Just Try to Stop Me

by Gregg Olsen

As they passed the open doorway to the tack room, Violet caught a glimpse of a bank of computers and electronic equipment. It wasn’t a meth lab or some kind of drug operation that had occupied her son and his evil girlfriend’s time. It crossed Violet’s mind that in another time or place she might have thought the blinking lights of the devices were pretty. Like the Christmas lights around her Snow Village.

  Something wicked had been going on in that barn.

  * * *

  Sherman shoved his mother inside a stall and slammed the door shut. “Mom, I’m sorry,” he said through the door of the stall.

  Violet could barely hear her son. Even if she could understand every nuance in his words, she wouldn’t have said anything back to him anyway. He killed someone. He’d killed an innocent woman by bashing her head with a shovel. It was beyond her comprehension. She’d never speak to him again as long as she lived.

  “You shouldn’t have been so nosy,” he said. “You should have just looked the other way. Brenda isn’t like other people. She’s special. It’s an acquired taste, I admit it. But, God, Mom, I love her. She’s everything to me.”

  She’s evil, Violet thought, though she didn’t respond to her son. She wasn’t going to give him one bit of comfort by accepting his apology. You are disgusting to me. Revolting.

  “Mom, it won’t be long,” Sherman went on. “I promise. Brenda says that most people live empty lives and never achieve any kind of greatness. She’s right about that, you know? She has it all figured out, and she picked me. Me? Who would have thought it?”

  Violet put her cold hands over her ears. She didn’t want to hear one more muffled word from her son. She would rather die than do so. And considering what was going on all around her, she probably wouldn’t have to wait long.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Kendall Stark had ignored some of the more mundane paperwork associated with her job for long enough. She’d have taken any excuse to break away from it—no matter how weak. A very good one came in the form of a call from the Clallam County Sheriff’s Office.

  “It’s about your missing girls,” said a young man who identified himself as Deputy Flanagan.

  Kendall shoved her paperwork aside.

  “Go ahead,” she said.

  “Well, I think it might be related,” he said. “I was on the scene of a drive-by shooting we had out in the county. A guy named Robert Taylor was shot at point-blank range.”

  Kendall had heard about the shooting. Clallam County was not known for anything as urban as a drive-by. She doubted that’s what had transpired up there, but it wasn’t her case.

  The missing girls from South Kitsap, however, were.

  “What makes you think our girls were involved?”

  “Not involved,” he said. “I think that whoever killed our guy took them.”

  “Why do you think that?” Kendall asked.

  “One of the girls’ cell phones was discovered at the scene. I found it. Right there, under the VW that belonged to our vic.”

  “What makes you think it belonged to one of our girls?” she asked.

  “I’ll send you the video she made. It isn’t great quality, a little on the Blair Witch side of things. You know what I mean?”

  Kendall did. “Yes, can you send it to me now?”

  “Yup, encrypted. What address?”

  She gave him the email to the department’s secure server.

  “What else did you find at the scene?”

  “Not much. Tire tracks. We cast those, but not much there to go on. Pretty common tires. Nothing fancy.”

  The email popped into her in-box, and she clicked on it to download.

  “You get it?” he asked.

  “Yes, server’s slow.”

  “One thing that was kind of weird,” he went on. “Our guys found two shell casings.”

  “What’s so peculiar?”

  “Robert was shot once. At point-blank range. Just kind of strange that the shooter shot his weapon twice.”

  The file finished downloading.

  “Maybe he missed the first time,” Kendall said.

  “I don’t know. Just seems to me that if the shooter had shot someone in the head at close range he wouldn’t need to shoot another time. If he did, where the heck did that bullet go?”

  “Done loading now,” Kendall said, her eyes fastened on her computer screen. “I’ll watch and get back to you.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  The pixelated video jerked from one jagged image to the next, before settling on the shuddering chin of a girl. The jaw moved and the soft voice of someone very scared was faint, almost unintelligible. Kendall adjusted the volume, trying to tune out the hissing noise in the background and the movement of fabric against the phone’s microphone.

