by Gregg Olsen
FUELED BY A KING-SIZE KIT KAT, A POT OF COFFEE, and this belief I actually had something to write about, I finished the first chapter of the true crime book that would put me back in the game. I left it next to the coffee maker for Val to read in the morning. I even set out the reading glasses she purchased from a drugstore rack—not to save money, but because she didn't want to admit that she needed "real" glasses. I added a postscript to the chapter because I know the way my wife thinks. She's been slogging through my stuff since I picked up my first zebra-bloodbath-covered tome and thought, Wow! This author gets money for this?
♦
Love You to Death
PART ONE
THOUGH EVERY ONE OF THEM ENDURED their lives under clouds so dark and low they could be poked with a sharp stick, none particularly liked the rain or paid it any mind. It just was. It came from the sky with such maddeningly regularity that most never carried umbrellas, never bought galoshes, and most certainly, would never be caught dead swirled in the protective plastic of a poncho. The town of Timberlake was a soggy reminder of what the Northwest's timber industry had once been. Smokestacks from the mills choked ash through the rain but half the time of the good old days. Worker shifts had been cut by almost two-thirds. Most of what had once been, however, was still in evidence. Taverns and pool halls still ran good businesses and college students from Portland, less than an hour south, came to buy Timberlake castoffs at the thrift shops. Fridays were "Two-fer" days, with the tattered row of shops offering half-price deals.
And while it rained, rivulets coursed through the gutters to the streets, then on to the Pacific Ocean. Tired workers lugged their sweaty bodies home, a video and a six-pack in tow. Mothers microwaved leftover Top Ramen and served up smiles for their babies.
Outside of town on the old Pacific Highway, young people pulled off the black sheen of asphalt and climbed the rutted logging roads tumbling down the mountainsides. Up the slope, through the mud, jacked up and juiced, they went. Little pockets of music could be heard throughout the fall of the evening. Though it was long since their prime, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix still ruled. Most hadn't a clue Hendrix was dead and had been since the time they were born. The local record store had requests for a new Hendrix album so often it put up a sign behind the cashier: NO NEW JIMI.
The fact was that if any group was stuck in a rut it was the youth of Timberlake. Out of a class of 245, only twenty-one arranged for further education—and two of those were headed for Merilee's School of Beauty. Most planned on jobs at the mill or the mall. Career Day at the high school was such a flop that spring that only the recruiters for the U.S. Army and a pimply-faced man from Buckle showed up with application forms. Four boys and one girl signed up for the service, and Buckle had a line out the door for its new teen lifestyle apparel outlet. There were seven openings for the thirty-five dreamers that had decided on careers in fashion merchandising.
And so at night the rain would fall, the mall would close, and bulked up young men and their bulls-eyed butt-tattooed girlfriends would head for the logging roads where they could guzzle beer from tepid cans, screw their brains out, and just plain forget they lived in Timberlake.
-
IT WAS JUST AFTER ONE in the morning, November 28. Cool and wet, the forecaster had promised, and he was right. Melba Warinski was sitting at the front desk of the River's Edge Motel working on a pinecone wreath that would be a Christmas present for her mother. She was a pleasant woman, with a round face and a nose so tiny it was a modern-day miracle that her glasses did not slide from her face. She was in her forties, a mother, and with her husband's hours being cut at work, she willingly took up the slack with a part-time job at the motel. She wanted a little extra money for craft supplies and she figured that the front desk job was as easy as any place to get it. Hardly anyone ever stayed there after the Holiday Inn Express went in alongside the interstate. The slick little upstart had a free continental breakfast and in-room movies. There were no honor bars. To compete, the River's Edge's owner picked up a dozen donuts for breakfast and bought a used VCR for what he called "Courtesy Cinema."
In the four weeks Melba worked there, only one man asked for the video player. He brought it back a half hour later.
"Thing isn't worth a damn. Movie won't track right."
"I'll let the manager know as soon as possible. I'm sorry for the inconvenience, sir. Would you like a copy of the paper?"
