A Cold Dark Place

Chapter Nineteen

1:05 n.M., twenty-one years ago, Meridian, Washington

The sky was a colander. Olga Morris scanned the parking lot of the Builders' Center off Railroad Avenue as she sought a vacant spot close to the door. Her coat, while waterproof, lacked a hood. Her short hair guaranteed a chilly splash on her scalp. She maneuvered her dark blue Chevy into a reserved parking spot. She did so somewhat reluctantly, but the thought of getting drenched won out over the prospect of being caught taking advantage of the silver and gold shield she carried in her purse.

Inside, she rushed past the contractor's help booth, and a swarm of shoppers filling their carts with caulking, lumber, and the miscellaneous provisions of home repair. The detective was grateful that she was an apartment dweller and hadn't been forced into the nest-building trap so many homeowners had embraced unwittingly.

Forget a caulking gun; I d rather carry a Glock.

She made her way to Arnold Davis's office, a small room behind a ten-foot-wide two-way mirror that allowed the fifty ish manager with gorilla-haired knuckles and a tuft of trolldoll hair protruding from his open collar to keep an eye on the selling floor.

"I'm back, Arnie. Miss me?"

She took off her coat and shook it slightly. Rain puddled the linoleum tile floor. "And I'm soaked!"

Davis looked up from his Tupperware bowl of macaroni salad. Mayonnaise collected at one corner of his tight mouth, and Olga's gaze zeroed in on it in such an obvious manner that he scrambled for a napkin. The room smelled of garlic.

"I assume you're back to talk about Lorrie and Shelley," he said. "We're having a memorial after hours, now that ... now that we know."

"May I?" Not waiting for an invitation to sit, she pulled up a visitor's chair. "I hadn't heard about the memorial. That's nice. When is it?"

"Saturday at nine."

"Okay, I'll be here"

"If you didn't come about the memorial, then what's up?"

"We're looking into the manner of death," she said, her tone shifting from warmth and concern, to cool and dead serious. "This is very important. I want to talk to you about some of the products you sell."

"What do you mean?" Davis leaned closer and looked toward the open door. Several customers standing in line were looking inside. "Let's shut the door," he said.

Olga nodded and reached over to the knob, teetering on the cheap plastic molded chair, and pulled it in tight. The air was sucked out of the room. Behind the two-way glass the people who'd been staring turned away. There was nothing for them to see, just a silver void and their own gawking images.

She noticed a couple of flyers, slightly balled up in the trash. She knew what they were. Anyone in town would have. Since the girls went missing more than four thousand hand bills had been stuck on telephone poles, Laundromat bulletin boards, and anyplace where college students congregated. Across the top of each page was the word MISSING. Underneath those big block letters were Lorrie and Shelley's photos. Both had been employed part-time at Builders' Center.

"None of this has been in the media," Olga said, "and I expect it to stay that way."

"I understand," he said. His eyes looked watery and she wasn't sure if the store manager was tearful or overdosed on garlic, which, judging by the overpowering smell in the room, was Mrs. Davis's chief ingredient in that macaroni salad she'd packed for her husband's lunch.

"Two things turned up by forensics indicate the killer might have had access to a special kind of wire and a clear plastic tarp of a fairly large size. Of course I thought of your store"

"I see" The color drained from his face. "You don't seriously think the killer shopped here?"

Olga shook her head, but it was halfhearted. "No, I'm not saying that"

"Good" Relief washed over his Davis's face, but it was only momentary.

Olga Morris dropped the bomb.

"I think he might have worked here," she said.

"Look, Detective," Davis said, rising and suddenly turning his salutation into something formal. "You and your people have talked to everyone here. There isn't an employee here who didn't love those girls."

"I'm sure, but this is a crime of sexual brutality, Arnie and sometimes there is a fine line between love and brutality. In some people, it's a hair trigger between the two"

Davis's face was now red. "You know what I mean. We're like a family here. No one here would ever hurt Lorrie and Shelley."

"Let's hope so. Now I'm going to show you something that might be upsetting. I've cropped out the girls, but I want you to look at two pieces of evidence."

"Oh God," Arnie Davis said, slumping back down, the crimson draining from his face. "What is it?"

"Two pictures. That's all." From her purse, Olga removed two color photographs. She had used strips of copier paper to mask off any bits of human flesh. With her eyes riveted to Davis's she put them on the desk, scooting the Tupperware bowl to one side with her other hand. Davis dropped his gaze to the desktop, a perplexed look on his face.

"What is it?" he asked. "May I?" He indicated the desire to turn the first photograph at another angle. The exposed photographic image was narrow on that one, with the other being broader. Still unsure, he looked up at Olga.

"It's Shelly's wrist," she said.

Davis gasped. It was an involuntary response, one he wished he'd felt coming. The color of Shelly's skin looked so gray for human flesh it almost seemed as if it had been taken with black-and-white film, yet there was a hint of color in the form of thin bands that marked her wrist. He peered closer and felt the macaroni rise slightly in his stomach.

