The Girl in the Woods (27 page)

B
irdy Waterman sat across from Jennifer Roberts and picked up the phone.

“Detective Stark would be a better choice to listen to your side of the story. If that’s what this is about,” Birdy said. “Why ask for me?”

Jennifer looked beaten down. The Kitsap County jail was a far cry from the Pinnacle Peak Patio, the restaurant where she liked to lunch with friends, or the wine bar at the DC Ranch where she and Bobby first went when it had opened—and when he thought she might love him.

“I could list some reasons,” she said. Her voice was devoid of the bravado that she used like a trumpet to get people to pay attention. It was almost soft, weak.

Birdy took her up on the offer. She had nothing to lose. “Go right ahead. Start listing.”

Jennifer ran her fingertips through her hair, tucking one of her blond locks behind her telephone ear.

“First of all,” she said, “I’m innocent.”

Birdy knew it was a mistake going there. Kendall told her to go. Kendall thought that maybe Jennifer felt some kind of connection to Birdy and that association might give them some leverage in the case. Birdy figured she wanted her there for a little attention. Nothing more.

“You summoned me over here for that? You’re going to have to do better. We’ve got you for killing Ted with antifreeze. You fed it to him like it was nectar for a hummingbird.”

A slight and inappropriate smile came over Jennifer.

“Hummingbirds remind me of home,” Jennifer said. “I didn’t kill Donny and I didn’t kill Teddy.”

Birdy thought of asking her if she selected husbands based on infantile-sounding names. Bobby was in the mix too; sandwiched between the two dead ones. She held her tongue on that, though. There was no need to antagonize.

“Look, Jennifer,” Birdy said, “you’ll have your day in court. You’ll be able to tell a jury or a judge every bit about what you didn’t do. Telling me doesn’t make a bit of difference. Why do you want me here?”

Jennifer drew a breath. It actually crossed Birdy’s mind that as shallow, lethal, and glib as that woman most assuredly was, she was wrought with anxiety.

“Because I’m being set up,” she said. “I didn’t kill anyone.”

“You’ve already told us about Molly O’Rourke.”

“You have to check her out,” she said.

“Detective Stark has already done that.”

“My daughter told me that you went down to Scottsdale and actually dug up Donny.”

Birdy didn’t answer.

“And you found nothing, right?”

She was right about that, of course. But there was still a slim chance. Never count out the men and women in the Washington State Crime Lab. They were among the best in the country.

“The samples are at the lab,” Birdy said.

“There’s nothing there,” she said. “I had no reason to kill Donny or Teddy.”

“Bobby thinks otherwise.”

“I hope you know he’s a drunk. He hates me. I never should have married for money. I admit that I did. So what? I’m not the first woman who has and I sure as hell won’t be the last. Gold digger? That’s not who I am.”

Birdy could have laughed out loud at that remark. If any woman could be put in the category of gold digger it was the woman on the other side of the thick glass partition. She was never, ever anything but a gold digger.

“Really?” Birdy said. “That’s what Bobby thinks too. That you married him to get your hands on his estate. He told me that he feels like he’s the lucky one. He’s the one who got away from you. Alive.”

“Dr. Waterman, I know you are a decent person. I don’t think you’re stupid either.”

“I’m not here for a personality assessment from you, Jennifer.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t mean it like that. I just want to be heard. I just want someone to understand that even though I’ve done some admittedly stupid and selfish things in my life that . . . well, being selfish and stupid doesn’t make me a killer. If those attributes were a precursor for murder, you’d have more people in the morgue than you could deal with.”

Jennifer was right. It was, Birdy thought, the only time she’d been spot on about anything during their conversation. That included her personality assessment too. Birdy was intelligent and she was decent, but she’d made some mistakes of epic proportions in her personal life—things that had come back to haunt her since Elan’s arrival in Port Orchard. Things that might never be solved no matter how much navel gazing she employed.

“I don’t see the point in this, Jennifer,” she said.

