by Gregg Olsen
He was Leonardo. She was his Mona Lisa.
Grace Alexander looked at the fax sent by Anna Sherman’s nurse.
“What’s that?” Paul asked as he hovered over her, dirty coffee mug in hand.
“Nothing,” she said.
“It doesn’t look like nothing.”
“Paul, this is personal.”
“You’ve been doing something personal a lot lately.”
She wanted to tell him, but it felt foolish. They were in the middle of a major investigation. She had Emma, Kelsey, and Lisa to think about. And while their cases were at the forefront, she had that need to find out who had killed her sister.
“I’m leaving for a meeting.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now.”
It was time to go see Peggy Howell. Peggy had lived with her mother in Ruston, in the heart of the smelter’s toxic zone. The arsenic in Tricia’s bones had come from the smelter.
She looked up Peggy’s address. Of course, she’d moved. She had to move.
So did the bones.
A second later, Grace was out the door.
CHAPTER 45
In January 1989 the air in Tacoma was heavy with the stench of the Simpson paper mill, an acrid odor to which residents of Washington’s toughest city, Grit City, had somehow become immune. The air had been especially chilly after temperatures dropped following a green Christmas. Ice pricked at the edges of lawns and vapors melted into frozen masses where the O’Hares’ dryer duct fed moist air outside. And yet as cold as it had become outside, the scene on the TV set in the O’Hare family living room was beyond chilly. Sissy, Conner, and their little girl watched the spectacle coming from Florida.
Burn, Ted, burn!
Conner held Sissy’s hand and leaned closer to her. He spoke in a whisper so that Grace couldn’t hear.
“His time has run out,” he said.
“He’ll get another stay,” Sissy said, her face knotted with worry.
“No, he’s out of time. I’m telling you, he’ll die tonight.”
She shook her head. “Not so sure about that,” she said. “He always manages to find a way to survive.”
Conner looked at his daughter.
“The man who killed your sister is going to finally be punished.”
Grace didn’t say anything. She didn’t know what she could say that would matter. She looked at the TV, but kept most of her attention on her parents. They carried such a strange mixture of fear, hate, and hope. They seemed both elated and miserable at the same.
“He didn’t answer my last letter,” Sissy said.
“He’s been busy,” Conner said, and a grim smile came over his face.
When Jeremy Howell looked into his mother’s eyes it was with fear and respect, rather than love. Peggy had told her son over and over that he was special and that his specialness had to be fulfilled. If he was to be what he was born to be, to follow in his father’s bloody footprints, then he had to do more than seize the moment. He had to create it. He had to be wily, crafty, smart. He had to be ruthless. When Jeremy looked into his mother’s eyes it was with the kind of respect and fear that came with hate.
And yet he loved her. He knew her struggles. She’d told him repeatedly that loving Ted had been the hardest part of her hard-fought life.
“My own family disowned me,” she said one time when they sat in the car parked in front of his grandmother’s house. “And when they disowned me, they disowned you. I hate them. I know you don’t know them and you never will, but, honey, trust me.”
It was always about trust. Jeremy had never talked to his father, of course. By the time Peggy had told her son about his important father, Old Sparky had zapped Ted into oblivion.
“They killed him. No one would kill a lion for doing what he does naturally, exquisitely. No one thinks anything of a killer whale eating a seal, for God’s sake. It is what they do. Your father was like that. You’re like that.”
“Like that?” he asked.
His mother’s face tightened. “Don’t be stupid. What don’t you understand here?”
He thought a moment, wondering if he’d had the ability to say what he was really thinking.
“What if I don’t want to be like that?” he finally asked.
She looked at him, with those cold eyes. She took a moment, too. Conversations between mother and son were always like that. Long gaps between utterances, rather than quick exchanges fueled by any real connection.
Her eyes narrowed once more and she shrugged. He was a bug. A gnat. His questions were annoyances. “You will struggle for the rest of your life. You will die being a nothing. Nothing is worse than a promise or birthright unfulfilled.”
The words didn’t track and Peggy Howell could see that.
“Being your mother isn’t easy,” she said. “What I did for you just doesn’t seem to matter.”
She turned away and looked out at the house that she grew up in.
“I hate my parents and you’ll probably hate me, too.”
“I could never hate you, Mom,” he said, lying.
“I could hate you,” she said.
“You couldn’t.”
“Don’t mess with your birthright,” she said. “If you do, you’ll be alone forever.”
“I don’t want to be alone.”
She lit a cigarette and cracked the window.
“Except for Ted, I’ve been alone my entire life,” she said.
“What about my sister? My stepdad?”
“He’s dead and your sister Cecilia might as well be.” She pushed smoke out of her nostrils, reminding Jeremy of a dragon. “Are you going to let me down, too?”
“I guess not,” he said, still unsure of what she wanted.
“When Ted was only a little older than you he killed a girl.”
Jeremy felt his pulse quicken. “I don’t want to kill anyone.”
