The Fear Collector (22 page)

Sissy O’Hare looked over at the detective and motioned that she was going to be sick. She spun around and reached for the door, but there wasn’t enough time. Though it felt as if she hadn’t eaten for days, she began to vomit. At first it was simply that horrendous noise that accompanies dry heaves. It is the kind of noise that sometimes induces others to follow suit. A second later, a foul fountain came up out of her throat and splattered against the floor. In any other another time, Sissy would have been mortified beyond words by what had transpired. She was a woman in complete control. She was tidy. Her manners were impeccable. She was the strand-of-pearls-wearing gardener, for goodness sake.

“This isn’t my Tricia,” she said.

“Are you sure?”

“A mother knows her baby. Yes, I’m sure,” she said, standing there crying, hunched over a coagulating pool of vomit, wishing that God would take her right then, too. The love of her life was gone. The baby she’d rocked since birth. Gone. Everything good. Gone.

Who could have done this?

It was a question that she’d later convince herself that she had to answer on her own.

Those two moments—learning her daughter was missing and the viewing of the lifeless remains of someone else’s little girl—could only be supplanted by the memory she wished for more than anything. She wanted to live long enough to savor the death of the man or men who were responsible for the cruelest deed. Before going to sleep each night, Sissy O’Hare found a private moment away from Conner, then later, from Grace, and said a silent prayer.

Dear God, it is wrong for me to wish harm to anyone, but please answer me and spare my broken heart by making the Tricia’s murderer pay for his crimes with his own blood. Forgive me for wishing another human being to suffer, but I cannot be a stronger, better person here. I want him to die a slow, painful death. I want him to feel whatever she felt times a million. God, please hear my prayers. Please show some mercy on my broken heart and release me from the torment of a killer walking free to cause more harm.

Sissy O’Hare knew it was distasteful and probably even wicked to ask God for harm to another human being, no matter how vile the individual. She thought somehow that it was possible that God, in his infinite compassion for her suffering, would understand and do what he could to help ease her shattered heart. She didn’t tell Conner what she was praying for, because vengeance was not something he could truly comprehend. His devastation was his alone. He told Sissy over and over that he wanted whoever had taken and probably killed Tricia to be punished when he met his maker.

“Justice,” he said, “will be done. It may not occur in our lifetime, but one way or another whoever took our girl will pay for it.”

The year after Tricia’s vanishing was the blackest time of the O’Hares’ lives. It was a pendulum, however, that lurched back and forth from hope to despair. Any crumb of hope was devoured; each setback brought tears, drinking, arguments. They joined a victims’ families support group the spring after their daughter died. Neither would say that it was something that didn’t provide some solace, yet Sissy in particular found it a little too emotional.

“It’s like a church potluck, but with tears instead of fruit punch,” she told her husband after a few months of going to meetings in the basement of the Lutheran church on Pacific. The fifteen other members seemed focused on the tragedy of their circumstances, something none would have denied. Sissy saw a different purpose. She wanted to two things—justice for her daughter and another baby.

She was forty, not ancient, but hardly a young mother. When she told Conner she wanted to get pregnant, he was overjoyed by the prospect. No child could take their Tricia’s place, of course, but Conner felt that they still had a lot of love to give. When she became pregnant just before the Fourth of July the year after Tricia was murdered, Sissy made her next move. She quit the support group at the church and formed her own. Hers would focus on the catching of the killer responsible for Tricia’s murder.

A
crew from a Seattle TV station made its way to Tacoma to cover a story that would likely lead the 11 PM broadcast. A missing girl was a ratings grabber—and despite the second-city reputation of T-Town, it had been a good locale for such stories. Ratings had been boosted by images of crying moms, empty parking lots, and the morose intonations of Kelli Corelli, a reporter with big hair and big teeth and the kind of sad, savvy delivery that always ensured at least a few viewers would tear up.

“. . . in a moment you’ll see the last images of the missing teenager as she left her job at the Lakewood Towne Center. . . .”

The video, all grainy and practically useless, played for a second, and then another voice came on.

