Closer Than Blood

“Coffee’s fine,” Laura said.

“Nothing else for me.”

“Strawberry Fields going on now,” the waitress said.

“I’ll fill her in,” Kendall said, somewhat sharply. The waitress shrugged and went back to the counter across the room, where a man had been complaining loudly that his popcorn shrimp was heavy on the batter and low on actual shrimp.

“I’m worried about my son,” she said. Kendall nodded.

“Yes, I know you are.” Laura ran her fingers through her hair, pulling it away from her face.

“I don’t think I can talk about it. This was a mistake.”

“What was a mistake, Laura?”

“Talking to you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“My son. He’s all I have.”

“Yes, I love my son, too.”

“I think my son is mixed up in something.” Kendall had seen that look, heard those words, felt the palpable fear that came with a mother trying to save her boy. She prayed that she’d never be the woman telling the story. God knew that she had her own challenges with Cody, but he was inherently sweet. It was possible that he could be victimized by someone, but she could never imagine him doing something that would harm someone. Laura Connelly clearly thought something was up with Parker. The waitress approached and Kendall waved her away. Not now. Couldn’t she see that moment was not made for a slice of berry pie? “Talk to me, Laura.” The tears welled up in Laura’s eyes and she steadied herself by holding the coffee up in both hands, her elbows planted on the table’s oak trim.

“I read about that minister. The one who was killed.” Kendall had no idea where that the woman was going.

“Yes, that was a terrible tragedy. Go on.”

“Well, I found something in his room. Something from that church.”

“What did you find?”

“I brought it with me.” She reached into her purse and pulled out the money pouch emblazoned with the name of the dead minister’s church. She slid it across the table. Kendall didn’t touch it. Though she could readily ascertain that Laura Connelly had her fingers all over the pouch, she didn’t want to degrade any potential evidence. She knew of one case in which a positive DNA match was made to a hairbrush that had been used by other family members two years after a murder victim had been dumped and found. It was not a familial match, but dead-on to the individual.

“Did you ask him about it?” Laura nodded and awkwardly slid her elbows close to her sides.

“Yes, a couple of days ago,” she said.

“I know I should have told you sooner. I don’t think he had a thing to do with the murder. He’s not a violent kid. I just think he must know something.” Laura started to cry, loudly enough to get the attention of diners adjacent to them.

“Tell me what happened,” Kendall said.

“I know you’ll help me, mother to mother,” she said.

Laura Connelly had wrestled with the discovery of the deposit pouch to the point where she couldn’t think about anything else. While it was true that her relationship with Parker had worsened since his father’s death, she could see that the disintegration had been coming for quite some time. He’d been evasive, indifferent, and on occasion, almost threatening. There was no “you and me against the world” banter. No more promises to “take care of you when you’re an old lady, Mom.” Parker was sullen, agitated, and counting the days to his eighteenth birthday. Her heart thumped hard inside her chest as she knocked on the door of his bedroom. It was never open when he was home anymore. In fact, she only knew he was home when he’d come out, get something to eat, and scurry back to whatever it was he was doing. She’d allowed that pattern to take root and she regretted it. The isolation between mother and son had likely allowed something very dark to fester.

“Honey, we need to talk,” she said, poking her head into his room. Parker was on his computer. He snapped his laptop shut.

“Do you mind?” he asked.

“I’m sorry,” she said, not knowing why she felt a need to apologize. She’d seen something that could be tied to a murder case near Kingston. She never thought for one second that he’d been involved in anything, but maybe his friends had? Drew’s mother had complained to her when they ran into each other at Top Foods that her son was “practically incorrigible.”

“We need to talk.”

“You’re talking, Mom. I’m busy. What is it?”

“Can I come in?”

“You’re in. Fine. What?”

“I didn’t mean to, but I saw something of yours that concerned me.” She was sugarcoating it and she knew it. She wondered how she got to the point of being so weak around her son. It was as if the stronger he got, the more belligerent he became, the weaker she grew. It was like when she discovered that Alex was cheating on her and she thought of every reason why it was her fault, not his. Parker stepped away from this laptop and sat on the bed.

“Mom, I have stuff to do.”

“Parker, I found the money pouch from the church.” Her hands shook a little, but she tried to steady them. Calm. Be as calm as you can. He didn’t allow any expression to cross his face.

“Were you going through my stuff?” She shook her head slowly.

“I didn’t do that. I wouldn’t do that.”

“I can’t believe you, Mom. You are so full of crap.” She sucked in some courage. The issue here wasn’t how she saw what she saw, it was that a relic from a murder scene was in their house.

“Where did you get that pouch, Parker?”

“I found it.”

“Where?”

“I don’t remember. Just somewhere.”

“You were gone the day that minister was killed. I remember that we fought.”

“We always fight, Mom. I said I found it; I can’t even believe for one second that you would think that I would ever lie to you about anything.” Parker didn’t state the obvious and it crushed his mother. He didn’t say, “What minister?” Laura didn’t want to give voice to the truth just then. The truth was ugly. She had caught him in many, many lies. After his last summer visit with his father, Parker had become a frequent and facile liar.

“We need to give this pouch to the police. You need to tell them where you found it.”

“At the skate park. That’s where I found it, Mom.”

Kendall listened to the anguished mother sitting in front of her. She watched her slide lower in the booth. She was all but disappearing. She handed her a tissue from the packet she kept in her purse for such occasions. She didn’t want to tell Laura Connelly about one little flaw in her son’s story. There was no skate park in Port Orchard.

“I’ll need to talk to your son, Laura,” she said. Laura nodded.

“He’s at home.”

“I’m going to call my partner and have him meet me there. You go on ahead. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

“There’s one more thing. I think that he’s involved with Tori.”

“Involved? How so?”

“She’s all he talks about. They’re too close. Something’s going on.” Kendall set down her coffee and waved away the waitress and her pot.

“Something inappropriate?” she asked. Laura shook her head.

“I’m not sure. I mean, I don’t really know. She’s his stepmother.”

“But you think he’s involved,” Kendall said, pushing a little.

“You used that word, involved. What do you mean by that? I want to understand.” Laura stood up to leave and reached for her purse.

“I thought he had a girlfriend, but, well, I really do think that he’s sleeping with her. There, I said it.”

“She’s always been a manipulator, Laura. If she’s been using your son for whatever reason, it’s just what she does.”

“You aren’t going to arrest him, are you, Kendall?” The Kitsap detective shook her head, though she really wasn’t sure. She didn’t want to lie, so she just left it at that.

They met in the TV room of the spotless Fircrest home Laura Connelly purchased with the proceeds from her divorce from Alex. Laura was still unsure if she should call Alex an ex or a late husband. After the shooting, she knew she still loved him a little. When the Kitsap detectives arrived, Parker begrudgingly emerged from his bedroom to talk with them. He wore blue jeans and a black hoodie and an impatient look on his face. His pants were slung low, low enough to show the top two inches of the waistband of his underwear. Emporio Armani, no less. Kendall and Josh conferred on the phone before meeting there that the Lord’s Grace money pouch alone was not enough for an arrest warrant. It was a start, though. While there were bloody footprints at the Kingston crime scene, they were smeared and not much evidentiary value. The shoes themselves would be good, but they’d have to be in plain sight in order for the detectives to pick them up without a warrant. The other key piece of evidence was the red tape. Kendall and Josh scoured the Connelly residence in as casual a manner as possible—without opening doors, drawers, or closets. Nothing.

“Son,” Josh said, “you need to tell us what you know.” Parker looked away at the TV.

“Why does everyone call me ‘son’ all of a sudden?” Laura got up and turned it off.

“I was watching that, Mom.”

“You need to talk to the detectives here.” Kendall pulled a bench a little closer to where Parker was sitting. Josh stood. It was a show of domination that wouldn’t have gone unnoticed by a police cadet. Or a teenager.

“You don’t intimidate me,” Parker said. Josh leaned closer.

“Look, I’m not here to do anything but help you.”

“Whatever. I don’t give a shit about what you’re here to do. And my mom’s a stupid bitch for asking you to come over.” Laura was at the breaking point and his name-calling didn’t exactly do her fragile psyche any good. She looked like she was going to crumble.

“Parker,” she said.

“Please don’t.” Kendall took over.

“You need to trust us,” she said to the teen.

“I didn’t do nothing wrong,” he said, his eyes still riveted to the black TV screen.

“Anything is the word,” Josh said.

“You didn’t do anything wrong but miss English class.”

“You’re funnier than Letterman. About as old as him, too.” Kendall shot a bruising glance at Josh that was meant to have him dial things down.

“Ms. Connelly, what do you say you get us some coffee?” Laura didn’t mind leaving the room. She had dissolved in tears twice that evening already. She had called on Kendall and her partner because she wanted to extricate her son from something that might ruin his life. Tori, she felt, was somehow involved in all this.

“Your mom said you found the money pouch,” Kendall said.

“Yeah, so what?”

“Do you know that the minister of that church was murdered this week?”

“I’m sure he’s in heaven, then.” Kendall ignored the sarcasm. She knew that making a point of calling him out on it would only antagonize him. Josh Anderson, however, had no ability to show restraint.

“You boning the old girl?” Kendall resented both the term boning and that Josh called Tori “old girl,” because they were the same age. Before she could rephrase, Parker answered.

“She’s hot,” he said. Josh nodded.

“Yeah, she is. Nice rack.”

“Are you involved with Tori, Parker?” Kendall asked.

“You mean, am I screwing her?”

“I guess if you want to put it that way.”

“It isn’t like that. And even if it was, it’s none of your business.”

“Tell us,” Kendall said, gently.

“We want to understand.”

“You could never understand.” For a second, Josh seemed to warm up to Kendall’s soft touch.

“Try us.”

“Have you ever really been loved? Do you know what it is to find your soul mate?” He looked at Josh.

“You’ve been around. Bet you haven’t got a clue. All tough, you are.” Josh suppressed a grin.

“I’ve married three of my soul mates,” he said, as dispassionately as possible.

“Am looking for my fourth.”

“I knew you wouldn’t get it.” He turned his attention to Kendall.

“How about you, Detective Stark?”

“We’re here to talk about you, Parker,” she said.

“Not whether or not we have found our soul mates.”

“Am I under arrest?”

“No, Parker, you’re not.” Parker got up.

“Mom, I don’t want to talk to them anymore. I want a lawyer. I want them out of our house.” Kendall noticed a flash of red on the boy’s wallet as it peeked from his hip pocket. She looked over at Parker, then back at Josh. The two detectives excused themselves and went into the kitchen.

“We need a warrant,” Kendall said.

“Call it in.” Josh retrieved his phone and started for the door to make the call in private.

“Calling now,” he said.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Port Orchard

“Look, Josh. She’s a black widow,” Kendall said as the two Kitsap County detectives huddled in her office, waiting on the search warrant for the Connelly place. Josh opened his mouth wide and tipped back the bag of Bugles he’d bought from the vending machine in the break room. Apparently, he didn’t want to miss one crumb.

“She’s killed two husbands and a boyfriend,” she said. He wadded the bag and tossed it into the trash behind Kendall.

“Nothing but net,” he said.

“Are you listening to me?”

“Yeah. But I’m not hearing anything new. Although, if she’s anything like her photo in the paper, Tori Connelly is the best-looking femme fatale to come around since Kathleen Turner in Body Heat.”

“I’m not kidding,” Kendall said, getting up from her desk. Even in the tight confines of her office, she found space to pace in front of her partner.

“Think about it. Jason, Alex, and Zach are all dead. The last one to see each of those men alive was Tori.” Josh backed off toward the doorway.

“They’ve nailed Darius What’s-His-Name for the Connelly shooting.”

“I know,” Kendall said, tensing a little.

“I don’t know why they don’t look at the obvious. The totality of her life and what she’s done. She’s not a nice person. She never has been.” Josh held his hand out as if to calm her.

“This is beginning to sound personal, Kendall. Personal never works and you know that.” Kendall knew what he was saying was right, but there was more to this.

“Hear me out one more time.”

“Okay, go.”

“Tori is a user. She’s a master manipulator. She always has been. She likely killed Jason herself—she was the one with the opportunity.”

“Motive?”

“I have some ideas, but consider the idea that she’s amazingly adept at making people—men, specifically—to do her dirty work.”

“Like the Connelly kid.”

“Yes, like Parker. Did you see the way he defended her? He is in love with her. He’d probably do anything to please her.”

“So you like him for the killer of his own father? Darius Fulton’s been arrested for that.”

“Yes, and he’s probably the killer, put up to it by Tori.”

“So you think the kid killed the preacher?”

“I do.”

“Why?”

“The reason I think he’s the killer or that she put him up to it?”

“Either or both.” Kendall nodded.

“She wanted Mikey silenced for what he saw on Banner. He probably saw her kill Jason. We might not ever know that for sure. But with all the publicity, it was only a matter of time until Mikey, now a minister, did the right thing.”

“Maybe. What else?”

“Remember the red tape?”

“Sure. It’s our biggest traceable piece of evidence.”

“Parker had a duct-tape wallet.”

“A what?”

“Kids make wallets, clothes, belts—all sorts of stuff—out of duct tape.”

“Sounds dumb.” Kendall shrugged.

“Dumb, maybe. But Parker’s wallet was a duct-tape wallet. I saw it tonight. It was trimmed in red tape.”

“Interesting,” he said, “but just interesting. Nothing concrete.”

“What about the dead guy in Hawaii?”

“She must have had help there, too. They just missed it.”

“Sounds like you really dislike her and you want to nail her for personal reasons. You don’t care what I think, but that’s how I feel, Kendall.”

After Josh left, Kendall closed her office door. It was personal, but not for the reasons he’d presumed. Kendall wanted the truth. She felt that Mary Reed deserved it. Lainie did. They all did. She sat down and looked at the bulletin board in her windowless office. The answer was staring her in the face. A postcard Barbara in Records had sent to Kendall from her vacation to Hawaii. The answer was in Hawaii. Kendall got online and booked a flight on Alaska Airlines using 45,000 frequent flier miles she and Steven had saved for the past six years. She’d call in sick, lie to her husband about where she was going, and pray to God that whatever she found out would set them all free.

Kendall returned home and packed a single carry-on bag. The one she always took whenever she went on a business trip. She pulled off the tag for SFO, the remnant of her last forensics conference the previous fall.

“Conference came up out of the blue,” Steven said, sitting on the edge of the bed. Kendall didn’t look at him. She just couldn’t.

“I guess. When the other investigator couldn’t make it, I volunteered. Budgets are so tight these days, we’re lucky that we didn’t take a bath on the entire conference.”

“Yeah, that’s good.” Her clothes were all lightweight and Steven noticed.

“Hot weather in L.A., I gather.” She nodded.

“Scorching.”

“Sure you don’t want us to take you to the airport?”

“Too late, babe. I’ll park at Thrifty and take the shuttle.” Kendall hated lying to Steven. She wanted to grab him by the shoulders and tell him just why she was going, where she was going, and that she just couldn’t let Tori get away with murder. Not again. She got out of her car on the Southworth ferry for the crossing to West Seattle, and went upstairs to the passenger deck. She let the wind wash over her, blowing her hair, caressing her like the love of a lifetime ago. I’m sorry, Steven. I’m sorry that I couldn’t tell you everything.

