Just Try to Stop Me

by Gregg Olsen

“Nothing,” she said. “Just glad that we’re all together. I’m a very lucky girl.”

  BOOK TWO

  VIOLET

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The Kitsap County Coroner’s new offices sat on the hill above Navy Yard City, adjacent to Bremerton. Despite its decidedly blue-collar locale—just past auto dealerships and next door to a military recruiting and training center—the facility was anything but. It housed top-of-the-line equipment with two chillers (one for deep-freezing decomps and another for the bodies waiting to be processed or for pickup by a funeral home).

  The powers to be had listened as the plan for a new facility took shape. Considering the dire shape of the old office, they had no real choice. Whenever Birdy attended a conference, fellow attendees would inquire about the old house on Sidney Avenue in Port Orchard and scratch their heads at a county that wouldn’t cough up the bucks for a proper morgue. For a county as large as Kitsap—as close in proximity to Seattle and King County—the comments brought embarrassment. Birdy deflected all of it and couldn’t agree more that their working conditions were subpar.

  “Someday,” she said more than one time, “our taxpayers and our county commissioners will come to some kind of consensus, and we’ll get what we need to do our jobs.”

  Finally they did. The move had been on the calendar for weeks, and the fact that the Brenda Nevins investigation was in full swing wasn’t going to change any of that.

  Boxes of supplies had been carefully marked, evidence double-checked, and libraries of books about the latest in forensics had been dispatched to designated locations throughout a facility that was ten times as large as the old house/coroner’s office on Sidney.

  It was a step up. A giant leap, really. The family room with a video feed, and an ever-ready tissue box, was one improvement that the public would see. No longer did a grieving relative need to have the body of a loved one wheeled from the old naval battleship chiller that serviced the old facility for a viewing. In the new space, families could look upon a loved one on a plasma screen.

  The purpose was more than just making it better for those dealing with a terrible and often shocking loss. It was also to improve efficiency, safety, and workers’ health. One of the two autopsy suites was set up to handle bodies with potential biohazards, with an air replacement unit that ensured a complete change of air every thirty minutes.

  As good as all that was, there was something lacking too.

  Birdy’s office was no longer in a converted bedroom in an old house near the courthouse. It no longer had the tragic, worn vibe of a place that had been pressed into service by a county short on funds. And yet, when Birdy was at that location, the courts were there. The sheriff was right there. Over by Navy Yard City, she felt isolated from the machinations of a county government and its law enforcers.

  “I’m not sure we’re going to like this, Sarah,” she said to her favorite assistant, a redhead with a nose spattered with freckles and a collection of rose gold jewelry from her aunt in South Dakota that was the envy of the office.

  “What’s not to like?” Sarah asked as she shifted instruments around in the stainless-steel overhead cabinetry. “The facility is amazing. We no longer have to bring colleagues in to prove to them that Kitsap is some poor country cousin and that we’ve been forced to conduct examinations in the basement of an old house.”

  “Right,” Birdy said. “And we no longer have to remind new hires that the cream is on the top shelf of the refrigerator in the break room and tissue samples are on the second shelf.”

  Sarah laughed. They both did.

  “I won’t really miss any of that,” Birdy went on, “But I guess I’ll miss that connection we had with the other agencies.”

  Sarah twisted a chain with an grape-leaf pendant that hung around her neck. “CENCOM is next door, Dr. Waterman.”

  CENCOM was the 911 call and dispatch center.

  “I know,” Birdy said. “I’m glad about that.”

  Sarah went about her supply check, and Birdy retreated to her office, vowing to herself that she’d get comfortable in the new space. Change was good.

  She switched on an old gooseneck lamp and fished a photograph from her purse. It showed her and Elan, an image taken by Kendall that first week Elan moved in. He had his hand on her shoulder as he squinted into the sun. Birdy wore sunglasses in that photograph, but not to block out the sun. She’d teared up a little. There was something overwhelming about Elan coming to live with her. Not because she didn’t want him. Not because he was too much trouble. It was just that he’d been such an important part of her life, and she’d never been able to tell him that she’d always had his back.

