Closer Than Blood

by Gregg Olsen

  “After I talk to you, what difference will privacy make?” There was a coolness, a directness, to Laura’s words, and Kendall nodded understandingly.

  “It depends on what you have to tell me.”

  Laura barely blinked. “I guess so. Believe me, I thought about not coming inside. I sat in my car for fifteen minutes. I saw you go in and thought about just driving away.”

  “But you didn’t,” Kendall said.

  Laura nodded at the busboy, but kept silent as he poured her a cup of coffee. “No, I didn’t. But that doesn’t mean I’m crazy about this.”

  “I understand.”

  The waitress scurried over with a thermal coffeepot. “Coffee? Something to eat?”

  “Coffee’s fine,” Laura said. “Nothing else for me.”

  “Strawberry Fields going on now,” the waitress said.

  “I’ll fill her in,” Kendall said, somewhat sharply.

  The waitress shrugged and went back to the counter across the room, where a man had been complaining loudly that his popcorn shrimp was heavy on the batter and low on actual shrimp.

  “I’m worried about my son,” she said.

  Kendall nodded. “Yes, I know you are.”

  Laura ran her fingers through her hair, pulling it away from her face.

  “I don’t think I can talk about it. This was a mistake.”

  “What was a mistake, Laura?”

  “Talking to you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “My son. He’s all I have.”

  “Yes, I love my son, too.”

  “I think my son is mixed up in something.”

  Kendall had seen that look, heard those words, felt the palpable fear that came with a mother trying to save her boy. She prayed that she’d never be the woman telling the story. God knew that she had her own challenges with Cody, but he was inherently sweet. It was possible that he could be victimized by someone, but she could never imagine him doing something that would harm someone. Laura Connelly clearly thought something was up with Parker.

  The waitress approached and Kendall waved her away. Not now. Couldn’t she see that moment was not made for a slice of berry pie?

  “Talk to me, Laura.”

  The tears welled up in Laura’s eyes and she steadied herself by holding the coffee up in both hands, her elbows planted on the table’s oak trim.

  “I read about that minister. The one who was killed.”

  Kendall had no idea where that the woman was going.

  “Yes, that was a terrible tragedy. Go on.”

  “Well, I found something in his room. Something from that church.”

  “What did you find?”

  “I brought it with me.”

  She reached into her purse and pulled out the money pouch emblazoned with the name of the dead minister’s church. She slid it across the table.

  Kendall didn’t touch it. Though she could readily ascertain that Laura Connelly had her fingers all over the pouch, she didn’t want to degrade any potential evidence. She knew of one case in which a positive DNA match was made to a hairbrush that had been used by other family members two years after a murder victim had been dumped and found. It was not a familial match, but dead-on to the individual.

  “Did you ask him about it?”

  Laura nodded and awkwardly slid her elbows close to her sides. “Yes, a couple of days ago,” she said. “I know I should have told you sooner. I don’t think he had a thing to do with the murder. He’s not a violent kid. I just think he must know something.”

  Laura started to cry, loudly enough to get the attention of diners adjacent to them.

  “Tell me what happened,” Kendall said.

  “I know you’ll help me, mother to mother,” she said.

  Laura Connelly had wrestled with the discovery of the deposit pouch to the point where she couldn’t think about anything else. While it was true that her relationship with Parker had worsened since his father’s death, she could see that the disintegration had been coming for quite some time. He’d been evasive, indifferent, and on occasion, almost threatening. There was no “you and me against the world” banter. No more promises to “take care of you when you’re an old lady, Mom.”

  Parker was sullen, agitated, and counting the days to his eighteenth birthday.

  Her heart thumped hard inside her chest as she knocked on the door of his bedroom. It was never open when he was home anymore. In fact, she only knew he was home when he’d come out, get something to eat, and scurry back to whatever it was he was doing. She’d allowed that pattern to take root and she regretted it. The isolation between mother and son had likely allowed something very dark to fester.

  “Honey, we need to talk,” she said, poking her head into his room.

  Parker was on his computer. He snapped his laptop shut.

  “Do you mind?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, not knowing why she felt a need to apologize. She’d seen something that could be tied to a murder case near Kingston. She never thought for one second that he’d been involved in anything, but maybe his friends had? Drew’s mother had complained to her when they ran into each other at Top Foods that her son was “practically incorrigible.”

  “We need to talk.”

  “You’re talking, Mom. I’m busy. What is it?”

  “Can I come in?”

  “You’re in. Fine. What?”

  “I didn’t mean to, but I saw something of yours that concerned me.”

  She was sugarcoating it and she knew it. She wondered how she got to the point of being so weak around her son. It was as if the stronger he got, the more belligerent he became, the weaker she grew. It was like when she discovered that Alex was cheating on her and she thought of every reason why it was her fault, not his.

  Parker stepped away from this laptop and sat on the bed. “Mom, I have stuff to do.”

  “Parker, I found the money pouch from the church.” Her hands shook a little, but she tried to steady them.

  Calm. Be as calm as you can.

  He didn’t allow any expression to cross his face. “Were you going through my stuff?”

