Just Try to Stop Me

by Gregg Olsen

  Unravel the braid, Kendall thought.

  “I had a lot of time to think while I was locked up,” Brenda said. “I had a lot of time to remember the four little bitches in school that told me I wasn’t good enough. Not pretty enough. Tits too small. The girls on the cheer squad were pawns. Stand-ins.” She took a deep, satisfied breath. “I know that the bitches that hurt me in high school will suffer for the rest of their lives, knowing that blood is on their hands.”

  “They were innocent,” Kendall said.

  “Not all of them,” Brenda said, just as she became a blur. A lime green blur. Brenda lunged for the knife with such ferocity that it startled Kendall. It was as though there was some kind of bizarre hangover of their conversation, slowing her movements. Before she could point her gun to stop her, Brenda was on top of her and the gun skittered across the floor.

  And a knife was at Kendall’s throat.

  “You called me a narcissist,” Brenda said, spitting out her words. “Not nice. Not true. There is no label for someone like me.”

  Kendall was pinned to the floor. She could feel the tip of the knife go into her throat—not enough to bleed her out, but enough to let her know that she was about to die. She was one of those animals caught in a snare. If she moved, the knife would go deeper.

  “Don’t do this,” she said, thinking how lame the words were, but not knowing what else to say. She thought of her husband, her son. She knew she’d made a rookie mistake by not firing at Brenda, but she just couldn’t. There was something horrific and magnificent about Brenda Nevins that made it seem as though killing her would be the end of a species.

  Something so evil. Yet so pretty. So captivating. Stomach turning and awe-inspiring at the same time.

  “The last thing you’ll see are my eyes, drinking you in like a tall ice tea. I’ll cut your head off and boil it in a pot and serve it to some unsuspecting fool somewhere far, far from here.”

  “What the hell happened to you, Brenda?” Kendall asked, her voice choked by blood. She scanned the room from the floor where Brenda held her.

  There was no way out of there.

  “After I carve you, I’ll take care of your stupid little friend, Birdy. Both of you are the kind of girls that never gave me a chance. Like the girls in the barn. All of you selfish bitches.”

  “You want to see selfish?”

  It was Birdy’s voice.

  Brenda looked over, perched on Kendall like a wolf on a sheep’s carcass.

  “Just in time,” she said.

  Without another remark, Birdy Waterman did something she’d never done in her life. She fired her gun at a human being. She knew just where to fire to inflict the most damage—but not kill her. The sound of gunfire echoed through the kitchen.

  “I thought she was going to kill you, Kendall,” she said.

  “She was,” Kendall said holding her hand to her neck.

  Birdy lowered the barrel. Her fingers felt numb. The scent of gunfire filled her lungs. “I wasn’t sure, Kendall,” she said. “I thought that she’d kill you. I couldn’t have that. I had to fire at her.”

  Birdy had never shot another human being. Indeed, she’d never killed anything that she hadn’t planned on using to feed her family. Birds. Rabbits. Squirrels. A deer, but that had only been one time. She stood there, looking at the blood and the mess she’d caused. She went to Brenda and felt for a pulse. Her brown eyes looked up.

  “She’s alive, Kendall.”

  “More than she deserves,” Kendall said, holding her hand to her neck. “It looks worse than it is,” she said indicating her own injury.

  Birdy pulled a kitchen towel from a knob by the sink.

  “I won’t try that hard to save her,” Birdy said, though she didn’t really mean it.

  Kendall looked out on to the yard as a wave of police cruisers rolled in.

  Among the new arrivals was Jonas Casey.

  “Holy hell,” he said. “Both of you look like crap.”

  “Thanks,” Kendall said.

  “Good job,” he said, looking over at Birdy as she applied pressure to Brenda’s head wound.

  “I think she’ll survive,” Birdy said.

  Jonas turned his attention to Kendall. “She said, ‘Not all of them.’ What did she mean by that?”

  Kendall blinked. “How do you know that?”

  The FBI special agent turned away and scanned the ceiling. It only took a second. “Right there,” he said, his finger pointing at a tiny camera embedded in the overhead light fixture. It was black, shiny, like the eye of a shark.