The man shuffled back to his room without another word and Melba went back to her hot glue gun. Her fingertips were burned and she was about ready to call it a night when the noise of a honking car turned her toward the window. The driver was laying on the horn, easing up only every ten seconds or so.
For a moment Melba Warinski wondered if it was another husband trying to find his wife or a drunk looking for a room.
She went to the front door and swung it open. Two beams of light stared at her from across the parking lot. The honking stopped and a car door opened. In an instant, there was a thud. A man fell onto the asphalt and it was quiet, save for the noise of a talk radio station.
"You okay?" She squinted her eyes at the headlights.
"Help. She set me up," a voice called from the darkness. "She set me up. I've been shot."
Melba hurried to the truck. The slippers her husband gave her the previous Christmas were not meant for the dampness of the weather. But Melba didn't even think about them when she went to the man, though later she would regret that she hadn't gone barefoot to save on the wear and tear. She loved those slippers.
"You all right?" She repeated as she bent over the body of a young man, maybe twenty-three or twenty-four. Red oozed from his chest and the smell of beer and gunpowder came from the open cab of his pickup.
"She did this to me. She did it."
"Who? Who did this?"
"Janet did. Janet set me up."
"Son, we've got to get you a doctor."
Melba looked around for something to put under the young man's head. Blood and rain swirled toward a leaf-chocked storm drain. The man was mumbling and Melba's heart raced. She was scared. She took off her slippers and put them under the young man's glistening head.
Was it blood? Was it rain?
"Don't you go to sleep, now," she yelled as she ran back to the office phone to call 911. As she crossed the parking lot she nearly careened into Andy Lowery, a 32-year-old cook who had rented a room monthly for the past year.
"What's going on?" he asked.
"Can't talk," Melba said. "Kid's been shot. Calling 9-1-1. Keep talking to him!"
Andy Lowery made his way to the victim and Melba disappeared inside the motel office.
Her hands were shaking as she spun the 9 digit of the rotary dial. It seemed to take forever...then the two ones and an answer. Melba told the operator what she found, verified the location and promised to keep the victim talking while help arrived. She unplugged her smoldering glue gun and went out into the rain. In the time it took her to run back to the man in the parking lot she could already hear the sirens warning drivers to pull over.
Help was on its way.
"Can you hear them? They're coming to help you...what's your name?" Andy Lowery asked the man as Melba joined them.
The young man rolled his head to the side and vomited.
"Deke. Deke's my name. Deke Cameron. My name is Deke."
Andy noticed a twelve-pack of Bud. It seemed that Deke Cameron was not drunk. Of course, being shot could sober up anyone lickety-split.
"Can I turn off the radio?" Andy asked.
"Okay."
Andy fumbled with the radio for a bit and couldn't find the right button.
"Just push the knob in," Deke Cameron said between rekindled murmurs of utter agony. "Just push it in."
♦
Note to Val: Yes, the phone was a rotary dial—this is not one of those “embellishments” that befall true crime writers as they seek to add “layers of detail” to make reality more “real” as my editor on Murder
Among Friendsonce insisted I do. We're talking a town populated with people who still have microwave ovens the size and heft of a deep freeze. Don't ask me why. Keep reading. —K
♦
PACIFIC OCEAN MEDICAL CENTER was a mile from the River's Edge Motel on Big Leaf Avenue. It had been opened amid a parade of grade-schoolers and bunting-bedecked fire trucks in 1952. It was the pride of the county, and indeed the region. In 1977, in celebration of its silver anniversary, Pac-O, as the locals called it, was remodeled top to bottom. Bulbous-shaped orange and lime green plastic molded chairs were installed in the waiting areas and a green and rust plaid carpet was laid wall to wall giving the rooms the flavor of a pumpkin patch in October. The decor was out of date ten years before it was put in place.
Deke Cameron was brought to the Pac-O emergency room at a few minutes past two in the morning. He was still conscious and continued to repeat his name and the name of the woman he blamed for the shooting. Melba Warinski, now wearing shoes, had followed the ambulance from the motel. She wanted to make sure the young man made it.
