Victim Six (10 page)

April 19, 1:15 a.m.
South Colby

She was naked, running through the deep green of the forest. Overhead, she could see the contrails of a jet scratching the powder-blue sky. Could the people in the plane see her? She ran faster, her arms working like pistons as she propelled herself up an incline between a hemlock and a fir. Where to hide? Who could help her? Sweat oozed from her pores, and she ran faster and faster. Would she have a heart attack? Would she fall to the ground into the black mud, be sucked into the mire, lost forever? The woman was screaming as loud as she could, but it was for naught. There was no one to hear her screams. At one point she dared to look behind her, and she could see the form of a man rushing toward her.

“Help me! Help!”

“Babe, what is it?”

Kendall shot up in their bed; her husband had turned on the light and was putting his hand on her drenched shoulder.

“Oh,” she said, realizing where she was.
Who she was
. “Oh, Steven, it was so real.”

“A bad dream?”

She sat on the edge of the bed, looking out across the black waters of Yukon Harbor through the window, its antique glass rippling the view.

“Yes. I was running from someone.”

“You’re safe now.”

She blotted her face with the sleeve of her robe. “I know, but it was so real.”

“Just a dream,” he repeated.

Kendall knew he was correct, of course, but she didn’t tell him the part of the dream that seemed so troubling, so very disconcerting. It wasn’t that
she
was running from someone. She wasn’t herself in the dream at all. Kendall was sure that the woman in her dream was Celesta Delgado.

“I’m going to get some water,” she said, heading toward the door.

As the tap ran, Kendall thought of the woman she would never meet. Coworkers at Azteca adored her. The owner of the brush shed had not one single harsh word for the young woman. And, of course, Tulio Pena had insisted from the very beginning that something very dark had occurred that afternoon in the woods. The clump of hair all but confirmed it.

She drained her glass, set it next to the sink, and went back to the bedroom, stopping only for a moment to check on Cody. She wondered if her son’s mind ever conjured up such frightening images as she just had. Were his dreams empty, blank? Was autism a cocoon that kept a person buffered from the pain of the world around them?

Is it better to know fear
, she asked herself as she pulled up the covers next to Steven, who was fast asleep,
so that you can appreciate love and the safety of those around you?

In her job as a detective, Kendall had seen terror and its opposite over and over. She wasn’t sure if she had the answer to her own question.

The row of flowering cherry trees had dropped a blushing blanket of snowing petals on the ground outside the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office. Several cars circled the front of the building trying to find a place to park in response to TV reports that a Navy aircraft carrier was coming into Bremerton that morning. A small group of people, Kendall Stark among them, gathered to observe the ship as it came into view. She stood with coffee cup in hand, feeling rushed and tired at the same time. She wore tan slacks, a crisp white shirt, and an ice-blue sweater, her hair a little more spiked than she liked, given a night of slumber interrupted by the dream of the frightened young woman.

Later, Kendall would recall the dream, wondering if it had been something more than the workings of a mind trying to solve a problem.

Serenity Hutchins, clunky old newspaper-issue Nikon camera in hand, nodded at Kendall as their paths crossed in front of the Kitsap County Administration Building.

“Here to take some shots of the carrier?”

Serenity smiled. “That and whatever else they tell me to do. Jesus, I know Keller won’t run this story anyway—not if there’s some major breaking news about a missing llama in Olalla or something.”

Kendall retuned the smile. “Nice job on the Delgado story.”

“Thanks. Any update?”

Kendall shook her head. “I’ll let you know. But between you and me, nothing.”

“I got another call from the weirdo the other day, saying he knew something. I called Josh—Detective Anderson—about it.”

“I heard,” Kendall said. “I’m sorry that you’ve been getting those. It can be very upsetting. I know.”

Serenity slung the camera strap over her shoulder. “Our jobs are sort of alike in that regard, Detective.”

Kendall sipped her coffee as they walked toward the front door of the Sheriff’s Office building, pink petals swirling underfoot.

“You’re right. We both want the answers to the really hard questions, don’t we, Serenity?”

The reporter raised her camera to take a shot of the fading cherry blossoms.

“Yes. But in my case, I have to take on whatever my boss says is important.” She looked at her watch. “Like the new dry cleaner opening up on Bay Street. I can’t afford to dry-clean anything on my salary, but off I go.”

