Authors: Gregg Olsen

Closer Than Blood (32 page)

BOOK: Closer Than Blood

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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 stateâand 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 placeâratty, 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 relatedâexcept 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 knowâ
not think
âthat 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.

BOOK: Closer Than Blood

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