Victim Six (33 page)

Late summer
Port Orchard

Serenity Hutchins woke up in the blackness of a mild summer night. She heard a noise coming from the kitchen of her Mariner’s Glen apartment. She opened her phone to see the time; it was almost 2
A.M
. She’d had a hard time sleeping since the ordeal in the Fun House, and she’d made plans to pack up and move to Seattle. A call from Kendall Stark that afternoon that Sam Castille had been beaten to death in a prison holding cell had brought an unsettling mix of relief, anger, and sadness.
Just like Dahmer
, she thought.

She slipped her arms through the sleeves of a kimono that had belonged to her mother and navigated past boxes, rolls of tape, and a deluge of things she was either going to throw away or give to charity. Cautiously, she followed the noise down the hallway into the kitchen.

Her feet slipped a little on the wet floor.

Serenity flipped the switch on the ceiling light, and a drip of blood caught her eye. It was also smeared on the cheap cabinetry surrounding the sink. Her heart raced.

“Max!” she called out, running back down the hall toward the second bedroom.

Her nephew was sitting upright in bed.

She turned on the sailboat lamp on the bed stand. “Honey, are you all right? What happened?”

Max blinked away the bright light. “I’m okay,” he said.

She put her arms around him and held him.

“Did you cut yourself?”

He shook his head.

“I saw some blood in the kitchen.” She pulled his hands out from under the covers.

Clean. Good. He’s okay.

The next morning, the kitchen was clean. No blood anywhere. Serenity dismissed what she thought she’d seen. It had been a reaction to the stress of all she’d endured. The conselor she was seeing had told her it would take time to heal. To start over.

When she called for Mr. Smith to come to his full food dish, the cat was nowhere to be found. She called for her cat over and over, but no answer. Also missing was the box cutter that she’d set out on the dining table with other moving supplies. Its bloody tip wiped clean, the blade was wrapped up in a towel under the bathroom sink.

The author would like to thank David Chesanow, Jessica Wolfe, Tina Marie Brewer, Bunny Kuhlman, Jim Thomsen, and Charles Turner for their help in getting this book ready for readers.

To best-in-the-business editor Michaela Hamilton, literary agent Susan Raihofer, and film agent Joel Gotler: I greatly value all that each of you do on my behalf. Also, much appreciation to Kensington’s tireless Doug Mendini, who might have the most important job of all: seeing that my books get into the hands of booksellers across America and Canada.

I’d like to give a shout out to the reference librarians at the Peninsula Library in Gig Harbor for being so accommodating and giving me a home away from home—Joy, Adam, Beverly, and Lynn, you are the best.

While this is a work of fiction, I do want to acknowledge the time taken and the tours given by various Kitsap law enforcement offices. Thank you to Sheriff Steve Boyer, Detective Lt. Earl Smith, Corrections Sgt. Steve Lawson, and Deputy Scott Wilson of the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office. Thanks also to Kitsap County Coroner Greg Sandstrom for the tour of the old coroner’s office.

Last, but surely not least, I’d like to acknowledge my beautiful and smart daughters, Morgan and Marta, and the love of my life, Claudia.

TURN THE PAGE FOR AN EXCITING PREVIEW OF GREGG OLSEN’S NEXT EXPLOSIVE THRILLER

COMING FROM PINNACLE IN 2011

She knew setting the stage was as crucial as it was easy. All one had to do was think like a CSI or a cop. Maybe a little like a nosy mother-in-law. She’d had a few of those to contend with, too. Ultimately, she knew that no detail was too frivolous. Even the mundane had to be considered, very carefully. The point of setting the stage was to ensure that she was in the final act.

The act that had her getting everything she ever wanted.

The plasma over the fireplace was playing Bill O’Reilly’s Fox TV show. Her husband loved the anchorman’s take on politics, business, and culture. He even drank from a “Culture Warrior” mug.

She considered the newsman an insufferable blowhard.

She felt the chill of the air conditioner as she stood nude behind the sofa.

“Babe, how about a piece of that pie,” he said, his eyes fixed on the screen.

She exhaled, fired, and pulled the gun from his head. Blood spurted like a stomped-on catsup package. Specks of red freckled her glove-covered arm. There was likely more blood than she could see with the naked eye, but that was fine. She knew how to handle it. She’d planned for it. He gurgled a little, but it wasn’t the sound of a man fighting for his life. That was over. It was the sound of air and gas oozing from his trachea. He slumped over. She made her way to the shower, already running. She pulled off the glove and set it inside a trash can lined with plastic. The water was ice cold by then. Even for her, it had taken considerable effort to summon the nerve to do what she had wanted to do. She hated cold.

Gunfire was messy.

Blowback is hell.

Spatter matters.

And only time will tell.

It was a kind of verse that she’d conjured that moment, and she allowed a smile to cross her lips as the icy water poured over her. She looked down at her legs, long, lovely. Flawless.