  She shook her head slowly. “I didn’t do that. I wouldn’t do that.”

  “I can’t believe you, Mom. You are so full of crap.”

  She sucked in some courage. The issue here wasn’t how she saw what she saw, it was that a relic from a murder scene was in their house.

  “Where did you get that pouch, Parker?”

  “I found it.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t remember. Just somewhere.”

  “You were gone the day that minister was killed. I remember that we fought.”

  “We always fight, Mom. I said I found it; I can’t even believe for one second that you would think that I would ever lie to you about anything.”

  Parker didn’t state the obvious and it crushed his mother. He didn’t say, “What minister?”

  Laura didn’t want to give voice to the truth just then. The truth was ugly. She had caught him in many, many lies. After his last summer visit with his father, Parker had become a frequent and facile liar.

  “We need to give this pouch to the police. You need to tell them where you found it.”

  “At the skate park. That’s where I found it, Mom.”

  Kendall listened to the anguished mother sitting in front of her. She watched her slide lower in the booth. She was all but disappearing. She handed her a tissue from the packet she kept in her purse for such occasions. She didn’t want to tell Laura Connelly about one little flaw in her son’s story.

  There was no skate park in Port Orchard.

  “I’ll need to talk to your son, Laura,” she said.

  Laura nodded. “He’s at home.”

  “I’m going to call my partner and have him meet me there. You go on ahead. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

  “There’s one more thing. I think that he’s involved with Tori.”
/>   “Involved? How so?”

  “She’s all he talks about. They’re too close. Something’s going on.”

  Kendall set down her coffee and waved away the waitress and her pot.

  “Something inappropriate?” she asked.

  Laura shook her head. “I’m not sure. I mean, I don’t really know. She’s his stepmother.”

  “But you think he’s involved,” Kendall said, pushing a little. “You used that word, involved. What do you mean by that? I want to understand.”

  Laura stood up to leave and reached for her purse. “I thought he had a girlfriend, but, well, I really do think that he’s sleeping with her. There, I said it.”

  “She’s always been a manipulator, Laura. If she’s been using your son for whatever reason, it’s just what she does.”

  “You aren’t going to arrest him, are you, Kendall?”

  The Kitsap detective shook her head, though she really wasn’t sure. She didn’t want to lie, so she just left it at that.

  They met in the TV room of the spotless Fircrest home Laura Connelly purchased with the proceeds from her divorce from Alex. Laura was still unsure if she should call Alex an ex or a late husband. After the shooting, she knew she still loved him a little. When the Kitsap detectives arrived, Parker begrudgingly emerged from his bedroom to talk with them. He wore blue jeans and a black hoodie and an impatient look on his face. His pants were slung low, low enough to show the top two inches of the waistband of his underwear. Emporio Armani, no less. Kendall and Josh conferred on the phone before meeting there that the Lord’s Grace money pouch alone was not enough for an arrest warrant. It was a start, though. While there were bloody footprints at the Kingston crime scene, they were smeared and not much evidentiary value.

  The shoes themselves would be good, but they’d have to be in plain sight in order for the detectives to pick them up without a warrant. The other key piece of evidence was the red tape. Kendall and Josh scoured the Connelly residence in as casual a manner as possible—without opening doors, drawers, or closets.

  Nothing.

  “Son,” Josh said, “you need to tell us what you know.”

  Parker looked away at the TV. “Why does everyone call me ‘son’ all of a sudden?”

  Laura got up and turned it off.

  “I was watching that, Mom.”

  “You need to talk to the detectives here.”

  Kendall pulled a bench a little closer to where Parker was sitting. Josh stood. It was a show of domination that wouldn’t have gone unnoticed by a police cadet.

  Or a teenager.

  “You don’t intimidate me,” Parker said.

  Josh leaned closer. “Look, I’m not here to do anything but help you.”

  “Whatever. I don’t give a shit about what you’re here to do. And my mom’s a stupid bitch for asking you to come over.”

  Laura was at the breaking point and his name-calling didn’t exactly do her fragile psyche any good. She looked like she was going to crumble.

  “Parker,” she said. “Please don’t.”

  Kendall took over. “You need to trust us,” she said to the teen.

  “I didn’t do nothing wrong,” he said, his eyes still riveted to the black TV screen.

  “Anything is the word,” Josh said. “You didn’t do anything wrong but miss English class.”

  “You’re funnier than Letterman. About as old as him, too.”

  Kendall shot a bruising glance at Josh that was meant to have him dial things down.

  “Ms. Connelly, what do you say you get us some coffee?”

  Laura didn’t mind leaving the room. She had dissolved in tears twice that evening already. She had called on Kendall and her partner because she wanted to extricate her son from something that might ruin his life. Tori, she felt, was somehow involved in all this.

  “Your mom said you found the money pouch,” Kendall said.

  “Yeah, so what?”

  “Do you know that the minister of that church was murdered this week?”

  “I’m sure he’s in heaven, then.”

  Kendall ignored the sarcasm. She knew that making a point of calling him out on it would only antagonize him.

  Josh Anderson, however, had no ability to show restraint.

