The Fear Collector

by Gregg Olsen

  “Is it true?” she asked, her voice trying to find a breath. Her eyes were ablaze with a curious mix of anger and fear.

  While both detectives knew to what she was referring, they didn’t give any indication. A rookie would blurt out that they’d found a body when the mother might only have asked if it was true that they’d eaten at the local Sonic. Never, ever give up any information first. Always, both knew, wait and see what the subject is really talking about.

  “What?” Paul asked.

  “I heard that someone found a body,” she said.

  Marty Keillor appeared behind her.

  “Is it Lisa?” he asked.

  “May we come inside?” Grace asked, and Lisa’s mother opened the door wide to allow them entrance into the living room. She stopped them with a cry.

  “I knew she was dead!” she said. “I knew it in my bones. My girl’s gone. My only baby! Gone!”

  “Ms. Lancaster,” Paul said, trying to calm her.

  “Are you going to tell me everything is going to be okay? Maybe you’d know how I feel if this had ever happened to you. Lisa is gone.” She glanced at Marty. “Except for Marty, I’m alone.”

  The remark was strange. Why acknowledge Marty as her boyfriend now? If that was, in fact, what she was doing?

  “We aren’t sure it is her,” Grace said. “The medical examiner will be analyzing”—she stopped herself short of saying the body or body parts, which sounded as horrific as it really indeed was—“analyzing the, uh, evidence.”

  By then Ms. Lancaster was inconsolable. Marty Keillor slumped silently into the sofa where Lisa’s mother had sunk in a sobbing heap. On the coffee table adjacent to the sofa were an ashtray and a stack of laser prints with images of beaches and tropical flowers, printouts from a travel website.

  As the detectives left the house, Paul leaned close to Grace’s ear.

  “Looks like Ms. Lancaster and Marty were planning a vacation.”

  “Saw that,” she said, walking down the driveway a few yards before stopping. She started for the pair of galvanized garbage cans that sat next to the curb.

  “What are you doing? Dumpster diving at a time like this?”

  “Hardly,” she said, prying off one of the lids and peering inside. “Look here,” she said, hoisting up a half-full black plastic bag. “Look familiar?”

  Paul shrugged a little. “Like who doesn’t use those bags?”

  “I admit Shane and I use them, too, but let’s bring this in to the lab to see if they are the same manufacturing lot as the one recovered from the scene.”

  “You really don’t think that Ms. Lancaster and that creepola Marty offed Lisa,” he said.

  “Maybe. You saw the printouts on the table.”

  “Maui does sound nice,” he said.

  She nodded. “Yeah, a great place to run away to.”

  “Okay, so the daughter’s ex-boyfriend is shagging her mother,” Paul said. “Disgusting on all grounds, but why kill her? If anyone should have been hacked up it would have been Party Marty.”

  Grace smiled grimly at the mention of the nickname Naomi had given Lisa’s ex.

  “Agreed. There something more going on here,” she said. “Maybe there’s a conspiracy here? Maybe Mom was mad at Lisa.”

  “She said she was a saint on that TV news report.”

  Grace glanced back at the house. “She oversold that, didn’t she? The guilty often overdo it when it comes to lauding the victim.”

  “Right. But why kill the girl?”

  Grace opened the trunk and put the plastic bag and its smelly contents inside. “Maybe there was a money reason.”

  A money reason. Aside from jealousy and rage, money was the most frequent flash point for crimes that led to murder. People killed because they had too little money. Because they were afraid someone would take some of their money. Sometimes they killed for profit. Although children were rarely murdered by their parents for insurance proceeds, there had been cases in which that had occurred. Indeed, more than one wary insurance salesperson had begrudgingly sold a policy in the tens of thousands on a child whose earning power—the measure of a person’s worth—was nil. How they slept at night was beyond Grace Alexander’s comprehension. In one notorious Northwest case, a couple purchased nearly a million dollars on the life of a child who later died in a terrible and suspicious house fire.

