by Gregg Olsen
“I have kids,” Mick says. “They’re grown and gone now. But, yeah, it was very, very annoying. Cute kid, though. I’ve got nothing against kids. Not like those two.”
“What do you mean, Mr. Hightower?” I ask.
He rubs his big hands over his thinning hair, and in doing so, his chest-hair plume pushes toward me like a spear.
“Nothing specific,” he says. “Just a feeling that they couldn’t be bothered with the little girl.”
“You say they?” Carter asks.
“Yeah,” he says. “Look, who lets their kid cry like that? I thought for a while that maybe parenting rules have changed again. Like, when my boys were small, it was suddenly no longer okay to give ’em the belt. Maybe you can’t do anything if your kid cries now.”
I want to say, You can comfort them, but I don’t.
“You mean both of Ally’s parents, right?” Carter asks.
He nods.
“You ever see them do anything to Ally?” I ask.
Mick thinks a moment. “I don’t know what you’re getting at, Detective. If I’d actually seen anyone harm a child, I’d bust ’em in the snot locker so fast, they wouldn’t know what hit them. So, no, I never saw anything. All I saw was a couple of young, selfish kids who didn’t seem to give a crap about their little girl. Nothing specific with the exception of the constant crying.”
I give Mick my card and thank him.
“World’s going to hell in a handbasket,” he says. “I used to think that Aberdeen escaped a lot of the bullshit that you see on the news all the time. Not anymore. What kind of piece of shit leaves their kid in a car to die? No way to make sense of that. I’m not going to try. I guess that’s your job.”
I take down his information. There’s nothing specific here that could be used in a case against Luke, just the sick-to-my-stomach feeling that Ally never had a chance.
Carter and I knock on a few more doors, but either no one is home or the resident says he or she never even noticed the Tomlinsons.
In the car on the way back to the station, we sit in silence for a while. I feel like crying. It feels so hopeless. Not the case but the reality of what happened to Ally.
Carter sees it in me.
“I feel the same way, Nic,” he says.
“Just plain sad,” I say.
“Just a baby,” he says.
“Yeah. A beautiful little baby girl.”
“Any other family would have been overjoyed to have her,” Carter says.
I know I would have. I know how blessed I feel to have Emma. Her mother really didn’t want her; otherwise, she wouldn’t have given her up to me. Threats or no threats. Stacy handed over Emma as if she were a white-elephant gift that she didn’t mind forgoing on the off chance she’d get something better.
“In every child-abuse case that I’ve worked,” I finally say, “there have been a handful of people who saw something that wasn’t quite right but didn’t report it to anyone.”
“Yeah,” Carter says, pulling into our lot. “No one wants to be the person who trips the trigger on an investigation like that. Not unless they saw something that couldn’t be explained away. Like bruises on a kid.”
“I had a case in which the grandmother saw bruises and a broken arm and believed that her grandson was accident-prone, because that’s what her daughter told her.”
“She didn’t really believe that,” Carter says.
“No, probably not. It was a lie she told herself.”
“What happened to the kid?”
“Died. The little boy fell down the stairs. His mom shoved him.”
As we sit there in the parking lot of the Aberdeen Police Department, the air-conditioning chills my spine. I think about all of the kids unlucky enough to be born into a family in which there was a monster. They are out there. Always trying to placate the monster so they won’t be hit, beaten, locked in a closet. They start each day with the hope that something will be different. They retrace everything they’ve done to find a path to love. What did they do? How can they undo it? Are all kids punished like this?
Are all kids bad?
It hits me so hard that I can barely breathe. The cold air from the AC is coming at me with such force, I think that I can’t pull in any oxygen. Carter looks at me with those caring eyes of his. I want to tell him more about my sister, because he is the only one that I can trust.
But I don’t.
Instead, my mind races back to Emma. I will never give her up. No matter what. She is mine. My love.
And I will never fail Ally Tomlinson.
I failed one little girl already. Every day and every night, I think of Kelsey Chase. I know I always will.
The engine is off now.
“Are you all right?” Carter asks me.
I glance at him. “I’m fine,” I say.
It’s a lie.
I’m never fine.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Monday, August 21
It’s early the morning of the seventh day of the investigation, but I cannot miss this appointment for any reason. It’s at a church, but it isn’t about God exactly. Even so it has been my salvation.
The faces in the basement of the Methodist church on Sitka are more beat-up versions of the ones that confronted me when I attended Gambler’s Anonymous meetings in Bellevue when my desire to win at slot machines ruled every waking hour, every relationship that I had. These people aren’t doctors and lawyers or PTA moms, although they might have been if they hadn’t been a millworker’s son or daughter. Like any disease, gambling is classless. It sucks the rich, the poor, the smart, and the stupid into its glittery world of quick riches.
It’s a disease that tells the afflicted that life-changing moments come with the pull of a lever or the push of a button.
I’m Nicole here. I’d be Nicole F. if there were another Nicole, but there isn’t. Two Ambers, though. Used to be two Desirees, but one quit the group. I smile as I look around. I know that a few of those sitting on the metal folding chairs stamped with the church’s initials know that I’m a police detective. I don’t mention my work, but Aberdeen and Hoquiam are small towns through and through.
