The Girl in the Woods (11 page)

T
he call came in at 7:02 a.m.

The operator at the Comm Center in Bremerton dispatched an ambulance after confirming the address and assessing the need. The woman making the call said that her husband had been ill for quite some time and had become unresponsive. She identified herself as Jennifer Roberts and her husband as Ted Roberts.

“Please no lights and sirens,” she said, her voice oddly flat. “There’s no point in it. He’s dead.”

“I need you to check and see if he’s breathing,” the operator said. “Can you do that? Can you check for a pulse?”

“I did. Nothing.”

“Jennifer, please stay calm. I need you to do what I’m asking until help arrives. All right?”

“I
am
calm. And it’s no use. Ted’s deader . . .” her voice trailed off to a distracted mumble.

The operator couldn’t quite make it out, but she had an idea of what the woman had just said.

The operator finished the call and picked up the next line, this time a fire called in by a neighbor in a housing development in Silverdale. The caller was unsure, but thought the family was on vacation and no one was inside. The fire department was on its way.

And yet with all the drama that comes with her job, the call with Jennifer Roberts hung in the young woman’s memory, the way one or two a week did.

A paramedic team led by Danny Ferry filed a report that accompanied the body to the Kitsap County morgue:

Paramedic Ferry, with his small, compact stature and bright red beard, looked more like a cereal box leprechaun than the lifesaver he often was. Birdy was in her office to receive the body.

“Something definitely hinky about this one,” he said, handing over his notes.

Birdy set down her coffee. “How so?”

“Most of it’s there. But the one weird part on this one was that his wife couldn’t name his doctor. She said she’d have to look it up.”

“She was probably too distraught,” Birdy said.

Danny scratched his beard. “
Distraught
isn’t the word. This lady was all over the map, I’m telling you. All over it. She cried. She laughed. She didn’t know which end was up, and then she offered me a cup of coffee like I’d come over for a visit. Weird.”

In her line of work, as in Danny’s, Birdy had seen all sorts of reactions when it came to traumatic situations. “Danny, people handle shock and grief differently. You know that.”

Danny fidgeted for something in his pockets. A cigarette, maybe.

“Yeah, I do. And I can tell you this lady was off the Richter scale of strangeness. Her kids too. They stood there and watched their mother like they were watching some play. Not once did either comfort her.”

“She sounds hysterical.” Birdy turned her gaze from Danny to the paperwork. “You’ve seen people out of their minds with grief. Impacts the way others behave too. The report doesn’t mention the kids.”

Danny didn’t like to make mistakes, even an omission. His face flashed red. “Sorry,” he said. “My bad, Dr. Waterman. A boy and a girl. High school age.”

“All right,” she said.

After Danny and his team departed, Birdy took care of all the intake prep work that accompanies the dead when they arrive under her jurisdiction. Getting everything ready and ensuring that things were properly documented. This was crucial not only in the possibility that a criminal case was involved—which was rare because most autopsies were not about a crime, but about a determination as to cause.

She put on her scrubs and wheeled Ted Roberts’s remains toward the autopsy table.

The circumstances surrounding this latest visitor to the morgue would have raised the eyebrows of even the most inexperienced forensic pathologist. Ted Roberts was relatively young. He’d been ill for an unspecified period of time, but there was no certainty that he was under any doctor’s supervision. He died at home. Home deaths were always treated with the utmost caution. Beyond all of that there were a couple of things that troubled Birdy more than others. Red flags. The widow had asked for the ambulance to arrive silently.

And she wanted to know when she could get the body back.

Birdy put on her scrubs and mask and went to work. She started by taking photographs of the body as it appeared on arrival. He was thin, but had decent muscle tone. A tattoo on his right bicep was of an eagle clutching a heart in its talons. It was crude, she suspected probably gotten when he was young.

He was navy. Even his haircut suggested it. Not buzzed, but close cropped and all one length.

She checked his eyes. Yellowish, but no petechial hemorrhaging.

Next she cut off the pale blue pajama bottoms that he’d had been wearing when the paramedics found him. Over the next couple of hours she “sliced and diced” him, as her nephew would surely consider it. Elan had such an inappropriately direct way of putting things.

As Birdy went about her protocol, she collected specimens for the lab. A tox screen was a given in cases in which there were no outward indications of trauma. Ted Roberts hadn’t been strangled. Stabbed. Shot. No wounds indicated he was an intravenous drug user. She examined his lungs for damage and was surprised to find that none existed. They were pink. It was doubtful that Ted Roberts had been a smoker at all.