  The jaw wasn’t moving because the girl was talking. It was moving because she was trembling. The chin moved closer to the phone’s camera.

  “Someone just shot Patty,” a voice said. “I’m pretty sure he’s going to kill all of us. I love you, Mom and Dad.”

  The voice of a young man, calm and genial, silenced her.

  “Sure,” he said to someone. “Helping these gals will be the highlight of my day.”

  Whatever had scared her and made her think her life was in jeopardy had just transpired.

  One of the girls—farther away from the microphone—said they didn’t need help. Her tone was pleading, but unconvincing.

  She was lying. Trying to spare the young man.

  The phone jostled a bit more, and in doing so, it captured the purple fingernails of the girl closest to the camera.

  “Hey! What’s wrong with her?” the young man asked.

  Robert Taylor, Clallam’s victim, Kendall thought.

  Gunfire and panicked screams came next. The recording bumped again.

  It was indeed a single shot.

  A man’s voice told the screaming girls to shut up, though the last part of what he was saying was partially obscured by the screams.

  Shut the hell up, you four little bitches!

  Another girl shouted, demanding to know why he’d done that.

  “I can’t see his face,” whispered the girl with the purple nails who was closest to the phone—presumably its owner. Her voice was teetering between the softest whisper and inaudible, like a terrible cell connection. “He’s old. Like my dad’s age. White. Not fat. Not thin. God, I love you, Mom. I’m really sorry.”

  “He shouldn’t have stopped,” the man said. His tone was flat, devoid of any remorse or urgency. The tone caught Kendall off guard. In the drama of the moment, gunfire, screaming girls, this was the affect of the shooter?

  The phone moved, and the camera raked over the images of two other girls, both screaming and crying. Then everything stopped.

  Kendall watched the video a dozen times, trying to pick out the clues about what had happened, where Patty Sparks and the girls had been when they were attacked. Nothing on the video suggested that the girls had been abducted by someone they knew. Yet, true stranger abductions were rare. Most abduction cases involving children were sparked by parents at war with each other. This wasn’t in play. Besides, these weren’t little kids. The girl who’d recorded the video—and who Kendall knew all but certainly was Chloe MacDonald—didn’t know her attacker.

  A phrase struck her as familiar, but she couldn’t place it. She played it over and over.

  “. . . you four little bitches.”

  It couldn’t be.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Kendall put her purse and keys into the locker across from the metal detectors. Visiting prisons had become too frequent as of late. Yet, in order to find Brenda Nevins, she felt that it was probably necessary to turn the soil over again. Fenton Becker, who worked in the superintendent’s office and was in line to replace her, met Kendall.

  “No one likes a snitch,” Fenton said.

  “I know,” Kendall said.

  “But you’re in luck,” he said, pushing his round glasses
up the bridge of his long, patrician nose. “No one, and I mean no one, likes Brenda Nevins.”

  Kendall smiled. “My faith in humanity has been restored,” she said.

  Fenton stayed expressionless. “Mine will be. Once you catch her.”

  “That’s why I’m here, Mr. Becker,” she said.

  They walked through security to the first of a series of doors monitored by a guard in a video control booth.

  The doors buzzed and opened.

  “There are two inmates that knew Nevins here, and they’ll tell you whatever you need to know,” he said. “Coral Douglas worked in the computer lab with Brenda. Tamara O’Neal had some downtime with Brenda in the pets program.”

  The pets program reference brought a nod of uncomfortable familiarity from Kendall. Brenda had been caught having sex with a guard on a dog-grooming table.

  Fenton told Kendall that Coral was doing time for a meth conviction.

  “Boyfriend was the cooker/dealer. Coral made what she insists she thought were ‘deliveries’ of art supplies to needy high school students.”

