All Roads Lead To Murder

by Lynn Bohart

  The journalist who had written the article about Owens however, had done her homework. Owens had suffered through a nasty divorce from Trina, partly because of the affair and partly because he owned a pharmaceutical company worth almost a billion dollars. His wife not only wanted custody of their young children, she wanted half his assets. In the end, she’d gotten custody of Amy and her brother, Brad, along with the house on Queen Anne Hill and two million dollars to keep her happy. For a guy worth that much money, though, I thought she’d gotten stiffed. If you’re used to a certain lifestyle, you can blow through two million dollars pretty quickly, especially in Seattle where the cost-of-living is one of the highest in the country.

  The article went on to report that after the divorce, Owens had quickly married his campaign manager and continued his upward climb in the Republican Party. The article delved into his rise in the business world, too. Between 1999 and 2010, his company had been sued three times for gouging patients by charging exorbitant drug prices. Owens had also personally been sued twice for sexual harassment and was once accused of murder.

  What? That got my attention.

  I leaned forward, focusing on the text. A suit had been filed against Owens early in 2003 by the family of a young man who had died in a tragic accident in West Seattle when he fell from the roof of one of the office buildings. The accident had occurred in the early eighties when Owens was working for Camden Pharmaceuticals. He and three other co-workers had gotten very drunk at an office party and found their way onto the roof.

  The lawsuit had accused Owens of playing a role in the accident. Apparently, the boy who died, Steven Phipps, was gay. Owens had mercilessly bullied him prior to the incident. He had not only called Phipps ugly names, but had been seen leaving notes on the windshield of his car suggesting that gay people ought to just be done with it and commit suicide. His boss had disciplined him twice.

  God, what a monster, I thought.

  On the night in question, witnesses claimed that Owens had shamed the young man into stepping onto the ledge of the building, even though the boy was dead-drunk. The boy got dizzy and fell.

  Owens’ lawyer had questioned why the family had waited so long to accuse Owens of such a heinous crime, and eventually the suit was dropped. I smelled a payoff. Nevertheless, it painted an unflattering picture of a man who had aspirations of occupying the Oval Office.

  I sat back, thinking.

  Could one of those situations have been the motivation for someone getting revenge?

  I decided to do more research.

  Amy had a Facebook page. I scrolled through her posts and many of her pictures.

  She liked to post tutorials about how to do makeup and had posts about some of her favorite musical artists. There were also pictures of Amy with her mom, her stepdad, her brother, her boyfriend and her friends.

  Her mother was an attractive woman in her fifties, with auburn hair, high cheek bones, and a full mouth. She looked happy and contented in the photos, making me wonder how devastated she must feel right now at the prospect she might lose her daughter forever. After all, Amy could have been abducted by a deranged serial killer as easily as someone who wanted revenge because of something her birth father had done. It might even be more likely.

  Amy had tagged herself on Facebook as being in a committed relationship with Dylan Masterson. Dylan had a bit of a bad boy look–dyed black hair, pierced nose, and a chain tattoo around his neck. I had a feeling he wasn’t a favorite at family functions. In fact, he didn’t appear in any of the family photos.

  One of Amy’s recent posts implied that Dylan had recently had a run-in with the law. She lamented openly that since pot was legal in Washington State, things like cocaine should be, too. I remembered that David had mentioned something about drugs. Could Dylan have gotten into debt with drug dealers and abducted Amy as a way to pay off his debts?

  According to Facebook, Amy planned on going to Simmons College in Boston. I looked up Simmons College. It was a women’s liberal arts school. Glancing back at some of her pictures with her friends, it surprised me she would have picked a women’s college. She seemed like too much of a partier for that. Then I remembered that Dylan had planned on going to the community college there.

  Her mother’s Facebook page was pretty sparse. The now Mrs. Dunphy had grown up in Bremerton and graduated from the UW. She shared some of the same family photos on her wall as her daughter, plus a few pictures of her and her second husband, Grant Dunphy.

