Now That She's Gone (5 page)

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

B
irdy Waterman looked up from her stack of paperwork. She smiled at Kendall. Birdy was a Makah Indian with dark hair and eyes—the opposite of Kendall's blond hair and blue eyes. And while they were nearly the same age, Birdy definitely had the edge when it came to hard-fought wisdom. She'd grown up very poor on the reservation at Neah Bay in the very western corner of Washington State's Olympic Peninsula.

Birdy's mother would be perfect fodder for any number of sleazy reality shows. She was cruel. She was jealous. She thought that there were limits on how much love to give and what should be given in return. She was everything that Birdy wasn't. Birdy was single. Since her nephew Elan had had shown up in Port Orchard to get away from his mom—Birdy's sister, Summer—she was doing her best to make a home for him.

Kendall's own parents were dead. Her sister lived in Portland. Her husband was presently in Sunnyvale, California, and she was raising an autistic son, Cody, temporarily on her own. So as different as they were, they found a connection that was deeper than finding out who'd killed whom.

“It's official. I'm stuck doing that
Spirit Hunters
show,” Kendall said.

Birdy slid her reading glasses down the bridge of her nose. Her silver earrings dangled.

“I figured. I take it that you don't want to.”

“No. I don't. There isn't time for it.”

“Have you heard from Steven?” Birdy asked, taking the conversation where she thought Kendall needed it to go.

“Not since last night. It's not about that, Birdy. It's about taking advantage of people who don't know they are being taken advantage of.”

“Katy's parents? Her sister?”

“Right. Them.”

“I know the Fraziers, Kendall. They have been stuck in limbo for years. This might help them in some small way.”

Kendall didn't know Birdy knew Roger and Brit, and she asked about it.

“They go to my church. I can't say that I'm close with them, but we've talked about Katy a few times. They aren't any different than other parents whose kids have gone missing. Sad. Heartbroken. Hopeful.”

“No one knows what happened to Katy. I understand that. But, Birdy, Pandora and that cretin of a cop are never going to do anything more than exploit their grief for the cameras.”

Birdy nodded. “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe not.”

“You don't believe in that crap.”

Birdy didn't answer.

“Tell me you don't believe in that crap, Birdy.”

Birdy paused, took off her glasses, and folded them into a black leather case. “I'm Native American, born on a reservation, and raised to believe that the spirit lives in all of us, in all things. Do I know for sure that Pandora can find out something the county missed? No. Is she probably a fake? Yes. But if there is a slightest shred of hope for a family who can barely hang on, I'm willing to take the chance.”

“I can't believe you're saying this,” Kendall said.

Birdy rolled her shoulder a little. She'd played tennis with Elan the week before and it was still bothering her. “Chalk it up to one of our cultural differences. It's part of who I am. It's the reason I sometimes sing quietly to the people who end up on my table downstairs. It's why I still pray for them. It's why I promise them that I'll do all I can to find out what happened.”

Kendall knew Birdy did all of that. That didn't bother her at all. Birdy was sincere. It wasn't trumped up for the cameras.

“I know all of that,” Kendall finally said. “I just don't believe Pandora is going to do anything good here, and I'm really mad at the sheriff for forcing me to be a part of it.”

“He picked you for two reasons, Kendall.”

“And what might those be?”

“You won't make the department look bad—and you weren't here when the girl went missing.”

Birdy picked up a folder and handed it Kendall.

“This is all we have from the labs from the Katy Frazier case. Some blood work was done on samples from the scene. Some hair and fibers recovered. You need to do your homework.”

Kendall made a face. She wasn't happy about that at all. She took Birdy's paperwork and folded it into the slender file she'd printed out from the department's computer system.

“Any Brenda sightings?” Birdy asked.

Kendall shook her head. “Nothing.”

“Maybe Pandora will be able to find her too,” Birdy said, offering a wry smile.

Kendall didn't return the smile. “Don't even say that, Birdy. That's the last thing we need right now.”

“Talk to you tomorrow, Kendall.”

Kendall started for the door.

“Wait,” Birdy called out.

Kendall turned. “What is it?”

“Just wanted to tell you to break a leg. I've always wanted to say that to someone.”

“I hope I do,” Kendall said, this time smiling. “Then I won't have to do
Spirit Hunters.
”

“I don't see that happening.”

“So you're psychic now too.”

“Everyone is.”

 

 

Later that day, like a scratched CD that skipped without mercy, the interview with Brenda Nevins's mother came back to her. She wondered what it was that had piqued the FBI's interest in her single interview with the serial killer. What were they getting at when they kept trying to get information out of her?

There wasn't any.

C
HAPTER
S
IX

T
he stark house in Harper, Washington, was as still as a slack tide. The old waterfront home was perched on a rolling hill overlooking the black waters of Puget Sound. It was after nine. Cody Stark was quiet as always when Kendall put him to bed that evening. The little boy was verbal, but often existed within his own world. He showed affection to his mother and father—there was none of the distance that other parents at the school complained about. Before Steven took the new job, Kendall thought that there was no one luckier than she. Certainly, her son had challenges that were beyond what some other parents could see themselves handling. But in reality, as far as the various shades of autism were concerned, Cody's problems were light. He didn't bang his head against the wall. He didn't let his frustration with the world manifest itself in destructive behavior. He was sweet and compliant. A pleaser.

Kendall poured herself a glass of sauvignon blanc, a wine that she had enjoyed immensely since Steven left. The only benefit of his departure. He'd always insisted that serious wine drinkers preferred only red. She didn't like that about him at all. It was like he was judging her for what she liked, as if her choices were not in line with what he wanted his wife to be.

There were other things on the list too.

She was too involved in her job.