But not for long.

The water had gone from crimson, to pink, to clear, swirling down the drain between her painted toes. She turned off the shower and reached for a towel. As she patted her face dry she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror.

Still lovely. Still rich
.
Even more so at that very moment than she’d ever been in her life.

She poked her arms through the sleeves of a sheer white nightgown and let the filmy fabric tumble down her body. This was part of setting the stage. Her augmented breasts—not freakishly so, just enough to arouse a man when she needed to—would protrude only slightly. She’d act modest and embarrassed, but if the cops on the scene were under fifty, they’d be looking where they shouldn’t.

A distraction. One of many.

She poured a plastic cup of bleach down the shower drain and ran the water while she counted to ten.

Grabbing the waste can liner with the glove and the empty plastic bleach cup nestled inside, she hurried back into the living room and surveyed the scene. Exactly seven minutes had passed since she pulled the trigger propelling the slug into her unsuspecting…pie-waiting…TV watching…husband. It was important for her to get on with it. The pool of blood around his head would began to congeal and her story would not seem so plausible. She knocked the contents atop the coffee table to the floor. Using her hip, she pushed over a potted button fern. Black soil scattered over an Oriental rug. A drawer in a sideboard was pulled to the floor. Knives fell like gleaming pixie sticks.

It looked like a struggle. Not much of one, but one that could have taken place in the moments that she’d later describe.

Next, she put on a second rubber kitchen glove—the long kind that ran from fingertips to elbow—and picked up the gun. She was grateful for all the things that money could buy just then. Pilates. Yoga. Tai chi. She’d taken all those courses with the other rich bitches. They never accepted her, but that didn’t matter. She wasn’t there to get to know them. She was there to limber up. She bent down and twisted her shoulder as she pointed the gun at her leg and fired.

She didn’t cry out.

Instead, she bit her lip and started toward the door. She was no longer concerned about blood and where it fell. In the throes of her imagined escape, there could be blood anywhere.
His or hers
. She left the door open, and started to pick up the pace by the koi pond that had been the labor of love, apparently, of the previous owners. She didn’t love anything or anyone. Except, of course, a brimming bank account. She bent down, her nightgown now more red than white. She’d missed her femoral artery, of course. But she hadn’t expected that much blood.

Good thing the neighbor’s still home
, she thought, looking through the open wrought-iron gate to the property next door, a beam of light slashing a through the coiffed foliage.

She slipped the gun into the plastic bag, dropped in a three-pound lead weight, and deposited it into the koi pond. Each time she moved her leg she let out a yelp. Then a scream. Finally she turned on the tears.

One notch at a time.

Colton Fulton couldn’t sleep and was watching TV. He wasn’t sure if it was the crab cakes or the fight he’d had with his daughter. He was queasy and uneasy all at the same time. He scrolled through the satellite guide. Nothing was on. Nothing good, anyway. It was a muggy night, the kind with thick, choking air and without even a twitchy breeze to vibrate the feathery tops of the Pampas grass that divided his home from the neighbors.

Oh, the neighbors.
He’d heard them arguing earlier in the evening. They’d barely moved in and they seemed to never miss the opportunity to seize the attention of everyone within earshot and eyesight. New car. New landscaping. New this.
New that.
Colton had been alone for more than a year and knew that his days of keeping up with anyone were long gone. At 55, and divorced, Colton Fulton was going to have to make do with the residual trappings of the life he’d once known. Before the asshole with the Porsche scooped up his wife and left him in the dust. She’s been the proverbial trophy wife, with tits that stood like Twin Peaks when she was on her back.

The best money could buy. That he could buy.

Colton’s time had passed. Not those two next door. They were on the way up. Up and more up.

He hoisted himself up from the couch and went to the kitchen, where he poured himself a glass of wine, dropping an ice cube into the slightly amber liquid. He didn’t care if ice cubes in wine was some big faux pas. Hell, it was Chablis out of a box, for Christ’s sake. Bored and tired, he flipped through television shows recorded earlier in the week before settling on an Oprah broadcast that celebrated all the things he’d need to do to have his “best life.”

“My best life was five, no, ten years ago,”
he thought.

Another sip. A guzzle. And he hoped that sleep would come right then and there on the couch that he and Teri had picked out together. When he was carefree. When he was climbing the corporate ladder with the vigor and grit of a man who knew that he’d have the world in his hands. Always. Forever.

And just like that his pity party for one was over.

He thought he heard a sound at the door. His ex-wife’s cat Darcy scooted under the dining table in the other room. How he hated that damn cat. Colton looked at his mantel clock and determined that he must have misheard. It was after eleven, too late for a visitor. He turned up the volume. A moment later, the unmistakable sound of a fist bumping the pane glass center of the front door.

“Who’d be over at this hour?” he muttered to himself as he went toward the door.

He turned on the overhead light and let out a gasp.