“If anyone has seen my daughter, please let us know.” It was Diana Rose, her voice cracking under the emotions that came with the discovery that Emma wasn’t where she was supposed to be.

The next shot showed Emma’s mother standing on her front porch.

“She’s all that we have.”

The cameraman panned to the mother’s hands. Inside one of her balled-up fists was a crumpled tissue.

“If anyone knows anything . . . I’m begging you . . . please, please help us find our daughter.”

The reporter got back on camera and somberly reminded viewers that the case was a top concern “not only of this family, but of the Tacoma Police Department, which has been investigating a series of missing girls’ cases.”

People connected to the case were watching that channel that night—Paul, Grace, the Roses. All were hopeful that someone would come forward with information. Emma didn’t just vanish like the fog off Commencement Bay. Someone out there had to know something about her whereabouts.

Someone watching did. A phone number was flashed on the screen.

Sienna Winters shut her phone and waited for a call back. She curled up on the sofa of her South Tacoma apartment. The neighbors were loud, as always, and it was hard to think, hard to figure out if she’d done the right thing. She was sick to her stomach about making the call, but there was nothing she could do. She felt that the Roses should have all the information they needed. They were nice people. An hour later, there was a knock at the door.

It was a pair of detectives from the Tacoma Police Department.

Grace spoke first. “Are you Sienna?”

“Yeah. You the police?”

“Yes, we are. I’m Detective Alexander and this is my partner, Detective Bateman. We got your message.”

“I thought you’d just call me. Kind of weird that you’re here.”

“Sorry, but your message was so . . .” Grace stumbled, uncharacteristically, for the words. “So disturbing.”

Sienna, a cranberry-headed girl with pale, pale skin, green eyes and twitchy nerves, didn’t blink. “Yeah. I guess it was.”

“Can we come in?”

“Yeah. Just don’t let the dog out,” she said, indicating a terrier mix behind her legs.

“No worries.”

Sienna and the dog led the detectives to the living room portion of the studio apartment. It was a dark space with a wall draped in icicle Christmas lights, a TV on mute, and a pile of dishes on the floor next to the sofa.

“Obviously, I wasn’t expecting company,” Sienna said.

“That’s all right.”

“Am I supposed to offer you something? All I got is sweet tea.”

“No, we’re not here to visit. We’re here about your message.”

“Yeah that. I kind of regretted it after I left it,” she said, settling into a molded plastic chair across from the detectives, who were now seated with the dog on the sofa.

“Sienna,” Paul said, “let’s go over what you told us.”

“You mean about her telling me she was going to run away? Hated her mom. I know that sounds ugly, but I just had to say it. I saw Diana crying on TV and it made me puke. Those two hated each other.”

“Really. And you know this how?”

“We used to work together. Before she went big-time and got the Starbucks job.”

“Where was that?”

“Food court. I was, still am, at Hot Dog on Stick. She was over at Mandarin Wok,” she said. Grace’s eyes landed on the ridiculous hat that was placed on top of the rest of Sienna’s work clothes.

“Don’t say how dumb the uniform is. I already know.”

Grace smiled. “No, I won’t. So you were friends with her?”

“Not BFFs, but pretty tight.”

“And she told her that she hated her mom?”

“Yeah. It was no big deal. I hate my mom, too.”

Grace nodded. She pretended to understand, when of course, she didn’t. She always loved her mother.

“Anyway, she started telling me about her mom being sick and demanding. How she didn’t get go to college because her mom was such a bitch about everything. A total control freak. One time she told me that she thought her mom was crazy enough to have faked her cancer just to keep her around.”

“That’s a pretty ugly thing to say,” Paul said.

Sienna shrugged it off. “So, ever heard of the ugly truth?”

“You said on the message that you thought she was a runaway. Why do you think that?”

“Because she told me she was going to.”

Grace narrowed her brows. “Told you, specifically?”

Sienna nodded. “Yeah. She said she was going to just walk away and disappear. She was going to start over somewhere. New name. New everything. She said she’d never be found because if she ever did her bitch of a mom would be right there telling her what to do.”