Jennifer waited a beat. Later, Birdy would wonder if it was for dramatic effect or if she was just trying to come up with something to keep Birdy captive in that visitor’s carrel.

“If not Molly, then maybe Ruby could have done this,” Jennifer said.

Birdy hadn’t expected that, but Jennifer was always good at coming up with a surprise. She had said so once herself.

“She was a little girl when Donald died, for one thing.”

Jennifer shook her head. “Not Donny. But maybe she’s behind Teddy’s poisoning.”

This wasn’t going anywhere.

“Really, Jennifer, how low can you go? Now you want to blame your daughter. Why is that? Because she’s turned on you?”

“She won’t testify against me. She’s not going to. She loves me.”

Birdy leaned in closer to the glass. “She’s scared of you.”

Jennifer didn’t even flinch. Not a trace of reaction, emotion, escaped her frozen face.

“She’s just like me,” she said. “She’ll do the right thing. She’ll do what’s best for us.”

Birdy pulled back. Jennifer was a game player. Probably a good one. But she was also a murderer and she wasn’t going to get away with it this time.

“You know you were taped talking to her last night,” Birdy said, knowing that Kendall probably would not have volunteered that information.

“Really? It says right here that audio recordings are not made of inmate and visitor conversations.” She indicated a notice that had been laminated to the glass.

“No audio. But video. And we’ve got a great lip reader in the sheriff’s department.”

Jennifer looked a little defeated. She glanced at the angle of the camera. Birdy could see the wheels rotating. Jennifer was wondering if the angle was right to capture what she said or what her daughter had said.

“I’m not worried. I didn’t do anything wrong,” she finally said.

“We’ll see about that, Jennifer,” Birdy said, hanging up the phone and turning to leave.

Jennifer pounded on the glass.

Birdy turned to look at the former hotel restaurant hostess with the big dreams and the face and figure to get what she wanted from men. The words
master manipulator
came to mind. Jennifer was saying something and Birdy Waterman was pretty good at reading lips too.

“You’re a bitch! I’m not a killer.”

Or something like that.

And she winked.

The wink was strange. It was the same as the one on the tape, but it didn’t mean anything.
Jennifer had a nervous tic.

Jennifer Roberts went back to the jail’s TV room. She thought about growing up in Spring Valley and how her parents had saved their money to go to Scottsdale. It was years before the city would morph into the Beverly Hills of Arizona. They walked along the streets of what was later called Old Town and sucked in the sights, sounds, and smells of a place so different from Spring Valley.

Jenny, who was eight at the time, got a big chocolate ice cream cone from the Sugar Bowl, a painted all-pink fantasy of a soda shop. She sat on a bench with her family eating that cone and watched all the pretty cars roll on by. They were shiny in a way that made her think she could go up to one and use it to make sure her hair was combed out the way she liked it. The cars were not dull and dust-caked like those back in Spring Valley. Not like the old Chevy her dad had driven.

While her father and brother, Carter, went inside a western wear store to look at belt buckles, Jenny and her mother sat in silence as women sauntered by with beautiful long blond hair and cords of gold and silver around their necks and so many bangles stacked on their wrists it looked like they were wearing armor.

It was an eyeful and, in every sense, life changing.

“That’s what I want to be when I grow up,” Jenny said.

“That’s never going to happen, sweetheart,” her mother said.

“Why not? Daddy says I’m pretty.”

“You’re not pretty like that. You’re cute as a button. Pretty like that takes a lot of money.”

She didn’t want to be cute like a button. Buttons were utilitarian. Boring.

“I could get some money,” she said.

“Baby, just be happy with what you have,” her mother said, sitting there in cheap sandals and clean, but boring, jeans and top. “It’s better that way. We are who we are.”

“But I want
that
,” Jenny had said with great adamancy.

Her mother, a plain woman with those same unreal blue eyes as her daughter, patted Jenny on the knee.

“The only way to get that is to get out of Gila County, and if you’re at all like me—and everyone thinks so—you’ll end up right next door.”

