Closer Than Blood

by Gregg Olsen

  He remembered what happened that night.

  As he knelt down to help the girl who had been driving, he watched the other one hurry over to where the boy was sprawled out on the gravel. He was saying something to her, though Mikey couldn’t hear a word of it.

  He heard the sirens coming from the end of Banner, a good four minutes away.

  The girl standing over the boy was yelling at him.

  “I hate you. I wish I’d never met you,” she said.

  “Help me,” said the girl in his arms. “Help my sister. My boyfriend.”

  Mikey tried to soothe her. His brain was fried and it was so hard to concentrate on what was happening. The smoke. The headlights still on, punching through the blackness of the night. The sirens getting louder and louder.

  “They’re okay.”

  “It’s all my fault,” she said.

  He patted her hand. “It was an accident. You were probably going too fast for the Jump. It happens.”

  “Are you sure they are okay?”

  He looked over at the other girl. She was yelling at the boy.

  “Goddamn you! I hate you!”

  What he saw next would haunt him forever. The other girl clenched her hands around the boy’s neck.

  “You’re a piece of shit, Jason!”

  “What’s happening?” the first girl said.

  “I don’t know. Nothing!”

  The lights of the sirens came down the hill like fireflies on steroids.

  He looked over and the boy had stopped moving. The other girl’s eyes locked on Mikey’s and she came toward him.

  “You say anything and you’re dead. I’ll make sure the sheriff blames you for all of this. That you crossed the center line and forced us into the ditch.”

  “You’re a crazy little bitch,” he said.

  “I’ve seen you around. You’re Mikey Walsh. You’re trailer trash, a drug addict. A loser. No one would ever believe you over me.”

  The girl went over to her twin, leaned close to her ear, and whispered something. A moment later, a deputy sheriff and the commotion that comes with the sirens and lights arrived.

  It was late evening and the silhouette of Blake Island was outlined by a halo of lights from Seattle on the other side of Puget Sound. Kendall tightened her frame to stay warm as she sat on the old madrona stump with a glass of wine. She’d been quiet since coming home from the sheriff’s office. In fact, she’d been quiet the last few days. Steven brought the bottle and a glass outside in search of his wife. It was a cool night, but late spring in the Northwest guaranteed such weather. A sweater and a blanket were kept in a storage bin by the back door.

  “I haven’t seen you like this in a long time,” he said.

  Kendall looked up and smiled.

  “I’m sorry. I guess I’m not good company.”

  “You’re always good company, honey. But sometimes you’re very quiet company. What’s going on with you? Is it the case?”

  The case.

  Those words were often volleyed among the spouses of those in law enforcement when they tried to dig into the source of whatever it was that had stolen all the attention. Steven didn’t mean it in that way, of course. He’d long accepted that Kendall had a purpose in life nearly as great as mother and wife—putting away monsters so they’d never hurt or kill again. It was that simple. It didn’t matter one bit if the victim was a child, an old man, a person of wealth or not. All were equal in her mind.

  He sat next to her and poured himself a glass. “Want more?” He extended the bottle and Kendall nodded.

  “I’m trying to sort things out.”

  “Can I help?”

  “Not really.”

  She wanted to say something more; she wanted to tell her husband that she was wrapped in lead-lined clothing and she could barely breathe. But she didn’t. She just couldn’t.

  “Make a wish,” he said, looking at the quilt of stars over the inky-black island. “A falling star.”

  Kendall looked skyward and did just that. She wished that she didn’t have to say anything to Steven, ever. Not the truth. It just hurt too much.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Kitsap County

  Kitsap County Sheriff’s Detective Kendall Stark looked at the text message on her cell phone. It was from Adam Canfield and marked urgent. She pondered if it was something about the fifteen-year high school reunion that, in the scheme of things, was anything but urgent.

  Annoying, yes. Urgent? Only to those with something to prove.

  Her short blond hair was damp from a morning towel-dry as she stood in the kitchen of her Harper, Washington, home and considered the rest of her morning. There had not been any major cases in a while, at least none that hadn’t already wound their way from investigation to the prosecutor’s office. There was a lull in Kitsap County, and that alone made her a little nervous. Kendall Stark believed in the concept of calm before the storm.

  Every criminal case started that way. From nothing to something. With a gunshot. A knife. An electric cord wrapped around the neck.

  Kendall’s phone buzzed again. She sipped coffee and listened to the radio as it recounted more news about a stumbling economy, a soggy spring, and a shooting in Tacoma.

  She opened the first message:

  CHK OUT PAPER. TORI O SHOT. HUSBAND DEAD. L8R.

  Then the second. Adam had a penchant for drama and never used one exclamation mark when several would do.

  Can u believe it?!!!!

  Kendall couldn’t, or rather didn’t want to.

  Tori O’Neal had been a student at South Kitsap High. Her sister, Lainie, was on the reunion committee, along with Adam, Kendall, and Penny Salazar. No one—not even her sister—had heard from Tori in years. Her name was the proverbial “blast from the past,” and, in Tori’s case, a cold blast indeed.