  She found a piece of tape and taped the photo next to her desk phone. She knew that she’d violated county policy.

  “Do not adhere anything to the walls with tape or pushpins. Please use museum-grade removable fasteners if you must post something in your work location.”

  Birdy didn’t care. Elan wasn’t her son, but he might be the only true and lasting family she’d ever have.

  * * *

  The painting of the sea stacks at Ruby Beach sat on Birdy Waterman’s desk. Her sister Summer had painted it for Birdy when she was away at medical school to remind her of home. It was a mostly gray image with the stacks rising from the water, craggy monoliths looped in sea foam. A lone gull hovered in a cloudy sky. A nest of driftwood was scattered like a child’s pickup sticks in the foreground. Summer had brushed paint on canvas with energy and vigor. Her work was never the type that had been created to match a sofa. Each stroke of her brush had been deliberate, assured.

  On the back side she’d written: Remember the Time.

  Birdy didn’t know if her sister was referring to a specific time that they’d shared at that gorgeous, rugged beach. It had been a favorite place. Or if Summer merely meant the image as a reminder of the place from which she’d come. Before things went so bad between them, the connection they shared seemed unbreakable. While Summer stayed on the reservation to marry, raise Elan, and look after their mother, Birdy had charted another course.

  “You know,” Summer had said one time, “just because you’re a doctor for dead people doesn’t mean I’m not proud of you.”

  “Just because you’re full of it, doesn’t mean I’m not proud of you,” Birdy answered back.

  Birdy looked around for a nail and picture hook, picking through the boxes yet to be unpacked. The painting was tempera and egg, a medium that gave a vibrant opacity to each brushstroke. Summer was a talented artist. Gifted, Birdy always thought. That’s the part that hurt. Not that they didn’t get along. Not that Summer drank too much. Couldn’t manage her rage. It was that she’d had so much promise. Birdy always looked up to her older sister. Promise unfulfilled crushed her more than anything.

  She pushed the painting to the other side of her desk and opened the wide middle drawer to see if she’d put the nails and hooks there. She wondered why she had so many paper clips. She couldn’t think of the last time she or anyone she knew used them. Staples too. God, she had so many boxes of staples.

  And no stapler.

  When she didn’t find a hook for the painting, she pushed back her chair to get up.

  It caught her eye just then.

  She lifted the corner of the painting and tilted the lamp so that it illuminated the texture of the painted surface more directly. On the right-hand bottom corner, she noticed for the first time that there had been two figures in the foreground. Two girls. Ghosts. Summer painted over them with some driftwood.

  One girl was slightly taller than the other. Her arm had been hooked around the shoulders of the smaller girl. Wind blew their hair to the north.

  Something about that vanished scene brought tears to Birdy’s eyes, making it harder to see. She peered closer, turning the painting to see. Her sister was a very good painter. It had not been a mistake that she’d sought to cover. The obfuscation was intentional. She’d wanted those two girls toge
ther, looking out at the water, remembering a time when they were so very close.

  It took Birdy’s breath away.

  Summer, she thought, what happened to us? Why have we ended up like this?

  She tried her sister’s phone number, and, as it almost always did, the call went to voice mail after a couple of rings.

  “I wanted you to know that I’m thinking of you right now. I know you’re with Mom and that’s a good thing. For both of you. I miss you, Summer. I’m sitting here in my new office and remembering all the good times we had. Remember how much we loved Ruby Beach? Call me when you can, will you?”

  Birdy wondered when had been the last time she’d phoned her sister out of love. All the calls over the past couple of years had felt like duty. They had the weight of obligation. When Elan moved in with her, things morphed into a kind of cold war between them that she never imagined. Now, with their mother dying, the connection they had was only about her. The focus on their mother had brought them together a little. Birdy wondered where they would be when she was gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Violet Wilder watched from the kitchen window as her son, Sherman, loaded the last of the horses into the trailer of the man from down by Discovery Bay who’d come to buy her beloved Montana. Monty had been the last of the stable to be sold. It pained Violet to watch that splendid animal go. Monty was such a beauty. He was a black gelding with a streak of white that ran the length of his nose. Monty had been her favorite of the horses they’d had on the farm. He was the gentlest, and the grandchildren loved riding him. But the farm had become too much for her to handle, even with the help of her devoted son.

