Victim Six (17 page)

“She was young, in her twenties. She was wearing—”

Cullen set down the glass, missing the tabletop. The tumbler shattered, and Miss Anna ran for a place under the table.

The clothes look as though they could be Skye’s. The age is right too.

His heart raced. He disregarded the broken glass and stared at the TV.

“…the young woman’s injuries were so severe that a forensic artist was brought in to re-create what she might have looked like in life.”

A woman identified as the coroner came on the screen. Birdy Waterman held up a drawing. Cullen felt relief wash over him. The image was all wrong. The girl in the rendering had a kind of vacant stare. She wasn’t vibrant and full of life.

Of course,
he told himself right away,
she was dead.

“This is an artist’s representation of what our victim might have looked like. It isn’t a photograph of her,” Dr. Waterman said. “If you are missing someone who approximates this image, please contact the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office.”

The blond woman came back on and read a phone number. Without even thinking, Cullen Hornbeck wrote it down.

It can’t be her. She isn’t dead. She just can’t be.

It passed through his mind that he might not have the courage to dial the number. Not
knowing
still meant hope.

October 7, 10 a.m.
Port Orchard

Kendall Stark and Josh Anderson fielded the calls after the story featuring the Little Clam Bay victim rendering ran in the
Lighthouse
and on TV. Calls came in fits and starts throughout the morning and into the afternoon. Sometimes it was clear that the person on the other end of the line was heartbroken or an attention seeker. Sometimes a little of both.

“Looks like a girl I worked with at the Dinners Done Right on Bethel Avenue.”

“My sister has been missing for two years. Might be her.”

“My aunt.”

“Best friend from high school. I think.”

“My daughter.”

There were dozens of such calls. But only one had some information that promised some real potential.

It was from a man in Vancouver, British Columbia.

“Was the blouse a Trafalgar?” he asked. “My daughter’s missing. I saw that the girl you found was wearing a green blouse.”

Kendall looked at the list of clothing found on the victim.

“Sir,” she said, “how long has your daughter been missing?”

“Three weeks yesterday,” he said. “Is it my daughter that you’ve found?”

Kendall could hear the man’s heart shattering.

“I don’t know. But the blouse is a Trafalgar. Can you come to Port Orchard?”

Kendall had seen the all-consuming look of loss on the faces of others who’d sat in the waiting room, next to the array of magazines on a glass-topped side table. The magazines were well worn but barely read. They were brought in by thoughtful staff members, the address labels neatly removed with scissors. Cullen Hornbeck sat slightly stoop shouldered, as if the air had been let out of his body and he’d refused to take in any more oxygen. His eyes were black buttons, unblinking and sad.

“Mr. Hornbeck?” she asked as she stepped into the room. “I’m Detective Stark.”

He stood and extended his hand.

“Yes, I’m Cullen.” He looked around, catching the eye of the only other person waiting to see law enforcement, a gray-haired woman with a peeled orange and a
People
magazine. The woman went back to her reading.

“Thank you for seeing me,” he said.

“Of course, Mr. Hornbeck. We’ve already sent for your daughter’s dental records. We should have them this afternoon.” She looked at her watch. “Or they could be here even now, waiting in the coroner’s lab for log-in.”

She motioned for him to follow, and the pair meandered through the lobby, behind the receptionist’s desk, past several unoccupied cubicles. She opened a door and led him inside a grim little room with two chairs and a black metal table.

“Coffee?” she asked.

“No, thank you, Detective.”

“All right, then.”

“It has to be Skye,” he said. “The girl you found.” His tone was slightly demanding, and Kendall found it a little off-putting. It was almost as if he was
insisting
that his daughter be identified as the Little Clam Bay victim.

“Sir, as I told you on the phone, we won’t know until we compare her dental records or barring that, DNA from your daughter. You brought her toothbrush?”

“Yes,” he said, his eyes welling with tears. “Right here.” He pulled a bright red toothbrush clad in plastic wrap from his breast pocket and slid it across the table. “I also brought her hairbrush. I know that sometimes that can be helpful.”

