Victim Six (16 page)

October 5, 3:30 p.m.
Key Center, Washington

The drive out to her sister Melody’s place took almost an hour. Serenity Hutchins kept her radio on an eighties music station playing hits that were popular before she was born. She listened to the Waitresses’ song, “I Know What Boys Like” and wondered how come music wasn’t fun like that anymore. Her sister, Melody, and her husband, Sam, lived on almost five acres in a log home just outside of Key Center on the Key Peninsula. The Castiles had a son named Max who had just turned eight. In fact, the gathering that afternoon was to celebrate the boy’s birthday and the last sure sunny day before the Northwest rains kicked in and stole the last of the summer. The music was loud in her little black car, but more out of habit than a desire to blast her eardrums. Serenity had gone so long with a loud muffler that after she finally fixed it, she’d gotten used to a decibel level that threatened hearing damage.

Relationships between sisters are always complicated. Any sibling can vouch for that. But with a ten-year age gap, Serenity and Melody shared little more than the commune-style names their mother had given them.

Melody had resented her sister from the time her parents brought her home. She’d suddenly been demoted to helper and sister instead of the center of the universe. Whenever her mother and father left Serenity in the care of her sister, she’d feign attentiveness until the door shut behind them.

She never changed Serenity’s diaper. She never gave her a bottle. She just let her cry it out until she saw the headlights of her parents’ car in the driveway.

Later, there were hair-pulling, screaming, and setups to get her in trouble. Serenity was far from perfect. She’d learn to give as well as she got. One time she found a condom wrapper in a park and planted it in her sister’s room. Melody got a beating from her dad and a smile from her sister. Both sisters held memories distorted by their own wants and wishes. Theirs was a relationship in a constant mend.

At least they played at it as though they cared. Attending Max’s birthday barbecue was part of the game.

Serenity parked her car and knocked on the door.

Sam, dressed in blue jeans and a faded red shirt, answered. He was forty-four, broad-shouldered, and a little more than six feet tall. On this particular afternoon his black hair was wavy and a little long, swept back from his forehead. Sam Castile was a man of a thousand looks—facial hair that changed from a full beard to a goatee and then back to a Fu Manchu. He was handsome in a Marlboro Man way, weather-beaten and a little too tan.

“Your sister was thinking you forgot,” he said, letting her inside.

“She always thinks the best of me.”

Sam shook his head. “Now, now.”

“She started it. Or you did.”

There was some truth in what she said, and it only made Sam Castile suppress a smile. He loved lighting the fuse between his wife and her little sister.

Max ran up to his aunt, eyeballing the small package wrapped in blue tissue paper she held at her side as he hugged her.

“For me?”

Serenity kissed the top of his head. “It sure is, Max.”

The boy reached for it, all smiles.

“Video game?” he asked, taking the present.

“You’ll see.”

She followed her brother-in-law into the kitchen, where her sister was slicing onions and lemons.

“Need some help?” she asked, finally.

“I thought that was you driving in. Do you really have to blast the neighborhood with your music?”

Serenity wanted to say, “What neighborhood? You live out in the middle of nowhere.” But she kept quiet.

“Really, what can I do?” she asked.

Melody went about her chopping. She was a pretty brunette who wore her hair pinned back even when she wasn’t in the kitchen. A silver pendant hung around her neck like a swinging pendulum as she attacked an onion with her knife. Melody had light blue eyes, so pale, that sometimes, when the light hit them just so, they looked like shiny black beads floating in pools of white. Her skin had always been flawless, although Serenity thought she could finally see the tiny creases around her mouth from smoking and too much sun.

You’re getting old, sis,
she thought.

Sam took a beer from the refrigerator and held it out to Serenity.

“No, thanks,” Serenity said.

He removed the top and started to drink.

Melody just kept slicing, filling the air with the scent of onions and lemons, the garnish she’d planned to adorn the salmon that her husband had caught on one of his overnight fishing trips.

“How’s work?” he asked.

Serenity shrugged. “Oh, you know, boring most days.”

