Victim Six (9 page)

“I’ll do whatever Charlie says,” she finally said. She knew that he’d been involved in the Zodiac case in San Francisco, at least on the periphery. The papers there had been used as a conduit for messages between the purported killer and the police. Ultimately, Serenity felt, everyone had looked bad because the case was never solved.

After Charlie and Serenity filed out, Josh turned and whispered in Kendall’s ear.

“I’ll work on her. I’ll get her to agree.”

Two hours later, Josh showed up in Kendall’s office carrying a paper Starbucks coffee cup. He had, apparently, gone out. He could be a selfish jerk at times, but usually office protocol dictated that anyone who went out specifically for lunch or coffee would make the rounds to see if anyone wanted something.

“The girl said she’d do it,” he said.

“What girl?”

“Serenity Hutchins said she’d let us run a tap on her line. She had one condition, and I agreed to it.”

Kendall set aside the meager case file and studied Josh.

“What agreement?”

“She doesn’t want her boss to know. He’s a freak about it. She’s scared. I said we’d do it.”

Kendall hesitated a minute. “When?”

“Tonight. That pervert said he’d call her tonight.”

April 13, 8 p.m.
Key Peninsula, Washington

As she prepared herself for an evening with her husband, Melody Castile climbed into the shower and let the water run over her body. She set aside a pink plastic razor and some shaving foam and spread her legs. While Sam called for her to hurry, she went about the business of shaving her most private areas.

Although, she knew, there was no privacy whatsoever.

It had started with small things.

Melody wore her hair shoulder length when she and Sam Castile first met. He complimented her on the color and style, saying that he’d never seen a woman’s hair with such a sheen.

“Like the sun is shining through you.”

Three months into their relationship, Melody decided to surprise him with a new look. She had her hair shorn. She thought the haircut was stylish, sophisticated.

Sam hit her.
Hard.
“You’re stupid, Melody. You looked so sexy and hot before. Now you look like some boring chick from Bremerton. Pop out some kids, get fat, and be nothing.”

His words hurt, and she never cut her hair again.

Six months into their relationship, Sam asked her to drop the rest of her life and move in with him. He’d bought some property down on the Key Peninsula and was going to build a house. They’d live in a travel trailer down there, with no running water, no cell phone service, and no power.

Melody told her family about it, making it sound as though she and Sam were going to be living off the land as they built their dream house.

“He wants to use the actual logs on the property. Isn’t that cool?” she asked, her eyes sparkling with excitement.

Serenity, still at home, caught the disapproving looks of her parents. No one really liked Sam or thought that he was a good match for Melody. Even before they married a full year later, the couple had completely fallen off the family grid. When Serenity was still in junior high, she and her parents drove out to the peninsula to see the new house. They waited in the unfinished living room on lawn furniture for about a half an hour before Melody emerged from the back bedroom. She was so pale and thin that her mother gasped.

“Honey,” she said, “are you all right?”

Melody looked at Sam. “I’m fine. Just tired. It’s a lot of work to get this place in order. We barely have time to eat and catch our breath around here.”

A moment later Sam started the tour, pointing out all that he’d done and chiding his bride for being “Miss Lazy” and not doing enough to help. Melody laughed it off, but Serenity thought that there was no real laughter behind her eyes.

The bedroom was dominated by an enormous four-poster made of alder logs that had been peeled and oiled to a tawny sheen. A stuffed grouse fluttered in a corner; a deer head hung over the back window—trophies testifying to a man’s hobby. Serenity caught her mother’s eyes riveted to the headboard where two large steel hooks had been sunk into the wood and oily leather straps dangled. Everyone noticed the hooks, but no one remarked on them.

After the tour, Melody served ice tea and sandwiches. The conversation was a bit strained, and then at exactly 2
P.M
. she stood up and thanked everyone for coming.

“I have chores to do now. So you’ll all have to go.”

“We’ve only been here an hour,” her mother said.

“And we’ve enjoyed every minute,” Sam said. “But Mel’s right. We’ve got things to do, and we have to get them done.”

Serenity went to embrace her sister good-bye, but Melody pulled back slightly. She’d never been much of a hugger, but it was a cold reaction that seemed in keeping with this strange afternoon visit.

“Something’s going on there,” she said in the car as they began driving home.