  The kicker there was the little girl had been adopted only seven months before the fire swept through the couple’s house in Yelm, southeast of Tacoma. Law enforcement speculated that they had adopted the girl only to kill her for the insurance money. The case could never be proved and National Life had to make good on its policy. The couple took the proceeds and disappeared, leaving observers to wonder if they’d do it again somewhere else.

  Could Lisa’s mother be one of those coldhearted people? By all accounts she was a devoted nurse, a caring soul whose compassion for others knew no limits. Why was she sleeping with her daughter’s ex? Why was she going to take a trip to Maui? And if she wasn’t the worst kind of a mother in the world, was Party Marty the ultimate evil?

  CHAPTER 13

  It was after 7 PM when Diana Rose returned home from work. The day had been brutal; as of late, that was more a common occurrence than a rarity. She’d spent two hours at the church before going to her class at Annie Wright. Mocha was waiting for her by the back door and she bent down to give the cat a little attention before setting her purse on the counter. She made a face when she noticed that Emma hadn’t put out the frozen chicken to thaw. She’d have to microwave it and that was always risky. More often than not, she’d learned over the years, defrosting meat semi-cooked it.

  “Emma?” she called up the stairs. She noticed the cat’s bowl was empty, so she filled it with water.

  No answer.

  She went upstairs and opened the bedroom door. The room was such a mess. Like always. The bed was unmade, a tangle of clothes were heaped on the floor, and dishes were stacked on the nightstand.

  Diana speed-dialed her daughter, but it went right to voice mail, a surefire sign that Emma had let the battery run down again.

  She punched in the speed dial number for Starbucks.

  “Hi,” she said, “this is Diana Rose. Can I speak to Emma?”

  “Hi, Ms. Rose. This is Devon, her manger. She’s not here. We tried calling her phone, but no answer.”

  Diana was confused. “What do you mean, not here?”

  “She’s two hours late. She didn’t even call to let us know. Really had us in a bind.”

  “Are you sure she was supposed to be in today?” Diana asked, trying to stave off the uneasiness that had started to sweep over her. She found herself sinking onto her daughter’s crumpled linens on the edge of the bed.

  “Must have missed the bus,” Devon said, picking up on the mother’s anxiety.

  “Maybe,” Diana said. “Maybe one, but there are buses every half hour. She’d have to have missed at least three or four. That’s not possible. I’m really worried, Devon.”

  The sound of coffee grinder churned in the background.

  “I’ll let you know,” Devon said. “We’re super short-staffed today. Besides Emma, I have another no-show today. Gotta go.”

  “Wait!” Diana said, nearly yelling into the phone.

  “What? I’m, like, super busy.”

  “Call me as soon as she gets in.”

  “Okay. Will do. Thank you for calling Starbucks.”

  It was early evening when Diana phoned her husband, Emma’s stepfather. Dan Walton answered on the first ring. From the background sound, it was obvious he was in his car heading home.

  “Need something from the store?” he asked.

  “Honey, Emma didn’t show up for work today. I don’t think she came home last night, either.”

  “What do you mean, didn’t come home?”

  She looked around the room. “I really can’t tell for sure, but I called Starbucks and they said she didn’t make it
to work today. We have to call the police. We have to find out where she is. This isn’t like her. Something bad happened to her. I know it.”

  “Calm down,” Dan said. “I’ll be home in five minutes. I’m sure she’s okay.”

  “Hurry,” she said. “Please, Dan. Get here as fast as you can. Something is very, very wrong. I’m her mother. I feel it.”

  Dan promised he would. He dialed 911 and explained the possible emergency to the dispatcher. He gave his address and said he was headed home.

  “My wife is there now,” he said, running a hard yellow light—something Cautious Dan would never have done. “I’ll be there in three minutes.”

  “We’ll send a car out,” the dispatcher said.

  Dan Walton had an uneasy feeling, too.

  At 6:45 a Tacoma police officer named Antonio Lorenzo knocked on the Roses’ front door. He was a young officer, barely thirty. He had warm eyes and an instantly soothing countenance that no doubt served him well responding to calls such as the one made by Dan Walton.

