He kept his laptop on a credenza in the bedroom. I went in there and the scent of our lovemaking still hung in the air, making me feel guilty as I opened his computer to search for information. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t get past the password request and I gave up after a few tries and turned it off. I decided to return to the living room and go through the stacks of paperwork.
I’d shuffled through the papers before but now I read all the notes and analyzed the pictures and reports. There was a ton of information on anyone who knew me and especially Gramps, Grandma, Katie and people who worked with me at the gas station. Also, I found a file that contained all the things that connected the girls besides the fact that they were from towns in Washington State. Each one had been a victim of abuse and had, at one time, attended a group therapy session at the community center for victims of abuse. I knew it well and had attended a session myself one time after I’d seen it advertised online. Went once but didn’t go back. Bunch of doe-eyed girls who jumped out of their skin when there were loud noises. I wasn’t like that and didn’t feel right being there. I guess that was a connection they were keeping from the public. The killer must’ve seen them there or met them there.
There was a file simply marked with the initials POI. I had no idea what that stood for but I opened it and realized that it contained almost ten pages about me. My throat grew dry as I read all the information: my date of birth, my mother’s name, the fact that my birth certificate listed the father as unknown, the schools I attended, and more recent history of places I lived and who I lived with and where. Apparently the guy I’d roomed with just a few blocks from here during my waitressing days was doing time for sexual assault. Garrett had circled his name three times but notes farther on indicated the guy was definitely in jail at the time of the abductions.
Garrett had admitted the first time we met that he’d thoroughly checked out my history, but seeing my life sprawled out in front of me in black and white still made me feel violated. His final notes were his interview with Mrs. Buchanan. She’d hired me years ago to help find her little girl presumed drowned in the Nooksack River. His notes said the dad refused to be party to my search even though the girl had gone missing and then died while out fishing with him, but the mom told Garrett she would be forever in my debt for giving her closure.
Closure. I always cringed at the word even though I understood the need people had to have someone to put inside the casket.
Altogether I saw at least one hundred pages on the missing and dead girls, trying to draw a connection. Everything from every dentist any had ever seen to every single teacher, boyfriend, schoolmate, neighbor and cell phone provider. Beyond the fact that each girl had been a victim of abuse, I saw little connection between the girls other than they all lived north of Seattle in the west half of the state. Suggesting the killer was also a local.
Once I found a blank piece of paper, I wrote down everything I knew about Katie to see if any part of her life crossed with the other girls. Nothing I could find matched. I slammed my fist on the coffee table out of frustration. On the off chance Katie had sent me any kind of message, I started up my laptop and went through my emails. Nothing from Katie but there was a message from Jonas.
Great seeing you with your uncle yesterday. What a fluke to run into you like that! I’m so sorry to hear about Katie. L I know you used to be friends so I’m sending you hugs and kisses.
The attached picture was of him making a moronic kissy face. His comment that Katie and I “used to be friends” hurt. He hadn’t heard of the disagreement from me so that meant that either she had told him we’d fought or he’d heard it around town. Probably heard all about Denny and Katie being together and me catching them playing hide the salami. A part of me still wanted to be too angry with Katie to give a shit about her going missing but nobody deserved what happened to those girls. Katie had been a part of my life for so long that her abduction felt personal and I had an ache of worry sitting heavy in my chest.
Deciding maybe a hot shower would help clear my head, I closed my laptop and got to my feet just as my phone chimed. It was a text from Jill telling me to open the door. The second I opened it she walked past me with a sack of groceries. She took out random salad fixings and a bottle of dressing and some chicken breasts and stuck it all in the fridge.
“If you’re going to play his mistress the least you can do is cook for him,” she said snidely. “Oh, don’t worry. He’s too sweet to kiss and tell. I guessed when I showed up early this morning and the door to your room was wide-open and, guess what, you weren’t in it.”
“It’s really none of your business.”
“That a fact?” She put her hands on her hips. “Your name is all over this case. Just because Garrett is the lead investigator doesn’t mean we don’t all go down with him if the evidence is tossed out because he’s sleeping with a witness. I use the term witness loosely because, in my opinion, this entire investigation revolves around you.” She poked a sharp fingernail in my chest and I took an involuntary step backward. “Your best friend is missing. Your boyfriend is being interrogated as we speak, a-a-and you’ve found three bodies.” She laughed meanly. “For all I know you’re sleeping with Garrett and the killer. Wouldn’t surprise me one single bit actually.”
“You should go,” I said, trying to sound tough.
“You’re throwing me out of his house now? That’s priceless.” She laughed. “Don’t ever forget that you were a person of interest on this case long before you became his fuck bunny.”
She slammed the door so hard when she left that the floor shook. I turned the dead bolt and exhaled loudly. It took me ten minutes in the shower just to wash away Jill’s venom.
The words person of interest ricocheted inside my head. My file was marked POI. At least now I knew what that stood for.
