Betrayal (22 page)

“What happened to Savannah?” Kevin asked.

“Well, her house blew up and she died. Allegedly, she was manufacturing methamphetamine,” Hayley said.

“I remember her now, Kevin,” Valerie said tentatively and pushed her croutons underneath some greens. “Didn't Savannah get fired from the university for using drugs or something along those lines?”

“Mom,” Hayley said, her voice getting louder and firmer, “Savannah didn't get fired for that, and you know it. What's wrong with you? Why don't you just admit you know all about Savannah and me and Taylor?”

Valerie pushed back from the table and stood. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

Hayley stood. “Really, Mom? You're really going to be that way?” She reached under her place mat and pulled out Savannah's letter.

“I'm talking about this, Mom! This letter!” She held it out, but Valerie didn't take it. Instead, Valerie looked first at Kevin and then back at the girls. The room was still, tense, and filled with the hurt of a million lies.

Seeing that she was adrift without one bit of support, Valerie turned back to Hayley. She took the letter. “Don't you ever speak to me like that again, Hayley. It is rude and disrespectful. And I don't appreciate you going through my things either.”

Hayley loved her mother with every fiber of her being, but she didn't think love meant burying family secrets—certainly not ones as big as this. “It's rude and disrespectful, Mom, to lie to your kids.”

Taylor's mouth fell open in disbelief.

Valerie shot Kevin a look that was a request for a lifeline, if ever there was one. “Kevin, are you going to let them talk to me like that?”

Kevin lasered his eyes on his wife, and then he turned to his daughters. “Girls,” he said as sternly as he could, “apologize to your mother.”

Taylor finally spoke up, though her voice squeaked in apprehension. “We have questions, Dad, and she won't answer us.”

On that note, Valerie turned, her feet hitting the floorboards harder with each step away from the kitchen. Her bedroom door shut. It wasn't a slam, but it was close. It meant:
You've hurt me. You've made me angry. Do not ever push me where I don't want to go.

“She won't ever talk about it,” Hayley said, her eyes now back on her father's.

Kevin's thoughts wandered back to the strange e-mail he received from the newspaper reporter last year. It was about Savannah, and he and Val had fought when he brought it up. She hadn't shared what happened then, and she clearly wasn't going to now. Kevin picked up his plate. Dinner was over. “I don't know exactly what this is all about. Maybe, honey, she can't. Don't you get that? Don't you both understand that some things are just too painful to relive?”

“We're her daughters,” Hayley said. “We need to know.”

“We have a
right
to know,” Taylor added.

“She'll tell you when she's ready,” he said, putting some dishes in the sink. His face was red. It was possible he was even more in the dark about what had just transpired than his kids.

“You cannot push your mom. You know that.”

Taylor got up and stood in the kitchen doorway. She didn't want her dad to leave, too. This was all too important. He had to listen.

“Dad,” she said, “someone set up Savannah. Someone killed her.”

Kevin, who clearly had had enough of the confrontation, wasn't sure he heard Taylor correctly. “What do you mean? Did the sheriff tell you that?” he asked.

By then, Hayley was standing next to her sister in the doorway. They were like bookends, making the space completely impassable. Kevin Ryan, who had faced off with serial killers, had never met a force with as much determination as his girls right then. They were going to get the last word, no matter what.

“No,” she said. “Not really. But we know it's true.”

“How do you know?” he asked.

Taylor's eyes fastened onto her father's. With a final sigh, she said simply, “Ask Mom.”

Chapter 22

WITH SOFT ROCK HITS PLAYING from the radio on the credenza behind her desk Monday morning, Annie drank the last of her coffee and opened the file of cell phone records for the principals in the Grant murder case: Beth, Olivia, Drew, and Brianna. It had been exactly a week since the girl in the bloodied white slip was found at the Connorses'. In a week's time, the world had churned and turned like a paint mixer. Everything had changed. Almost everyone regarded Katelyn's death as a fluke. But with a second teen death in less than a year, the fluke was starting to look like a pattern. People no longer talked about the charm of Port Gamble, but rather its creepy underlying vibe.

Office administrator Tatiana Jones pointed out a trending tweet when she got in:

“Licorice tea time?”

Annie shook her head. “Lobotomy time. This thing is a mess. With Brianna and Drew missing and the Brits slinging mud from London by the hour, this whole thing is spinning out of control.”

“You'll sort it out,” Tatiana said.

“I hope so. In this whole circus, everyone is forgetting about the murder of an innocent girl.”

Tatiana left, and Annie reviewed the phone records. Nothing out of the ordinary stood out from Beth's list of calls. Even so, Annie couldn't help but think that Kim Lee might need to look for a provider with a better text-messaging plan. Beth had texted more than two thousand times in the past month.

Who has that much to say?
Annie wondered.

Olivia's calls were mostly to Port Gamble kids and to a few phones back home in the United Kingdom. Most of those were to her father and to friends. Or so Annie assumed.

The day she died, Olivia had made six calls to Brianna and one to Drew. That seemed to match what Beth and Brianna had said about the change in plans for the party.

Right after Olivia's final call, Beth had sent a text to Hayley and Taylor.

Brianna's calls were consistently to Drew, Olivia, and her mother, and several dozen other numbers, all of which would have to be checked out. Though they had texted and talked throughout the weeks and days before Halloween, the most relevant call from Brianna to Drew was placed just after 1:23 a.m., which supported her story that he was not at the Connorses' house when she found Olivia. Then she called her mother, the first of fifteen calls to Brandy Connors Baker all starting at 1:24 a.m. By the time Brianna called 911, Drew was already there, purportedly watching TV.