“All right. Thank you.”

“Detective, you’ve never asked me why I know that the dead girl is Skye.”

“You saw it on the news.”

Cullen shook his head. “No, that’s not all of it. That’s not how I found you to call. It’s deeper than that.”

He looked at Kendall, wondering how many times she’d been faced with a man in his shoes.

“How is it?”

He took a breath. “I saw her picture on the missing girls’ Web site.”

Kendall was unsure what Internet site he was referring to.

“Sorry? Someone put up a photo of your daughter to help get the word out that she’s missing?”

“No,” he said. “Someone put up a photo of the body you found in Little Clam Bay.”

Kendall had known several cases in which armchair detectives—or cybersleuths, as they liked to call themselves—had put up victims’ photos, sometimes gruesome and offensive images, with the hopes that they’d strike lightning and glean a nugget of truth from the gawkers that flock to such sites. She knew that despite the confiscation of their phones, the images that Devon and Brady took of the dead woman had been floating around the Internet like a heartbreaking calling card.

“I have this feeling in my gut. It is like the blade of a knife stuck in so deep that it presses against my spine. I know that my daughter is dead. I know that she’s never coming back.”

He pulled out a photograph and handed it to her.

It was a pretty young woman wearing the green blouse.

“She’s pretty. Very pretty.”

“Smart too.”

“Where’s Skye’s mother? Has she heard from your daughter?”

Cullen shook his head. He had a hangdog expression that made Kendall want to proceed with gentleness.

“Maybe she knows something.”

“I doubt it. The woman only knows one thing—and that’s how to live her own life, unencumbered. She never loved Skye.”

“I’m sure you’re wrong, Mr. Hornbeck. All mothers love their children.”

“Look, all mothers are supposed to love their children. It is supposed to be automatic, natural. But it isn’t so.”

Kendall looked down, feeling the man’s pain swell to the point where it was palpable. She wanted to argue with him about what Skye’s mother felt. She was sorry for her too. Her daughter was dead, and whatever had transpired between them would never get resolved.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I had no business presuming how anyone felt. That’s between them.”

Cullen looked hard at her.

“That it is,” he said.

“A bay view will be fine,” Cullen Hornbeck said as the Holiday Inn Express clerk slid a plastic key card across the front desk. She was a chubby girl, a brunette with lively brown eyes that she accentuated with a heavy application of mascara. She was younger than Skye and by no means a ringer for Cullen’s daughter, but the front-desk girl’s very aliveness taunted him. Picked at him. She tilted her head as she watched the hotel’s newest guest complete the requisite paperwork. She smiled a friendly smile.

“Canada, huh?”

“I’m afraid so.”

He noticed that the girl wore braces and had three holes pierced into each ear.

Skye had had braces when she was fourteen.

Skye had two…or was it three holes in each ear? How was it that he couldn’t be sure?

“My mom goes up there every six months to get the aspirin with codeine. Can’t get it here.”

Cullen didn’t say a word.

“We have free continental breakfast tomorrow at six. If you’re looking for dinner tonight, the Chinese place across the street is pretty good. Try their rainbow pot stickers and sesame balls.”

“That sounds good,” he said, knowing that the idea of any food whatsoever was the furthest thing from his mind.

His hotel room door secure, Cullen threw his suitcase on the bed and turned on the shower. He turned on the TV, louder than he would need to hear it, but not so loud as to be a nuisance to the other guests. He drew back the bedspread and dropped onto the pillow. He thought of how his daughter had always felt hotel bedspreads and pillows were full of “cooties” and that no one in their right mind would touch his or her bare skin to either. Deep within the folds of the poly foam, he began to scream. At first there were no words but the guttural cries of a man who had lost everything.

Finally, the pillow consumed his grief, keeping his words tucked inside.

“Skye, no! Please come back to us! Come back to me!”

