to the garage. She turned the knob and pushed it open. When she stepped inside, she immediately knew something terrible had happened there.

  She opened her phone and called 911.

  Chapter Forty-one

  February 4, 1 p.m.

  Port Orchard

  Kendall Stark ate alone at a small café in downtown Port Orchard. She’d brought a salad Steven had made the night before but had left it in the car. Now it was a soggy mess. The café was no great shakes, but it gave her a moment to think. She watched a woman across the room cut her daughter’s hamburger into small pieces while she talked on a cell phone. The girl was about fifteen and obviously impaired. She sat hunched over her plate while her mother did her duty.

  Poor girl. Maybe cerebral palsy? Kendall was unsure. But what struck her was how the mother just went on and on with her phone conversation, cutting the food as if her child were not present. She was grateful for Cody, happy that despite her son’s problems they were connected. They had a bond. He might not be the son of her dreams, but she’d learned to love every minute they shared. The realization had come slowly.

  Her phone vibrated. She set down her fork and answered a call from Josh. It soon became clear that the apple pie she had ordered, which the waitress had said was the best in the county, was going to go uneaten.

  “I’m way up north in Kingston,” he said. “We’ve got a deputy out at McCormick Woods on a call, Kendall, but since you’re not far, can you check it out?”

  She took down an address in McCormick Woods.

  Kendall Stark surveyed the interior of the Godding garage. There was a pegboard with outlines of various tools, most of which were missing. Carol’s car, a dark blue Lexus, was in perfect condition. In the space next to the car was what had caught Kirsten Potts’s attention. In the middle of the concrete floor was Carol’s dog, a Doberman named Dolly.

  Someone had taken hedge loppers and sheared off the dog’s head.

  A pool of dried blood fanned out over the concrete floor. The dog’s decomposing head was separated from its body by about four feet. A rope apparently had been used to choke the dog before it was decapitated. Kendall recorded the scene with pictures and measurements. She sketched out what she was seeing and phoned Animal Control to come get the dog.

  A few neighbors had gathered in the driveway, a self-satisfied Kirsten Potts in the center of the group. They seemed to seize the moment to do some neighborhood kibitzing. One woman brought up the subject of the new menu at Mary Mac’s, the clubhouse restaurant, and how it didn’t offer enough vegetarian options.

  “Honestly,” said the woman, whose earlobes were stretched into pendulums of flesh by a pair of too-heavy earrings, “the management there seems more focused on cutesy golf-inspired names for their menu items than what they serve there. A Par Four Omelet—come on!”

  Kirsten didn’t appreciate that the conversation was being diverted from her, so she ignored the vegetarian complaint.

  “I was worried about the condition of her yard,” she told a woman in black stretch pants and a red plaid jacket. “I never thought their dog was much of a problem.”

  Kendall approached the group, and they fell silent.

  “Here comes the detective,” Kirsten said.

  “Does anyone know how we ca
n reach Ms. Godding?” she asked. “Do you know where she works?”

  Plaid Jacket shrugged. “I heard that she looked for a job after her husband left her. Couldn’t find anything in her field, whatever it was. I didn’t know her well.”

  A truck from animal control pulled up, and the group watched two men go inside the garage.

  “She was selling a lot of stuff online,” said Kirsten, proving herself to be the neighborhood know-it-all.

  A retired commander from the Navy who lived next door spoke up.

  “She told me that she was going to visit friends or relatives down south. She wasn’t too explicit, and I didn’t ask. She traveled a lot.”

  Kendall took down the man’s name and phone number.

  “So the consensus here is that Ms. Godding is on vacation.”

  Kirsten piped up. “If you’re leaving for more than three days, you’re required to alert the HOA.”

  “Her ex never followed the rules, either,” Big Earrings said.

  The animal control officers emerged a moment later carrying the dog’s corpse in a thick plastic wrapping.

  Kendall made sure the garage door was locked. She noticed a large water bowl on the patio. It was elevated in a metal frame, a glossy white ceramic dish decorated with coal-black paw prints and Dolly’s name. Wind chimes in the shape of silvery dog bones spun on a chain from the eaves. That dog was loved, Kendall thought. If Carol Godding was going out of town for more than three hours, she likely wouldn’t have left Dolly alone. She got in her car and drove back to the office, leaving a group of deputies to cordon off the site.

  Josh had been working the case from another angle, and Kendall needed to know what he had found out.

  Carol Godding had been dumped by her husband, and by all accounts she’d gotten over it—at least, as much as any woman can when the man she loves with all her heart drops the bomb. Until that moment Carol had fooled herself into thinking that she was happy. She was middle-aged and facing the prospect of starting over.

  Kendall’s examination of the Godding residence pretty much told the story. The refrigerator was stocked with flavored waters and diet salad dressings. The guest bedroom had been heaped with things that her husband had left behind: engineering books, workout clothes, and CDs by rock bands that hadn’t been relevant for two decades. The front room was mostly empty of furniture, which had been replaced by a dozen cardboard boxes that held housewares, linens, and books. The boxes weren’t completely full.

  When Josh told Kendall that he’d learned from the neighbors that Carol had participated in the McCormick Woods neighborhood garage sale, the state of the home’s disarray made sense.

  “Did you see the stack of garage sale signs by the back door?”

  Kendall nodded.

  “She was on the committee for last week’s big sale. Her job was to put up and take down the signage. One of the neighbors asked for them, and I didn’t see any harm, so I let her take them.”

  “I thought the neighbors didn’t care for Carol.”

  “Her husband. They hated him.”

  “I see.”

  “Seriously, I don’t think the woman who asked for the signs cared much about anything other than getting the signs back. She’s having her own sale next door on Saturday. She’s worried that our missing-persons case will bring out the lookie loos.”