The widow had suggested emphysema.

She had also suggested alcoholism.

Despite the yellow hue of his eyes, his liver fell in the normal range for a man of his age. If he’d been a heavy drinker there would have been plenty of markers for that.

The kidneys, however, were in dire shape.

For such a relatively young man, the kidneys’ condition was shockingly bad. Although more tests were needed to determine if she had been correct with a visual assessment, Birdy considered cause of death was probably renal failure. The manner? She wouldn’t put money down on it until tox analysis was completed.

Throughout all of it, Birdy recorded her observations on tape, both video and audio.

With the clean palm of her gloved hand she pushed the button on the CD player and listened as Stan Getz played softly in the background.

Music made the last part easier, because it was so very sad. Birdy returned all of Ted Roberts’s organs to the body cavity. Unlike some in her profession, she put them back where they belonged. Some medical examiners—especially those in large cities who were pressured by time constraints that come with assembly line processes—stuff the organs back inside with no rhyme or reason. Birdy considered that disrespectful. No matter what had been planned for the remains—burial or cremation—the body was once a person, a creation that only a higher power could have conjured.

A little time. A little care. Dignity restored.

She stitched him up and notified Kendall Stark.

“I don’t have all the answers,” she said, “but the case that came in this morning looks like a probable homicide.”

“Nice way to start the day, Birdy. Are we talking Ted Roberts?”

Birdy was surprised.

“Did you know him?” she asked.

“Oh no,” Kendall said. “But someone who did called 911 five minutes ago and you’ll never believe what she said.”

Birdy liked the sound of that.

“Try me,” she said.

“She said Ted Roberts was murdered.”

“Who was it who called?” Birdy asked.

“Don’t know. Didn’t give a name. It was a female. Young. Want to come to meet the widow?”

Birdy put Kendall on speaker so she could set down her phone and finish what she was doing when she called.

“I thought we were done with cross training, Kendall,” she said.

“You know you love it,” the detective said. “Pick you up in five minutes. Unless you’re too busy to come along. I understand your compulsion to make your reports a thing of incontrovertible beauty.”

Birdy looked at Ted Roberts, naked as the day he was born.

“Let me put a sheet on Mr. Roberts and roll him into the chiller. I also need to change. I’ll be ready in four.”

“How can you be ready that fast?”

“I’m younger than you,” she said.

“Two years.”

“Detective years are like dog years, Kendall.”

Kendall laughed. She wasn’t about to argue that one.

Four minutes later, Birdy slid into the passenger seat of Kendall’s white Ford SUV, one that was in bad need of a good washing.

“Incontrovertible beauty?” she asked. “Where did that crack come from?”

Kendall smiled. “You liked that, didn’t you?”

“Not at all. It seemed a little like a dig.”

“Not meant that way, Birdy. In fact, quite the opposite. A friend of mine in Seattle complained about a pathologist’s report on a rape-murder over there. Thought it was part of a serial and the pathologist blew it by not detailing the defensive wounds. Didn’t write them up. And sure as hell didn’t photograph them for court. Said she wished the pathologist’s report were as good as the ones we get over here. Called your work a thing of ‘incontrovertible beauty.’ ”

Birdy liked what she heard, but she made a face anyway.

“Oh, Birdy, that’s a compliment,” Kendall said.

“I guess so,” she said. “Makes me sound like a perfectionist control freak.”

Kendall smiled as they drove down Sidney toward the Roberts’s residence. “And, in case you’re wondering, that’s why I like working with you so much.”

On the way their conversation turned to the Darby Moreau case.

“Tess called me this morning,” Kendall said.

Birdy could barely sleep the night before because she felt so sick about what Tess was going through. “Oh God, that poor woman,” she said. “I already know the answer, but how is she?”

Kendall’s face held a grim expression. The lightness of their banter evaporated. The air in the car felt heavy and sad.

“Tess is a mess—sorry, I didn’t mean it that way.” Using the words
Tess
and
mess
in the same sentence was a cruel reminder of the insults hurled at the woman for the way she lived. “She is upset. She thanked us for helping her last night. Getting her friend to take care of her was a good thing. She said that Amanda stayed up with her all night. They talked about Darby and what might have happened to her. She wants Darby’s body back so she can have a memorial service. And, more than anything, she cried and cried.”

