Shocking True Story

by Gregg Olsen

  “Only a loser would support the Mariners,” Katelyn had once said, looking over at Colton as he stood in defiance, his scrawny arms wrapped around his small chest, nodding as if he were defending his team.

  But that was then. A million years ago, it seemed. Since then, Port Gamble’s youths had grown into pubescent teenagers. Taylor and Hayley, still mirror images of each other, had blonde hair, blue eyes, and the occasional pimple. Colton had traded in sports T-shirts for ‘80s relic rock bands’ insignias and was dating Hayley. And Katelyn was dead.

  “When was the last time you actually talked to her?” Hayley asked, already trying to piece together what had happened.

  Taylor brushed aside her annoying bangs, which she was growing out, and shook her head.

  “Not sure.” A puff of white vapor came with Taylor’s warm breath. “Last month, I guess.”

  “Do you think she was depressed? I read somewhere that suicide rates are highest at Christmas.”

  Taylor shook her head. “Depressed? How should I know?”

  “You have a better pulse on the social scene than I do,” Hayley said matter-of-factly. “They’re saying she killed herself because she was upset about something.”

  “Was Katelyn still cutting?”

  Hayley looked surprised. “You knew about that too?”

  “Duh,” Taylor said, wishing that she’d brought gloves like her sister had. Taylor’s fingertips were numb. “Everyone knew. Dylan, that sophomore with a shaved head and earlobes he’s been gouging since Halloween, called her Cut-lin last week.”

  Hayley looked down at the icy pavement and said quietly, “Oh... I was under the impression she had stopped.”

  Taylor shook her head, then shrugged her shoulders. “I remember her telling people that she liked cutting. Liked how it made her feel in control.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. Cutting made her feel in control of what?”

  “She never said.”

  The crowd contracted to make room for a gurney. Covered from head to toe was the figure of the dead girl. Some people could scarcely bear the sight and they looked away. It felt invasive. Sad. Wrong to even look.

  The ambulance, its lights rotating red flashes over the bystanders, pulled away. There was no real urgency in its departure. No sirens. Nothing. Just the quiet slinking away like the tide.

  A few moments later, the crowd surged a little as the door opened and Port Gamble Police Chief Annie Garnett’s imposing frame loomed in the doorway. She wore a dark wool skirt and jacket, with a knitted scarf around her thick neck. She had long, dark hair that was pulled back. In a voice that cracked a little, Chief Garnett told everyone they should go home.

  “Tragedy here tonight,” she said, her voice unable to entirely mask her emotions. Annie was a big woman, with baseball-mitt hands, a deep, resonant voice, and a soft spot for troubled young girls. Katelyn’s death would be hard on her, especially if it turned out to be a suicide.

  Hayley nudged her sister, who started to cry. “We probably should go home, Tay,” she said gently.

  In that instant, shock had turned to anguish. Hayley’s eyes also welled up, and she ignored a text from her boyfriend, Colton, who was out of town and missing the biggest thing to happen in Port Gamble since the devastating bus crash. The twins looked over the crowd to see the faces of their friends and neighbors.

  Hayley jammed her hands inside her coat pockets. No Kleenex. She dried her eyes with a soggy gloved fingertip. It could not have been colder just then. The air was ice. She hugged her sister.

  “I feel sick,” Taylor said.

  “Me too,” Hayley agreed. Curiosity piercing through their emotions, she added, “I want to know what happened to her and why.”

  “Why do you think she did it?” Taylor asked.

  “Did what?” Hayley argued levelly. “We don’t know what happened.”

  “I’m just saying what they’re saying.” Taylor indicated those in the outer ring of grief, just beyond their own.

  “I’d rather know how. I mean, really, an espresso machine in the bathtub? That’s got to be a first ever.”

  Taylor nodded, brushing away her tears. She could see the absurdity of it all. “Some snarky blogger is going to say this is proof that coffee isn’t good for you.”

  “And write a headline like ‘Port Gamble Girl Meets Bitter End,’” Hayley added.

  The spaces in the crowd began to shrink as people pushed forward. All were completely unaware that someone was watching them. All of them. Someone in their midst was enjoying the tragic scene that had enveloped Port Gamble as its residents shivered in the frigid air off the bay.

  Loving the sad moment to the very last drop.

  BETRAYAL

  Gregg Olsen

  CHAPTER 1

  Olivia Grant wasn’t exactly sure what she’d expected America to be like, but Port Gamble, Washington, most certainly wasn’t it. As the sixteen-year-old foreign-exchange student had boarded the late summer flight from London Heathrow to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and plunked herself down next to a smelly man and his chubby little boy, she daydreamed of palm trees and movie stars. The travel magazine in the seat pocket in front of her all but confirmed the glamour awaiting the redheaded teen in just a few short hours: the cover featured a big splashy photo of beautiful people living in sunny, USA splendor. She was almost giddy, but she held it inside. British reserve, of course.