Sam Castile knew the value in “mixing it up,” as he liked to call it when it came to dealing with the women he stalked, used, and discarded. The only method that was off limits was gunfire. Even the most inept police department had access to labs that examined the lans and grooves of a spent bullet. Ballistics ensured that a killer could be traced. That is, of course, if the gun could be found and matched to the killer. Certainly, he could have stolen a gun. But even that upped the ante for the risk of detection. So many killers in the
Encyclopedia of Crime
that he kept on the shelf with other, less useful books had been caught because they’d committed another crime.

Ted Bundy had been pulled over on a traffic violation in Salt Lake City. He’d attempted to elude police by driving through stop signs.
With his headlights off!
When he finally gave up, cops found an ice pick, handcuffs, and a pantyhose mask in the vehicle.

The serial killer’s traveling kit.

The Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez, screwed up his string of fourteen murders in the L.A. area when he was traced to a Toyota stolen from some restaurant goers in the city’s Chinatown. It was, Sam thought, a stupid move. If Ramirez had kept his focus, he’d have been able to keep his string of murders alive.

No killer likes to be told when they are finished doing what they do best.

Aileen Wuornos, who took it upon herself to rid Florida of purported philandering husbands and male abusers by killing the men she picked up for sex, was another one who could have prevailed if she hadn’t been so careless with her associated crimes. She was traced to a stolen car belonging to a dead man. Pawnshop receipts for victims’ belongings were mottled with her fingerprints.

Kill for sport or to make a point, not for money, stupid bitch!

So there he sat, thinking of what he might like to select from his smorgasbord of murder. What would be the most memorable way to steal the life from someone? What would fuel his desires? How would it play back when he remembered? Would it make him hard? Or would it merely frustrate him because there were not enough aspects to conjure a decent erotic fantasy?

Who would it be?

October 8, 9 a.m.
Port Orchard

Lighthouse
publisher Tad Stevens scurried out of his occasional office and stood under the
YOU AUTO BUY
and
LET’S GROW REVENUE
banners that had been plastered on a nearby wall to motivate the long-suffering advertising staff.

“People, I need your attention. People, I need your attention now.”

Mr. Stevens, as he insisted on being called, was the owner of the half dozen small papers that made up the struggling chain that caught the ad revenue and news crumbs that the Seattle papers apparently deemed too insignificant. Mr. Stevens was a remarkably neat man with a small frame, soul patch on his chin, and rimless glasses that held the DG logo of Dolce & Gabbana at the right temple hinge. He lived alone with his two Pomeranians, Hannity and Colmes. Editor Charlie Keller, for one, insisted that everyone in the newsroom show the publisher respect.

“Whenever he’s in the office, be nice,” Charlie had instructed them. “When he’s gone, you can call him
dipshit
if you like.”

No one had a problem following Charlie’s lead.

“People, no one likes the idea of capitalizing on tragedy. But that’s what papers do better than any entity other than maybe police departments and the medical profession,” Mr. Stevens said.

Let’s not forget the lawyers,
Serenity thought.

“We have a golden opportunity to kick some ad revenue and readership butt, team.”

Golden opportunity? I’d like to kick someone’s butt,
she thought some more.
But it isn’t a reader’s or an advertiser’s.

The publisher went on, his enthusiasm swelling: “It appears a serial killer might be at work right here in our own backyard. We’ve got the dead woman in Little Clam Bay and what’s her name…the brush picker.”

Jesus, do you have to be gleeful? Two women are dead. This isn’t the biggest thing to hit Port Orchard since the Wal-Mart went in.

Serenity wanted to say something but stayed quiet. Not something she was particularly good at, either.

“We need to be tough,” he said. “We need to
own
this story. We need to sell our expertise as the local paper with its hand on the pulse of a major case. If this serial killer case gets the kind of traction I’m thinking, we’ll be able to sell photo rights to media outlets across the country.”

He looked over at Serenity but didn’t say her name.

“There will be opportunities for all of us. TV interviews. Maybe even a book. But our focus now is claiming this as a
Lighthouse
exclusive.”

Next he lowered his impeccable DGs and looked over at Travis Janus, the backup sports reporter who also did the paper’s Web site.