The telephone conversation didn’t go well but Parker Connelly could have guessed that would be the case. He knew by his mother’s overwrought, and judgmental, reaction that he’d screwed up big-time. Murder was big, indeed. Pour a big heap of suspicion coming from the Kitsap detectives on top of that and he knew he was in deep trouble.

“You did what?” Tori repeated.

“It was a packet of money and I took it.”

“Are you stupid because you’re young or just plain stupid?”

“Don’t treat me like this,” he said, his voice low because he didn’t want his mom to hear him arguing with his lover. His stepmother. There was silence on the line and Parker pleaded a second time.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“What did Kendall and her partner say?”

“They thought we were sleeping together, but I convinced them otherwise. They are going to get a warrant or something, at least that’s what Mom thinks.” She seethed on the other end of the line, doing her best to maintain control. Finally, Tori spoke.

“We’re going to have to speed up our plans,” she said.

“Use the ID I gave you and check in to a motel in South Tacoma. A rat hole. A place where no one is going to pay attention to you. I’ll come and get you,” she said, hanging up. Parker grabbed his car keys, his laptop, and a jacket and climbed out the window. He was gone.

Tori rolled over and raked her fingernails down the chest of her lover.

“You have been working out,” she said.

“Yeah, I have,” he said.

“We have a problem,” she said.

“So I heard.” She scooted closer.

“Nothing we can’t handle.”

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Honolulu

As Kendall Stark sat on the overnight flight for Honolulu, she knew she was an anomaly among the other travelers. She wasn’t going to Hawaii to celebrate a wedding anniversary, a birthday, a honeymoon. She was going there to find out what, if anything, had been missed when Tori Connelly’s first husband died there. Of course, there’d been an investigation. A cursory investigation at best, Kendall thought. A retired Honolulu detective named Rikki Tyler had sent her a portion of a minuscule case file as a courtesy. It consisted of two witness statements. One was from a bystander who’d come across Tori on the beach as she screamed that something was wrong. It was to the point.

“The woman in pink was on her knees yelling about her husband. I saw the body in the surf and I pulled it ashore. I don’t know CPR. The lady was too upset to do anything. I think the man was already dead. I don’t know what happened. I am very sorry that the man died.” Tori’s own statement was a little longer and it pretty much echoed what she’d told her sister when she called the evening of the accident. Lainie told Kendall how she was at the P-I working on an article about incorporating vegetables in the Northwest landscape—a very Seattle kind of story. The kind she never wanted to write in the first place. The kind she would kill to write if only the paper had not gone under and left her jobless and now consumed by what her sister might have done. Lainie told Kendall how the newsroom seemed to go silent and how the air thickened when her sister told her.

“Zach is dead! He died in an accident! I’m coming home.”

“Oh my God, Tori. What happened?” Tori sobbed a story into the phone and, despite her being a reporter, Lainie asked no questions. It was so much of a shock that she could barely catch her breath and tell Tori that she’d be all right. Everything would be okay. She wrote down the flight number for Tori’s return the next day.

“I’ll pick you up,” Lainie said.

“I have to go now,” Tori said.

“I have to make arrangements for Zach.” Lainie wanted to ask if that meant she was shipping the body back, but it seemed too touchy, too painful a thing to bring up. Yet Tori answered the question before her sister asked it.

“I’m having him cremated and his ashes spread over here. He loved Hawaii. I don’t want him to ever have to leave.” The scenario played in her mind those many years later. This was a second dead husband and a second rush to the crematory. Why the hurry? she wondered.

As the jet engines droned outside her window, Kendall finished her complimentary mai tai and looked down at Tori’s statement, given the day of the accident. A few things leaped off the pages.

“I told him that the surf was too rough. You’d think he’d listen to me. I’m an expert swimmer. I could have been on the Olympic team if I’d put my mind to it.” It was true. Tori was a great swimmer. Maybe not Olympic material, but knowing Tori as Kendall did, there was nothing she couldn’t excel at—swimming included. She recalled how Lainie told her that she didn’t even try to compete in swimming at South Kitsap. She didn’t have Tori’s speed, but she was a better diver. That rankled her sister a little and she appeared to love it. It was always hard to get the best of her if she decided she was going to do something. Piano. Cooking. Public speaking. Kendall knew Tori as the one who showed the instructors how things were done. She didn’t care if they hated her for it. She never cared what anyone thought.

“We’d taken the boogie boards out after lunch. It was about 2 P.M. My husband was an experienced surfer, having summered with his grandmother in Huntington Beach, California. I’d been on a board a time or two myself. . . .” Kendall wondered what “time or two” she was referring to? When she was younger? Always bragging about something. So very Tori. Also, Tori seemed to speak in a vocabulary that suggested the O’Neals were blue bloods from the East Coast. Summered? Did she really say that? Kendall turned her attention back to the report.

“My husband proceeded to swim out about a quarter of a mile from the shore. It might not have been that far. The sun was bright in my eyes and I lost track of him. I was paddling around when out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of an enormous rogue wave. It must have been twenty feet or maybe thirty. It is hard to tell with any certainty. It happened so fast. When the wave got to me, I hung on to my board for dear life. I didn’t see what happened to Zach. I found him ten minutes later on the shore.” That was her statement. The case was closed. The Hawaiian authorities wrote it off as a tragic accident. Detective Tyler, who’d agreed to meet with her on the island, had included a truncated version of the coroner’s findings: “Victim died from blunt force trauma to the head while surfing.” There were four photos in the file. Only four, which in itself was surprising. There was a shot of the beach, the color of raw sugarcane, with barely a footprint to mar its smooth, broad nothingness. Off to one side of the image, she saw a paddle and a pair of sunglasses. Across the bottom of the scan was a notation that the photo had been taken at 4 P.M., “near the location of the accident.” Two others came without any notation. One was the image of young man, Asian or Hawaiian. He wasn’t posing, but it was clear the image was taken near the beach. Coconut palms were visible in the background. The next also included the young man, this time in front of a car with a Hawaiian plate. What does this have to do with Zach? The final photo was a picture of Tori, her blue eyes caught in a frightened, terrified gaze. The shiny glaze of her tears streaked her lightly tanned face. It wasn’t a face that Kendall would have ascribed to Tori. The woman in the photograph was in complete anguish. There was no way of faking that look. Kendall finished her drink. She was tired but too stressed to sleep. She only had two appointments—the owner of the house where Zach had last been seen alive and the retired cop. It wasn’t much, she knew, but if there had been a pattern of murder, Zach Campbell had been in the middle of it. Women serial killers often killed for profit, for greed. Greedy was Tori to a T. Female serial killers often employed poison. They liked killing in a way that left their hands clean. A stabbing was too up close and personal. Kendall knew that if Tori had killed Zach, she probably had help. Just as she probably did back in Tacoma.

People are supposed to love the weather of the Hawaiian Islands. Kendall figured she’d love it, too, if her body temperature didn’t rise when she was stressed over something. From the moment she landed in Honolulu, she felt the characteristic blooms of sweat coming from her armpits and lower back. She stopped to pull the fabric of her too-tight shirt and knew why her mother had always sworn by the properties of natural fabrics. Her shirt, a light blue cotton-poly blend looked better on the hanger than it did after a five-hour flight from Seattle. She’d gone with the poly blend because she knew that she would never have to send it out to be cleaned and pressed. She liked saving time—and, given that this was not a Kitsap County junket—saving money. She grabbed her ribbon-handled bag from the conveyor belt at the baggage claim as a group of tourists dove for their unfortunately identical black bags, the kind stewardesses used in the day when people still called them that. Now they were flight attendants, of course. Kendall caught a shuttle bus to the car rental lot to pick up a Jeep for the short drive up to the North Shore town of Haleiwa. A Jeep sounded like fun, but it was noisy and rough driving. She wished she’d settled for a Honda Accord. She arrived at 11:30 A.M.—characteristically a little early. Early, she knew, was almost always a good thing. The address was a mile out of town, a secluded place with a large, heavy gate decorated with a family of sea turtles in bronze. They’d gone verdigris in the hot humid weather, making them look nearly lifelike in the way that metal sculpture artists can do. They know that the passage of time reveals new truths in their work. She was hoping for the same thing. Kiwana Morimoto met her outside on the driveway. She was an attractive woman, a fifth-generation islander with silver-streaked black hair, a broad freckled nose, and hands so tiny they’d have suited a child better than a grown woman of more than sixty. She held out her hand and smiled warmly.

“I hope you didn’t have much of a problem finding Bali House.” Kendall returned the smile.

“No, no worries,” she said.

“Mai tai?”

“Too early,” she said.

“Iced tea?”

“Sure. Follow me.” Kiwana led Kendall around the house, an ’80s abode with a low roofline and a seamless bank of windows overlooking the basalt-studded shoreline. A fisherman with a pole that must have been fifteen feet long worked the current in hopes of a suppertime catch. Kendall had no idea what one would pull from those pristine waters, but with a pole like that, she expected it to be big. Really big. They sat on a pair of bright blue lounge chairs under an almond tree that dropped green nuts and tangerine-colored leaves onto the brick patio. A giant green sea turtle basked in the sun.

“I’ve never seen one,” Kendall said.

“Yesterday,” Kiwana said, “we counted eighty-seven here on the beach.”

“They bring good luck, right?” Kendall said. She already knew that they did because she’d flipped through the inflight magazine before takeoff.

“Yes, Bali House for the most part has been a blessed place.” Kendall knew that when the hostess said “for the most part,” she was referring to the reason she’d come across the Pacific Ocean. Tori O’Neal Campbell Connelly. Kiwana disappeared into the house and Kendall watched the fisherman and the waves. When the homeowner returned, she carried a rattan tray of macadamia nut cookies and a pitcher of the pinkest iced tea the detective had ever seen.

“Guava syrup,” she said, catching Kendall’s eye on the pink drink. Kendall sipped.

“It’s good,” she said, stifling the gag reflex that kicked in as she swallowed the liquid cotton candy.

“Let’s talk a little,” she said, swallowing hard.

“Then maybe you can show me around the house.” Kiwana looked out at the water, then at her glass before answering.

“As I told you,” she said, her black eyes suddenly flinty, “I’ve covered this ground a time or two with the police.”

“I know it must be boring for you to talk about it again. I’m sorry.” The older woman let out a sigh.

“It’s all right. I don’t have guests coming to the house until tomorrow. I have to warn you about something, however.” Kendall rotated her glass, catching shards of the sparkle of the lowering sun.

“What’s that?”

“There aren’t many people that I’ve met in my life—a pretty long one at that—whom I cannot stand. Your friend’s sister probably stands alone on the list, when I think about it.” Her words trailed off. It was clear that this woman, this host to strangers in her North Shore ocean home, didn’t like to speak ill of anyone.

“I can see that, but I still need you to help.” Kendall wiped the condensation from the tall glass onto her pant leg. She wished she’d worn shorts.

“I understand.”

“Fine then. I couldn’t stand her. I’ve been renting out Bali House for twenty-seven years. I’ve never met anyone like her.” Kendall urged Kiwana to continue without saying so. Truth be told, nothing could stop her, reticent or not. Tori had made an impression. She always did.

Only one time did Lainie O’Neal find the courage to broach the subject of what had happened to her in juvenile detention when she switched places with Tori. It wasn’t that the images of that night in 7-Pod had faded completely from view. But it was not her experiences that haunted her. It was what she imagined her sister had gone through the months of her incarceration following the accident on Banner Road. She was working as an intern at the Whatcom Weekly during her senior year in college. The story she’d been assigned was what she considered an easy A as far as the instructors at the university were concerned. Students in her journalism major knew that their professors could never fault a story that touched on incest, rape, or child molestation.

“Pick one of those subjects and you’ve got yourself a guaranteed award winner.” She dug into a story at the Whatcom Weekly that fit those parameters. It centered on a young woman who had been raped by a guard at the Washington Corrections Center for Women in Purdy. The woman known in the media as “Inmate Nicola B” had filed a civil claim against the state—and it was clear that the state would have to pay. Her proof was the guard’s DNA match to her baby girl. After several weeks of constant but respectful requests, Lainie scored an interview with the former prisoner. It was more than the basis for a story; the meeting between the young reporter and the rape victim was life changing. Nicola, a small woman with penetrating brown eyes and a surprisingly sweet demeanor, said something that Lainie underlined four times after the interview as she built her courage to talk to Tori.

“I honestly felt that the guard owned me. I felt that I was powerless and to try to stop him from the rape was to say that my life was worth nothing. I knew that he would kill me. For the longest time, I thought that all that I’d done in life had brought me to that moment, like some sick payback from God or maybe the devil.” A few days after the interview, Lainie drove I-5 to Seattle and took the ferry to Bremerton. Tori was living in a cheap apartment close to downtown with a peekaboo view of the Manette Bridge. It wasn’t a great place—ratty, dirty. A man was urinating around the corner as Lainie parked. She felt that her sister lived there because that was how she saw herself. She couldn’t shake what the guard had done to her. Tori was singing at the casino then. The only suggestion that her life had any promise was the sparkle of the sequins on the costumes that hung in her closet.

“Pretty,” Lainie said as Tori showed her a red sequined dress she planned on wearing that night.

“Better be, for what it costs.”

“I’d like to hear you sing sometime,” she said.

“Dad would, too.”

“I’d be too nervous to have you two there. You understand, right?” Lainie didn’t, not really.

“I guess so.” Tori mentioned she was dating someone, a fellow named Zach. He was older, had a good job, and drove a nice car.

“Serious?”

“Hell no. I’m never going to be serious.” Lainie mentioned that she had been working on the prison rape story. She unveiled the case slowly, watching her sister’s reaction. But there wasn’t one. At least not one that Lainie could see.

“Did anything like that go on when you were in juvy?” Tori went into the kitchen and opened the fridge. She pulled out a couple of diet colas and handed one to Lainie.

“Is this an interview?” Lainie let out a little laugh.

“No, not an interview. Just a question.” Tori shook her head and flipped the top of her soda can.

“The guards there were one step above a rent-a-cop.” They sat on the sofa, a dark blue velvet sectional that was in serious need of repair.

“I honestly don’t remember much of that place. I consider the memory loss to be a chief benefit of the passage of time.” Lainie looked around her sister’s apartment. Would she be living in a place like this if that car accident hadn’t occurred? What would she be doing now? “Something happened to me that time I was there,” Lainie finally said. Tori put her hand on Lainie’s knee.

“You were raped?” Lainie hesitated. She wasn’t ready to tell her sister that.

“No,” she said, testing Tori a little.

“But I could have been.” Tori sighed.

“God, you’re not going to be one of those stupid journalists who lives the story, are you, Lainie?”

“I wasn’t raped,” Lainie said, “but that one guard got rough with me.” Tori looked incredulous, then concerned.

“Really?” Lainie nodded.

“Yes, really.” In a flash, the concern faded. Tori shrugged.

“Maybe you should put that in your story. Might sell some papers.”

“Nothing happened. I just thought, you know.”

“No, I don’t.”

“I thought maybe something might have happened to you.”

“Don’t be a twit, Lainie. Sometimes I think we couldn’t possibly be related—except for the fact we’re twins, of course.” Lainie laughed, nervously.