Try telling a dead boy's mother that you don't have time to take her call.

She was too concerned with her appearance.

Only because he made such an issue of it.

She wasn't interested in his work.

She sipped the glass of wine and settled in at the kitchen table. A couple of raccoons scratched at the window.

Kendall hated what she was doing right then. She loved her husband. Steven Stark, she knew, was the love of her life. She didn't want to start to think of reasons why she shouldn't love him anymore. She didn't have the facts. She didn't know why he was dodging her. It might not have been a dodge after all. It might just be that he was busy in a new job trying to prove himself against some twenty-year-olds in a business that required around-the-clock devotion.

It was a new world, after all.

Kendall refused to get up to give the raccoons any marshmallows. Steven was definitely right about that. Wrong about the sauvignon blanc. She loved that wine and it didn't stain her teeth. Oh, wait a second, maybe he was right? Maybe she was too concerned about her appearance after all.

She shook her head, sending all those distractions to the far corners of the kitchen, and opened the file. Inside, she found interviews, one conducted by a detective long since gone to a new position in Idaho. She'd always considered Nick Mayberry a good deputy, and later a sergeant—one who peeled back every layer of a case. But this file was woefully thin in content. The interviews, Birdy's just-added forensic report, and some photographs taken at the scene. Kendall remembered the case. Everyone in Port Orchard did. A genuine mystery lingers forever.

 

 

Katy Frazier was co-captain of the South Kitsap tennis team—no small feat for a sixteen-year-old. She was a straight-A student. She was pretty with long dark hair and hazel eyes that looked almost too large for her heart-shaped face. Her parents were Roger, a former Navy commander who ran a small architectural firm in Port Orchard, and Brit, a school guidance counselor who at the time of her daughter's vanishing had just quit her job with the South Kitsap district to run a coffee shop that supported a clientele of homeless and at-risk teens. Second Cup, Second Chance was in a storefront in downtown Port Orchard. Katy had a sister, Naomi, four years younger, who started acting out and ended up in an alternative school—a blow to her mother, for sure.

The interviews with the parents indicated that both had been away on a trip to Portland, leaving Katy in charge. While Kendall knew others had chimed in about the inappropriateness of leaving a sixteen-year-old alone with her younger sister, Katy was hardly just any kid. She was mature, bright, and highly capable. When the couple arrived home late, Katy was nowhere to be found. Naomi was home, mad about her sister being gone, but seemingly unconcerned.

In Nick's report, there was a complete description of what he'd seen at the house, a glass cube that Roger had designed to take full advantage of the views of Seattle's skyline across Puget Sound.

Along with her sister, who really didn't know anything other than the fact that her sister wasn't home where she was supposed to be, Nick Mayberry also interviewed two of her closest girlfriends, Alyssa Woodley and Tami Overton, along with her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Scott Hilburn. There were transcripts for those interviews.

Kendall paused and let another sip of wine slide down her throat. She had once been one half of that golden couple. Everyone thinks that the so-called lucky ones—those with good hair and teeth—have it made. That everything will be easy for them and that their lives will glitter to the end. Fast-forward a decade or more and all of those things mean nothing. Gold tarnishes just like tin.

She read on about the girls' friendship and how they'd known each other since kindergarten at Manchester Elementary. They'd been inseparable until the past year when Alyssa didn't make the cut for the tennis team.

Next, Kendall read the interview with the third prong of the Katy trio, Tami Overton, also sixteen. It was recorded two days after Alyssa's interview. Kendall wondered why the delay in getting her to sit down. That answer came a third of the way into the interview.

The passage was moving. Kendall couldn't help but think that the girl being tabbed had an undeniable sense of reality. Her assessment was simplistic and complex at the same time. Getting out of Port Orchard and doing something elsewhere was the best way back in. It was the only way to come back with an air of respect for the people and the place that depended on each other in the way that some isolated communities do.

Kendall was about to read Scott Hilburn's interview when she heard the familiar scuffling of Cody's footed pajamas over the hardwood floors. He was a few years older than most kids who wear that sleep attire, but it made him feel secure, and Kendall had found a shop online that specialized in footed sleepwear and that was a godsend. Anything that made her son feel comfortable in his own skin was something worth keeping.

“I want to talk to Dad now,” he said.

She looked at the clock. It was after eleven.

“It's a little late, honey.”

“I want to talk to Dad now,” he repeated. His tone indicated there would be an endless rehash of the same statement unless she made an attempt to reach Steven. She swallowed the bottom inch of wine in her glass with a big gulp and punched the button for his number.

This time was met with a bit of a surprise. Steven Stark answered.

“Hey, babe,” he said. “What's up? Kind of late to call.”

“I've tried three times today,” she said, immediately hating her tone. “Anyway, Cody got up missing his father.”

“I miss him too. And you. Put him on.”

“Daddy.”

“That's me, son. How are you doing? How is school?”

“Legos day. Fine. I made about sixty-seven little cars.”

“I'd like to see them when I come home. Don't you be taking them apart until I do.”

“Okay.”

“What else is going on?”

“Mommy's sad.”

“She is? Well, I miss Mommy too. Just so busy here, buddy, I'm trying to stay in the game here and it isn't easy, I'll tell you that much.”

“Okay. Did you know there are two hundred and two tissues in a Kleenex box?”

“No, I didn't. But I'm glad that I know now. Thanks for sharing. Put Mom back on, will you?”

Kendall reached for the phone and motioned for Cody to get back to bed.

“Our son seems to be doing pretty darn good,” Steven said.

“He'd do better if you were here.”

“You know I can't be in two places at once, Kendall. I have to do this. This is my shot. You don't understand because you're doing what you've always wanted to do. Fight monsters. I just want to make money. Is that so wrong?”