“There isn’t much to talk about.” She turned off the faucet and reached for a kitchen towel. Again, no eye contact.
“It would be all right to be mad at him, if that’s what you’re feeling.”
“I am mad at him, but I really am not having any kind of struggle about him dying. He treated all of us like a big jerk. You, me, Tori.”
“Tori?”
“Yes, her, too.”
“How did he treat her? I thought they’d been happy.” He shook his head.
“I’m not going to get into it, Mom. Tori’s a private person. I just know stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?” Parker knew that on some level his mother had every reason to hate Tori. Yet he wanted her to know that she was wrong for doing so. Tori was a victim, too.
“Dad was cheating on her,” he said. Laura didn’t say it, but she wanted to. What goes around comes around.
“All right, let’s change the subject. Tell me about this girlfriend of yours.”
“Have you been spying on me again?”
“A mother looking out for her son isn’t spying, Parker.”
“She’s just some girl. She’s cool. That’s all you need to know.”
“When do I get to meet her?”
“I don’t know, Mom, maybe never.” Part of him wanted to shout it in the middle of the mall that he and Tori were lovers. But his mother would never, ever understand. He didn’t think anyone could understand. He also knew that what he and his stepmother were doing was illegal.
“If she’s so cool, why can’t I meet her?” Laura asked.
“Because you can’t,” he said.
“I don’t want to see you get hurt.” The idea of his mother dispensing that kind of advice set him off. His face went red. She could be so stupid. Tori warned him about women like his mother. They say they know best because they don’t want you to find what eluded them, she said the first time they made love. I know best. I can give you what you need.
“Jesus, Mom, there’s no chance of that. I’ve found my soul mate. Look at you. You’re alone. You don’t have a freaking soul who cares about you. You think I want to end up like you?” He got up from the table and started for his bedroom.
“And I don’t appreciate you going through my stuff, Mom. That’s over the line, even for a control freak like you.” Laura didn’t dissolve into tears, though she felt like it. Her son was growing up. He was trying to find his own way. He was such a good, sweet boy. She was sure that whatever girl he was dating was going to be just like him—good, sweet. She could not have been more wrong. Parker’s phone buzzed. He looked down at the text message and took a deep breath.
HAVE U LEFT YET?
THE SOONER THE BETTER.
MISS U.
LOVE, ME.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Kitsap County
Kitsap County forensic pathologist Birdy Waterman kept a completely well thought-out workspace, even if her surroundings suggested more of the makings of a gruesome garage sale than the offices of the county coroner. The house at 704 Sidney was exactly that, a house. County commissioners and law enforcement had resumed talks about the need for a state-of-the-art facility, but money remained in short supply. Recently, jail and administrative offices had been renovated and rebuilt, and clamped-handed conservative taxpayers were not in the mood to shell out more so soon. So the sad little house pressed into service by a tight budget had been the place of a thousand autopsies in its dank, cement-floored basement. Like Hollywood deaths, Kitsap deaths often came in threes. That month the tragic ending to a trio of lives had already crammed the first week in May of the coroner’s calendar. The first was a Southworth toddler who’d been run over by her father as he backed out of the driveway in a hurry for work. The second found its way to the basement morgue in the remains of a Port Orchard man whose hand had become tangled in a fishing net with no time to free himself before being pulled underwater just west of Blake Island. The third was a Poulsbo woman who had packed up all of her belongings to make her getaway from a husband who’d used her as a punching bag whenever he drank—which was daily. She’d made a run for it one night, but she wasn’t fast enough. He severed her jugular with the splintered end of a Monarch vodka bottle. That last one echoed scenes from Birdy’s own childhood. Not the murder, of course, but the darkness that came with living in a household in which booze was the dominating force behind every act of evil done to her mother. And there were too many of those moments to forget. Outside, Kendall Stark peered into the small window of the basement autopsy suite of the Kitsap County Coroner’s Office. It was dark, which was in its own way a relief. Kendall didn’t mind dealing with the aftermath of an actual crime scene when gathering evidence. Those moments came with a kind of adrenaline surge to ensure that everything was done with complete urgency, as if a dead person’s life depended on it. Which it did. On the other hand, autopsies were slow, mechanical, and sad. Though they were often the start of the real investigation, they held no adrenaline surge for the practitioner or observer. The hemline of Kendall Stark’s black slacks wicked water from a puddle as she went around the coroner’s office toward the front door. The detective always felt a little funny about going inside. Walking up the wet sidewalk between the overgrown shrubberies, up the concrete steps to the front door, felt like one was visiting a friend, not a county government office. She buzzed, identified herself, and went inside. From the small foyer, she passed the desk of the administrative assistant, a capable silver-haired woman who’d been with the office longer than anyone. Kendall smiled at Pamela, who was on the phone negotiating a warranty on a Stryker saw that had gone kaput. She walked toward Dr. Waterman’s office, across green hi-lo carpeting that had been splattered with stains made by God-knew-what. Leaking bags of bodily fluids? Or the dribble of tea from the kitchen in the back of the office? Birdy, her black hair swept back by a bright red clip, hovered over her work. A plastic and foam tote holding the fragments of a woman who’d been shot three times in the head by her estranged boyfriend sat on her desk, the focus of her attention. She was in the midst of marking chain-of- custody paperwork that would take the tissue samples to the state crime lab in Olympia, where toxicologists would examine everything for drugs—prescription or otherwise.
“I thought you might be downstairs,” Kendall said.
“Heard about the crash on the highway last night.” Birdy looked up. She slid a manifest about what was being dispatched to Olympia into a glassine. She scooted the tote aside.
“The girl was seventeen. Died at the scene. Broken neck. Honestly too many broken bones to count, but I logged in every one. Once you find a severed spinal cord, you don’t need to look for another cause of death.” Birdy let out a sigh and ran a line of evidence tape down the center of the tote, over the glassine, and under the bottom of the container.
“Driver, a drunk from Gig Harbor, walked away without so much as a scratch.” Kendall sat in one of two old typing chairs being used for visitors in a place that seldom had many, or rather, many visitors who were living.
“Seventeen,” she said.
“That’s so young.” That’s the same age as Jason.
“Almost everyone who comes through here has died too young, Kendall. But you’re right. This is a heartbreaker of the worst kind. The girl was a straight-A student and captain of her tennis team. Pretty. Smart. Athletic. The kind of girl you’d want your daughter to be.” Fifteen years ago, Kendall was that girl.
“Notification?” As Kendall slid her coat off her shoulders and let it fall over the chair back, its sleeves tumbled to the awful green carpet and she pulled them onto her lap. Birdy nodded.
“Handled. The parents were at the scene when they brought her in.” The words were so painful, Kendall was grateful that this was one notification she didn’t have to make.
“Nothing is more difficult,” she said. Birdy looked at the clock on the wall behind Kendall.
“She’s in the chiller. The guys from Rill’s Chapel will be here in an hour.” The doctor and the detective were friends, and they used a few minutes of their time to catch up. At forty, Birdy had married the owner of a Port