  He grabbed the device and gave it a tug. It snapped from its mounting and dropped to the floor.

  “Show’s over,” he said. “Brenda’s been broadcasting live. The world’s been watching.”

  A slight smile came to Brenda’s lips.

  EPILOGUE

  Birdy Waterman took an indefinite leave of absence from the Kitsap County Coroner’s Office, citing personal reasons. The county and federal officers investigated the events at the Wilder Farm. Despite Birdy’s comment that she wasn’t going to try “very hard” to save Brenda Nevins, it was determined she had, in fact, acted within the guidelines of her job. Birdy rented out her house on Beach Drive in Port Orchard and returned to the reservation. She moved into her mother’s old mobile home.

  * * *

  Kendall Stark returned to her job as an investigator for the homicide unit of the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office. She visited Birdy a couple of times at the reservation, and the two remained close—talking several times a week by phone. Cody continues to do well at his school in Bremerton. Kendall and Steven are expecting a second baby, a daughter, in the new year.

  * * *

  SA Casey returned to the Seattle field office. He called Kendall a few times after the shooting. They became friends.

  * * *

  Brad Nevins no longer did interviews with the police or media. His parting shot, “That bitch is a liar and there’s no way my son would have killed his baby,” was made to a local TV station when a wrecking crew demolished the remains of the burned-out house on Stoneway Drive.

  * * *

  Chelsea Hyatt pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the death of Charlotte Barrow. She was sentenced to seven years and is serving her time at the Washington Corrections Center for Women. Her roommate is Coral Douglas.

  * * *

  Erwin Thomas and Sandra Sullivan married four months after Janie’s death. They welcomed their son, Trey, six weeks after they returned from a ten-day honeymoon in Fiji. Joe Thomas, who dropped out of Boise State, no longer speaks to his father and has moved to an undisclosed location in northern Idaho. He told Kendall by phone that he would never forgive his father. “If he hadn’t hurt my mom by playing around with Sandy, none of this crap would have happened. If you want someone to blame, blame him.”

  * * *

  Violet Wilder, who’d been found unconscious in the van, moved to an assisted-living center in Sequim, Washington, not far from Port Angeles. Tansy Mulligan’s daughter Shelly, who’d returned to live in the family home in Port Angeles after her mother’s murder, visits every other week. Violet’s daughter Denise and her son Timothy rarely come to see her. Violet adopted a cat she named Kelly.

  * * *

  Brenda Nevins recovered and was charged with multiple counts of murder. She was sent to a maximum-security prison in Oregon to await trial in Washington State. Against her attorney’s advice, Brenda appeared on two television programs and on four magazine covers. It was reported that a film and Broadway musical about her were in development.

  * * *

  Amber and Elan never made it to the hospital in Port Angeles. Neither has been seen since they left the farm. The library van was found on the dock that launches tourists’ boats to Victoria, Canada.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many thanks to the usual suspects—my amazing editor, Michaela Hamilton, always and forever agent Susan Raihofer of Black Inc, Tish Holmes, Arthur Maisel,
Lou Malcangi, Jean Olson, Linda Montgomery, and, of course, my wife, Claudia.

  Especially Claudia.

  All of you do your part to get me to the finish line. Your support and encouragement means the world to me. Thank you so much.

  Special bonus for fans of Gregg Olsen’s

  exciting Waterman and Stark thrillers!

  Keep reading to enjoy a sample excerpt from

  THE GIRL IN THE WOODS

  Available from Kensington Publishing Corp.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Birdy Waterman went toward the ringing bell and an annoyingly insistent rat-tat-tat knock on the glass storm door of her home in Port Orchard, Washington. Her cell phone was pressed to her ear and her fingertips fumbled in her pocket for her car keys. She retrieved a tube of lip balm—with the lid off and the product making a mess of her pocket.

  Great! Where are those keys?

  “Hang on,” she said into the phone, grabbing a tissue and wiping off her hand. “Everything happens at once. Someone’s here. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  She swung the door open. On her doorstep was a soaking wet teenaged boy.

