Closer Than Blood

by Gregg Olsen

  “Daddy,” she said, when she reached him on the phone that evening, “want to get some Chinese?”

  “You know I would love to, babe, but I’m up to my neck in alligators.”

  “How’s that case going?”

  “Making some progress,” he said.

  She knew when her dad did and didn’t want to discuss a case. Usually it was because it wasn’t going all that well.

  “Good,” she said. “But you have to eat sometime, you know.”

  He let out a sigh. “I’m going to be at the office for a while. I’ll get something later.”

  When Lindsey hung up, she went about the business of putting together a care package expressly for her dad. The year before her mother dumped him, he’d tried to get back into the fatherhood role in earnest. Trying so hard to win over his daughter. He used to make care packages for her when she had a big calculus test. She hated calculus, and her dad’s thoughtfulness made it a lot easier to endure. Her mother was out with her boyfriend, and Lindsey went through the fridge and pantry to try to put together something he’d like. She knew he was working on losing weight, but he also loved Fig Newtons—and since she hated those cookies above all others, they were easy to part with. She added a couple of bottles of water and an “encouragement” card that she’d bought for a friend whom she no longer wanted to encourage. She’d never seen the inside of his apartment, but maybe he’d invite her in.

  Just before she started to knock, she heard voices.

  Her father’s and the softer voice of a woman.

  Lindsey was thrilled that, just maybe, her dad was seeing someone.

  It was about time.

  She left the package by the door and stepped quietly away. Later that night, she texted him about her foiled delivery.

  He texted back right away.

  I WISH! THAT WAS LANDLADY! NEIGHBOR ABOVE HAD LEAKY SHOWER. LOL. MY LIFE SUX.

  With Parker’s eighteenth birthday only days away, Laura Connelly fretted about what she might do to celebrate the milestone. Every time she broached the subject, her son just dismissed it. He said that he didn’t want any fuss.

  “Drew and I will go out and do something, Mom. I’m not a kid anymore.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting Chuck E. Cheese, Parker.”

  “Whatever,” he said.

  “What do you mean, whatever? What do you want to do? Maybe I could meet this girlfriend of yours.”

  “I highly doubt that, Mom.”

  Later, Laura would beat herself up over how blind she’d been to what was going on in her son’s life. How she’d missed all the signs that he was slipping away. He’d been more remote than ever and she had no idea what he’d gotten himself into. Or what that pouch of money from the church meant.

  Part of her didn’t want to know.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Tacoma

  The cab ride from Seattle to Tacoma was a bleary-eyed mess. Lainie O’Neal had sold her Ford Focus for cash, thinking that she’d be able to get by on Seattle’s overhyped bus and light rail, Sounder Transit. The money helped in the short term. But not right then. She had expected to get to the hospital in an hour, but a recent miscalculation by the engineers working for the Washington State Department of Transportation had turned the primary link between the two cities into a parking lot as five lanes merged to one.

  It had been three days since Tori called, telling Lainie that she needed her to come, “but not right now.” Everything, even an emergency, was ruled by the whims of her twin sister.

  As the yellow cab waited behind a minivan with two children watching a DVD, Lainie thought once more of the last time she’d seen her sister. It had been years. So many, in fact, that she’d stopped thinking of Tori every day as she had when she first made it clear that she had no room in her life for any family member.

  It was a dark time, seared in her memory like a hot blade against her cheek. Unforgettable. Unstoppable. She fought the memory as the traffic in the so-called fast lane crawled southward to Tacoma.

  Maybe this is a new start, she thought. She needs me.

  As traffic centipeded past the Tacoma Dome, a message envelope appeared on the screen of Lainie’s cell phone. It was from Tori. If anyone had asked Lainie a week ago if her sister had ever called, Facebooked, MySpaced, or texted her, she would have laughed out loud. She might even have asked, “What sister?” But not right then. Tori had, indeed, called and texted. She was making up for lost time and using whatever means were available to reel in a sister she’d ignored for years.