Peggy turned away. “Then you’re nothing. You’re dead to me. And you know what? I’ll be kind of relieved. Nothing I loathe more than a loser. Especially a loser who’s been handed greatness on a silver platter. Be nothing. Fine with me.”
Jeremy remembered going to his bedroom after that encounter with his mother in the car, his sister playing in the room next door. He’d cried a little, but the tears were oddly forced. He went to Cecilia, who was playing with her Barbie, and he took his belt and slipped it around her neck. Cecilia started to scream and Peggy came in, yanked the belt from her daughter’s neck, and slapped Jeremy as hard as she could.
“Dogs don’t poop in their kennel,” she said.
He touched his face where the stinging pain came. “Huh?”
Peggy’s eyes bulged. “You heard me. Now get out of here!”
“But, Mom.”
“Don’t ‘but’ me, or I’ll beat the crap out of you.”
“I was doing what—”
Later that same night, Cecilia came into Jeremy’s bedroom, her neck still pink from the belt that had he’d twined around it. Her saucer eyes absorbed her brother.
“Jeremy, why did you hurt me?” she asked. Her tone was plaintive, but she didn’t cry.
“I don’t know,” he said, now barely looking at her.
She touched him, but he pulled back a little. “Please don’t hurt me ever again,” she said, looking at him as she tried to understand.
“I’m sorry,” he said. His words came at her, hollow and empty.
“I love you,” she said.
“I know.”
In that moment even Jeremy Howell’s kid sister could see that there was nothing to her brother’s apology. He had meant to hurt her. He wanted to hurt her.
Years later after Cecilia married and found fewer and fewer excuses to come home she told her husband about the time her brother tried to choke her with a belt.
“I don’t want that sick SOB around our kids,” Kirk Morris said.
“I don’t, either, but I don’t blame him. Not really. I think that the stuff my mom was do
ing to him was making him that way.”
“What was she doing to him?”
“Not that,” she said emphatically. “She was always whispering in his ear. Telling him things.”
“What was she saying?”
“Empowerment stuff. I watched her lean next to him and say, ‘You’re better than the rest. You are special.’ ”
“What’s so creepy about that?”
“It wasn’t in the words,” she said. “It was in how she said things and how he reacted. It was like something secret, maybe forbidden, dark. I don’t know.”
“Now you’re acting weird.”
“Maybe I am. I was a kid. Maybe I just didn’t get it. But on more than one occasion I remember my mother telling him that being the best was a lonely endeavor, one that few could understand. She said, ‘Your work will only be known if you get caught.’ ”
“Get caught?”
“Something like that. I don’t know for sure. It was a long time ago. Really, when I look back, my brother never really had a chance.”
“I don’t feel sorry for him and I don’t want him around our kids.”
“I do feel sorry for him, but I agree. I don’t want him around the children, either.”
Although the Morrises lived only across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Gig Harbor, they never saw much of Uncle Jeremy. Their mother said he was too busy. A recluse. He had a demanding job. She never told her children that their grandmother actually lived with their uncle. Oddly, they never asked about her. They assumed that she, along with their grandfather, was dead. After all, why wouldn’t their grandma come to see them if she was alive?
The crack. The way out. The source of the air. Emma Rose woke up, her mind still zeroing in on what she needed to do above all other possibilities. Her head throbbed and she wanted to throw up. But more than that, she wanted out of the apartment. She wanted to go home. She pulled herself up from the mattress and found her way to back to the wall with the crack. At least, that’s where she was certain it had been the day before. On her knees, she ran her hands over the wall, but she couldn’t find the opening. Had she gone the wrong direction? The room was not that large. How was it that she couldn’t find the source of the airflow? It was dark as always, but she’d found it before by feeling the air pass through the opening. How was it that she couldn’t find it now?
God, help me. Where is it? Where did it go?
The Howells had moved to a nice middle-class neighborhood in Tacoma, on North Howard, not far away from where Ted had grown up. Donna Howell had taken her relocation money from the old neighborhood in Ruston and paid cash for the two-story house with the brick façade and bright green louvered shutters—a house that Peggy had insisted was the perfect location. After Donna died in 1994, the house was willed to Peggy, who was already living there with her adult son, Jeremy. While none of the neighbors liked Peggy, they did appreciate Jeremy’s dedication to keeping the yard in perfect shape. He never missed a mowing and, better yet, kept it sprinkled in the summer.
“I haven’t seen you in years. Since you were a child. But I know who you are,” Peggy said, when she answered the door. “You look a lot like Tricia, not quite as pretty, but a lot like her.”
“Hi, Peggy,” Grace said, looking her over. Peggy wore jeans and a sweatshirt. Her skin was wrinkled and her hair was long, but very thin. It dawned on her that her sister would be showing signs of aging by then—had she not been murdered. “May I come in?”
Peggy nodded. “If you must. I’m surprised you’ve come by. Your mom pretty much disowned me. Shoved me to the side when all I wanted to do was help bring Tricia back home.”
