“Two words: Graham Bauer.”
Olivia groaned. But she suddenly realized she felt better. Human again.
With his hand on the door, Deck paused. “Seriously, though. Are you sure you’re okay? I know it’s been a rough couple of days.”
“This helps.”
“Distracting yourself with a case, huh? Maybe you are a cop, after all.”
She didn’t correct him. Didn’t tell him this meant him.
Olivia took a seat in the empty lobby, which looked more like a run-down living room, watching as Deck disappeared inside the program office. She surveyed the selection of reading material on the water-stained coffee table and picked up a Narcotics Anonymous Booklet, just like the one her dad had kept in his cell. Flipping through the pages, she still felt shaken by the thought he’d been working for the cops.
A voice broke through her unease. “What is this about, anyway? I just saw my PO yesterday.”
Chuck Winters looked like a shell of the man in his mug shot. His shoulders slumped, his head hung low and the prison tattoos that decorated most of his body were covered with long sleeves. But mostly, it was the way his eyes shifted warily, like he expected to be strip-searched, shoved against the wall and cuffed and carted back to the big house at any moment.
Mr. Guthrie, the house manager who’d greeted them at the door, offered him no comfort. “A detective wants to talk to you.”
Chuck grimaced but went along anyway, trudging through the door and into the lion’s den.
Olivia allowed thirty seconds to tick off her watch, just in case Chuck grew a backbone. Decided to flip a table and storm out, demanding to speak with an attorney. But she knew better. She’d counseled enough lifers to suspect Chuck would sit there and take whatever punishment Deck dished out. Just like her father had in front of the parole board. Twenty-seven years with a boot on his neck, and he’d finally fallen in line. Look where it got him.
Heavy-hearted, she got up and slipped down the hallway, leaving Chuck at Deck’s mercy.
Seventeen
“So, how long have you been out on parole?” Will lobbed an easy one over the plate, taking the time to study the man seated in front of him.
Chuck Winters couldn’t fool him. He still had the worn look of a career criminal. With the warpaint he couldn’t quite hide beneath his shirt. The chiseled frame he’d earned behind bars doing burpees and push-ups in his cell. Mostly, the way his eyes darted, guiltily, looking everywhere and nowhere, and certainly not at Will.
“Two months. But I still feel like the odd man out.”
“You working?”
“Trying to. It’s hard to find a job with a record like mine. When the boss finds out you’re a convicted sex offender, your skills don’t matter. You might as well call it a day. I swear, I’d have more luck if I was a straight-up serial killer.”
Will didn’t blink.
“It’s no different out here than in prison, Detective. I’m the lowest man on the totem pole. The one nobody wants. I practically begged my way into Second Chance. And still, you saw how Mr. Guthrie looks at me. Like I’m a piece of dirt on his shoe.”
Will had read Winters’ file, and he couldn’t say he disagreed. But that would get him absolutely nowhere. “Mr. Winters, I need your help on a case I’m working. I’d like to show you some photographs.”
He laid out five of the six photos taken by the girl in the barrel, holding one back in the folder as his ace in the hole.
“Anything look familiar here?”
Winters briefly glanced at the photographs, but he didn’t touch them. His hands stayed hidden beneath the table. “Should it?”
“You tell me. Look closer.”
He took the pictures one by one into his meaty paws, holding them gingerly. As if Will had dipped them in cyanide.
“It’s a house. Can’t say I’ve ever seen it before.”
Will nodded. Like he believed the guy. “You got arrested in 1986 for burglary, right? Your third felony strike.”
“That’s right. Three strikes and you’re out. It’s a helluva way to end up doing life in prison.”
“Can you tell me about the burglary?”
“Not much to tell, really. I got released from Valley View on that rape charge a month prior. Went right back to my old ways, using coke and doing crime to support myself. After one dirty drug test, I got the hell out of San Francisco. Hitchhiked to Fog Harbor and scoped out this little cabin in the redwoods. A real peaceful spot. I figured nobody lived there. I watched the place for a few days and moved in. But then, I got cocky. I started using the electricity. Before you know it, I woke up staring down the barrel of a Glock, surrounded by the entire Fog Harbor police force.”
“That must’ve been a shock. Did you associate with anyone in Fog Harbor? Any friends? Relatives?”
Winters scoffed. “Nah. I’m a lone wolf. Always have been.”
“What about women?”
“Are you askin’ if I reoffended? Because the answer is no. That case was a one-off. Like a crime of opportunity, you know? I broke into a house, high as a kite. I didn’t know there was a woman at home. I don’t even remember what happened, to tell you the truth.”
“So, you didn’t go to any bars in Fog Harbor? Pick up any women? A good-looking guy like you, I’m sure you had some offers.”
“No. I already told you.” Winters eyed the door, shifting restlessly in his seat.
“What if I said I think you’re hiding something?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time a cop didn’t believe me. This is starting to feel a lot like an interrogation. Am I a suspect in some kind of crime?”
“Sounds to me like you’ve got a guilty conscience.” Will reached inside his folder and played his ace. He set the last photo on the table and pushed it toward Winters. “Recognize this guy?”