“Thanks. I guess I feel better now. Knowing that nothing happened to you.”

“It wouldn’t be because you are worried about me, Lainie. I know that much. You’d just feel guilty. You swim in guilt. You blame yourself for everything, don’t you?”

“Sometimes I do.” Tori finished her cola.

“Maybe we can switch again sometime. You can sing for me at the casino and I can make the world a better place.” She started to laugh.

“Wouldn’t that be funny?” Lainie pretended to think so, but deep down she knew what her sister thought. Her words almost never matched the truth of her heart. If she had one, that is. After they made their false promises to get together soon, Tori said good-bye to her sister. Her apartment was a dump. The clothes in the closet were tacky. The ’70s cover tunes she was forced to sing with the subpar band were inane. She loathed almost everything about her life right then except one thing. She threw herself on the bed and started to laugh. It felt so good to know that Lainie still hurt. Lainie’s pain always made her smile.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Lakewood, Washington

Parker paid fifty-five dollars to the front desk clerk at the American Inn in Lakewood, just south of Tacoma, and went to his room. It was an old-style motel, the kind that Norman Bates would run if he’d never been arrested for being a psycho. It was a dump, used mostly by military guys cheating on their wives or the wives cheating on their husbands. A faded lithograph of a bald eagle in flight hung over the double bed, a nod to the military patrons who kept the place busy. In a way, Parker liked the crappy accommodations. It would be the last time he ever stayed in a place as dank and dirty. The world that he and Tori would inhabit would be as stunning as the sunset over the Olympic Mountains that they shared that first time they’d made love. Real love. Not the kid’s stuff of a hand on her breasts or her mouth on his penis. But when they’d united their bodies in intercourse. It was in her car parked on a side road near Titlow Beach. He remembered how she cried. How the tears streamed down her face as he’d given her the kind of pleasure that his father had denied her.

“I love you. I hate myself for it,” she had said.

“I do.”

“Don’t,” he answered, as he touched her cheek to wipe away the tears.

“Nothing good will come of this,” she said.

“You’re wrong, Tori.”

“This is so dangerous,” she said. Parker nodded.

“But I also know how much we mean to each other.” She stared at him with her big blue eyes, shiny with tears.

“We are soul mates, star-crossed soul mates,” she said.

“We can never be together.” He snuggled next to her, but she pushed him away. She was thinking.

“Don’t say that,” he said.

“There has to be a way.” Tori adjusted her blouse. She’d removed her bra and put it in her purse. Next, she slid her panties up her thighs and straightened out her skirt. She let Parker take in the silkiness of her legs and lifted her hips.

“I’ll think about it,” she said.

“I’ll find a way.” They stepped out of her car and walked to a bench with a view of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. A man was jogging and winked at them as he ran by.

“Everyone will want this for us,” he said.

“Everyone but your father,” she said. The air was cool and they felt the chill on their sweaty skin. They watched as the sun crawled behind the Olympics, burnishing the waters of the sound orange and pink.

“Reminds me of Hawaii,” she said.

“I’ve never been there.” Tori paused a moment, thinking of the last time she’d been there. Her first husband’s death? How things had transpired on that remote beach? At the beach house? “Oh, where we’re going to live is even more beautiful,” she said.

“We’ll have servants. You’ll have a new car in whatever make and model you like.”

“Really? Any car that I want?”

“Yes, but remember, there won’t be a lot of places to drive on an island. We’ll just have to find other ways to keep ourselves occupied.” She touched his inner thigh. Parker closed his eyes and grinned at the memory of that evening rendezvous, but his smile faded as he thought of his mother. She wasn’t part of this, and he shouldn’t have dragged her into it by being so stupid about the money pouch from the church. His dad had been competition for his love for Tori, but his mom had never really done anything but love him. He wished he could tell her that he loved her and that he was sorry that he’d never see her again.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Haleiwa, Hawaii

Ten years ago

It had been a warm night with trade winds that barely fluttered the knife-blade fronds of the coconut palms that leaned over the beach. Kiwana Morimoto went about her business of straightening up the lanai and the patio. She stacked chairs and pulled the cover over the bubbling cauldron that was the hot tub. Next, she turned her attention to the trio of tiki torches to make sure they were refueled so Tori Campbell didn’t complain about that detail a second time.

“Look,” Tori said, “I don’t think we should have to haul that smelly fuel and pour it into the torch basins. That’s a smelly, smelly job suitable for support staff, not guests.” The snotty tone still rankled Kiwana. She shook her head as she poured the citronella-scented oil until the liquid pooled slightly in the cone of a funnel. Support staff, indeed, she thought. She looked up as the sound of an argument reverberated through the jalousies of the master bedroom.

“I don’t like her and I don’t like the way you look at her.” It was Tori’s voice. It was harsh and full of anger. The next voice belonged to Zach.

“Look at her? How is it that I look at her?”

“Like a hungry dog. Like what you are half the time.”

“Why are you pulling this shit, Tori?” Kiwana noticed that Zach’s voice was resigned rather than irritated, as if they were engulfed in the continuation of a conversation they’d started earlier. The postponed Hawaiian honeymoon must have been over before they got off the plane from Seattle. Kiwana lingered only a moment.

“Don’t get me started,” Tori said.

“You make me sick sometimes. You act like you’re tough, but you are weak. A little boy. A goddamn middle-aged man-boy who doesn’t know how to take care of his wife. Yeah, you make me sick, Zach.”

“Tori,” he said, his voice holding a measure of anger, but as quiet as he could be.

“I don’t care if she hears me,” Tori said.

“She means as much to me as that bitch you’re banging back home.”

“I’m not banging anyone. I love you.”

“You don’t know what love is and you don’t care about me.” A door shut and Zach appeared on the lanai. He caught a glimpse of Kiwana down below on the patio, but he didn’t acknowledge her presence as she hurried the lamp fuel to its storage location under the stairs.

“I’m sorry about all of that,” he said. Kiwana turned to see Zach right behind her.

“Not a problem,” she said.

“Sometimes sunshine makes people cranky. Too much of a good thing, you know.” He smiled at her. It was a sad smile, meant to convey appreciation of what she was saying without betraying his wife with too much of an apology for her behavior.

“Trade winds are supposed to pick up,” she said, looking past him, the awkwardness of the encounter passing in the breeze.

“That’ll be nice,” he said.

“The morning will bring a better day than today. That’s just how it is here on the North Shore. Every single day is better than the one that preceded it.”

“Sounds like you should be working for the Chamber of Commerce or something,” he said. She smiled at Zach.

“Actually, I’m on the board. Have been for twenty years.” Her demeanor was disarming. So much so, he didn’t expect the next words from her mouth.

“Your wife is maintenance high, isn’t she?” He looked at her quizzically.

“You mean high maintenance,” he said.

“And, yes, she is.”

“Of course you’ve known this all along.” He felt a little redness and it wasn’t sunburn.

“Yes, I have.”

“She’s pretty,” she said.

“Yes, very.” Kiwana turned the key on the storage locker.

“Pretty isn’t always easy to live with.” He nodded. Kiwana told him good night. Though they were in the middle of their stay, she would never see him again.

If Kendall Stark had been surprised by the candor of the Pacific Islander in pearl-decorated slippers and a fuchsia-and-bird-of-paradise-patterned shift, she didn’t say so. She sipped her tea, the sweetness no longer nearly as cloying as it had been before the ice cubes began to melt.

“You call it like it is, don’t you?”

“As much as I can. At that moment, I felt sorry for the guy, but I wanted him to know that whatever he’d gotten himself into was his own doing. You know?” Kendall nodded.

“Tori is beautiful, no doubt, but so are these.” Kiwana touched a necklace of shark’s teeth that she wore low, almost into the slightly crinkly cleavage that spilled over the front of her dress.

“So you think she had something to do with Zach’s death.”

“It isn’t for me to say.”

“But you want to say something about it, don’t you?”

“More tea?”

“No, thanks.” Kendall left her eyes on Kiwana, demanding an answer with a smile on her face at the same time.

“You know what I think. I told the police. I cannot add any more. I wasn’t on the beach. I didn’t see the accident.” Kendall asked Kiwana about the photograph of the paddle.

“Do you want what I know or what I think?” Kendall nodded at her and sipped her tea.

“Thinking is good, but what do you know?” She looked upward, pondering what she knew.

“I know of only one thing for sure. When they went off that morning, I sent them with boogie boards and paddles.”

“So I saw,” Kendall said, still conjuring up the image of the photograph.

“No, what you saw was one paddle.”

“One paddle,” Kendall repeated.

“The police only recovered one paddle. Hers. The other one was gone.”

“Lost in the ocean.”

“Maybe,” she said.

“Paddles are small and the Pacific is enormous. I know what you’re getting at.”

“I know—not think—that the paddle would have come ashore right there. The current is dependable as Sunday dinner with Grandma.” Kendall sized her up. Kiwana was a no-nonsense type and her certainty was convincing.

“So you’re suggesting that the missing paddle was something else. A weapon.”

“I’m not Hawaii 5-0, Detective Stark. I’m a landlady. All I know is that I made a note of the missing paddle and I billed Tori for it when she returned to the mainland. She put up a real fuss, that one. She never paid me.”

“You are tough,” Kendall said, with enough of a rise in her voice to convey a touch of humor, a little irony. Kiwana didn’t care much for it.

“You can think whatever you want. But I’d still like to be paid. Maybe you’ll pay. She’s your friend’s twin sister. I’ll go get the bill.” Kiwana got up and went inside. Kendall watched a trio of sea turtles toss like green Frisbees in the surf. When Kiwana returned, she handed Kendall a handwritten bill and she found herself digging into her overstuffed purse for her checkbook. It was an old debt that Kendall was sure should have been forgiven long ago.

“I’m a businesswoman,” Kiwana said.

“Your friend’s sister got the best of me those years ago. Now the score is settled. You pay. We’re even.” Kendall was tempted to say that the score between Tori and Lainie could never be made even, but she refrained from doing so. It could never be settled fairly between her and Tori, either.

Kendall drove through Haleiwa with its macaw-colored shaved ice and overpriced beachwear before heading up the coast toward the place where Tori and Zach had spent their last moments together. She had a map and GPS in her rental car, but didn’t need either. Oahu was an island with mountains so rugged that there was no way, and probably no need, to traverse them with a highway. The melty-hot roadways hug the coast, and though the speed limits are ridiculously slow, there usually is no rush to get anywhere. She parked in a small lot across from the mosquito-buzzing small planes of the Dillingham Airport. Save for the noise of shorebirds, the surf, and the small sightseeing planes, the beach felt desolate. Kiwana had told her only the locals really got that far out of the way. Tori had asked the night before things went so wrong where they could go to celebrate their marriage “as if we were on a desert island all to ourselves.”

“So I told her where to go,” she had said.

“Not really where to go, if you know what I mean. Now I wished I’d done just that. When I had the chance, you know.”

“We can’t like everyone,” Kendall had said.

“No, we can’t. God wants us to. But in my years doing what I do, I have to accept what I cannot change. That woman was one of those.” Kendall walked over the leaf-littered sand to where the foam of the waves lapped things clean every day. She went past a couple of young men with fishing spears and a cache of beer in a Styrofoam chest. A few steps closer on the hot sands and she could see they were younger than she thought, no more than fifteen. Kendall was certain the beer and the spears were a bad idea, but she said nothing. She looked down at the photo of the beach taken by the Honolulu Police Department the afternoon of the accident. Her eyes ran the flat line of the horizon. A lone surfer plied the waves breaking a mile offshore where coral and basalt had formed a broad reef. The sun was lower in the sky than in the photo. She looked up the coast where she could see the outcroppings of Kaena Point, partly veiled in a thin layer of volcanic ash and fog the locals called vog. Kendall didn’t know what she was really looking for because so many years had passed, it was possible the sands had shifted and moved the most desirable part of the beach out past the landmark that Kiwana had given her.

“The place where it happened is directly in front of the palm swallowed by the banyan,” she had said. That was easy enough to find. In the way that only God could devise, a coconut palm had somehow managed to punch a hole in the canopy of a sprawling banyan tree just off the highway. It looked like the tufted head of a peacock emerging from a mountain of dark green foliage. It could not be missed by anyone with a sense of imagination or a need for shade. The heat was getting to Kendall once more. She’d coated her exposed skin in a waterproof sunblock that made her sweat. Every time she touched her arms, she felt the oily slick of a product she’d never use again. It was called Banana Boat, but she figured Banana Peel would have been a more appropriate moniker. Kendall looked at the second photo, the one retrieved from the victim’s camera. It was Tori. She was wearing a hot pink bikini and no one would argue that she could get away with donning one. In fact, if she’d wandered past one of those Hawaiian Tropic bikini contests on Waikiki Beach, she might have been confused with the winner. Without oil and the help of the implants yet to come. Probably without an entry form, too. She was simply stunning. Her blond hair seemed more golden than in any other photo Kendall had seen. Her eyes were blue, but not the vapid kind of blue that suggests a swimming pool or charmless sky. There was intensity, a depth of lapis. Kendall looked at the necklace around her friend’s sister’s neck. It seemed so fitting. Shark’s teeth, she thought.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Haleiwa

Ten years ago

Maryanne Milton was mad at her husband, an airman stationed in Hawaii. Mad was hardly the word. She was bitter, angry, and hell-bent on revenge. He’d cheated on her with another woman, a secretary who worked at the base. To add insult to injury, it was a woman Maryanne had known and admired. Maryanne filled a cooler with beer and drove out to the beach near Dillingham. She figured that she’d drink the beer, then walk out into the creamy surf and let the waves carry her to something that approximated peace. Tranquility. A place away from the embarrassment and torment of marrying the wrong man and having a father who’d been right on the money about the louse. Other unhinged women might have sought revenge by killing their husbands, but not Maryanne. She figured that the burden of her suicide would haunt him for the rest of his life. She parked her yellow VW and dragged her cooler to a deserted spot where the waves struck the shoreline with a fury that suited her mood. She turned the dial on her radio to find the last song she’d hear before she died. A suicide soundtrack is harder to come by than the happy can imagine. Alanis Morissette was too angsty. A tears-in-her-beer country song she couldn’t place was too maudlin. Maryanne wanted something melancholy, but settled on an angry woman’s anthem, Linda Ronstadt’s “You’re No Good.” Old school, but oh-so-right. As she settled into her misery, she noticed a man and a woman down the beach. The woman in a pink bathing suit was on top of the man while another man kneeled behind her. Maryanne averted her eyes when she figured out what they were doing. They were making love. Great, she thought. Rub my face in it. I can’t get one man. And she has two. I wonder if they are cheating on their spouses as they act out their little From Here to Eternity scene. The next time Maryanne looked, the woman had moved her blanket closer to shore and was sitting alone. Maryanne was planning her next move, her last act of desperation and revenge. She was wondering how her family would react, how the woman who’d stolen her husband would feel. She looked up to the sound of sirens as police and aid cars converged on the road up the beach. The woman in the pink bathing suit was waving her arms and screaming. In less than an hour, paradise had turned into a nightmare. Half drunk but sobering up quickly, Maryanne ditched her remaining beer in a trash can, and returned to her car. The hot sands of the beach crunched like tin cans under her feet. A dose of reality had saved her life. But not the man who’d been making love with the woman on the beach. She saw on the news that night that one of the men had died during a boogie board accident. As far as she knew, the trio hadn’t been boogying on anything, much less a board. She didn’t say anything to anyone about what she’d seen. She didn’t want to explain why she’d driven up to the North Shore.

