The Girl in the Woods (10 page)

W
hile Elan valiantly resuscitated her old laptop on the sofa in the front room, Birdy Waterman ruminated over all that had happened that day. The notification she and Kendall had made to Tess Moreau was an anvil of immense weight on her shoulders. When she’d talked to other victims’ families, it was without exception at her office. The location was removed from who the person belonged to and where he or she had come from. Even in the clutter of Tess Moreau’s home there was evidence everywhere of Darby’s life. School photos. Books about vampires. Blue jeans that were not the style of a mother. No victim was anything less than a human being when he or she arrived on the autopsy table, but few were as known to Birdy as Darby.

Cross training was annoying, but she didn’t doubt that it held a benefit.

“Everyone’s talking about that dead girl on Facebook,” Elan said.

“I’m sure they are,” Birdy said. She changed the subject. “How’s that laptop coming along?”

“No offense, but it is a piece of crap,” he said. “But what about that girl? Heard that she was sliced and diced.”

Birdy sipped her beer. She needed one. Maybe two.

“We don’t talk about people like that, Elan.”

He glanced up from the screen, a satisfied look on his face. “I was hoping that this POS wouldn’t work. But it does.”

Birdy studied the now lit up screen. “Good. That means you can do your homework.”

“I don’t have any,” he said.

“Find some,” she said. “You’re not on vacation, Elan.”

“Whatever, Aunt Birdy.” The teenager powered down and closed the lid on the laptop. “What happened to the kid?”

“She has a name. Darby Moreau.”

“I know all about her,” he said.

The comment interested Birdy. “What do you mean, you know all about her?”

Elan brightened. “Well, for one thing, I know her mom is a total freak. Do you know what they call her?”

Kendall had told her that Tess was a local celebrity. It wasn’t an exaggeration.

“Yes, her mother has a problem.”

“She should be on that hoarder’s show on TV. One time I watched it and the lady had two dead cats buried under a pile of newspapers. She thought they ran away. Those people are so messed up.”

Birdy knew he was right. They
were
messed up.

“It is an obsessive-compulsive disorder, Elan. Without extensive therapy, they can’t change their behavior.”

“Do you feel sorry for everyone, Aunt Birdy?”

“Not everyone,” she said. “I never feel sorry for those who kill someone, even when I can see their reasons for it.”

Elan went to the refrigerator and took out a beer.

“Put that back!” Birdy said.

Elan flashed a sheepish grin. “Just testing you.”

“I don’t need to be tested,” she said. “I’ve had a top-ten worst day.”

He took a can of soda, popped the top, and returned to the sofa. “So was she?”

“Was she what?”

“Sliced and diced?”

Birdy admired his persistence. Persistence was a positive attribute—when applied to something like homework.

“We’re not going to talk about the case, all right? That’s a ground rule that I should have added to the conditions of your staying here. I’m dealing with some sensitive things at my job. I can’t talk to you about any of them.”

Elan shrugged and sat up. “Be that way. I don’t have any friends and I just thought if I could get some insider info it would help. But I guess I don’t care. Bunch of losers at this school anyway.”

“When are you going to talk to me about what’s troubling you so much at home?”

“We didn’t set a deadline,” he said. “I have homework to do, remember?”

As Elan disappeared into what was once the guest bedroom, Birdy’s thoughts about Tess and her loss shifted to her own strained relationship with her mother.

The last time she’d seen her had been just after the New Year.

That visit, like the others before it, felt like a failed reconciliation. Birdy needed to escape. One beer became two. Two became three. While Elan did whatever he was doing in his room, she sat in the office in her craftsman-style bungalow and replayed the visit with her mom and re-experienced the worsening frustration that came with the encounter.

“You are a selfish girl,” Natalie Waterman had said while she stared at the TV. “You don’t give a shit about anyone but you.”

“That’s not true, Mom. I’m not like that.”

Birdy put her hand on her mother’s shoulder, but she brushed it off like the long ashy tip of her cigarette.

“Keep telling yourself that, Birdy,” Natalie had said in that ever-deepening voice of hers. “Always trying to be better than anyone from around here.”

“Why does it always come to this, Mom? Why does it come to me leaving? Dad wanted me to leave.”

“Keep him out of it, Birdy. You are too good for all of us. Why don’t you just go?”

Birdy looked at her mother’s reflection on the old TV. Her jaw was clenched, her eyes unblinking. “Why do you hate me?”

“Just go,” Natalie said.

“Why, Mom?”

“Because you are who you are. That’s why.”

Birdy didn’t cry. She never let her mother see her cry. Not since she was a little girl.
Maybe there was some truth to it? Maybe she had thought she was better than everyone who stayed on the reservation?

“What am I?”

There was a slight flutter of her mother’s eyes, almost a hint that she’d say something.

Reveal something
.

“Just go,” Natalie finally said. “All right? I want to watch TV and I don’t need you pissing me off. Just leave.”

Birdy drove from Neah Bay to Port Orchard, vowing she’d never go back—though she knew her resolve would fade. If she really was that girl—the one who thought she was better than her family—then she’d hate herself. And the fact that she didn’t want to hate herself made her wonder if, indeed, her mother was right after all.

