“Her driver’s license. I’ll show you.” She tore open the wallet and her face fell.
“I don’t understand. I don’t . . .” Kendall bent down and picked up the plane tickets. Two hundred classmates stopped in their tracks to watch the spectacle. Kendall pushed people away in that way cops often do to “give people some air.” Penny told the band to play something else—and fast.
“She’s bleeding,” a former cheerleader called out.
“Someone get a bandage.” The woman felt her head and stepped backward. She bumped into the guest registration table.
“Make her sign her name!” she said. Kaminski rolled his eyes, clearly exasperated.
“This is stupid.”
“We don’t know who is who,” Kendall said.
“And considering what we found out tonight, we need to.” A former geek-turned-hottie who was hosting the table handed over the guest book and a pen. The woman signed her name and handed the pen to her sister. She knew her sister was a practiced forger, but there was one thing she couldn’t do. The sister complied and the tip of the pen ran over the paper.
“They look the same,” Kaminski said, looking down at the signatures.
“Better do that again,” the bleeding one said.
“This time use your left hand. Like I did. Lefty Lainie.” Kendall eyed Josh. No words were needed between them.
“Tori Connelly,” Kendall said.
“You’re under arrest for the murder of Mikey Walsh.”
“She’s my collar,” Kaminski said.
“Not so fast,” she said. Kendall held out the airline tickets. One ticket had been made out for Lainie O’Neal; the other, Edmund Kaminski. She looked at the Tacoma Police detective with the kind of disgust that cops use for the scourge of their brotherhood—the dirty cop.
“And you’re mine,” she said.
Tori was cuffed and sitting in the back of a Kitsap County sheriff’s cruiser. Her makeup was smeared, her dress disheveled, and her hair looked like it had been styled by an immersion blender. Tori probably never looked worse in her life and Lainie figured that probably bothered her as much as anything. Even the reason why she was cuffed in that car. Lainie went over to Tori. A deputy put his arm out to stop her.
“Let her,” Kendall said. Lainie nodded at the detective and walked past the deputy barricade. She stood by the open car door and faced her twin sister.
“I won’t even begin to ask you why. I doubt you know,” Lainie said. Tori barely looked at her.
“My life would have been different if I hadn’t been forced to share it with you from the minute we came onto this earth.”
“I thought your life was wonderful, Tori.”
“I hate you,” she said, this time looking right into Lainie’s eyes.
“I always have.” Lainie stood her ground. Her sister could say nothing to make her hurt, to make her cry. She’d done that over and over and there was no emotion left.
“I know. Maybe you have reason to hate me.” Lainie and Tori watched as Parker was escorted to another cruiser. The teenager held his head down, looking only at the pavement. He looked like a boy who’d been caught smoking by the school principal.
“I’m sorry,” Tori said halfheartedly.
“I’ve told you that.”
“I guess sorry doesn’t do much after all, Tori.”
“It wasn’t easy for me. You think I’m tough, but I got raped in that hellhole by that asshole prison guard,” Tori said. Lainie’s heart raced, something that seemed a physiological impossibility given all the stress she’d been through. She thought she might have a heart attack.
“You, too? You were raped, too?” Tori allowed a faint smile to cross her lips.
“Yeah, Lainie, join the club.” Lainie’s face was red.
“My own sister handed me over to be raped. Who could do that but you, Tori?”
“I figured you deserved it for what happened to me. Besides, I knew how you operate. All I had to do was ask. You live on guilt the way some people live on Diet Coke.” Lainie was reeling then, and Kendall came over and pulled her by the shoulder.
“I’m not finished here,” she said.
“Let her go,” Kendall said gently. Lainie turned to face her sister one more time.
“Were you going to switch identities, pretend you were me and live your life?” Tori rotated her shoulders as if she were bored. She waited a beat before she turned her laserlike eyes toward her sister.
“Something like that,” she said.
“But really, just long enough to get past airport security and get out of this country.”
“You killed Mom, too, didn’t you?”
“Not sure what you’re getting at.” Lainie started to ball up her fists, though she never would have hit her sister. She was tense, angry, and still reeling from her ordeal in the trunk.
“I know you did,” she said, refusing to cry.
“I saw you do it in my dreams. I told you . . . I saw things like that.”
“Your dreams were stupid, Lainie,” she said. Lainie turned away and started walking, but she had one more parting shot.
“You’re sick, Tori.” Tori held her hard gaze at her sister.
“Look who you’re talking to. Remember, I’m a mirror of all that you are. Everything I am, you are. Our genes and DNA are the same.”
“We’re not the same,” she said.
“We
EPILOGUE
Sunday morning all over Puget Sound people did what they always did. Some woke up to brewing coffee, sizzling bacon, or the frenzy that comes with getting ready for church. Some hurried out the door to walk their dogs or take a run along a path. May in the Northwest is stunningly unpredictable. The night before it had rained buckets, soaking the streets, filling swollen gutters from Bremerton to Seattle, but that morning the whole region was blessed with the blue skies and soft marine winds that make the region among the most beautiful places on Earth to live. All across the Puget Sound region, people connected to Tori’s crimes stirred.
In their cozy Harper bungalow, Kendall snuggled next to Steven, relieved that there were no more secrets between them. He’d been so understanding and forgiving that she wondered how she could have doubted him at all. The fact that she’d given birth so many years ago hadn’t changed who she was to him or to Cody. That she’d made the decision to give her son up for adoption hadn’t changed who she was. It was not a mark against her. Her oldest son. He’d be eighteen in a couple of years. She wondered if he’d look for her. She hoped so. She wanted more than anything for Mary and Doug Reed to see their grandson. As she drifted off toward much-needed sleep, Kendall made a list in her head. Vonnie, Jason, Zach, Ronnie, Alex, Mikey . . . Lainie would have been Tori’s seventh victim. Tori was only thirty-three. She’d had decades of killing to do. There was no telling how many people she might have killed during the ten years that she’d vanished. The FBI was working the case along with the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office. Seattle, Tacoma, and Bremerton police were also scouring their records for any connection she might have had. It was possible that the only murder she’d do time for was Alex’s. Kendall didn’t think it was fair, but murder and justice usually weren’t.
When Parker Connelly was being booked into the Kitsap County Jail, all of his personal effects were cataloged, bagged, and placed into bins for storage. The booking officer looked quizzically at the ID retrieved from his duct-tape wallet.
“This is you, but the name’s not right,” the officer said. Parker shrugged.
“I know. My girlfriend had it made for me.”
