Now That She's Gone (29 page)

C
HAPTER
F
IFTY

R
oger Frazier sat up in bed and shifted his body away from Kendall Stark, who stood near the doorway. Tubes ran from a saline bag overhead to his left arm, which was folded over his right. His eyes never once met Kendall directly. They stayed fixed on some crows toggling over the body of a dead rat in the hospital parking lot. The disgraced architect's mouth stayed clamped shut. He didn't want to see, didn't want to talk, and almost certainly didn't want to breathe right then. Roger had been denied the end that he'd sought for himself. His last creation was not a building or fancy home, but had been his death, and even that had been a complete failure.

“Nurse,” Kendall said, “can you give us a few minutes?”

The nurse, a middle-aged woman with hair the color of driftwood—and about as stiff—nodded.

Kendall approached the bed. She held the note, now in a plastic sleeve, and spoke once more.

“Mr. Frazier, you had us all fooled. I feel like the biggest idiot in Port Orchard. And that's saying a lot,” she said, trying to shake some words from his frozen mouth. “I never once believed you had been sexually abusing Katy. I thought it was some kind of sick suggestion made by the show. Something for ratings.”

After what seemed like a long time, after the crows took wing and went to ravage elsewhere, he finally looked up. His eyes were red and his skin very pale. He looked like he'd been through a war zone, and in a way he had. But the damage he'd done to himself at the end of it all was by his own hand. Kendall wasn't sorry for him. It was, she thought, the coward's way out.

“I didn't molest her,” he said.

“It says you did,” Kendall said, holding the note to make sure he knew she had it. “Not specifically, but a jury wouldn't have a hard time seeing this as an admission of guilt. Why don't you just own up to it?”

His eyes stayed on her. “I didn't do it.”

Kendall moved a little closer. “Cowards use suicide,” she said. “You did it, but you didn't want the world to know that you molested and murdered Katy.”

He looked back at the empty parking lot at the dead rat.

“Because I didn't,” he said softly.

“Let's try this another way, all right?” Kendall sat in the window seat facing the bed. “When did you start molesting her?”

“I told you I never did that. I wouldn't do that. I loved my daughter very much. It was me and her against the world.”

Molesters always say that
, Kendall thought.
So typical.

“Why did you try to kill yourself?” she asked.

“Because of you,” he said. “Because of everyone.”

Kendall blinked. “What have I got to do with it?”

“You're like everyone else,” he said, staring her down. “It's how you look at me now. You look at me in a way that I'd never experienced before, with revulsion and hate. I see it in your eyes right now. You think I'm a monster. My secretary of fourteen years, someone who knew me, quit because she didn't . . . how did she say it . . . didn't want the stink of the likes of me on her clothes.”

His eyes welled up a little but he wouldn't let that first teardrop go. He was a lot of things, but he wasn't a crier. Not even when it might have been okay to be one.

“I'm doing my job,” Kendall said, almost feeling sorry for the man. “I have to consider that you might have done it.”

“Even when the bearer of the news is some phony psychic from a TV show? One that just comes to town to make trouble for the sake of higher ratings? You, like everyone else, gets sucked into the idea of it and in no time at all the idea becomes reality.”

Kendall pushed the plastic-ensconced paper at him. “Your note,” she said.

He nodded, still fighting the tears. “My note,” he repeated.

“Yes.”

“It's just a note about the facts,” he said, still looking at her.

Kendall pushed a little harder. “The facts,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “The facts are that I've lost everything. All of my clients. All of my very good friends. Even my high school reunion asked that I not come this year because I would be a distraction. I used to be someone, Detective, now I'm a distraction, a pariah. I'm never going to be who I was before. Never again.”

“That sounds like a guilty man speaking, Roger,” she said, using his first name.

“A realistic man. I wish I had died. I wish that the embarrassment that has been foisted on my wife and daughter had never happened. I wanted to do the show because I thought it would give me some national exposure. What kind of father would do that? Would trade his missing daughter's memory for a spot on a show because he might sell a condo project?”

“You're being too hard on yourself now.”

“Am I? I don't think so. I think I got what I deserved and there's no amount of spinning that can bring back what I was before I let Pandora into my house. She screwed me over. She ruined my life.”

Kendall knew that much of what he said was completely, unequivocally true. Pandora's box and its contents had been dumped all around Port Orchard, wreaking havoc wherever she'd been.