She thought of calling her mother, but dialed her sister instead.

It went straight to voice mail.

“Summer, just wanted to chat. Give you a little update. Elan is doing fine. I’m happy to have him here. Still not sure why he’s here. He’s not talking. And since you never seem to answer your phone, I guess I’ll just hang in there until he talks,” she said, realizing that she was rambling. The beer had gotten the best of her. “Love you, bye now.”

She hung up.

A
manda Watkins lived in a small house on Soundview Drive in Gig Harbor. Except for its contents—neat, new, fresh, and not too much of any one item—it was comparable to Tess Moreau’s farmhouse in Olalla. Amanda had done most of the talking on the drive along Crescent Valley and to her house in the harbor. Tess cried and uttered one-word answers to whatever Amanda said.

She offered to call family, anyone, to let them know.

“No,” Tess said.

“What can I get for you?”

“Darby.”

“Honey, I’m so sorry.”

“Hurts.”

“I know. I know.”

When they got inside, Amanda led Tess to a spare bedroom. Amanda lived alone. She and her husband divorced two years prior, when their youngest of three graduated from high school. She had known it was coming. He had a girlfriend. Just as they got to her daughter’s old room, Amanda changed her mind.

The room was a teen’s dream with a beautiful maple bed and deep purple cushions. The boys’ room would be better.

Fewer reminders of what her friend had just lost.

“You need to eat,” Amanda said.

Tess slumped into a chair. Amanda planted herself on the edge of one of her sons’ beds. Both boys had graduated from college and her daughter was away at school in Oregon. A Seahawks poster dominated one wall, a Mariners the other.

“I’m not hungry,” Tess said.

“Of course not,” Amanda said. “But you have to eat.”

“Why?”

Amanda, who was ten years older than Tess, didn’t have all the answers. No one in a time like that really did. A minister maybe? Someone who had undergone the same kind of tragedy? The worst thing that happened to Amanda was that her husband had left her. And that hadn’t been so bad after all. She wanted to help her friend, but something else was on her mind.

“Do they know what happened?” she asked, finding the nerve.

Tess put her fingertips to her mouth. Silence filled the room. This wasn’t easy. It was the hardest thing Amanda had done in a long, long time.

“Do you know?” she asked, her eyes riveted to Tess’s.

Tess, who’d stopped crying, looked away.

“Why would I know?”

Again, awkward silence passed between the two women.

“You know, because of Brenda.”

“Brenda,” Tess repeated. “I don’t see how.”

Brenda Nevins was a lifer at the prison. She’d been incarcerated for only five years, but her anger at the world and anyone who crossed her was legendary. She was a classic narcissist who saw no value in anything that didn’t benefit her directly. She’d drugged her husband and daughter and set fire to her house in Yakima, a farming community on the eastern side of the Cascades, the mountains that divide the state in two. To cover the evidence of murder, she set fire to the house.

She did it all for insurance money—which she promptly spent on a new car, cosmetic surgery, a trip to Hawaii, and a condo overlooking the Columbia River. She nearly got away with it, until, in a ballsy and exceedingly stupid move, she did it a second time. This time she killed her boyfriend, a swimming coach at the local high school. She drugged and drowned him at the pool.

Her trial for that murder had been a media sensation. Washington State had seen its share of famous criminals—Ted Bundy, Gary Ridgway, to name a couple at the top of any killers hit parade. The likes of a woman like Brenda Nevins, however, had never been seen.

Brenda’s mass media appeal had as much to do with her cunning approach to her kills as to her stunning looks. She had emerald green eyes and a mane of blond tresses that dropped to the small of her back. She had a porn star’s figure—courtesy of the implants she’d received from her State Farm payout. A psychologist testified that her IQ was in the genius range, but that her narcissism prevented her from understanding the most basic of all human emotions.

It was true that Brenda could intellectualize about feelings and their place in the world. She could use emotion in the way that an impressionist mimics the voices of others as part of a Las Vegas review—close, but not quite right.

Brenda didn’t let her incarceration stop her from doing what she did best.

Seduction.

It was late fall and Tess Moreau had to run some files from one end of the prison to the other. That meant going through security gates outside and then back in. It was cold outside and Tess hated the cold, but she’d never said no to any request her boss or co-workers made. While some office women preferred to sit on their butts all day eating donuts and bitching about something that didn’t matter one bit, Tess was a doer. That’s how she’d been named “Support Person of the Quarter.” On the other side of the steel ringlets of barbed wire that crowned the walls around the women’s prison, however, she was seen as a pathetic creature.

On the inside, she was the employee the superintendent wished she could clone. None were better. None more indispensable in a place that needed order.

As Tess made her way down the corridor where the prison had its inmate dog-grooming and pet-boarding program, she heard strange moaning. At first, she thought it was a dog fussing about being away from its owner. That happened occasionally, though not often. The prison’s program was surprisingly popular. It allowed pet owners to leave their animals with inmates, for smaller fees than other kennels in nearby Gig Harbor or Olalla. Price wasn’t the sole benefit. The inmates were carefully screened. They were animal lovers. They might have been meth addicts on the outside, but inside they cuddled up with dogs, walked them, and combed them.