  IVE BEEN DISCHARGED. MEET ME AT 222 N.JUNETT.

  Lainie gave the driver the address.

  “Nice part of town,” he said, glancing in the rearview mirror.

  Lainie looked out the window. “Figures,” she said.

  Tori always knew how to get what she wanted.

  When Lainie thought of her sister and how she became the way she did, she was transported back to the times and places of their childhood in Port Orchard. In her mind’s eye, Lainie saw Tori as she saw herself. As twins, they’d come into the world as a matched set. They’d been dressed alike. Voices were often mistaken for each other, particularly when answering the telephone. For the longest time, when they were elementary-school age, Lainie thought they were the same person—replicas of each other. Lainie assumed that their feelings mirrored each other’s, too.

  Why wouldn’t they?

  A few things stood out that she could pull from her memory and revisit.

  They were ten. Their father, who literally couldn’t kill a fly, had the misfortune to back over the O’Neals’ ancient, bag-of-bones Siamese cat, Ling-Ling. It was a Sunday morning and they had been on their way to church when the bump and crunch occurred. Their dad sprang from the driver’s side as if he’d been jolted by a hot wire. Their mom followed. Tori and Lainie were in the backseat, at first unaware. Lainie caught the look of anguish on her parents’ faces and watched her father bend down to pick up the cat. She was limp, bloodied, lifeless.

  It was apparent only then what had transpired—what the bump had been.

  “Daddy ran over Ling-Ling,” Lainie said, starting to cry. She unbuckled her seat belt and swung open the door, dropped her feet onto the pavement of the driveway. She swiveled and looked in the direction of sister.

  “Are you coming?”

  Tori didn’t bother to look up. She had a Sweet Valley Twins book in her lap, her eyes fixed on a page, as she continued to read.

  “Tori, Daddy ran over Ling-Ling!”

  “He didn’t mean to and the cat was old,” she said.

  The cat was old, and their father hadn’t meant to kill it. Lainie understood that. Everyone understood. But Tori’s observation came with a disturbingly cool demeanor.

  Snow on ice.

  That afternoon when they buried Ling-Ling under a pear tree that never fruited, Lainie let the tears flow. Her father held her hand and squeezed. His eyes had moistened, as had their mother’s. Tori’s eyes had puddled, too. Lainie thought that the wave of emotion that swept around them as they placed an avalanche of pink and white dahlia blossoms on the tiny grave was genuine.

  “I thought that you didn’t care about Ling-Ling,” Lainie said later when the twins tucked themselves into their beds that night. “You cried. I saw you.”

  Tori rolled onto her side and her blond hair tumbled onto the pale blue pillowcase. She looked at Lainie.

  “A cat is a cat,” she said. “I know she meant a lot to you, Mom, Dad. We’ll have other cats, other pets. She’s an animal and she was going to die soon anyway.”

  Lainie didn’t know her sister. Later, she’d play the scene over and wonder if she ever had. Tori’s matter-of-fact take on things seemed clear and emotionless. She was right about Ling-Ling. The O’Neals did have other cats. What resonated with Lainie was not about the cat at all. It was about how devastated their father had been by killing Ling-Ling. The cat was a pet, for sure. She was, in fact, very old. But none of that mattered.
Their father was so sorry for what he’d accidentally done. Lainie’s tears were really for him. She didn’t think Tori ever got that part of it.

  “She never understood how other people really felt,” Lainie confided to a friend many years after the incident. “It wasn’t in her to really, really look into the heart of another person to see their suffering. Or even their joy.”

  Pewter-colored Commencement Bay faded from view as the taxi headed up the hill from downtown toward the Stadium District, then on to North Junett. Lainie hadn’t spent much time in Tacoma, having fallen victim to the prejudice that came from thinking that Seattle was the Northwest’s only real city. Tacoma had been the butt of jokes since she’d been a child. The “aroma of Tacoma” was a favorite derision of those who didn’t live there, as it evoked the stinky smell of the old pulp mills and copper smelter that no longer spewed any stink. The jokes, like a residual smell, still lingered. It never occurred to her that her sister lived there. In fact, it never crossed her mind that she might bump into her in some random way like that. They’d been apart so long, the ties felt irrevocably severed.

