Now That She's Gone (12 page)

“I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“You do too.”

With that, there was a slight pause. The camera focused on Wyatt next.

“You're right, Pandora,” he said. “Something very dark happened here. Hard to believe that such a beautiful place could harbor something so vile, so horrific.”

Pandora, her eyes shut, nodded. “Evil seeks the pretty.”

She rocked back and forth and the cameraman trained his lens on Wyatt. He opened a folder with copies of the original interviews conducted by Detective Mayberry when Katy first went missing. Even in the dim light of the Frazier living room, Kendall could see that Wyatt had scribbled all over the papers. The word
incompetent
was written in red, large enough for the camera to pick up.

“While your sketch is being finished by our forensic artist, Pandora, I want to tell you some things that you might not know.”

She nodded. “Go ahead. I doubt anything will surprise me. Not after my walk through this place tonight.”

When she said the word
place
she made the million-dollar home seem like a crack house.

“I conducted my own investigation here. No offense to the detective here tonight, because she was not involved, but I have never seen an example of more incompetent police work in my entire career. And I've been around the block a time or two.”

Pandora nodded. The Fraziers looked over at Kendall. It was not a look meant to comfort, merely to acknowledge they were in complete agreement with what the TV cop had to say.

“Since arriving in Port Orchard I've interviewed several key witnesses to the case and I've turned up some absolutely stunning information—information that anyone could have found if they'd have used a little shoe leather. That's me. That's the way I roll.”

Kendall remembered how he'd said something similar on the Nova Scotia show. He was a cop's cop. He was swathed in blue. He was a man of the downtrodden, the abused, and the murdered. She felt like throwing up just then.

“I interviewed three of Katy's closest friends. First I met with a very troubled young woman, an admitted drug addict, Tami Overton. Here's her picture.”

He slid a photo over the tabletop to Pandora, who nodded in recognition.

“She's been here, many, many times.”

“That's right, Pandora. She was a very, very good friend. She told me something very disturbing.”

“She was abused?”

He shook his head and looked at Juliana. “Edit that.”

“She told me that in the weeks before Katy disappeared she was acting very, very strangely. She seemed distracted. She didn't have the edge, the focus that she normally had.”

Brit jumped in. “That's true. Something was bothering her.” She looked at Roger. “I told you that. I told you something was up, but you were too busy with that stupid shopping mall project in Tacoma to give a care.”

Kendall looked over and noticed that Naomi had disappeared. She didn't blame her. She wanted to leave too.

“I did too care,” Roger said. “I talked to her. She was fine.”

“Fine for you is not the same as fine for a teenage girl,” Brit said.

Juliana let the argument play out before directing the camera back to Wyatt.

“I told Tami that the truth would come out,” Wyatt said. “I told her that there was no way she could hide what she knew forever. It just wasn't going to go on and on anymore. Tami no doubt was shook up by my interview, but I don't care. I'm trying to find out what happened to Katy.”

“I'm getting something on Tami,” Pandora said, “but I can't quite grab it.”

“Give yourself some time. You'll get there. You always do.”

Pandora smiled faintly.

“I also interviewed Katy's best friend. She's now a twenty-year-old college student at the University of Washington. She wouldn't go on camera and I can't use her real name, but I think the Fraziers know who she is.”

“We do,” Roger said.

“I'm a little surprised she wouldn't do the show,” Brit said. “Alyssa was like a sister to Katy. She stayed with us two weeks after Katy went missing. We couldn't have made it through that time without her help. She and Tami put posters up all over town. They even made phone calls from a call center set up by the high school.”

Juliana spoke up. “That's great stuff, Brit. Can you repeat it without using Alyssa's name? Privacy rules.”

Brit nodded and did what she was told to do.

“I also conducted a very interesting interview with Scott Hilburn, Katy's boyfriend at the time.”

“He wasn't really much of a boyfriend. He hadn't even earned his driver's license at the time,” Roger said.

For the first time, Kendall noticed a small monitor set up on the floor near the end of the table. Juliana put it on the table before turning it on.

“I'm not in the shot here, this will be edited out later,” she said. “Also, we're not NBC, we won't be showing the tape made of Scott's interview here in the room. However, Wyo will accurately reflect its substance and we'll pull together some reaction shots.”

Kendall was completely confused. Reaction shots of something they weren't seeing? Brad was such an idiot. She was such an idiot. How in the world did she get sucked into this mess? Guilt maybe? Not for what she did, but for what her department hadn't done. What was it that had been going on at the Fraziers' place that set all of this in motion?

She was about to find out.

Pandora jumped to her feet. “Enough! I don't need his taped interview. It makes everything I do look so fake! Stop it. Stop it now! Or I'll leave here and never come back.”

Juliana and the crew looked shocked.

So did Katy's parents.

The only one who seemed unfazed was Wyatt himself, and maybe that weird bald guy with the black mustache who'd done nothing but lurk in the back of the room since the cameras started to roll.

“You don't mean that, Pandy!” Wyatt said.