  “Make that twenty,” she said, pulling the phone away from her ear.

  It was her sister’s son, Elan.

  “Elan, what are you doing here?”

  “Can I come in?” he asked.

  “Hang on,” she said back into the phone.

  “Wait, did I get the date wrong?” she asked him.

  The kid shook his head.

  Birdy looked past Elan to see if he was alone. He was only sixteen. They had made plans for him to come over during spring break. He hadn’t been getting along with his parents and Birdy offered to have him stay with her. She’d circled the date on the calendar on her desk at the Kitsap County coroner’s office and on the one that hung in the kitchen next to the refrigerator. It couldn’t have slipped her mind. She even made plans for activities that the two of them could do—most of which were in Seattle, a place the boy revered because it was the Northwest’s largest city. To a teenager from the Makah Reservation, it held a lot of cachet.

  “Where’s your mom?” Birdy asked, looking past him, still clinging to her cell phone.

  The boy, who looked so much like his mother—Birdy’s sister, Summer—shook his head. “She’s not here. And I don’t care where she is.”

  “How’d you get here?”

  “I caught a ride and I walked from the foot ferry. I hitched, but no one would pick me up.”

  “You shouldn’t do that,” Birdy said. “Not safe.” She motioned him inside. She didn’t tell him to take off his shoes, wet and muddy as they were. He was such a sight she nearly forgot that she had the phone in her hand. Elan, gangly, but now not so much, was almost a man. He had medium length dark hair, straight and coarse enough to mimic the tail of a mare. On his chin were the faintest of whiskers. He was trying to grow up.

  She turned away from the teen and spoke back into her phone.

  “I have an unexpected visitor,” Birdy said. She paused and listened. “Everything is fine. I’ll see you at the scene as soon as I can get there.”

  Elan removed his damp dark gray hoodie and stood frozen in the small foyer. They looked at each other the way strangers sometimes do. Indeed they nearly were. Elan’s mother had all but cut Birdy out of her life over the past few years. There were old reasons for it, and there seemed to be very little to be done about it. The sisters had been close and they’d grown apart. Birdy figured there would be a reconciliation someday. Indeed, she hoped that her entertaining Elan for spring break would be the start of something good between her and Summer. Her heart was always heavy when she and her sister stopped speaking.

  As the Kitsap County forensic pathologist, Dr. Birdy Waterman had seen what real family discord could do. She was grateful that hers was more of a war of words than weapons.

  “You are going to catch a cold,” she said. “And I have to leave right this minute.”

  Elan’s hooded eyes sparkled. “If I caught a cold would you split me open and look at my guts?” he asked.

  She half smiled at him and feigned exasperation. “If I had to, yes.” She’d only seen him a half dozen times in the past three years at her sister’s place on the reservation. He was a smart aleck then. And he still was. She liked him.

  “I’ll be gone awhile. You are going to get out of all of your wet clothes and put them in the dryer.”

  He looked at her with a blank stare. “What am I supposed to wear?” he asked. “You don’t want a naked man running around, do you?”

  She ignored his somewhat petulant sarcasm.

  Man? That was a stretch.

  She noticed Elan’s muddy shoes, and the mess they were making of her buffed hardwood floors, but said nothing about that. Instead, she led him to her bedroom.

  “Uninvited guests,” she said, then pretended to edit herself. “Surprise guests get a surprise.” She pulled a lilac terry robe from a wooden peg behind her bedroom door.

  “This will have to do,” she said, offering the garment.

  Elan made an irritated face but accepted the robe. He obviously hated the idea of wearing his aunt’s bathrobe—probably any woman’s bathrobe. At least it didn’t have a row of pink roses around the neckline like his mother’s. Besides, no one, he was pretty sure, would see him holed up in his aunt’s place.

  “Aunt Birdy, are you going to a crime scene?” he asked. “I want to go.”

  “I am,” she said, continuing to push the robe at him until he had no choice but to accept it. “But you’re not coming. Stay here and chill. I’ll be back soon enough. And when I get back you’ll tell me why you’re here so early. By the way, does your mom know you’re here?”