Amber C. is sort of a friend. Not really anyone that I see outside of the group, but someone who always gives me a friendly nod and stops fidgeting with a paper clip that she’s turned into a whale, swan, house, bus, or RV. I can’t tell.
Despite all that’s going on, I know that I have to hit the “Pause” button on my life at least twice a week and face who and what I am.
Especially today. Today it is my turn to share.
“Hi,” I say, in words that used to stick in my throat like I imagine one of Amber C.’s paper clips might if I tried to swallow it. “I’m Nicole. I’m a gambling addict.”
“Hi, Nicole!” they all say.
That greeting used to feel like an assault. Now it oddly feels like an affirmation. I start talking. I tell them about some of the things I used to do. How I’d go without food and use my money on the slots. How I ended up in a women’s homeless shelter in Seattle. How I slept with the most narcissistic man on the planet because I thought that I was less than nothing.
They’ve heard most of this before. Saying it over and over sort of takes away the shame. At least a little of it. These ten people in this church really don’t know me at all, but they know more about me than Carter or anyone who I work with at the Aberdeen Police Department.
I tell them about my latest temptation while they drink coffee from mismatched church mugs that, while clean, likely haven’t seen a dishwasher in years.
“A few days ago,” I say, “I found a string of lotto tickets in the parking lot.”
Nate brightens immediately. Lotto was his drug. More than one ticket? Much better odds, he’s thinking.
I’m sure of it.
“It was just there, you know. By my feet. Someone dropped it when they loaded up their car.”
“Was it Double Summer Sizzler?” Nate asks, th
ough he’s really not supposed to.
I answer with a nod.
“Anyway, I admit that I picked them up. You know, someone had lost them. I put them in my car on the passenger seat.”
I’m sure Nate is drooling now.
“I’m not a lotto person,” I say, glancing at Nate. “No offense.” I take a sip of coffee. “Before I started to drive away, I noticed that one of the tickets had been scuffed up a little. I don’t know why I did it, but I picked up that ticket and turned it every which way to see if I could see anything. Something that might tell me if—”
“If it was a Double Summer Sizzler winner,” Nate says.
I can tell that he likes lotto better than sex now. His chair has inched closer to me. In a minute, I’m sure, he’ll be on my lap.
“Yes,” I say, “I guess. Anyway, here’s the thing. It passed through my mind that maybe there was a million dollars behind that silvery latex covering. That if I scratched it, my life could change forever. But I wasn’t tempted. I know that doesn’t mean that I’m cured. I know that I’ll always be a gambler. I look at it this way . . . that if I was like a heroin user with my slots, then there is no need for me to go down a path to start smoking crack cocaine. Does that make sense?”
The two Ambers nod. So does lotto-man Nate (whom Amber B. and I call Lotto Trouble).
“I folded up the tickets accordion-style and took them inside the Safeway. I told the checker that someone might have spent their last dollar to buy them and while store employees might think it would be all right to see if there were any winners, they shouldn’t do it.
“‘Someone might have given up an awful lot to buy these,’ I said to the checker. ‘Like, everything they had.’”
The group is silent. Lotto Trouble crosses his legs and looks away. It wasn’t the ending he wanted, but it was the ending that made me feel as if the lure of easy money might not have been about money at all. My counselor had told me that once, and I dismissed it out of hand.
“It’s almost never about the money,” Melissa Tovar said, in that hippie-dippie, gauzy way she had whenever she spoke. “The gambling trigger is deep inside of you, dear. You’re trying to make up for something else that’s missing in your life.”
Someone else shares something about an online poker tournament that sucked them in to the tune of $1,200.
I thank God that I didn’t go that route. Slot machines are in casinos. An online poker game is at your desk, on your phone.
Amber C. comes up to me after the meeting. “I know you’re not supposed to talk about a case that you’re working on,” she says.
I nod and put down the stale donut offered as a refreshment. It’s one of those white powdered affairs that leave a mess and the eater feeling like crap for eating it in the first place.
“That little girl,” Amber C. says. “That car.”
“It’s a very sad case,” I say. “And I’m sorry, Amber, I can’t really talk about it. Ongoing investigations are kind of tricky.”
She nods and gives up on her donut too.
Amber C. is a beauty. She’s in her late twenties, with thick, dark hair and blue eyes the color of those geothermal pools in Yellowstone National Park. She works the counter at a deli downtown called the Upper Crust. She’s bright and fun. She might have been a good friend, but good friends two gamblers can never make. And, like mine, her gambling addiction was also tied to casinos. She was a bingo player. A good one, if there can be such a thing. One time Amber C. won more than $56,000 on a single card at the Shoalwater Bay Casino in Tokeland, less than an hour from Aberdeen. The amount of her winnings was impressive, for sure, a bigger score than anyone I’d ever actually known. The current group included. Despite her big win, she hated telling people that she was hooked on bingo.
“Does anything sound more lame?” she asked one time.
Everyone in the group said it was fine, but, yes, deep down we were kind of embarrassed for her. I mean, bingo. Honestly.
I indicate some white powdered sugar on her lips. Only a friend would do that.