  “Let’s back up a little,” he said. “Tell me what’s going on with your daughter.”

  “Emma didn’t show up for work today,” Diana said, her words coming out in quick gulps. She hadn’t cried yet, but Officer Lorenzo could easily see she was on the verge.

  “May I come inside?” he asked.

  “Yes, please,” Dan said. “I’m Dan Walton. This is my wife, Diana. Our daughter is Emma Rose. We didn’t see her last night after work and they said she didn’t show up today.”

  Officer Lorenzo had a kind, calm face, which in that moment and in the hundreds of others that preceded it, was put to good use.

  “Is this unusual for Emma?”

  Diana’s face tightened. Not facelift smoothed out, but stretched with worry. “Very. Of course it is. We wouldn’t have called the police if it was commonplace, now would we?”

  Dan, now sitting next to his wife on the sofa facing the officer, who’d taken a seat on the brown leather recliner in the living room, put his hand on her knee. He patted her a few times to remind her to stay calm. Thinking the worst was ludicrous. Their daughter was a good girl. An environmentalist. A great student. If she’d gone off somewhere they were going to hear from her.

  “Are you sure she didn’t come home last night?” the officer asked.

  “I didn’t hear her come in. I’m a very, very light sleeper,” Diana said.

  Officer Lorenzo made some notes.

  “Are all of you getting along?” he asked, his voice soft and nonjudgmental.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Dan asked.

  “Just asking. Just need to know if there were any problems here at home. Were all of you getting along with Emma?”

  Dan leaned closer. His brow narrowed. He didn’t want to be angry just then, but the implication of the police officer’s words seemed directed at him.

  “Do you mean to suggest she’s run away, left home?”

  “Did she, Dan?”

  “There would be no reason I could think she would do that. She is our only child and we’re a very close family,” Dan said, still stiff with resentment.

  “My husband is right. We are extremely close. Sometimes too close, I think. Emma didn’t go to college this year because of my illness.”

  “Sorry?”

  “I’m cancer free now,” she said. “But the past couple of years have been rough and Em didn’t want me to go through it all on my own. Even though the surgery was a year ago and I’m fine, she just decided to postpone college for a year. Does that sound like a girl who would run away?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” the officer said. “Is it possible that all the responsibility became too much for her and she needed a break?”

  “But I am fine now! Look at me! My daughter even got me Mocha when she’s so allergic because she knows how much I love cats,” Diana said, looking over at Mocha as the furry feline wandered across the living room floor, her dust mop tail pointing upright like a skunk’s.

  Officer Lorenzo took a few more notes about Emma’s height and weight, and asked for a picture. Diana got up to get one off the bulletin board in the kitchen.

  “We can’t report her as missing until she’s been gone for twenty-four hours,” he said.

  Dan looked at his watch, an old Seiko that had belonged to his father. “Well, as far as we know, that’s in two hours. She closed up the Lakewood Mall Starbucks last night. She gets off between nine and ten, depending on how much cleaning is needed after a day of coffee drinkers.”

  Diana returned and handed over a five-by-seven.

  “Her senior photo,” she said.

  Officer Lorenzo looked at the photo and then looked up quickly. He didn’t want to say what he was thinking, so he said something else.

  “She looks like a very nice girl,” he said.

  “She is. Very nice,” Dan answered.

  “She’s everything to us. She would never not come home. She would never not call us. Never,” Diana said.

  The officer got up, still looking at the photo.

  He didn’t know Emma Rose, of course. But he’d seen her face before. The nineteen-year-old was a ringer for Lisa Lancaster and Kelsey Caldwell. All three wore their dark hair long, parted in the middle. Kelsey’s was slightly wavy, but her mom said she’d taken a flatiron to it over the past year to give her the long, straight look that she’d sought. It was very, very seventies, which in turn, was very, very cool.

  “I’m going to make a run over to Starbucks to see what I can find out,” he said. “It will be close to nine when I get back to the department. When I do, I’ll make the report. One of our detectives will get with you for a more detailed follow-up.”