“TJ, let’s think out of the box on this. We need to enrich the content that we have up now. I’d like to see photos and docs pertaining to the case. If you need content to connect the dots, Serenity will help out.”

Serenity nodded, but knew that TJ wouldn’t ask her for anything. The Web was his bailiwick. He didn’t take advice from anyone. Supposed computer experts never do.

“You see this?”

Steven Stark, sweaty from his early-morning run from their place to Manchester’s boat launch and back, handed Kendall the morning’s edition of the
Lighthouse
. Cody was at the table waiting for a pancake and Kendall set down the spatula.

SERIAL KILLER STALKING KITSAP?

The story with Serenity Hutchins’ byline ran at the top of the front page and featured two photographs. The first appeared to be Skye Hornbeck’s high school photograph; the other was one of the images that Tulio Pena had provided for the feature story that ran after his girlfriend, Celesta, was reported missing.

“She makes a reasonable case that the two are connected,” Steven said.

“Oh, she does, does she?”

“I’m just saying,” Steven said, taking a seat at the table.

Kendall started to read while the pancake on the griddle began to burn. Serenity noted how the women were of approximately the same age, on the petite side, and both wore their hair long.

“She’s describing half the county,” Kendall said, looking up at Steven. “I thought that was a stretch. But that’s not where she won me over.”

Kendall read on as the
Lighthouse
reporter indicated that the fact that both dead women had been butchered in too similar a fashion to ignore. She’d interviewed a profiler who lived on the Internet and offered no real credentials but was always handy with a quote. The article concluded with an over-the-top line that made Kendall wince and her husband laugh.

“Boston had its Strangler. New York had Son of Sam. Are we being plagued by the Kitsap Cutter?”

Steven got up from his chair and flipped the burning pancake.

“She’s trying to sell some papers,” he said. “Nothing more, I’d wager.”

Kendall put the
Lighthouse
on the counter and squeezed some syrup on Cody’s short stack.

“Only one problem, honey,” she said, hesitating a little. “We’ve never released the extent of Skye’s injuries.”

“Wasn’t she there when the body was pulled from the water?”

She put the plate in front of her son and watched for a second.

“Want Mommy to feed you?” she asked. Sometimes Cody didn’t want any help. This, it turned out, was one of those mornings. He took the fork and started to eat. Kendall looked back at Steven, who was flipping another pancake.

“What was the problem, Kendall?” Steven asked, obviously curious.

“Serenity was there at the crime scene, but she couldn’t have seen what Dr. Waterman and I observed during the autopsy. We’ve never released the information about the cuts to her breasts.”

“Then how did she know that?” he asked.

Kendall set down her coffee. “That’s what I’d like to find out.”

Kendall Stark shut her car door with so much force, she actually slammed it. Josh Anderson, snuffing out a cigarette in the parking lot of the Sheriff’s Office, winced from twenty yards away. His startled look was the only good thing that had happened since her husband pointed out the lead article in the newspaper.

“Did you tell her about Skye Hornbeck’s wounds?”

Josh looked as blank as he could. “Tell who?” he asked.

Kendall crossed her arms and stared at him. She kept her voice calm, but there was no mistaking how she felt. “Don’t bullshit me, Josh. Did you tell Serenity Hutchins about the condition of Skye’s body?”

He shook his head. “No. Why would I?”

“Because you think she’s hot for you. Or something like that. The older you get, the more stupid you get.”

Josh took a step back. He’d never seen Kendall so heated.

“Look, I never told anyone about that,” he said.

She jabbed a finger at him. “Like I’m going to believe you? Look, I know you’ve been seeing her. What is she, twenty-one?”

“No. I don’t know. I haven’t told her anything.”

Kendall knew that her face was red, but she didn’t care.

“We look really stupid, you know.”

“Is that what this is about? Looking stupid, Kendall?”

Kendall turned to go inside. He was partially right, of course.

“Don’t even go there,” she said. “If we have a serial killer, then we have bigger worries than anyone’s ego. That includes yours and mine.”

