Just Try to Stop Me

by Gregg Olsen

  “Oh, Sissy, this is so small time. I deserve a larger audience than the latest busload of meth heads, child abusers, and these other low-IQ chicks. I will be a star. I will do what it takes to ensure that those who’ve hurt me, put me down, made me think less of myself, realize that transgressions that go unpunished are merely unfinished business.”

  * * *

  Sissy finished talking, and Kendall processed all that she’d said. None of it was at odds with the killer Kendall had been tracking. In fact, it was a big, fat underscore of Brenda Nevins’s known psychiatric profile—a report made while she awaited trial for the murder of her husband and baby. If anything, it showed that time in prison wasn’t going to change one thing about who she was, what made her tick, and what she might do if she’d been given the chance.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Coral Douglas was next. Fenton Becker ushered her in, made quick introductions, and returned to his office. She was a sullen-looking girl who seldom smiled. On those rare occasions when she did, the act revealed a mouth full of teeth that were so fragmented and black that it was no wonder that she weighed less than 100 pounds.

  How in the world can she eat?

  Coral held her hand in front of her mouth when she spoke.

  “I don’t like strangers judging me,” she said.

  “I’ve seen what methamphetamine does to people, Coral. How are you doing on your recovery?”

  Her hand remained up over her mouth.

  “What do you care?” she asked. “You’re here about that bitch Brenda. Isn’t that right?”

  “I do care, Coral. Did you know there’s a community group that donates funds to replace the teeth of former meth addicts?”

  She looked down at the table. “Yeah. I heard about them.”

  “I can tell them about you,” Kendall said. “I can ask them to help you. I can’t guarantee anything, but I can promise I will try.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “I’d appreciate it.”

  Kendall made a note of her promise.

  “Now let’s talk about the reason I’m here. Let’s see if you can help me, okay?”

  Coral lowered her hand. With her mouth pressed shut, she wasn’t scary at all. Her black hair was long and clipped back. Her brown eyes were clear and alert. While Coral had a pair of tiny scars on the bridge of her nose, for a meth addict her skin was in surprisingly good shape.

  “You didn’t like Brenda much, I gather,” Kendall said.

  “Couldn’t stand her.”

  “Can you be a little more specific?” Kendall asked. “You worked with her in the computer lab, correct?”

  Coral played with her hair. “Yeah. And I’ll tell you she was absolutely the worst person to work with. She acted like she was the boss of me and that I was stupid because, well, because of the reason I’m in here. People judge. Brenda finishes people off.”

  Coral let loose. She talked about how Brenda had anointed herself as the authority on everything and anything. The two women from Pierce County College who’d volunteered with the computer outreach program both quit over Brenda.

  “She actually made one of them cry. Told the lady that . . . let me get the exact quote . . . ‘Fat girls like you are always trying to please others because they know deep down that nobody wants them.’”

  “Harsh,” Kendall said. “Why did she say that?”

  Coral looked around the room. Her eyes rarely stayed focused on the detective. “Because the girl was fat, and she knew that she was vulnerable. Brenda thought that she wasn’t getting the attention she needed, and that if she could get rid of her—which she did—she’d be able to get someone new that would do whatever she wanted them to do.”

  Kendall leaned in. “Like what?” she asked. “What was she wanting the volunteer to do?”

  “Send messages out. That kind of BS. Brenda wanted to make a video—because that’s one of the things she thought she ought to because, well she was the effing Brenda Nevins, star killer. Whatever.”

  Fenton had told Kendall that the computer lab at the prison was merely a shell, not functional at all. It was not connected to the Internet. It was set up by volunteers and the State of Washington to help inmates without any computing skills to learn so that once they were outside the institution they might be more competitive in their job search.

  “With no Internet, how was she expecting to accomplish her goal?”

  Coral was unsure. “I think she just wanted to get rid of that woman.”

  “I don’t follow you,” Kendall said.