  “She sounds lovely,” Kendall deadpanned. “And bright.”

  “Not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but she’s not that bad,” Fenton said. “Really very nice. I have hopes that she’ll make something out of her life when she gets out of here. Most don’t.”

  “Tell me about Tamara,” Kendall said. “What’s her story? And what’s your assessment about whether she’s reliable or not?”

  “Sissy has been here since she was seventeen, and she’s in her early fifties now. She loves animals. Darn near treats them like they are her babies. Probably because she lost hers. She saw something in Brenda, I’m not sure what. I can’t quite grab it in my mind, though she’s told me a time or two.”

  “How come she’s been here so long?”

  “She threw her twin baby boys off the Narrows Bridge.”

  “That’s a famous case,” Kendall said. “I remember reading about that when I was a kid.”

  “Infamous is more like it,” he said. “Said that she was at her wits’ end. Husband beat her. Told her that she was a piece of garbage and that her boys would grow up hating her. She snapped. She killed them to save them from being as unhappy as she was.”

  “You feel sorry for her,” Kendall said, her eyes widening a little.

  Fenton rolled his shoulders. “I guess so. I never really thought of it that way. I just know her as a woman serving a lot of time for a terrible thing that she did, but the person she is today isn’t that woman. Not anymore.”

  “When is she due for a hearing?”

  “Next year,” he said. “She lives on that hope. I think she’ll get out, but I can’t say that to her. Can’t give people a false sense of hope when so much is on the line.”

  “No, I don’t see how you could,” Kendall said.

  Fenton indicated for Kendall to follow to a conference room. “Care who you see first?”

  Kendall shook her head. “No.”

  * * *

  A small gray-haired woman in faded blue jeans, a sky-blue shirt, and white tennis shoes appeared with Fenton in the conference room doorway. The space was airless, devoid of any artwork except a faded Washington State flag, which sat forlornly in the corner. A cobweb enrobed the tarnished brass eagle on the tip of the pole. Tamara “Sissy” O’Neal had that caged animal look in her eyes, always scanning the space before landing her eyes on another’s.

  “This is Kendall Stark,” he said. “She’s a detective with the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office in Port Orchard. As I explained to you, she’s here to talk about Brenda Nevins.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” Sissy said. “I want to help. I don’t think any good could come from that woman being out on the loose. She’s trouble with a capital T.”

  “Please have a seat, Sissy,” Kendall said. “Let’s talk.”

  Sissy slid into the chair across from Kendall. Fenton excused himself and disappeared down the corridor.

  “You worked with Brenda in the kennel?” Kendall asked.

  “Right,” she said. “She really didn’t do much work. But, yeah, that’s where I knew her from.”

  “What was she like to work with?”

  “As I said, she didn’t do much work. Didn’t want to wreck her nails. One time a cat scratched her, and she had a fit like a two-year-old, worried she’d get a scar.”

  “I see,” Kendall said. “On her face?”

  “On her finger. Seriously she was worried about a scar on her finger because she said that if she wanted to do some modeling after prison her hands had to be flawless. Like she was ever going to be a model.”

  “She wanted attention,” Kendall said. “Isn’t that right?”

  “An attention whore is what I called her. She wanted everyone to watch her, worship her, dress like her. She was sure that she was going to be a big star someday even though she killed her baby and her husband.” Sissy stopped for a beat, assessing Kendall’s reaction to what she was saying.

  “I know what you’re thinking, that I’m one to talk.”

  “I wasn’t thinking that at all, Sissy.”

  “Look, I killed my boys. I own that. It took me a long time to get to that place where I could look in the mirror at my own reflection and see that I was something more than a killer.”

  “I know that you feel remorse,” Kendall said. “It must be a very heavy burden to carry.”

  Sissy looked like she was going to cry, but she held it together.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” she said, “but that’s where Brenda comes in. She made it seem like we shared the same truths about who we were and how we got there. What a joke. She killed her baby for money. I killed my babies because I loved them. Big difference.”