A fifty-five-year-old woman named Selena Jonas sat at her kitchen table in Haleiwa. Her toes tapped a Morse code of agitation on a well-worn linoleum floor. She shook her head at the late-night circumstances as she eyed the wall-mounted kitchen phone. It stayed mute as it had all day. What did you do now, Ronnie? It was a rhetorical question, one she had asked over and over from the time he was small. Shoplifting at seven. Drugs at eleven. Juvenile detention at fourteen. Ronnie had been nothing but trouble. Over and over. He’d promised to get his act together. He said that he’d sober up, go back to school. He agreed to a curfew. All of that had been a big, sad lie. She only moved from her chair to unhook the receiver to make sure that the line was not dead. Cigarettes piled up like Pickup sticks in a Scotch plaid beanbag-based ashtray. Her husband, a Haleiwa boat mechanic, entered the kitchen and patted her gently on the shoulder. He told her that whatever had happened, Ronnie would be all right. It was a hope. Nothing more. Deep down, Selena knew it. The police arrived three days after Ronnie went missing. The teenager’s body had washed up on the northern shore of Kauai, the island neighbor to the west of Oahu. A female tourist walking the beach near Kilauea found him. The sight was horrific beyond imagination. Parts of his face and the soft tissue of his abdomen were missing.

“Juvenile sea turtles,” the officer told her, “made a mess of your boy. You don’t want to see him.” Serena had braced herself for the news, and yet her resolve to hold it together was crumbling.

“How did he die?”

“Looks like he hit his head on a rock or something.”

“You aren’t going to cut him up, are you?” Her eyes were raining tears.

“Yes, ma’am. If you mean are we going to do an autopsy? The answer is yes.” Selena cried until she could cry no more. After that she could never look at the image of a green sea turtle without thinking of what had happened to her boy. In Haleiwa that was very hard to do. Turtles were everywhere. The next day the Honolulu Advertiser carried a story in the back of the news section. It was only five lines, the kind of article that means nothing to anyone but those who loved Ronnie Jonas.

Haleiwa Boy Dies

In Surfing Accident

Without mentioning Zach Campbell by name, the piece noted that the Jonas boy’s death been the second of two deaths in the area in three days. It was the only time the deaths were linked in any manner.

The boy was loading his beat-up Chevy Cavalier with a stereo when Tori Campbell first saw him. She’d been walking in the neighborhood at first light; an obnoxious cacophony of tropical birds fed the irritation and anger she’d felt toward Zach. With each step, the anger bubbled over.

“Shut up,” she said to the birds.

“Shut it up!” She thought of all the things she could do to make her life better. She could leave him, of course. He’d only married her as arm candy and there was no genuine love between them. And yet, the idea of just walking away seemed like a futile waste of resources. His resources. He had the house before they married. He had the bank account. He had everything she ever wanted. The only problem was him. Then she saw the boy. A beat later, he saw her.

“My stereo,” he said.

“Your stereo, my ass,” she said moving closer to his car. The backseat was filled with valuables that she knew never could have belonged to him. She reached for her cell phone.

“Please,” he said.

“Do not call the police. It will mean big trouble for me.” She moved closer, unafraid.

“You should have thought about that before you stole from that house, you stupid little thug,” Tori said, indicating the beachfront two-story that had been the source of his booty.

“I can put it back,” he said, his eyes widening. She had been young like that boy and she knew how hard it was to climb back toward respectability after the world decides who and what you are. His fear was useful to her.

“No, keep it.”

“I can go?” She held a camera to her eye and clicked twice, first an image of Ronnie. The second time, she took a photo of the car, its Hawaiian license plate clearly visible. Like the proverbial frog in the cool water on boil, Ronnie Jonas had no idea that the kettle was over a flame.

“I want you to come back here tonight. I will have something for you to do.”

“I don’t want any trouble,” he said.

“Baby, you don’t have anything to worry about.” She turned and walked away. If the boy came as she thought he might, everything would be perfect. Taking another party into her plan had really no risk. The other party would never live long enough to say a word. Tori knew that she’d made a mistake on Banner Road. She would think twice about letting a witness live again.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Haleiwa

The present

In her room at the Haleiwa Beach Inn Kendall fiddled with the AC, which someone had set on chill-blaster mode. She’d gone from 90 degrees to 55 and was shaking from the unpleasantly cold air. She’d packed light, too light. She found a beach towel and wrapped it around her shoulders like a shawl. All she’d learned that day was that no one liked Lainie’s sister, and her husband had died in a tragic accident. Things she already knew. She changed into an ice blue sundress and sandals and touched up her makeup. A few hours on the beach and she’d already lost the pallid skin that characterizes those from Seattle or the undead. Not a burn, but almost. Even so, she looked pretty good. Rikki Tyler, the retired Honolulu detective who had investigated the Zach Campbell beach accident, had agreed to meet her for dinner in the bar at Haleiwa Joe’s. She took the towel-shawl off her shoulders, stepped into the warmth of a beautiful Hawaiian evening, and made her way to the restaurant. Tyler, half English and half Hawaiian, had all the good attributes of both. His hair was jet black and thick, and his brown eyes sparkled with intelligence. Kendall introduced herself at the hostess station. She explained the situation with Jason Reed and her role in the investigation in Kitsap County. By way of full disclosure, she also confirmed that she had gone to high school with the O’Neal sisters.

“I used to be a friend of Tori’s,” she said.

“Well, I used to be a cop,” Rikki said, his white teeth gleaming in the dim light of the restaurant.

“Until my wife told me she’d had enough. She wanted to return to Idaho. We moved. But Idaho is no place for a Hawaiian boy.” Kendall understood completely.

“There’s no ocean beach, for sure.”

“That’s why I’m back here, working at the Walmart in Aiea as a security guard. You caught me on my day off and, frankly, you reminded me of a case that I always wondered about.”

“What did you wonder about, Rikki?” she asked as they took their seats next to a boisterous group from the mainland. He shook his head.

“Want a drink?” Kendall ordered a Blue Hawaiian.

“When in Haleiwa,” she said. Rikki might have been retired, but he was still very interested in Tori Campbell.

“What happened after your friend returned to the mainland?” Kendall studied her unnaturally blue drink, fiddled with the pink paper umbrella that came with it, and took her time answering.

“Good question. She put the house she and Zach shared up on the market within the first day or two. She sold it in a week. She bought an expensive house on Oyster Bay about three months later. It was way more money than I thought she had, but of course I hadn’t considered the life insurance.”

“Do you know how much she got?”

“Not really. Lainie was working at the P-I then. She told me she asked a friend on the business desk to look into the real estate deal. This was prior to the whole world being at your fingertips on the Internet. When a cell phone was only good for calling someone. She paid cash.”

“Must have made some major dough selling the first place,” Rikki said.

“Not really. They owed a lot on it. She maybe came away with a few thousand.”

“How much was the new house?”

“Four hundred grand. That’s chump change for a place here, but in Bremerton, we’re talking a Bill Gates–type property.” She paused a second, rethinking her statement.

“Maybe not quite Gates.”

“She paid for it with insurance proceeds,” he said. She nodded.

“I guess so.” Rikki gulped the last of his drink, and motioned to the bartender for another.

“What’s the victim in Tacoma worth to her?”

“Two million.”

“She’s trading up, isn’t she?”

“Tori was always was that kind of a girl.” They talked a bit more after a waitress left a plate of coconut shrimp and mango chutney—just delicious enough to halt the conversation a moment.

“You brought something for me,” Kendall said, indicating his briefcase.

“Like all retired detectives working at Walmart,” Rikki said with a self-deprecating smile, “I have photocopies of some of my old cases stashed at home. The criteria, not surprising to you, I’m sure, were the cases that I felt would be the subject of interest someday.

“How many of those? Just four. Your friend’s sister’s case made the cut.” He opened his beat-up alligator briefcase and produced a small stack of papers. Lainie could see a few more than what she’d found in the North Junett house.

“What did you make of the crime scene?”

“Other than what I wrote?”

“Right. I mean you mention the terrain, the wide grooves in the sand, but you don’t really say what they were. Or if it was related.” Rikki nodded.

“Yeah, the grooves in the sand, as you call them, were strange indeed. They led from the parking lot to where they were sitting on the beach. We thought there might have been a cooler or a board dragged, but we couldn’t track ’em.”

“How come there were no photos showing them?” Rikki fanned out the remaining pages.

“I guess I blame myself for that. We didn’t do a good job securing the scene. We focused on the body and recovering it, not the entire stretch of beach. It is, after all, a pretty big beach.” Kendall, adept at reading upside down as any reporter, noticed the toxicology report.

“What did tox say?” she asked. Rikki flipped through the three pages that were the sum of the finding from the lab in Honolulu.

“Alcohol in his system, some trace of a sleeping pill, and—this was the only interesting part—there was some chlorine in the seawater in his lungs.”

“Chlorine?”

“Trace, really. But interesting.”

“Yeah, I mean, you keep Hawaii’s beaches spotless, but not that clean.” Rikki laughed nervously, then became completely serious.

“I think it was an error at the lab, Kendall. We were going through a bad time back then. Had a flake in the lab who thought that processing evidence was ignoring it.” Kendall understood. While Kitsap County had never had such a scandal, other jurisdictions had a rash of them.

“Tell me about her. Tell me about your interview with her.”

“Memorable,” he said, grateful for the change in topic.

“Do you mean to make me cry? Do you get off on seeing a girl tormented for no reason?” Rikki Tyler rolled his eyes and sipped his iced tea. The air-conditioning in the police station was working overtime, sending a cool stream throughout the space. After her husband’s body was recovered, the young woman with the stunning tan, blond hair, and slender body had exhibited enough evasive and combative behavior that an interview off scene was in order.

“You are something else, aren’t you?” Tori Campbell looked at the mirrored surface of the window behind him. She knew there were prying eyes looking at her, studying her like she was an exhibit in a greenhouse or maybe even a zoo. Yes, that’s how they’d been treating her. Like a caged animal.

“Do you mean to offend me, officer? I’m a visitor here in your so-called island paradise and my husband has died.”

“Detective,” Tyler said, now drilling his stare into her blue swimming-pool eyes.

“The officers around here are the man and woman waiting outside to escort you to the bathroom. Should you need to go.” Tori shifted in her chair. It was metal, wobbly, and not at all comfortable. It made a grating noise when she moved. She sat still.

“I don’t need to go anywhere but back to the mainland. Home.”

“You’re not going home.”

“Oh, but I am. I watch Law and Order. I know my rights and I know you can’t hold me.” She stopped herself for a second, thinking about the possibility of using the Flirt she knew so well. The Flirt was definitely a skill not to be wasted.

“My lawyer will be here in five minutes.”

“All right,” he said.

“Maybe you’ll want to pass the time telling me about your husband and his little swimming accident. I talked with the rental house owner. Says you two weren’t getting along.”

“She’s a bitch,” she said, pressing her palms into the table.

“I won’t say anything more about it.”

“What happened out there at the beach, Ms. Campbell?” She stared at him. Her eyes were now glacial. She wasn’t saying another word.

“Don’t want to talk about it, do you?”

“I don’t—I won’t—talk about any of it. None of it whatsoever. But nice try, officer.”

“Detective.”

“So you keep reminding me. Or maybe you’re just reminding yourself.” Tori had meant to get a rise out of him and she could see by the redness of his cheeks she’d been somewhat successful. Rikki Tyler’s lips tightened. His tenseness and anger made Tori relax. It was as if she was sucking the power from him and she wound him tighter and tighter around her finger. He wanted her, she was sure. All men did. He wanted to rip her clothes off right then and there, and make love to her on that crummy metal table. Banging around. Dragging its legs over the cement floor where all the people on the other side of the two-way mirror could just watch. Sure, he wanted her. They all did. Tori didn’t say another word. She let the detective stew in his own juices. He’d be better at that than what he was trying to do with her. That’s how she saw it. The pair sat there silently, fluorescents buzzing overhead, the rat-tat-tat of a woman’s heels against the tiled floor outside. People were moving on the other side of the glass, and then the door swung open. Lyndon Knox, a fiftyish man with a slight belly but the posture of a man who knew how to wear a really good suit, entered the room. He was sweaty and in a hurry. He was well known among Honolulu law enforcement as a gun for hire who delivered the goods.

“She’s done,” he said.

“I’m here. We’re all done.” The detective gave the lawyer an almost sheepish grin.

“Hi, Lyn. Didn’t figure she’d have the dough and the connections to hire the likes of you.” Tori smiled at her newly hired lawyer.

“I’m tired. Can I go home? Maybe we could stop somewhere and get something to eat. As rough as this ordeal has been, I still find the need to have something to eat.” The detective held his tongue. He wanted more than anything to say to her, Eat? Said the spider to the fly? Instead, he stood, poked his head out of the interview room. He spoke in low tones with a couple of other police department suits and returned.

“Okay,” he said.

“You’re right. She can go.” He spoke directly to the lawyer, without even looking at the beautiful woman sitting there.

“Don’t go far,” he said.

“We’re not done with you.” Tori looked at her lawyer.

“Tell him that I have plans. My sister’s in from out of town and I’m going to take her on a little trip.” Lyn Knox didn’t see any need to relay the message. It was clear what she said.

“I’ll make sure Ms. Campbell is available if you need her again.” Tori Campbell uncrossed her long, shapely legs and stood. She smoothed out the wrinkles in her sheer skirt and swung her big white leather purse with the oversize silver buckle over her shoulder and started walking toward the door. She rounded her shoulder with a stretch of her arm, exhaled.

“Lyndon,” she said, sweetly, “I really want to have dinner with you tonight. I’ve been so lonely. I’ve been through so much.” The detective shook his head. This lady has game. And I doubt I’ve heard the last of her.

“One more thing,” Kendall said, getting out the photos that Lainie had sent to her. From her side of the table, she slid the image of the Hawaiian boy, his dark eyes flashing fear into the lens of the camera.

“Do you know why this photo was among Tori’s things?” Rikki held the photo in his fingertips to the flame of the candle in the center of the table. He shook his head, thinking.

“Wait a second,” he said.

“That’s Ronnie Jonas.”

“Who’s that?”

“He’s a local kid. Died the same week that Zach Campbell did.”

“Is there a connection?” Kendall asked.

“There is now.”

Her bag packed, Kendall Stark made a beeline through the hotel lobby past the brochure rack that touted all of the luaus, booze cruises, and authentic lei-making classes that promised tourists “a real Hawaiian” experience. She’d had none of that on this trip. She got in her rental Jeep and drove past the farmers’ market and along the beach road to the highway to Honolulu. She had one last stop before heading home. She wanted to say good-bye to Kiwana at Bali House. She found her just inside the turtle-decorated gate, cutting a bouquet of bird-of-paradise, long green stems topped with spikes of orange and purple.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” Kiwana asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe. I talked with the detective last night. He told me something that got me thinking a little.”

