Now That She's Gone (4 page)

“I'll read them later,” she finally said. “When are we doing the interview?”

“Pre-interview tomorrow,” the producer said. “That's with me. Then the real interview with Wyatt is the next day.”

“Okay. Do you want me to call you?” Kendall asked, completely trapped.

“Nope. Let's just set a place and time.”

“A place?”

“Yes, Detective. I'm in town. Staying at an adorable B and B in Southworth, Swallow Heaven. Couldn't find anything I liked in Port Orchard.”

“The Comfort Inn is nice and convenient,” Kendall said, finding herself in the role of Port Orchard booster. She hated when people made slights against the town that had always been home. It was not upscale, but decidedly working class. Its views were of the shipyard in Bremerton, not some huge snow cone view of Mount Rainier. Port Orchard was never going to be like nearby Gig Harbor with its quaint waterfront lined with boutiques and restaurants. It was, however, something that a lot of other communities weren't.

It was welcoming to new people.

“Oh, I didn't see that on TripAdvisor,” Juliana said. “I only go four stars and above. Not that I can actually afford a five-star in a major city. The show doesn't have that kind of dough.”

“I see,” Kendall said. “In any case, I don't want to do it at my office. And like I said, I'm very, very busy.”

“That's fine. How about a restaurant? You have to eat, don't you?”

Kendall did, of course, but she also had Cody to think about. She'd need to get him from school, get him settled in, and see if Marsha, his regular babysitter, could cover.

Plus there was another fact that this TripAdvisor snob might have a problem with. She didn't mention her son. That was none of Juliana's business.

“Not a ton of choices here,” she said.

“Just looked online,” said Juliana, clearly a multitasker. “How about Cosmo's off Sedgwick?”

Kendall knew the place well. Steven liked the restaurant's five-cheese ravioli. Cody liked buttered spaghetti noodles.

“Fine,” she said.

“Tomorrow at six. The crew is coming to town as we speak and I'll have to babysit them to make sure they get done what they need to get done. We have a show to put on.”

Kendall didn't like that last sentence at all. A show. It made what happened to the Frazier family so trivial. Their daughter had gone missing and while there was great mystery about it, it was hardly entertainment.

Nor should it be.

“I'll see you then,” Kendall said.

“Bye, Detective. Oh, one more thing. If you want to bring your son, Cody, that's quite all right.”

Cody's name being mentioned surprised her a little.

“How did you know I have a son?” she asked.

Juliana laughed. “It doesn't take a psychic to find out things like that anymore. I Googled you.”

The line went dead.

Kendall sat there feeling sick to her stomach. She didn't want to do the show. She didn't want Roger and Brit Frazier, Katy's parents, to get their hopes up either. Pandora wasn't going to bring them closure.

At least she highly doubted that.

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

K
endall Stark and the county's forensic pathologist Birdy Waterman met in Kendall's office to cue up the videotape that the FBI had recovered from prison surveillance cameras. The pair were still in the midst of a cross-training program designed to improve the work and perception of the offices of the Kitsap County sheriff and the coroner—the result of a blunder that still had many embarrassed and angry.

“The FBI actually gave you something?” Birdy asked. “I think I'll faint.”

“Don't faint, Birdy,” Kendall said. “It's a total bone toss. But yes. They know that we don't have jurisdiction on the Nevins case and they want to play nice. You know, in case they want to blame us for something later.”

“When was it recorded?”

“At seven p.m. the night before the guards and staff noticed that Janie was gone.”

“And Brenda too.”

“Right. Brenda too.”

“Where did Erwin Thomas think his wife was, anyway?”

“That's a good one, Birdy. She told Erwin that she was attending a U.S. Council of Prisons conference in Philly. The subject was helping inmates achieve their full potential once they leave prison.”

“That
is
good. Our government at work.”

“This time the government gets a pass on stupidity. There was no conference. I checked. Not in Philly. Not anywhere.”

Birdy's dark eyes flashed. “That means that Janie went willingly, didn't she?”

“More than willingly,” Kendall said. “You'll see.” She swiveled her computer screen, pressed
PLAY
, and joined Birdy on the other side of her desk where they could watch the video clip at the same time.

The images were black-and-white and slightly grainy, but certainly clear enough for any viewer familiar with the women to identify them. Brenda wore dark pants and a white top. Janie had on a skirt and patterned blouse. Glasses hung on a chain around her neck.

“It just occurred to me now, but what's Brenda doing in Janie's office, anyway?” Birdy asked.

Kendall looked at her drafted partner. “Special privileges, I'm told.”