  Diana, so wrapped up in her deepening worry, didn’t get the change in mood just then, but Dan did. There had been a seismic shift. If the officer with the kind manner had been calm and professional when he first arrived, he no longer seemed quite so composed. There was something about the photograph that seemed to change everything.

  Smaller bones likely meant—though he was inexperienced and unsure—an easier go of it in the basement when he went about the business of butchering her. Butchering her, by the way, was as far as he would ever go.

  The idea of sex with a corpse sickened him. The idea of visiting human remains in the woods of the Pacific Northwest was wholly unappealing. This wasn’t about some psycho sexual conquest, but about control and technique.

  He wanted to take what had been done before and improve it. As if he was revising code on a slow-moving, jagged-looking computer game. That was cool. It was about the cool factor and the fame that came with being the best, being better than his father, a man he had never even met, but one he’d admired and fantasized about from the time his mother told him the truth. He’d been cheated a little and he knew it. Other serial killers had unwittingly or purposefully involved their family members. When he read about Green River Killer Gary Ridgway’s proclivity for bringing his little boy while hunting prostitutes along the SeaTac strip, he felt a pang of jealousy. He’d never had that time with his dad.

  That had been taken from him when he was but a child and his father was strapped into Florida’s Old Sparky. The flip was switched. Human flesh burned and his dad was electrocuted to death. That moment, as much as anything, set things in motion. Not right away, of course. He was a sleeper cell and it was that night on the Pacific Lutheran University campus, he was awakened.

  The dark-haired girl with the pretty eyes had done that. She was a shot of adrenaline. She was just like the others.

  The day after Kelsey Caldwell’s father called the Thurston County detective with the suspicion that his daughter’s case might have a connection to Lisa Lancaster’s disappearance, detectives from the Tacoma Police Department and the Pierce and Thurston County Sheriff’s Offices conferenced by phone. Grace and Paul were among those on the call, a brief one to make sure that all were aware of the purported similarities in the two cases. After a
number of serial cases had gone undetected in the Northwest for a number of years, no law enforcement professionals wanted the blood of future victims on their hands. Most of the connecting of dots among the counties along Puget Sound yielded nothing more than increased awareness. The chances that a true serial was at work were slim to none.

  Serial killers, or rather the proliferation of them, was a kind of Hollywood invention. There just weren’t that many. And yet, in reality, the gloomy Pacific Northwest had had more than its share of famous cases. To many crime aficionados, the Northwest was serial-killer central. Seemingly mild-mannered Spokane resident and military man Robert Lee Yates had killed sixteen women, all prostitutes, in a two-year string that started in 1996. Gary Leon Ridgway was granddaddy of them all, at least in terms of confirmed victim count. The dull-witted truck painter, like Yates, also hunted and murdered prostitutes—a common prey among those who kill for sport. While the Seattle man was eventually convicted of killing forty-nine, he confessed to almost a hundred victims in total. There was no real diabolical brilliance displayed by Yates or Ridgway, yet they managed to elude capture for a number of years because of the victims they selected, girls and women on the fringes trying to survive by selling the only thing they felt they could offer—their bodies.

  Of course, the most infamous of all serial killers in the Pacific Northwest, and possibly in the entire world, was Tacoma’s own dark son, Theodore Robert Bundy. While most serial killers were stuck with the perpetual and requisite use of their entire formal names, Tacoma’s killer was simply known as Ted.

  Grace’s connection to Ted was deep and personal, and until her sister’s case was resolved, she knew it always would be.

  The Tacoma detective shut out the world around her and put her laser-like focus on the electronic case files of the two missing girls on her computer screen. Lisa’s had been a missing persons case, initiated by Detective Goodman. It also included updates from the interviews she and Paul conducted with her mother and best friend. Next, she turned her attention to Kelsey’s file, a more detailed accounting of the seventeen-year-old’s sudden absence from the planet. While Grace could see similarities in their physical descriptions—serial killers frequently stalk a specific type—there was something else that jumped out at her. Something she was sure was merely a coincidence.