It was not a Greek tragedy, but one with a distinct local flavor. At the center of it all was the psychic from Spokane. She might not have had real psychic powers, but a maelstrom of tragedy enveloped everything and everyone that came in her path.

The nurse with the driftwood hair returned and poked her head into the room. She wore an impatient look on her face.

“I'm going to need to take the patient's vitals in a moment,” she said.

“Patient wishes you'd put him out of his misery,” Roger said.

“One more minute, nurse,” Kendall said.

“This note isn't an admission of guilt in your daughter's molestation and murder?” Kendall asked, pointing to the piece of Hotel Murano stationery.

“It was an admission that I am weak and that losing everything precious to me means more to me than living in this world. I'd rather be dead than be a nobody, Detective. Wouldn't you?”

Kendall didn't answer. She didn't want to tell him that she understood, even a little. She opened the door and told the nurse to keep an eye on him.

“He's pretty despondent,” she said.

“I'm surprised,” the nurse said. “Most of those pedophiles aren't. They don't seem to give a care that they've ruined some poor girl or boy's life. At least this guy has a conscience.”

C
HAPTER
F
IFTY-ONE

K
endall was adept at seeing the tiniest fissures in a person's facade. She'd seen it in Scott Hilburn when she interviewed him at the apartment he'd shared with Alyssa. Alyssa had shut him down a couple of times during the visit . . . and she didn't even have to use words. It was out of her way, but Kendall didn't mind. The ferry to Seattle gave her time to process what was happening in her personal life and what she needed to do to ensure justice for Katy, Juliana, and Tami. Steven had left a brief message that morning—more for Cody than for her. It was better than nothing. At that point they were so far apart that she didn't know exactly where things would go. She waited her turn and rolled off the ferry, feeling the bump, bump of the ramp.

She parked in the oil-stained parking lot across from Happy Teriyaki, where Scott had indicated he worked most evenings. It was hot and she rolled down the window, taking in the smells and sights of the University District, affectionately nicknamed the U-District by the grab-bag mix of old, but mostly new, people who prowled the bars, bookstores, and ramen shops there.

Some of the old had started their love affair with the neighborhood when they were young, of course. Kendall had never seen so many gray ponytails in her life. She counted fourteen as she waited in the car.

When she saw Scott head for his car, Kendall got out of her SUV and hurried over.

“I don't want to talk to you,” he said before she crossed the parking lot.

“I don't believe you,” she said.

He looked around.

Kendall could see the same little fissures she'd seen before. He did want to talk, he just needed a little push.

“I know that you had something to do with Katy's disappearance.”

“You're blowing smoke, Detective.”

“Scott, you know I'm not. I can tell that you have been carrying the weight of the world for some time. Talk to me. Let me help you do what's right. I know there's a part of you that can grab ahold of some goodness and do the right thing. I know that's not true of Alyssa.”

“Don't you talk about her,” he said, his tone shifting a little.

It was as if the words were said by rote. Without feeling. Without true conviction. Kendall saw another little chip fall.

“Talk to me, Scott. I can see there's still some good in you. I know that you didn't want things to go as far as they did.”

“You don't know anything, Detective Stark.”

“I think I do. I've been doing this awhile, Scott. You get a sixth sense about people after a time. When you see true evil like I have a time or two, you know that some people are powerless to stop it.”

“You're BS'ing me. I'm not talking to you.”

“I can help you, Scott. If you didn't kill Katy, I can go to the prosecutor's office. You just have to tell me what happened. Tell me that I'm right.”

“About what? Right about what?”

“That you loved Katy. That you didn't want her to die.”

“I can't do this. I can't do this,” he said over and over, a monologue that he'd probably practiced in his head the minute he saw Kendall in front of Happy Teriyaki.

“You can. I know that you can.”

“You can't tell her I told you.”

Another fragment.

“Come sit in my car. I can turn the AC on. It's hot out here.”

“She'll kill me. Katy's not the only one.”

That wasn't a chip, but a boulder-sized fragment. “Talk to me. Let's make things right. Don't you know what's happened to that family? Don't you know that Katy's family deserves to rest too? You liked them. You used be a part of the family, didn't you?”

“One of them was part of it,” he said.

Mt. Everest.

“Come on. Sit.” She swung the door open and Scott Hilburn lingered a little before sliding into the passenger seat.

“You have to protect my family from Alyssa. She said she'd kill Mom and my little brother.”

“I'll protect them. I'm going to take you to the sheriff's office where you'll be safe. I'll call ahead to have someone watch your family's house. On Colchester?”

