Davis pulled reading glasses from his breast pocket. 'It looks like a double line, each mark'
'That's correct. The wire or tubing used to bind the girls' wrists and feet, we think, though I admit it has been difficult determining just where they were bound because of the decomposition of the bodies.'
'It could be 45V9, electrical,' he said. 'It's dual wire and is about that thick.' He tapped the photo once more. 'Pretty flexible, too.'
Olga wrote down the stock number. 'You sell it here?'
Davis looked up, queasy, but emotionless. 'Yes. Not often, but we keep it on spools.'
Spools, good. The killer needed lengths of it to tie them up.
'All right,' she continued. 'Before you take me to it, look at the other photo. I'm concerned with the plastic tarp'
'Is that a leg?' he asked, looking closer at the larger of the two images on his desk.
Olga didn't answer him directly. 'Focus on the plastic,' she said. 'Anything like that around here?'
Davis shook his head and rapped his hairy knuckles on his desk. Nerves were kicking in and beads of sweat had collected and started to roll from his temples. 'No, I mean ... I mean it is just clear plastic. That can come from anywhere. It could be Saran wrap for God's sake. Maybe the Safeway people next door can help you'
Olga stood, picked up a Builders' Center pen and directed him back to the photo.
'I realize that,' she said. 'But look here. Look at the edge of the material. It is as plain as day and I don't need to blow it up to prove to you that there's something distinguishing about this tarp'
Davis narrowed his gaze back to the unpleasant business at hand. Just past where the form of the human leg ended, he could make out some whitish cross-hatching. The tarp was at least three millimeters thick, and the edge of it had been embossed with three rows of Ys. They ran the full length of the seam, and then disappeared under, what Davis, now apparently allowed himself to accept, was one of his part-time cashiers' dead bodies.
'I think I know what that is,' he said. He lifted the photo and brought his gooseneck desk lamp closer. He turned the fixture to better illuminate the image. 'Looks like Cross beam's Triple D painter's tarp. The edge is embossed to stop tears'
Olga wrote that down, too. 'DDD?'
'Dense, durable, and defect-free. And yes, we sell it here. Not much. It's expensive. Top of the line, but we do sell it. Oh God, no. . ' His voice trailed to a soft whimper as the realization of what it meant set in. 'You don't think the killer got his supplies here?'
Olga gathered up the photos and tucked them back inside her oversized purse. 'As I said, I don't think he shopped here. But I'd bet my life he works here' She reached for her coat and started for the door. 'I want to see Dylan Walker. Is he working today?'
If there was a more handsome man working at the Builders' Center-in all of Meridian, for that matter-Olga Morris would have been hard pressed to give up a name. Everything about Dylan Walker was perfect. His teeth were whiter than plaster of paris. His eyes were dark and sparkly. At thirtythree, he had a thick mane of dark brown hair that any woman would have killed for. His body was that perfect V: broad shoulders that were square without being too angular and honest-to-goodness six-pack abdominal muscles that revealed themselves whenever he reached for a can of paint on a higher shelf. More than one Meridian woman asked for the eggshell tint base, when she really wanted a flat paint because, well, Dylan Walker had to move that body to reach it.
Olga moved past the plumbing supply section, sinks and toilets displayed with pencil-point lighting that made them look like objets d'art. The smell of gardenias from a shipment of plants in the nursery hung in the soggy air of the rainy day. As she rounded the corner at the end of the aisle, she could hear a woman twittering about something.
'. . . Oh really? I thought it would be so much harder to do''
'Depends on how hard you want things.'
Olga interrupted Dylan Walker and the now red-faced suburban mom who'd been caught flirting over a stack of travertine tiles.
'Dylan, I could use some help, too,' Olga said.
Even though he knew why she was there, he flashed his blazing white smile.
'That's what I'm here for,' he said.
The woman with the shopping cart of travertine started to back off slightly. Olga was tiny, blond, quite pretty, and best of all, carried a badge. The shopper must have realized that those attributes easily trumped overweight, mousey, and an upper lip in need of bleaching.
'Thank you,' the woman said, her smile now sagging and her cart inching down the aisle. 'If I have any questions, can I ask for you, Dylan?'
Walker stuffed his hands in his pockets; his jeans were loose around his thirty-four-inch waist. He turned and fixed his gaze on the detective. 'What do you want now?'
Olga's eyes remained steely, completely unflinching. She let a slight smile part her lips. It was merely for effect and had nothing whatsoever to do with how she felt about him. They'd had it out during the first week of the investigation when he tried to suggest the missing girls were promiscuous.
'They were always coming on to me,' he had said.
Olga knew the guy was a creep and just looking at him sent a shiver down her spine.
'You,' she said. 'Dylan, just like everyone else around here, I want you'
Chapter Twenty
9:15 A.m., nineteen years ago, Meridian, Washington
The Whatcom County Superior Courthouse was the jewel of a revitalized Meridian, Washington. It was an old terracotta castle, with five gold-tipped spires that held court over a downtown that had seen a recession come and go, and a kind of renaissance emerge. The art museum had scored a major postimpressionists show-a coup for a city of Meridian's size. Nordstrom store officials had vowed to keep their location just where it was, thus ensuring that the mall going up in the hinterlands of the county would never be more than a second-tier destination.
It had been more than a year since the two Cascade University students were found on the sandbar. It had become a touchstone moment. Nearly every resident could recall where they had been when the news broke. The college had tightened security. The police stepped up neighborhood patrols. In a sense, the city dusted itself off and continued moving forward.
There were problems in the courthouse with the Dylan Walker double-homicide case. What had seemed to have been an exceedingly strong case was imploding. Olga Morris, who'd made the collar for Meridian Police Department, sat stone-faced while lawyers argued about whether or not the defense's theory of another perp could be heard by the jury. Ordinarily that wouldn't have been much of an issue. Blaming someone else had always been in the hip pocket of any half-good-and sometimes desperate-defense lawyer. But this one was tricky. No one could depose Tyler Ticen. No one could get him on the stand. This particular 'I-didn't-doit-he-did' target was stone-cold dead a suicide without a note.
College student Ticen also worked at Builders' Center. Detective Olga Morris wondered who didn't work for Builders' Center. Ticen let several coworkers know that he was interested in Lorrie. An examination of his room on campus showed an overt interest in criminology, sociology, and truecrime books-one of which was about a killer with the same ligature and torture MO.
But he was dead. The suicide, the defense postulated, was a direct result of his growing guilt over the arrest of allAmerican charmer Dylan Walker. Walker enjoyed the volley of words as the lawyers pitted their wits against each other and case law. He sat somewhat smugly, Detective Morris thought, shifting his weight from one side to the other while keeping a slight smile on his handsome face. His hard brown eyes followed everyone in the courtroom like a roadside artist's painting of Jesus, only creepier. There was nothing soft about Dylan Walker. Hard body. Heart of stone.
All of that but no place to go but prison.
Olga hoped Walker would be off at the state penitentiary in Walla Walla as someone's bitch by month's end. But the petite detective was nervous. Her blond hair was longer now; she absentmindedly pushed it behind her ear. She leaned closer to capture every word being said by the lawyers with their backs like a wall in front of the crammed courtroom of spectators. The judge was actually listening to the public defender, a windbag who made