  I hope Lainie’s all right. This is the last thing she needs, Kendall thought as she retrieved the paper from a stack ready for the recycling center on Burley-Olalla Road. Her husband, Steven, hadn’t gone running that morning, and that meant that the morning’s edition hadn’t been picked up from the tube at the end of the driveway.

  Tori O’Neal? Shot? Dead husband?

  She unfolded the paper and scanned for the story.

  The article was tucked near the bottom right-hand corner next to articles about toxic rainwater runoff in Commencement Bay and a tragic accident involving a church bus and a semi in Terre Haute, Indiana.

  Man Dies in North Tacoma Shooting, Wife Injured

  An intruder shot a North Tacoma couple in their home early this morning. Police are unsure if it was a home invasion or a robbery gone wrong. The man, an executive with an investment firm, died at the scene. The woman was transported to St. Joseph Medical Center for treatment.

  “We’re still piecing together last night’s events,” Sgt. Tammy Lewis said. She cited privacy laws when declining to provide the prognosis for the woman. “There did not appear to be much of a struggle so we don’t consider this a home invasion.”

  Lewis’s remark referred to several cases involving intruders who held their victims captive. The most recent case pending involved a trio of young people who’d murdered and tortured victims they’d met through Craigslist when they feigned interest in purchasing jewelry or other items.

  “We can’t say anything about her condition other than to say she was taken to St. Joseph Medical Center for treatment. She was admitted sometime after midnight.”

  The article’s abbreviated content was more a reflection of the timing of the shooting than what had actually occurred at the residence and who the victims had been. If it had taken place earlier in the day—and provided there were decent photos—it easily would have found itself above the fold on the front page of the News Tribune. Cutbacks at the News Tribune and other papers had shifted more editorial effort to the electronic side of the news operation. Frequent updates, blog entries, and even video supplied by “mojos,” or mobile journalists, would be feature
d there. Partly because her husband was in the media business, working for a hunting and fishing magazine, the Starks still subscribed to print editions of three newspapers: the Kitsap Sun, the Port Orchard Lighthouse , and the Tacoma News Tribune.

  She set the paper aside and opened her laptop on the kitchen table and clicked over to the web page, where the update included the victim’s name, Alex Connelly. There was also a photo. He was a handsome man with a square jaw and dark hair that he wore combed straight back. His eyes were intense and very blue. Piercing blue eyes, even in a photograph. The image appeared to be a business portrait. In the casualness of the Pacific Northwest, a suit and tie were seldom worn unless it was for work or a wedding.

  In the comments section someone had posted:

  RIP, Alex. You were a great guy. It was an honor to serve with you.

  Although the paper said he was an executive with an investment firm, it was clear that Kendall’s first impression was right on the money. She instantly saw the unmistakable deliberateness that came with a military background. A military man’s eyes never failed to telegraph directness. He looked straight at the camera. Unblinking. Sure. Confident. She wondered where Tori had met him. Had it been across Port Orchard’s Sinclair Inlet in Bremerton where the navy decommissioned old battleships and aircraft carriers? Or maybe Fort Lewis south of Tacoma? That was army. Or McChord Air Force Base right next door?

  More than anything, she thought about Tori.

  How was it that she was able to escape when her husband was likely trained in self-defense?

  It was close to 8:30 and she needed to finish drying her hair and scoot out the door to work, a ten-minute drive away. That it had been a slow spring, crime-wise, was just as well. She wasn’t the kind of cop who’d signed on because she was an adrenaline junkie. She knew that type and felt they’d missed the whole point of law enforcement.

  “We’re here to help people, not ride the wave of others’ misfortune,” she once told her frequent partner in investigations, Josh Anderson. “Do you really need to smile so much at a scene?”

  Kendall went outside to the patio, following the sound of her husband and son in the yard. She glanced at the stump of the madrona that had once arched over the backyard with its distinctive red-and-green striated bark and canopy of waxy green leaves. It had silvered in the weather of the past couple of seasons, and a series of fissures ran from the center of the cut outward, like spokes on the wheel of an old ten-speed bicycle. The cool air from Yukon Harbor blew against her face and she touched her damp hair, wondering if she’d be able to avoid the blow dryer and just tousle it with her fingertips. It was short and she could get away with that technique most days. She was still young and attractive, but time was creeping at her and she knew that fingertip hairstyling and a light swipe of lip gloss was no longer a wise go-to regimen for the morning.

  She watched Steven and their nine-year-old son, Cody, burn deadfall in a fire pit on the edge of the yard. For most, it would have been too early in the morning for such an endeavor. But not for those two. Father and son were early risers. Kendall was the opposite—the last one out of bed on a Saturday morning. The one to turn out the lights of the house in the evening. The one to check the door locks and the security of the windows.

  A smile broke out over her face as she caught her son’s gaze. Cody was quiet, leaving the conversation to his father.

  As always.

  “Let’s get that bunch of branches from over there, son. Let’s get this thing going good.”

  Kendall moved across the wet grass. “Isn’t there a burn ban?” she said, half kidding.

  “You going to arrest us?” Steven said, winking at his son.

  Cody remained mute, but the flicker in his eyes indicated he’d understood the irony of his dad’s comment.

  “I might have to,” she said.

