Betrayal (28 page)

Neither girl dared challenge her on that.

In order to get to the island, the twins knew they needed a boat, or someone with a boat. From the creosote-smelly landing, they saw a man tinkering on his boat.

“You talk to him,” Taylor said.

“Why me? He could be a freak,” Hayley argued, watching him work on the motor of his small cabin cruiser.

“You're older.”

“I hate it when you pull rank.”

“Well, you
are
. Ask him.”

“What do I say?”

“I don't know,” Taylor said. “Make up something. Tell him that we're geocaching or something.”

Hayley shook her head. “That'll be great. Then he'll want to hang out with us and see what we're trying to find.”

“You've been in Port Gamble too long. People aren't as nerdy out here. Trust me.”

A few minutes and twenty bucks later, they were on their way across the choppy waters of Puget Sound to the place their mother had grown up.

And where she had kept her secrets.

IT WAS EARLY IN THE AFTERNOON and the island was quiet with the exception of some barking seals along the shore and a flock of seagulls circling overhead. The local paper had dubbed the place “Shuttered Island” when it did a feature story on its closing years ago, and the twins couldn't think of a more fitting name. The place was deserted.

As Hayley and Taylor surveyed the bleak, rocky landscape, their eyes landed on the largest house in the little village planted outside the brick-and-steel walls of the prison.

“Is it just this awful place or do you feel an overwhelming sense of sadness?” Hayley asked.

“More like fear,” Taylor said.

The girls walked from the landing toward the house, a big, white two-story that in its prime might have been an amazing residence. It had a river-rock chimney and black shutters. The upper windows were intact, but the lower ones had been broken. Splinters of glass littered the entryway. Some graffiti artist had tagged the door with a spray-paint image of the twist of a noose.

The twins had seen pictures of the house when visiting their grandparents. No doubt about it, it was the place where their mother grew up.

And the place from where she vanished for two days when she was nine.

The door was ajar. Taylor, leading the way, pushed it open.

“Let's find Mom's room,” she said. “It's where we'll get the strongest impression.”

“Upstairs, to the right,” Hayley said.

Taylor looked a little surprised. “She told you that?”

“No,” Hayley said. “I don't think so. I just know it.”

It had been years since the Fitzpatricks lived there. Decades. There were a slew of other superintendents that followed the tenure of Valerie's father when he stepped down from his post.

The wallpaper from various vintages, none particularly charming, still clung to the walls, although in some places along the seams it was coming undone. The sisters went into the kitchen first. It was a shell. All of the appliances were missing and most of the cabinets. A doorway leading to the basement commanded the inside wall.

“Mom always said a kitchen window should have a view. Makes doing the dishes easier, supposedly,” Taylor said, looking out the cracked window over a big, white, cracked porcelain sink. “But not
this
view.”

Hayley peered over her sister's shoulder. Late in the day, the prison guard tower cast a shadow over the blackberry and Scotch broom-infested backyard. The remnants of a swing set poked from a spiny thicket.

“Can you imagine Mom playing hopscotch or whatever out there with four guys with machine guns ready to fire?” Hayley asked.

Taylor stepped away from the window. “I don't think they used machine guns, but yeah, I get what you're saying. It
is
weird. It's almost like I can think of Mom in a different way, just by being here.”

“How?” Hayley asked.

“I guess I feel sorry for her. She didn't have anyone,” Taylor said. She didn't say the words “like I have you” but she might as well have, so implicit was the statement. She and her sister had never really been alone. They'd always had each other.

The living room was an empty space. The walls there were yellow and cream, a patchwork of shadows where paintings or photographs once hung.

“Upstairs?” Taylor asked, though Hayley was already headed in the direction of the darkened staircase.

“First door on the right, you say?” Taylor said. She turned on the flashlight app of her phone to see better in the shadowy space.

Hayley switched hers on too. “Don't ask. I just know it.”

The boards creaked with each step, and the girls followed the thin beams of light from their respective phones, worried that a riser might be missing.