  “The woman, the overweight one, thought Brenda was a bully and had written her up. Brenda thought by getting rid of her, she’d get a man in there.”

  “Brenda was adept at seducing women,” Kendall said.

  “She could seduce a preacher during Sunday service,” Coral said, “if she thought it would get her what she wanted. She told me one time that the only thing more powerful than money was sex. Although, she was more graphic than that.”

  They talked a bit more, mostly about how much Coral hated Brenda. How she’d picked on her biggest vulnerability, her teeth. She reminded Kendall of her promise to help her get the needed dental work. Kendall said she’d make the call the minute she got back to her office.

  “You know she made some videos here,” Coral said, getting up to leave.

  Kendall was surprised. “No, I didn’t. What kind?”

  Coral allowed her eyes to meet Kendall’s. “The creepy kind. Ask Fenton. He has one of them. Bet he watches it all the time.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  “Let’s see the video,” Kendall said, as she and Fenton stood by the guard’s desk.

  “What video?” he asked.

  “Come on,” she said, “are you really going to play a game with me? Your institution looks pretty bad right now. Inmate escaped with the help of the superintendent. Not the best media coverage you’ve had lately.”

  “No, it isn’t,” he said.

  “Come on,” Kendall said, knowing that he didn’t need to comply. “Show me the tape.”

  His face stayed grim. “I gave it to the FBI,” he said.

  Great, Kendall thought.

  “But you kept a copy, didn’t you?” she asked.

  Fenton kept his eyes on the detective.

  “Yeah,” he finally answered. “I did. I needed it for our files, and I wasn’t sure I’d get it back. We’ve been through a lot here since the Brenda and Janie debacle. I’m not taking any chances. My ass is on the line.”

  Kendall didn’t appreciate the visual of Fenton’s ass being anywhere.

  “Let’s watch it,” she said.

  “Pretty graphic,” he told her as they walked up to his office.

  “I can handle it,” she said.

  When they got to his office, he produced a cell phone.

  “It’s on your phone?” she asked. “How’d it get on your phone?”

  He shook his head. “Not my phone. Don’t know whose phone it is. There’s nothing on the damn thing but the video.”

  “Why didn’t you give the phone to the FBI?”

  “I had made a copy on a thumb drive, and SA Casey said that would be fine. He didn’t ask where the video came from, how I got it, or even about the existence of the phone.”

  That was a head-scratcher, for sure. SA Casey was utterly and completely by the book.

  “Maybe he already had a copy of it,” she said.

  “Could be,” Fenton said.

  He queued up the video, and Kendall started watching.

  It was Brenda, of course. She was wearing a T-shirt and facing the camera. She sat on the edge of a desk in what appeared to be a classroom.

  “This was recorded here?” Kendall asked. “Inside the prison?”

  Fenton acknowledged her question with an uneasy smile.

  “Pretty graphic,” he said. “Just watch.”

  Kendall kept her eyes on the phone’s tiny screen. Brenda took off her top and exposed her breasts. She
stood and shifted her sweatpants down her thighs and then stepped out.

  There was no audio.

  Brenda sat on the desk, slid down to its edge and pleasured herself with some kind of a rod. She writhed with ecstasy. She arched her back, and lifted herself upward and then back down again, the rod inside her.

  Kendall glanced over at Fenton.

  “Selfie stick,” he said.

  “Where’s she get that?” Kendall asked.

  “Someone smuggled it in.”

  “Can you tell exactly where this video was created?”

  He folded his arms. “Yeah,” he said. “Computer lab.”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “One of the girls who works in the kitchen found it. Said it was out in plain sight.”

  She looked down at the video, now frozen with a still image of Brenda Nevins thrusting her breasts out at the lens.

  “She seemed to be saying something in the video,” Kendall said. “How come no audio?”

  “Don’t know.”

  What did he know?

  “How would she have been able to film this in the computer lab?” she asked.

  “Not sure,” Fenton said. “Janie Thomas kept a looser ship than I will.”

