by Gregg Olsen
“Best for you. Best for me,” he said.
Tavio was up watching a DIY show about landscaping—always good for a chuckle—when Michael came home that particular night. His younger brother literally kicked off his shoes and threw down his jacket. Though he was sometimes hard to read, this time there was no room for doubt. Michael seemed agitated about something.
“You pissed about having to move?” Tavio asked.
“No. Pissed about other stuff.”
Tavio studied his brother. His facial muscles were taut and he stood with his feet planted firmly. It was almost as if he was daring Tavio to take him on, to push him.
“Like what?” he asked, weighing his words and watching for the reaction. “Other stuff?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” Michael said.
“I might,” he said. “But how would I know if you don’t tell me?”
“You have everything, Tavio. I have nothing.”
Tavio motioned for his brother to sit, but Michael refused. “I worked hard,” Tavio said. “You work hard.”
Michael shook his head. “It isn’t about that. I don’t care about that,” he said, looking at the big-screen TV. “I am stuck. I’m trying not to be. I’m trying to do like what they talk about on the radio. Move on. I want to move on.”
Tavio didn’t ask from where or what. He had an idea, a hope.
“Talk to me, Michael.”
“I won’t. I can’t. Sometimes I feel like there is a beast inside of me, eating me, clawing at me from inside my stomach.”
Tavio glanced at the TV, the sound of a commercial loudly filling the room. He pushed the MUTE button and turned to talk to his brother, only to find that he was alone.
Michael was gone.
The next morning, the Tacoma News Tribune ran another article on the dead and missing girls and women. Since there had been no real news, the reporter went for the easy way to advance the story by highlighting other Northwest cases that had held the attention of the region in years past.
GIRLS MISSING: Remembering Other Cases That Rocked Our Region
The article, which included a timeline and bonus online features, highlighted the Ted cases from the 1970s and made mention that the lead detective in today’s case had a personal connection to the crimes.
Detective Alexander’s family has always maintained that Tricia O’Hare was a victim of Bundy’s. She disappeared just before the string of murders, but her remains were never found. She’s been listed as a victim by a number of authorities, including the FBI.
Tavio and Mimi Navarro sat in his landscaper’s pickup truck across the street from the Tacoma Police Department on Pine Street. They’d never been to a police department before—they’d never had a reason to. Both also knew there was a risk at coming there—a risk that by sharing their concerns with those who carry a badge they could destroy their family. Mimi, who had the most to lose, had been the most insistent of the pair.
“If another girl dies,” she said, “then it is blood on our hands. I cannot live with that.”
“But what about . . .”
Mimi didn’t blink. She was completely sure. “I would rather be sent back to Mexico than live knowing I could have stopped Michael from hurting another girl.”
It was more than hurting, of course. The Navarros were heartsick about the possibility that Michael was a killer.
“Remember, we are here with the hope that he didn’t kill that girl,” Tavio said, reiterating a kind of fantastic wish that seemed like the longest shot imaginable. Everything had pointed to Michael.
Grace Alexander met them in the lobby among the historic uniforms and other relics that played out the history of the Tacoma Police like a mini law enforcement museum. The Navarros followed her to a second-floor interview room and she offered them coffee or water, but they declined.
“I know this is difficult,” the Tacoma Police detective said. “And I know your circumstances concern you, but do not worry. I’m not concerned with that. I’m not looking at causing you any harm, I just want to understand why you think your brother killed the girls found by the river.”
“I am not a police officer,” Mimi said, stating the obvious. “But I do watch CSI and Investigation Discovery all the time.”
Grace smiled. “Yes, many people do.”
Tavio spoke up. “I don’t watch them. But I do fear, I mean, know that he killed that girl in Yakima. I am sorry that I never said anything before. I am very, very sorry. I think I just believed him enough to stop me from telling anyone. And when they found the girl, what more could I do anyway? She was dead. There was no bringing her back. He’s my brother and I will always love him right or wrong. At the time, I didn’t want to think that he really killed her. . . .”