Getting the body back was not going to be anytime soon, which Birdy knew would only compound the agony.

“We get sad cases all the time,” she said, “but this one just seems worse than so many of the others. Not that we can measure someone else’s hurt. But if we could . . .”

“Tess had been through so, so much. But that’s not what I wanted to tell you. She’s remembered something that she thinks might be helpful.”

Birdy hadn’t expected that. “What’s that?”

“She didn’t say. Wants to tell you. She knows that you don’t judge her and that you care.”

“We both do,” Birdy said.

“I know, but that’s what she wants, and given all she’s going through right now, I think it’s a reasonable request. We can go see her after we pay a visit to Mrs. Roberts.”

Kendall parked her SUV in front of the white and blue house at 511 Camellia Street.

“Let’s see what the grieving widow has to say,” Kendall said with a smile. “She probably won’t like or trust either one of us.”

J
ennifer Roberts wore a crisp white top and dark-dyed blue jeans, expensive ones, not the dreaded mom jeans that other women of her age still wriggled into when they felt the need for a competitive advantage. Jennifer didn’t need to do any wriggling whatsoever. She was magazine thin. Jennifer’s eyes were so blue that when Birdy first saw her standing in the doorway, she’d have sworn those eyes had been enhanced by tinted contact lenses. A sideways glance, however, indicated they were real, the color of aquamarines. Her hair was a shade too light of blond to look natural, but there was no denying that the widow was lovely.

She also seemed frazzled and sad.

“Why are the police involved?” she said after Kendall made their introductions.

“Sheriff,” Kendall said, correcting Jennifer. People always thought the police and the sheriff’s department were interchangeable. “We investigate cases like this. Routine procedure.”

Jennifer wrapped her arms around her chest and started to tear up. “There’s nothing routine about losing the man you love,” she said.

Birdy waited for a tear to roll and Jennifer blinked hard.

Down one went.

“I’ve examined your husband,” Birdy said, her eyes full of sympathy. “In order to complete my report I need to follow up on some things you told the paramedics.”

Jennifer indicated she understood and motioned for the women to come inside. They followed her to the living room with its massive flat screen and a brown leather recliner positioned front and center. Next to the recliner was a small end table with an empty water bottle. Next to the water bottle, a coffee cup. Over the fireplace was a sunset scene from the American Southwest, all pink and orange with the silhouette of Pinnacle Peak. The view of the water and the Olympics from the window couldn’t have been more different.

“Ms. Roberts,” Kendall said, “we need to go over what happened this morning. We’ll also need some background about your husband.”

Birdy wanted background about Ms. Roberts as well, but this was Kendall’s investigation.

“Coffee?” Jennifer Roberts asked. “I have some cookies too.”

“None for me, thank you,” Kendall said.

Birdy shook her head, declining the offer.

While Jennifer went to get herself coffee, the two women looked at each other, telegraphing in that way they could—since cross training—that something was very extraordinary about this woman and her behavior.

Danny, the paramedic, was spot on.

“Her husband died a few hours ago and she’s offering cookies? Why not hold a party?” Kendall said, her voice a low whisper.

Birdy didn’t say anything, but she was thinking the same thing.

When Jennifer returned she sat in the recliner and rested her hands on the armrest. Her blue eyes snapped shut.

“I can still feel his presence here,” she said, her eyes still shuttered. “Teddy, how I love you.”

Awkward silence filled the room. Birdy and Kendall exchanged glances.

Jennifer’s amazing blue eyes opened.

“We’re sorry for your loss,” Birdy said.

Kendall asked Jennifer for some background information. Ted Roberts’s widow got teary again. She talked about how she and her husband had met online. She lived in Arizona and couldn’t imagine leaving the sunshine, pool, and margarita scene for soggy, rough and tumble, Port Orchard.

“But when you are in love you go where your heart leads you,” she said. “I can’t say that I regret it. Teddy was an amazing husband, lover, father.”

“How long ago was that?” Birdy asked. “When you moved up here?”

“Longer than a year ago,” she said. “I’m terrible with dates. If you asked me what day of the week this is, I probably would get it wrong. I live in the now. Always have.”

“The paramedics said you have a couple of children,” Kendall said.

Jennifer nodded. “Ruby and Micah, from my first marriage.”