  “You boning the old girl?”

  Kendall resented both the term boning and that Josh called Tori “old girl,” because they were the same age. Before she could rephrase, Parker answered.

  “She’s hot,” he said.

  Josh nodded. “Yeah, she is. Nice rack.”

  “Are you involved with Tori, Parker?” Kendall asked.

  “You mean, am I screwing her?”

  “I guess if you want to put it that way.”

  “It isn’t like that. And even if it was, it’s none of your business.”

  “Tell us,” Kendall said, gently. “We want to understand.”

  “You could never understand.”

  For a second, Josh seemed to warm up to Kendall’s soft touch. “Try us.”

  “Have you ever really been loved? Do you know what it is to find your soul mate?” He looked at Josh. “You’ve been around. Bet you haven’t got a clue. All tough, you are.”

  Josh suppressed a grin. “I’ve married three of my soul mates,” he said, as dispassionately as possible. “Am looking for my fourth.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t get it.” He turned his attention to Kendall. “How about you, Detective Stark?”

  “We’re here to talk about you, Parker,” she said. “Not whether or not we have found our soul mates.”

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “No, Parker, you’re not.”

  Parker got up. “Mom, I don’t want to talk to them anymore. I want a lawyer. I want them out of our house.”

  Kendall noticed a flash of red on the boy’s wallet as it peeked from his hip pocket. She looked over at Parker, then back at Josh. The two detectives excused themselves and went into the kitchen.

  “We need a warrant,” Kendall said. “Call it in.”

  Josh retrieved his phone and started for the door to make the call in private.

  “Calling now,” he said.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Port Orchard

  “Look, Josh. She’s a black widow,” Kendall said as the two Kitsap County detectives huddled in her office, waiting on the search warrant for the Connelly place. Josh opened his mouth wide and tipped back the bag of Bugles he’d bought from the vending machine in the break room. Apparently, he didn’t want to miss one crumb.

  “She’s killed two husbands and a boyfriend,” she said.

  He wadded the bag and tossed it into the trash behind Kendall.

  “Nothing but net,” he said.

  “Are you listening to me?”

  “Yeah. But I’m not hearing anything new. Although, if she’s anything like her photo in the paper, Tori Connelly is the best-looking femme fatale to come around since Kathleen Turner in Body Heat.”

  “I’m not kidding,” Kendall said, getting up from her desk. Even in the tight confines of her office, she found space to pace in front of her partner.

  “Think about it. Jason, Alex, and Zach are all dead. The last one to see each of those men alive was Tori.”

  Josh backed off toward the doorway. “They’ve nailed Darius What’s-His-Name for the Connelly shooting.”

  “I know,” Kendall said, tensing a little. “I don’t know why they don’t look at the obvious. The totality of her life and what she’s done. She’s not a nice person. She never has been.”

  Josh held his hand out as if to calm her. “This is beginning to sound personal, Kendall. Personal never works and you know that.”

  Kendall knew what he was saying was right, but there was more to this.

  “Hear me out one more time.”

  “Okay, go.”

  “Tori is a user. She’s a master manipulator. She always has been. She likely killed Jason herself—she was the one with the opportunity.�
��

  “Motive?”

  “I have some ideas, but consider the idea that she’s amazingly adept at making people—men, specifically—to do her dirty work.”

  “Like the Connelly kid.”

  “Yes, like Parker. Did you see the way he defended her? He is in love with her. He’d probably do anything to please her.”

  “So you like him for the killer of his own father? Darius Fulton’s been arrested for that.”

  “Yes, and he’s probably the killer, put up to it by Tori.”

  “So you think the kid killed the preacher?”

  “I do.”

  “Why?”

  “The reason I think he’s the killer or that she put him up to it?”

  “Either or both.”

  Kendall nodded. “She wanted Mikey silenced for what he saw on Banner. He probably saw her kill Jason. We might not ever know that for sure. But with all the publicity, it was only a matter of time until Mikey, now a minister, did the right thing.”

  “Maybe. What else?”

  “Remember the red tape?”

  “Sure. It’s our biggest traceable piece of evidence.”

  “Parker had a duct-tape wallet.”

  “A what?”

  “Kids make wallets, clothes, belts—all sorts of stuff—out of duct tape.”

  “Sounds dumb.”

  Kendall shrugged. “Dumb, maybe. But Parker’s wallet was a duct-tape wallet. I saw it tonight. It was trimmed in red tape.”

  “Interesting,” he said, “but just interesting. Nothing concrete.”

  “What about the dead guy in Hawaii?”

  “She must have had help there, too. They just missed it.”

  “Sounds like you really dislike her and you want to nail her for personal reasons. You don’t care what I think, but that’s how I feel, Kendall.”

  After Josh left, Kendall closed her office door. It was personal, but not for the reasons he’d presumed. Kendall wanted the truth. She felt that Mary Reed deserved it. Lainie did. They all did.

  She sat down and looked at the bulletin board in her windowless office.

  The answer was staring her in the face. A postcard Barbara in Records had sent to Kendall from her vacation to Hawaii.