  I zeroed in on him momentarily, flipping through pictures in which he was featured. In most of those, he appeared distant from others in the photos, as if he was uncomfortable or just a loner. In one picture of the family at the beach, his eyes had drifted in the direction of Amy, clad in a teeny white bikini. The lasting image of him appearing to leer at his stepdaughter prompted a chill to run the length of my spine.

  There was something else though, that made my heart skip a beat.

  Grant Dunphy looked familiar. His eyes. His nose. The beefy shoulders. He looked like Monty, the man traveling in the white motorhome!

  Damn! Now, my adrenalin was flowing.

  I quickly looked Grant Dunphy up on Facebook. He didn’t have a page, but Trina’s page had mentioned the Dunphy Construction Company, so I looked that up. It was located in Kirkland, a wealthy community about fifteen minutes northeast of Seattle. Sure enough, there were a few pictures of him on the company’s website. Each time I saw him the nervous queasiness in my stomach grew.

  He looked enough like Monty to be related!

  “You okay?” Blair asked, looking up from her book again.

  “Yeah,” I replied, feeling a little breathless. “Look at this.” I got up and eased into the seat next to Blair. “Who does this guy look like?”

  I angled my tablet so she could see the picture of Dunphy. She stared at it a minute, scrunched up her pretty pink lips in thought and then said, “He looks like the guy with the white motorhome.”

  “Bingo! I think so, too.”

  “Who is he?”

  “That’s Amy Owens’ stepdad.”

  Blair’s eyebrows lifted. “Well. Well. Well. Do I smell some kind of conspiracy theory brewing in that mysterious head of yours?”

  “Don’t make fun of me.”

  “I don’t mean to,” she said, placing a hand on my arm. “You know, maybe you should tell David about all of this if you really think you saw Amy Owens in that motorhome.”

  I slumped back against the seat. “I tried to call him earlier, but it went to voice mail. What if he doesn’t believe me?”

  “He’ll believe you, Julia. His cop’s brain will look at it rationally. It might at least put you at ease.”

  I nodded. “Okay. I’ll try him again.”

  I pulled out my phone and got up and went into the bedroom. I dialed his number. He answered on the second ring.

  “Hi, Julia. Listen, I can’t really talk right now. Can I call you back?”

  “Um…sure.”

  I hung up, disappointed again and returned to the main cabin.

  “That was fast,” Blair said.

  “He couldn’t talk. Something must be going on. Maybe they’ve found Amy.”

  “That would be wonderful,” she said. “Hang in there. He’ll call back when he has time.”

  I sat across from her at the table and picked up my iPad again.

  Senator Owens had a Facebook page through his office. It had over two thousand followers and gave his bio. Owens had graduated from a small college in Florida with a degree in business. He currently sat on the Board of Regents there. I googled the school and found he was also one of the school’s largest donors. He’d donated over $3 million to have a new School of Business named after him. The picture showed the building overlooking Trinity Lake.

  I flicked through dozens of campaign and rally photos. Once again, my heart rate sped up when I saw a red-headed woman standing in the background of several pictures. I leaned in to peer more
closely. None of the photos showed her clearly, though. Her face was often turned to the side or she was partially blocked by someone else.

  “Look at this, Blair,” I said, turning the iPad to her. “What do you notice in these three photos?” I pointed to the ones in which the redhead stood in the background.

  Blair’s eyes shifted back and forth between all three images. Then her eyes lit up. She reached out with her index finger and pointed. “The redhead.”

  “Exactly!”

  “You don’t think…I mean you can’t see her too well. Does she look like the woman in the motorhome?”

  I hunched my shoulders. “I don’t know, but I don’t believe in coincidences.”

  “Well, when David calls, tell him everything, Julia. Whether he believes you or not. You need to get this off your chest. Otherwise, you’re not going to be very much fun for the rest of the trip.” She gave me a mischievous smile and went back to her book.

