The Girl in the Woods

by Gregg Olsen

  “Really?” Kendall asked. “That’s interesting. We have a tape. Come and watch when you have time.”

  “No time like right now,” Birdy said. “Just say that this is the worst mother-daughter dynamic, since . . . well, since me and my mom.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Kendall said.

  “I was thinking more of my mother. She sets the tone for everything. Always has. See you in a few.”

  On the computer screen in Kendall’s office, mother and daughter were about to face each other through an inch-thick safety glass partition at the Kitsap County jail. Their lifeline was a landline-style telephone mouthpiece and receiver. There was only one other person with a visitor, another woman there on a DUI charge four seats down. Her visitor was her husband, a sleepy-eyed guy who looked about half-baked. Either one could have been on the wrong side of the glass.

  The chairs were fixed to the floor. The ambience was decidedly impersonal for any kind of reunion. As it should be. Jennifer smiled and drummed the tabletop of the carrel that she occupied while she waited for Ruby to take a seat. At once, Ruby picked up and started talking.

  “I can’t hear the audio,” Birdy said.

  Kendall made a face, then hit the PAUSE button. “There is no audio.”

  “Then why record it?” Birdy asked.

  “For security reasons. We can’t include the audio because of right-to-privacy laws.”

  “Shouldn’t people visiting someone in jail expect they’d be recorded?”

  “It isn’t their privacy. The inmates’ right to privacy is what’s of concern.” Kendall stopped talking. “And don’t look at me like that.”

  Birdy was stunned. “Really, Kendall? The inmates?”

  “Yes, I know,” the detective said. “They have an expectation of privacy within a visit. Spokane County got sued four years ago. They didn’t know that the person on the good side of the glass was a lawyer. So now we have to assume that everyone is a lawyer.”

  “Sometimes I hate what this world’s turning into, Kendall.”

  Kendall couldn’t disagree. “Sometimes? I hate it at least once a day. Now watch the vid because actually it is kind of interesting.”

  She clicked on the arrow and it started up again.

  “Look at Jennifer,” Kendall said. “She’s not saying a word. Her daughter is doing all the talking.”

  “Ruby said her mom threatened her, Kendall. Maybe that comes later in the tape.”

  “Nope. But something else does.”

  The video was hardly high definition. In fact, it was black and white and disappointingly grainy. The camera was in a fixed position, showing the back of Ruby’s head, and about three-quarters of her mother’s face.

  “I wish I knew what she was saying,” Birdy said.

  “Watch this part.” Kendall sped up to just a hair before the end of the recording. “Right here. Now.”

  Jennifer was standing up, clutching the phone next to her ear.

  “I didn’t think you could wear earrings in jail,” Birdy said.

  “Sh! Watch.”

  Jennifer was saying something to her daughter, but her manner, her affectation, seemed utterly at odds with what Ruby had said about the encounter. Jennifer, who despite her jailhouse garb looked pretty good, was smiling.

  “Maybe she’s one of those people who smiles at you while she’s slitting your throat?” Birdy said.

  Kendall grabbed a picture of that in her mind. “I wouldn’t put it past her.”

  “If only there had been some audio,” Birdy said.

  “If only we could read lips,” Kendall added.

  Birdy leaned in, then pulled away from the screen. “Yeah, but her mouth isn’t visible,” she said.

  Kendall pointed to the screen. “Right. Here. Watch her eyes.”

  Birdy looked at Kendall. “She didn’t do that, did she?”

  “Watch again.” She clicked the arrow, sending the video back two seconds, and pushed PLAY.

  The forensic pathologist and detective looked at each other. They both saw it.

  Jennifer Lake Drysdale Roberts winked at her daughter.

  “What do you make of that?” Kendall asked Birdy.

  “I honestly don’t know. She was adamant that she’d had some kind of knock-down drag-out with her mom and that she was scared to death to testify against her. She told me that she feared for her life.”

  “She didn’t look too scared there.”

  Birdy shook her head. “No, she didn’t. Not at all.”

  The inmates at the women’s prison in Purdy are allowed the use of wall-mounted telephones in a central location. Despite the idea that outsiders frequently embrace as gospel, the inmates do not have their own phones or computers. Many, however, have TV sets in their cells. That’s more about keeping the population occupied than rewarding them with a special privilege. Phone calls are limited to a specific time of day—and are always made collect. Monopolizing the phones is an issue—some inmates are constantly trying to work in a call. Brenda Nevins never had a problem getting the amount of time extended. She had canteen money or sex to trade.

  A newbie who was incarcerated for selling meth for her boyfriend was crying into the phone to her mother. She wanted to come home. She was terrified. Brenda came up to her and tapped her shoulder.

  “I’m still talking,” the girl said.

  “You’re done,” Brenda said.

  Their eyes locked. “Mommy, I gotta go.”

  She dropped the phone and scurried down the hall.

  Brenda picked up the phone and listened.

  “Kimberly?”

  “Kim’s gone. Bye.”

  She smiled, hung up, and started dialing. The recorded message played before she could speak. It alerted that the call was originating from a correctional facility. It went on to say that if the recipient didn’t know someone named “Brenda,” they should hang up immediately.