Grace leaned forward. “But you know he did, right?”
Tavio nodded. “Yes. Are you going to arrest him for that?”
“No,” she said. “That’s not the case I’m working, but the police in Yakima will be taking another look and we will see some kind of an outcome concerning their investigation later. I’m more interested in learning more about your brother and how it is that you think he’s involved in the murders here.”
“Yes, but what will happen with Yakima?” Mimi asked.
“I talked with the police there,” Grace said. “Other than your statement, it looks like there is not much evidence.”
“What about his DNA?” Mimi said, a little proud that she could bring up a technical term. Although she was taking classes, she didn’t have much opportunity to talk about things like that. Tavio was a good man, but he was not complicated.
“Unfortunately, the samples from Catalina’s body,” Grace said, “were compromised.” She didn’t tell them that the samples had vanished from the crime lab.
As Mimi listened to the detective, she reached into her purse and pulled out the photographs of the young women she’d found in her brother-in-law’s bureau drawer.
“Makes me sick, this stuff,” she said.
Grace looked down at the images. None of the girls looked familiar. No Kelsey, no Emma, no Lisa. It was a collection of porn, disturbing, certainly. Evidence, possibly.
“Look,” Mimi said, “All of the girls look the same. Just like the missing girls in the newspaper. He must be collecting these for some perverted reason, Detective.”
Grace turned the photos over. She didn’t say that the girls were a match, because they weren’t. Not really. Yes, they had dark hair and dark eyes, but they were Hispanic.
None of the missing or dead girls were.
CHAPTER 33
Palmer Morton was good looking in the way that men with money can afford to be. He wore the best clothes—clothing that he purchased on trips to New York because he insisted that Seattle or, even more so, Tacoma, had no sartorial finesse. He didn’t admit to it, but he dyed his hair—or rather had a stylist come to his house and do it. No Grecian Formula for his locks. Palmer was a small man, but like actor Tom Cruise, he carried himself in such a way that most people didn’t realize that he was under five-foot-eight. Lifts in his custom Italian shoes didn’t hurt the perception, either.
Yet right then as he stood in his son’s room overstuffed with the accoutrements of a father with a guilty conscience—a plasma screen that nearly covered one wall, and a computer workstation that would have made computer geeks Apple-green with envy.
“You little shit,” Palmer said, jabbing his fingers into Alex’s shoulder as the teenager sat up on his bed.
“Hey! That hurts!” Alex yelped.
“You ungrateful little shit. You made Calla cry!”
Alex shot his dad a lightning-fast cold look—so fast that he hoped his dad hadn’t seen it. “That’s what you’re mad at? You made Mom cry when she caught you screwing Calla at the beach house.”
Palmer jabbed at his son again, but Alex pulled back in time. This brought an even darker red hue to the older man’s face. His eyes were now bulging and the veins on his neck pul
sed in time with his anger in a staccato fashion.
“Alex, that’s done,” he said, seething. “You mention that one more time and you’re going to go to a state school. Don’t ever make Calla cry again. Don’t ever threaten her again. Got that?”
Alex got up and not so skillfully hid a package of cigarettes from his father’s prying eyes. “Can we forget about her?” he asked, looking up. “I’m in trouble, Dad.”
Palmer shed his jacket. He was hot and angry. He knew he’d already blown up, but there was always the threat of an aftershock of anger.
“You are always in trouble,” Palmer said. “You seem to make a sport of trying to find ways to piss me off and make me wish I pushed harder for an abortion when I had the chance.”
Alex had heard that particularly hurtful regret before. His father claimed that his mother tricked him into marriage by getting pregnant. His dad had never wanted him.
“The cops came today,” he said, refusing to look into his father’s eyes.
As Alex predicted, Palmer exploded again. “Jesus! What did you do? Shoplift at Frye’s again? What an idiot!”