"Are you his mother?" a nurse asked as she breezed past, clipboard open, pen poised for a response.
"Oh, no. " Melba answered, stepping away. "I just found him in the parking lot. I don't know him from Adam."
♦
MARTIN RAINES WAS AT HOME TRYING to sleep off his wife's shredded beef enchiladas and a bad sci-fi movie he had watched with his kids. The Pierce County Sheriff's detective was up twice in the hours after he went to bed. Each time he made it to the toilet he expected some kind of relief. But he sat there like a statue and nothing happened. He drank a couple of gulps of Pepto-Bismol and went back to bed.
Finally finding himself drifting off, the bedside telephone rang. It was his sergeant calling, telling him to get his tired butt down to the Pac-O.
"There's been a shooting," the sergeant monotoned into the phone. "A guy's in ICU and it looks like he won't make it. Been shot at least twice by his girlfriend."
The detective made one more pass at the toilet and dressed for work. He was ten minutes from the hospital, but given the ungodly hour, he knew he'd be there in five or six, tops. His sleeping wife didn't stir. The dog, a messy little black and white thing with an overbite, didn't move. No one ever bothered to say goodbye. Slipping into the night was a matter of routine in the Raines house.
Martin Raines was a round little man with sandy hair and blue eyes that suggested the color of bluebonnets. It was appropriate since he had, in fact, been born in Austin, Texas. He was just four when his mother and father split up from a marriage made in hell. His father had used his mother as a punching bag since before the two wed. His mother had stuck by her man because she was raised to believe in God and marriage for life. Deeply depressed, she sought solace in prayer and food. When the young woman finally reached her limit, she loaded Martin on a Greyhound bus for the Pacific Northwest to live with her mother. The hope, however, was short-lived.
Little Marty and his mama moved to Timberlake where his mom worked at her mother's hair shop until her death of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at thirty-two. No one had seen the signs of impending suicide. No one saw her as she sculpted daggers out of wet hair. No one watched as she held the scissors as a weapon against herself. No one knew anything was up until she failed to return from her half-hour lunch break. Martin came home from school to find his grandmother on her hands and knees scrubbing the pieces of her daughter from the floor.
"Mama's gone, hon. Your mama's gone to heaven to sleep with the angels," the old woman with the bicycle-pumped hairdo said, holding back tears.
The second-grader with the big ice blue eyes cried for the next ten days. In his heart, of course, he never stopped crying.
Martin was raised by his grandmother in an apartment she kept above the Clip Joint. When he was eighteen, he joined the Army, did a tour in Desert Storm, came back to odd jobs, and finally, a law enforcement career.
As he passed the old storefront of the Clip Joint, by then a pet grooming place called Love on a Leash, the memories of growing up in Timberlake came back to him as they always did. He let out a sigh. He had battled the depression that was an occupational hazard among many in his profession. He didn't want to end up like his mother. Iraq had not made it any easier. Thankfully, counseling and an understanding wife had. Detective Raines only wanted to make the world a better, safer place for his own children. He wanted to be a good cop.
And so he drove on to Pac-O.
♦
Note from Val: Love on a Leash sounds like an S and M dive Rhianna would sing about. Are you sure it's a pet groomer? Anyway, reminds me that Hedda's due for a bath and haircut herself. If I make the appointment, will you drop him off at Shampooch? Like what I'm reading so far, but Marty might be unhappy being called a “round little man.” Even though, he is. —V.
Chapter Thirteen
Friday, August 16
I HAD FORTY-FIVE MINUTES TO KILL IN TIMBERLAKE, so like a spawning salmon, I followed the road along the river and made my way to the Columbia Mall. It was just opening and I followed the throng of semi-bargain hunters into the forty-four-store shopping center. Right by the door was the Food Circus with its white and blue Under the Big Top theme, a place where nations of food battled each other for dominance with the overreaching aroma of their cuisines.
The Swiss Hut Pretzel girl, a boomeranged-pigtailed Pippi Longstocking wannabe, offered a basket of cut-up pretzels.