  He kept his eyes on the robe. “No. She doesn’t. And I don’t want her to.”

  That wasn’t going to happen. The last thing she needed was another reason for her sister to be miffed at her.

  “Your dad?” she asked.

  Elan looked up and caught his aunt’s direct gaze. His dark brown eyes flashed. “I hate him even more.”

  Birdy rolled her eyes upward. “That’s perfect,” she said. “We can sort out your drama when I get back.”

  “I’m—”

  She put her hand up and cut him off. “Hungry? Frozen pizza is the best I’ve got. Didn’t have time to bake you a cake.”

  She found her keys from the dish set atop a birds-eye maple console by the door and went outside. It had just stopped raining. But in late March in the Pacific Northwest, a cease-fire on precipitation only meant the clouds were taking a coffee break. Jinx, the neighbor’s cat, ran over the wet pavement for a scratch under her chin, but Birdy wasn’t offering one right then. The cat, a tabby with a stomach that dragged on the lawn, skulked away. Birdy was in a hurry.

  She dressed for the weather, which meant layers—dark dyed blue jeans, a sunflower yellow cotton sweater, a North Face black jacket. If it got halfway warm, she’d discard the North Face. That almost always made her too hot. She carried her purse, a raincoat, and a small black bag. Not a doctor’s bag, really. But a bag that held a few of the tools of her trade—latex gloves, a flashlight, a voice recorder, evidence tags, a rule, and a camera. She wouldn’t necessarily need any of that where she was going, but Dr. Waterman lived by the tried and oh-so-true adage:

  Better safe than sorry.

  As she unlocked her car, a Seattle-bound ferry plowed the slate waters of Rich Passage on the other side of Beach Drive. A small assemblage of seagulls wrestled over a soggy, and very dead, opossum on the roadside.

  Elan had arrived early. Not good.

  Birdy pulled out of the driveway and turned on the jazz CD that had been on continuous rotation. The music always calmed her. She was sure that Elan would consider it completely boring and hopelessly uncool, but she probably wouldn’t like his music either. She needed a little calming influence just then. Nothing was ever easy in her family. Her nephew had basically run away—at leas
t as far as she could tell. Summer was going to blame her for this, somehow. She always did. As Birdy drove up Mile Hill Road and then the long stretch of Banner Road, she wondered why the best intentions of the past were always a source of hurt in the present.

  And yet the worst of it all was not her family, her nephew, or her sister. The worst of it was what the dispatcher from the coroner’s office had told her moments just before Elan arrived.

  A dismembered human foot had been found in Banner Forest.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Tracy Montgomery had smelled the odor first. The twelve-year-old and the other members of Suzanne Hatfield’s sixth grade Olalla Elementary School class had made their way through the twists and turns of a trail understandably called Tunnel Vision toward the sodden intersection of Croaking Frog, when she first got a whiff. It was so rank it made her pinch her nose like she did when jumping in the pool at the Y in nearby Gig Harbor.

  “Ewww, stinks here,” the girl said in a manner that indicated more of an announcement than a mere observation.

  Tracy was a know-it-all who wore purple Ugg boots that were destined to be ruined by the muddy late March nature walk in Banner Forest, a Kitsap County park of 630-plus acres. She’d been warned that the boots were not appropriate for the sure-to-be-soggy trek inside the one-square-mile woods that were dank and drippy even on a sunny spring day. There was no doubt that Tracy’s mother was going to survey the damage to those annoyingly bright boots and phone a complaint into the principal’s office.

  “That’s why they call it skunk cabbage,” said Ms. Hatfield, a veteran teacher who had seen the interest in anything that had to do with nature decline with increasing velocity in the last decade of her thirty-year teaching career. She could hardly wait until retirement, a mere forty-four school days away. Kids today were all but certain that lettuce grew in a cellophane bag and chickens were hatched shaped like nuggets.

  Ms. Hatfield brightened a little as a thought came to mind. Her mental calculations hadn’t been updated to take into account this day.