Serenity Hutchins was like any other person in Port Orchard, Kendall reflected: she was doing what she needed to until that big break came.

As Celesta Delgado had.

A few minutes after returning to her desk, Kendall’s phone rang.

The caller identified himself as Bernardo Reardon, a detective with the Mason County Sheriff’s office. He prattled on for a few moments in the congenial way cops do before cutting to the chase.

“You might want to take a drive over here,” he said. “I think we might have found your missing brush picker. Or rather, what’s left of her.”

The last words pierced her heart.

What’s left of her.

“What makes you think it’s our missing woman?”

“Height, weight, age—it’s all good. Of course, it could be someone else, but if so, no one’s reported this lady missing.”

“I see. Decomp?”

“I’ve seen a lot worse. But like I said, come on over and take a peek. We’re about done with processing what we can.”

Kendall’s eyes landed on the poster that the Kitsap Crime Stoppers had made, with its lovely photo of a beaming Celesta Delgado. It offered a one-thousand-dollar reward.

A life was worth more than a thousand dollars
, she thought.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll see you in an hour.”

“Can’t wait,” the caller said.

She found Josh Anderson chatting with a young woman who worked logging evidence in the property room. She was laughing a little too loudly to be discussing business, so Kendall felt no compunction about interrupting.

“Ride out to Mason County with me?” she asked.

Josh turned away from the woman, and it was obvious that she was only too glad for the break in whatever story he was telling. She returned to the work she had been doing before Detective Anderson showed up.

“Sure. What’s up, Kendall?”

“Delgado.”

He studied her face. “Not so good, huh?”

Kendall shook her head. “I’m afraid not.”

April 20, 10:30 a.m.
Shelton, Washington

The Shelton, Washington, Chamber of Commerce likes to brag that the city of more than eight thousand is the “Christmas Tree Capital of the World.” In fact, the town has always been about trees, Christmas or otherwise; for a century, it exported logs and lumber, long before firs festooned with tinsel were thought of as a commodity.

The city is quintessential small-town Pacific Northwest, with past glories based on once-abundant natural resources now supporting attempts to coax tourist dollars. Every spring, the past is celebrated with the annual Forest Festival, with food booths, logrolling, and chain-saw competitions.

It was the festival that reminded the people that Shelton, Mason County, had been established on the southernmost edge of Puget Sound for a purpose. Smoke still curls from the Simpson Lumber Company’s mill. Old-timers and current employees take a deep breath whenever possible. They know the plume smells like house payments, new cars, and kids’ college educations.

The last time Kendall Stark had been to Shelton was the previous January, when she attended a candlelight vigil for a little girl who’d been raped and murdered by her neighbor, a registered sex offender still at large. Kendall had gone with her sister and some friends, not because they knew the little girl, but because her story had been so heart wrenching that they simply couldn’t stay away. She came in her street clothes, of course. She didn’t want to attract attention; she just wanted to hold one of those cheap, drippy candles to tell the world that Rikki Jasper would not be forgotten. Kendall remembered how she’d looked at the crowd and wondered if the perpetrator was among them.

Thoughts, she was sure, that also consumed the law enforcement officers who oversaw the case.

Kendall parked the SUV in a visitor’s spot in front of Mason General Hospital on Mountain View Drive, the city’s hospital and morgue. Moments later, after a receptionist buzzed him, Detective Bernardo Reardon came for the Kitsap County homicide investigators. He was a tall, thin man, with a Fu Manchu mustache and dark plum-pit eyes. He smiled broadly as he walked toward the sitting area, where Kendall and Josh had been waiting on some upholstered chairs next to a dying philodendron and a surly receptionist who was busy chewing out her boyfriend.

“Look,” the receptionist was saying, oblivious to her visitors, “there are plenty of other fish to fry around here…”

Bernardo rolled his eyes. “Welcome to Mason General Hospital and our morgue. Come on back,” he said, and they followed him to a private room where friends and family waited to identify the deceased. It was stark and empty, and smelled of alcohol-based cleaner.

He motioned for the pair to sit, and tapped his fingertips on his file folder.

“The vic was found by some birdwatchers at the Theler Wetlands,” he began.