“Of all people in the prison,” Birdy said. “Brenda Nevins? She should have a tattoo on her face that says ‘Get the F Away from Me.'”

Kendall half smiled. “I know. It's utterly crazy that anyone would give her any special privileges whatsoever.”

“But someone did.
Her
,” Birdy said, tapping her fingertip on the screen.

“Yes,” she said. “She was the only one who could.”

“Do we need popcorn?” Birdy asked. “I'm hungry.”

“You're always hungry. And no, we don't. Not unless you want to puke it up later. Just watch, okay?”

“Sufficiently intrigued, Kendall.”

The images unspooled across the screen. At first it was as Kendall admitted when she called Birdy to join her for a screening—“A whole lot of nothing, but wait until the third act.”

When the third act came it was everything that she'd promised.

“What's Janie doing?” Birdy asked.

Kendall looked at her friend. “She's taking off her clothes.”

Birdy made a face. “I can see that. But . . . oh crap, she's not . . . Yeah, she is.”

“Right,” Kendall said. “She is.”

“I can't get a man to do that to me,” Birdy said.

Kendall glanced at her friend. “That's borderline TMI.”

“I'm just saying,” Birdy said, turning her head a little to improve her viewing angle. “Just saying.”

“You sound like a teenager,” Kendall said, still riveted to the video, even though it was her third viewing.

“Blame that on my nephew, Kendall. Elan's influencing me more than I'm influencing him.”

The clip went on with Brenda doing what she was extremely proficient at—writhing in ecstasy. Tossing her head back. Running her fingers through her beautiful hair.

“How is it that I can barely get a date and Brenda can turn these women like it's nothing?” Birdy asked.

Kendall let out a short laugh. “I have no idea.”

“At least you're married, Kendall.”

Kendall almost said “for now” in response, but she held her tongue. She wasn't going to go there. Not until she heard something definitive from Steven.
Why doesn't he call? What is he up to?

The video finished and Kendall looked at Birdy.

“Well?” she asked.

“I hope that Janie pulls herself together before Brenda decides that she's no longer worth the trouble,” Birdy said.

“I figure Janie has the shelf life of an already ripe banana.”

“I hope Janie's family doesn't have to see this.”

“I'm almost glad that it's not our case just because of that,” Kendall said. “I wouldn't want this played in a Kitsap County courtroom either.”

Kendall's landline rang and she picked it up.

“Really?” she said, looking at Birdy with a strange expression on her face. The caller did most of the talking. “All right. I'll bring Birdy. She's with me now. I see. All right.”

“What was that all about?” Birdy asked.

“Brad James says I have a visitor.”

“He's getting on my nerves, Kendall. He asked me to speak to a kindergarten class at Mullinex Ridge about autopsies. As if I could or would do that. What's he making you do?”

“Beside that stupid TV show,
Spirit Hunters
?”

“Besides that.”

“He says I have a visitor. Someone who I need to see even though it's not really related to any case I'm doing.”

“That's weird. Who is it?”

“Deirdre Holloway.”

“Name doesn't ring a bell,” Birdy said. “Who's that?”

Kendall stood. “Brenda Nevins's mother.”

“I want to go too,” Birdy said.

“I thought you would,” Kendall said, heading out through the doorway. “She said no. Will only talk to me.”

“I thought we were a team,” Birdy teased as she departed for her office.

“We are,” Kendall said. “For better or worse.”

C
HAPTER
F
OUR

T
he woman's eyes were familiar. They had the same coloring and shape as someone with whom Kendall had spent some time. They were older, wiser. And no doubt much, much kinder. Wearing a long, almost-black blue dress and a flowing, flowery pashmina over her left shoulder, held in place by a Tiger-eye clip, Brenda Nevins's mother would get looks no matter where she was. She was beautiful with high cheekbones accented by a nearly imperceptible touch of makeup. PR guy Brad James had made it very clear.

Brenda Nevins's mom is coming to talk to you. Says she has something important to tell you. You
,
and only you.

“I'm Deirdre Holloway,” she said.

Kendall smiled at her. It was weak smile, meant to disarm and inspire interest in the woman.

“I'm glad you're here,” she said as she met her by the reception desk of the Kitsap County sheriff.

“I can see that you are judging me,” the older woman said.

Despite the fact that she'd arranged the meeting, Deirdre Holloway was defensive. Kendall was all but certain that when it came to her daughter as a calling card, she'd had her share of rebukes and censures.

“I'm not,” Kendall said.

Deirdre fussed with her pashmina. “I understand. Obviously I didn't do a very good job raising her, did I? If I had, we wouldn't be here.” Her voice trailed off before she added a quick and sad postscript to the truth of her words. “And I would still have a grandchild.”