He was crying then and couldn't speak. He nodded.

Kendall decided to take the long drive home, through Tacoma and across the Narrows Bridge—the bridge that had once buckled in a major windstorm and dropped into the deep waters of Puget Sound. It was a lot like Scott Hilburn was just then, bending, breaking, and falling into pieces.

He looked out the window as they passed the Tacoma Dome.

“Katy and I went there to see Britney Spears,” he said. “That was one of the really great times we had. I knew she wanted other things. I knew she didn't want me anymore. It crushed me. It hurt so bad.”

“Bad enough to make her pay?”

He looked over at Kendall. “Pay, yes, but not die. Alyssa took things too far. She really did. After it was over, I wanted to die. I really did. I even took a bottle of aspirin. Just made me hurl like I drank a fifth of whiskey.”

“You said she killed before,” Kendall said.

He nodded and returned to the window. “Yeah. But not before. Afterword. She killed Tami. She thought Tami was going to tell that TV show. She said we had to stop her . . . that no one would miss her.”

Kendall didn't say anything about Tami's little boy. Her husband. Her mother. There were probably plenty of other people who would miss Tami Overton.

“Killing Katy, that was wrong. I know that. I felt sick about it. But killing Tami, that was just too much. I thought to myself, who was this woman? She could just off anyone. Like a junior Brenda Nevins. She'd kill anyone who got in her way. When she told me that she'd kill my family I saw it as a promise, not a threat. A promise she could make good on and then go to the mall to buy a new outfit.”

“You said someone from Katy's family was there.”

He didn't answer for a long time.

“Yeah,” he finally said, “but she really didn't want any part of what happened.”

C
HAPTER
F
IFTY-TWO

N
aomi looked up. Alyssa was hovering over her bed. Naomi had never noticed that Alyssa's eyes were so devoid of emotion. Tears fell at all the right moments, but it was more mechanical than emotional. Alyssa sat down on the bed and rested her hand on Naomi's shaking shoulders. Her fingernails dug in a little.

“I have to tell my dad,” Naomi said.

“You have to tell him what?” Alyssa said, kneading her nails into Naomi's flesh like a purring cat.

“What we did. What happened to Katy.”

“That would be pretty stupid, now, wouldn't it?”

Naomi had cried for two days. She'd gone along with everything. She'd done what Alyssa and Scott had demanded she'd do. She lured her sister to meet up with them. Everything they'd told her made sense. Katy
was
full of herself. Every time she walked into a room people scurried toward her like she was the brightest light and they were moths drawn to her. Naomi had hated being a moth.

“I don't think I can live with this, Alyssa,” Naomi said.

Alyssa clenched her grip and leaned in close. Naomi could feel the older girl's warm breath. Her rapid heartbeat. The moisture of her nervousness.

“Really? That's funny, Naomi. We did this for
you.
We did what
you
wanted. And now you're saying that you can't live with it? Forgive me if I laugh out loud right now.”

“I didn't want her gone,” Naomi said.

Alyssa loosed her grip and pressed her face closer to Naomi. “Sometimes things go farther than you like when you set them in motion,” she said.

Naomi knew this wasn't a game anymore. She knew that whatever she said she'd get some kind of verbal punch to the gut. She could lie. She could avoid saying anything to provoke Alyssa. And yet, when she weighed what had happened and what she'd done she knew that only the truth would work.

“I'm going to tell my dad,” she said, averting her eyes for the onslaught she knew was about to come at her.

Alyssa didn't disappoint. “You stupid little bitch,” she said, seething. “You aren't going to do that. If you do, you'll have hell to pay.”

Naomi lifted her head from the pillow and pushed Alyssa away. “I'm not afraid of you and Scott.”

Alyssa stayed cool, but those lifeless eyes were now full of rage. “That's fine,” she said. “I didn't say anything would happen to
you.
But I can certainly take care of your do-gooder parents.”

“You wouldn't.”

“Try me, Naomi. Just try me. I'm sick of being second best and I feel a whole lot better now that your sister is out of the way. Scott loves me. I'm empowered. I'm in control and everyone else needs to get out of the way.”

Naomi looked away. Alyssa was a monster and she'd never even seen a glimpse of that side of her. She'd played her. She'd made her feel that what she was doing to her sister was something that Naomi needed. Wanted. Couldn't live without.

