Victim Six (25 page)

March 1, 3 p.m.
Seattle

The lights went up, and the affable host of
Seattle Now,
Jerry Porter, forty and holding, peered into the camera. He had a kind of manufactured intensity: dark eyes and tawny powdered skin that in the age of high def looked more coated than the naturally smooth, youthful glow he and his makeup artist had tried so hard to project. His jacket was Nordstrom navy and his tie a red and yellow argyle. It was a preppy look that had been his trademark since he first landed in Seattle on his way to a top-ten market.

A trip that never found its final destination.

“We have a shocking story today.” He paused, pretending to correct himself on the script that he’d written—“a
horrifying
story today. If you’ve been watching this station or reading the paper, then you know across Puget Sound from here in sleepy Kitsap County at least three women have been brutally murdered by a man who has come to be nicknamed the ‘Cutter.’”

In rapid succession a series of photographs filled the TV screen. First the now-familiar image of Celesta Delgado at her high school graduation; next, a photograph of Skye Hornbeck taken a few months before she went missing—judging by her quilted attire, during a ski trip; finally, a photograph of an almost unrecognizable Marissa Cassava looking oddly demure, long before heavy eyeliner and piercings masked a sweet charm that probably no one apart from her mother had known.

The host continued as the camera panned away to reveal two men and two women sitting in a row of swivel-based dinette chairs that had been welded by the stage crew to keep from turning.

“At least three women have been brutally murdered in Kitsap County, and family members want to know why the killer is still at large. I’m Jerry Porter, and this is
Seattle Now
.”

Cullen Hornbeck, Tulio Pena, Donna Solomon, and Serenity Hutchins blinked away the lights.

In her office, Kendall reached for her phone and dialed Josh’s number. She hadn’t seen him all day.

“Are you watching this?” she asked.

“Yeah, if you mean
Seattle Now
, never miss it.” His tone was deadpan. He didn’t tell Kendall that he was in the show’s green room waiting for Serenity.

“Did you know Serenity was going to be on it?” she asked.

“She might have mentioned it.”

Annoyed to be the last to know, Kendall snapped her phone shut and turned her attention back to the TV screen.

“I don’t like to speak ill of the investigators,” Cullen Hornbeck said, the focus solely on him. Although the camera purportedly added ten pounds, Kendall thought that Skye’s father actually looked as if he’d shrunk since the last time she saw him. “I know they are doing the best they can,” he went on, a bit of the Canadian accent filtering through, “but it isn’t good enough.”

Next, the camera turned to Donna Solomon, who was nodding in obvious agreement. Almost aggressively so.

“Look,” she said, “my daughter was no saint, but what that maniac did to her shouldn’t go unpunished.”

Jerry Porter got out of his chair and walked behind the four guests, resting his hand on Tulio Pena’s slightly trembling shoulder.

“Your fiancée was the first victim,” the host said, “and the Sheriff’s Office just dismissed her case out of hand, correct?”

Tulio could not speak right then. The lights caught his glistening tears. In the awkward silence, the producers—in a surprisingly kind move—aired a second photo of Celesta. Under her name:
VICTIM ONE
. For the next couple of minutes, the host talked to each of the family members on the stage, reciting the details of the victims’ lives and what was known of their gruesome deaths.

“The Sheriff’s Office should be ashamed of how they done Celesta,” he said. “If they had caught her killer, then Skye and Marissa would still be alive.”

Kendall could feel her blood pressure rise, but she took a deep breath and tried to reason her way out of her anger. She’d done the best she could. There was no reason in the beginning of the case to think a serial killer was on the loose. There is no pattern to discern when there is only a single body. It is hard to make a case for a serial murderer when there are two dead, unless the cause of death and the victims’ profiles are a clear match.

“When we return, we’ll talk to the journalist who has been on top of the case from the very beginning. She’ll reveal information that she’s held tight to the vest. Stay close. You won’t want to miss it.”

Kendall dialed Josh’s number, but this time it went to voice mail.

Damn him!
she thought.

She fumed through four commercials, wishing that she wasn’t watching the show live and could fast-forward to the information that Serenity Hutchins was about to reveal.