Kendall led her to a conference room—a nicer one than the one she usually took suspects or witnesses to. It probably wasn't easy being the mother of a serial killer. In fact, she knew it
couldn't
be. Brenda Nevins had finally achieved what she'd long sought—notoriety on a grand scale. She's vowed she'd do so. Promised detractors. Cajoled the police and jailers over the course of her various stretches of incarceration. In running off with Janie Thomas, Brenda had unleashed a veritable media frenzy on the Kitsap Peninsula. There wasn't a parking lot that didn't have a satellite truck looming above the pickups and SUVs. She was out there. Somewhere.

“I'm sure you did the best you could, Ms. Holloway,” Kendall said. “Some things are beyond anyone's control. I'm sure you know that by now. At least I hope you do.”

Brenda's mother sat down and pulled out a crumpled tissue.

Kendall shot her a sympathetic glance.

“Allergies,” Deirdre said. “Not going to cry, if that's what you were thinking. I'm all cried out. Have been for years.”

Kendall had read the files about all that Brenda had put her single mother through. The drugs. The running away. The men. And, of course, the murders. Kendall had seen so many mothers and fathers left to cope with the aftermath of destruction left by their progeny. None could hold a candle to Brenda's swath of destruction—which, of course, put Deirdre Holloway in a category of her own.

“You said you thought you could help,” Kendall said.

Deirdre refreshed her lipstick. “Yes,” she said, returning the black and gold tube to the open jaws of her purse.

“You've talked to the FBI, haven't you?” Kendall asked, already knowing the answer. They
all
had. Birdy had. The sheriff had. Kendall—as the last member of law enforcement to have a sit-down interview with the notorious killer—had a three-hour interview with two special agents and a stenographer. The FBI had pressed her hard as if she was supposed to know more about the plans that Brenda had been hatching with Janie Thomas. But she hadn't any information. Not really. The interview was a little on the awkward side, with Kendall pushing back as they fired their questions.

Those familiar eyes staring at Kendall held steady from across the conference table. Cool air pumped in and the AC whirled. Behind Deirdre Holloway was a large framed photo of a beloved deputy killed by a meth head the year before.

“Yes,” Brenda's mother said. “I've told them whatever they needed to know. I've talked to them before, you know.”

“Before what?” Kendall asked.

“Before Janie Thomas.”

The detective was surprised, but she didn't allow any emotion to register on her face. The feds never shared. They only popped into backwaters like Port Orchard to show the rest of the world they were on top of it and that the local PD or sheriff didn't know how to investigate a serious matter like they did. In part that was true. Outside of a few major American cities, none had the resources that the bureau lorded—sometimes irritatingly so—over them.

“What were they after?” Kendall asked.

Deirdre narrowed her gaze. “You don't know?”

Kendall shook her head. “No. I don't know.”

Brenda's mother wiped her nose and wadded up her tissue.

“My daughter was corresponding with a couple of other serial killers incarcerated in Utah and right here in Washington.”

“Corresponding?” Kendall asked. “That's not possible. Inmate-to-inmate mail is impossible.”

Deirdre fiddled with the pashmina, smoothing out a wrinkle that had seemed to annoy her from the moment she arrived. “You obviously don't know Brenda as well as you think,” she answered after a delay.

Kendall had read everything she could about Brenda Nevins. She'd followed her case during her murder and arson trial. Everyone did. But as a law enforcement officer, Kendall was supremely interested in the psychological makeup of the female killer. Outside of Aileen Wuornos, who murdered her customers in Florida, and a smattering of trailer park “black widow” killers over the years, there were few women who killed more than once. Brenda not only fit into that camp, she seemed to be the only one who reveled in the endeavor.

“How?” Kendall asked. “And really, why? That is, if you know.”

As she spoke, something occurred to Kendall. Deirdre was a little like her daughter. She had a flair for the dramatic, and was all but certainly paying Kendall a visit to indulge in a little attention-seeking too.

“I don't know,” she said, a little unconvincingly. “Not exactly. During a visit last year she told me about Connors and Reed. She said she'd managed to get correspondence out whenever someone was released.”

Jerry Connors had murdered fourteen women—mostly street girls and weekend prostitutes—in the Seattle area in the early '90s. He wasn't a particularly brilliant serial killer, but one who managed to elude detection for a decade because his killings were so random. The ages and races of his women were across the board.