  This recipient didn’t hang up.

  “Why are you calling me?” a woman said.

  “Because, I dunno, I guess I just wanted to let you know that we might get to be roommates, after all.”

  Brenda loved every second in which she could inflict pain. One time she had an orgasm while she battered another woman in the shower; the sole blind spot provided cover from the video cameras that caught almost everything that happened inside the walls of the institution.

  “Don’t ever call me again.”

  “But you accepted my call.”

  “I shouldn’t have.”

  “But you miss me, don’t you?”

  “Like cancer I miss you.”

  “Too bad. I don’t often do things for other people because, well, they are always so busy doing for me.”

  “What do you want, Brenda?”

  Brenda breathed into the phone. “I’m so horny for you, babe.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Be that way,” Brenda said. “A detective from Kitsap County came for a visit. You’re about to be on the news. If you are, just make sure to mention me.”

  CHAPTER 36

  Missy Carlyle was often underestimated. She was attractive, with soft auburn hair that she wore in a stylish bob. If someone needed some heavy lifting done, they’d look right past her. She had a small, wiry frame. But she was tough. Navy tough. She’d worked in a prison, for God’s sake. Even more impressive, she worked as a high school janitor. That was tougher duty than the prison and the navy combined. And despite the good-looking package over a steel interior, she was shaken to the core. She’d never faced anything with such a grim outcome as telling her girlfriend what she’d done before they met.

  And that it involved notorious killer Brenda Nevins.

  Connie Mitchell was packing up her things in the classroom that she’d made a second home over her years at South Kitsap High School. Everywhere she turned there was a memory associated with something. A gift from a student. A piece of art that had been a creative breakthrough. The stain of co
pper sulfate in the sink that was a reminder of a boy who thought art and chemistry should be combined and nearly burned down the place. Connie’s world had been shattered. She’d been placed on administrative leave with pay. The rumors about her involvement with Darby Moreau had become impossible for the school board and the principal to ignore.

  She wasn’t told in person, but by a letter delivered by a representative of the teacher’s union—a smug man who didn’t like her “kind” working in the school.

  “You mean an art teacher,” she said, knowing that’s not what he meant at all.

  “Here,” he said, handing the letter to her seconds after the bell ended the day.

  For legal reasons and to protect all parties involved we are placing you on leave for the remainder of the school year. A full review of any alleged or non-alleged incidents involving any improper behavior between you—a teacher—and a student will be conducted in the immediate future. Your pay and benefits will continue until such time as severance or termination is applied to your specific employment with the South Kitsap School District.

  She’d texted Missy the second the man left.

  Connie: I need u. I can’t pack this up alone.

  Missy: I need to talk to u too

  Connie and Missy had been in a domestic partnership, but when Washington became one of the first states to pass same-sex marriage into law they’d planned a summer wedding at Snoqualmie Falls Lodge near North Bend, Washington. They had selected matching dresses and had pared the guest list down to a manageable twenty-two.

  Now all of that was in serious doubt.

  Connie was collecting things from her desk and selected a few paintings from students that she’d miss—including one made by Darby.

  “I have something to tell you,” Missy said when she arrived. Standing in the doorway, she wore a grim look on her face.

  Connie looked up and half-smiled, trying to lighten a very dark mood. “It can’t be anything worse than losing my job.”

  “You haven’t lost your job yet,” Missy said, her voice achingly soft. “But it is a lot worse than that.”

  Connie looked out the door. Seeing no one in the hall, she got up and embraced Missy. She held her and quietly sobbed. It was a rolling cry, one that was not meant to be heard, but rather just absorbed into the body of the one person she’d trusted and loved above all others. Until she met Missy, Connie had never wanted anything more than to be a teacher, to shape and mold the dreams of the misfits, the outcasts, the students who reminded her of herself at that age. She’d found serenity and joy in the art she created and she knew that other teens could do the same. If only someone would lead them in the right direction.

  With Missy came the dream of a more fulfilling life—a life to be shared.

  “Connie,” Missy said, pulling her back and looking into her weeping eyes, “what I have to tell you is even worse than you can imagine.”

  Connie wiped her eyes with her sleeve.

  “What, baby? What could be worse than being called a sexual predator?”

  “But you aren’t,” Missy said. “I know that. Everyone in this school knows that. It was a whisper, a rumor made by some kid to get attention. It will be seen for the lie that it is. You’ll see.”

  Missy waited a beat. It was so hard to get out the words. She wasn’t sure if she should trickle out her story like a leaky faucet, one drop at a time. Or maybe just dump it all out like a fire hydrant hit by an SUV.

  Trickle. That was the only way.

  “There is no way that I can be saved from my past,” she said. “There is something . . . something that you need to know about me.”

  “Missy, you’re scaring me.” Connie shut the door. School was over for the day, but there were lingerers—kids who didn’t have anywhere to go and stayed long past regular hours. Most of those kids seemed to drift into the arts: drama, music, and Connie’s specialty, fine arts.

  She turned around to find Missy facing the window that looked out toward the parking lot and then beyond to a barricade of green woods behind the school.

