Betrayal (26 page)

“Girls, where is this all coming from? Does it have to do with the man in the woods?” Valerie hoped against hope for an answer she knew wasn't coming.

Taylor put her elbows on the table and searched for the words.
How do we say it? How do we not sound like morons?

“Sometimes we get messages, and we don't know where they come from. It's more like a feeling than anything else,” Hayley chimed in.

Valerie studied her daughters. “What do you mean, a ‘feeling'? You're scaring me. That's what I get at work from my patients all the time.”

“She means that sometimes we can catch a glimpse of the past, present, or future when we're not even there. You know we can do it. We saw the video,” Taylor explained.

“What video?”

“The one of us as babies. The one that Savannah Osteen took of us. We warned her about her sister Serena . . . before she died. You were in the video, too,” Hayley said. “You know.”

Valerie's eyes started to water. She looked out the window, toward the alley. Tiny tributaries of tears started down her high cheekbones. “I don't want to talk about this, girls. I know you want to. You might even need to. But not now.”

Valerie grabbed her coat and keys from the little hooks by the kitchen door.

“Mom!” Hayley said.

“Please,” Valerie said. “Don't. Don't dig into the past.”

“Talk to us,” Taylor said, though Valerie Ryan couldn't hear her.

The kitchen door shut and she was gone.

WHILE THEY WERE MAD AT THEIR MOM, Hayley and Taylor couldn't shake off the anxiety and fear that came from the discovery of Brianna's body. At their mother's and father's insistence, the girls skipped school that day, leaving Taylor to wonder if their excuse would be the best one the attendance office would get all year—better than “Garage-door opener didn't work so couldn't leave the house” or “Mom might be pregnant and I am too upset that I might have to share my room,” the top reigning contenders for the title.

The Ryan twins called this one in:

Found the remains of a missing student.

“I really can't think of anything except Brianna,” Taylor said as they put on their coats and went outside in the cold. Sitting around the house was bad enough when you're sick, but ten times more boring than when you're completely well. Frazzled, yeah. Scared, sure. But all in all, feeling fine.

“And Olivia,” Hayley said as she shut the door.

Taylor nodded. “And their killer.”

Port Gamble was always a quiet place. Until lately. The girls took a walk and talked about what had happened in the woods with Text Creeper and Brianna. They also had another piece of business to attend to. Timothy Robbinette might be dead, but they could still track down Tony Ortega. If their mom wasn't going to tell them the whole story, they'd have to find out on their own.

As they turned the corner by the water tower, they watched a white Mercedes coupe turn toward the police station.

For the first time in a long time, the driver was back in town.

Chapter 27

BRIANNA CONNORS'S MOTHER entered Annie Garnett's office like a pink-and-purple cyclone—her Look-at-Me signature colors fighting for supremacy in a wardrobe that knew no limits, only extravagance.

“I want to see my daughter,” Brandy said, forcing herself in through the doorway. Annie had just picked up the phone to call the Kitsap County Coroner's office and was in mid-dial when Brandy burst in. She gently set down the receiver.

The police chief hadn't seen Brandy in a couple of years, with the exception of the video clip in which she stood in front of the library in Seattle and told a TV reporter that she was devastated by the disappearance of her daughter. When the focus of the investigation had swung toward Brianna and Drew, Brandy had lawyered up and refused to advance the investigation by talking to the police—a stall tactic that could work for only so long. Annie figured that Brandy, like most parents, wanted to protect her child—right or wrong.

“You shouldn't see her,” Annie said. “Believe me, Brandy, you don't want to see her.”

“I've seen a dead body before. My mother. My father. I want to see my little girl.”

Annie searched Brandy's eyes, trying to pinpoint just how much she could tell her. There were reasons why a mother shouldn't see her child's corpse. Nothing could be more devastating than having the last glimpse of your baby looking like
that.

The final imprint of that image could never be erased.

“Please,” Annie said, indicating one of two visitors' chairs. “Sit down.”