Cecil Reed was another matter altogether. He was devious, smart, good-looking. In another time and place he might have made the shortlist for TV's
The Bachelor.
While some serial killers, like Washington's Jerry Connors, were unintelligent and unattractive (the media called him a “dolt with a dark side”), Provo, Utah, ski lodge owner Cecil Reed was handsome and cunning. He also very specific. His targets were somewhat risky: lonely-hearted widows and divorcées who were looking for love on a ski weekend that his brochure promised “would be the trip of a lifetime where everything is taken care of . . . and romance is free of charge.” Over the course of a five-year period, the handsome and evil man met six women looking for love and adventure with a penchant for torture. They were drugged, violated, and kept alive in a chamber he'd created underneath the Alpine Glow restaurant that he had managed before creating his own scheme for money and grisly satisfaction.

Sissy Crowley, a wealthy woman from Stonybrook, Connecticut, would have been the seventh victim, but she managed to extricate herself from the dungeon by creating a small fire and sending smoke into the restaurant. Fire investigators found her, weak, nearly dead from smoke inhalation. After a lengthy trial, Sissy became a kind of spokesperson for victims. Cecil Reed emerged as one of the most evil killers of modern times. The lead investigator for the Provo police said they suspected he had killed more than the six who'd hit the slopes and landed in an underground dungeon.

“They were getting the messages out with the paroled inmates,” Kendall said. “How?”

Deirdre offered a grim smile. “She called it ‘where the sun don't shine' and I took that to mean a couple of places.”

Kendall didn't need a picture sketched out, the sordid mental image came readily.

“I see,” she said.

“Yeah, she said that no one ever does a cavity search when someone goes out of the institution. Why would they? My daughter was always smart. Smart and devious.”

“What was she saying to Reed and Connors?”

“That I don't know. Not really. The FBI didn't tell me anything. I don't really care. That's not why I came here.”

“Why did you come?” Kendall asked.

Those familiar eyes stared hard at the detective.

“Because of what she said about you,” Deirdre said.

For the second time, Kendall kept her feelings in check. Inside, she felt a chill, but she didn't disclose it.

“And what was that? What did she say?” she asked.

“Words of anger,” Deirdre said.

“What was she mad about? I barely spent any time with her.”

“Like I said, you don't know my daughter. She was angry because your interview came at the worst possible time. She blamed you for killing her TV special.”

The words gave Kendall another reason to hate TV even more.

“What TV special? I honestly don't know what you're talking about, Ms. Holloway.”

“I don't know. All I know is that she blamed you and she blamed your partner, Dr. Waterman.”

“What did Birdy Waterman have to do with anything?”

“You are expecting my daughter to make sense, Detective. I expect that you've researched the deviant mind before. In fact, I'm sure you have.”

“Yes,” Kendall said. “I've taken some training.”

“Thought so. Then you should know there's no way to understand a girl like my daughter. You have to watch her, hopefully from a distance, like a wild animal, with the assumption that if given the chance, she'd chew your arm off. Maybe your face.”

 

 

After Deirdre Holloway left, Kendall phoned Birdy, who immediately took charge of the conversation by telling Kendall the day was one of the worst ever.

“Husband and wife died in a wreck over by Sunny-slope,” the forensic pathologist explained. “Baby in the other car hanging on by a thread at Harrison. Thank God the little one didn't take the brunt of the hit. I can't take another baby in the chiller.”

“Alcohol?” Kendall asked.

“Oh yes,” Birdy said, letting out a sharp and pronounced sigh. “Off the charts.”

“I have something else for you that's a little off the charts,” Kendall said, thinking that her segue was not as facile as she'd thought just before it came out of her mouth. Birdy had a way of taking over a conversation and Kendall needed to say what she needed to say.

“What's that?” Birdy asked. “Was it a bomb dropped by Brenda's mother?”

“Indeed. Seems that Brenda is mad at us,” Kendall said. “Really mad at me, but your name came up too.”

“Mad at us, Kendall?” Birdy asked. “What'd we do?”

Kendall looked down at some decidedly chicken-scratch notes she'd made while talking to Brenda's mother, Deirdre.

“Interviewing her about Missy Carlyle evidently cost her some privileges,” she said. “That ultimately cost her some TV gig she was hoping for.”

“That's not entirely a bad thing. I hate the fact that TV puts those people on for entertainment practically every night of the week. The worst. I hate TV.”

“Me too,” Kendall said. “Always have. Give me a book any day.”

“A beer and a sunny day for me,” Birdy said. “Maybe some jazz playing on my stereo.”

“That sounds good too,” Kendall said. “Anyway, I don't know that any of this truly matters. I do, however, find it interesting seeing how the special agents who interviewed me made no mention of it.”

“Neither did my trio,” Birdy said. “Guess they held that back for some reason.”

“Guess so,” Kendall said.