“That was a long time ago, Peggy.”
“Yeah, well, it still hurts,” Peggy said, searching for her cigarettes. “I worked my ass off putting up flyers, you know. I did everything I was asked to do and then some.”
“I came here to talk about my sister.”
“You want a cigarette or a beer or something? I have some thick-cut potato chips if you’re hungry.”
“I’m not hungry, Peggy. But I am here for something.”
“For what?”
“The truth.”
“What kind of truth?”
“The truth that only you know. The truth that the only living witness knows.”
Peggy, still looking for her cigarettes, gave up. “You’re talking in riddles. Can you get to the point? I have to take my son out for a haircut later.”
“Jeremy?”
“Yes, Jeremy.”
“Is his father home?”
“No. His father is dead. Now you’re going to have to leave. You’re making me uncomfortable and I don’t like feeling that way in my own home,” Peggy said.
“I thought that this was your mother’s house.”
“She’s dead. It’s mine now.”
“Right. She was bought out by The Pointe developers, is that right?”
Peggy nodded. “She was. And they really screwed her over. They were supposed to give us six months before they tore down the house so we could salvage those gorgeous old leaded windows by the fireplace. But no, they didn’t. Really made my mom mad.”
There were several ways to conduct interviews. One way was to build up to the key question, one little drop at a time, until there was a bucket of water to toss over the witness. The other tactic was to just go for the jugular.
Grace used the second technique.
“You killed my sister, Peggy. Didn’t you?”
Peggy stepped backward. “Jesus! Where did that come from?”
Grace had Peggy where she wanted her.
“Tricia wanted you to stop messing around with the professor, didn’t she? Did she say she was going to tell? Did you kill her because of that?”
Peggy looked flustered and angry.
Where were those damn cigarettes?
“I have no flipping idea what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do. I think you killed her and buried her at your mom’s house on Ruby Street in Ruston.”
“What are you talking about? Killed her? Buried her? You are really going to have to leave now. My son is at work and when he gets home he’s going to rip you a new one for treating me like this.”
“The bones found at the beach were full of lead and arsenic. They came from your yard. You know what I’m talking about. I can see it in your eyes.”
Emma Rose could hear yelling going on above her. It wasn’t the TV. It was louder, continuous. Two women were yelling at each other. She heard footsteps. Someone other than him was there. This was her chance. Her only chance.
She took the People magazine with Selena Gomez on the cover and rolled it up into a megaphone.
“Help!” she screamed. “I’m down here!”
She stopped and listened for movement, but there wasn’t any.
Next, she did what she had to do. It was her last chance. Her only hope. The stakes could not have been higher. If she failed, she would die.
She took the match she’d found up from the floor and ran it against the concrete, but nothing happened. Only a white line.
You have to light! she thought. Light! Please!
She tried it again. She could smell the scent of a burning match, but there was no flame.
God, why don’t you love me? she asked.
She thought of Elizabeth Smart. She’d made it. She’d found freedom.
The match lit and she held it the edge of the People cover. She knew that Selena had been through a lot of things in her life, and she would forgive her.
It was a torch. She was the Statue of Liberty. Emma Rose knew that the smoke would need to find the nose of someone who would help her. Someone upstairs. Someone yelling. For good measure, she took off her T-shirt and doused it with Sam’s Club diet cola and held it over her mouth and nose. Next, she carried the blanket to the chair under the furnace vent and lit it on fire.
If she died of smoke inhalation or even if she’d burned alive, it would be be
tter than dying at the hand of the sicko who held her in the apartment. She held the Sam’s Club-diet-cola-soaked T-shirt and waited by the door. She didn’t cry. She wasn’t even that scared. She knew that whatever happened would be for the best.
Whatever happened, she would be free.
Grace stopped talking. She breathed in cautiously.
“I smell smoke,” she said.
“I don’t smell anything,” Peggy said. She was angry. Her face contorted. “I want you to leave.”
“We need the fire department.” Grace reached for her phone and Peggy shoved her, knocking it out of her hand. It spun across the floor like a gyro.
“Are you crazy?” she asked, already knowing the answer.
“Get the hell out of my house.”
“The smoke must be coming from the basement.”
“No, it’s not. I was cooking earlier. Get out of my house!”
Grace picked up the phone with one hand, and pulled out her police issue. She pointed the gun at Peggy.
“What’s downstairs, Peggy?”
She punched in 911 with her thumb and put the phone on speaker.
“I’m at 2121 North Howard and there’s a fire. This is Detective Grace Alexander with the Tacoma PD. I need backup, too. This is an emergency.”
Grace didn’t wait for the dispatcher response other than to hear that “help is on the way.”
By then Peggy was gone.
With her gun drawn, Grace made her way first to the kitchen, where the back door had swung open. The door to the basement was locked. She kicked at it, but it didn’t budge. She stepped back a couple of feet and fired in the lock. It took only one shot and the door was open. She turned on the light.
Smoke oozed from the slot in the steel door.