“Your sister makes me puke,” Alyssa said earlier that year. “I can't stand her stomping in and out and getting what she wants.”

“She's your best friend,” Naomi said.

Alyssa shook her head. “Best friend? She's all about her own self. She doesn't give a crap about anyone but Katy. You know that's true.”

Naomi was jealous of Katy, but it wasn't because Katy didn't deserve her accolades. It was simply because Naomi had been relegated to being background sister. She was the one who every teacher felt compelled to tell that the other sibling was going to be a tough act to follow. She was the daughter who tried so hard to get the attention of her parents, but the glow, the noise, the aura that surrounded her competition was too, too fierce.

“I love her and hate her, Alyssa,” Naomi had said.

“I know the feeling,” Alyssa answered as she pretended to be distracted by a text message.

“That's why we need to get her out of the way. I mean, she treats Scott like crap and that's not right. Scott's the greatest guy in the world. If he were my boyfriend I'd never treat him the way she does. He told me some of the crap she pulls on him, how she just can't help that all the other guys want to be with her. Poor me. Not my fault. Such a load. Scott is the best.”

Naomi nodded. She liked Scott too. He was always nice to her. Other boyfriends didn't even pretend to be kind to her. Scott was different. One time he brought her a package of black licorice because he knew she liked it—and he liked it too. Katy didn't.

“I guess so,” Naomi said, thinking back at the list of wrongs her sister either willingly or unwittingly had done to her over the last couple of years. “I guess she needs to be put in her place. We aren't going to hurt her, right?”

Alyssa shook her head. “Oh no. We're just going to teach her a very important lesson.”

“What lesson? How?”

“That she's not all that. That the world wasn't created for her exclusive use and that the rest of us have a place in it. You know that I didn't get to try out for the cheerleading team because Katy said she might and that she'd ‘feel bad' if I didn't get on it and she did.”

“She's such a bitch,” Naomi said.

“Yeah, and remember that time she said that it made her feel bad for you because you looked like your mother's side of the family and that you'd probably never really be pretty.”

Naomi recalled the incident and what her sister had said, though Alyssa had twisted it. The words had been offered to her as a kind of pep talk when the two of them were in the bathroom getting ready for school.

“You look like Mom. Mom's beautiful, but what I've always liked about her is how she looks smarter than pretty. Pretty fades. Smart is forever. I think you have that look.”

When Naomi first told this to Alyssa while they were waiting for Katy to get off the phone one afternoon, she brought it up because she thought it was kind of funny. That even when her sister was saying something that others might perceive as mean, it was offered as a pep talk.

“She said that?” Alyssa said, acting outraged, and reaching out to hug Naomi. “Sometimes your sister is a real bitch!”

“Well,” Naomi said, “I just thought it was funny.”

“What is this? The Stockholm syndrome around here?”

Naomi shrugged a little. Maybe she was stupid too?

“I don't know what that is,” she finally said.

“It's when a bitch like your sister makes everyone else suffer and feel like they should suffer because she's so great and they are a piece of crap. Sometimes I can't stand her.”

Naomi started to think. Alyssa was kind of right. Her sister did have a way of making her feel about two inches tall.

 

 

Roger Frazier had talked about the house he'd designed on Hood Canal as being the pinnacle of his career. The county planners had moved slowly on its approval and his daughters had taken to using the model he'd built as a place for their Barbie dolls to hang out while they weren't in the pink plastic RV that Katy had been given for her tenth birthday, and which she'd passed on to her sister. The Donaldson place was a postmodern palace conceived for a Microsoft executive who cashed in millions of dollars of stock, flitted about the world funding various causes, and yet still had time to build a monument to his own humble self. It was 5,500 square feet of shiny clean excess with an enormous flagstone terrace adjoining a cozy 2,000-square-foot guest cottage. The neighbors hated what the proposed structure was going to do to their colorful collection of old beach cabins.

“It looks like a godawful alien spacecraft, albeit a clunky one, has set down in the middle of a Norman Rockwell painting,” one particularly unhappy local resident said in front of the county review board two summers before the groundbreaking.

“Yeah, and if you ask me, the architect is trying to ruin our community with a design that pushes all boundaries of scale and decency,” said another, in a quote that never left Roger's brain.

At the time of Katy's disappearance, the only thing that was under construction was the foundation for the guesthouse and its accompanying six-car garage.

Scott Hilburn, in belly chains and shackles, barely said a word as deputies led him to the edge of the driveway. A backhoe and two teams of searchers waited closer to the garage area. The owner, Calvin Donaldson, approached Kendall.