“The only question I have,” her mother said, “is why in the world anyone would want to live all the way out here in the middle of nowhere. It seems so remote.”

Her husband leaned his head out the window as he backed up, not wanting to hit a pile of lumber crowding the dirt driveway.

“Bingo. You’ve got the reason.”

For the next two nights, Kendall, Josh, and a tech named Porter Jones showed up in Serenity’s Mariner’s Glen apartment. They’d set up a feed that ran the phone through a listening and recording device. Of course, a tap could have been set up off location, but that would require a judge and there’d be a lot more heat about “freedom” of the press. Serenity didn’t seem to care about that right then. While she wanted to advance her career, she wanted to prove that the voice she was hearing was not some kook, but the voice of a killer.

A telemarketer called twice.

Josh looked at her. “You know, you can get on a ‘do not call’ list.”

“Thanks for the tip,” she said.

“Serenity,” Kendall said, “are you sure you’re getting calls on this line?”

Serenity’s eyes went cold. “Yes, I’m sure.”

“That’s what she says,” Josh cut in.

Kendall let out a sigh, but held her tongue. It was interesting that Serenity would have some new blog post or article just about every other day. Where was her source? Why hadn’t he called?

If he was real at all.

Kendall got up to take a break from the huddle around the dinette table. She stepped over the sleeping tabby cat, Mr. Smith, through the living room to the apartment’s sole bathroom. Next to the sink, she noticed an open shaving kit. It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that Serenity Hutchins probably had a boyfriend.

“I didn’t know you were seeing someone,” Kendall said. “The shaving kit.”

Serenity barely looked at her.

“That’s my dad’s,” she said. “He stayed over last week.”

April 18, 11:15 a.m.
Port Orchard

It was a crystalline morning without the fog that had coated Sunnyslope for the past several days. Certainly the mist burned off by the early afternoon, but for morning people like Trevor Jones, the muslin shroud over the woods was a complete and undeniable downer. He longed for his home in the Midwest, where most mornings—no matter the season—started with a sky patched with blue. It seemed that when it wasn’t raining in the Northwest, it was foggy. At least on his days off. He threw a leg over his mountain bike, called for his Labrador, Cindy, and went for a ride. He thought he’d pedal through Sunnyslope, toward the Bremerton Airport, then maybe as far as Belfair, a town along the southern shores of Hood Canal. Cindy would see him only as far as the end of the driveway: The invisible fencing collar that she wore had reminded her that, as much as she’d like to go with Trevor, she had to stop.

“Sorry about the force field, Cindy!” Trevor said as he spun out toward the road.

The dog looked forlornly at him and then turned around.

“Good girl!”

Trevor had twenty bucks in his wallet, a bottle of water, and the conviction that at twenty-nine he was still allowed to take the time for a Saturday ride. He put in long hours in the metal shop at the shipyard, and outside of tipping back a few beers on Friday nights and video games during the week, this was the extent of his fun. His wife, Crystal, was back in their tidy home, sewing a top that she intended to wear to a luncheon at the Central Kitsap School District office, where she worked as an aide.

Trevor pedaled toward the entrance to the woods, then turned down a pathway that looped through part of the forest before joining the road near the airport. His heart was pumping as he went up a little rise, his wheels cutting into the coffee-black soil, his iPod on shuffle mode. He stopped to catch his breath at the top of the rise and took a drink of water. A breeze fanned the beads of sweat on his face.

He noticed a tangle of long dark hair draped over some old deadfall and assumed that horseback riders had been through the area.

As he took another sip, his eyes returned to the clump of hair. It was shiny and fine.

Too fine for horsehair.

He got off his bike to get a closer look.

It was a considerable clump, maybe fifty strands. It looked remarkable not only for its silkiness but also for the violence with which it had been removed. It was held together on one end by what looked like small patch of skin.

Jesus
, he thought, recalling the article about the missing brush picker, Celesta Delgado, who had been featured in this latest edition of the newspaper.
That brush picker must have been attacked by a bear. I’m getting the hell out of here.

But before he did, he took out his cell phone and punched in three digits: 9-1-1.