Jenny finished her cone. She looked at her mother. “But I want to,” she said.

“Everyone has a dream. The smart ones know that dreams don’t come true. They are a desire, a want. Nothing more. Not real. Do you understand me?”

The Sugar Bowl was real. The women walking around were real. Her mom was a liar.

“Yes, Momma,” she said.

Inside, Jenny wondered what it would take to get out of Gila County. She’d plan her escape. There was no way she would end up in the trailer next door to her mom. She wanted that pretty-in-pink life she saw all around the Sugar Bowl.

She didn’t care what her mother said. Jenny was nothing like her mom. She vowed to do whatever it took.

“I
need to talk to someone,” Tess Moreau said, waiting outside the offices of the Kitsap County coroner. She was completely sober this time, but her eyes still looked as hurt and haunted as they had since the day her daughter went missing. She wore her work clothes, a blazer and light-colored slacks. On her lapel was a small photo button of Darby anchoring the neatly cut tails of a pale pink ribbon.

Birdy smiled at Tess and with a nod indicated they should take a walk.

“I wasn’t always like I am now,” Tess said, as they picked their way through the still-jammed parking lot between the county buildings before reaching the plaza that overlooked the shipyard and its nearly mile-long row of gray behemoths.

An empty bench beckoned and the two women sat down.

“Of course you weren’t,” Birdy said, not really sure where Tess was going. “Circumstances brought you to where you are. You can change things.”

Tess looked out at the water. “It isn’t about Darby. I mean, not really. It’s about the accident that killed my husband and Ellie, Darby’s sister.”

“I’m a doctor, but maybe not the kind that could help you best.”

Tess studied Birdy. “I trust you,” she said.

“I appreciate that, Tess. I can be a good listener, despite what my nephew says. He’s staying with me through the end of the school year.”

“How old is he?” Tess asked.

“Sixteen.”

“Did he know my Darby?”

Birdy shook her head. “No, he came here right around the time she went missing.”

“About the accident,” Tess said, changing the subject back to what was heavy on her mind. “I want to tell you something that I have never told anyone. Not ever.”

Birdy didn’t like the sound of that. It felt a little confessional. Introspection was fine, of course. She’d be a good sounding board for that. But confessional? That wasn’t her strong suit—especially if there was nothing to be done with the confession.

Tess settled back and closed her eyes. She was remembering, concentrating. The truth was that the night of the accident had never completely left her mind. Not from the moment a team of paramedics extricated her from the crushed passenger side of the Honda Civic that her husband had been driving.

First there was the sound, then the quiet, then the crying . . .

“You know what happened?” a man had asked.

Her face had felt numb. She wasn’t sure she was moving her lips.
Maybe she was paralyzed?

“Is everyone all right?” she sputtered out. “My husband? My girls?”

“We’re taking care of everyone right now,” the man said.

Tess couldn’t move. She was pinned under the dash. She heard one of her girls crying.

“We’re getting to everyone. What happened? Do you know?”

She tasted blood in her mouth, but she couldn’t wipe it away. “What? I want to know how my husband is doing.”

The paramedic flashed a light, not in her eyes, but in a sweeping motion over the debris of the car. A couple of CDs. A juice box. Some baby wipes.

“What’s his name?” the paramedic asked. “Can you tell me his name?”

She shut her eyes. “Brad. My husband is Brad. My girls are Ellie and Darby.”

More crying came from behind her and she tried to move.

“We’re doing all we can,” the calm voice said. “Are those your children?”

Tess gulped for air.

“Ma’am, do you remember what happened before the crash?”

A shooting pain went down her legs. The jaws of life were tearing a chunk of metal and plastic from the front end.

“A deer. A deer jumped out. Brad swerved. How is Brad?”

Tess felt her body move. She was being lifted upward by another paramedic. It was possible it was the first one who helped her, it was hard to see. It was so dark. The lights from the aid cars pulsed like a heartbeat.