“We might need to talk to them,” Kendall said.

“Oh, I don’t know about that. So upsetting to them.”

“You understand,” Kendall persisted, “as part of wrapping up our investigation.”

Jennifer indicated a pair of school pictures on the wall. Ruby looked like her mother with long blond hair and sapphire blue eyes. Micah was a handsome boy with dark, medium-length hair that he wore parted in the middle. Like his sister, he could be a teen model.

“They went to a friend’s house,” Jennifer went on. “With all that happened here, they needed some space.”

“Their stepfather just died,” Kendall said.

“They weren’t that close,” Jennifer said. “I wanted them to be, but you know, you just can’t make a blended family because you want one.”

“How old are they?” Kendall asked. “What school do they attend?”

Jennifer sipped her coffee and closed her eyes again. “Ruby is seventeen. Micah is sixteen. Irish twins. They both go to South Kitsap.”

“Last names?” Kendall asked.

“Roberts.”

Kendall was surprised. “Mr. Roberts adopted them?” she asked. “That’s a little unusual. At their age? I thought you said they weren’t close.”

Jennifer pushed the other cup and water bottle aside and made a place for her own cup. She looked toward the window, its frame filled with the blossoms of a pink dogwood tree.

“Teddy loved that tree,” she said. “He couldn’t wait for it to bloom. I’m so happy that he saw it.”

“Yes, it is beautiful,” Kendall agreed, “but tell me about the adoption. Just so I can make sure I get everything correct in my report.”

Jennifer swallowed. “Oh yes. Your report. Their daddy died years ago. They were little. And, well, when I found Teddy he wanted to be a father so much. He’s been alone forever. That’s the military for you. Anyway, when we enrolled them in school, I told Ruby and Micah to use Roberts for their last name.”

Kendall opened a little black book and started writing. The homicide investigator was an obsessive note taker and Jennifer was giving her plenty to remember. Birdy made a mental note to say something about the “incontrovertible beauty” of Kendall’s detailed scribbling when they left the Roberts’s place.

“So they weren’t officially adopted by Mr. Roberts?” Birdy asked.

Jennifer sighed. “Oh no. I lied, I guess. I just wanted them—for us—to be a family. I won’t be in trouble for having them do that, will I?”

Jennifer’s phone rang and she looked at it.

“My daughter,” she said. “I know she’s very upset. Can I take this?”

“Of course,” Kendall said.

Jennifer reached for her phone and started talking on her way to the kitchen.

“The police are here, honey . . .”

Birdy and Kendall looked at one another.

“I want to know what happened to the first husband,” Birdy said.

Kendall nodded.

“Me too.”

They both waited in silence, listening to bits and pieces of the conversation Jennifer was having with her daughter.

“. . . I took a Xanax . . .”

“. . . they say this is routine . . .”

“. . . pizza sounds fine . . .”

“. . . I don’t know.”

“. . . don’t worry.”

When she returned, Jennifer looked more upset than she had when the detective and forensic pathologist first arrived.

“My daughter Ruby,” Jennifer said, taking her place in the recliner. “I don’t know how we’re going to get along without Ted. I don’t work. I don’t have any source of income. With him being sick we were barely hanging on. What are we going to do?”

“I’m sorry,” Kendall said. “The Red Cross might help with some emergency assistance.”

Jennifer looked around as though she was lost. Maybe she was?

“Your church?” Birdy offered. “Mr. Roberts’s other family members?”

Jennifer shook her head. “No, we don’t go to church. Ted didn’t get along with his family. They didn’t want him to marry me. I don’t know why. All I did was love him to death. He was my everything.”

The irony in what she just said was lost on her. She drank her coffee and watched the breeze blow the dogwood blossoms, making them flutter like a thousand pink butterflies.

“I don’t have enough money in the checking account to pay for a funeral,” she went on. “What am I going to do?”

It was all about her right then.

Birdy already knew the answer, but she couldn’t resist the question.

“Does he have life insurance?” she asked.

Jennifer’s demeanor shifted. “Oh yes,” she said, her mood brightening a little. “I completely forgot about that. Yes, through the military. I think he has some supplemental too. I should start looking for that paperwork.” She got up and started for a cabinet across the room.

“That should help,” Birdy said, locking eyes with Kendall.

Jennifer, her back to the women, sifted through some papers. “I’ll have to file a claim, won’t I? I don’t know how to do that.”