  Olivia immersed herself in American TV the entire way over the polar ice cap to Seattle and wondered if the little boy to her left was going to be a kid contestant on The Biggest Loser. His father definitely was destined for some kind of makeover show. He not only smelled vaguely bad—garlic—but his mustache hung over his lip like an inverted vacuum cleaner attachment. The stylist who cut his hair had apparently used a saucepan for the template. When he looked over, she simply smiled. Olivia Grant was always very, very polite.

  As it had turned out, Port Gamble wasn’t sunny Southern California. Not by a long shot. Instead, even in late August when she’d arrived, it was about as soggy and dismal as Dorchester was in the middle of winter. Gray. Wet. Windy. The people who lived there were average teachers, cooks, millworkers, nurses.

  So not movie stars with golden hair and perfectly straight teeth.

  OLIVIA PONDERED THIS WHILE SITTING in the living room of her first American party. Olivia conceded that her first American beer wasn’t what she thought it would be either. Brianna Connors, her new best friend, had promised that her dad’s favorite craft brew was no big deal, even at 11 percent alcohol content. Tonight at Brianna’s Halloween party, Olivia—in full costume—had sucked down the amber liquid like water and at first felt great. Then all of a sudden, somewhere between fending off some geeky, eye-linered, pirate boy’s cringe-worthy come-on (“Hey hot wench, you lookin’ for a first mate?”), arguing with her host roommate Beth Lee, and trying to cozy up to Jason Deveraux, the hottest guy at Kingston High, a wave of nausea hit her like a mini-tsunami. With the party still in eardrum-splitting full swing, Olivia went upstairs and sought refuge in Brianna’s acre-sized bed.

  Olivia curled up for an hour, maybe two. If she’d been able to recount it later, it would have been hard to say exactly how long. Time came and went in the way that it does in a dream. Vapors. Mist. She wondered if she’d been drugged. She had only had one beer, two at most. She ran the scenario in her head. It was true that she had felt a little sick that morning. Maybe it was nerves? Maybe it was the onset of the bug that had been going around school? She hadn’t really eaten a thing since breakfast. Could it be just the combination of really bad American beer and no food?

  Where was Brianna? Olivia thought, feeling sicker by the minute as the room started to spin. Was the party still going on? She could hear loud music and some teen slasher DVD blasting from the TV downstairs. The bass from the two competing subwoofers pumped up through the gleaming, dark, walnut floorboards.

  Slowly, slowly, and with great effort, Olivia sat up
, pulled off the scratchy, sparkly costume, exposing her thin white Calvin Klein slip underneath, and looked at herself in the mirror across the room. Even in the dark and through her late-night drunken haze, she could see her red hair, her flawless pale skin, and her green eyes. Boasting was so tacky, but even then, sick as she was, she thought she looked pretty good. It was ridiculous that she had worn not one, but two silly costumes during the party. Yet it was her first Halloween in America, a country that apparently reveled in the weird, macabre, and cheesy. She wondered why every boy’s costume was that of a superhero and every girl was dressed up as a naughty or sexy something.

  America, land of the puritan posers.

  Slipping Brianna’s bedazzled “Lights out!” eye mask on, Olivia wrapped herself in the slippery, satiny duvet—the same one on which she and Brianna had spilled nail polish the previous week when they were ragging on their absent mothers. She felt the circular dry spot that had stiffened the fabric. She picked at the spot with her long, slender fingers. It felt slick and smooth.

  It wasn’t the last thing she would feel that night.

  Where Olivia’s SLIP ended and the sheets of Brianna’s bed began was impossible to pinpoint in the dark. Olivia tossed, turned, wriggled and, finally, had just started to get comfortable. As she drifted off to sleep, Olivia sensed movement in the far reaches of Brianna’s expansive bedroom.

  “Hello?” Olivia called out.

  No response. Just the sound of a girl screaming on the TV downstairs.

  Again, the air moved.

  “Who’s there?” she asked. Olivia unsuccessfully tried to lift her arms and head from the mummy-like yardage of sheets and the white fabric of her slip that had encircled her limbs and torso like a malevolent wisteria vine. She got one arm free and pulled off the eye mask. Olivia looked over. Silver glinted in the darkness as a shadowy figure moved toward her.

  “Who are you?” she asked, still unable to see a face. Olivia was annoyed, but not unnerved. It was, after all, a party. Whoever it was might be looking for a place to crash just like she had when the beer hit her. Or maybe it was a Halloween prank? The living room and family room downstairs were full of kids looking to be the center of attention. Fighting to make an impression. Tweeted about. Facebooked.

  “This isn’t funny,” she said, in her clipped accent.

  It wasn’t. Not at all.

  It happened so fast, the way awful things almost always do. The mattress dipped under the weight of another person kneeling on the bed. The first cut wasn’t the deepest. It was tentative, a slight jab through the snow white fabric just above her navel.