  * * *

  Kendall Stark thought of the video as she drove her SUV back to the Kitsap County Sheriff’s office. Her hand stuck to the steering wheel. Cody had discovered the joys of a caramel apple. Despite the sticky distraction, she wouldn’t shake what she’d seen. The video had been made with the help of at least one other person. Someone needed to hold the phone while Brenda put on her pathetic sex show. No one in prison was taking selfies, as far as Kendall knew. Had the selfie stick been brought in for a specific purpose other than selfies? For the purpose Brenda employed, or was she just using a prop of convenience?

  With Brenda Nevins it was hard to know.

  Kendall believed the video was meant as a turn-on for someone. It had not been made for Brenda’s pleasure. The way she’d positioned herself on the desk, the way she kept her body perfectly inside the frame indicated that she was performing. Performing for someone. But who? Janie? That wasn’t likely. Janie’s interest in Brenda skewed toward romance and a deep personal kind of understanding, not sex.

  Brenda was performing for a man.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  Oh, screw it, Shelly Evans thought to herself as she threw some things into an overnight bag lying open on her bed. She wasn’t that sick. Her mom had sounded so disappointed that she couldn’t make it for the holiday weekend. Her mother Tansy’s reaction had needled her all weekend. She had a way of doing that, though not in a manner that could be explained with a sassy retort to a friend.

  “My mom needs to get a life! She keeps thinking we’re BFFs.”

  She caught the ferry from Edmonds to Kingston and drove up the highway to Port Angeles. She’d grown up in PA, as the locals called it, and never minded that she had done so. Small-town life had been good. Her dad worked at the mill, and her mom taught school, then went to work for the library system. It had been a good life. She felt the tug of her roots every time she visited there.

  The Mulligan house was an old yellow craftsman with a red door and black shutters. A pair of dormers on the waterside looked out over the Straits. The yard was immaculate. Shelly noticed that her mom had, in fact, given up on her English garden, and was tending the dahlia bed that had grown larger with each year—and with each new tuber. Tansy Mulligan had recently specialized in dinner plate–sized blooms. From the freshly spaded earth, it appeared that she’d be planting some new tubers or, perhaps, had dug up some to share with a friend.

  Shelly went to the kitchen door by the detached garage. Her mom’s pride and joy, a brand-new white Nissan Versa (“It’s extravagant, I know, but I’ve always wanted a brand-new car!”), was missing, so she assumed she’d gone on an errand somewhere. The second she opened the door, Boots and Chin-Chin were on her.

  Those cats!

  She noticed their water dishes and food bowls were empty. Not like her mother at all. Chin-Chin, a Siamese mix, weighed more than twenty pounds by her mom’s most recent calculation (“I got on the scale holding him and then subtracted my weight from the total”). He clearly never missed a meal. Shelly opened the refrigerator and noticed the brisket her mom had said would be the “best ever” was ready to roast. She had to admit it did look pretty good. She took a can of tuna, rolled her eyes at the way her mom babied her cats, and fed them.

  The house was dead silent, save for the appreciative purrs coming from Boots and Chin-Chin.

  Shelly texted her mom: Surprise! I’m here at the house! Where R U?

  She poured herself a glass of wine. After all, it was a holiday. As darkness fell over her childhood home, turning the family photos into sepia hues, Shelly began to worry. Her mother hadn’t answered her text.

  Where was she, anyway?

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  Blake was in the stall next to Amber’s. She’d cried all night. They all had. She told herself that whatever had gotten them into that dire predicament was not going to take them down completely. She hadn’t fought her way to become the best she could be to die in some twisted maniac’s smelly old barn. Not by a long shot.

  She felt the presence of something watching her, but that wasn’t going to stop her either. She felt around in darkness. The space was small. Smaller than the cubicle her mother complained about at work. About the size of the storage room where the girls on the squad kept their uniforms and pom-poms during the off-season. The space smelled bad, but it was an odor that reminded her of her uncle’s farm in Kittitas County, not far from Ellensburg on the dry side of the Cascades.