  ÷

  The landscape we passed over the next couple of hours went from flat to rolling hills. We stopped for gas and lunch in Mitchell, a small town about two-thirds of the way across the state. Rudy announced we also needed to dump the waste water.

  Since she had a list of public dump stations across the country, she had pulled into a gas station that offered one behind the convenience store. After we filled the big tank with gas, we pulled the Hulk around to the back of the building. This was the first time we’d dumped the waste water, so we were all a little nervous.

  We got out and walked around to the other side of the RV, where there was a compartment holding the sewer hose. Rudy put on rubber gloves and pulled out the three foot hose with its swivel adaptor and took off a 3” diameter metal cap from a pipe underneath the RV. She screwed an elbow adaptor onto a circular connector at one end of the hose and a second adaptor at the other end. Then she snapped the hose into the pipe underneath the RV.

  “Okay, Julia, can you snap that end into that hole?”

  She pointed to a metal cap in the cement.

  “Um…is there another pair of gloves?”

  She quickly stripped hers off and handed them to me. “Here, take these.”

  I put them on and did as she asked, opening the metal cap and snapping the other end of the hose into the dump hole.

  We had been instructed by Nathan Aberdeen to empty the black water tank before the gray water tank. The gray water tank, which was the dish and shower water, would wash out remnants from the black water tank.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  When I nodded, she pulled a lever under the motorhome that would release the black water. The motorhome shook a little. Then, we heard the rushing of waste as it flowed down the big tube into the dump hole. The four of us waited patiently, looking everywhere but at the hole that extended underground.

  That is, until the hose popped off!

  “Oh, God!” Doe screamed, jumping back.

  Everyone shrieked and bounced away as waste water spewed out of the RV and all over the ground, splashing everywhere. We must have looked like we were dancing a jig, since we did it in such perfect unison.

  I was far enough away, that I hadn’t gotten splashed, but I glanced over at Rudy as she wiped down her shirt.

  Uh, oh!

  There was nothing we could do to stop the flow, so we watched in dismay until it finally slowed and then ceased. When it finished, the four of us stood there staring at the biggest, brownest, smelliest mess ever.

  Our stunned silence was interrupted when Rudy pointed at something lying at the foot of the RV. It had once been white. And it had once been a tampon.

  “Whose is that?” she asked in shock, still pointing at it.

  Count to three.

  We all turned to Blair.

  Her eyes opened wide as her hands came up in defense. “Are you kidding me? Don’t the Aberdeens have a daughter?”

  “Yes,” Rudy said, turning back to the mess. “God, what do we do now?”

  I glanced around and found a water hose hanging over a hook nearby. “I guess we hose it into that grate.”

  “Wonderful,” Doe said, glancing at her feet.

  I could just picture Doe’s tennis shoes either going into the trash or the campfire that night.

  “At least for once it wasn’t my fault,” I said, walking over to get the hose.

  “What do you mean?” Rudy retorted. “You pulled the hose out and put it into the hole.”

  I turned on the water and came back over to hand her the nozzle. “Yes, but you’re the one who screwed the hose onto the motorhome, and that’s what popped off. Have fun washing it down.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I left the others with a small smile playing across my lips and walked around to the AM/PM to get a Pepsi on tap. It was hot and humid and dumping human waste all over the pavement had made me thirsty.

  Our mishap had been shielded from view by the building, so no one in the store commented on it when I went in. I got my drink and then took my time wandering the aisles, contemplating buying a Snickers bar or a small bag of cookies. The Snickers bar won.

  As I came out, ready to rip open the Snickers, the Jayco motorhome passed the gas station heading east. I sucked in a gulp of air and ran out the door and around the building back to the Hulk.

  “We have to go!” I called out, coming around the side of the RV.

  The dump hose still lay on the ground, and Rudy was just returning the water hose to the hook. Doe and Blair looked on.

  “C’mon, we gotta go!” I repeated.

  “Why?” Blair asked, turning towards me.

  “The white motorhome just passed. We have to follow it.”