Brandy shook her head. “I don't want to sit. I drove all the way from Seattle once I heard on the news that you found her. All the way. Three long hours to get here. Traffic was a nightmare.”

“Sit,” Annie said, this time less gently.

Brandy undid the buttons of her long pink coat and sat.

“I'm so, so sorry,” Annie said, “but your daughter's body was . . .” She stopped, thought carefully, as she tried to summon all of her deep reserves of compassion to come up with the right words to tell a mother the worst possible thing.

Even if it was the worst possible mother.

“Was what?” Brandy asked, tapping her nails on the top of Annie's impeccably tidy desktop.

There was no way of sugarcoating it. “Battered,” Annie finally said.

Brandy tried to furrow her Botoxed brow. “What do you mean?”

Annie kept her eyes on the mother across from her. “I'm telling you that she doesn't look like your little girl anymore. She was strangled and beaten.”

Brandy didn't flinch, and yet she felt the need for a tissue. “She was buried, correct? I already know that from the news. At least they get to the point.”

Annie could be direct too. She knew that being specific could sometimes seem harsh and clinical. That wasn't the kind of woman she was, nor the kind of cop she'd wanted to be.

“Yes,” she said stiffly, lowering her eyes, “the news media does a good job of getting the word out, although what they say isn't always accurate. The killer tried to hide Brianna in a shallow grave,” Annie said. “She's at the morgue in Port Orchard. They need to determine how she died.”

The statement quieted Brandy for a second.
Finally
. Her relentless push to see the body had finally abated.

“We have to be sure it's
her
,” Brandy said.

“We're sure. Your former husband identified her.”

Brandy made a face—or tried to. She'd been so worked over by a plastic surgeon that it was hard for Annie to determine exactly what her reaction was.

“Oh, he did, did he?” she said, shaking her head. “Nice. Great to see that prick involved in his daughter's life.”

Annie's reservoir of goodwill and compassion had been tapped. She wanted to say that she understood it was Brandy who'd been the less admirable of the two parents. She recalled how, on the night of Olivia's murder, Brianna had texted Brandy repeatedly to get her to come to Port Gamble.

But Brandy had missed the ferry.

Worst mom ever.

“Who issues the death certificate? Your office or Kitsap County? I'm a little confused here, Chief Garnett. I don't know who is in charge here.”

“I'm in charge of the investigation,” Annie said.

“Then I want you to know that I blame you for my daughter's death.”

“Me?” Annie asked, her tone more incredulous than she liked.

“You should have caught Olivia's killer before he had a chance to kill again. If Drew is dead too, his father, Chase, will sue you and your soggy little town for letting this happen. I'll bet he'll want answers—and damages too.”

Annie let the threat dangle in the air and thought back on the evidence she had pieced together. She didn't want to argue with Brianna's mom. She felt sick to her stomach that the girl was dead.

“There was no evidence to support that theory,” she said emphatically. “In fact, we have a pretty good idea that the suspect was not a serial killer.”

OVER IN ENGLAND, Edward Grant faced the cameras with wife Winnie standing like a statue by his side outside their home in London. It had rained hard, and the pavement was slick and shiny, adding to the somber mood that came with seeing Olivia's parents on the TV screen. Neither looked well. Grief had grabbed them by the throats and hung on tightly. Olivia's father told the
Sky News
reporter that he wasn't surprised at all by the details that had come out overnight from America.

“I want to be respectful of the American system of justice,” he said in his perfectly clipped accent. “But I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that this latest development has made things crystal clear. The system failed our Olivia. That girl, that horrible Brianna, and her boyfriend should never have been released from police custody. They should have locked them up and thrown away the key. All the evidence needed to do so was there. That girl got what she deserved, but her boyfriend gets off scot-free.”

For a second, it appeared that his resolve not to show any emotion was beginning to crack. His eyes watered. “I wonder if the American investigators would have been less accommodating to her and more considerate of justice if the murder victim had been one of their own.”