  Kendall shook her head. “Kill me before I ever move into one of those subdivisions. Promise me, okay?”

  Josh grinned. “Deal.”

  Steven Stark had used the afternoon to split wood from a cherished madrona that had died two summers before. Madronas were red-barked trees native to the Northwest that were striking in form and color. Anyone who had one growing in his yard felt lucky. The Starks had only one, and Kendall had cried when it started to die limb by limb, all of its characteristic waxy green leaves turning bronze. The wood had cured, making it easier to split. Easier, but not easy: Madronas are a dense hardwood, known to bend a penny nail.

  Sweat bloomed under Steven’s arms and ran from his temples as he hoisted and swung a sharpened ax into the heart of each piece of wood. Cody sat on the swing in the backyard not really watching his father but seemingly captivated by thoughts in his head that he’d never be able to share.

  “Hi, you two,” Kendall said, emerging from inside the house. She was wearing dark gray slacks with a blouse of sea-foam green that she had put on that morning. Despite the long day, she looked lovely. Her cropped blond hair caught the late-afternoon light, almost making it glow. She kissed Cody and gave his swing a gentle push before planting a kiss on Steven’s sweaty lips.

  “You taste like salt,” she said.

  Steven smiled at her. Their eyes locked.

  “You taste like honey.” He set the ax down. Behind him was a mountain of evidence that he’d been hard at work.

  “Long day,” he said. “For you too.”

  Kendall sat down on the swing next to their son. “An incident out at McCormick Woods today.” She looked at Cody; his gaze was fixed on a small flock of Canada geese overhead. She wouldn’t give any details.

  “I’m worried,” was all she could say.

  Steven knew what that meant. Kendall could be completely poker-faced during an interrogation, but not with those she loved. She had a face that invited those who loved her to see the need for comfort. Later that night, with Cody asleep, she would tell her husband about the dead dog and the missing woman.

  She’d even use the words that had been the invention of the Lighthouse news staff:

  Has the Cutter struck again?

  Ultimately she dismissed it. Carol was not a young woman. She didn’t have anything in common with the others. On the surface, she was a professional woman of some means. Skye was a free-spirit wannabe; Celesta was a food service worker and brush picker; Marissa was a prostitute.

  There was very little reason to carry on without his daughter, and Cullen Hornbeck had considered becoming one of those tragic statistics that make the TV news now and then: the one that sadly reminds the world that it is too painful for many parents to outlive their children, that when the rhythm of life is disrupted to such a degree, only death, it seems, can salve the wounds.

  Skye had been dead and buried for months, and there was no getting over it. When Cullen logged on to his computer to compose a suicide note, he ran through some of the old e-mails that she had sent him. His heart ached with the loss and memory of his beautiful little girl.

  He hadn’t told anyone they had argued the day before she left. Skye had told him in no uncertain terms that her life was her own and that her college degree would always be there for her, like a savings plan for rainy day.

  “But I won’t always be young, Dad. I want to do something other than what you and Mom see for me. I don’t know what it is, but I’ll know it when I see it.”

  He had told her she was ungrateful. The next day she was gone.

  As he rolled though his e-mails, he noticed that his spam filter was full. He opened the file and, one by one, started deleting the unwanted offers of sex, larger breasts, and a bigger penis. Near the list’s end was a two-meg file—too large for the settings of his free e-mail account.

  It was from Skye, sent the day after she disappeared.

  He clicked on it.

  The message was brief.

  Dad, Don’t worry about me. Don’t be mad. I’m going to do what you always told me you wanted me to do: be myself.

  I’ll call you tomorrow.

  Love, S

  The e-mail included a large, uncompressed photograph. Cullen clicked on the image, and slowly the pixels found focus and a picture filled his computer screen. It showed Skye standing on the deck of a Washington State Ferry, the cloud-laden Seattle skyline in the background. She had a big smile on her face and a backpack slung over her shoulder. She was wearing a red hoodie, halfway unzipped. Around her neck was the sterling silver yin-and-yang necklace that her mother had made for her when she graduated from high sc
hool. Not only did the sight of his daughter looking at the lens with a smile on her face bring tears to his eyes, it brought him newfound resolve. There would be time to be together in heaven. But not yet.

  He forwarded the e-mail to the two women who seemed to care most about his daughter’s fate; neither woman was Skye’s mother.

  Cullen tapped out a short note:

  Just found this…. She made it to Bremerton…. Please find my daughter’s killer. She said she’d call me “tomorrow”—there was no tomorrow for Skye.—CB

  Kendall Stark opened Cullen Hornbeck’s e-mail on an office computer and deliberated on the photograph while Josh looked over her shoulder.

  “She was a beautiful girl,” Josh said, as if such a remark had anything to do with the reason they were viewing the last known image of the Cutter’s second victim.

  “Notice something?” Kendall asked.

  “One thing jumps out, for sure.” He pointed to the name of the vessel, visible on a flotation device in the foreground. It was familiar to most native western Washingtonians. “She was on the Walla Walla, which means she made it to Bremerton.”

  Kendall nodded. “Also, look: she’s not wearing the green blouse she had on when we found her body in Little Clam Bay. That can only mean she either changed her outfit that day—not likely—or she was picked up by someone after she got off the boat.”

  Josh processed what Kendall had said. “Not only that,” he said. “She promised to call her dad the next day, which we know she never did. Look at the time stamp on the photo. It was Sunday.”

  It was not a night for eighties music. Her cat, Mr. Smith, at her feet and the sounds of a Seattle classical music station filling the apartment, Serenity Hutchins went about the task of checking her e-mail before calling it a night. She resisted the urge to Twitter, or log on to Facebook. Those were extras after a long day. E-mail, however, was just part of staying connected with those friends and family members who really mattered.