Will had to give Winters some credit. The guy could keep a straight face. Emotionless, he stared at the picture of his younger self for so long Will wondered if he’d claim him. But finally, he spoke. “That’s me. A lifetime ago. Where did you get that?”
“I’ll ask the questions, alright? Who took the photo?”
Winters picked it up, a slight tremor in his hands. “Do I need a lawyer?”
“Why would you?”
“Because you’re a homicide detective.”
“How do you know that?”
Winters sighed, laying the photo on the table face down like he couldn’t bear to look himself in the eyes either. “Ain’t no other kind of detective who’d make the trek from Fog Harbor. Plus, I saw the story about the barrel on Good Morning, San Francisco. I figured it might be her.”
Will waited, but Winters said no more, retreating inside himself. That was alright. Will would peel back the truth layer by layer. Right down to the rotten core. He’d stay here all day if he had to. “‘Her’? So there was someone?”
“A girl staying at the cabin next door. A pregnant girl. She took that photo of me. But I didn’t hurt her. I know how it looks, but I swear it. I barely knew her. Then, she up and disappeared a week or so before I got arrested. I just figured she went back home where she belonged. Maybe changed her mind about giving up the baby.”
“This girl, do you remember her name?”
“She never would tell me. I thought she might be hiding out from someone. Her family or her good-for-nothing boyfriend. I got the impression she didn’t want to be found.”
“What can you tell me about her?”
“Like I said, I didn’t know her that well. I was only there for two months or so. Blonde hair, average height. Probably seventeen or eighteen.”
“Pretty?”
Winters groaned. “I know what you’re gettin’ at.”
“Well?”
“Yeah. She was pretty. Pretty knocked up.”
“You weren’t attracted to her, then?”
The sweat beading on Winters’ forehead, the flush creeping on his neck, spoke for him.
“Lo
ok, I was a twenty-three-year-old horndog, so yeah, I thought she was cute. But she had a boyfriend. She told me he didn’t want the kid, but she wasn’t sure what to do. She’d come up to Fog Harbor to figure it out.”
“You sure do remember a lot about someone you didn’t know that well.” Will revealed another photograph. The faux ruby ring Chet had removed from the victim’s finger.
“Recognize this?”
Winters shrugged.
“It belonged to Margaret Rollins. She reported it missing from the cabin where you were squatting. Guess where we found it?”
A hard swallow told Will that Winters understood he meant business. That this was his show. That he had the winning hand.
“On the ring finger of a dead girl,” Will said.
Eighteen
Chuck Winters’ room resembled a prison cell. Small and sparse. Olivia had found it easily enough. A board hung on the wall in the hallway with the residents’ last names and room numbers. Little magnetic circles to mark themselves in or out. Room 5 belonged to Chuck. He’d tried to make it his own with a stack of Jack Reacher crime thrillers and a gray bedspread. Who’s the detective now, Deck?
Feeling smug, she rifled through the nightstand drawer, flipping through a bundle of pens and a stack of handwritten job applications. A dead giveaway for a man who’d been locked in a box for the better part of the twenty-first century, he’d left the same question blank on each one: Have you ever been convicted of a felony?
Closing the drawer, she turned her attention to a bag of toiletries at the foot of the bed but it revealed nothing out of the ordinary. The closet, too, gave no clues. The lone dress shirt with a missing button only made her sad. Somehow, it reminded her of her father. How she’d never given him credit for starting over. How hard it must’ve been. How lonely.
Those thoughts slowed her down, so she pushed them from her mind and pondered what she knew of Chuck. The profile she’d gleaned from his file. With the exception of the rape conviction in 1980, most of his arrests were property crimes—burglary, theft, shoplifting—and it seemed unlikely he would’ve stuck around if he’d killed someone in the cabin next door. Still, there was no denying he’d been on the victim’s film roll. Even if thirty-five years had passed, the vestiges of twenty-three-year-old Chuck still lived in the sixty-year-old man who’d dragged his feet into the program office to meet Deck like he’d been anticipating the guillotine.
Olivia tried to imagine where Chuck might hide the traces of his real self. The self he’d learned to keep well-hidden. The definitive evidence of the kind of evil that would lead a man to stuff a girl in a barrel. A pregnant girl, at that.
She slipped her hand beneath the mattress, searched the light fixtures and the trash can. Even tugged on the threadbare carpet that didn’t budge. All she had to show for it was a tattered Hustler magazine that had been folded and tucked along the bed frame.
Olivia sat on the bed, defeat weighing on her chest. She didn’t want to give up, didn’t want to leave empty-handed. It felt critical to get this one thing right. But she’d already been here too long.
Last resort, she opened the drawer again and plucked out the applications. She read through them again one by one—fast food, construction, janitorial—thinking again of her father. She’d never have the opportunity to see for herself if he’d really changed. To watch him have his own second chance outside of the prison gates. The unfairness of it cut deep.
Setting the papers aside, she searched the drawer for a false bottom. Instead, a purple marker shoved in the back caught her eye. Its vibrant, happy color seemed out of place among the cheap ballpoint pens. She plucked off the cap. Shocked, she pulled the contents from the otherwise empty tube. Unrolled it and gasped.