When the show resumed, Serenity had been reseated next to the host. She wore a celery green suit jacket with khakis and open-toed shoes. She looked older on TV than she did stomping around the courthouse. Jerry Porter started to cover some of the story’s background and how Serenity had been reporting the case for the small-town paper, but in the middle of his introduction he abruptly stopped.

“Just a moment,” he said, tilting his head slightly as he listened to his earpiece. “We have a caller.”

Serenity didn’t say anything, though she appeared a little unnerved.

“Go ahead,” Jerry said.

“Hello, Serenity,” the familiar voice began, its odd cadence and timbre filling the studio and sending a chill down her spine.

“Yes,” she said, looking at the host.

“You know who this is,” the voice said. “This is your friend calling to say how lovely you look on TV today.”

Serenity locked eyes with the host. “Jerry, this isn’t what we discussed.”

“Hey, don’t look at me,” Jerry shot back, clearly enjoying live TV. “He called in. He’s the guy, isn’t he?”

Serenity reached for the tiny microphone that a production assistant/intern had clipped to her lapel. Livid at being blindsided, she said to Jerry, “If this is the guy, he’s doing this for attention.” She stood to leave, but the host motioned her to sit down.

The family members who thought they were there to tell their stories sat in stunned silence.

“Let’s hear him out,” Jerry said, his face lit up with the excitement of the call and the idea that it was frazzling the young reporter.

This makes for Emmy TV,
he thought.

“Serenity, I’m surprised you didn’t correct the producers and that insufferable host,” the caller said. “You know that there have been more than three victims.”

Serenity slid back into her seat, frozen, her mic dangling.

“What do you mean?” Jerry Porter asked, looking out into the studio audience as the phantom voice came from a wall-mounted speaker. The dozen or so tourists were perched on the edges of their seats. The Cutter had been news outside of his own area, as serial killers almost always are.

“Serenity will have to tell you. I tell her all my secrets,” he said.

“I don’t know what he’s talking about,” she said, glaring at Jerry.

“Oh, but you do,” the caller said.

“I thought there were three victims,” Jerry said, his eyebrows lifting as he looked questioningly back at the young reporter.

“There are,” she answered, bewildered. “At least, as of this morning, there were.”

“Caller, are you there?” Jerry asked, looking straight in the camera.

A short pause followed, and once more the voice crackled into the air-conditioned chill of the studio. “I’m here. I’m surprised that the reporter didn’t fill you in. I’m guessing she likes to keep details to herself.”

Josh Anderson stood in front of the monitor in the Seattle TV station’s green room, flirting with a pretty brunette production assistant named Ellen, who was doing her best to concentrate on what she was doing: wiping the counter where someone’s guest had splashed coffee. She wasn’t interested in the Kitsap County detective, but what was unfolding on TV got her attention.

“Wow!” she said, turning her attention to the monitor. “I didn’t know they were going to drop this kind of bomb on the show.”

The Kitsap County detective, his phone buzzing with another call from Kendall Stark, looked at the young woman gaping at the TV screen and shook his head.

“I didn’t, either,” he said.

The TV was a distraction on her day off. Jamie Lyndon had cocooned herself in a fluffy eiderdown most of the morning and, although she would never admit it, well into the afternoon. She surfed the channels, letting the various programs take her mind off the CENCOM office, where she fielded desperate call after desperate call.

She clicked on
Seattle Now
just as a caller was speaking to the young woman reporter.

The voice was mechanical, strange, and unforgettable.

Without a beat, she threw off the covers and dialed the direct line for the investigative unit of the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office. She got Kendall Stark’s voice mail.

“Detective Stark, Jamie Lyndon, CENCOM operator. I’m at home watching TV, and I hear this voice. The same voice of the creep who called in to say he was the Kitsap Cutter. I’m sure of it. Call me back.”

Serenity scurried down the TV station’s corridor, her heels smacking against the high gloss of a polished tile floor like machine-gun fire. Josh Anderson was right behind her. He implored her to slow down, but she kept going.

“What was that all about?” he called out.

“I don’t know,” she said, not turning around.