Alex pulled back and let his eyes look into his father’s only for a half-second. “No. No. I haven’t done that in a long time.”
Doesn’t he know the difference between shoplifting and real trouble?
“Good, because the next time you do I’m not going to bail you out by paying off the manager. He’s using me like a damn ATM. So what is it now?”
“The cops came today about Emma. She’s missing.”
“Is that the chick you were doing?” Palmer asked, a smirk now spreading over his face.
Alex glared at his father. “I didn’t do her, and yes, it was the girl I really liked.”
Palmer shook his head in utter disgust. “Liked? God! You’re nineteen, grow a pair and use ’em. Use ’em a lot. Forget liking any girl. There’s time for that later.”
Alex hated his father so much just then. More than he ever did. He knew that his dad had no real attachments to anyone. Not even Calla. Certainly not to him. Alex knew that there were things about him that were genetically linked to his father—his eyes, his build. Thankfully not his height. By his sixteenth birthday, Alex had been a good five inches taller than his dad—an achievement that made Palmer Morton bitter. As Alex watched his father, he often worried that his near sociopathic personality had transferred to him. His dad was an ass. He probably had some of that in him, too. When he’d told a friend about what he thought, she’d told him that he “absolutely” wasn’t like his dad at all.
“The fact that you recognize what kind of person he is and that you don’t want to be like him is proof enough that you’re not headed down that path.”
It was Emma Rose who had said those words. And when she had, he’d fallen for her. Hard. It was as if for the first time ever he’d found someone who wanted to believe that he had some good inside him. He wasn’t just the rich kid with the blowhard dad. He wasn’t a petty thief who shoplifted iPods and other stuff he didn’t need.
Palmer pressed on with the quasi interrogation of his son. “Why did the police come to talk to you about her?”
“She’s missing. I told you that.”
“Look, I can’t remember every detail of your social life, as puny as it is. But why did they come to you about Emma?”
“You know, because we went out a few times. That’s all. They were just looking for information.”
“What’s the big deal then?” Palmer asked.
Alex searched for the right words. Some things his dad could never understand. “I don’t know.”
Palmer unbuttoned his shirt collar. His anger still percolated, but it had subsided a little. “Alex, I can’t fix this if I don’t know what kind of problem we’re facing here.”
“Dad, I’m not sure. We had a big fight. Emma actually dumped me. I said some stuff about wanting to get her back. I didn’t want her to break up with me. Now, you know, she’s gone and it looks like, well, bad. Real bad.”
Palmer sighed. “What a pussy you are. Jesus! I never thought I’d have a dickless wonder for a son. But I’ll fix it. I always do.”
CHAPTER 34
In the manner articles highlighting a mysterious crime always do, the latest GIRLS MISSING article in the News Tribune prompted a series of calls to Grace Alexander. One tip after another that, in the interest of justice, had to be followed up in some way. Most went nowhere. Most had no real connection to the case. The call from an elderly woman was one of those. She spoke with the throaty deep voice of a smoker with a slight wheeze, suggesting that her lungs were ravaged by emphysema.
“You better find who killed those three girls,” she said.
“The department is doing its best,” Grace said.
“Your best wasn’t good enough. You never caught the SOB who killed my Susie.”
Grace instantly recalled the name, and the voice. Susie Sherman’s photo was on the wall of unsolved cases, like her sister. It was Susie’s mother, Anna, on the line.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Sherman,” she said.
“I’m sure you are. I’d be sorry, too.”
Anna Sherman and Grace Alexander shared a bond. There was no doubt about it. Years after Susie’s disappearance in 1972, her body had been discovered in the woods off a remote stretch of Highway 401 under the shadow of Mt. Rainier. Anna’s voice still held the unmistakable sharp pain that came with each utterance.
Like my mother.
Like my father, too.