She’d found their Jane Doe.
Olivia ran down the hallway like a woman possessed, knocked once but didn’t wait for an answer. Just burst into the program office, breathless.
Both men gawked at her, Deck’s surprise quickly turning to exasperation. “What’re you doing?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“Right now?” he asked, through gritted teeth. “I’m in the middle of something.”
“It’s important.”
Chuck’s eyes volleyed between them and settled on Olivia’s hands, widening at what she held there. What she’d found.
“Just let me finish up here. I need five minutes.” When she didn’t move, he raised his eyebrows, jerked his head toward the door. “Five. Minutes.”
Olivia felt an inexplicable panic rise up in her throat. She smacked the table with the photograph she’d found, leaving it there, its edges curling in.
“You may want to ask him about this.”
Pulling the door shut behind her, she collapsed against it. All she’d been through in the last two days swelling like the waves at Little Gull lighthouse, taking her feet from under her. When she reached the safety of the hallway bathroom and locked the door behind her, she finally, finally let herself cry.
Nineteen
Will sat there for a moment, reeling. Olivia had really outdone herself this time. Barged right into the middle of his interrogation—when he’d explicitly asked her not to—and detonated a bomb. He didn’t even want to imagine how she’d gotten the photograph. What laws she’d broken. What lines she’d crossed. The worst part, she’d seemed a little unhinged. Like grief had finally caught up with her, sunk its claws in, and shredded all her common sense.
“Care to explain this?” Will unrolled the bent photo paper. No matter how reckless she’d been, he looked at it with awe.
“Did that woman search my room? Is she even a cop?”
“That’s the least of your worries.” He pointed to the young girl, posing on the front steps of the same cabin where she’d been found dead. Her shy eyes avoided the camera, her hands resting on her very pregnant belly. “Right now, from where I’m sitting, you’re looking like the prime suspect in my case. If I were you, I’d start talking. The truth this time.”
“I told you the truth. I didn’t know her that well.”
“But you held onto her photograph for how long? Thirty-something years? I don’t buy it. And neither will your PO.” No quicker way to get to the real story than to remind a man on parole how easy it would be to send him back to the joint. Will might as well have pressed a knife to his jugular.
“Okay, okay. When I transferred to state prison, they shipped what little stuff I had on me to my cousin. I didn’t even remember I’d kept the photo until I got out. The truth is, she’s the only gal who ever treated me like a person. I wanted to find her to say thanks. To see how she turned out. If she had the kid. And yeah, maybe ask her out, if she was single and the timing felt right. She told me she was from San Francisco, so I was gonna show her picture around. See if anybody recognized her.”
“Do you have any other pictures of her?”
“I wish. She gave me that film roll the last time I saw her. I had it developed at the drug store after she went missing. It was mostly pictures of me and the house. She liked taking pictures of random shit. Typical girl, you know. That’s the only one I saved.”
“And this photo?” Will pulled out the last shot from the film they’d found in the Nikon, the blurred hand reaching to block the camera. “What do you make of it?”
Winters studied the image, inspecting it from all angles. “It ain’t me. Looks like somebody who didn’t want to be photographed. And…” He squinted, held the picture up in the light.
“And what?”
“Well, she never invited me inside the house. She said it didn’t belong to her. That we could get in trouble. But, one time, I peeked through the front window and saw this painting above the fireplace. A bunch of nothin’ willy-nilly on a canvas. I think they call it abstract art. These bright colors here, in the photo, remind me of that. ’Course, you can’t really make anything out. It’s all fuzzy.”
Will made a mental note to have JB ask Grimaldi if he’d hung any artwo
rk in the cabin.
“What about the camera? You stole that too, huh?”
Winters hung his head. But Will couldn’t let himself feel sorry. Not now. Not when he had him on the ropes.
“So, you stole the ring and the camera. Both of which we exhumed from the barrel. Your photo is one of the last ones she took. And you admit you had a thing for her. That you looked in through the window. Maybe she caught you. Maybe you came on a little too strong. She told you to back off. You got angry, and you lost control. You didn’t mean to do it. But you couldn’t very well call the police. Not when you’d absconded from parole. Is that pretty much the way it happened?”
Will only half believed the story he’d just spouted. A guy on the run like Chuck Winters probably wouldn’t have stuck around the neighborhood if he’d offed a pregnant girl. Will only had to convince the man of one thing: that he had the power to cuff him up right now and take away his hard-earned freedom.
“You can answer me here or back at the station.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Let’s go then. Get up.”
Winters anchored himself to the chair, even as Will stood and lorded over him.
“I was a bonehead back then. A total idiot. The old me made a lot of stupid mistakes. Like taking the stuff from the cabin to impress her.”
Will grabbed Winters by the arm, forced him to his feet. Reminded him what it felt like to be this close to a badge. “Give me one reason I shouldn’t arrest you for her murder.”
“I would never hurt Shelby!”
They regarded each other, as the name—now spoken aloud—drifted between them like a ghost.
Her Perfect Bones Page 8