He grabbed her by the shoulder, but she twisted away and kept moving.

“Don’t do this, Josh. I don’t want to go into this.”

“Who was that on the phone?”

“It was
him
,” she said.

“What do you mean
him
?”

“I don’t
know
who he is. He’s the guy that’s been calling me.” Serenity stopped and spun around. Her arms were wrapped tightly around her torso, as if holding her frame could slow the pounding of her heart. Her eyes were filled with terror, not tears. Serenity fought the urge to fall apart. Too much was at stake.

Josh was so enraged he didn’t care that his voice carried into the sales and production offices that lined the corridor. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I wasn’t sure if he was the real deal or just a creep,” she countered. “But he
is
. I know he is.”

“What makes you say that?”

“He told me who was next.”

Josh’s anger turned to confusion. “What are you talking about?”

“Carol Godding.”

Josh shrugged it off. “She doesn’t fit the profile,” he said, slightly annoyed that they were having this conversation. “She’s too old—the others were in their twenties. Kendall and I went over that ground, believe me.”

Serenity’s eyes pleaded. “It doesn’t matter. He told me that he was going to ‘change it up’ and go for someone older. He told me that he likes to break the rules, Josh.”

“‘The rules’?”

“Yes, as if there are goddamn rules for serial killing.”

March 16, 8 a.m.
Port Orchard

While the minivan idled, Paige Wilson looked in the handheld mirror and glowered. This was not the style she was going for. Teal eye shadow and an overly intense smear of slightly orange blush just above her cheekbones had been painted with a practiced hand, to be sure. There could be no faulting the skill of its application—if you liked
that
kind of look. There was no way out of it, and Paige knew it. She was seventeen, but the heavy hand of her “queen mother’s” Max Factor makeup made her look more like a TV hooker or someone’s washed-out mother looking for a third husband at the Bethel Saloon.

“When you are up on the float,” Maggie Thompson said in her deep smoker’s voice, “you have to use everything you’ve got to project a positive image.”

“Yeah, but I’m not going up on a float.” Paige climbed out of the minivan in the lot of the Port Orchard
Lighthouse
. “I’m giving an interview.”

“Oh, honey, every time someone is looking at you, you’re on a float.”

Maggie was overstuffed in a turquoise velour tracksuit that had never seen the track. She’d been serving as the queen mother for Port Orchard’s Fathoms o’Fun pageant for as long as anyone could remember. She was a pleasant but pushy woman in her sixties who knew that managing young beauty queens was akin to herding cats: damn near impossible.

Paige was an ash blonde with sparkling green eyes who had won the competition with a stirring rendition of the Dolly Parton sentimental charmer redone to utter bombast by Whitney Houston: “I Will Always Love You.” Paige missed most of the notes, of course, but she had the hand gestures down pat, the kind of big motions that made her look every bit a TV pop star wannabe.

Clutch fist. Raise arms. Hold out palms. Make a pushing motion.

Besides, her competition was a girl who demonstrated batik on a T-shirt and another who read a haiku dressed in a kimono. Batik and haiku were the runners-up, relegated to the back of the float and a mere $100 in scholarship money. Paige was crowned the winner, picking up a $1,000 scholarship and a rhinestone-studded tiara that she loathed, as it pinched the top of her head and nearly made her cry.

“I know it hurts a little,” Queen Mother Maggie had said, “but behind every beauty there is a little pain. Think of a rose. Thorns hurt, don’t they?”

When
Lighthouse
reporter Serenity Hutchins wrote a front-page article about Paige being crowned the previous summer, she headlined the article:
FATHOM’S QUEEN TURNS A NEW ‘PAIGE
.’

In the months of following her coronation, Paige and her court did the obligatory store openings, posed with Navy sailors in Bremerton, huddled on a parade float that showcased Port Orchard and its place as one of Kitsap County’s most pleasant towns. Paige gamely did whatever Maggie and the creepy float driver requested. She thought that by being the best Fathoms Queen ever there would be some kind of a reward, that a glimmer of something good would present itself and lead to greater opportunities.

Anywhere but here,
she thought.
Anywhere but Port Orchard.