“What was that?” She put down the flowers and opened the gate. She pulled her rental car inside and Kiwana shut the gate.

“Come on. I have more of the tea you loved so much.” Kendall didn’t have the heart to tell her host that the tea was beyond sickeningly sweet.

“No, thank you.” Kiwana laughed.

“No worries. I know it wasn’t your favorite. I have pop, too. Come and sit. Let’s watch the ocean. Turtles are coming today.” They sat on the white wooden lounge chairs facing the pummeling surf. Kiwana looked over at the spa and shook her head.

“Darn thing’s turning green.” She got up, fished around the closet that held the boogie boards and tiki torch oil, and produced a bottle of Clorox.

“Seawater is lovely when the sea can churn it and keep it clean.”

“The spa is seawater?”

“Yes. Don’t tell anyone, but I do spike it with chlorine bleach. Just enough to keep it fresh.” Kendall set down her cola, but she missed the rattan side table and the plastic glass scuttled to the patio.

“Oh, no,” she said.

“I’m sorry. I have to leave.”

“It’s all right, dear. That’s why we use plastic.”

“It isn’t all right. Not at all,” she said, getting up.

“I have to go. I have a flight to catch.” And, she knew, the truth to confront.

Across the Pacific, another dream came. Lainie reached for a sleeping pill. She curled up in the empty bed, pulling the sheets up high to her neck as if she would choke the life out of herself just to get some sleep. Sleep without dreams. Slumber without nightmares. Was that too much to ask? The images came to her slowly. The water boiled and roiled . . . a seemingly toxic brew. She was naked and she wasn’t alone. She felt a man’s hands on her waist.

“I’m going down,” he said. His voice was husky, deep. She watched as he lowered himself in the water, as she arched her back and spread her thighs apart. She turned and spoke in the direction of some bushes.

“Now,” she said.

“All right,” another voice answered, also male, but much younger. She clamped her thighs around the man’s head and grabbed his hair with both hands. She pressed with all her might. The man, who’d gone down to please her, was fighting under the roiling waters.

“Hit him now!” she said. An oar dropped into the hot tub. A small amount of red bloomed in the water.

“Let’s get him in the car,” she said.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Kitsap County

“Tori! What am I going to do now?” Lainie and Tori stood outside their car. The smell of gasoline and the crunch of broken glass, torn leather, and acrid striations of burned rubber fell over Banner Road like the remnants of an S&M parade gone terribly wrong. Or, at the very least, more wrong than usual.

“We’ve got to get Jason out of the car,” Lainie said. Her blue eyes were nearly black as her pupils soaked in every drop of light in the darkness of the stretch by the Banner Jump. The fun of the rise and fall of the car had ended in a nightmare. Airborne had become terror. The sisters, working in tandem, battered and bleeding from the crash, hoisted the limp teenage boy from the overturned car and laid him out by the roadside.

“Is he alive?” Lainie asked. She was shaking and bleeding from a small gash in her forehead.

“I didn’t mean for this to happen. I was going too fast. We were having fun. I thought it was fun.”

“He’s alive,” Tori said, bending closer.

“What am I going to do? I’m going to go to jail!” Tori put her hand on her sister’s shoulder. She was bleeding, too.

“He’s going to be fine.” Lainie was crying then, bending over Jason and looking up at Tori.

“I already have one ticket! I’m going to be in so much trouble. I’m going to go to jail!” She was referring to a minor-in-possession ticket that she got after a party in Manchester earlier in the year. Their father had gone ballistic and Tori had reveled in the fact that “Lainie the Perfect” had gotten a little taste of being on the outs. Lainie, inconsolable and in full panic mode, was crying as she bent over her sister’s boyfriend. Tori went to turn off the ignition. She looked up to see the headlights of an approaching car. The sheriff already? Couldn’t be. It would take ten minutes to get anyone out in that southernmost part of the county. She squinted in the headlights as the vehicle parked on the opposite side of the road. The door opened and the driver stepped onto the pavement, which was glittering with glass.

“It’s that druggie Mikey Walsh,” Tori said.

“That’s okay,” Lainie said.

“Jason’s alive. He’s going to be all right.”

Jason Reed’s voice was weak. Not really a whisper, but the kind of soft voice one uses when speaking from the heart, which he was. Tori cradled his head in her arms, while Lainie went over to talk to Mikey Walsh.

“I’m not gonna make it,” he said.

“You are, too,” Tori said.

“Help will be here in a few minutes. God, I hate this county!”

“I made a big mistake,” he said.

“It wasn’t your fault. Lainie went too fast.” He shook his head.

“No, not that.” Tori heard Mikey talking with Lainie, telling her to calm down.

“This is my fault! All my fault!” She leaned closer to her boyfriend.

“I don’t love you, Tori. I love Kendall. But I screwed things up.” She didn’t think she heard him correctly and she leaned closer. She wanted to scream at Lainie and Mikey for talking so loudly.

“What are you saying?” she asked. His pale blue eyes were open, staring at her, unblinking. He spoke and his words trailed off to a whisper, caught up in the wind of the night, but indelible in Tori’s memory.

Tori O’Neal was crouched over Jason Reed as Mikey Walsh rounded the Taurus. The young man who was tweaking and partying just moments before was now in a sweat. He held his arms close to his chest in an attempt to control his pounding heart. He didn’t know what to do. He thought of the drugs in his vehicle, and he’d hoped that if the sheriff came, they’d consider him a Good Samaritan and not someone who they needed to bust. Why didn’t I take the Valley Road? I could have avoided this mess. It appeared as if Tori was consoling Jason, though she was not saying anything. Her eyes were rimmed in red. Even in the stabbing beam of the headlights across the road, it was obvious that the unthinkable had just occurred.

“He’s dead,” she said.

“Jason is dead!” By then Lainie joined them, slumping onto the gravel roadside and crying so loudly that the nearest neighbors surely would have heard her, even if they’d missed the sound of the breaking glass, twisting metal, and the skidding tires of the crash itself.

“Oh, God,” Lainie said.

“What have I done?” Tori reached for her sister and hugged her.

“You didn’t do anything,” she said.

“I was driving. This is my fault.” Lainie studied Tori’s face. She was offering a solution, an unselfish gift if ever there was one. Had she heard her right? “What are you saying, Tori?”

“I’m saying that I was driving. This accident is on me.” As Tori spoke, she caught a glimpse of something in Mikey Walsh’s expression. She was adept at reading people. Better than her sister. But she wasn’t sure what it was that his drugged-out and fearful expression meant. Just how much had he heard? How much had he seen? Mikey turned to Lainie.

“I thought you said you were driving.” Lainie was practically on top of Jason’s body, sobbing. She looked at Mikey and started to speak, but Tori cut her off.

“Are you on something right now? Do you need to have a drug test when the sheriff gets here? Or are you just stupid? I was driving. I said so.” Lainie never told anyone about what happened that night. There was no point in it. She was sure that Tori would get off without having to go to jail. It was an accident and she’d never done anything wrong. What she didn’t know was that the Kitsap County authorities had reached their limit when it came to teenagers and their dangerous joyriding around the county. Tori O’Neal was going to be the example that everyone remembered.

Mikey Walsh had been a loose end and a pathetic one at that. The former speed-freak-turned preacher had been lurking in the darkness of Tori’s memory for fifteen years. She reviled loose ends. She knew from experience that she alone was the only one worthy of being a witness to whatever it was she’d done. As she packed her suitcase, she knew that her plan had its share of risks. But the rewards were so very great. Two million reasons would easily tip the scales in favor of taking the risk. She wasn’t sure if she was being watched by the police, reporters, anyone. With Darius Fulton’s arrest and the refusal of bail, eyes were not on her right then.

“He called me from the jail,” she told Kaminski.

“Threatened to kill me. He said that if he couldn’t have me, no one could.” Despite all of that, Tori was not a woman who wanted to take any unnecessary chances. Not when she was so close to the prize. When Lainie arrived to “help” after the shooting, Tori sized up the one attribute that she needed to alter. Her hair. Lainie’s hair was at least two shades darker, and shorter. It was the kind of haircut and color that screamed “average” and she knew it wouldn’t be hard to mimic. Tori went into the bathroom with a pair of scissors and a box of honey wheat hair coloring. A few snips, a slathering of the drugstore-brand dye, and it was over. It took all of a half hour to alter her appearance from stunning to merely attractive. It was a trade-off she was willing to make for a very short time. The matter of her breasts, however, was a slight problem. They were larger than Lainie’s. She purchased a bra that, while uncomfortable, would minimize what her surgeon had given her. Tori didn’t mind binding them. They were never for her anyway. Finally, she put on a little black dress that was a duplicate of the one that Lainie had bought at Nordstrom for the class reunion. It was not something that Tori would ever have picked for herself. Lainie’s taste in attire was lackluster—from dress to heels to accessories. She was a road map to mediocrity. Always had been. She studied herself in the mirror. Something wasn’t right. What was it? Tori smiled at her reflection.

“Oh, yes, that,” she said aloud. It was a small detail, but one that might be noticed. She picked up a rattail comb and changed the direction of her part.

“Hi, Lainie,” she said into the mirror. Inside, she knew relief would come once she took care of the final loose end in her life. Her sister.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Tacoma

Parker opened his laptop and clicked on the icon for the webcam. Tori had her back to the camera. She was wearing the red teddy. She’d told him that she only wore that on special occasions—the times when they’d be together. In the hotel in Seattle that first summer. The time they’d made love on the soapstone island in the kitchen. The night his father was set aside for good. Parker was about to speak when he noticed a man’s voice, then some laughter. He turned up the volume because he couldn’t quite make out what was being said. Despite what the Radio Shack clerk had promised when he made the purchase, the sound quality was only good when the person talking directed his or her attention right at the built-in microphone.

“He thinks I’m pregnant,” she said.

“I know. Stupid sap,” the male voice said. Parker couldn’t believe what he was hearing. It had to be some kind of a joke. Who was Tori talking to? Tori crawled onto the bed, unaware that she was being watched.

“The other day when I had a glass of wine, he told me that it might hurt our baby. I told him that the doctor said that a glass of wine or two is good for it.”

“You’ve got him wrapped around your finger,” the man said. Parker started to shake. None of this could or should be happening—she was his soul mate. They’d done the unthinkable, all for love. All that they’d ever wanted had been built on a big lie.

“Young, dumb, and full of cum,” she said. Who was she talking to? He couldn’t see. The voice seemed a little familiar, but not so much that he could identify it. Parker slammed the laptop shut, imagining that the noise reverberated all the way to North Junett Street and startled her. Her. She. The woman he loves. The woman who told him he was a man. The woman who had asked him to prove his love with a gun and a knife. Parker started to cry, guttural, deep—heart-wrenchingly so. He buried his face in a pillow as he sobbed and screamed. It was his eighteenth birthday. Everything that he thought was true was a lie. He was not a man. He was a fool. He got up and rifled through his bag as if there was something he could take to end his life. The medicine to control his acne probably couldn’t do that much. He looked for a razor, but he’d forgotten to pack one. He only shaved once a week. He thought of his dad. How his dad had showed him how to shave with the back of a comb when he was five.

“Dad, I’m sorry. Dad, can you hear me? Forgive me.” Parker was frantic. There was nothing there to end his life, and once that thought was accepted as reality, perfect, clear, there was only one thing to do. If he could not die, he’d have to face up to what he’d done.

When Parker Connelly closed his eyes, all he saw was a river of red. When he held his hand over his ears, he could still hear the guttural sounds made by the minister he’d murdered. His hand could still feel the grip of the blade and the ease with which he sunk it into Mikey Walsh’s neck and abdomen, draining him of blood and life. And while he doubted he could ever shake the images, the smells, the experience of murder, he didn’t want to give voice to what he did afterward. Not to her. Not to Tori. He didn’t tell her how he’d sat down and cried before going inside to do what she needed done. He knew he was in love with her. That he wanted to be with her for the rest of his life. But he also knew how wrong all of that was. How twisted the fantasy had become. It was as if he’d been sleeping, dreaming, and now he was awake. He closed his eyes. Red. He started to cry out, but the sounds he made into the pillow were the same sounds that Pastor Mikey had made. That his father had made. He felt that his life was over. That there was nothing to do but kill himself. Stop the pain. Stop all of the red. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t do that to his mother. She deserved more than that. He opened his phone and called her.

“Mom,” he said.

“Parker. I’ve been worried sick. Where are you?”

“Mom, I want to come home.”

“Come home, baby. I’ll come and get you.”

“Mom, I killed that man.” Laura refused to cry.

“I know. I know you did. Why? Honey?”

“I can’t talk about it.”

“You’re calling me because you can. I’ll come and get you.”

“Mom, it’s Tori,” he said.

“Why?” she asked.

“She’s in love with me. I’m in love with her. She said we could be together. She wants us to get married.”

“Parker, I don’t know. . . .” Laura wanted her son to come home. She didn’t want to push him away.

“We can talk about all of that.”

“She shot Dad. She made me shoot him, too. He was dead when I shot him. I just couldn’t do what she wanted.” Laura was crying now but fighting hard to sound calm.

“Where are you? I’ll come and get you.”

“Mom, she’s going to kill her sister. She’s going to switch places with Lainie.”

“Where are you, Parker?”

“I’m at the American Inn off I-5, south of Tacoma.”

“Don’t move. I’m coming to get you.”

Laura Connelly had not held her son that closely in a long time. He’d not said a word the entire way home from the motel. He stared out the window, and she let him be quiet. Whatever was really hurting him was deep, deeper than she could understand. She knew enough not to provoke him. When they got inside, she led him to the sofa, where they sat together. Almost immediately, he’d slumped against her, letting her absorb his pain. In every way, except for the awareness she had that he was nearly a grown man, it felt like a mother holding her baby. He was taller than her, stronger than her. Yet there he was warm, sweating, sobbing quietly in her arms. Between gulps of air and a torrent of tears he let some words pass his lips.

“I thought she loved me,” he said.

“She said she did.” Laura patted him gently, almost so softly that she wasn’t sure he’d even feel it.

“I know,” she said, though she did not know at all.

“I’m sure she did.” He shuddered a little, unwinding, unspooling.

“She and I were going to get married on Monday. We were going to fly away to Bermuda.” Laura knew how fragile Parker was just then. She knew what kind of a manipulator Tori could be, but even this was far beyond anything she could have guessed. There was no girlfriend. At least not a girlfriend that she could have imagined for her son.

“You were wanting that to happen,” she said, almost a question. Parker took a breath.

“No, Mom. She and I were soul mates. We’re going to have a baby.” A baby? This was too much. It seemed an impossibility. He was only a teenager. She was a grown woman. There was no way that there was going to be any baby. If it was true, there was a deep sickness inside Tori. If it was not true, her son was deluded, and dangerously so. Every explanation, every excuse she could conjure, came at her like Niagara. With so many explanations, so many possibilities, there had to be one that made absolute sense. There had to be one that would save her little boy. Laura didn’t want to offend her son, scare him off, do anything to break the bond they’d somehow managed to forge in that moment of crisis. Parker needed his mother more than ever. She felt that she’d failed him in the past. She owed him the help that he needed.