“Be careful. We don't want to fall into the basement,” Hayley said.

“We won't,” Taylor assured her. “Just pay attention to where your feet are landing.”

The squeaking sound of an animal and the scratching noise of tiny nails against the floorboards sent a chill down Taylor's spine. She thought of how much she despised rats and mice. Her sister hated them too.

“What do you mean ‘time is running out'?” Hayley asked.

Taylor shook her head. “I didn't say
that
. I didn't say anything.”

“You did.”

“I didn't.”

The verbal stalemate ended as Taylor skirted past her sister into what both were now certain had been their mother's bedroom. It was on the same side of the house as the kitchen and it had its own view of the guard tower and razor wire fence and a partial glimpse into the overgrown prison yard. Still, both girls could easily make out where the inmates had played basketball. The court was still there. Out further, past the prison yard, the girls could see the leaden expanse of Puget Sound.

It was all as grim as grim could be.

“I'd hate living here more than Port Gamble on its worst day,” Taylor said.

Hayley looked away from the window and around the small room. It was not much bigger than a walk-in closet.

“Country Christmas Festival worst?” she asked.

Taylor smiled faintly. “Yeah, worse than that.”

“We need to focus, Taylor,” Hayley said, standing in the middle of her mother's lilac room. It was Valerie's favorite color.

Together, the twins thought of Savannah Osteen, of Moira Windsor, of Text Creeper, of their mother's disappearance when she was a child, and of the gibberish twin-talk phrase they'd repeated over and over when they were learning to speak:
levee split poop.
As they did so, the pair kept their blue eyes fixed on each other, trying to feel
something
, hoping to receive a message from their mother's old bedroom.

Yet nothing came. After a few minutes, both became restless.

“Okay,” Hayley finally said. “The energy isn't here. We need to look somewhere else. We need to go exactly where she was during those two days.”

“The article said she was found in a service hallway, a corridor of some kind that ran under the prison,” Taylor said. “There must be a way into the corridor under the prison from here.”

Hayley fixed her eyes on Taylor. “The basement,” she said.

Chapter 31

WITHOUT ANOTHER WORD, the twins made their way down the stairs to the basement. The lights from their phones barely amounted to the glow of a firefly, but down they went. The air grew much colder. Puffs of vapor came with each breath. The basement was huge, bigger than their entire house back in Port Gamble. The center of the musty space was crammed with boxes and other debris.

A trio of rats—or large mice—scurried along the edges of the space, reminding Taylor of an episode of
Animal Hoarders
in which an elderly woman in Baton Rouge collected hamsters. So many were loose in the kitchen that the floor actually appeared to move. On the show, she told her daughter that she had no idea the animals would procreate to such a degree.

“I did my best to keep the little boys from the little girls, but as sure as I'm standing here they somehow found a way to hook up,” she had said.

Hayley and Taylor had joked about the stupidity of someone letting their hamsters hook up, a phrase that morphed to a disparaging remark they used for girls and guys on the make. They were looking for a “hamster hook-up.”

Down in the basement, a steady stream of cold air came at the girls.

“There's a breeze in here,” Taylor said.

“Like an air conditioner at the theater,” Hayley said. “On full blast.”

Taylor moved her phone's flashlight to get her sister's attention.

“Over here,” she said. “It's coming from here.” She bent down and held her phone over an opening in the floor. The opening was about the size of a storm drain, maybe a little larger. Cool air blew against her face.

“That's the way into the underground passage,” Hayley said, leaning close to the edge. “That's where we need to be.”

As she turned, shifting her weight, Hayley slipped. A second later, she was inside the opening, holding onto the edge.

“Taylor!” she screamed. “I'm going to fall!”

Taylor could barely see what was happening. It was so dark.

“No, you won't! I won't let you. Take my hand.” She threw herself to the floor and slithered over to the edge, stretching her arm toward her sister. Their eyes met in the terror of the moment.