  Barn. Leather. Tack. Hay. Manure.

  Blake was in a horse stall.

  She felt every inch of space until she reached each of the four walls. On the fourth wall, her fingers ran along a wide space that was all but certainly a door. Another swipe in the dark confirmed it. She found hinges on one side, a latch on the other.

  She heard a noise. A sneeze. Amber had allergies. It had to be her. It was a high-pitched sneeze that could pierce through a crowded school bus or, in this case, a makeshift prison.

  “Amber? Can you hear me?” she whispered.

  No response.

  She tried again, this time a little louder. But not loud enough, she hoped, to let anyone know she was reaching out to the others.

  Finally, an answer.

  “Blake? Is that you?”

  Blake teared up at the sound of her friend’s voice. She was tough. Tougher than anyone would give her credit for. Being beautiful didn’t make her weak. Yet, the emotional response to knowing with complete certainty that she was not alone was something she could not set aside.

  “It’s me,” she said, fighting to hold it together. “Are you all right?”

  “I think so,” Amber said. “You?”

  “Mad as hell,” Blake whispered back. “But I’m okay. The other girls?”

  “Don’t know,” Amber said, her voice cracking. “I can’t hear them anymore. God, what is happening to us?”

  “I don’t know,” Blake said, “but we’re going to get out of here.”

  A beat of silence. The wheels were turning.

  “How?” Amber asked. “I can’t even move. I’m tied up like a pig.”

  Blake leaned closer to the slats of the wall that separated her from Amber. She strained to try to see through them, but it was no use. She couldn’t see anything.

  “We’re going to have to find a way out of here,” she said.

  “Aren’t you tied up?”

  Blake put her lips to the space between the boards to direct the sound of her voice.

  “Not really,” she said. “He thinks I’m tied up, but I’m not. Not at all. I just need to find a way to get out of here.”

  Amber didn’t say anything for the longest time.

  “Did you hear me?” Blake asked.

  “Yeah,” sh
e said, “I think they took Chloe, Blake.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  Bay Street, the main drag through Port Orchard, had never lived up to its promise, but the locals didn’t mind. It was situated along Sinclair Inlet facing the Naval Shipyard in Bremerton. The Olympics were a stunning silver, blue, and white curtain behind the scene. A celebrity romance author and a nationally syndicated radio show host had pooled resources to revive the town with new signage and fresh paint. While their efforts were appreciated, it didn’t spark a major revitalization. It didn’t matter. Bay Street was a lot like the people who lived in Port Orchard: friendly, not particularly glamorous, but pleasant as the day was long.

  Justin’s Quick Print was tucked into a sliver of a space between the old movie theater and an antique store that specialized in vintage gelatin molds. The shop was no longer owned by Justin Mallory. His daughter Cici, thirty-three, took over after her parents moved to Kingman, Arizona, to get out of the gloom of Washington winters.

  Looking at her, it was easy to see that Cici Mallory lived and breathed ink. A field of tattoos covered her arms; the swirls of undulating images chronicled her affection for fantasy and theater. Only her boyfriend could see her tribute to The Lord of the Rings.

  “Hi Dr. Waterman,” Cici called over as the forensic pathologist and the homicide investigator swung open the heavy old glass door, triggering the small bell on a hook used to alert employees that someone had come inside.

  Kendall gave Birdy a look.

  “Is there anyone you don’t know?” she asked.

  “I had some things printed here for my forensics group,” Birdy said.

  Indeed, Birdy had met Cici the previous year when she chaired the annual banquet for the Pacific Northwest Forensics Organization, for which she was a past president.

  “Paying for things like announcements, programs, and a bar tab, are apparently a few of the duties that go with the honor,” she said.

  “Running my high school reunion a few years back was similar. Except, of course, the food probably was worse.”