I smiled at her and patted my stomach.
"Too early for me."
After finding the true crime section of the as-expected under-stocked Book World outlet, I pulled two copies of my books and placed them front cover facing out. I always did this. In the trade it was called "facing" a book, and for me, it was a compulsion. It might not be if I had ever taken a moment to figure out that if by the off-chance someone bought both copies, the sales would net me less than one dollar. For all the times I did it over the years, I would be lucky to have made enough to pay one month's phone bill.
After a driver for our local book and magazine distributor chewed me out for moving my book to Number Nine on the store best-seller list, I never did it in grocery stores again.
"Don't you ever mess with my racks!" said the man with the embroidered patch that proclaimed his name as Happy. He had short, brown scrub-brush hair. His eyes were dark, and I was sure, cold and unfeeling. He looked nothing like his name.
"Sorry... just trying to boost sales," I said sheepishly.
"I'm the one who decides which books get which boost. You touch my racks again and I'll leave your books on the truck until its time to rip off their covers to send back to your publisher."
"Hey, it's not like I made the book Number One or anything."
Wrong retort, I knew right away.
His eyes went a shade darker. "Listen, paperback writer, I'm the one who decides Number One. Got it? There's a mystery writer in Seattle that will never see Number One again, even if she earned it. She used to leave me little notes demanding to know why we were out of stock on her titles. And I fixed her, good. Her stuff stays on the truck."
I hoped I hadn't angered him for good. "Sorry, Happy. It won't happen again."
Perhaps Happy took pity on me. He never screwed me over and I stayed out of his way. The good Lord knew he had seen dozens of my kind circling the racks, facing the books, pretending to be interested in a book to lure other potential readers over.
"This story's unbelievable!" I said one time loud enough for a woman fifty feet from the book section to hear. I looked at her and pointed to my book. "Unbelievable."
"I only read romance," she replied as if they were based on some kind of reality.
"It's like romance," I persisted. "The woman kills her husband because she's so very much in love with another man."
It was one of those moments when you'd like to rewind the tape of what you said and start all over. The woman glared at me and moved on. I had lost another sale.
It was 10:45 a.m. I had fifteen minutes to catch up with my interview appointment. I gave into the charms of the Swiss Miss and grabbed some pretzel pieces before heading for my truck. They were greasy and good. I went back for another handful.
Thank God, I was tall. Sure, I was losing my hair. Sure, I swore each pint of Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey ice cream would be my last. I thanked God, and I would never embody the triumvirate of the attributes of the dumpy—short, fat and bald.
At least I would always be tall.
♦
I FOUND DEKE CAMERON'S MOTHER in the back of the Timberlake Dairy Queen. The smell of chocolate and French fries overwhelmed the cold, overly air-conditioned restaurant. Blizzard indeed. A group of kids in baseball uniforms crowded around the counter; their faces either glum because they lost their late-season playoff game, or the fact that the soft serve ice cream machine was sputtering alarmingly as it swirled. Mrs. Cameron stirred a paper cup of coffee with one of those plastic sticks, oblivious to the kids overtaking the place. Five little containers of cream had been dumped into her cup. A wadded napkin indicated nervousness, maybe apprehension. The television camera at the talk show had been kind to Deke Cameron's mother. She looked a lot older than she had on The Rita Adams Show.
"Mrs. Cameron?" I asked.
"Yes," she said, looking up from her cup. She did not smile. "Mr. Ryan?"
I nodded. "Kevin. I'm sorry if you've been waiting. I went to the mall to kill some time. If I had known you would have been early I'd have been here sooner."
Anna Cameron was a heavy woman with strong arms and broken blood vessels on her face. Her hair was too dark to be natural and she wore it in a style that reflected the tastes of the mid-1960s. A bit of a bubble added a couple of inches to her hair height. It was a look that had been with her since she was a teen. Anna, a bus driver for the school district, was named Driver of the Year five years prior. She wore earrings that reflected the honor: on her right lobe dangled a gold #1, on her left, a gold school bus.