  They shared an indulgent look between them.

  “Julia,” Doe began.

  I put up a hand. I’d had it. They didn’t believe me. Or worse, they didn’t care.

  “If you’re not going after them, I am.” I whirled around and hurried into the Hulk.

  “Julia! Wait a minute,” Rudy yelled after me.

  All three of them quickly followed me back into the RV. I’d already made it into the driver’s seat, slammed my Pepsi cup into the cup holder and had the keys in my hand by the time they made it inside.

  “Hang on,” I warned, starting the engine.

  Before they’d even found seats, I pulled away from the dump station with a jerk. Blair had barely gotten the door closed and had to hold on as I twirled the big steering wheel and made a hard left turn, circling the building.

  “Julia, are you nuts?” Rudy demanded. “We left the dump hose back there.”

  “I’ll buy a new one,” I said.

  “And we left the cap open,” Doe said.

  “Then I wouldn’t use the restroom if I were you. Could be messy.”

  I had to sit forward in the seat in order to plant my foot solidly on the pedal. I turned right, bumping over the curb as I left the gas station parking lot. The Jayco was six cars ahead of me. I didn’t have to weave in and out of traffic to follow it, since I could see it above the other cars.

  “What are we going to do when we catch up to them?” Rudy asked, slipping into the seat next to me.

  The anger vibrated in her voice.

  “I don’t know. I just want to know where they’re going.”

  “What if they turn off onto some side road? We have to be at the Aberdeens,” she said.

  “A girl’s life is more important,” I snapped back.

  “Shouldn’t we talk about this?” Doe said quietly from behind me. “We’re a team, Julia.”

  “None of you believe me. I’m not sure I believe me, anymore, but I need to know if what I think I saw was correct. If I was, then that girl is in danger. If I was wrong, I’ll take the heat.”

  We followed Monty and his crew out of town at a leisurely pace, continuing east on I-90 for about forty minutes. Inside the Hulk, it was quiet. I had drawn a line in the sand with the others, maybe even creating a gap I might never close. I just couldn’t se
em to stop myself—I needed to find out about that girl.

  As I followed the motorhome, Rudy went to change her blouse. By the time she came back, I had pulled off I-90 and entered the small town of Alexandria. The Jayco RV pulled into a McDonald’s and stopped. I slowed down, but kept going. As we passed the fast food restaurant, their door opened and Eva and Ponytail Guy got out and went inside.

  I turned right at the next light, thinking I’d circle around the block and come back. I entered a residential neighborhood with narrow streets and cars parked on each side, forcing me to slow down. I had to navigate the parked cars, which I’m sure put everyone on edge, remembering the orange cones at the practice track.

  When I got to the end of the street, I whirled the big steering wheel to make a sharp right turn. The motorhome swayed as I took the corner fast. I cut the corner too close and hit the stop sign. The impact ripped the side mirror off, and it flew into the street.

  “Julia!” Rudy yelled. Her head whipped around as the mirror hit the pavement.

  “I’ll pay for that, too,” I said, returning my eyes to the road.

  I hunkered down, drove to the end of the block and turned right again, this time without ripping anything off the Hulk. A few seconds later, I made it back to the main street. I could tell the others were concerned, maybe even angry, but I didn’t care.

  I was on a mission.

  We approached the McDonald’s again. The Jayco was still there, so I pulled to the curb and left the engine running.

  “Now what?” Rudy asked with barely restrained anger.

  “I don’t know. We wait.”

  I stared at the front door to the fast food restaurant, while Doe and Blair remained silent and Rudy fumed in the background.

  Alexandria was a very small town. As I glanced around, I estimated that not more than five or six hundred people lived there. By the looks of the businesses around us, we were also in the main part of town. The McDonald’s looked like the only fast food restaurant.

  “Julia,” Doe finally said behind me. “This could get dangerous.”

  I sighed. “I know, but it can’t be more dangerous than what that girl might be facing.”