Josh followed her inside, but Kendall was too angry to say anything more to him. When they found their offices, she shut the door. A blinking red light on her phone indicated a message. She dialed the code for her voice mail.

The voice was familiar.

“Detective Stark, is it true? Did this Kitsap Cutter kill Celesta?”

It was Tulio Pena. His voice was in shards.

Kendall felt a kind of sickness wash over her. It was the feeling that came from letting down someone who had depended on her. She could blame Josh for leaking information to Serenity. She could even blame him for insisting that Celesta’s murder had been the result of a turf battle over floral greens. She could even tell herself just then that she had done the best she could.

But that was a lie.

“I want you to call me,” he said. “I want you to tell me that you are still trying to find who killed Celesta.”

Kendall hung up and drew a deep breath. She dialed Tulio’s number. Her heart was heavier than the anchor her father had used to lock their boat into a fishing spot on the east side of Blake Island when she was a girl.

“I’m so sorry,” she began, “that you had to read that in the paper…”

As she spoke to Tulio, she had no idea that things were about to get worse.

Margo Titus had done her job and the outcome was what she’d prayed for: an identity revealed. She put away the files that she’d accumulated on the case. It was always a great relief to store the bits and pieces she’d used to help find out who was who. While the vacant-eyed Janes looked on, Margo’s eyes landed on the autopsy photo. For the first time she noticed a series of very faint red impressions on the victim’s neck.

Skye Hornbeck’s neck,
she corrected her thoughts.

She dialed Kendall’s cell number.

“I was just thinking of you, Margo,” Kendall said. “I meant to call. I’m guessing you heard the news.”

“It isn’t about that. They don’t always end this way. I’m glad that this one worked out.”

“Me too.”

They talked about the case, the cause of death, the fact that Kendall had been in touch with Skye’s father.

“I don’t know if it is anything,” Margo finally said. “I was looking at the photos, and I noticed marks on her neck. I don’t know if you have a serial up there or a onetime psychopath, but he might have taken a trophy.”

Kendall, pulled the photos and began flipping through them. “A necklace?”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

“Her father mentioned one.”

“If the killer took it, he took it without unclasping it.”

Kendall saw the series of faint red marks in one of the autopsy photos.

“I see it.”

“Of course, I could be wrong. But I worked a case in Red Bluff where the perp kept all his vics’ brassieres in a laundry bag under his bed. One in Oklahoma City kept his vics’ earrings.”

Kendall Stark stood in line behind the other county workers looking for their caffeine buzz. She’d had a restless night with Cody and the case. The press accounts fueled by Serenity Hutchins hadn’t helped, either. She wasn’t sure right then what was weighing most heavily on her mind. Her son didn’t—or couldn’t—use words to indicate that the Inverness School had been a stunning disappointment for him too. It was hard to gauge a shift in his awareness. At times, he showed no emotion whatsoever.

Kendall, who didn’t favor a foundation for her makeup, applied some concealer under her eyes. Her hair was in need of a cut or a double-dose of hair product. She didn’t look good, and she didn’t need anyone to tell her so. What she needed was that mocha.

She felt an abrupt peck on her shoulder, and she turned around. It was Serenity Hutchins.

“I know you don’t think much of me,” Serenity said.

Kendall let out a sigh and knew she’d lost her place in line. There was no way they were going to have that conversation right there. She indicated for Serenity to follow her to a table by a large window filled with the view of the inlet. They sat facing each other.

“It isn’t about you. It isn’t personal,” Kendall said.

Serenity was upset, but it was unclear right then if she was angry or embarrassed. She’d gone after Kendall, but she seemed to pull back a little.

“I’m doing the best that I can,” she said. “I’m trying to get at the truth.”

Kendall knew better than to say what she was thinking, but she couldn’t stop herself.

“Look, I just don’t like your methods, Serenity.”

“My methods?”

Kendall allowed a slight glare of condemnation to zero in on Serenity’s unblinking eyes.

“Yes, your methods. I really don’t want to get into it. Can we leave it alone?”

“No. We can’t. I have a job to do too.”

Kendall looked out the window. “Fine. We all do.”