  She edged her walker away from the window to answer the noise coming from the teakettle. She’d noticed the decline of her physical abilities over the past few months and tried her best to avoid the thoughts of how the rest of her life would play out. How much longer would she be able to live on her own? Where would she go? What would become of her farm?

  She poured hot water into a mug and watched the amber color of the orange spice tea as it glowed from the tea bag. Violet Wilder was eighty-eight years old. She no longer said “eighty-eight years young” because there was nothing young about her age anymore.

  “Need some help with that mug, Mom?” Sherman said as he entered the kitchen.

  She turned, a warm smile on her face. Sherman was the youngest of her babies and he was in his fifties. It was hard to even think of him as a child. He was in decent shape for his age, with a full head of sandy brown hair and piercing brown eyes that telegraphed intelligence whenever he was talking to someone—no matter who they were or what the subject.

  Sherman was always on.

  “I’ll miss Monty,” she said, as she slid her walker over to the kitchen table where Sherman had placed her steaming mug.

  “I know, Mom. I will too,” he said, taking a seat across from his mother. “But as hard as this is, it has to be done. Life’s about making tough choices, and they all come with a price.” He pushed the sugar bowl closer to her.

  “You sound like your father,” she said, dropping a spoonful of sugar into her fragrant tea.

  He pointed to her cup. “Drink up. Tea’s getting cold.”

  Violet looked down and caught her reflection on the back of the sugar spoon. She had been beautiful once—at least people had told her so. When she and Alec got married, she had the most striking chestnut hair. She wore it long, though she had the style shortened with the birth of each child. She’d been unable to wear it with a clip or ponytail by the time Sherman was born. Her eyes sparkled with mischief then and were blue like the waters of Puget Sound. Not anymore. Her hair was white, and her eyes looked gray, not blue. Her gaze was a dull stare, and her hands were knotted at the joints like burls of wood.

  And her legs. That was the worst of her current state. Once the pride of Port Angeles High School as she set a record in the 100-yard dash, they could no longer support her in a steady fashion. She’d been condemned to get around with the aid of that metal-tubed contraption that was her companion whenever she moved about the house. Leaving the house? Not so much. She had too much pride to be seen around town shuffling along with a walker, or God forbid, in one of those motorized scooters.

  Her son had offered to buy her one, but she’d insisted that she could manage just fine.

  “I’ve been everywhere I want to go,” she’d said.

  “What about seeing your friends, Mom?” Sherman asked.

  “My friends are dead.”

  “Not all of them.”

  Her expression turned wistful. “The ones I actually liked are.”

  As she sat there with her tea, Violet watched Sherman make his way across the yard to the now very, very empty barn. Barn cats Snowball and Licorice were curled up on top of a stack of hay bales. They jumped down to meet him, looking for a treat no doubt. He bent down and petted them and went inside.

  * * *

  The Wilder Farm was pitched in its own little valley along the Elwha River. After logging more than a third of their 100-acre parcel, Alec and Violet Wilder raised sheep, then goats, and finally turkeys. Alec worked at the paper mill in Port Angeles, leaving Violet to raise the kids and run the farm. She told her husband that she felt like she was living a life reminiscent of Betty MacDonald, who’d famously written about her chicken ranching experiences in the classic memoir The Egg and I.

  “The same problems, but without the wit and laughter,” she deadpanned.

  The farm was so remote that the Wilders had no real neighbors to speak of. The kids—Sherman, Denise, and Timothy—were carted six miles to a bus stop and then another forty-five minutes to their various schools in Port Angeles. When Alec managed a shift change at the mill, he drove them. Those were the best times the family ever knew. Alec hurt his back in an accident when he was fifty-nine and never recovered. He died at sixty-seven, leaving Violet to manage on her own.