The dog, whose name they learned was Toby, started to scratch and Grace was sure that she was going to end up with fleabites on her ankles. Bugs of all kinds loved her blood. She was a veritable smorgasbord for mosquitos, too.

“When did she say this to you?” Paul asked

“When didn’t she? She was always complaining about her mother. She thought her stepdad was nice, but stupid to be stuck with that witch of a wife.”

“Did she share this with anyone else?”

“How would I know? I told you that we weren’t that close.”

Grace made a few notes, asked a few follow-up questions, and the interview was over.

When they got out to the car, she stopped before getting inside.

“She’s such a liar,” she said. “If she’s not, then I can’t read people at all. Diana Rose is no bitch mommie dearest. She just isn’t.”

Paul got inside and turned the key.

“Get in, let’s go.”

“Are you listening to me?”

“Yeah. I am. But honestly, you know that no one has a clue about what goes on behind closed doors. Remember Candee?”

Grace slid into the seat. How could she forget?

* * *

Candee Getz was a seven-year-old girl who had been held captive by her father and stepmother for four years in a back bedroom of her Browns Point home. Patty Getz simply hated any reminder of the first Mrs. Getz, a woman who had died in a traffic accident and had never even been a rival of Mrs. Getz number two. When she and Don Getz married, she sold everything that was even remotely connected to Geneva Getz. Literally everything. Every. Little. Thing. Geneva’s family would have loved to have had the old silver, the china, the family antiques, but Patty couldn’t be bothered with returning any of the treasures. She wanted it all gone and she wanted it done fast. She ran an advertisement on Craigslist and let complete strangers pick the bones of her husband’s first wife’s memory. All gone but Candee, of course.

And yet, the small blond toddler simply disappeared. As far as the neighbors knew, Candee had gone off to live with relatives in Idaho. The Idaho family had given up on trying to stay connected to their sister’s little girl.

Don Getz had been adamant that it was better for Candee to start over.

“She’s been through enough. She needs to be part of a new family.”

The family, heartbroken beyond words, didn’t know what else to do. Don had always been a decent guy. If he’d wanted to start over, then they’d let him.

All of that changed when one sunny July afternoon a young man hired to clean the pool next door heard cries coming from the Getz house. At first it sounded like a wounded animal.

A coyote? Maybe?

Jorge Martinez knocked on the door, but no answer. He noticed a stack of
Tacoma News Tribune
newspapers heaped up on the steps, indicating that whoever lived there hadn’t been home. The cries were so loud that he let himself in the side gate and wound his way around the house. At the back of the house was a bedroom with its windows covered with aluminum foil from the outside.

The sound was unrelenting.

“Hello?” he said.

The noise stopped. It was sudden. Just off.

“Hello?”

Jorge heard the sound of something moving beyond the aluminum-covered window. He rapped on the glass, a dull thud rather than the clear sound of a fist against glass.

Then he heard a sound that caused the hairs on the back of his neck to rise.

“Help,” the voice cried.

It was no coyote, but the sound of a very scared child.

It didn’t take Jorge much time at all to do the right thing.

“Move back,” he said. “Move away from the window. Do you hear me?”

“Yes,” the voice said.

Jorge pulled the concrete top off a bird bath and pushed it hard into the window.

From the opening he could see her. She was small. Pale. Frightened. Candee had been found.

The neighbors did what they always did. They told the police, the reporters, even Oprah Winfrey, that they’d had no idea she was held captive. No idea that the ideal family unit next door was nothing as it had seemed.

Grace ran the story through her mind. She knew that people like Don and Patty Getz existed. They had jobs. They put up Christmas lights. They attended the annual block watch meeting. And yet inside their beautiful home, with its stunning gardens and views of Commencement Bay, was a dark secret. No one could have seen it coming. No one would have ever guessed in a million years.

Grace looked over at Paul as he started to drive. They’d both worked the Candee Getz case. It was one of those cases that stayed with everyone a long, long time. Probably forever. That wasn’t true of most cases. Most came and went. A good detective knew that when his work was done, it was done. To dwell on something terrible, as most such cases were, was to invite nightmares and regret.