  Kendall didn’t see the distinction at all. Dead was dead. Murder was murder. Still, she wasn’t there to challenge Sissy O’Neal on her crimes, only to try to find out where Brenda might have gone. Or at least, perhaps understand more of Brenda’s motivations.

  “But you liked her?”

  Sissy drew nearer. “I did at first. That’s the weird part of dealing with Brenda. She was hard not to like. As awful as she was.”

  Kendall noticed a subtle shift in Sissy’s demeanor. She seemed a little wistful.

  “You got close to her,” Kendall said.

  Sissy blanched at the statement. “Not Janie close if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “Not getting at that,” Kendall said. “Did she ever tell you her plans?”

  The inmate folded her arms, revealing scars from a habit long ago. “Do you mean escape plans? Never.”

  “Okay, but think a little and help us find her. I was wondering if she told you what she wanted to do when she got out of here.”

  This time, a spark of recognition came over Sissy’s washed-out face.

  “Yeah,” she said, “She did. We were grooming a couple of Westies and she laid it all out.”

  “Tell me,” Kendall said. “I need to know what you know.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Cream-colored fur was everywhere, falling like snow. Brenda Nevins rinsed off her arms and pulled a paper towel from the battered dispenser and applied it to her face. She looked over at Sissy, who was putting the grooming tools into the plastic storage containers donated by a dog lover.

  “I’m not going to curl up and die in here,” Brenda said.

  The comment came out of the blue. They’d been happily caring for the dogs, talking about pets they’d owned before they came to be warehoused at the prison. They’d even discussed how much they’d love real French fries (“Fried in oil! Not baked!”) if they’d ever managed to get the attention of the man who ran the kitchen. The food he made was devoid of flavor, low in calories, and just plain boring.

  “What?” Sissy asked.

  Brenda leaned against the counter. “I said, I’m not going to curl up and die in this place. I have a lot more I want to do.”

&
nbsp; “We all do, Brenda,” Sissy said.

  “We all might,” Brenda said. “But very few of us are in the position to do anything about it. Look around you, Sissy. All these girls talk about how they’re going to do this and that when they get out. You’ve been here long enough to notice that there’s a whole bunch of them that don’t do anything at all except reoffend and end up right back here.”

  Brenda was spot-on. More than a quarter of the girls managed to come back after a year or two.

  “So what’s your plan?” Sissy asked.

  Brenda swiveled to look at herself in the polished steel mirror over the sink. “Still working on it,” she said. “I’ve thought of a million things that I could do, but only one thing that I feel that I have to do.”

  Their eyes met in the mirror.

  “What is it?” Sissy asked.

  “Be memorable,” Brenda said. “I’m going to do something, something big, something that will get me noticed by everyone.”

  “Like what?”

  “Still working on it,” Brenda said. “All the haters out there need to be reminded that I have feelings too. That I’m a person of talent and refinement and that I should never have been marginalized. That was an error. A fatal error for some, I’d say.”

  Sissy was pretty sure Brenda was crazy.

  “Are we talking about a big revenge plot?” she asked. “Is that what you’re going to do? I thought you wanted to be a TV star or something along those lines.”

  Brenda smiled at Sissy. She had been listening. That was good. Later, Brenda was fairly certain, Sissy would recount the conversation as though it were some bombshell revelation.

  “I’m already a big star, Sissy,” Brenda went on. “You and all the other girls here know that. You see how everyone wants to please me? Everyone wants to dress like me. Do their hair like mine.”

  Sissy didn’t think any of what Brenda was saying was true. The other girls stayed clear of Brenda because she scared the crap out of them. She was wildly unpredictable, full of herself, and determined to get her way in every situation. No matter how small.

  Sissy played along. “You’re already the most famous girl here,” she said. “Everyone knows who you are.”