“It isn’t difficult,” Birdy said. “Once we clear the case, you’ll have the documents you need. Despite what you might have read or heard on the news, the one thing the government can be counted on is paying out when those who served have died.”

“That’s a huge relief,” Jennifer said, turning around. “I’ll find the paperwork later. Now I have to just take all this in.”

That random discussion on insurance over, Kendall refocused the interview back to the time of Ted Roberts’s last breath.

“You told the paramedics that he’d eaten breakfast,” she said. “And he didn’t feel well.”

“Yes. French toast with orange marmalade.”

“He was upstairs?”

Jennifer fluffed her hair, apparently still damp from a shower.

“Yes, he’d been too weak lately—too drunk if you want the ugly truth—to come down to eat,” she said.

“He was a heavy drinker?” Birdy asked.

Jennifer’s eyes fluttered. “There’s no use lying. I wouldn’t have married him if I had known. I’ve had bad experiences with other men who drank too much.”

Birdy was looking for medical facts to weigh against her own findings. “Was he treated for alcoholism?” she asked.

Jennifer ran her French-manicured fingertips through her long hair. “You have to admit you have a problem in order to get help.”

They talked a while longer, but Jennifer was oddly vague on her timelines. It was possible it was due to stress. That happened all the time. One time when Kendall asked a distraught mother the birthdate of her child, the woman couldn’t even come up with the right month.

 

 

Molly O’Rourke lingered between her house and the Roberts place. She had come off her shift at the convalescent center and gone two doors down to the neighbors who watched her dog Candy during the day. Lena loved animals, but her husband Sam was a grouch and wouldn’t let her have a pet of her own. To appease his wife, he reluctantly agreed that Lena could watch Molly’s dog a couple of days a week. The two women joked they had the first dog-share program in Port Orchard, maybe even in America.

When Lena answered the door it was evident that something was wrong. Her face was awash with concern and anxiety. She was not one for dramatics. She was a straightforward type who’d worked in the county clerk’s office for decades before retiring. Serving the public makes one straightforward. She called it survival mode.

“Is Candy all right?” Molly asked.

“She’s fine,” Lena said. “She’s with Sam. But you missed quite the hubbub this morning,” the neighbor said.

Molly loved that dog and was instantly relieved. The feeling was a flash.

“What happened?” she asked. “Did those tweakers at the end of the block get busted again?”

Lena dismissed that notion. “No. I think Ted Roberts died. That bitch finally did him in.”

Those words were a sucker punch to the gut. Molly gasped. She nearly doubled over.

“What happened?”

Lena’s eyes misted up. “The ambulance came a little after Kathie Lee and Hoda came on the
Today
show. I was walking Candy and saw the whole thing. They came with the sirens blaring and, well, they left quietly. That’s not a good sign when they leave without lights and sirens. Means they don’t have to hurry to where they’re going.”

Molly was shaking. She felt a chill, but the air was warm.

“Are you sure it was Ted? Maybe one of the kids OD’d or something?”

“No,” Lena said. “I’m sorry. I know you were close to him. I liked him too. He offered to take me kayaking one time, but I thought I was too old for a new hobby. Sam thought so, anyway.”

Molly remembered the same offer once. She regretted declining it at that moment more than ever.

The neighbor went on. “After the ambulance left, the three of them—bitch and brats—got in his car. She was back a half hour later. Alone. Probably dropped off the kids somewhere.”

Lena’s husband came up behind his wife with Candy.

“Sorry about your friend,” Sam said.

Molly took her dog and convulsed into tears.

“I knew this was going to happen,” she said, sputtering around to look over at the Roberts house a few doors down. “I’m going to call the sheriff. I’m not going to let her get away with this. She was doing something to him. I know it.”

“You going to be all right?” Lena called out.

“No. I’m never going to be all right,” Molly said, though not to anyone in particular. She was on her way home, crying and holding her dog. “I
let
this happen. I let her do whatever she was doing to him. Something was so wrong over there. He was practically catatonic last time I saw him.”

Molly went home and waited with Candy clutched in her trembling arms. She stood outside and looked over at the window behind the dogwood tree between her house and the Roberts place. She knew the car parked in front was a county vehicle by its plates. She was hoping that someone was there to do the right thing because she had seriously screwed up. She’d had her chance. She knew something was wrong.