When I climbed out and dried myself off I remembered I’d seen a washer and dryer in a closet off the kitchen. I put the small amount of clothes I’d brought from home into the washer and then I took the sheet off my bed and wrapped it around myself when I returned to my laptop.
There were two emails from Katie’s mom, Mrs. Cole. The first one was a message that she sent to everyone on her email list. It had a Missing Person poster attached with a picture of Katie. She was pleading with everyone to put them up all over town. The second email was a personal message to me:
I know you and Katie had some kind of falling out but I don’t care about that right now. Katie told me a long time ago that you have some kind of witching talent. If you have the power to help find my baby girl please try. Please, please try. Love, Mrs. Cole
The message twisted my heart. Mrs. Cole was the only person who ever stood up to Grandma. She’d seen marks on my legs one summer and told Grandma that she would call the authorities if it didn’t stop. Grandma was a lot more careful about where she landed her blows after that, but it was nice of Mrs. Cole to try.
With all the other crazy emails that had flooded my inbox I nearly deleted a reply from the woman who was a self-proclaimed expert at pendulum dowsing. She suggested multiple reasons why my pendulum dowsing might not be revealing results.
Perhaps the questions you are seeking are not for you to know. If that is the case, you may not ever get your answers. I do not know if you are using metal or crystal for your pendulum but some find that divining with a more personal object with emotional ties helps to relieve blockages. Also, I suggest you remove all emotions you have tied to the outcome.
She went into great detail describing her own methods of dowsing. It felt strange having someone describe so matter-of-factly something I’d always kept somewhat quiet and deemed to be my own weirdo talent. I left the email open in order to think about the suggestions while I went to throw my clothes from the washer to the dryer. Garrett walked into the apartment while I was standing there with only the sheet on.
He
looked positively miserable but then he stopped and his eyes grazed over me.
“That’s the best thing I’ve ever seen you wear,” he said, walking toward me. Then he pulled the sheet from my grasp and it pooled at my feet. “Correction, this is.”
We didn’t make it to the bedroom this time and the lovemaking was frantic and hurried and felt more like a cathartic purging of all that was broken in both of us. Afterward he lifted me and brought me naked to lie on the sofa. He crawled in behind me and covered both our bodies with the thin sheet.
“I need to rest my brain for a while,” he whispered and his hot breath caressed my neck. “Please lie with me.”
It was midafternoon and I wasn’t tired at all, but feeling needed and cherished was the most powerful drug I’d ever experienced. It was much stronger than all the wine I’d ever had and I wouldn’t have moved out of that spot for the world. When he draped his arm around me and I could feel his heart beat against my skin, I finally understood what all the love songs and poets raved about. My head knew that we were just seeking refuge in each other. This could not possibly be love. Still my soul ached for him and for the possibility.
Oh my dear gawd I was love drunk.
After an hour he stretched languidly behind me and cupped my breast.
“Did you sleep at all or just wait for me?”
“I closed my eyes for a minute.”
Not a complete lie. I had rolled toward him and buried my face in his chest with my eyes closed and enjoyed the rise and fall of his chest and the steady rhythm of his heart.
“I see you’ve been getting more information on pendulum dowsing,” he said, obviously reading my email on the coffee table.
“Yeah.” I sat up reluctantly. “I don’t know if it’ll help at all but thought I’d get advice from a so-called expert.” I turned to him. “Are you hungry? Jill dropped off some more food.”
He sat up and dragged his fingers through his hair. “I’m sure she was her usual polite self.”
“She definitely has a big hate on for me. What were the terms she used?” I tapped my chin. “Oh yeah...person of interest and also fuck bunny.”
“Damn,” he muttered. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Strangely enough only one of those insults bothered me and it wasn’t the part about fucking.”
He laughed then but got up in search of his clothes across the room. Once he was dressed, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and typed on it. “There. I’ve asked her not to come by the apartment anymore. Her services as your keeper are temporarily on hold.”
“I appreciate that.”
I walked down the hall, pulled my clothes from the dryer and dressed on the spot and then brought the spare couple of outfits to my room, folded them and put them back in my bag. When I came back to the living room he had my computer on his lap.
“Have you tried all these suggestions?”
“No.” I sat down next to him. “I don’t have a personal item to use for dowsing. Obviously part of your bathroom faucet that I was using is not what she’d call personal. I don’t own any jewelry so...” I shrugged.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t think so.” His phone kept beeping with incoming messages. “I have to go back out,” he said. “I’m sorry but I can’t take you with me and I might be quite late.”
“Sure. I get that.” I nodded. “How’d it go with Denny?”
“He’s been released and he’ll be watched over the next while but he was working inside the casino at the time we think the attack happened. The casino has cameras everywhere and he seemed to be on the casino floor and on camera throughout his shift. Outside cameras showed him coming into the building at the beginning of the day and leaving at the end of his shift and not leaving otherwise.”
“Did the cameras pick up anything in the lot around Katie’s car?”
He shook his head. “Her car was parked just out of range of the cameras.”