The Mary E. Theler wetlands were at the head of Hood Canal, an elbow of salt water that protruded into the rugged interior of Kitsap, Mason, and Jefferson counties. A favorite of day-trippers and bird-watchers, the saltwater marsh just outside Belfair was traversed with a web of elevated boardwalks. Kendall, Steven, and Cody had been there several times, with Cody tucked snugly into his father’s backpack, back when nature walks seemed to hold his interest. Sun on his face. Birds in the water. The movement of the reeds along the shore.

It was a lovely place to visit, and, apparently, to dump a body. At least, a killer thought so.

“We’ve got a touch of decomp going, so be ready for that,” he said, looking mostly at Kendall. “I can still smell her from here. Anyhow, she matches the description of your missing brush picker. Pathologist has already swabbed and examined for trace, but like I said, she’s a mess.”

Josh jangled the change in his pocket, a habit that he had whenever he was bored or a little anxious. “Sounds good. Where do you guys break for lunch around here?” he asked, more concerned about his stomach than the dead girl they were about to see.

Kendall shot him a look, but he deflected it by mouthing, “Low blood sugar.”

“Logger’s Bar and Grill is always good,” Bernardo said, opening the door to the morgue.

He handed the Kitsap detectives face masks but wasn’t fast enough. The scent of the dead surged forward, and Kendall felt her stomach stir. She shot a cold stare in Josh’s direction.

“How could anyone even think about lunch? Now or ever?”

Reardon responded first: “Detectives, one word of warning: our victim has no hands.”

The dead woman had been laid out in a dark blue body bag, which was split open like an oven-roasting bag to keep the putrid juices from spilling out onto the table, and to the floor. Long dark hair curled around her face and the nape of her neck. Even in that condition, it was clear that the victim had once been a pretty young woman. Her eyes were half-open, seemingly staring upward at the fluorescent lights overhead.

Kendall thought of her dream of the woman running through the darkened forest the night before.
What had the woman seen before she ended up on that table, so far from home?

Bernardo peeled back the edge of the plastic body bag obscuring the victim’s arms.

“The other one’s the same,” he said, indicating where her hand had been excised from her wrist.

“Looks pretty clean,” Josh said, bending closer to get a better view. “That’s what the pathologist said. No hesitation with the cut here. This wasn’t some mad, frenzied stab job, but a clean cut.”

Kendall didn’t dare turn away, although it passed through her mind that no one should have to see whatever the monster had done to the woman she knew had to be Celesta. She didn’t use her name. It seemed easier to call her “the victim” or “the body” when the trio went about their business.

“Can I see the victim’s other arm too?” she asked, her voice slightly muffled through the mask.

“Suit yourself,” Bernardo said, walking around to the other side of the table. “Just as ugly.”

“Did your pathologist indicate if the victim was alive when this injury was incurred?”

The clinical talk was the best. Kendall plucked the words out of a textbook when she really wanted to say “Did she suffer?” or “Did the sick, twisted piece of garbage who did this to her do it after he killed her?”

“Postmortem. Almost a hundred percent sure.”

The answer brought a little relief.

“Did you find the hands?” Josh asked, stepping closer to get a better view of the injuries to the body.

“Nope. And believe you me, we looked. Don’t want some kid feeding a bag of day-old bread to some ducks to turn up a finger or something.”

“When you say your pathologist indicated no hesitation, are you suggesting someone with unusual skill?” Kendall asked.

“Hunter, butcher, surgeon. You know, the kind of people who know how to move a blade.”

Kendall looked over at Josh. “Logger or maybe brush cutter?”

Detective Reardon shrugged. “Could be. But one twisted perv, for sure.”

Josh spoke next. “Any other injuries?”

“Pathologist says the girl was likely raped and tortured. Vaginal and anal tearing. Some ligatures on the ankles too. Hard to say about the wrists, for obvious reasons.” He indicated a crescent of darkened skin on the body’s right breast.

“Looks like some damage inflicted on the vic’s breasts,” he said, pointing. “Almost a perfect half circle, like a big hickey.”

Kendall felt a wave of nausea work its way from her stomach, but she steadied herself.

“How long has she been dead?”

“A week, maybe less.”

“Celesta Delgado,” Kendall said, finally saying her name, “has been missing for more than a week.”

Josh broke his gaze at the corpse and looked at Kendall.

“Maybe she was kept somewhere?”