He tapped the photo. "What are those?"

"Ligature marks. Look closely. Do you have anything for sale that might leave that kind of indentation?"

Davis pulled reading glasses from his breast pocket. "It looks like a double line, each mark"

"That's correct. The wire or tubing used to bind the girls' wrists and feet, we think, though I admit it has been difficult determining just where they were bound because of the decomposition of the bodies."

"It could be 45V9, electrical," he said. "It's dual wire and is about that thick." He tapped the photo once more. "Pretty flexible, too."

Olga wrote down the stock number. "You sell it here?"

Davis looked up, queasy, but emotionless. "Yes. Not often, but we keep it on spools."

Spools, good. The killer needed lengths of it to tie them up.

"All right," she continued. "Before you take me to it, look at the other photo. I'm concerned with the plastic tarp"

"Is that a leg?" he asked, looking closer at the larger of the two images on his desk.

Olga didn't answer him directly. "Focus on the plastic," she said. "Anything like that around here?"

Davis shook his head and rapped his hairy knuckles on his desk. Nerves were kicking in and beads of sweat had collected and started to roll from his temples. "No, I mean ... I mean it is just clear plastic. That can come from anywhere. It could be Saran wrap for God's sake. Maybe the Safeway people next door can help you"

Olga stood, picked up a Builders' Center pen and directed him back to the photo.

"I realize that," she said. "But look here. Look at the edge of the material. It is as plain as day and I don't need to blow it up to prove to you that there's something distinguishing about this tarp"

Davis narrowed his gaze back to the unpleasant business at hand. Just past where the form of the human leg ended, he could make out some whitish cross-hatching. The tarp was at least three millimeters thick, and the edge of it had been embossed with three rows of Ys. They ran the full length of the seam, and then disappeared under, what Davis, now apparently allowed himself to accept, was one of his part-time cashiers' dead bodies.

"I think I know what that is," he said. He lifted the photo and brought his gooseneck desk lamp closer. He turned the fixture to better illuminate the image. "Looks like Cross beam's Triple D painter's tarp. The edge is embossed to stop tears"

Olga wrote that down, too. "DDD?"

"Dense, durable, and defect-free. And yes, we sell it here. Not much. It's expensive. Top of the line, but we do sell it. Oh God, no. . " His voice trailed to a soft whimper as the realization of what it meant set in. "You don't think the killer got his supplies here?"

Olga gathered up the photos and tucked them back inside her oversized purse. "As I said, I don't think he shopped here. But I'd bet my life he works here" She reached for her coat and started for the door. "I want to see Dylan Walker. Is he working today?"

If there was a more handsome man working at the Builders' Center-in all of Meridian, for that matter-Olga Morris would have been hard pressed to give up a name. Everything about Dylan Walker was perfect. His teeth were whiter than plaster of paris. His eyes were dark and sparkly. At thirtythree, he had a thick mane of dark brown hair that any woman would have killed for. His body was that perfect V: broad shoulders that were square without being too angular and honest-to-goodness six-pack abdominal muscles that revealed themselves whenever he reached for a can of paint on a higher shelf. More than one Meridian woman asked for the eggshell tint base, when she really wanted a flat paint because, well, Dylan Walker had to move that body to reach it.

Olga moved past the plumbing supply section, sinks and toilets displayed with pencil-point lighting that made them look like objets d'art. The smell of gardenias from a shipment of plants in the nursery hung in the soggy air of the rainy day. As she rounded the corner at the end of the aisle, she could hear a woman twittering about something.

". . . Oh really? I thought it would be so much harder to do""

"Depends on how hard you want things."

Olga interrupted Dylan Walker and the now red-faced suburban mom who'd been caught flirting over a stack of travertine tiles.

"Dylan, I could use some help, too," Olga said.

Even though he knew why she was there, he flashed his blazing white smile.

"That's what I'm here for," he said.

The woman with the shopping cart of travertine started to back off slightly. Olga was tiny, blond, quite pretty, and best of all, carried a badge. The shopper must have realized that those attributes easily trumped overweight, mousey, and an upper lip in need of bleaching.

"Thank you," the woman said, her smile now sagging and her cart inching down the aisle. "If I have any questions, can I ask for you, Dylan?"

Walker stuffed his hands in his pockets; his jeans were loose around his thirty-four-inch waist. He turned and fixed his gaze on the detective. "What do you want now?"

Olga's eyes remained steely, completely unflinching. She let a slight smile part her lips. It was merely for effect and had nothing whatsoever to do with how she felt about him. They'd had it out during the first week of the investigation when he tried to suggest the missing girls were promiscuous.

"They were always coming on to me," he had said.

Olga knew the guy was a creep and just looking at him sent a shiver down her spine.

"You," she said. "Dylan, just like everyone else around here, I want you"