As Taylor started to pull Hayley out, the edge of the opening began to give way and Taylor felt her body slide down.

“Don't let go!” Hayley screamed.

Taylor's heart was racing. Sweat collected at her temples, and the cold air on her face made her shudder.

“I won't,” she said, bearing down as hard as she could. “You hang on.”

Hayley dug her nails into Taylor's wrists so hard, she was certain she was cutting her. Yet any less of a grip would mean that she'd fall. And there was absolutely no way she was ever going to let that happen.

“I'm hanging on. I won't let go,” Hayley said, inching closer as her sister pulled with all of her strength.

Taylor struggled to heave her body backward, away from the opening in the floor. She used every bit of muscle that she had to leverage her sister out of that spot.

And then their hands separated. Hayley, screaming, fell into the black space under the prison warden's house.

Taylor screamed, too. “Haayyyyleeey!” she shouted into the hole.

“Are you all right?”

No answer.

“Hayley! Please! Can you hear me?” Taylor called out again as loudly as she could. She leaned over the hole in the floor and held her phone into the black space.

Nothing.

Her sister was gone.

Taylor got up and looked around for a rope, a garden hose, anything at all that she could use to climb down to Hayley. There was nothing useful. Boxes, rats, a baby blanket. Her phone was down to a flicker, and she knew she had to get help.

“Hayley!” she called down into the hole. “I'm going to get help.”

Still no answer.

She closed her eyes and hoped the twin-sense they shared would send a message that would travel through the darkness down below to her sister.

Don't die!
Taylor thought, but she didn't say it.

“I'll come back for you. I promise,” she said.

BIRDY WATERMAN, Kitsap County's forensic pathologist, hung up the phone. She'd dealt with grieving family members more times than she'd ever care to count. The hurt from a car accident or, even worse, a homicide brought the kind of reaction for which there was no real remedy. She never told the grieving that “time” would make them feel better. There was no “better.” But with all the calls that she'd ever taken in her role in the coroner's office, there had never been one quite like the one that she'd just experienced. It simply threw her. She dialed Annie Garnett's direct line at the police department in Port Gamble.

“Chief Garnett here,” she said.

“Annie,” she said. “This is Birdy. I just had the weirdest call. I mean, in all of my years doing this job.
Really.
“

“I'm all ears,” Annie said.

As Birdy talked, Annie made a few notes. At one point, the police

chief had to stop and tell Birdy to take a breath. The forensic pathologist had a lot to get out.

“Location?” Annie asked.

“Silverdale Beach Hotel.”

“Going there now.”

IN THE DAMP DARKNESS OF THE CORRIDOR, Hayley lay on the cold concrete beneath her mother's childhood home. Though she was barely conscious, her brain had kicked into overdrive. Each image that came to her was punctuated by a sudden flash. The first vision was unmistakable. Hovering somewhere between dead and alive in her mind's eye, she saw the Hood Canal bridge. A second later, she saw the back of the little school bus headed toward the Indian Island picnic.

Next appeared a man's face, the same one she had seen in her previous vision. But this time Hayley knew without doubt that he was Timothy Robinette. Then, like a slide show on its fastest speed, she saw Text Creeper giving Timothy an envelope. Next, Timothy alone, looking nervously at the bridge as a storm rolled in and the bus approached. He pushed a button with a trembling fingertip. It was clear that he hadn't wanted to, but had been forced. A fury of raindrops fell like spikes. The bridge deck rumbled as it slowly opened. The bus approached and then dropped into the water.

Then Hayley was underwater.

Chapter 32

TWENTY MINUTES AWAY FROM PORT GAMBLE, Drew Marcello went up to the front desk of the Silverdale Beach Hotel.

A young woman with a swirling brunette hairdo that looked like it had been styled by Dr. Seuss smiled from behind the counter as he approached. Her recent customer-service training had emphasized the importance of the smile with each greeting. She was going for the Employee of the Month award, which included a Target gift card and an overnight stay at the hotel. She really wanted that gift card.