  “Hey! Stop!” Olivia cried.

  Her voice, loud as it was, was lost in the sounds of the music and laughter downstairs. If anyone had heard her muffled scream, they might have mistaken it for that terrified teen with the fake boobs on the enormous plasma TV in the family room where half the partygoers congregated.

  Yet there was nothing fake about Olivia Grant or the fear that seized her. Her manicured fingertips found her abdomen. She pressed it lightly with the heel of her palm and cried out in pain. She barely had time to process the fact that her hand was wet.

  All too quickly, someone was on top of her, holding her arms down. Everything conspired against her. Her flowing slip, Brianna’s bedding, the eye mask, and even her long red hair entwined in her attacker’s fist gave her little hope of escape.

  Is this a sick joke? Did the geek pirate not understand NO means NO?

  Pain shot through the sixteen-year-old’s body and she started breathing hard. This was no trick-or-treat prank. Her mind reeled. Olivia thought back to the self-defense moves she had seen on American TV. The key was to have a survival plan, a strategy to save your life. She worked up a scenario to use her knee to shove off her attacker, freeing her arms and scooting to the edge of the bed where she could—just maybe—get away.

  But that damn sheet. It was a magician’s endless handkerchief. Olivia couldn’t move her feet. It was like she’d been spun up in a cocoon. The force of the continued onslaught pushed her, wrappings and all, crashing to the floor.

  “Stop it! Stop!” she screamed. “That bloody hurts!”

  Despite her beauty, Olivia Grant was no English rose. She was not frail, passive, or genteel. She was a fighter. Finally free, her arms and hands flailed into the darkness. Once, twice, she was hit by something sharp. Hard. It was hot and agonizing. Olivia realized what was happening was not a prank. She was fighting for her life and she knew it.

  Was it a knife? Scissors? A box cutter? Something very sharp and deadly.

  It passed through the teen’s mind right then that she might never get to Hollywood. She’d never have a real boyfriend. She’d never get back to London. She’d never design that dress that every other girl in the world would covet. Her life and all her big dreams would be extinguished right there in her friend’s bedroom.

  With everything she had, Olivia lurched herself upright. She ran her bloody hands under her slip as she tried to extricate herself from the shroud, once white, now red.

  Tears came as she thought of home. Her mind flashed to a memory. She and her mother were packing her suitcases for the trip in Olivia’s bedroom back in London. Her mother implored her not to take her finest things to America, as she was all but certain that they’d be stolen.

  “Everyone thinks that Aussies are descended from criminals, but I think there’s a mix-up there. Take a look at America’s crime rate,” her mom had said. She sniffed in that superior-than-thou affect she used whenever the occasion called for it, which was always. “The U.S. is worse than Down Under by far.”

  She had been right. Her mother, with whom she’d battled about the smallest of things, had been absolutely right.

  Just as the lightning bolt of memory passed, a pair of hands grabbed Olivia’s shoulders and shoved her body backwards against the wooden floor. Hard and complete. So fast and so slow at the same time. She gasped.

  I’m not going to die here. Am I?

  Olivia filled her lungs and screamed once more—only to have a wad of fabric violently shoved into her mouth. She started to choke, but she refused to give up. She had come to America to snag a boyfriend, be discovered for the rocking talent that she was, and to import everything she had learned back to the UK. She, most assuredly, had not come to America to die.

  Get. Off. Me.

  The teenager felt hot breath against her face. It came at her in quick puffs and it smelled of beer. Jason? Kurt? All the boys had been drinking. It could be any one of a dozen or more. As Olivia tried to roll away from her attacker, the blade of a knife flew at her, burying itself in her throat. It came with speed and fury.

  Just like that.

  Over.

  Out.

  In a second, blood soaked the fabric gagging her, slipping over her tongue with a peculiar metallic taste as blood spilled from the corners of her mouth like candle wax.

  In the final beats of her life, Olivia Grant caught a glimpse of her killer. Like a camera with a fading battery, her green eyes captured the image until they could no longer see.

  Only her killer knew the irony of her last words.

  That bloody hurts.

  ALSO BY

  GREGG OLSEN

  (Nonfiction)

  1. Abandoned Prayers

  2. Bitter Almonds

  3. Mockingbird

  4. Cruel Deception

  5. Starvation Heights

  6. The Confessions of an American Black Widow

  7. Bitch on Wheels

  8. If Loving You is Wrong

  9. The Deep Dark

  10. A Twisted Faith

  (Fiction)

  1. A Cold Dark Place

  2. A Wicked Snow

  3. Victim Six

  4. The Bone Box

  5. Heart of Ice

  6. Closer Than Blood

  7. Envy

  8. Betrayal

  9. The Fear Collector

  sp;

  Gregg Olsen, Shocking True Story