  The phone call from the hospital changed all of that.

  She nodded off in the deep dark of the taxi’s backseat, only to awaken as the car slowed in front of the gargantuan Victorian. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and looked out through the fingerprint-marred window. A swirl of apricot blossoms clung to the large turret that overlooked the street. It was a gingerbread house with sugar. It was Candy Land. Chutes and Ladders. The house was a girl’s fantasy of the most charming home ever imagined.

  And her sister lived there.

  “I guess she married well,” Lainie said to the driver as she swung open the taxi’s door. A blast of cool air smacked her in the face and she pulled back a bit.

  The driver nodded. “Oh yeah, that she did. She had it good. Real good. You know, until the end.”

  He must have read the news paper or saw the story on TV, she thought. She noticed a fluttering remnant of yellow crime-scene tape on a walkway lamppost. That also might have tipped him off.

  She reached for her purse and started to rummage for her wallet, full of maxed-out credit cards and four twenties. She paid the man and, with suitcase trailing like a dog on a leash, Lainie trudged up the brick herringbone-patterned walkway to the front door, which was already parted to let her inside. Ten steps away, her heart pounded as she braced herself.

  Immediately, she saw her face.

  Her face.

  The door opened wider.

  “I knew I could count on you,” Tori said.

  It was Lainie’s voice, too. The voice that confused any who called the O’Neals’ wanting either of the girls from elementary to high school.

  “I’m here and it’s cold outside,” Lainie said.

  Despite a recent violent injury and a hospital stay, Tori had pulled herself together. Her makeup was flawless, understated. She wore a white robe with what appeared to be egret feathers—a little Sunset Boulevard, Lainie thought. Her hair was chic and lighter, almost the color they’d shared when they were little girls and looked exactly alike. Lainie wasn’t sure, at least not completely, but as she ran her eyes down her sister’s body, it looked as though Tori had breast implants. She wasn’t heavy in the face, but she was definitely heftier up there.

  “When did you get those?” Lainie asked, staring at her sister’s breasts.

  Tori shrugged. “A while ago. Already jealous and you just got here.”

  “Jealous? Of you?”

  “You’ve always wanted whatever I had.”

  Lainie regretted her original comment and ignored her sister’s tone. Getting off on the wrong foot was not her intention. It was easy, too easy, to slip into old habits.

  “I came because you said you needed me,” she said.

  Tori’s face softened a little. “I know,” she said. “Leave your bag by the stairs. I’ll take you up later and show you to your room.” The door shut behind them and the sisters studied each other in the foyer, quickly so as not to be peculiar, but the rapid once-over that twins sometimes do when taking stock of how they might appear to others.

  “The police are treating my house as a crime scene,” Tori said. Her voice was low, almost a whisper.

  The remark was ludicrous. Lainie wondered if it was a sedative talking.

  “That’s because that’s what it is,” she finally said.

  Tori’s eyes flickered. A glare or look of confusion? With Tori, Lainie could never be sure.

  “That’s not what I meant,” Tori said. “I mean they are treating me and my space as though I’ve done something wrong.”

  Lainie studied her sister’s lips. They also seemed a little fuller than her own. Not that she thought she had particularly thin lips, but her twin apparently thought so. She’d had them plumped with some ghastly filler, a permanent pout that she undoubtedly felt was sexy.

  Youthful. Pretty.

  “It all happened so fast,” she said.

  “Of course it did,” Lainie said. “Did you get a good look at whoever did it?”

  She paused and looked past her sister.

  Lainie knew that the tone of her words hadn’t matched what she’d meant to convey. The word whoever had come out slightly accusatory. She didn’t know why it did, but it did.

  “You look tired,” Tori said. “Hungry?”