Melody ran a fillet knife along the fish’s spinal column, expertly separating the bone from the rosy flesh.

“I’m glad you’re getting so much out of your college degree.” Melody never missed an opportunity to say something about how her parents had put Serenity through school when she herself had had to drop out.

“Seems like you’ve had some interesting things to write about lately,” Sam said.

“You mean the election of the Fathoms o’ Fun Queen?” Serenity said, her tone deadpan.

“I missed that one,” he said. “I’m talking about the dead girl in Little Clam Bay.”

Serenity nodded and started to talk about the forensic artist in Portland and how she’d been the first to publish the photograph, but her sister cut her off.

“Grill hot enough, Sam?” Melody asked, interrupting the conversation.

Sam winked. “Always. Come on, Serenity, you can help.” He set down the last of his beer and headed for the French doors with the salmon.

While Serenity held the platter and he scraped tiny bits of burned-on black off the grill and into the fire, they talked about the murder case, the weather, the fact that her sister could be such a bitch.

Serenity looked across the backyard while he worked the grill. Sam was using charcoal briquettes instead of gas, and she liked the old-school touch. Sam was a traditional guy, and, coming from a family with a father who wasn’t, Serenity could see why her sister was attracted to him. Sam’s hair was still licorice black, as thick as it had been in high school. The lines on his face only accentuated his handsomeness, as if dimples and prominent cheekbones needed to be underscored. His eyes sparked intelligence and fire, more golden than brown. He was a man’s man, the kind who put in a full day as an inspector at the shipyard, a soda with his buds at Toy’s Topless in Gorst, then went on home to his wife and son. All in all, Serenity figured, her sister had been reasonably lucky in love. As lucky as she deserved. On the other hand, Sam could have done a little better.

“Been out on the
Saltshaker
?” Serenity asked. “Or is it too cold now?”

The
Saltshaker
was Sam’s pride and joy, a thirty-five-foot Sea Ray cabin cruiser that was more than twenty years old. Sam had babied it in every possible way. He hosed it off. Waxed it. Redid the galley and the head, and put in new vinyl on the seat cushions that served as a banquette at the dining table.

“Every now and then. Half the time alone. You know your sister.”

She poured herself some iced tea. “Yeah, she always hated the water.”

“Maybe I can get you to come aboard sometime?”

“I’m a little like Mel that way. Probably the only way.”

Sam laughed. “I get what you’re saying.”

“What’s up with that?” she asked, changing the subject.

“What?” He tried to follow her line of vision, but didn’t catch what she was talking about.

She pointed to a mobile home tucked behind the trees.

“Oh, that. Been here forever. Just didn’t have the sense to have the previous owners tow it away. Wish we did. A damn eyesore.”

Serenity grinned. “Fits in with the sketchy neighborhood. No offense.”

The barbecue splashed some fire, and Sam jumped backward a couple of steps.

“None taken,” he said. “We like the seclusion of the place. Some people pay a premium for it. For others it’s all they can afford.”

Serenity knew what he was talking about. It was the perfect last sunny day of the season.

At least, she thought so.

Sam Castile had seen that look on his wife’s face before. Cold. Bitter. Pissed off.

“She got him a goddamn video game,” Melody said.

Sam turned down the blanket on his side of the bed. “Your point?”

“Jesus, Sam. She’s supposed to be educated. Doesn’t she know that Max will end up a big, fat, stupid couch potato if he hangs out in front of the TV screen playing when he should be doing something better?”

He peeled off his underwear and T-shirt. “She was trying to be nice.”

Melody knew what was coming. She went for the bottom drawer of her dresser and, from a stack of twenty identical undergarments, pulled out a filmy, frilly bra and panties. “She knows how I feel about this stuff. She doesn’t care. Never has. She just does what she wants.”

“Lighten up,” he said, now running his hand over her small breasts. “We do what we want, too.”

Melody was about to make another cutting remark about Serenity but didn’t. Her tirade just then had been a lapse in the kind of control that she needed. She could hate her sister, be jealous of her. She could think anything she wanted. But she wasn’t in control. She never had been.

