Closer Than Blood

by Gregg Olsen

  “Darius Fulton here. I want to come in and talk to you. In person.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Tacoma

  Corazón White rolled a cart with a snack for Tori Connelly, a task that a nurse would never have to do if not for the budget cutbacks that left the hospital short staffed. Mrs. Connelly had somehow managed to make a bad situation worse. The gunshot victim’s latest annoyance was her request for an egg white omelet and side of whole wheat toast “no crust please” and “a dark juice of either acai or pomegranate.”

  “We have orange, tomato, or pineapple,” Corazón said while she took her order and did her vitals for the doctor’s rounds earlier that morning.

  Tori frowned and fussed with the IV line again. “This is a hospital, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, of course it is.”

  “Surely, you’ve heard of the benefits of dark juices.”

  She wanted to play dumb and say her name wasn’t Shirley. Mrs. Connelly was getting on her nerves.

  “Yes, I have.”

  “Well, your dietician here ought to have his or her work permit pulled. The juices you offer might as well be colored sugar water, because you’re not giving your patients anything of value.”

  The “work permit” phrase was a slam and Corazón knew it. She’d also waitressed through nursing school and knew that such arguments can never be won.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” she said.

  It turned out she could do next to nothing. Mrs. Connelly wasn’t getting any pomegranate juice. She was getting orange like everyone else on the floor.

  “Best I could do,” Corazón said, wheeling the tray into the room.

  “Your best is not going to be noted on my comment card. If you have one here. I guess one would be surprised if you did.”

  Corazón wanted to say something rude back, but she held her tongue. The woman with the wound on her thigh and the perfect haircut thought she was in a spa or hotel, not a hospital. She sure wasn’t acting like a woman who had just lost her husband in a violent shooting.

  She started to pull the curtain, even though the room was without a second bed.

  “I know you’ll want some peace to eat your meal, Mrs. Connelly.”

  After her encounter with “the bitch in 561D,” Corazón did only the minimum required. She saw the patient. She tried not to engage her. The woman on the other side of the perma-drawn curtain didn’t seem to mind. Being alone and being the subject of hospital gossip didn’t trouble her one iota.

  Corazón stalled when she came to get the food tray. Tori Connelly was on the phone and Corazón didn’t want to disturb her. Instead, she parked herself a few steps inside the doorway.

  “Do not call me back,” Tori said.

  A short pause.

  “Are you listening? I do not want to talk to you. Not for a while.”

  Her tone was demanding and exceedingly direct.

  “I won’t say another word about it and neither will you.”

  The next pause was a bit longer.

  “You will do what I say. Good-bye.”

  Corazón wasn’t completely sure what she heard, but she’d been browbeaten by Tori Connelly once and that was enough. She waited a second, and then made her presence known by rattling the metal cart.

  “Hope you’re feeling better,” she said.

  Tori looked at the young nurse when the curtain parted. She was wary. Her eyes fixed on Corazón’s.

  “Talking to my sister just now.”

  “Oh, your chart says you don’t have any family,” Corazón said, careful not to sound like she was anything but bored with her patient. She disliked this lady, but she knew the type. They’d make trouble for anyone they could. Making trouble was a sport for those who could afford to play the game.

  “She’s coming from Seattle,” Tori said.

  “Seattle’s pretty.”

  “And boring. You’d like my sister.”

  Corazón wasn’t sure who was the subject of the put-down—the sister or her. She was just glad that whenever Tori Connelly was discharged, she’d be rid of her. Her sister, poor thing, was stuck with that woman for the rest of her life.

  “I want to see the doctor. A real doctor. Not a nurse. Not a trainee.” Tori pulled herself up. “I want out of here. I can rest more comfortably at home.”

  Corazón figured they both could.

  “The doctor will be in soon. Just rest, okay?”

  She left the room glad that the patient wanted to leave and feeling sorry for the sister who was stuck with such a . . .

  Class-A bitch, she thought. Yeah, that’s what she is.

  There was something oddly gratifying about the e-mails—knowing that she would see them, react to them, and they’d make love.

  I miss you. I miss how you feel in my arms.

  You are being cold to me. How come?

  What have I done?

  I saw you yesterday outside. I waved but you ignored me. I don’t get it.

  Your husband is a fool. He’s not taking care of you. Not like I would.

  Please. Don’t do this to me. Give me another chance.

  Not every message got a reply, but those that did were unfailingly direct.

  Stop.

  I don’t want to see you again.

  My husband knows what happened and he loves me enough to forgive me.

  It is over.

  Smooth jazz played from the stereo in the other room, but it did little to abate the tension in the air. The lovely little house in Fircrest never held a vibe that matched its charming Cape Cod exterior. Laura and Parker Connelly were mother and son, but they were increasingly at odds. Alex Connelly’s brutal murder on the other side of town had done nothing to bring them together. The two residents in that little house knew firsthand that times of crisis aren’t always measured in the positive. Sometimes there was no bright side.