Grace knew that tragedy either bound family members tightly together or tore them completely apart. She’d seen her own parents’ marriage disintegrate over the years. Within the heavy walls of Anna Sherman’s throaty voice Grace could still hear echoes of her own mother’s grief. It was, she knew, a grief that never went away. While it was clear that Mrs. Sherman couldn’t exactly shed any light on the cases that were consuming every moment, there was no way she would ever refuse the invitation the still-grieving offered.
“Come and see me. I think I know something about serial killers who prey on young women,” Anna said.
“Are you a psychologist?” Grace asked, wishing a second later that she hadn’t.
“I’m a mother,” she said.
Grace felt embarrassed. “I’m sorry. Of course. I didn’t mean . . .”
“That’s all right. I corresponded with Ted Bundy.”
“You did?”
In that moment, Grace wondered who hadn’t corresponded with the serial killer. Authors, her mother, and now, Anna Sherman. It seemed Ted Bundy might have been in need of a social secretary.
“Don’t be so surprised,” Anna said. “If you thought someone killed your daughter you would have done the same thing. I thought I could get him to tell me something, you know, before he fried in the electric chair.”
“Did he tell you anything about what happened to your daughter?” Grace asked.
A beat of silence.
“No. Not really, but he told me enough that made me feel that the world was a safer place for everyone when they finally put him out of his miserable existence. I don’t mind telling you I had a glass of champagne the night he cooked on the electric chair.”
“I understand,” Grace said, though she never admitted to anyone that she didn’t believe in the death penalty. Her job had been about tragedy and death and there was no need to add to it by taking another’s life.
Even Theodore Robert Bundy’s.
“Anyway,” Anna said, again with a wheeze, “I think Ted might be able to help you better understand what might have happened to the missing girls.”
The words were perplexing. Ted is dead.
“Sorry?” she asked.
“Come and read the letters. I have a stack of them. Better than some hifalutin profiler on the Today show. I know all about you. I think you’re smart. Besides, I make pretty good banana bread and I’ll have some out of the oven by the time you get here.”
Anna Sherman was i
n the Island Home retirement center not far from the Target off Union in Tacoma. Grace knew the location; she had visited there with her seventh-grade choir to sing Christmas carols to the elderly residents. As she went inside to find Anna, the wafting smell of old people filled her nose. It was as if the scent of the people who had been there two decades prior still lingered like summertime lavender and, she thought, a little bleach. That wasn’t the case, of course. Places like the Island Home always smelled that way. Anna lived in the assisted-living section of the community. She had been moved from the “live alone” to “needs a little more help” series of buildings cheerfully painted in red, blue, and yellow—a color combination that Anna thought must have been a painter’s mistake.
“If they were going for something patriotic, they blew it big time. I mean, really, yellow? Who pairs yellow with blue and red?” she’d asked when her daughter and son-in-law moved her there four years ago.
Grace found a place to park under a big fir tree. A yard keeper ran a leaf blower over the sidewalk and a couple of young people went toward their car, the woman crying. It was, Grace imagined, a typical morning in a place that always needed to look pretty for someone’s final days.
Anna was in Rosedale Bungalow, room fourteen. A nurse’s aide named Brigitte let Grace inside. In a wheelchair by the window, a small gray-haired woman with driftwood-gnarled hands and hunched shoulders brightened. At her side was a blue plastic file box. Anna was an impossibly tiny woman. She sat ramrod straight watching a dog chase a cat across the parking lot. It wasn’t a pretty view, but it held her interest.
She turned to the detective and smiled.
“You look like you did when you were a little girl, Grace. Just as pretty as a picture.”
“I thought you wouldn’t remember me,” Grace said, bending down to give the old woman a gentle, but heartfelt hug.
“I’m as old as the hills,” she said, pointing to her temple, “but I’ve still got everything right upstairs. Knock on wood.” She looked around and smiled at the obvious fact that there was no real wood in her room. “All vinyl and plastic. Ugh. I don’t know why they think everything has to be completely hose-able around here.”