Kendall Stark looked down at the tuft of hair on the steel table in the center of Kitsap County’s mini crime lab, a cinderblock-walled room that had the vibe of a sinister high school chemistry lab. The lab, with both rudimentary and sophisticated forensic science equipment, was the central location where all evidence was processed. On the far wall was an old aquarium used for superglue testing for latent fingerprints; black and infrared lights that could pinpoint the location of blood or semen on a garment; and a series of images that showed various blood-spatter configurations. In the event that something required more refined analysis, it was dispatched to the labs operated by the state in Olympia or even to the FBI.

Kendall turned the clump of hair with her latex-gloved fingertip and reached for a tape measure. The strands were fifteen inches long and held together by a tag of human skin that had dried to pliable leather.
Human Naugahyde
. She rotated the sample once more under the flat overhead light.

“That the bicyclist even found this is a bit of a miracle,” Josh said, entering the room. “Has he been checked out?”

“He’s clean. Just sharp-eyed,” Kendall said.

“Our dogs turned up nothing more? Just this?”

“That’s right,” she answered. “Nothing else.”

She put the sample into a clear plastic envelope and fixed a bar-coded sticker with a name and case number to the bottom edge of the packet.

“Off to Olympia,” she said. The state lab was already running a DNA test against samples recovered from Celesta Delgado’s hairbrush and toothbrush.

“Must have been a knock-down, drag-out there in the woods. You know, a place so remote no one could hear her scream,” Josh said as he followed Kendall into the hallway.

“At least two people must have heard her scream,” she said. “Celesta and her abductor.”

She was right, of course.

Where was Celesta Delgado?

“Call for you, Serenity. On two.”

Serenity Hutchins nodded at Miranda Jacobs, who commanded the phones outside the editor’s and sales director’s offices for all it was worth. Miranda, who never knew a day when a low-cut top and short skirt weren’t appropriate for the office, was the gatekeeper, the story fielder, the person with the heads-up on anything worth buying out of the
Lighthouse
’s classified section before it even found its way into the paper.

Serenity set down her coffee and answered the blinking light on her office desk phone. She pressed the earpiece to her ear by lifting her shoulder.

“Article’s a little thin on the facts,” came a husky voice over the line.

“Most are,” she said. “Which one are you talking about?”

There was a short silence. The caller moved something over the mouthpiece, sending a static crackle sound into Serenity’s ear.

“The one about the brush picker.” Another silence. Another muffled noise.

Serenity let out a sigh. She’d been a reporter long enough to know that readers always expected more than deadlines sometimes allowed. It wasn’t as if there was any real information in the article, at least not anything that she could have really screwed up.

“Can I help you?” she finally asked.

“No, you can help yourself.” The tone was unpleasantly cold.

“How’s that?” she asked. “Did I make an error in the story?”

“Not an error of the kind you’re probably imagining. An error of omission, that’s all.”

Serenity could feel her blood pump a little. “Just who is this, please?”

A slight hiss, then: “I’m the one who could tell you everything that happened to her.”

His words came at her with the unmistakable air of authority, and they jolted her a little.
Everything. That. Happened. To. Her.

Serenity looked around the room, trying to catch eye contact with someone—anyone. Miranda Jacobs had her face glued to her computer screen. No one else was in the newsroom.

“You’re an asshole to make a crank call like this. And I don’t care if you’re a subscriber.”

The voice on the phone laughed. “Oh, I’m not, Serenity. I’m a fan of your work. I just think you could use a little more depth in your reporting. Maybe I could tell you what happened. Like I did the other night.”

Serenity banged her stapler on her desk and finally caught Miranda’s eyes. She got up from her computer and started toward the young reporter.

“Who are you?”

“One who could tell you everything,” he said.

Her face was flushed by then. “Then start talking. Tell me what you think I should know.”

But the line went dead.

“Hello? You still there, creep?”

Miranda was standing in front of Serenity’s desk by then. “What was that all about? Are you okay? Did that guy say something awful to you?”

Serenity shook her head. “It was that crank caller. Said he knew more about the missing brush picker out in Sunnyslope.”

Miranda searched Serenity’s eyes. “You sure he was
that
crank?” she asked. “You look scared.”

Serenity relaxed a little and set down her phone. “Just a little unnerved. Did he call in on the eight hundred line?”

Miranda nodded. “Afraid so. Creepy
and
cheap.”

Calls coming through on the toll-free line were untraceable on the phone console’s ID.

“I wish those guys who get their rocks off calling in to the paper with bullshit theories about things would just get a life.”