  She scaled back. Sold off thirty acres to a man from California who thought that the location would be ideal for a camping resort, of all things. Violet could not fathom why anyone would want to come out that bumpy road in an RV, but she wasn’t about to quell the deal. The money from the sale, she was sure, would take her to her last days.

  She just hadn’t expected to survive so long. She hadn’t expected to live in the manner in which she was living, either. Life might not be fair, but did it have to be cruel?

  Yet there was something for which to be grateful. Sherman, who’d lost his most recent job due to downsizing in the IT department for a Washington state government office, was there to help her. Denise, a dentist in Seattle, was far too busy, but that was understood. She called twice a week. As for Timothy, he was the Wilders’ problem child. Always into trouble. Always able to charm himself out of a mess. The last Violet had heard he was living in Littleton, Colorado. She knew that he’d pop into her life again. He always did.

  Sherman was her Steady Eddy.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Meth had overtaken pockets of rural Washington, and the Makah reservation was no exception. It was a problem that couldn’t be solved the way that had been promised by the government workers who’d come with full hearts and always-ready optimism. Stopping the trafficking took more than reminding people that meth, an insidious drug if ever there was one, could kill them. By the time meth teeth showed their ugly snarl, it was too late. Too late for the family cat that went unfed and died in the kitchen. Too late for the little girl who still wore diapers at age four because her mother was so transfixed by the powers of the drug that there wasn’t enough time in the day to do all that she needed to do.

  Birdy drove down the long gravel road to her mother’s house. She passed the Meakins place, a grave marker of sorts. It was decimated in a fire years earlier. The small wood frame house looked like the blackened innards of a beached whale. The rafters were ribs. The collapsed carport garage had fallen flat; its doors were the tail fins.

  A shark, no
t a whale.

  Mr. and Mrs. Meakin were a nice couple. They helped with the community, donated to the church, cleared fallen trees when the road became impassable after a wintertime storm. Birdy picked huckleberries a few times with the family. Summer did too. Mrs. Meakin offered everything that their mother, Natalie, couldn’t.

  Love.

  Attention.

  Truth.

  The irony was that their son Bobby was a cooker. Hooked on meth too, as most cookers are. Bobby did his best to stay clean enough through the arduous cycle of cooking meth for a dealer named Beast. He cooked in the woods in the summer, but the Beast kept pushing for more product. After repeated demands for more, Bobby gave in. He moved his operation, such as it was, into a woodshed off the kitchen. When the shed blew up, it triggered an explosion of the propane tank. The tank took off the roof of the house. Flames licked the rafters and beams.

  Mr. and Mrs. Meakin and their son Bobby were all dead.

  Birdy looked at her phone. It was seven minutes to two. She pulled over to wait a few minutes. She turned off the ignition, turning off the music from the CD player. So much had happened since she left. Her dad was gone. Her mother was growing weaker by the day. Not a whole lot to hang on to anymore. She watched a doe move along a fence line across the road.

  Waiting.

  She’d texted her sister that she’d be there that afternoon. Summer made the visit finite and exact.

  “You can come from two to three. Not a minute before. Please don’t try to talk to me.”

  It made Birdy feel sick. No matter what Summer did, Birdy loved her. She was all she’d ever had as far as a family member. She had been a lifeline when they were small. The tether between the two of them when they were young was a lifesaver, but as they grew it was a ligature—choking the life out of her whenever she thought of coming back to Neah Bay, back to what she had always believed would be home.

  * * *

  Birdy sat outside her mother’s house and waited for her sister, Summer, to leave. She and Summer had said very little to each other since Elan moved in with her. It wasn’t a completely new occurrence. They had gone through periods of time—some quite long—in which they didn’t speak. There had been lots of reasons for the wall between them. This time, Birdy was sure, was not the time to try to fix things. The glue that held them together had been the toxic love of their mother.