The glass inset was smeared in blood.

“God, what’s happened?” he asked, moving closer to get a better view. In that instant when reality is suppressed for a more plausible, a more acceptable scenario, he allowed himself to think that a bird might have lost its way in the dark, hitting the widow and splattering is blood. Yet, at once, he knew that there was too much blood for that.

The bloody smear looked like a big red octopus.

Or the shape of a human hand.

Without considering any risk to his personal safety, the now underemployed sales executive turned the lock and swung open the door.

Wilting on the front steps was a female figure, a woman in her nightgown. It must have been a white nightgown, but now it was bloodred. The woman’s hair was wet. She was lying there, making the kind of guttural sounds that people do as they fight for their last breath.

“Good God,” Colton said, dropping to his knees. “What happened?”

The woman, curled in a defensive ball, lifted her damp head. Her hands were smeared with blood.

“Help,” she said.

He knew her. He’d seen her going in and out of the big brick Tudor across the street. He couldn’t remember her name.

“I need an ambulance,” she said.

“Of course you do. I’ll call for one now.”

“Not for me,” she said. “My husband. He’s been shot, too. We’ve both been shot. He needs help. Oh dear God. Help me. Help him!”

“What happened?”

“A man got in. Our security system is down. He got in the house to rob us. He shot us. He shot my husband.”

Colton paced. It was all happening so fast. He was slightly drunk from the cheap wine and he knew it. He wasn’t sure right then if he should go for his phone—charging in the kitchen—or get something to help stop the bleeding.

“Are you going to call for help? I need help, too!” the woman said, struggling to her feet.

He made no attempt to keep her from coming in but slammed the door shut behind her and turned the deadbolt. The SOB who’d shot his neighbor was out there. His ex-wife had a thing against guns, so he no longer had any in the house. She’d taken everything from him. Everything but the cat, the mortgage, and the damned leather sofa.

“Yeah, dialing now.”

The woman who had staggered from the front door to the sofa was crying loudly, loud enough to be heard by the 911 dispatcher.

Setting the stage. That’s right.

He knelt next to her as he gave his address to the dispatcher. He looked in to her fearful eyes. “It’s my neighbor…Ms….”

“Connelly,” she said, “Rachel Connelly. My husband…my husband
is
Alex Connelly.”

Jesus, of course. Alex Connelly, the bigwig at Charles Schwab. He was rich, successful, and now, dead.

If there was something to be grateful for, it was that he was alive.
It wasn’t much,
Colton thought,
but it was better than the sap next door.

Riley O’Neal stared at the blank face of her computer screen. French roast coffee perfumed the confines of her open concept home office. She watched her Siamese fighting fish, Rusty, blow bubbles on the surface of the brandy snifter that was his home. It was just before 6
A.M
., and she had time to polish a chapter of the true crime book that she’d been working on—with renewed vigor—since the
Seattle P-I
shuttered its newsroom after more than a century of being the “newspaperman’s newspaper.”

Her cell phone rang. Her eyes darted to the tiny screen, but she did not recognize the number. It was too early for a source to call. Neither was it a number for one of the other reporters who regularly called to commiserate about their futures in a post–newspaper employment world. The area code was 630, which was unfamiliar. A beat later, the caller tried a second time.

It must be urgent
, she thought. She clapped the phone to her ear.

“Hello?”

“Riley?”

The voice was a whisper.

“This is Riley O’Neal,” she said.

“Riley, this is your sister.”

Riley no longer needed the early morning jolt of a mud-thick French roast. The words were a cattle prod in her heart.

“Rae?”

Silence.

“Rae? Is that you?”

“I’m in the hospital. I’ve been hurt. I need you.”

“Where?”

“In the leg. I’ve been shot.”

“Oh my, but no,
where
are you?

“Mercy.”

Riley felt her adrenaline pulse. She needed more information. She had no idea in which city her sister had resided. They were twins, but they hadn’t spoken in seven years.

“Chicago,” Rachel said. “Please come.”

“What happened?”

“An intruder. I was shot. My husband was killed.”

Husband?
Riley had no idea that Rachel had married. Again.

“Will you come? I need your help.”

“What kind of help?”

Again, an awkward silence, the kind that invites the person waiting to hear to press the phone tighter to her ear.

“They’re whispering about me…I think they think I did this,” she said.

“I’ll be there,” Riley said, coming to her sister’s aid.

Once more.

She hung up and looked across the room at a photograph of two little girls posing in ballet tights on a balance beam. Their hair was blond, eyes blue. Everything about them was the same, but in reverse. Like looking into a mirror. Riley’s hair parted naturally on the left side of her face, Rachel’s on the right. Riley’s upper left lip had a mole, Rachel had hers—on the right side—removed when she was 14. Their mother dressed them alike until junior high. No one could tell them apart. They were so close.
So identical.

Yet they were not the same. Not by a mile.