“Was Tori your girlfriend?” The words were delivered as flatly as possible. Laura Connelly used all that she possessed to try to keep the tone of judgment out of her words. To judge him was to push him away. To push him away at that moment would be to lose him forever.

“Mom! I told you, she’s pregnant. I’m going to be a father. I’m going to be a better dad than Dad ever was.” She patted him gently. The touch of his heaving body scared her. He was going to disintegrate.

“I have no doubt,” she said, softly, but with all the conviction of someone desperate to keep her son safe. No matter what he did. Parker fixed his stare on his mother.

“She lied to me, Mom. She lied to me. She wasn’t going to be with me. She was going to take our baby and run off with someone else.” Laura was crying now, but silently.

“How do you know?”

“I heard her. She was talking to him on the computer. I’ve been tricked. She made me do things that I shouldn’t have.”

“Parker, what things?” He tucked his head down on his mother’s chest, and she held him like a baby.

“Bad things, Mom.” Laura tried to remain calm. Her son was in serious trouble and on some level it felt like calmness was needed. Like the time he’d split his knee open after falling from the backyard swing when he was seven. The wound looked bad, but she acted as though it was nothing. She knew, like all moms do, that her fear would be reflected back at her boy.

“What kind of bad things?” she asked. Parker didn’t answer.

“You can tell me, Parker. Tell me.” He looked up at her.

“She wanted me to kill Dad, but I couldn’t. I was too weak. I didn’t do what a man would do that time, but later, Mom, I did. I really did.” Laura could feel her muscles tighten. She willed herself to stay calm, as though she really could.

“What did you do, Parker?”

“That minister. She made me kill him. She told me that he was going to hurt her. That he would send her to prison and we’d never be together. She said that our baby would be aborted by the state. I couldn’t let that happen. A baby needs a father. I needed a father.” Laura was crying, but she didn’t make a sound. Her tears rolled from the corners of her eyes and landed in the tangle of her son’s hair while she cradled him in her arms. She could only think of one thing. She needed to get her son out of harm’s way.

“We have to get you away from here. Get you out of here. Somewhere where the police can’t find you.”

“That’s just it, Mom. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want anyone else to die. I don’t want to hide.”

CHAPTER FIFTY

Bremerton, Washington

Mary Reed could no longer hold her secret. It took everything she had—and her reserves were substantial—to break her silence. She had made a promise. Her word meant something. It always had. But with all that was being said about Jason, Tori, Kendall, Lainie, and the whole Class of ’95 reunion, she knew that the time was right. It was as if God had called her and told her that it was time to shine a light on the past. It was her day off from her job at the courthouse. For some reason, maybe pride, she decided to dress up a little. She put on a pretty new pink top and dark trousers that made her look slim and stylish. It was as if she was going out for a lunch date with a girlfriend. She wanted to look her best when she said what she had to say.

“You look like a million bucks today,” Doug said as he sipped his coffee over a stack of brochures from Poulsbo RV. Retirement from the shipyard was beckoning, and Doug was sure that a recreational vehicle would be ideal for their new “footloose and fancy-free” lifestyle.

“We’re going to need a million bucks to afford one of those,” she said, heading out the door. So wrapped up in the brochure, Doug hadn’t noticed that his wife had been crying. I can do this, she told herself as she drove to the sheriff’s department. What I’m about to do is for good, not to hurt. Mary parked her car and went through the back door. She told the receptionist who she needed to see and waited in one of those uncomfortable visitor’s chairs.

“Mary?” Kendall said, emerging from the door by the front desk. She was exhausted and exhilarated from her trip, though she told no one that she’d just returned. She’d come to work directly from SeaTac Airport. She hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours, but didn’t really feel the need to. She was sure that Tori had murdered her husband Zach and Ronnie in Hawaii. She was running on adrenaline, but the look on Mary’s face brought that all to a halt.

“Kendall, I have something to tell you,” she said, looking as if she was going to burst into tears. Kendall hurried toward Mary, her face full of concern. She wondered if the exhumation had been too much, brought back too many memories.

“What is it? Are you all right?”

“Not here,” Mary said.

“Is there some place we can go?”

“Some place” meant somewhere private—not an interview room or her office.

“Let’s take a walk,” Kendall said. It had warmed up considerably and it finally felt like spring. Kendall didn’t see a need for a jacket, so they started out along Division Street until they came upon a row of old maple trees banking one of the uglier courthouse complex’s parking lots. She hadn’t told Mary about the bloody message on the dollhouse and she wondered if she’d somehow heard about it. Penny? Adam? But it wasn’t that.

“Kendall, I really need to get something off my chest.”

“Mary, the investigation is moving along, slowly. But we’re making progress. I’m sorry that it has been taking so long.” Mary shook her head. That wasn’t it, either.

“I’ve done something to you. Something I shouldn’t have.” Mary stopped talking for a moment. It was as if her words were suddenly lodged in her throat. Kendall had no idea what she was talking about, but the pain was so evident that her own eyes began to pool with tears. Losing a child is something that can never really be over.

“It can’t be that bad,” Kendall finally said. Mary looked down.

“I sent those messages through the website.” Kendall was confused. The conversation wasn’t going in the direction that she’d imagined at all. It wasn’t about Jason’s investigation.

“I’m sorry. I don’t follow you,” she said.

“When the class reunion card came in the mail for Jason—I guess the class of ’95 forgot that Jason was dead—I just couldn’t stop myself. I dropped the note in your office, too.” Kendall’s heart raced.

“The ‘I know everything’ message?” Mary nodded.

“I also e-mailed the committee. I wrote a message about how the truth will set you free.”

“I still don’t understand,” Kendall said, though she had an idea.

“Kendall, I talked to your mother. I took a part-time job at the Landing last fall to make some extra money. When I cleaned your mother’s room, she told me the truth.” The truth. Kendall knew what was coming and she felt her knees weaken. She sat down on the curb and Mary joined her.

“What did she tell you?” There was still hope that her secret was safe, though a part of her wanted it to be out, over. Finished. Keeping silent all those years had made it the forefront of her thoughts, not forgotten.

“That you had a baby. Jason’s baby. My grandson.” Kendall tried to come up with the right words for a conversation she’d never intended on having.

“You must hate me, Mary,” she said. Mary put her arms around Kendall.

“You were so young,” Mary said.

“I’m sure it was the hardest time of your life.” Kendall hugged her back. Her words came in pieces.

“After we broke up . . . I found out I was pregnant, but it was too late. He’d started seeing Tori O’Neal. I’m so sorry.” Jason’s mother lifted Kendall’s head and looked into her eyes.

“Don’t be. I’m happy. Knowing that a part of Jason is alive is the greatest gift I could have.”

Maddie Crane looked out over Commencement Bay as she absentmindedly scrolled though e-mails while talking on speakerphone with Darius Fulton from the Pierce County Jail. She looked at the time and wondered what had delayed the bank transfer. She also wondered what had delayed her afternoon tea. Where was Chad? If anything, Maddie was the consummate multitasker. She felt a surge of power that she hadn’t experienced in some time. It had been a long, hard road since the DUI that nearly cost her everything. But it was behind her. It had faded from the news. She thanked God that she’d been given another chance, and she promised herself that the second time she was stopped for driving drunk would be the last time. While the deal she made compromised her ethics, it was all she could do. She was not going to be the sad woman who’d lost everything.

“I’m sorry, Darius, but you’re just going to have to be patient. Your threats to Ms. Connelly have done you in.”

“I did not threaten her.”

“She says you did. Phone records bear out her claims.”

“I never called her.” Maddie logged on to a secure server and doubled-checked the bank transfer she’d initiated for a client’s offshore account. She smiled at the confirmation that $2 million in life insurance benefits had been deposited.

“Hang tight,” she said.

“I’ll do my best to get you out of there after the weekend.”

“Don’t be so vague. Say you’ll get me out of here on Monday.” She swiveled in her chair at the sound of her assistant coming into her office. Finally, the tea.

“I have to go now, Darius.” She clicked off speakerphone and took the tea from the tray. She dropped two cubes of sugar into the steaming amber liquid—the color of whiskey, the way she liked it.

“Chad, will you let Tori Connelly know that her business is completed?” Chad nodded.

“Will do.”

Tori Connelly set down her phone and made her way to her Lexus. The house was locked, but not because she cared about anything inside. The contents were not important. Where she was going, she’d be starting over with the man of her dreams. The only one who understood both her beauty and her power. She carried an overnight bag with the bare essentials she needed for the trip later that night. And then she’d be rich and free. She texted Lainie, her last loose end.

RUNNING LATE. CALL U WHEN I GET TO YR PLACE. MEET ME IN GARAGE.

She sent one final text message:

LOVE U. SEE U SOON.

She selected two names and pressed send. It was so easy to stay connected.

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

Port Orchard

Kendall Stark stood in front of the mirror, looking at herself. She was not a woman given to overt displays of vanity, but she could not help but wonder how well she’d really held up over the past fifteen years. It was hard to know. Age was a funny thing. It seemed to work so slowly, sneakily, against the beholder. It was as if one day you look in the mirror and you see a line that surely must have been there the day before, but it had gone unnoticed. Unrecorded. Ignored. She thought she looked pretty good. Adam Canfield had reminded her that since she hadn’t been a cheerleader or a prom queen, no one would be giving her the critical and cruel eye.

“I’m not saying you don’t look great, because, honestly, Kendall, you do. But the truth is that no one cares about what the B-listers look like now. They only want to see how fat the cheerleaders are and how bald the jocks have gotten since graduation.” B-lister? She wore a black dress that was short enough to show some leg, but not so much that it looked like she was a Bremerton girl who tried too hard to snare a sailor by the navy base. She almost never wore them, but that evening she put on the single strand of pearls that her mother had insisted she keep when she moved into the Landing.

“Wow, look at Mommy,” Steven said as he and Cody appeared in the doorway.

“Look, indeed,” she said, dangling the pearls.

“Will you hook the clasp?” Cody sat on the edge of the bed, smiling at his mom.

“You look pretty,” he said.

“Well, aren’t you the charmer,” she said, looking down at Cody. She held her hair above the nape of her neck while Steven fiddled with the tiny lobster-claw clasp.

“Your daddy looks pretty good, too.” Steven wore a dark gray jacket, black slacks, and an electric blue tie that was youthful and cool. Like he always was.

“Tonight should be fun,” he said.

“Memorable for the right reasons, too.”

“Fifteen Minutes of Fame, here we come.” On the drive over to Gold Mountain, Kendall asked Steven to take a detour and drive down Banner Road.

“That’s out of the way,” he said.

“I know, but I need you to do this for me. I need to talk to you.” He could see the anguish in her eyes.

“All right, we can do that.” It wasn’t dark yet. In fact, the sky was blue and the sun turned the tops of the enormous firs along Banner Forest into gold-tipped spears.

“Steven,” she said, “Park down by the Jump.” He didn’t like the idea, but he could plainly see that whatever it was that Kendall wanted—needed—to say was dark, deep, and difficult. He’d notice how stressed she’d been in the past few weeks and he knew her well enough to know it was more than the murder cases she was working, more than the reunion, or the last-minute forensics conference. He found a spot, pulled over, and turned off the ignition. A deer and her impossibly tiny twin fawns ambled across the roadway.

“Her babies are beautiful,” she said, as she watched the trio disappear into the blackberries and ferns off the edge of the roadway. Kendall kept her gaze toward the deer, though they were gone.

“You look like you’re going to crumble,” he said.

“I am,” she said.

“I’ve lied to you. I’ve pretty much lied to everyone.” Steven reached over and put his hand on her knee.

“What is it? It can’t be that bad,” he said, though he could easily see that it was.

“After we broke up, I saw someone.”

“You mean in high school, right?”

“Yes,” she said.

“That’s fine. I dated, too. While you were away.”

“That’s why I went away.”

“To study. Yes, I know.”

“I was in trouble. I got pregnant. I left because I had to do something about it.” Steven could feel his own eyes misting. He had no idea that was coming.

“Kendall,” he said.

“Lots of women have abortions.” She shook her head.

“I know. I understand that. I couldn’t, I just couldn’t.”

“You couldn’t? You had the baby?” Steven clenched his fists. Not in rage, but in an attempt to hold his emotions inside. She nodded.

“Whose baby was it?”

“Jason’s,” she said. The name didn’t surprise Steven. Nothing could surprise him after hearing that Kendall had given birth before Cody. He wondered what he missed. How he didn’t notice anything about her that might have tipped him off. After Cody’s birth, her body changed in subtle ways. Why hadn’t he noticed it? “What happened to the baby?”

“He was adopted. I don’t know by whom.”

“Who else knows? Do the Reeds know?”

“My mom. Mary Reed. I told her today. Are you disgusted with me?” Steven folded his arms; his face was red, but he wasn’t angry. Not really. He could see that his wife was in torment then. It was a huge burden.

“Not disgusted, just disappointed that you’ve lived with this and didn’t think enough of our relationship to tell me.”

“It wasn’t that. I was so ashamed. I waited so long and then it seemed like it was too late. That it didn’t need to be brought up anymore.” Steven embraced her and kissed her. It was a soft, gentle kiss. Almost the kind of kiss that a parent gives a child to make them feel better.

“I love you, Kendall. You know that. My heart aches for all you’ve gone through. You’re going to be all right. We all are. You want to bag this reunion and go home?” She shook her head.

“I can’t. Adam and Penny would kill me. And we’ve had too much of that around here lately.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

Bremerton

The Olympic Room at the Gold Mountain Golf Club had been decorated with balloons and posters that highlighted the class theme “Fifteen Minutes of Fame.” Images of popular ’90s bands, TV and film actors, and political figures were interspersed with blowups from the yearbook. Side-by-side comparisons of celebrities and classmates made it all too clear—that Port Orchard was slightly behind the times when it came to being stylish. The South Kitsap version of “the Rachel” was a little bigger in volume, decidedly less sleek. Some of the men who rocked a ’90s goatee still wore them. Long sideburns, thankfully, had been replaced by a slightly more contemporary look. The Bremerton band Penny Salazar had fought for was playing its maudlin version of Céline Dion’s “The Power of Love” as Kendall and Steven surveyed the room. Most of the faces were familiar in the sense that, fifteen years after graduation, most still held on to the characteristics that marked them in high school. Blondes were still blond. Most athletes still looked reasonably trim. Maybe slightly beefier around the middle, but good.

“Not the train wreck we thought,” Adam said, carrying a glass of white wine from the bar and offering it to Kendall.

“Are you on duty or here for what passes for a good time in Port Orchard?” She took the glass.

“Good time, I guess.”

“Penny’s already overdoing it,” Steven said, indicating the primary organizer of the event. Penny wore a flowing low-cut gown that looked as if it used up the entire yardage at JoAnn’s fabric store in Port Orchard. Penny, they all knew, sewed her own clothes and never saw a “designer look” that didn’t invite her improvements.

“Michael Kors?” Kendall said.

“More like Bob Mackie,” Adam said. Kendall sipped her wine. She was exhausted from her trip and reeling from the disclosure she’d made to Steven. She didn’t feel like being anywhere close to the reunion festivities. But she had no choice. She’d agreed to it long ago. She’d already planned on coming up with an excuse for the next reunion. Let’s share the fun with other people, Penny. It would be wrong for me to be so selfish to do it again.

