Closer Than Blood

by Gregg Olsen

  Her voice began to carry an edge, and she recognized it. She modulated her words.

  “How can you do this to us?” she asked.

  “I thought I could.”

  “Give it to me. Give me the gun. True love,” she said, “means doing the right thing.”

  He handed her the weapon.

  “Do you still love me?”

  “You’re not making it easy, but, yes, baby. I do.”

  When it came time to do what they’d agreed to do, Tori stood there naked, her young lover behind her. He was dressed. He was supposed to be the shooter, but he was unable to do what needed to be done. The smell of gunfire filled the living room. Blood had blown back on her breasts. A piece of her dead husband’s brain stuck on her neck, and she flicked it off.

  Her eyes were ice. “Fire it.”

  Parker looked at his father’s body. “He’s already dead.”

  She poked the gun in his direction. “Are you serious? So what? You have to be a part of this. I’m not carrying this burden alone.”

  “Tori,” he said. No other words came.

  “You’ve got two seconds. Now you’ve got one second.” Parker stepped closer to his father and pointed the gun. His hands were shaking.

  “Steady or you’ll hurt someone,” she said.

  The gun went off, and Tori took it. She immediately pointed it at her thigh and fired. She didn’t even wince.

  “Get out now,” she said.

  Parker didn’t know that she’d made sure that his fingerprints were on the gun. She thought of it as her “insurance policy.”

  Or one of them, anyway.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Tacoma

  The note that appeared at the front desk stared at her, and Kendall Stark stared back. It was like looking at the face of a cobra, ready to lift its head and strike. It was a shark with its jaws wide open and a ladder lodged in it so that all a person had to do was climb down to die.

  So easy. Just come on inside.

  STOP AND THINK. JASON TOLD ME. I KNOW. YOU NEED TO BACK OFF.

  Kendall swiveled out of her chair and shut her office door. She turned to face the portrait of her family and the dying fern on her desk. She pressed her back against the door not because she was tired, but because she could barely stand. Her lungs were devoid of oxygen. She felt as if her knees would fail her, like a wooden peg doll that had its pins removed by a terrorizing child.

  She felt such fear, and she knew that the sender had declared war on her weeks ago.

  I know you sent this, Tori. I know you are the one.

  She heard a knock on the door and she spun around.

  “Kendall?”

  The voice belonged to Josh.

  Now isn’t a good time, she thought.

  “On the phone with my mom’s doctor,” she said. “Be a minute.”

  She let herself slide to the floor.

  The voice on the other end of the line was toffee—sweet, but with sharp, dangerous edges. The conversation between Parker and Tori was spoken in the kind of hushed tones reserved for those who do not want others to hear.

  “What is it that you want now?”

  “You. I’m waiting for you.”

  “Hold on a bit longer.”

  “Waiting for you is hard.”

  “Really? I like that.”

  “Not that. You know, I miss you.”

  “You miss making love to me.”

  “Yes. I miss everything about you. I want to hold you. Taste you. Be inside of you.”

  “Patience.”

  “You said it wouldn’t be much longer.”

  “Mmm. Longer. I like that, too.”

  “Knock it off. I’m going crazy here.”

  “Come to me.”

  “Where? When?”

  “I’ll make a plan.”

  “You’re good at that.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  The bedroom door swung open and another voice cut into the conversation. It was Parker Connelly’s mother, Laura. He set the phone down.

  “Hey, don’t you knock?” he said, his eyes blazing annoyance.

  She noticed the phone in his hand. “Who were you talking to?”

  “Were you listening? A friend.”

  “A girlfriend?”

  “Mom, that’s none of your business.”

  “All right, Parker. You’re right. None of my business. But you can’t blame me for wanting to know what’s going on with you. Come on, get up. Let’s make a run to Costco.”

  Parker didn’t move. Noticing the placement of his hands under the covers and the redness of his face, the first Mrs. Connelly knew why. She averted her eyes and backed out toward the door.

  “I’ll be in the kitchen,” she said, shutting the door.

  “Okay, Mom. Next time you come in my room, knock first.”

  He put his phone back to his ear.

  “Sorry about that,” he said.

  “Your mother’s a control freak. If she finds out about us, you can expect nothing but trouble,” the toffee voice said.

  “I love you, Tori.”

  “I love you more, Parker.”

  Parker turned off his phone. A quick cleanup and he’d be ready to go to Costco.

  Laura Connelly reached for the knob of her kitchen TV and turned the sound up slightly. Her stomach started to knot. The news was playing a segment about a memorial service for a minister who’d been murdered at his church in North Kitsap. The name of the church scared her: Lord’s Grace.

  She’s seen that name before and she knew where.

  “Ready to go?”

  She turned to see her son.

  “You look like crap, Mom.”

  “I’ll be okay,” she said.

  God, I hope we’ll all be okay.

  Tori Connelly’s face fell like a chocolate soufflé four minutes after serving. The summer before she made her plans, she opened the Blue Chip Benefits envelope addressed to her husband. What? It was as if a lightning bolt had struck her in the heart. The words were direct, incontrovertible.