“Did he have a theory on the girl?”

Serenity shrugged. “I think so. He said he could tell me everything.”

“Everything that was in the paper, I’ll bet. And, sorry, but you know there wasn’t much in there. No offense.”

Serenity hated Miranda a little more just then. The
Lighthouse
wasn’t the
Washington Post
, but she didn’t have to rub it in. She worked there too, for goodness sakes.

“Maybe you should tell the Sheriff’s Office?” Miranda suggested.

Serenity thought about it for a moment. “I suppose I could, but I really don’t have anything to tell them. We all get crazy calls.”

“That’s the truth.”

Miranda went back to answering the phone.

Outside of Gleeson’s Grocery, one of those locals-only mini-marts that was Key Center’s primary gathering place, was a bulletin board. Before the Internet and even before the local paper started a Key section, the bulletin board had been the primary vehicle for yard boys filling in the long days of summer, loggers looking for extra work as homeowners sought to improve their views of slate-gray Puget Sound, and house-cleaners in search of “mobile home or mansion” clients.

The boy and his father went past the bulletin board without so much as a sideways glance.

Inside, Gleeson’s was packed with DVDs on one wall, a “hot case” of fried foods on the other, and a small bin of produce, mostly of the kind that kept well: onions, potatoes, and head lettuce. The rest of the store was laid out like a bowling alley, with long, narrow lanes and shelves of canned goods on either side.

Dan Gleeson smiled at the man and the boy, a warm look of recognition on his face.

“Haven’t seen you in a blue moon.”

Sam Castile smiled. “Been a while. Nice to have some time off. Me and the boy are going out on the boat.”

“Weather’s been rough lately.”

“Yeah, it has.”

Dan looked at Max, who stood silently beside his father. “What can I get you? Turkey jerky? Healthy stuff, you know.”

Sam answered for Max. “Nope, we want the nastiest, greasiest corn dogs you’ve got rolling around that hot case of yours.” He looked at his boy; the kid was smiling ear to ear.

A girl behind the cash register rang up the sale as the store owner handed over a couple of corn dogs and packets of yellow mustard.

The man’s eyes landed on the counter. Light-blue flyers were stacked next to a pink one that advertised a food drive at the fire station later that week.

“The girl’s dad brought those in. Said I’d hand them out. Posted one on the bulletin board too.”

Sam’s heartbeat quickened, but he didn’t show a trace of concern. “Never a dull moment around here.”

“You got that right.”

He took a flyer and promised to post it. The headline was in big handwritten letters:

Have You Seen Her?

“Look familiar?” Dan Gleeson asked.

Sam shrugged and started for the door, his son trotting after him with a mouthful of nearly incandescent yellow mustard and batter-dipped hotdog. “The young pretty ones all look alike to me.”

“That they do.”

As he got in his vehicle, he noticed the blue flyer on the bulletin board flapping in the chilly breeze off the water.

Have You Seen Her?

He had.

No matter what she told Josh Anderson or Charlie Keller, Serenity decided that it was in her best personal
and
professional interest to hold back one little tidbit of information from both detective and editor. She didn’t feel particularly great about the lack of disclosure, but the tradeoff seemed worth it somehow. The anonymous caller had confided a detail that was tantalizing for a young reporter hoping to make a name for herself—and looking to find a way out from this dead-end job. What he had revealed was etched in her memory.

“I popped my cherry on another girl,” he’d said.

Serenity, at home at her kitchen table with the TV playing in the background, set down her pen. Was it truth or lie? Exaggeration or fact? The caller was hard to read with complete certainty. His voice was husky, foggy.

“What do you mean ‘popped a cherry’?” she asked, although she was familiar with the expression meaning to lose one’s virginity. But this man hadn’t really been talking about sex: although he’d described what he’d done to the dead girl, it had been about violating her.

His pleasure, it was clear, was her pain. Her death was his orgasm.

“Done it before,” he’d said. “Will most likely keep doing it. Until I get it right, Ms. Hutchins.”

His words blasted a chill down her spine. He said her name, and it startled her. Of course, he’d sought her out, dialed her number.
Wanted to tell her
. Even so, that he had used her name to conclude the conversation seemed so personal.

Ms. Hutchins.

The pervert was slightly polite, which unnerved her even more.