“She's been here the whole time?” he asked.

Kendall had expected the man, now in his forties, to be worried about the quarried slabs that made up the driveway. She was prepared to tell him that there was a fund for people of lesser means in the event that police work damaged their property, but that he wouldn't qualify. But, she thought, by the look on his face he didn't care.

“We don't know for sure,” Kendall said.

“Do whatever you need to do,” he said as she handed him the search warrant. “I feel sorry for Brit and Roger. And their girls too. Is Roger still in the hospital?”

Kendall nodded. “Released tomorrow.”

“This has been a tragedy all the way around.”

“Agreed.”

Scott led the searchers to the far corner of the driveway next to the garage doors. He kept his eyes low, ashamed and embarrassed for his role in what happened to a girl he'd once loved—but who'd told him that they were not a forever couple.

“Right around here,” he said, touching his toe to the slab of stone that had been installed a few days after Katy had been murdered.

A deputy nodded and another climbed into the backhoe.

A voice called out. “Have you found her?”

Kendall looked up. It was Brit.

“Have you found my baby? Pandora was right, wasn't she?”

Brit looked like a hundred miles of washed-out road. She hadn't eaten. She looked unkempt. The pretty-smart of her looks had ebbed in the days since they met at the reveal for
Spirit Hunters.
There was good reason for that, of course. It had been the second worst time of her life.

Kendall wanted to say “F Pandora” but thinking it was enough given the circumstances. Pandora and the show's ratcheting up of the case had, in fact, led to that moment. Even so, there could be no celebration. No acknowledgment. Tami Overton was dead. Naomi was in juvenile detention. Roger had tried to kill himself. It was as if Katy's case and the resolution they hoped was in store had set off a series of other tragedies that might never have occurred. Pandora had promised Katy's mother that the answer was close by, but she was also very, very lethal.

“I wish you hadn't come,” Kendall said.

“I wish my daughter hadn't been murdered, Detective.”

That was a statement for which there could never be any kind of response.

“I'll need you to stay back.”

Brit pushed closer to the backhoe.

“Really, Mrs. Frazier, you don't want to see her,” she said, putting out her hand like a traffic cop with a genuine sense of urgency.

Brit stopped in her tracks. She didn't say anything. She was as close to her daughter as she was going to get. She stood there alone. No husband. No girls. No supporters from the Second Cup, Second Chance coffee shop. Right about then, she needed her own second chance.

The sound of the stone breaking shattered the air. Everyone stood back, holding the air inside. Calvin Donaldson didn't say a word, but gave a sad nod and retreated to the front door of the main house. He didn't need to see any more. Kendall went closer to the equipment and the others.

The backhoe operator lifted the slab and set it aside. A moment later, he gently scraped layer after layer of soil.

“We barely covered her, Detective,” Scott said, his eyes finally directly meeting Kendall's. “I'm really sorry about what we did.”

Kendall nodded. She would give Scott plenty of credit later for having the basic qualities of human decency. She suspected Tami Overton was that type of person too. Not Alyssa, of course.

“Scott, what happened that night?”

“My dad says I shouldn't say any more. Not without a lawyer.”

“You're better than that. I know you are.”

“I want to tell you.”

“You can. You're an adult. You can waive those rights. You can do the right thing right here and now. We're alone,” she said, “but the world is watching.”

Scott watched as the backhoe kept moving. It was only a matter of moments before Katy would be found.

“Do the right thing, Scott. Brit and Roger deserve it.”

“Naomi does too,” he said.

“She was part of this, wasn't she?”

He shook his head. “Not really. She wasn't here when it was all over. She started walking home. I went after her when it was done.”

“Tell me.”

 

 

Katy Frazier was confused and crying. Alyssa had chopped her hair with a pair of scissors while Scott and Tami held her down in the trench dug to hold the cement forms. Naomi stood still. She had wanted to scare her sister. Remind her that she was a person too. She hadn't done a thing but watch and had left before what Alyssa promised would be the “real fun.”

“Alyssa! What are you doing to me?”

Katy was crying and shaking. Her hands were held to her head, feeling the patches and unevenness of her best friend's brutal hairstyling.

“You are such a complainer. We're just playing around. Like you do with our emotions every single day, Katy. You're always saying you'll be there. You're always saying come to the Kitsap Mall. I'll see you at A&W. Such a liar!”