Despite the possible renewed activity of the Cutter that spring, Charlie Keller insisted that Serenity do the traditional follow-up story on the beauty queen and what she had learned in her yearlong “reign” representing Port Orchard and the festival.

So there she was. Paige Wilson, that damned torture device of a crown on her head, sash (“warm iron, never hot…the rayon will melt”) in place, and wearing a Target tea-length dress that her queen mother had insisted on, knew that she had to turn on the charm for the reporter. She had to tell Serenity just what she wanted to hear. Anything that approximated the truth was never to pass her lips.

She imagined how the interview would go if she could just tell it like it really was.

The guy who drives the float tried to have sex with one of my princesses.

The queen mother is a complete control freak. No wonder her kids are either in jail or never talk to her.

The lousy thousand bucks wasn’t worth all the aggravation they put me through!

Serenity approached and smiled at her by the front desk. The interior dialogue stopped.

“You look so pretty,” the reporter said.

The pageant automaton kicked in: “Thank you. It is a total honor to be here. I’m having quite a year and am so excited to tell you all about it.”

Serenity led Paige into an interview room and offered her coffee.

“We’re not allowed to,” she said. “Water would be great!”

Serenity smiled. “All right…let’s talk about your work with the South Kitsap Food Bank.”

Neither woman wanted to be there just then, but they both had their jobs to do.

And so did one of the
Lighthouse
’s most devoted readers.

The Fun House smelled of Clorox, sweat, and strawberries. Melody Castile was on her knees, scrubbing the floors of the mobile home while Sam Castile messed with some leather gear that he’d ordered from a bondage catalog he found on the Internet. While Max was off with his Aunt Serenity for a day at the Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma, the Castiles focused on some housekeeping and role-playing.

Just another Saturday afternoon.

“What do you think of this, bitch?” Sam asked, planting his feet in front of Melody. He was naked except for a black leather jockstrap with a detail of silver studs across the pouch that formed the outline of a human skull. He folded his arms across his chest and flexed. His eyes glared at her.

Melody stopped scrubbing and looked up.

“Mmmm,” she said. “Love it. I
want
it.”

“I found something
I
want,” Sam said, stepping back and going toward the dining table next to the front door.

Melody felt a distinct coolness of her husband’s dismissal. It stung a little, but she didn’t say anything. She waited for Sam to continue.

“I’m thinking of something younger,” he said.

Melody nodded and went back to her cleaning, now running her sponge over the surface of the chest freezer. “Sounds like fun.”

Actually, it sounded like more trouble.

Sam walked back toward her, carrying a copy of the
Lighthouse
. “Let’s go get
her
,” he said, tapping his finger on the front page.

Melody acknowledged the black-and-white photograph of a young woman pushing several cans of tuna across a counter to an unkempt old man in a torn windbreaker.

“Pretty,” Melody said. She smiled.

Sam rubbed his hands over his hairy chest, letting his fingertips linger on his nipples.

“Yeah. And I hope stupid too. Hot and stupid. That’s how we like them, right?”

The article was headlined:

Fathom’s Queen Helped Feed the Hungry

“Yes,” Melody said. “That’s how we like them.”

Max Castile went into his father’s office to hunt for the video game that he’d been promised if he made his bed every single day for a full week, which he had. The room wasn’t necessarily off-limits—at least no key was required to get inside. The office was set up with three computers, a brand-new Sony DVR, a TV, a library of unmarked videos and DVR cases, and a jumble of wires that led from one machine to the next. His dad was at the shipyard, and his mother was out in the yard, digging a ditch alongside the old vegetable garden. Max had been helping her but made an excuse to go inside to use the bathroom.

Really, all he wanted was that video game disk.

He ran his eyes over his father’s cache of equipment, most of which he’d already seen. Only one item looked unfamiliar: a headset connected to a small metal box. A decal on the box indicated a brand name. Max picked it up. He tried to sound out what the headset and box were all about.

DigiALTAVOICE.

The word was hard to sound out, and Max set the device down again next to his father’s computer.

“Max, I need you to turn on the water,” his mom called from the yard.

He saw the disk he wanted and grabbed it.

“Okay, Mom!”