got back to us.”
Valerie smiled as a happy memory crossed her mind. “Yes, we wanted it because we didn’t have the money for a video camera back then. It would have been nice to have. You girls were so tiny.”
Kevin suggested a slice of Dutch apple pie, like it was some worthy distraction from the conversation that was really going nowhere. Hayley got up to get the plates.
Taylor looked at her mother directly, without saying a word. She was playing the old chicken game, a stare- down, just to see what she could read in her mother’s eyes. Valerie turned away first.
Later that night, Hayley and Taylor talked through the outlet cover.
“I hate it when they lie to us,” Hayley said in a soft whisper.
Taylor rolled over to get closer to the outlet. “No kidding,” she said. “I felt like calling them on it.”
“Me too. We’re going to have check out Atlanta Osteen,” Hayley said, deliberately using an incorrect first name.
“Savannah,” Taylor said.
“Whatever,” Hayley went on. “I hate it when parents name their kids for the states the moms got pregnant in.”
“It’s a city.”
“Okay,” Hayley said. “I hate when parents name their kids after cities too. Geographic names are just plain dumb.”
“Remember how we had four Dakotas in fifth grade?”
“Good night, Taylor.”
And though they were joking a little, both girls felt very uneasy about what had transpired that evening—the e-mail, the discussion with their parents. There were things about their own lives that were foreign to them. Undeniably, there was some irony to all of that. On separate occasions, Colton and Beth had remarked about how open-minded their parents were. Hayley and Taylor knew there was an invisible wall there too.
Some things were hidden behind a curtain. But no more. Not if they had any say in it.
WHEN WORD GOT AROUND to everyone else in Port Gamble (thanks, Beth!) that Jake Damon had been picked up in conjunction with the death of Katelyn Berkeley, tongues wagged in the way they do in small towns where everybody has an opinion about someone else’s business. Jake had few fans to begin with. Most people were sure he was nothing but a male gold digger, though with Mindee Larsen, he was surely digging in a depleted mine. Although she never told anyone, her husband, Adam, had disappeared with more than the remnants of a fraying marriage. He’d taken more than $100,000, which had been her inheritance from a distant and very, very rich uncle.
Sandra Berkley went up to Katelyn’s bed, where she’d been sleeping for the past three days, and called her husband to let him know that Jake had been arrested. Harper was staying in a Kingston motel, saying he needed some space to sort things out.
“Are they saying he killed our daughter?” he asked.
“No. They really won’t say why, only that he’s been arrested. I’m not sure.”
“Should we go down there?”
“No, the police say not to. They say they are working on things and the gossip around town is way out of hand.”
“I hated that guy.”
“I know.”
“I miss you,” he said.
“I miss our daughter,” she said.
Sandra hung up and thought about what Dr. Waterman had disclosed.
Starla Larsen did.
Sandra remembered how Katelyn once remarked on it when she and Starla had typed their blood in middle- school biology. They were cleaning the grills in the restaurant and Katelyn had wanted to talk about Starla.
“No one else in our class had AB, Mom. Only she did. Doesn’t it figure?”
Sandra wasn’t sure what her daughter was getting at. “How so?” she asked.
“She’s so special, Mom. Everything about her.”
chapter 43
HIS HAIR SLICKED BACK WITH A SHELLACKING of hair gel, Jake Damon sat on a concrete cot in one of two holding cells set up in the back of the Port Gamble Police Department. For a man arrested on charges that he’d had an outstanding DUI—a man who was likely the stalker of a teenage girl—he was remarkably composed.
“You need anything?” Chief Annie Garnett, a S’Klallam tribe member, asked.
“Just an apology,” Jake said.
“I was thinking about a candy bar or something,” she said.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” he said. “You’ll see.”
“You have a history, and we have the IP addy tying you to the e-mails and chats sent to Katelyn,” Annie said.
“IP addy? I don’t know a thing about that. What history?”
“Bellevue,” Annie said. “We’re getting the personnel papers about your dismissal.”
Jake blew up, his neck veins popping like roots under blacktop. “That? You think that’s some big deal that got me canned?”
“It involved an inappropriate relationship with a student, Jake.”
Jake regained his composure a little and shook his head. “Boy, are you going to look stupid.”
Annie had heard that before. So far she’d never looked stupid.
“We’ll see about that,” she said.
Jake stepped up to the bars of the holding cell. “No, you will. The ‘inappropriate relationship with a student’ that got me fired was because I gave money to the kid and his mother. Their house burned down. They had nothing. I wrote ’em a few checks. It was against district policy because I didn’t go through channels. That’s why they fired me.”
“I’ll need to verify that,” Annie said, turning away.
“You’d just better,” he called out.
Annie stopped and did an about-face. “Okay, if it wasn’t you, then who was tormenting the girl next door?”
Jake looked in her eyes and shook his head. “I have no idea,” he said. “Your information is crap.”
EVEN THOUGH SHE WAS WEARING A SILVER MINI and her go-to strappy heels, Mindee Larsen couldn’t turn a single head with her good looks as she arrived at the Port Gamble Police Department. Forget that it was the dead of winter and such a getup was so, so wrong. But the truth of the matter was, no one was looking at Mindee because she was hot, pretty, or anything like that at all. They watched her every move because she was the girlfriend of the man in the holding cell, an Internet stalker who’d pushed fifteen-year-old Katelyn Berkley to the brink, and then coldly shoved her over its cruel edge.
Chief Garnett led Mindee to her office. It was a comfortable space, as police chief offices go. The walls were decorated with citations and S’Klallam tribal artwork. Behind her was a bookcase full of case files—perfectly ordered and complete. Most crimes in Port Gamble were property crimes, and those were usually solved in short order.
Annie knew Mindee quite well, at least on a professional basis. It was Mindee who did the chief’s hair—color and cut. From the very beginning, the chief had liked Mindee. She liked her over-the-top sense of style. She didn’t consider herself a Native American version of RuPaul, but if Annie had the body for a silver mini she’d be shopping at Forever 21 instead of Lane Bryant at the mall.
“Annie, just so you know, Jake could not have done this,” Mindee said, planting herself in a visitor’s chair across from the chief.
The chief offered her some coffee, but Mindee declined.
“I just bleached my teeth and they’re still a little porous,” she said. “I know you care for Jake,” Annie said.