  “Pursuant to your request, the change in beneficiary is complete. Sole beneficiary is Parker Adam Connelly.”

  She carefully folded the insurance company’s missive and returned it to the envelope. She considered attempting to reseal it, but thought better of that plan. She’d torn it when she passed a silver letter opener along the seam across the top. Instead, the only solution was to destroy it and pretend it never arrived. Quietly, she walked into her husband’s office and turned on the shredder.

  In a second the letter had been turned into confetti.

  Confetti she would use to sprinkle over his grave.

  Tori knew what was coming next. Alex would leave her for that bitch he worked with downtown. He’d make up some lie and try to wriggle out of everything he’d promised her. Like her mother had. Like Jason. Like Zach. Like all of them. Her heart was racing, pounding like a broken drum inside her chest.

  Damn him. Damn all of them. I will not be set aside by anyone!

  Tori drew a deep breath and made her way back to the master bathroom. Never again! She turned on the cold water faucet, filling the white basin of the vintage pedestal sink. Never! She splashed the water against her face. Over and over. Water puddled all around her, but she didn’t care. She was fighting for control, for reason, for what she would do next. I can do this! She was trying to pull herself together. She didn’t cry. She didn’t want to open her emotions for the world to see. She’d been good at hiding them before. Tori had been adept at going with the flow.

  Tori knew that her answer was the teenage boy playing World of Warcraft in the bedroom down the hallway. She’d seen the way he’d looked at her. She could think of at least two million reasons why she was going to do what she must do. She thought of it as a test, a challenge to determine if she could still get the job done. She stripped off all her clothes and stood in her closet, facing a row of dresses. The black wouldn’t do. Neither would the white.
But the red one, that one seemed perfect. Like the other two she considered, it was strapless. She slipped into the red dress, holding it close to her body as she walked into his room.

  “Parker, will you zip me?”

  He looked up at her.

  “Sure, hang on. I’m almost done.”

  She let her hand slip just a little so that from the boy’s vantage point on the bed he’d get a glimpse of her breast. It was a move that at once was both deliberate and devious.

  “I don’t mind waiting,” she said, her voice soft. “You’re so good at what you do. Keep playing, Parker.”

  By then, he’d stopped, of course. His eyes were fastened exactly where she wanted him to look. She didn’t say another word. She didn’t have to.

  The beginning was messy, awkward, and unfulfilling. But she never said so. That would ruin everything.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Seattle

  Penny Salazar and Adam Canfield had been assigned the task of managing the incoming items for the Class of ’95’s Fifteen Minutes of Fame Auction. Adam knew that meant Penny would stake her claim as the “chairperson” of the event and “solely responsible” for making it a success.

  He was fine with that.

  It’s a bunch of crap anyway, he thought, as he surveyed the contents assembled in the hospitality manager’s office at the Gold Mountain Golf Club, the staging area for auction items.

  “Awesome,” Penny said, pointing to a lacquered black box with a trio of white herons painted on its gleaming surface. “This is going to bring in beaucoup bucks.”

  Adam pretended to agree, but he said softly, “If you have bad taste and twenty bucks, maybe.”

  “Huh?”

  “Love it, Penny,” he said. “Love it.”

  She looked at him, not sure if he actually did love it. Adam was so hard for Penny to read.

  Adam knelt down to inspect the single item that caught his interest. It was a Victorian dollhouse that looked handcrafted in the way that suggested it could be pawned off as a piece of folk art. Folk art, the kitschier the better, appealed to Adam.

  “I might bid on this myself,” he said.

  “I didn’t know you still played with dolls.”

  He refused to take the bait. “You’d be surprised, honey.”

  Penny shrugged and looked over a set of carnival-glass cat figurines that she thought she might bid on.

  Adam bent down and lifted the house. “Wonder if there is a label here or if this thing is completely handmade.”

  When he scanned under the front porch he noticed the writing. It was written in red-brown.

  “I know who killed Jason Reed.”

  “Jesus, Penny, check this out.” He scratched it with the edge of a dime. “It isn’t a red crayon. Something else.”

  Penny set down the glass cat and went over.

  “That’s freaky,” she said, bending close to take a better look.

  Adam’s eyes met hers. “I agree. But it’s more than that.”

  Penny stood. “Just some kid saying something stupid. Mad at someone.”

  He shook his head and reached for his phone.

  “I’m calling Kendall,” he said. “She needs to see this.”

  Penny put her hand out and gently pushed the phone away from Adam’s ear. “Wait a minute,” Penny said. “We need the money for the auction. I overspent. We can’t have the cops involved here. They might confiscate this or something.”

  Adam ignored Penny and dialed Kendall. Of course she overspent. She ran the committee like she ran her life. Right into the ground.

  Fifteen Minutes of Lame, indeed.

  Kendall Stark was running on fumes as she and Josh Anderson hovered over the dollhouse collected from the class reunion committee’s Adam and Penny. A phone call to the woman who’d donated the dollhouse for the fund-raiser revealed its chilling origin.