  “Honey,” Laura Connelly said, putting her hand on her son’s shoulder as she cleared the dishes from the kitchen table, “I’m worried about you.” She had fixed him his “unhealthy favorite” fish and chips with chipotle mayo and a carrot-and-cabbage slaw. It was a thousand calories a serving and the house smelled like a fast-food joint. Laura didn’t mind. She noticed a widening gap in their relationship and she wanted more than anything to win him back. Whatever secrets he’d been keeping had been wearing on her.

  “I’m doing okay, Mom,” he said unconvincingly. He fished a French fry off her plate as she started for the sink, a wobbly stack of dishes in hand.

  “Are you, really?” Without turning around, Laura started rinsing plates in preparation for loading the dishwasher. Avoiding eye contact was a strategy. Her son hated confrontation. “You haven’t talked much about your father’s death.”

  Parker pushed back his chair and looked over at his mother. “There isn’t much to talk about.”

  She turned off the faucet and reached for a kitchen towel. Again, no eye contact. “It would be all right to be mad at him, if that’s what you’re feeling.”

  “I am mad at him, but I really am not having any kind of struggle about him dying. He treated all of us like a big jerk. You, me, Tori.”

  “Tori?”

  “Yes, her, too.”

  “How did he treat her? I thought they’d been happy.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not going to get into it, Mom. Tori’s a private person. I just know stuff.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  Parker knew that on some level his mother had every reason to hate Tori. Yet he wanted her to know that she was wrong for doing so. Tori was a victim, too.

  “Dad was cheating on her,” he said.

  Laura didn’t say it, but she wanted to. What goes around comes around. “All right, let’s change the subject. Tell me about this girlfriend of yours.”

  “Have you been spying on me again?”

  “A mother looking out for her son isn’t spying, Parker.”

  “She’s just some girl. She’s cool. That
’s all you need to know.”

  “When do I get to meet her?”

  “I don’t know, Mom, maybe never.”

  Part of him wanted to shout it in the middle of the mall that he and Tori were lovers. But his mother would never, ever understand. He didn’t think anyone could understand. He also knew that what he and his stepmother were doing was illegal.

  “If she’s so cool, why can’t I meet her?” Laura asked.

  “Because you can’t,” he said.

  “I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

  The idea of his mother dispensing that kind of advice set him off. His face went red. She could be so stupid. Tori warned him about women like his mother.

  They say they know best because they don’t want you to find what eluded them, she said the first time they made love. I know best. I can give you what you need.

  “Jesus, Mom, there’s no chance of that. I’ve found my soul mate. Look at you. You’re alone. You don’t have a freaking soul who cares about you. You think I want to end up like you?” He got up from the table and started for his bedroom. “And I don’t appreciate you going through my stuff, Mom. That’s over the line, even for a control freak like you.”

  Laura didn’t dissolve into tears, though she felt like it. Her son was growing up. He was trying to find his own way. He was such a good, sweet boy. She was sure that whatever girl he was dating was going to be just like him—good, sweet.

  She could not have been more wrong.

  Parker’s phone buzzed. He looked down at the text message and took a deep breath.

  HAVE U LEFT YET?

  THE SOONER THE BETTER.

  MISS U.

  LOVE, ME.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Kitsap County

  Kitsap County forensic pathologist Birdy Waterman kept a completely well thought-out workspace, even if her surroundings suggested more of the makings of a gruesome garage sale than the offices of the county coroner. The house at 704 Sidney was exactly that, a house. County commissioners and law enforcement had resumed talks about the need for a state-of-the-art facility, but money remained in short supply. Recently, jail and administrative offices had been renovated and rebuilt, and clamped-handed conservative taxpayers were not in the mood to shell out more so soon. So the sad little house pressed into service by a tight budget had been the place of a thousand autopsies in its dank, cement-floored basement.

  Like Hollywood deaths, Kitsap deaths often came in threes.

  That month the tragic ending to a trio of lives had already crammed the first week in May of the coroner’s calendar. The first was a Southworth toddler who’d been run over by her father as he backed out of the driveway in a hurry for work. The second found its way to the basement morgue in the remains of a Port Orchard man whose hand had become tangled in a fishing net with no time to free himself before being pulled underwater just west of Blake Island. The third was a Poulsbo woman who had packed up all of her belongings to make her getaway from a husband who’d used her as a punching bag whenever he drank—which was daily. She’d made a run for it one night, but she wasn’t fast enough. He severed her jugular with the splintered end of a Monarch vodka bottle.

  That last one echoed scenes from Birdy’s own childhood. Not the murder, of course, but the darkness that came with living in a household in which booze was the dominating force behind every act of evil done to her mother.

  And there were too many of those moments to forget.

  Outside, Kendall Stark peered into the small window of the basement autopsy suite of the Kitsap County Coroner’s Office. It was dark, which was in its own way a relief. Kendall didn’t mind dealing with the aftermath of an actual crime scene when gathering evidence. Those moments came with a kind of adrenaline surge to ensure that everything was done with complete urgency, as if a dead person’s life depended on it.

  Which it did.