“I want to say something,” Winnie said, putting her hand on her husband's shoulder.

The reporter nodded. “Yes, go ahead.”

“My daughter and I were very, very close. I don't think I will be able to go on as long as I know that her murderer is out there free in a society that seems to cater to the perpetrator while ignoring the victim.”

The camera zoomed in on a small lapel button on Edward Grant's coat. It was a photograph of Olivia with the words:
JUSTICE FOR OLIVIA GRANT
.

Chapter 28

PUGET SOUND HOSPITAL for the criminally insane was located a few miles north of Seattle's city limits in Edmonds. In the 1960s, the state legislature voted to drop “for the Criminally Insane” in favor of the shorter, less descriptive moniker Puget Sound Hospital. Built of gray and red brick with a neat fringe of Douglas fir trees around its perimeter, the place gave off the vibe of an Ivy League college campus—albeit a campus with a scary student body. There were no guard towers, razor wire, or any of the accoutrements that made the institution look like a prison, even though that's exactly what it was.

That Valerie Ryan would choose to work in such a place might have raised a few eyebrows from those who knew her as a teenager and, later, in college. Those closest to her knew that for Valerie, growing up on McNeil Island had been difficult.

“I'm sure that growing up in the suburbs, like you, was a nightmare of its own peculiar kind,” she had told her college roommate, Daphnia. “But just between us, I couldn't wait to get off that island. I'll never, ever go back.”

And yet, no matter how far she had tried to run, life's path brought Valerie back to Port Gamble and Puget Sound Hospital, which was, ironically, a lot like the prison she grew up in on McNeil Island.

Valerie spent the morning doing her director's paperwork. The director was out on maternity leave, which meant that Valerie and the other psychiatric nurses had to pitch in. It also meant that Valerie was working double-shifts from time to time, much to the chagrin of her family.

None of the PSH nurses had gone into nursing to be administrators. Some did it for money, but most, like Valerie, had chosen the profession because they truly wanted to help people suffering from mental illnesses of the most dangerous kind.

That morning, Valerie did her best to focus on the work at hand. Yet she just couldn't. All she could think about was the confrontation with her daughters. She'd lied to them. She'd omitted the truth before, but this was the first time she crossed over into the realm of an outright lie. Obsessing over it gave her a massive headache. She took some aspirin, but it didn't help at all. Valerie knew at some point the truth would come out, and when it did there would be hell to pay.

She had not wanted things to turn out this way. She wanted to be the kind of mother who was close to her daughters. Maybe not best friends, but certainly a trusted, respected confidant on whom they could rely. Being that sort of person was next to impossible now that they had asked about Tony Ortega. As much as she hated to dredge up the past, Valerie knew she didn't have much choice. Hayley and Taylor were like dogs with a bone. They wouldn't give up until they found some answers, just like when their grandfather had fallen at the care facility.

“I need to make a phone call,” Valerie said to an assistant nurse named Jade.

“Okay, but be fast because I'm supposed to go on break in like five minutes. State law, you know.”

Valerie made a note to herself that if Jade ever needed something, she'd make sure her request aligned with state law.

It was easy enough to find the phone number she needed. Valerie logged on to the hospital computer and retrieved it from the emergency contact file for Maria Ortega, Tony's sister. She became a PSH patient after her brother was incarcerated. Valerie hurried from her office down the hall toward the staff lounge, which, thank goodness, was empty. A box of dried-up day-old donuts sat on a table next to a quarter jar that begged for coffee donations.

She sat on the slipcovered black sofa, positioned her phone, and dialed. A man answered on the second ring.

Valerie took a gulp of air. “Tony,” she said. “It's Valerie Fitzpatrick Ryan.”

“Valerie!” the man said, his voice full of exuberance. “Is it really you?”

“I'm afraid it is,” she said.

Just then, Jade poked her head into the staff room and pointed to her watch.

Valerie shook her head and mouthed, “Two more minutes!”

“Valerie?” Tony asked.