Annie cursed her bad vision, and fumbled for her reading glasses, something she hated to wear because they made her look like a manly Sarah Palin. Or maybe Tina Fey.

As she continued to pore over the printout, Annie paused and did a double-take.

What the . . . ?

She reached over and turned off the radio, silencing the uber-annoying John Mayer, who was still waiting on the world to change. One of the phone numbers that appeared on Drew Marcello's log of Halloween night calls seemed completely out of place. It was to one of the same numbers on his girlfriend's call log.

Drew had dialed that number forty-eight times the week prior to the murder and four times that night.

What in the world? Something's wrong here
, she thought.

Just then, the phone rang with the news that the knife found at the Connors house was indeed the murder weapon. The full report was being faxed over from the Olympia lab.

Annie leaned heavily back in her chair. The pieces of the puzzle were starting to fit together. Annie had initially thought that the crime had not been premeditated, but the phone records gave her reason to suspect otherwise. The killer may have planned what happened.

On the other hand, the Zodiac Killer brought a gun. The Night Stalker his own knife. Ted Bundy brought an entire kit of tools that he used in the commission of his unspeakable crimes. Serial killers, like Boy Scouts, come prepared.

If the kitchen knife they found had killed Olivia Grant, then it was possible the attacker
didn't
plan her death after all.
And if her killer was a novice
, Annie thought,
and just grabbed the first weapon available, he or she surely made some mistakes.
She hoped that the murderer's fingerprints and DNA would be on the knife.

If so, case closed.

Annie stood by the fax machine, impatient for the report to spit out. While she waited, she placed a call to Brianna's cell phone four times. Each time it went to voice mail.

While screening a police chief's calls in the middle of an investigation seemed well within character for a girl like Brianna, there was one more likely explanation for why the calls went directly to voice mail.

Like her former best friend, Olivia Grant, Brianna Connors's phone was dead.

THE ONE BRIGHT SPOT IN THE WORST WEEK ever came in the form of the report from Olympia's crime lab. As Annie read through it, she allowed a faint smile to cross her lips. The spot on the kimono that Beth Lee wore at the time of the party turned out to be plum wine, not blood. That, along with pegging the time of Olivia's death after Beth and her friends had left the party, put her just where Annie expected she'd be—in the clear. The lab's latest report also indicated that the necktie found in Olivia's mouth had a black fiber on it, which didn't match anything Beth was wearing. There was no DNA or other evidence that directly connected Beth to the murder.

Annie had always liked Beth, her spirit, and the way in which the girl tried to be different. Annie could relate to that, though on a different level. Annie knew that when Beth found her true self, she'd be unstoppable. All the girls who marginalized her would beg to be part of her inner circle.

The police chief swiveled away from her computer, picked up the phone, and dialed Kim Lee's direct line at the mill office. She'd been through enough with the loss of one daughter, her husband, and the foreign-exchange student who'd been living with them until that bloody Halloween night. As tragic as the past ten years had been, Annie was glad it was not going to get any worse. Kim wouldn't have to add “mother of a murderer” to her misery index.

“Kim, Annie here,” she said.

A small beat passed before Kim spoke. “Yes, this is Kim. Is everything all right?”

“Yes, it is. I just wanted you to know—”

Kim cut Annie off. “Beth is a good girl. She couldn't,
wouldn't
, ever hurt Olivia.”

“Yes, I know,” Annie continued. “I wanted you to know that Beth is not under investigation in the murder of Olivia Grant. The results from the crime lab came back. The red splotch on the kimono was not blood. It was plum wine.”

Kim let out a breath. Annie could almost feel her relax over the phone line. “Thank you. Thank you,” she said. “She is a good girl, maybe not perfect. But good, you know?”

“Yes, I know,” Annie said. “Just wanted you to be the first to hear the news.”

“Thank you, Annie. Thank you.”

Annie hung up and looked back through the forensics report. There was no evidence to pin the murder on Brianna Connors, either, or to corroborate a two-person attack.

She glanced at the photographs of Olivia, Brianna, Drew, Beth, and the bloody crime scene that she'd taped to the whiteboard on the far side of her office. She got up and pulled Beth's photo from the board.

If not Beth Lee or Brianna Connors, then who? Who killed the girl that came all the way from England? And why?

A GIANT WEIGHT LIFTED off Beth's shoulders after her mother called from work with the news. At first she had been scared, but now she was just mad and sad. Deep down, she knew she hadn't been a suspect. Not really. But it still hurt to have to explain herself. She could act tough, but she wasn't
that
tough. Her mom once told her that she was like a porcupine: “spiny on the outside, but so tender and sweet on the inside.” The analogy grossed her out, and she wondered when her mom had ever eaten porcupine.

The first thing she did as a “free woman” was text Hay-Tay:

And while the group of three girls had finally made up, like they'd all known they eventually would, things were about to get very, very difficult for another Port Gamble girl.

Chapter 23

BRIANNA CONNORS WAS BORED OUT OF HER MIND. She'd been hunkered down in that drafty, smelly, abandoned Port Gamble house number 7734, alone for over an hour while Drew went off to parts unknown. Getting food, she hoped. It was so cold that even though she hated the thought of it, the sixteen-year-old decided to scrounge around for some extra blankets. She never let used clothing touch her skin—even if it was labeled “vintage”—but just then she'd gladly take a scratchy old blanket. Even a painter's drop cloth. Anything that would keep her warm. As she moved along the darkened hallway, she noticed her phone on the table. She knew that Drew had said not to use it so the police couldn't track them, but the flashlight app surely couldn't hurt, right?