“Don't test me, cop,” she said, in what Kendall had already known was a catchphrase that was used on almost every episode. The yin and yang of psychic and cop's relationship was part of the show's appeal. Most thought they had a love/hate relationship. What they didn't know—which Kendall noticed because he wore a matching ring—the cameraman that followed Pandora around was her boyfriend. Maybe her husband.

It was all show.

Juliana stepped away for a second and returned with a piece of paper. She set it facedown on the table.

“Now that I have your attention,” Pandora said to the camera first, then to the parents, “I'm going to tell you a story. It is sick and twisted and it makes me so damn angry I wonder why I bother staying here on this earth. So full of sickness. Hate. Death.”

Kendall thought that's what kept her in business, but she didn't say so. Pandora's personality filled the room. There was no space for any other words, thoughts, even to breathe. Just her and a tirade against all humanity.

“I talked to Katy,” she said, now looking at Brit and then Roger.

Before she could even speak, Brit started to cry. “You mean she . . . she's dead.”

Pandora nodded. “Dead would be a gift to her. She's trapped in this house because of what happened to her here.”

The refrigerator went on.

“I told you to unplug that damn thing,” Pandora told Juliana, who scurried to the kitchen and did what she was told.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Katy died a horrible death. Yes. She died in the most despicable manner that anyone could die.”

Pandora leaned back and looked up to the stars overhead.

“She's with us, here, right now. And do you hear her cries? Because I do. I want to tell the girl to shut up. That her words are wasted on the living. That she should have used those very words when she was alive.”

Roger didn't say anything. He looked like he was sick.

Brit spoke up. “What words? What words?”

Pandora folded her arms across her chest and rocked back and forth. She did that for what seemed like a very long time.

“She's reaching out to the other side,” Wyatt told Kendall with a kind of matter-of-factness that seemed at odds with how he might have felt about her after that embarrassing tongue-lashing Pandora had given him. On camera, no less.

Kendall now considered that she was a part of some televised freak show and she made a vow to never, ever mistrust her intuition. She should never have been a part of it. No matter what her boss said.

“Katy is crying out. She's crying out like she did to you, Mrs. Frazier.”

“Me? She never cried out to me.”

“Oh, really? Can you really sit there and say you were there for your little girl when she needed you?”

“Yes, I was.”

“Really? Weren't you off trying to help other troubled teens when your little girl was in trouble?”

“She wasn't in trouble.”

“Not that you would know. You weren't listening. You weren't there for her.”

“That's not true. Tell her, Roger. Tell all of them. I was a very good mother.”

“Look, Pandora, I don't know what your game is here. But I do know that my wife was and is an exemplary mother to both our girls, Naomi and Katy.”

Pandora didn't even look at him. “She's gone forever, Mr. Frazier.”

“Where? Where is she? What happened to her?”

Pandora ran her fingers over the sheet of paper. She looked at Juliana, who instructed the camera to zoom in.

“One person knows what happened to her and where she is. One person. And that person is here. In this room.”

Kendall hoped the sketch wasn't of her. She had nothing to do with any of this, but this show was so full of mind games she wouldn't put it past the producers.

Pandora turned over the white slip of paper and Brit Frazier let out a scream. It was the image of her husband, a near perfect likeness. Brit grabbed Roger by the neck and started to scratch his face. She was so intent on hurting him that Wyatt jumped up and tried to pull her off.

All the while the camera kept rolling.

“You! You!” Brit screamed. “What did you do?”

Roger stood frozen. In shock. A terrified and confused look on his face. He looked over at Kendall, then at his wife.

“I didn't do anything to her,” he said. “This is complete garbage.”

Brit was a mess. She couldn't even look at her husband. “He molested your daughter,” Pandora said. Her tone was ice. “He silenced her by killing her.”

“How could you?” Brit wailed. “How could you?”

Kendall didn't know what to do. She'd read the blogs, she should have been more prepared. She felt duped and foolish and didn't know what her role was. Was she a participant? Should she intervene? Should she unplug the camera? It was as if she were frozen in her shock too.

“I didn't,” Roger said. “I swear I didn't.”

By now Brit Frazier had dissolved into a puddle of tears and the anguish that comes with a revelation that shook the foundation of her being. How could she have been so blind? How could any of this be missed?

“Do you have a boat?” Pandora, still cool, asked.

Tears streaming down her face, and barely able to speak, Brit finally found her voice. “Yes,” she said.

Pandora's face started to twist. It was elastic. Almost unreal in its contortions. “Out there,” she said. “She's out there in the water. She told me that he tied a boat anchor to her legs. Your baby is out there in the deep.”

C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN

F
inally Kendall found her voice. She'd had enough. Way more than enough. She got up and hurried over to Pandora.

“Look,” she said, trying to control her anger, “I don't know what I expected would happen here tonight and I should have figured that something ugly rather than helpful would transpire here. I had some hope, I guess. But you've gone too far.”

She spun around and glared at Wyatt, who sat there with an oddly smug look on his face. “You! I expected some crap from you, considering what you've done in the past. How you can sleep at night, I have no idea.”