  “My kids outgrew it, and we’re moving to a condo,” the woman said. “I know that it was made by the prisoners at the reformatory. I never saw any writing on it.”

  “Tori was there,” Kendall said as they turned the house on its side on the counter in the Kitsap County crime lab.

  “Maybe she blabbed to someone there,” Josh said.

  Kendall prepared to swab the first letter of the message with leucomalachite green.

  “We’ll have to send it out to the state crime lab for DNA testing,” she said.

  “If it is blood,” Josh said.

  Almost instantaneously, the LMG turned the tip of the swab a pale green hue.

  “It’s blood, all right,” she said, putting the swab into a tube and sealing it in a plastic bag.

  Next, she took photos of the text.

  I KNOW WHO KILLED JASON REED.

  “Written by a lefty,” he said, noting the smear and slant that came with each letter.

  Kendall nodded. “The question is not only who wrote this, but when?”

  “And why?” he asked.

  Kendall put the packet with the swab into an envelope and logged the date, her initials, and the case number for Jason Reed.

  “Yes, why would someone write a message like this in the first place? Seems like a heavy burden,” she said, not wanting to say what was really on her mind. Not to Josh. Not to anyone.

  It was as if Jason were calling out to her.

  Actually, it wasn’t fun to dream. Not when the dreams came at her like the most cunning stalker, through the darkness that swallowed every trace of their invasion before finding her under the covers. At first, Lainie O’Neal had begun to see insomnia as a gift, a respite from the dark dreams that ice-picked at her when sleep finally came. Doctors told her that her insomnia was something that she used as a defense mechanism, a response to real or perceived trauma.

  In one dream, the house in Port Orchard was very, very quiet. In her mind, Lainie thought that she and her sister would both select the phrase “quiet like a tomb.” That was when they still could joke about such things.

  The way that children sometimes do.

  “Black makes you look thinner, you know,” Lainie said to Tori.

  “Funny. I thought you were the fat twin.”

  Lainie spun around and looked in the mirror, her hand on her hip. She caught Tori’s gaze and flat lined her expression. Neither girl was fat. Both were lithe, blond, blue eyed, fine boned. They were petite for their age—fifteen—but there was nothing particularly fragile about them. The same could not be said for their mother—the reason they were dressing in black that morning.

  Vonnie O’Neal was an exceedingly tragic woman who’d suffered postpartum depression with the twins to such a severity, she never seemed to pull herself out of it. Having the twins was too much at once. More than she could bear. She once confided to a friend that her girls took her figure, stole her husband’s attention, and made her into “someone’s mother, nothing more.” She telegraphed her less-than-joyful take on motherhood with everything she did.

  No love was doled out without at least a sprinkling of resentment.

  For as long as they could remember, their mother had done nothing to give them much of a reason to love her. She slept most of the time. She abdicated most of the childrearing duties to a series of nannies and babysitters. She let her husband do all of the nurturing.

  Lainie put on a jacket for the ride to the memorial.

  “Are you going to miss her?” she asked.

  “A little,” Tori said, opening the bedroom door.

  They found their father at the kitchen table. His callused hands cradled his handsome face. Despite what she’d done and all he’d been through, it was obvious that Dex loved his wife.

  “She was a fighter, girls, wasn’t she?” Dex said.

  Tori nodded. “Yes, Daddy, she was. We were lucky to have her as long as we did.”

  Tori used the term “Daddy” as a way to endear her father to her. It was completely at odds with the way she talked about him behind his back. According to her, he was weak. He
was not ambitious. He let a depressed woman chart the course of his life.

  He held his forefinger to his lips. “We can’t tell anyone how she died,” he said.

  And there he was, protecting her once more.

  “I can keep a secret, Dad,” Lainie said, the tears flowing.

  Tori nodded. “I can, too.”

  Dex reached out for the girls and pulled them close against his chest. Lainie started to cry, feeling her tears absorbed by the lightly starched cotton of his laundered and pressed shirt.

  Only one of the girls knew the true depth of the secret, a secret she’d never tell.

  Their mother’s death was classified by the coroner’s office as “accidental,” but those closest to her knew that ruling was a gift that allowed her survivors to carry on without the specter of a suicide and the implications such deaths frequently bring to those left behind.

  Vonnie had taken a fistful of pills for depression and anxiety and went to sleep. No one saw her take them, but when her stomach was pumped the night she slipped into a coma, the doctors recovered more than ten that had not yet dissolved. It was a party mix of pills for a party that never took place. Vonnie did not leave a note. She merely said “good night” and went down the hallway to bed.

  As she had when the family cat had died, Tori seemed to hold up better than her sister or father. She cried when there was someone there to see it—if the person was the type to pass judgment on her emotions.

  One time she told Lainie that “tears are for the weak or those who pretend to be so that others won’t judge them.”

  It was easy for Lainie to know which category Tori fell into. She was that consistent.

  Lainie, on the other hand, could barely get over the very idea their mother was gone. Her own depression sent her farther and farther down a path that sometimes made her question her own stability.

  I don’t want to be like her. I don’t want to end up like her, she thought.