“She loves that fucking car,” I mumbled. “She always parks it far away so nobody will accidentally ding it.”
Garrett had walked to the door then and I followed to say goodbye. After he slipped on a jacket he turned to me. “I feel like I need to be saying something here about you and me.”
“You really don’t have to.”
Please don’t ruin it by trying to classify it and make it fit into a square box. And also please don’t say anything that makes this happy feeling dancing in my gut turn into a diarrhea cramp.
Before he could say anything I dragged him into a kiss. I really didn’t want him to try and fill the air with words that might sting or, worse, pacify. After a couple of minutes of tongue tango he wordlessly left the apartment to go and be the big bad agent he got paid to be. I hoped he did his job well and found Katie before anything bad happened. I locked the door and returned to the computer where I re-read the dowsing expert’s opinion about using a personal item as a pendulum tool. She’d attached a link that had a video of her performing pendulum dowsing. Her technique was similar to mine but she used a gold chain and her wedding band. On the video she claimed that oftentimes a ring held the most intimate emotional value and that it was always a truer instrument for her, adding that the ring of anyone interested in the outcome of a question could work.
It made me wish that I wore jewelry and it also made me think of that white circle on Garrett’s finger. It might not be an impassioned token of mine, but it would belong to someone who was emotionally invested in the questions I needed to ask. I drummed my fingertips on the table for a few seconds while I thought about all the reasons it would be totally wrong for me to use Garrett’s wedding ring. In the end, though, I decided to look for it and was able to find it in the first place I checked—in the drawer of his nightstand. Next, I looked for floss and found it in his bathroom cabinet.
After I tied the ring to a length of floss I took it into the living room. I sat cross-legged on the floor and held the ring to my heart.
“Please allow me to use the energy of this ring in order to help others,” I said.
Lifting the string up, I steadied the ring until it was completely still.
“Show me your yes.”
The ring moved from left to right slowly and then picked up speed in a wide arc. I stopped the motion and waited for it to settle.
“Show me your no.”
The ring moved toward me and away in a deliberate line, slowly at first and then more quickly. Once again I stilled it.
“Is Katie still alive?”
The ring moved left to right in a perfect affirmative manner.
“Whew, thank God.”
I blew out a breath and swallowed against the lump that formed in my throat as I steadied the ring.
“Is Sue Torres still alive?”
At first the ring remained motionless but slowly it swung toward me and away.
No.
“Damn.”
Chapter Nine
Katie was alive but Sue Torres was dead. Things were speeding up. He was no longer keeping them alive for weeks. I got out the map and flattened it out on the floor in front of me then smoothed the creases. I started calling out names with the ring poised to answer.
“Is Katie in Anacortes?”
The answer came back no.
“Is Katie in Bellingham?”
No.
“Is Katie in Everett?”
No.
I recited town after town and the answer was always no which could mean the entire pendulum thing was complete bullshit. Or I had yet to guess the right town. So I kept guessing. Eventually my stomach clenched from hunger and I made myself a sandwich. I ate it over the sink and washed it down with a glass of water while I thought of another step to find Katie alive.
When I returned to sit cross-legged at the map
, I picked up the string again.
“Is Sue Torres dead?”
The ring swung left and right in confirmation.
I looked over the map, at the rivers and casinos and abduction locations and possible bridge areas.
“Is Sue Torres’s body in the Samish River?”
The pendulum returned a no.
I asked three more rivers and all came back as a no.
“One more.” I sighed then promised myself a break.
“Is Sue Torres in Thomas Creek?”
A wide swinging arc back and forth. I gasped. Yes.
Oh my God! I closed my eyes and let a silent tear fall because we were too late again and I was still better at finding the dead than the living.
When Garrett walked through the door in the wee hours of the morning, I was sitting on the couch in just a T-shirt. I had the television on to a sitcom rerun that I wasn’t watching. I’d already placed his wedding ring back in its resting place because it felt like a betrayal to tell him that I’d used that symbol of love to find a body.
“You didn’t have to wait up,” he said, shuffling into the living room as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders. “I expected you to be in bed long ago.”
“Katie is alive,” I said quietly. “At least she was a few hours ago according to the pendulum of doom.” I sighed. “Unfortunately, Sue Torres is dead. She’s in Thomas Creek. Where the old ninety-nine highway crosses over.”
He stopped in his tracks. “You should’ve called me.”
“I thought about it, but she’s dead and Katie’s alive and I wanted to find where Katie was and I couldn’t.” I looked away and blinked back a tear.
He got on his phone then to pass along the message. When he ended the call he reached out a hand to me.
“We’ll head out as soon as it’s light. Come to bed.”
The next morning I was out of the shower and dressed ready to go by six although the sun had yet to poke up from the horizon. Garrett was making phone calls. Near as I could tell the phone didn’t leave his ear even while he showered and dressed. I’d made coffee and toast and handed him one of both. My body was apprehensive and tense with the weight of a secret.
A Grave Calling Page 17