“Maybe we should mingle,” she said to Steven.

“All right, honey,” he said, squeezing her hand as if to tell her everything would be okay. Kendall’s phone buzzed and looked down at the screen. It was Laura Connelly.

“Hang on,” she said, turning toward the door to the patio that overlooked the golf course.

“I’ll take this outside.”

“Laura?” she asked as she found an empty place by the rail.

“Kendall, I’m sorry to bother you. But Parker and I need to see you. It’s about Tori and Lainie.”

“What is it? Did you say you found Parker?”

“Yes, and I’m scared, Kendall. I didn’t know who else to call.”

“That’s all right. You can call anytime.” The band started in on their version of Ace of Base’s “All That She Wants.” It was louder than the Céline cover, and Kendall tried to move to a quieter section of the patio, away from a couple who’d had too much to drink and were arguing about who had dumped whom first.

“I’m at a function right now,” Kendall said.

“I can’t get away.”

“You’re at Gold Mountain, right? We’re coming to you.”

“Why, yes. How did you know? Who is ‘we’?” The phone went dead. Kendall dialed Josh Anderson.

“Josh, I need you to get over here. Laura Connelly found her son, and she’s bringing him here. She sounds terrified.”

“I can be there in a half hour. Backup needed?”

“No,” said.

“This is a mom and a boy. We can handle it.”

“Got it. On my way.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

Bremerton

Lainie was sure she was dead. The world had gone completely dark. The last thing that happened—before she was dispatched into the darkness—was a sudden, sharp pain to her head. Had there been an earthquake? Had something fallen? As she was ruminating over what might have happened, Lainie O’Neal realized that she was alive. But where was she? She was curled up in the darkness. She was not bound, but free to move. Although any movement was difficult, the space was so confining. Am I underground? She continued to wriggle and shift her body as much as she could, all the while feeling around in the darkness. She touched something round. Hard. Her fingertips felt the grooves of what she knew to be tire treads. A spare tire. Lainie was in the trunk of a car. She shifted her body again and tried to roll in the opposite direction. She was sure that if she was in a trunk, she was facing the wrong way. Because the right way, she hoped, would have a pinprick of light. Wouldn’t it? Lainie stopped her efforts. She was getting nowhere. She knew there was only one more thing she could do to get help. She could scream.

“Help! Help!” The words came out of her mouth, but she was unsure just how loud they were. Inside the car trunk everything seemed wrapped in silence. She tasted blood on her lip and remembered that she’d banged her face against something as she fell into the trunk.

“Get me out of here!”

Deirdre Jericho Landers planted herself by the bartender stationed outside the Olympic Room. If she’d thought for a moment that the class reunion was a good way to get reacquainted with her high school pals, she was wrong. The reality of her senior year had just come sharply into focus. She’d only gone to South Kitsap for her senior year. She was a perpetual outsider. Despite all that she’d done to fit in, she was scooted aside by girls and guys with friendships that went from elementary school to adulthood. Dee Dee drank a gin and tonic at a bar in Gorst before her arrival at the reunion. She was between husbands and boyfriends and felt a little self-conscious. She wanted to take the edge off. Unfortunately, she followed that with a couple more once she arrived. She wasn’t an alcoholic, just a woman who was tired of being on the outside looking in.

“I know you,” she called over to Eddie Kaminski, standing by the door. Kendall looked over, surprised that Kaminski was there. Josh had likely given him the heads-up on Parker and he was there to keep his hand in the case. The boys’ club, she figured, would never really die.

“Sorry,” he said, barely looking at her.

“I’m not a member of the class.” Dee Dee looked him over. Closely. Her first thought was that he was handsome, fit, and the kind of guy she’d fallen for more than once. She wondered for a second if he seemed familiar because he was the type of guy she usually went home with. Masculine. Military. Sure of himself. She liked the vibe.

“No, I know you,” she said, rethinking her approach.

“Are you on TV or something?” He shook his head.

“Not really. Sometimes for my work.”

“What kind of work?” By then, Dee Dee had examined his left hand for a wedding band. Good. This one’s available.

“Police. Tacoma.”

“Tacoma?” The wheels were turning, but Dee Dee had had one too many drinks and they weren’t all going in the same direction.

“Have a good night,” he said, walking away.

Laura and Parker Connelly stood in the turnaround in front of the golf course clubhouse. Kaminski stayed put, waiting for Tori to show up. Kendall and Josh led mother and son to a quiet place near a lineup of golf carts. Laura’s face was pinched in anguish. She’d implored her son to do the right thing and he was there.

“She lied to me,” Parker said.

“Tori?” Kendall asked. Parker nodded.

“She totally used and manipulated Parker. She’s an evil bitch,” Laura said, obviously unable to hold back. Kendall acknowledged the mother’s anger but turned her attention to the teenager.

“Tell us, Parker.” Parker swallowed hard and took a seat on the back of a golf cart.

“She shot my dad. I shot him, too. But he was dead. I swear he was dead.” Josh moved in closer and Kendall motioned for him to back off. This wasn’t the time to intimidate. The kid was talking.

“I’m really sorry for what I did to that minister,” he said.

“What did you do to Pastor Mike?”

“I killed the dude. I shouldn’t have. But she told me that it was the only way we could stay together. She thought that you—” He stopped and looked directly at Kendall.

“You were going to ruin things with that stupid investigation into that Jason kid’s death. All of this is your fault.”

“Parker,” Laura said.

“You know that’s not true.” He buried his face in his hands.

“I guess so. I mean, I know so.” In that moment Kendall could see clearly that the boy who killed the minister was really very much a boy, listening to his mother, deferring to her. Like he might have deferred to Tori.

“Tori lied to me,” he said.

“We get that, Parker,” Josh said.

“Specifically, about what?”

“She said I was the only one for her. That I was her soul mate. But she lied. I put a webcam in her bedroom ... I heard her talking tonight on the webcam.” He stopped and looked at his mother, who had taken a seat next to him and wrapped an arm around his shoulders.

“Go on,” Kendall said.

“There’s someone else. They were laughing at me.” He turned to his mother and started to cry.

“She was laughing at me, Mom.” Laura cradled her son.

“I’m sorry, honey. I’m so sorry.” Kendall couldn’t help but think of the connection between Jason and Parker. Both of their lives had been ruined at seventeen by Tori O’Neal.

“Please don’t hurt her,” Parker said.

“She’s going to have our baby.” Josh turned to Kendall and said in a low voice, “Jesus, this couldn’t get any better, could it?” Of course, like almost always, Josh Anderson was wrong. Laura pulled Kendall aside.

“What’s going to happen to Parker? Is he going to go to prison?” Kendall hated to answer. She could barely imagine what Laura was feeling. She sometimes wondered—though she would never say it aloud—if the burden on the parents of a killer was equal to the anguish of the parents of a victim. For the rest of their lives, those parents walk each footstep in shame. They wonder if they’d done something to create the monster. There is never, ever any closure.

“I can’t say how they’ll charge this, but he was a juvenile.” The hope was false, and Kendall knew it. More and more, prosecutors charged young people as adults. Parker was looking at serious jail time.

“He is a good boy. She was using him.” That was true, but it probably wasn’t enough.

“Laura, the prosecutor will surely consider those as mitigating factors.”

“He’s not lost forever,” Laura said. Kendall gripped Laura’s hand.

“No, no one is.”

“Wait a second!” A voice called over to Kendall, Josh, and Kaminski as they compared notes over what Parker had just told investigators. It was Dee Dee Landers.

“I remember now. You’re the guy I saw with Lainie or Tori at the El Gaucho last summer. You’re her boyfriend.” Kaminski took a step toward Dee Dee.

“Sorry, you must have me mixed up with someone else.” The slightly drunk brunette staggered on her heels, four-inchers that didn’t exactly do her any favors in the agility department.

“No. No. I haven’t,” she said.

“She’s had too much to drink,” Josh said.

“Let’s get her out of here so she can dry out.” Kaminski locked his arm on hers and started to take her out the door.

“Detective, wait a sec,” Kendall said, ushering them to the breezeway between the Olympic Room and the main clubhouse.

“I want to hear what she has to say.” Dee Dee nodded, a little wobbly, but in the affirmative.

“Yes. Thank you. Do I know you?” She looked at Kendall.

“Oh, yes. You’re Kendall. As I was saying—do you mind letting go of me?—as I was saying, I ran into you and one of those O’Neal twins last year. I talked with Lainie about it this fall when I saw her in Seattle. She didn’t remember, so it must have been Tori. The other twin. The one no one around here seems to like.” Kendall looked over at Josh and then locked eyes on Kaminski. Dee Dee would not be denied. She was not that drunk.

“I saw him on TV the other day. I know he’s the man that was in El Gaucho.”

In the dark of what she now knew was her sister’s car trunk, Lainie O’Neal began to reconstruct what happened to her. She’d met Tori in her condo’s garage.

“Let’s move this bag to the trunk,” Tori had said.

“I forgot to stop at Goodwill with these odds and ends.” Tori never thought her sister was the Goodwill type, but she helped her move the bag from the passenger seat to the trunk.

“Shove it in the back,” she said. Lainie bent over, and all of a sudden everything went black. Just like that. It was instantaneous. Tori had struck her. Hard. When she worked for the P-I she’d written a story about what to do if one is trapped in a trunk. She looked for the taillight to kick it out and wriggle her hand or foot to attract attention. She was so turned around she didn’t know which direction the back was. She felt along the top of the trunk for the other tip—the reason for her news story—look for the escape latch and pull. Found it. A flash of light. She was free. A sign in the parking lot told her where she was.

WELCOME TO GOLD MOUNTAIN

Drive Friendly.

Jesus, she thought, feeling the blood dripping from her head. This is the worst appearance by a schoolmate since Carrie went to her prom.

Kendall and Steven huddled with Lainie. It was obvious that something major was going on. Kitsap County deputies and detectives were swarming the parking lot. Penny Salazar told the band to play louder, but Ace of Base didn’t get better with volume. Penny was beginning to feel her theme had been a bit prophetic. But not in a good way.

“Parker confessed that your sister killed her husband,” Kendall said. Lainie steadied herself.

“It doesn’t surprise me, but it still hurts. Knowing that she could do something like that.”

“You’ll need to tell your father. It’ll be in all the papers.” Lainie said she would.

“This will kill him, you know,” she said.

“There’s more, Lainie. I think your sister killed some other people, too.” Lainie looked incredulous.

“What other people?”

“Jason, a boy in Hawaii, Zach . . . maybe even your mother.”

“That couldn’t be. You’re wrong about that.” Kendall felt so sorry for her, but she had to know. Eddie Kaminski, who caught the last few words of the conversation, offered to take Lainie somewhere if she wanted to clear her head.

“That would be nice. I really don’t feel like partying.”

Even an unbudgeted round of extra hors d’oeuvres barely captured the attention of the Class of ’95. There was too much drama in the parking lot. That was about to change when a second blonde in a little black dress showed up.

“Tori’s here,” someone said. All eyes went to the entryway.

“I’m Lainie and that bitch of a sister of mine whacked me.” Kendall looked over at Lainie and Kaminski as they started toward the door.

“You’re Tori,” she said to the twin who’d just arrived.

“That’s Lainie.” She pointed to the woman with Kaminski. The first blond twin shook her head.

“Oh, Tori, why are you saying that? Don’t you ever stop?”

“I am Lainie,” said the second, as she hurried across the room to face the other.

“I can’t tell the difference,” Kendall said.

“I am Lainie and I’m getting out of here,” she said, grabbing Kaminski’s arm and tugging.

“You’re not going anywhere!”

“Can someone calm her down? Please. This is embarrassing.” The bleeding blonde grabbed the other, but she pulled away. The contents of her Coach purse spilled onto the polished aggregate floor. Tubes of makeup, plane tickets, and a wallet tumbled out.

“I can prove she’s not me,” the second said snatching up the wallet.

“Her driver’s license. I’ll show you.” She tore open the wallet and her face fell.

“I don’t understand. I don’t . . .” Kendall bent down and picked up the plane tickets. Two hundred classmates stopped in their tracks to watch the spectacle. Kendall pushed people away in that way cops often do to “give people some air.” Penny told the band to play something else—and fast.

“She’s bleeding,” a former cheerleader called out.

“Someone get a bandage.” The woman felt her head and stepped backward. She bumped into the guest registration table.

“Make her sign her name!” she said. Kaminski rolled his eyes, clearly exasperated.

“This is stupid.”

“We don’t know who is who,” Kendall said.

“And considering what we found out tonight, we need to.” A former geek-turned-hottie who was hosting the table handed over the guest book and a pen. The woman signed her name and handed the pen to her sister. She knew her sister was a practiced forger, but there was one thing she couldn’t do. The sister complied and the tip of the pen ran over the paper.

“They look the same,” Kaminski said, looking down at the signatures.

“Better do that again,” the bleeding one said.

“This time use your left hand. Like I did. Lefty Lainie.” Kendall eyed Josh. No words were needed between them.

“Tori Connelly,” Kendall said.

“You’re under arrest for the murder of Mikey Walsh.”

“She’s my collar,” Kaminski said.

“Not so fast,” she said. Kendall held out the airline tickets. One ticket had been made out for Lainie O’Neal; the other, Edmund Kaminski. She looked at the Tacoma Police detective with the kind of disgust that cops use for the scourge of their brotherhood—the dirty cop.

“And you’re mine,” she said.

Tori was cuffed and sitting in the back of a Kitsap County sheriff’s cruiser. Her makeup was smeared, her dress disheveled, and her hair looked like it had been styled by an immersion blender. Tori probably never looked worse in her life and Lainie figured that probably bothered her as much as anything. Even the reason why she was cuffed in that car. Lainie went over to Tori. A deputy put his arm out to stop her.

“Let her,” Kendall said. Lainie nodded at the detective and walked past the deputy barricade. She stood by the open car door and faced her twin sister.

“I won’t even begin to ask you why. I doubt you know,” Lainie said. Tori barely looked at her.

“My life would have been different if I hadn’t been forced to share it with you from the minute we came onto this earth.”

“I thought your life was wonderful, Tori.”

“I hate you,” she said, this time looking right into Lainie’s eyes.

“I always have.” Lainie stood her ground. Her sister could say nothing to make her hurt, to make her cry. She’d done that over and over and there was no emotion left.

“I know. Maybe you have reason to hate me.” Lainie and Tori watched as Parker was escorted to another cruiser. The teenager held his head down, looking only at the pavement. He looked like a boy who’d been caught smoking by the school principal. Except he’d killed a minister. Except he plotted to kill his father.

“You mean about going to jail for you? That was a mistake. A spur-of-the-moment decision that I regretted.”

“I’m sorry,” Tori said halfheartedly.

“I’ve told you that.”

“I guess sorry doesn’t do much after all, Tori.”

“It wasn’t easy for me. You think I’m tough, but I got raped in that hellhole by that asshole prison guard,” Tori said. Lainie’s heart raced, something that seemed a physiological impossibility given all the stress she’d been through. She thought she might have a heart attack.

“You, too? You were raped, too?” Tori allowed a faint smile to cross her lips.