  Steven poked the fire and put out his hand to push Cody back a step. “Full plate today?”

  “Barring a catastrophe with the committee at lunch, it won’t be a long day,” Kendall said. The reunion was a week from Saturday at the Gold Mountain Golf Club in Bremerton.

  As far as Kendall was concerned, the next nine days couldn’t pass quickly enough.

  “We’ve got it handled, babe,” Steven said, giving her a short kiss.

  “You smell like smoke,” she said.

  Steven grinned. “You smell beautiful.”

  Cody set a nest of grapevines at the edge of the fire pit.

  “Be careful, Cody.” The boy nodded and Kendall kissed him.

  Steven patted their son on the shoulder. “He’s good.”

  Cody’s autism was fickle, cruelly so. Sometimes he’d speak plainly, even spontaneously. Not that day.

  Kendall climbed into her white SUV and started to back down the driveway, Cody and Steven looking smaller and smaller as she pulled away.

  She hadn’t mentioned to Steven what she’d read about Tori and she knew the reason why. Tori was connected to a part of her past that she’d just as soon never revisit. She knew she’d have to say something eventually. Once it broke that their old high school friend was the wife of the murder victim, Tori’s name would surely find its way to the pages of the Lighthouse, the local paper.

  She could feel her heart rate quicken and willed herself to relax. This was a stressor she didn’t need. She thought of a note on the back of a card that had come through the mail when the save-the-date and early head count cards went out six months prior. It too had bothered her. It made her a little paranoid. She hated even admitting to that kind of feeling. It was only eleven words.

  I KNOW EVERYTHING. SEE YOU THERE. IT’LL BE LIKE OLD TIMES.

  Just what did the sender mean? And to which committee member had it been directed?

  Kendall wasn’t sure if the card was a threat or just someone’s idea of a joke. She didn’t tell anyone—not Sheriff McCray, not Josh, not even Steven—that she’d taken the card to the crime lab and processed it herself. No fingerprints but her own. No postmark. No identifier whatsoever. Later, she pored through the stack of cards to see if it had come in an envelope that she’d misplaced somehow, but she came up empty handed.

  She wondered how that card got to her if it hadn’t been mailed. She also wondered if it was related to the Kinko’s e-mail.

  THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE.

  Earlier that same morning, a very tired Lainie O’Neal stared at the void of her computer screen. French roast coffee perfumed the confines of her home office, the second bedroom in a two-bedroom apartment she’d rented for five years on Seattle’s Queen Anne Hill. She watched her Siamese fighting fish, Rusty, blow bubbles on the surface of the brandy snifter that was his home. It was just before 7:00 A.M., and she had time to polish a chapter of a book that she’d been working on—with renewed vigor—since the Seattle P-I shuttered its newsroom after more than a century of being the “newspaperman’s newspaper.” She’d dreamed that a book would get her out of the endeavor that was killing her with each fifty-word nugget she had to write. She was a “content provider” for a number of travel websites. She was literally writing for food, each word, one bite at a time. On a good day she pounded out twenty-five of the inane little travel tips that the freelance employer sought. Everything from how many mint sprigs and limes should be muddled in a mojito to the best fish tacos in Los Cabos.

  She hated the whole lot of what she was doing, but reporters like her had been shoved out the door in an age that no longer seemed to value context, nuance, and depth.

  Everything was free, and fast. Even the news.

  Her cell phone rang and her eyes darted to the tiny screen, but she did not recognize the number. It was too early for a source to phone. Neither was it the number for one of the other reporters who’d regularly called to commiserate about their bleak futures in a post-newspaper world. A moment later, the caller tried a second time.

  It must be urgent, she thought. She clapped the phone to her ear.

  “Hello?”
>
  “Lainie?”

  The voice was a whisper.

  “Yes, this is Lainie O’Neal,” she said.

  A second of silence and the sound of a deep breath.

  “Lainie, it’s me. Your sister.”

  Lainie no longer needed the early morning jolt of a mud-thick French roast coffee from Starbucks. The words were a cattle prod at her heart.

  “Tori?”

  Silence.

  “Tori? Is that you?”

  Another hesitation on the line. “I’m in the hospital. I’ve been hurt. I need you.”

  “Where?”

  “Tacoma. I’ve been shot.”

  “Oh, wow, but no, where are you?”

  “St. Joe’s.”

  Lainie felt her adrenaline surge, slowly, then a tidal wave. She needed more information. She had no idea in which city her sister resided. They were twins, but they hadn’t spoken in years. Just how many, Lainie didn’t know. She refused to count the number anymore. It hurt too much.

  “What happened?”

  “An intruder last night. Late. I was shot. My husband was killed.”

  Husband? Lainie had no idea that Tori had married again.

  “Will you come? I need your help.”

  Again, an awkward silence, the kind that invites the person waiting to hear to press the phone tighter to her ear.

  “They’re whispering about me . . . I think they think I did this to myself,” Tori said. “To him.”

  “I’ll be there,” Lainie said. “Right away.”

  “No. Not now. Wait a day or two. I’ll be okay in the hospital. I’ll let you know when to come.”

  “Are you sure? I can come visit you now.”