  On the other hand, autopsies were slow, mechanical, and sad. Though they were often the start of the real investigation, they held no adrenaline surge for the practitioner or observer.

  The hemline of Kendall Stark’s black slacks wicked water from a puddle as she went around the coroner’s office toward the front door. The detective always felt a little funny about going inside. Walking up the wet sidewalk between the overgrown shrubberies, up the concrete steps to the front door, felt like one was visiting a friend, not a county government office. She buzzed, identified herself, and went inside. From the small foyer, she passed the desk of the administrative assistant, a capable silver-haired woman who’d been with the office longer than anyone. Kendall smiled at Pamela, who was on the phone negotiating a warranty on a Stryker saw that had gone kaput. She walked toward Dr. Waterman’s office, across green hi-lo carpeting that had been splattered with stains made by God-knew-what.

  Leaking bags of bodily fluids? Or the dribble of tea from the kitchen in the back of the office?

  Birdy, her black hair swept back by a bright red clip, hovered over her work. A plastic and foam tote holding the fragments of a woman who’d been shot three times in the head by her estranged boyfriend sat on her desk, the focus of her attention. She was in the midst of marking chain-of-custody paperwork that would take the tissue samples to the state crime lab in Olympia, where toxicologists would examine everything for drugs—prescription or otherwise.

  “I thought you might be downstairs,” Kendall said. “Heard about the crash on the highway last night.”

  Birdy looked up. She slid a manifest about what was being dispatched to Olympia into a glassine. She scooted the tote aside.

  “The girl was seventeen. Died at the scene. Broken neck. Honestly too many broken bones to count, but I logged in every one. Once you find a severed spinal cord, you don’t need to look for another cause of death.” Birdy let out a sigh and ran a line of evidence tape down the center of the tote, over the glassine, and under the bottom of the container. “Driver, a drunk from Gig Harbor, walked away without so much as a scratch.”

  Kendall sat in one of two old typing chairs being used for visitors in a place that seldom had many, or rather, many visitors who were living.

  “Seventeen,” she said. “That’s so young.”

  That’s the same age as Jason.

  “Almost everyone who comes through here has died too young, Kendall. But you’re right. This is a heartbreaker of the worst kind. The girl was a straight-A student and captain of her tennis team. Pretty. Smart. Athletic. The kind of girl you’d want your daughter to be.”

  Fifteen years ago, Kendall was that girl.

  “Notification?” As Kendall slid her coat off her shoulders and let it fall over the chair back, its sleeves tumbled to the awful green carpet and she pulled them onto her lap.

  Birdy nodded. “Handled. The parents were at the scene when they brought her in.”

  The words were so painful, Kendall was grateful that this was one notification she didn’t have to make.

  “Nothing is more difficult,” she said.

  Birdy looked at the clock on the wall behind Kendall. “She’s in the chiller. The guys from Rill’s Chapel will be here in an hour.”

  The doctor and the detective were friends, and they used a few minutes of their time to catch up. At forty, Birdy had married the owner of a Port Orchard restaurant the previous summer. Her life had seemed to run in a series of long-delayed changes. She never looked happier. A sparkle in her eyes. A smile on her face. Birdy Waterman was a late bloomer, a woman who’d put her career ahead of personal aspirations and desires. She once told Kendall that she’d forgone marriage and all that went with it out of a sense of duty, a need to achieve all she could.

  “You know,” she said. “Because of where I came from and how what I do reflects on my people.”

  Kendall had understood, yet there was nothing to which she could personally relate. She’d had the nice middle-class life in Small Town, America. Her parents adored her and her sister, and they’d never really gone without. If they needed some
thing, they got it. It wasn’t always the best quality, but growing up in Port Orchard, they didn’t necessarily know the difference between Walmart and Nordstrom.

  Birdy had been born on a reservation to an alcoholic mother and a father she barely knew.

  “My people need something to hold on to, and every time I go home, I am reminded of that. It is loud and very, very clear.”

  Kendall knew that was true. One of the rare times was when she’d been over to Birdy’s new place on the bluff overlooking the Southworth ferry landing, she’d overheard bits and pieces of a phone conversation.

  “Are you all right, Mom?”

  “Have you been drinking?”

  “Mom, just go to bed. Just crawl under the covers.”

  “No, there is nothing I can prescribe for you; you need to see Dr. Bergman.”

  “Mom, don’t do this now.”

  Kendall had seen the hurt and fear in Birdy’s eyes after she hung up the phone.

  Awkwardness had penetrated the air.

  “I’m sorry,” Birdy said. “My mother has problems.”

  Kendall considered Birdy one of the most accomplished women she’d ever known. Certainly, she knew she’d grown up poor, but somehow she hadn’t let it pass through her mind that the stunning black-haired woman with the medical degree had any battles left to fight.

  “I’m sorry,” Kendall said. “If there’s anything I can do . . .”

  The offer had been genuine, but words uttered in that sequence rarely carry much weight. People mean well most of the time, but sometimes they only mean to put a period on an uncomfortable moment. An offer of kindness that will never be cashed in, never be due.