“Yeah, Lainie, join the club.” Lainie’s face was red.

“My own sister handed me over to be raped. Who could do that but you, Tori?”

“I figured you deserved it for what happened to me. Besides, I knew how you operate. All I had to do was ask. You live on guilt the way some people live on Diet Coke.” Lainie was reeling then, and Kendall came over and pulled her by the shoulder.

“I’m not finished here,” she said.

“Let her go,” Kendall said gently. Lainie turned to face her sister one more time.

“Were you going to switch identities, pretend you were me and live your life?” Tori rotated her shoulders as if she were bored. She waited a beat before she turned her laserlike eyes toward her sister.

“Something like that,” she said.

“But really, just long enough to get past airport security and get out of this country.”

“You killed Mom, too, didn’t you?”

“Not sure what you’re getting at.” Lainie started to ball up her fists, though she never would have hit her sister. She was tense, angry, and still reeling from her ordeal in the trunk.

“I know you did,” she said, refusing to cry.

“I saw you do it in my dreams. I told you . . . I saw things like that.”

“Your dreams were stupid, Lainie,” she said. Lainie turned away and started walking, but she had one more parting shot.

“You’re sick, Tori.” Tori held her hard gaze at her sister.

“Look who you’re talking to. Remember, I’m a mirror of all that you are. Everything I am, you are. Our genes and DNA are the same.”

“We’re not the same,” she said.

“We never were.”

EPILOGUE

Port Orchard

Sunday morning all over Puget Sound people did what they always did. Some woke up to brewing coffee, sizzling bacon, or the frenzy that comes with getting ready for church. Some hurried out the door to walk their dogs or take a run along a path. May in the Northwest is stunningly unpredictable. The night before it had rained buckets, soaking the streets, filling swollen gutters from Bremerton to Seattle, but that morning the whole region was blessed with the blue skies and soft marine winds that make the region among the most beautiful places on Earth to live. All across the Puget Sound region, people connected to Tori’s crimes stirred.

In their cozy Harper bungalow, Kendall snuggled next to Steven, relieved that there were no more secrets between them. He’d been so understanding and forgiving that she wondered how she could have doubted him at all. The fact that she’d given birth so many years ago hadn’t changed who she was to him or to Cody. That she’d made the decision to give her son up for adoption hadn’t changed who she was. It was not a mark against her. Her oldest son. He’d be eighteen in a couple of years. She wondered if he’d look for her. She hoped so. She wanted more than anything for Mary and Doug Reed to see their grandson. As she drifted off toward much-needed sleep, Kendall made a list in her head. Vonnie, Jason, Zach, Ronnie, Alex, Mikey . . . Lainie would have been Tori’s seventh victim. Tori was only thirty-three. She’d had decades of killing to do. There was no telling how many people she might have killed during the ten years that she’d vanished. The FBI was working the case along with the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office. Seattle, Tacoma, and Bremerton police were also scouring their records for any connection she might have had. It was possible that the only murder she’d do time for was Alex’s. Kendall didn’t think it was fair, but murder and justice usually weren’t.

When Parker Connelly was being booked into the Kitsap County Jail, all of his personal effects were cataloged, bagged, and placed into bins for storage. The booking officer looked quizzically at the ID retrieved from his duct-tape wallet.

“This is you, but the name’s not right,” the officer said. Parker shrugged.

“I know. My girlfriend had it made for me.”

“You don’t look like an Eddie Kaminski. Maybe a Teddy Kaczynski.”

“I guess she thought it was funny,” Parker said.

“You know, naming me after the guy she was using until we got out of here.” The officer closed the lid to the plastic tote.

“Look, kid, I’ll tell you something about that woman. Forget about her. Forget you ever laid eyes on her. I married a gal like that. Maybe not that bad. But the type. You meant nothing to her.” Parker kept his mouth shut. I don’t care what you say, asshole, he thought. She’s my soul mate. I can forgive her.

It took two minutes for Darius Fulton to hear the news that a new guy had joined the ranks of those killing time at the Pierce County Jail. Edmund Kaminski was locked up in a segregation cell.

“That piece-of-shit cop is going away big-time,” a guard said.

“So is that woman. You’ll be out of here by tomorrow. This thing’s big.” Darius assumed he was talking about Tori, but he wasn’t.

By the time police came knocking on her North Tacoma door, Maddie Crane had downed her fourth whiskey sour and retired for the night. She looked at her watch, satisfied that everything was over. The plane had taken off from SeaTac to Miami. She was free. She was grateful for the second chance that Edmund Kaminski had given her the night he found her car in a ditch by the railroad tracks along Ruston Way. Instead of arresting her and destroying her once-damaged reputation, he’d offered her a deal. At the time, it didn’t seem too much of a compromise. Being a lawyer had always been about give-and-take. The knocking on her door woke her, and she put on a robe and went to answer. It was Tacoma Police Detective Daniel Davis and two uniformed officers. Blue lights showered her garden with an eerily pretty light.

“Madeline Andrea Crane?”

“You know who I am, Dan,” she said.

“You’re under arrest for conspiracy and fraud.”

In her cell at the Kitsap County Jail, Tori Connelly lay awake, staring at the ceiling. The woman next to her smelled of vomit and body odor, and Tori pulled the scratchy blanket up over her mouth and nose to filter out the stink. She thought of a million reasons why she’d ended up there. She’d miscalculated. She blamed Jason, her sister, Kendall, Kaminski, Parker, even Maddie Crane. She blamed everyone but herself.

“You’re that bitch who killed her husband, aren’t you?” The smelly woman on the other bed had awakened, and she was coming toward her.

“Excuse me?” Tori asked, suddenly ramrod upright.

“I saw you on TV. You’re something. We’re going to be friends. Come over here and sit next to me.” Tori flinched a little at the invitation.

“I’d rather die.”

“You’re too pretty to die.” A smile came to Tori’s face. She knew the woman was right.

Lainie O’Neal didn’t lie awake all night like she had night after night. After she’d been treated at Harrison Hospital and released, Adam Canfield took her to her Seattle condo. They’d arrived very, very late, and Adam curled up on the couch. Without Ambien, without counting games to numb her mind, she simply and sweetly fell asleep. When she finally opened her eyes she remembered nothing of her dreams. She could remember what happened the night before and the drama that came with it, but that was all a true memory. It wasn’t one of those transplanted dreams that her sister seemed to send her. Her eyes lingered over the photograph of her sister and her sitting on the top of her dresser. It showed the two of them in their ballet recital costumes. Lainie shifted in her bed and grabbed the extra pillow. She flung it across the room, knocking the photo and its silver frame to the floor. Adam Canfield scurried into the room and turned on the light.

“You all right?” he said.

“I thought I heard something.” She glanced in the direction of the broken photograph and Adam nodded at the splinters of glass and the black-and-white photo. No comment was needed.

“My head hurts,” Lainie said, pressing her palm against the spot that had been shaved and bandaged.

“That’s because your twin bitch-ter smacked you with a crowbar or something.”

“Right,” she said, though she hadn’t forgotten anything.

“What time is it?”

“Eleven forty-five.”

“A.M. or P.M.?” Adam laughed.

“Morning. You’ve been out, but not that long.”

“I’m going back to sleep,” she said. Adam reached for the light switch.

“No problem. You need the rest. I’ll be here.”

“Thanks, Adam,” Lainie said, slipping back deeper under the covers.

“Thanks for bringing me home.” She closed her eyes, thinking that the bad dreams would come back to taunt her. But they didn’t. They couldn’t. She was safe and free.

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GREGG OLSEN’S NEXT PAGE-TURNING THRILLER

COMING FROM PINNACLE IN 2012

Lisa Lancaster could not make up her mind. A willowy brunette with wavy shoulder-length hair and forget-me-not-blue eyes stood outside the student union building on the Pacific Lutheran University campus near Tacoma and tried to determine what she should do. With her hair. Her major. Her life. Lisa had been a history major, a communications major, a songwriter, a papier-mâché artist, and even a member of the university’s physics club. She thought her indecision had more to do with the breadth of her interests, but family members didn’t agree. Lisa was twenty-four and had been in college for six years. She’d leveraged her future with more than $120,000 in student loans. And she still didn’t know what she wanted to be. Lisa was talking on the phone to her best friend of the moment, Naomi, when she first noticed a young man with a heavy backpack and crutches walking across the parking lot. It had rained earlier in the evening and the lot shimmered in the blackness of its emptiness. His backpack slipped from his shoulders and fell onto the sodden pavement. Lisa rolled her eyes and turned away.

“Some dork with a broken leg or something just dropped his stuff into the mud,” she said.

“This campus is full of dorks. Is he a cute dork?”

“That’s an oxymoron,” Lisa said.

“Oxy-what?” Naomi asked. Lisa rolled her eyes, though no one could see them. There was no one around. Just her and the guy struggling in the parking lot.

“Never mind,” she said. Naomi wasn’t nearly as stupid as she often pretended to be. Neither was she all that smart. She was, as Lisa saw it, a perfect best friend.

“I can’t decide if I should skip dinner and go home. My parent’s fridge never has anything good.”

“Mine, neither,” Naomi said.

“Even though I make a list, they ignore it. I practically had to kill myself in front of them to get them to buy soy milk for my coffee. I hate them.”

“I know,” Lisa said.

“I hate my parents, too.” The young women continued to chat while Lisa kept a wary eye on the dork with the backpack.

“God,” she said.

“I don’t know why the handicapped—”

“Handi-capable is the preferred term, Lisa.” Lisa shifted her weight from one foot to another. She was impatient and bored.

“Whatever,” she said.

“I don’t understand why they don’t get a dog or a caregiver to help them get around. Or just stay home.” Lisa stopped and let her arm droop a little, moving the phone from her ear.

“He dropped his pack again.”

“You know you want to help him,” Naomi said.

“Remember when we both wanted to be physical therapists?”

“Don’t remind me. But I guess I’ll help him. I’ll call you back in a few.” Lisa turned off her phone and started across the lot.

Unlike the woman walking toward him, Jeremy Howell had a singular focus. Once he found out who he was, he knew that it was his birthright to follow in footsteps marked with his own DNA. And that of his father. He bent over and fell to the pavement. He pretended that one of the crutches was just out of reach.

“Can I give you a hand,” Lisa said. He looked up at her with an embarrassed half smile.

“No,” he said, trying to get on his feet.

“I can manage.” She stood there, a hand on her hip. She was pretty. Prettier up close than she’d been when he’d first spotted her. She was smaller than he thought, too. That, like her looks, was also a good surprise. Smaller bones likely meant—though he was inexperienced and unsure—an easier go of it in the basement when he went about the business of butchering her. Butchering her, by the way, was as far as Jeremy would ever go. The idea of sex with a corpse sickened him. The idea of visiting human remains in the woods of the Pacific Northwest was wholly unappealing. This wasn’t about some psychosexual conquest, like his dad, but about control and technique. He wanted to take what had been done before and improve it. As if he was revising code on a slow-moving, jagged-looking computer game. That was cool. It was all about the cool factor and the fame that came with being the best. Being better than his father, a man he had never even met, but one he’d admired and fantasized about from the time his mother told him the truth. He’d been cheated a little and he knew it. Other serial killers had unwittingly or purposefully involved their family members. When Jeremy read about Green River Killer Gary Ridgway’s proclivity for bringing his little boy while hunting prostitutes along the SeaTac strip, he felt a pang of jealousy. He’d never had that time with his dad. That had been taken from him when Jeremy was a child and his father was strapped into Florida’s Old Sparky. The switch was flipped. Human flesh burned and his dad was electrocuted to death. That moment, as much as anything, set things in motion. Not right away, of course. Jeremy was a sleeper cell, but that night, on the Pacific Lutheran University campus, he was awakened. The dark-haired girl with the pretty blue eyes had done that. She was a shot of adrenaline. She was a ringer for the others.

“Let me help you,” Lisa said, bending down and hooking her hands under Jeremy’s arms. He stood wobbly on one leg, like a flamingo at the zoo. A good wind would knock him over. Lisa handed him his other crutch and picked up the backpack.

“You must be taking some heavy courses,” she said, instantly feeling embarrassed about the unintended pun. She got a good look at his face. He actually was a handsome dork, dark hair, large brown eyes, and stylish stubble above his upper lip and on the tip of his chin. A goatee in the works? Lisa grinned—not outwardly, but inside. The breed existed after all. She’ll tell Naomi the minute she helped him to his car.

“Where are you parked?” she said.

“Over there,” he said.

“I’m Jeremy, by the way. Jeremy Howell.” He was so sure of what he was about to do that he didn’t think twice about using his own name. Lisa glanced over at the burnished orange Honda Element, a boxy mini-SUV that was destined to be the VW bus of the new millennium.

“Fun car,” she said. He shrugged, although with crutches under each arm, it was hard.

“Good for outdoor stuff. If you go hiking and get mud in the car you can literally hose it out.”

“I guess that’s good. You like to hike?”

“I do. Sometimes I like to drive out to the middle of nowhere, pull off the road, and just find something cool to look at. A lake. A forest. Someplace where no one goes to.”

“I’m Lisa, by the way. What are you taking?” she asked, moving the heavy backpack to her other shoulder “Biology. Pre-med,” he said, though it was a lie. Inside his backpack were the A, B, and C volumes of old, outdated encyclopedias from his mother’s basement recreation room. He was looking even more handsome. When they got to his car, he directed her to the passenger side.

“Can you put my books there?” Jeremy asked.

“Easier to get to later.” She nodded and smiled. Jeremy pushed the electronic door-lock button on his key fob, and Lisa swung open the door.

“Did some other Good Samaritan take a nap in here?” she said, setting the backpack on a seat that had been completely reclined to form a bed. Jeremy didn’t answer, and Lisa turned to look over her shoulder. The young man was standing without crutches, framed by a lamp partially blocked by an oak that hung onto the last of its crinkly brown leaves. Braided shadows crisscrossed his face like a spiderweb. He was holding one of the crutches like a baseball bat.

“What the—” she started to say, but her words were cut short. He’d filled the aluminum tube of the crutch with his grandfather’s lead fishing weights, thinking that a little more heft would be helpful when he swung it at his victim’s head. Which he did. And it was. Lisa’s shoulder bag fell into the gutter, and her cell phone cartwheeled on the pavement and broke into pieces. The college student offered no final scream. No real sound but the slumping of her body against the doorjamb of the Element. In a moment’s blur of swift movements and a gasp of air from the victim’s lungs, Jeremy had her inside. He looked at her through the passenger window, satisfied and excited. He fixed the image in his memory like a photograph that he’d retrieve later. Lisa Lancaster was so beautiful. Sleeping. Like a doll with a swirl of pretty dark hair and perfect little features. Jeremy owned her right then, and a broad and unexpected smile came to his face. Not fear. Not a thumping heart sequestered behind a rib cage somewhere in his body. None of that. At that moment, Jeremy Howell understood something about the power of the hunt that had eluded him as he’d planned and stalked his first kill. The rush. The excitement of doing something few dared to do. And doing it better than the father he’d admired but never knew. He climbed behind the wheel and twisted the key in the car’s ignition. He let out a little laugh at the pun that came to him just then. He really was in his element. In every way.