The moaning got a little louder.

“You like my tits,” a voice said.

Another voice murmured something, but it was unintelligible.

Tess had serious doubts that a dog was involved. It was possible. She’d heard of all sorts of things over the years going on between inmates. Some women were gay while in the prison; others tried to seduce male guards. One even managed to get pregnant and sue the state for abuse.

“Ooh that feels good,” the first voice said.

Tess thought about turning around and reporting it right then and there. She didn’t need the visual of what was going on, but those files needed to get where they were going. She turned the corner and caught a glimpse in the open doorway

Brenda Nevins was on top of a grooming table on all fours. She was completely naked and moving her head to and fro in faked ecstasy. Those bought-with-blood-money breasts looked like a pair of 777s nosediving to oblivion.

Licking her vagina from behind was Missy Carlyle, last year’s Corrections Officer of the Year.

Tess, stunned by what she’d seen, dropped her files. Brenda and Missy looked over.

“You say anything, you’ll regret it,” Brenda said, pushing Missy away with a foot and twisting herself upright on the table.

Missy, her eyes popping from her head like some cartoon depiction of someone seeing the shock of her life, gasped.

“It isn’t what you think, Tess!” she said, picking a hair from her mouth. “Please don’t say anything.”

Tess scrambled and picked up her files. Her heart was pounding. She hurried back toward Control.

“We’ve got a serious problem in pet grooming,” she said when the officer answered the buzzer.

“Dog get out again?” he asked.

“I wish,” she said. “I need an officer here now.”

A protracted, but very quiet, investigation ensued. Missy was put on paid administrative leave and Brenda was sent to the hole, a section of the prison that sounds worse than it really is. Some prisoners actually prefer isolation, only one hour of exercise, and the opportunity for endless “me-time.” Brenda, not surprisingly, was not happy about it at all. After the investigation of the incident concluded, which the inmates and officers had nicknamed “Doggy Style,” Missy was fired. Shortly afterward, a series of threatening letters were delivered to the prison addressed to Tess and marked
personal
and
confidential
.

The first one:

 

 

She tore that one up.

The next one came to her home in Olalla.

 

 

Tess tore that one up too.

When the third one arrived, two weeks later, Tess confided in Amanda in the employee break room—a cluttered space of floor-mounted tables, beat-up romance novels, and a cobalt blue couch with tufts of white poly protruding like a row of bunny tails from one side.

“I’ve been getting some weird, threatening mail,” she said when the room had cleared of the other employees.

“Me too,” Amanda said. “I call mine bills my ex didn’t pay.”

Tess didn’t smile.

“Something’s wrong,” Amanda said. “What kind of mail are you talking about?”

Tess pulled a folded slip from her pants pocket and slid it over the battered surface of the tabletop. Her eyes stayed on Amanda’s as she unfolded it and read.

Amanda looked up. “Holy cow,” she said. “This came to your house?”

Tess’s eyes were awash with worry and Amanda picked up on it.

She pushed the paper back across the table.

It read:

 

 

“You think it’s related to the investigation?” Amanda said. “You need to report this right now. Brenda or Missy could be behind it.”

Tess grabbed her friend’s hands from across the table. “No. I don’t want to cause any more trouble.”

“Come on.” Amanda said, still letting Tess hold her hands. “You are being threatened. This is serious stuff. It could be any one of the creepy women inside here.”

“Or someone on the outside,” Tess said, releasing her grip.

There was truth to that. A lot of truth. It was easier to smuggle something out of prison than inside. It didn’t matter what prison or what gender. There was always someone out there who would do something for money or payback. One woman used her canteen money to hire another prisoner to get her boyfriend to burn down the trailer of the man who’d turned her in for making methamphetamines. The price for arson? Seven Twix candy bars.

The state somehow managed to keep the Doggy-Style investigation out of the press—it was beyond embarrassing for the institution and its new superintendent. That meant that Missy Carlyle was only fired. She easily could have been charged with inmate abuse. Brenda could have pushed for it, but she didn’t.

“She has something on Missy and that could come in handy one day,” Amanda had said at the time.

As the women faced each other in Amanda’s sons’ room, they could only wonder if that time had come.

“You’ve got to tell the detectives,” Amanda said. “You have to tell them about the letters now. Do you still have that one you showed me?”

Tess nodded. “And the one after that.”

Tess’s eyes widened. “There was another? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I was afraid you’d make me report it. I didn’t want to be the subject of any kind of scrutiny,” Tess said, hesitating as if the words were stuck in her throat. “You know, Amanda, I didn’t want people to know who I was.”

“You mean how you live?” Amanda asked.

Tess still couldn’t stop her face from going red with the shame that had consumed her for so many years. Even in the presence of a close, trusted friend.

“Right,” she said, looking away. “I didn’t want to call attention to myself. The social worker from the county said that if I didn’t get my act together, I could lose my daughter. She’s all I have.”

Amanda put her arms around Tess. The irony in her friend’s words was heartbreaking. It
had
happened. She had lost her daughter.