He brushed off her obvious contempt.

“I sleep just fine, Detective. I know that we are doing very important work here,” he said.

Before Kendall could say another word, Wyatt turned to the camera.

“You see what I mean. Very defensive, these local cops. They mess up and want to blame everyone but themselves. I'm not buying her outrage. I'd say this detective is more embarrassed than anything.”

“I am embarrassed. You're right. I'm ashamed, in fact. And it isn't because you and your psychic here have solved a case that we didn't—it's because I participated in this charade.”

With that she hooked her foot on the power cord of the camera and yanked it from the wall.

“Show's over.”

“It's not over,” Roger said, now standing. “You're not leaving here with those tapes.” He started toward the camera guy.

Juliana Robbins, who'd said nothing during the entire out-of-control scene, finally spoke up.

“There are no tapes,” she said. “The footage was fed from the camera to our server.”

“You bitch,” said Roger, his face red and his fists clenched. He pounded the table so hard that the candelabra toppled. “You just did all of this to us for what? To have a show that you could sit around and tell people you produced that got some big ratings or something?”

While there was some perceptible fear in her eyes, Juliana tried to blink it away. There was a very angry man standing ten feet away from her and the star of her show had accused him of molestation and murder. “I do this program,” she said, “to help people.”

Before Roger could answer, Brit turned to her husband.

“I want you out. I want all of you out. All except for you.” She looked at Pandora.

Pandora shook her head. “I'm done here, Mrs. Frazier. What happens next is up to you. And”—she looked over at Kendall—“and I'm sorry to say, her. She's your only hope in finding out where Katy's body is and she's the only one to bring Roger to justice.”

“But I need to know more,” Brit said.

“You know all that I know. Her energy was fleeting here. Strong, pleading at first, then a very quick fade.”

“Please . . . how long was he messing with her . . . how come she never told me? I swear I didn't see any signs. That's my job! I'm her mother!”

“Sometimes we see only what we want to see.”

“Please,” Brit said

Pandora got up. She put on her pair of colossal moon and star earrings and they tinkled like wind chimes at the beach. “I'm done here.”

“Yes. I expect you've done all you could possibly do here,” Kendall said.

“How's your husband, Detective?”

The question was a punch in the gut.

“He's fine.”

“Oh yes, I'm sure he is.”

Kendall looked over at Juliana. She looked away. The producer must have mentioned the geographic separation that she and Steven were dealing with. There was no other reason why Pandora would have known. Unless she was psychic, which Kendall highly doubted.

 

 

It was after three in the morning when Kendall pulled her SUV up in front of her house. A light glowed in the window. Although she told Birdy to sleep in the guest room, she knew that she would be waiting up. The grass was covered with dew and the air heavy as her heart as she let herself inside. Birdy was curled up with a blanket and a cup of herbal tea.

“I thought you'd be awake,” Kendall said.

Birdy sized up her friend. “You look like crap. I'm guessing things didn't go all that great with The Amazing Parallax.”

Kendall slumped on the sofa. “Pandora is her name. And it was awful. Beyond awful. Like a nightmare. How was Cody?”

“No trouble. An angel. We had a nice evening. And by the looks of you, a much happier one. Want some chamomile?”

Kendall, still seething from all that had transpired at the Fraziers' home, nodded. “Sounds good. But I don't have any.”

Birdy offered a sympathetic smile. “Of course you do. In case you didn't notice, you have a nice little patch by the back door.”

“Thanks. I guess I'm not much of an herbalist.”

“I am.”

Birdy got up and led Kendall to the kitchen and poured her a cup, added some honey, and passed it to her. Kendall told her all that had transpired that evening. How the producers had obviously planned to ambush the Fraziers with the ridiculous accusation that Roger had molested and murdered his daughter.

“It sounds like more of a freak show than a ghost show,” Birdy said.

“More like an episode of that old
Twilight Zone
show.”

“My mom used to love that show,” Birdy said.

“So did mine.”

Kendall went to check on her son. His tugboat nightlight cast a pale yellow glow over his bed. She had the urge to kiss him on the forehead just then, but didn't want to risk waking him. Once awake, Cody wouldn't be able to go back to sleep. She tiptoed out and joined Birdy at the kitchen table.

“I'm sorry for dragging you into this, Birdy,” Kendall said.

“That's what friends are for, Kendall.”

Kendall drank more of the tea.

“I could use something stronger.”

“This will help you rest,” Birdy said. “It's Saturday. You can catch up on your sleep later. Now, talk to me. Tell me what you're going to do now.”

“You mean with Pandora and that mess?”

Birdy shook her head.

Kendall knew where she was headed.

“I don't know. Steven says we're okay. I want to believe him. I mean, I do believe him.”

“Said like you really don't.”

Kendall set down her cup. “I really don't know what to think.”

“Things will sort themselves out.”

“Says the woman with more drama in her family than an episode of
Spirit Hunters
,” Kendall said.

As tired as they were, they both laughed.

“You got me there,” Birdy said.