“I want to play now, babe,” he said. “Been a long day.”

She knew what he wanted, and she rolled over onto her stomach. There was no love in their lovemaking. It was more of a punishment, an endless poking and prodding. A game in which she was always the defeated and he the victor.

Everyone gets what they want,
she thought.
Everyone but me.

Only once since her life became dark and completely undone had Melody Castile reached out to anyone for help. She had phoned Serenity and asked if she’d meet her for lunch at the Shari’s just off Highway 16, near the first Port Orchard exit.

“What’s the occasion?” Serenity asked after the hostess had seated them in a window booth looking out at the highway. “My birthday isn’t for six months.”

Melody wore nineties-style pale blue jeans and an olive sweater. She never had anything new. She looked old, tired. Even her hair, which had been the true marker of her beauty, was dull, pulled back in a loose ponytail held together with a scrunchy.

Who still wears scrunchies? Only my sister, that’s who,
Serenity thought.

Melody ordered coffee and a slice of strawberry pie. Serenity ordered apple. She thought no pie without a top crust was a real pie.

“You look like shit, by the way,” Serenity said.

“Thanks, I needed the compliment. You always know what to say.”

Serenity could see that her sister was troubled. Her eyes stayed fixed on the traffic blur outside. She wanted to tease her more, kick her a little when she was down. There hadn’t been too many times in childhood when the balance of power had been in her favor. They were sisters in name only. Serenity had longed for something closer, something that approximated a genuine bond. She’d given up on that.

If Melody was waving a white flag just then, Serenity didn’t see it.

“So what’s up? Is it Mom?”

Melody set her fork down and looked at her sister. “No. It isn’t. It isn’t Max. It isn’t you. It isn’t Sam. No, really. This is about me.”

“And how you’re stuck out in the country, wasting your precious years?”

Serenity knew the words were harsh, but she’d already let them out of her mouth.

Melody reached for her purse. She pulled out a twenty and put it on the table.

“Never mind,” she said, edging toward the end of the booth.

“Mel, I’m sorry. What did you want to talk about?”

“Nothing. It’s all right. Never mind.”

Melody Castile knew that she was alone. It had happened so slowly that there was never a point at which she could have stopped it.
Alone
. And if she was sleeping with the devil, then she knew just what that made her.

With satellite dishes affixed like mushrooms on rooftops around the residential neighborhoods of Vancouver, getting a feed from U.S. TV networks was no longer the challenge it once was. In the years of rabbit ears and roof- or tree-mounted antennae, it was a lucky family who could pick up Seattle TV stations. Despite the fact that satellite TV brought in the possibility of picking up L.A. or New York TV, old habits died hard. Certainly, Cullen Hornbeck could watch anything he wanted, but he still stayed fixed on Seattle’s venerable KING-TV for its evening news broadcast. Since he traveled to Seattle a couple of times a month on business, it made perfect sense to stay current on the goings-on down there.

It had now been two weeks since his daughter went missing. He’d seen her face in the crowds at the local market. He’d heard her voice over the loudspeaker at the airport. He’d tricked himself at least twice a day into believing that she was all right and it was her finger that was tapping him on the shoulder when no one was there at all.

He splashed some Crown Royal over a couple of cubes of ice.
More
, he thought.

Another splash.

He rolled the smooth, sweet alcohol in his mouth and down his throat. He could feel the slight burn of the whiskey as it sent a shock wave of warmth through his body. The ice crashed against his lips as he swallowed more.

The anchorwoman, a striking blonde who’d been on the air since he was a teenager, announced the next story.

“They are calling her Jane around the morgue in Kitsap County, but they know that’s not her real name. The county coroner is hoping that someone watching this broadcast can help identify her…”

The TV showed a body of water, and a reporter, a black male in a puffy orange vest that made him look more road improvement worker than journalist, started to speak.

“Two Port Orchard boys skipping school two weeks ago found her floating right here in Little Clam Bay.”

Cullen poured another shot, keeping his eyes fixed on the screen. When Skye’s Siamese cat, Miss Anna, rubbed against him, he ignored the impulse to pick her up.