“I’m sorry, but your husband didn’t make it,” a woman’s voice said. “One of your little girls is in serious condition. We’re airlifting her to Harborview.”

The crying faded to a whimper.

“The car seat kept the other one in pretty good shape. The little one. She’s going to be okay. Bruised, but nothing serious. No lacerations.”

Darby was fine.

That was the moment frozen in time forever. Right then in that flash when she knew everything had been her fault. All of it.

Tess sat there mute. She had a faraway look in her eyes. Not sad. Just faraway.

Birdy gave her some leeway. She knew that revisiting traumatic incidents often replayed in the human mind as if they were occurring all over again. She’d seen it in her office more than one time. The worst was when a man was recounting how his wife had keeled over from a heart attack and how frantic he’d become trying to resuscitate her. He’d done everything. As he spoke, he suddenly went white and excused himself to use the bathroom—he died of a heart attack two minutes later.

“There was no deer on the highway,” Tess said. “Brad and I were arguing. I was so mad at him because he—and this sounds so pathetically stupid—because he wanted to go to Ocean Shores and I wanted to go to Leavenworth for vacation that year. I was just sitting there getting madder and madder. Darby was fussing and I couldn’t get her quiet. I know she was only reacting to our fighting. I reached over—”

Birdy cut her off. “I don’t want you to say one more word. Not a word. Do you understand?”

They locked eyes. “I have to tell someone,” she said.

Birdy held her hand out as if to push back whatever Tess was going to say.

The truth of what happened.

“Tell your priest at St. Gabriel’s,” Birdy said.

“I have,” she said.

“Good. That’s enough. You’ve suffered enough. It was a terrible accident. I know that whatever caused Brad to swerve is something that no one needs to know now.”

There was a time when Birdy would almost certainly have felt otherwise. Even a month ago or a few weeks prior to all that had happened since those kids from Olalla Elementary found Darby’s foot in Banner Forest.

“What happened to Darby has zero to do with whatever happened on the highway that night,” she said.

Tess plainly disagreed. “You can’t know that for sure. If I hadn’t . . . If it hadn’t happened . . . I wouldn’t live the way I live. I know that’s true. And if I didn’t live the way I live, my daughter would have let me inside her life more. Her friends. Her school. All of it was walled off. We were in a bubble, a messy bubble there in that house, and I just couldn’t make it right.”

Birdy put her arm around Tess’s shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said. “What happened to Darby was not your fault. You could have had a spotless home, lived in a hermetically sealed Lucite box, with not a speck of dust, and it still could have happened. Murder can happen to anyone. It absolutely is not your fault.”

Tess mouthed the words “thank you” and that faraway look returned for a beat.

“Tess, I know someone you need to see.”

“I can’t see anyone,” she said. “I can’t even tell Amanda.”

Birdy sifted through her purse and retrieved a business card. It was for a woman named Deanna Clarke who ran a grief group out of her home in South Colby, a couple of miles from Port Orchard.

“See Deanna,” she said, giving Tess the card. “She’ll help you. She had terrible guilt over a tragedy of her own. Not like yours, but with a similar outcome. You need to talk to someone. You have paid dearly already and no one could torture you with more pain than you’ve poured all over yourself.”

“I caused the accident,” Tess said.

“I understand.”

“Shouldn’t I go to jail? I work at a prison where people have done far less damage than I have and they are serving time.”

“See Deanna,” Birdy repeated.

After Darby’s mom left, Birdy let her imagination take her inside that Honda Civic with the Moreaus on the night of the accident. She let herself believe that Tess and Brad had only argued. Maybe Tess even gave him a shove, in the heat of the moment. She didn’t allow herself to think what might have truly occurred the night Brad and Ellie Moreau died. She would always wonder if Tess had grabbed that wheel and steered the car into that shoulder, killing her husband and two-year-old. If she knew for sure, then as an officer of the court she had the sworn duty to report what she knew.

But she didn’t. And she wouldn’t. No one had suffered more than the woman who would forever be known as Tess the Mess.