She wipes it away. “Well, I don’t know if it has anything to do with anything.” Her words drop to a whisper. Her blue eyes look troubled.
“What is it?” I ask. “Are you feeling all right?”
“Oh, I’m fine. I don’t even know why I’m telling you this.”
I wait.
She doesn’t speak.
“Telling me what, Amber?” I ask.
She shifts her gaze toward the rest of the group; the pull-tab guys that Amber is sure are a level below bingo give her the eye.
“I don’t want anyone to hear,” she tells me.
The basement doesn’t have many options for privacy. “I need to use the bathroom,” I say. “Come with me.”
I haven’t escorted another girl to the bathroom since some girl needed her ponytail held up away from the toilet because she drank too much. It flashes in my mind right then that it was Debbie Manning.
Debbie. Figures. She probably demanded I assist her.
We get inside and do a cursory check of the stalls. Empty. No feet. Suddenly we’re alone facing the mirror and looking at our reflections rather than facing each other. It’s weird. But I go with it.
“What is it, Amber? Something’s really bothering you. Do you need me to do something for you?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Are you all right?”
Her eyes glisten with tears.
“It isn’t me,” she says, stammering a little. “It’s my sister, Rachel.”
“I know Rachel,” I tell her, studying her face in the mirror. She seems to be in a world of hurt, and what she has to tell me is lodged in her throat. I perform a verbal Heimlich maneuver, giving her a breath to talk. “She worked in the bakery. Now in the floral department at WinCo,” I say.
The name of the store sends a charge of electricity through the air.
Her eyes blink.
“Does this have something to do with Luke Tomlinson?” I ask.
Long pause. I hear a toilet flush in the men’s room on the other side of the wall. It’s loud, like the unleashing of Niagara Falls, I think. Finally the sound fades away.
“Yeah,” Amber says. “Rachel would probably kill me, but I think you should know about her and Luke.”
“What about her and Luke?” I ask, though I already have an idea of what she’s going to say.
“They were seeing each other for a while.”
“Seeing each other how?”
“You know. Dating.”
“Oh,” I say. “Dating. You mean before he and Mia got married.”
The toilet on the other side of the cinder block wall flushes again. I remember now how one of the pull-tab guys has colitis.
“No,” she says softly at the mirror. “Not before. They started seeing each other after Ally was born.”
I can tell that she loves her sister. I wonder if her sister loves her. I know how half of that equation works only too well.
“That’s unfortunate,” I say. I can’t think of anything else to say. I like Rachel. She makes wonderful spring bouquets. She has great judgment about flowers. Men, not so much.
“Yeah, I was pretty sick about it. Our folks consider Rachel the good one. You know, the bingo-free girl. It would kill my dad if it gets out.”
“When did the affair end?” I ask.
She finally turns to face me. “That’s just it, Nicole. I don’t think it’s over. She told me last night that she still loves him, and she’s sure that he’s not the kind of guy who would do anything like the newspaper says he’s done.”
“I’ll need to talk to her,” I say. “You know that, don’t you?”
She nods. “Right. I do. I told her that I was going to tell you and that if you thought it was important—and only if you thought it was important—you would have to speak to her. Get a statement, right?”
“Yes,” I say. As we stand there, it runs through my head that Luke Tomlinson might be
the most despicable man on the planet. I think of a bunch of those smug jerks who kill their wives or kids or parents: Drew Peterson; Scott Peterson; the Menendez boys, Erik and Lyle. Charles Manson goes through my thoughts too.
It’s a hall of shame of the worst testosterone has to offer.
And Aberdeen has one of the newest members right there in our little jail.
“Please don’t tell Rachel that I’m coming to see her,” I tell Amber.
“You don’t want her to run off?” she asks.
I don’t say it, but I think it: Bingo.
“That’s right,” I say instead.
The WinCo floral department is in the center of the store. It’s kind of a cheerful mecca for people needing to do something nice for someone who’s sick, has a birthday, or has given birth. A bunch of helium balloons emblazoned with Disney characters adds to the overall promise that whoever visits the department will leave with a smile.
Unless, of course, they’ve come for a funeral wreath.
Or an I’ll-never-do-that-to-you-again bouquet of roses.
Or, in this case, if they work here and they are about to be outed as having an affair with a suspected child killer.
Like the young woman behind the counter, Rachel Cromwell. She’s unaware that she’s about to get sucked into something that she likely has not considered in her young life. She’s about nineteen, I think, taller than her older sister and not nearly as pretty. Her brown hair is pulled back and falls softly down her shoulders as she concentrates on curling some white ribbon with a pair of scissors.
“Hi, Rachel,” I say.
She looks up, first with the smile everyone in retail wears when encountering a customer. This one dissolves right away.
Rachel knows who I am too.
“You’re not here for flowers, are you? We have some late-summer hydrangea stems.” She indicates a galvanized bucket brimming with scoops of periwinkle-blue floral clusters.
I shake my head. “They’re lovely,” I say. “But no. I’m not.”
A woman approaches and lingers by some cactus plants that have been augmented with glued-on strawflowers.
My eyes shift back to Rachel. “Can we talk somewhere?” I ask.