  Lainie was, but she knew that her sister didn’t care about that. She’d asked only because it was the right thing to do. The expected thing.

  “It was a long ride, ten times longer than necessary,” she said. “But what about you? Are you feeling all right?”

  “My injury is severe, of course, but not so much that I can’t manage.” Tori’s eyes glistened. “Alex didn’t make it, and that’s the part that hurts so much. And I know that it will for a long time.”

  The two sisters were suddenly in the moment, the reason why they’d been brought back together. Lainie reached over and patted Tori’s hand. It felt cold, and she gripped it a little. Tori pulsed back. Lainie wanted her to warm up, be better.

  “I’m so sorry, Tori,” she said, feeling sorrow for a man she’d never even met. “Do you need me to call someone? Alex’s family?”

  Tori, her eyes dust-dry, looked at her sister, searching. “He has a sister.”

  “Parents?”

  Tori shook her head. “No. Just a sister.”

  “All right, a sister.”

  Lainie waited for more instructions, a name or a number. Something that would let her know what she was supposed to do. There was a coolness between the pair. Such an interaction wasn’t exactly foreign. At their greeting, there was no full-on embrace. It was more tentative, casual, almost impersonal. On the ride to Tacoma Lainie had let it pass through her mind that her sister would need her. Want her there.

  After all, she’d called her.

  “What’s her name? Where does she live?”

  Tori’s eyes drilled into Lainie’s. “I can’t stand her.”

  Lainie knew that meant that Alex’s sister couldn’t stand Tori.

  “Okay. Why is that? Why can’t you stand her?”

  “It’s complicated. But, yes, you need to let her know about Alex. Her name is Anne Childers. Husband is a sales manager or something. They live in Portland. One of the suburbs. Beaverton, I think.”

  Lainie could hardly believe her sister’s disclosure. “You don’t know?”

  “Not any more than I have to. Trust me. Anne is a bitch. But, yes, call her, tomorrow. She is family, after all.”

  Tori tenderly touched her thigh, indicating that she was in pain and the conversation was over.

  “Let’s lock up,” she said, “and I’ll show you to your room so you can freshen up.”

  They walked across a blue, gold, and cream oriental carpet in the foyer. Tori seemed only a little hesitant in her gait, not in wincing pain as she had when she first appeared in the doorway. Lainie watched her sister tap out a code on the alarm s
ystem hidden behind a panel in the foyer.

  “Did that go off the other night?” Lainie asked.

  Tori sighed. “No, it didn’t. Alex must have forgotten to set it. He was always doing that. It’s amazing that I’ve survived this long.”

  “It isn’t like you were suffering, Tori.”

  “I’m sure it looks fine from your perspective. Your view of things was always a little cut-and-dried. You know, average.”

  It was meant to be another sucker punch to her psyche, given by a sister who probably wanted to see if she still had the ability to hurt. Tori never liked to waste time.

  Lainie shook it off. “Are you afraid your attacker will come back?”

  “Why should I be?” Tori shut the panel. “You’re here.”

  The remark was unsettling, though it shouldn’t have been. It probably wouldn’t have been if they were any other pair of sisters. Lainie wondered if Tori was suggesting that since she had arrived, the assailant might become confused and snuff out the wrong twin.

  “That’s right, I’m here.” She picked up her carry-on.

  They slowly walked up the grand staircase and down the Persian-rug-padded hallway to the first bedroom, dominated by an antique canopy bed. Tori pulled back the coverlet and drew the floor-to-ceiling moiré silk drapes, the color of bloodred tulips, like the ones their mother had grown in pots on the back deck of their home in Port Orchard.

  “Lainie, I’m so glad that you came.”

  “Me, too,” Lainie said, watching her sister disappear into her bedroom just down the hall. Lainie dressed for bed, brushed her teeth. When she discarded a length of floss into wastebasket, a glint of foil caught her eye. It was square with a circular indentation.

  A condom wrapper.

  Whoever last stayed in the guest room had a lot more fun than I’m going to have, she thought.