  “Now, you’re really scaring me,” she said.

  “I can’t look at you,” Missy said. “Just let me talk.”

  Connie stood still, trying to think of what might be so troubling for Missy. She hadn’t been fired from her job. It wasn’t that.

  “All right,” she said. “Is it about our wedding?”

  Missy wished in her heart that was all the worry was about, that there was nothing simpler than that.

  “No,” she said, her voice choking a little. “But I expect it will eventually get to that. I don’t know if you will ever be able to forgive me.”

  “I love you, Missy, but why are you doing this now? Why are you going to bring something up that’s going to hurt me at a time when I’m the lowest I’ve ever been? You always seem to find a way to make everything about you.”

  Missy was shaking then. “This is about me. This is before we met. And,” she added, “it is very, very ugly.”

  Connie tried to insert herself between Missy and the window, but Missy narrowed the space and turned away. She just couldn’t face her fiancée.

  “Something happened to me when I worked at the prison,” she said.

  “I don’t like the sound of that, Missy. What do you mean something happened to you?”

  Missy’s eyes were still riveted to the nothingness outside the window. “I got involved with someone there and was let go,” she said.

  “It was against employee policy?” Connie asked. “Was it because you’re a lesbian? If that’s it we should sue. It’s so unfair.”

  “It wasn’t an employee, Connie,” Missy said, knowing that nothing would get her out of the mess she was in just then. “I got involved with an inmate.”

  Connie let out an audible gasp. “A prisoner?”

  Missy just stood there, unable to speak.

  Connie tugged at her lover’s shoulder. “Missy, tell me that this is some joke, babe. Tell me that you’re being dramatic because you think that it’s April Fool’s Day or something.”

  This was the bad part, the really, really bad part. It was like a mouthful of poison that Missy Carlyle had to spit out and just get it over with.

  “It was Brenda Nevins,” she said. “That’s who I got involved with.”

  Connie felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her, and she steadied herself against one of the student chairs in the classroom. The room had been swallowed in one big gulp. There was no air. No time. Everything was frozen in that one awful revelation.

  “The murderer?” she asked, though there could be no other. “You got involved with a psycho?”

  “It was only once,” Missy said, wishing that she hadn’t thought to add that piece of information. It came off as an attempt to make something so ugly seem trivial, and Connie pounced on it.

  “Got involved?” she said, trying to keep her cool, but failing. “You had a sexual encounter with a psycho?”

  The disgraced art teacher was reeling. Like the snap of a finger, suddenly their life together, their plans, the Borracchini’s wedding cake they’d pre-ordered from their favorite Seattle bakery—all of it was gone.

  Missy tried to hug Connie.

  “Don’t touch me. I work in a school. You work in a school. We’re two women in a relationship. We have to be better, more careful. We can’t have the taint of scandal associated with us, Missy.”

  Missy could feel her heart breaking. “That’s why I’m warning you.”

  Lost in her thoughts, Connie missed the word that should have, that would have, alarmed her even more.

  Warning.

  “We’re done,” Connie said. “I can’t make love with you. I can’t be involved with someone who could sleep with a murderer. I don’t even know who you are, Missy. Maybe I never did at all.”

  “I love you,” Missy said. “I made a huge mistake.”

  Connie didn’t cry. She was so mad, so hurt, she couldn’t. The muscles in h
er throat had tightened to such a degree that she almost felt like she’d pass out.

  “Go,” she sputtered out. “Go home, get your stuff, and get out.”

  Missy was crying then. “Where will I go?”

  Connie was past her breaking point, past the ability to empathize—a trait that had been her greatest gift.

  “Missy! That’s what you’re thinking about now?” she asked. “I am almost forty. I thought I had found the love of my life. I thought that I’d get pregnant next year and have a goddamn family. I will never have any of those things now.”

  “It was only once, Connie,” Missy said. “It was before I met you.”

  Connie took a step back. She looked hard at the woman she no longer really knew.

  “Why are you telling me now?” she asked. “Is it because you wanted to kick me to the curb a little harder when I’m already down so low? Are you some kind of sadist like Brenda Nevins?”

  “I never wanted to tell you. I love you.”

  “Then why? Why now? Why couldn’t you have just kept this to yourself?”

  “Because I think I’m in trouble,” she said.

  Connie still cared. She hated Missy just then. Loved her. Wished she’d just go away. Wished they’d be married as planned. Everything was spinning out of control.

  “What kind of trouble?” she asked.

  Missy swallowed hard. “I think the sheriff wants to talk to me.”

  “About what?” Connie took a gulp of air. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”

  Missy had already said more than she knew her fiancée could handle. She couldn’t tell her all she and Brenda had done. How the murderer had threatened to tell the school district the reason for her dismissal from the prison. How the whole thing had snowballed and a huge mistake became a nightmare. She had done something so terrible that it never left her thoughts. There were times, however, when she was with Connie that she could feel there would be a way to forgiveness for what she had done. But that was gone now. There was no turning back the clock.

  “I’ll get my things,” Missy said. “I just wanted to warn you. I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”