The other involved a pretty, young Bremerton woman who was out walking her Dalmatian after high winds pummeled the region, dropping power lines and blacking out half the county. When her exuberant dog ran ahead, the woman used the moment to tie a loosened shoelace. When she bent down, her knee made contact with a thousand volts of electricity from a power line obscured by fallen tree branches.
Katelyn’s case was different, of course. Her death was the result of a household appliance coming into contact with the water in her bathtub.
Dr. Waterman pointed to obvious burns on the right side of Katelyn’s torso. “The contact with the voltage was there,” she said. The burns were severe, leaving the skin so red it was nearly cooked.
“Yeah, I see,” Terry said, not wanting to get slapped down for any editorializing or joke making. It took a lot of personal restraint for him not to say, for example,
Next, the cutting and the sawing. The noise of a human body being violated by steel is horrendous—even for those who do it every day. The saw Birdy Waterman used emitted a noise somewhere between a Sears electric carving knife and a small chainsaw. Some medical examiners pipe music into their autopsy suites, turning them into hell’s concept of a downtown after-hours club.
“Some fractured ribs here,” she said, indicating faint lines where the bones had mended.
“Abuse?” Terry asked, peering over the pathologist’s shoulder to get a better look.
Dr. Waterman shook her head. “Medical history from the father says that Katelyn was in a bus accident when she was five. No other hospitalizations.”
Katelyn’s heart and other organs were removed from her body, weighed, measured, and examined.
What Birdy Waterman saw confirmed her suspicions. Katelyn Berkley’s heart had stopped beating because of trauma resulting from the electric shock.
“So is it a homicide?” Terry asked. “Accidental death? Suicide?”
Dr. Waterman raised the plastic shield that had kept the spatter of blood and tissue from her face.
“The girl had emotional problems,” she said, indicating the scars from the cuts the victim had made on herself. Most were old and faded, but some were quite new. “And while it is highly unlikely that she tried to kill herself with the espresso machine, it appears that’s what happened.”
“So how are you going to rule?” Terry asked.
Dr. Waterman took more photos and removed her green latex gloves and face mask, which were splattered with brain matter and bone chips.
“Accidental,” she said. “The police saw no evidence of foul play at the scene to indicate homicide. And the parents don’t need to live with the added heartache of wondering what they did wrong—even if they did something wrong. She’s dead. It’s over.”
She started toward the door of the shower and dressing room.
“You can close. No staples. Small stitches, Terry. She’s a young girl. I don’t want the funeral home to think we do the work of a blind seamstress. Katelyn …” She paused and looked at the paperwork that came with the body. “Katelyn Melissa Berkley deserves better. She’s only fifteen.”
“So? She’s dead,” Terry muttered under his breath, hoping the woman with the sharp scalpel and soft heart didn’t hear him.
But she did.
“I’ll remember that when I see you on my table,” she said.
IF THERE WAS A CASE TO BE MADE for waiting out the geekdom that is middle school before writing someone off as a complete loser, Colton James was Exhibit A. During the summer between middle school and high school, Colton had morphed into something of a hottie.
Colton was one-sixteenth S’Klallam Indian, the native people who’d lived in Port Gamble when it was called Memalucet. He had tawny skin, a mass of unusually unruly dark hair, and the kind of black eyes that looked almost blue in the sunshine. He’d been the skinny boy who dragged the girls to the edges of Port Gamble Bay in search of crabs, oysters, or anything else that might be good to eat. He joked that he did so because he was Native American, but really it was because his parents didn’t always have much money. Colton’s dad, Henry, was an Inuit fisherman, often in Alaska for the season, and his mother, Shania, was a woman who suffered from agoraphobia. She almost never left the house. People whispered that Shania James was a hermit and that she was lazy and too fat to do anything.
None of that was true, of course. The truth was far more sinister. Shania had been carjacked in a Safeway parking lot in Silverdale when Colton was two. With Colton secured in his car seat, the man who held Shania captive did things to her that she never talked about. Not to the police. Not to her family. At least, not that anyone had ever heard. Only the Ryans had a clue that Shania had been the victim of a violent crime; once, when Kevin was mowing the lawn, she had called over to him from the window.
She had held a copy of his book
“You got it right, Kevin.”
“What’s that, Shania?”
“The author’s note in your book. That’s what. Sometimes people can’t get over things done to them. Dr. Phil is wrong. We can’t always get better.”
“Screw Dr. Phil,” Kevin said.
Shania gave a slight nod of agreement. She closed the window and disappeared into the house.
Colton had always been the boy next door, literally. Hayley and Taylor never knew a summer’s day when they didn’t chat with Colton, get into some harmless trouble at the Port Gamble General Store, or sleep out under the stars.
He in his yard; they in theirs.
And then all of a sudden he seemed to have grown up. Both Hayley and Taylor noticed it. The girls found themselves attracted to him, a quasi-brother or sidekick at best, in a way that was unsettling and peculiar.
One day when he was out in his backyard washing the old Toyota Camry that his mom never drove but couldn’t get rid of, Colton called over to Hayley. She’d just come home from the beach in a tangerine bikini top and faded denim shorts, all sticky and smelling of sunscreen. Her hair had lightened, and the bridge of her nose was sprayed with brand-new freckles.
“You want to help me dry?” he asked.
She didn’t want to, but because he had his shirt off, she’d found reason enough to cross the yard and pick up a chamois.
It turned out it was more buffing than drying, but Hayley didn’t mind. She stooped down low and started on the wheel well.
“I was thinking,” Colton said, his teeth all the more white as they contrasted with his deeply tanned skin, “maybe you would want to go out sometime.”
“You want to go out with me? What do you mean
“Out.”
“You mean like on a date?”
“Call it whatever. But, yeah,” he said, now crouching close to her. “What do you think?”
What Hayley really thought was that it was strange. She liked Colton. She always had. Taylor liked him too. They’d even talked about how he’d changed and looked older, stronger, and sexier, which trumped all previous feelings they had had that he was like a brother to them.
“What about Taylor?” she finally asked.
Colton laughed. “I’m not into that.”
Hayley narrowed her blue eyes. “You’re not into what exactly?”
“Never mind. I was asking
Hayley wanted to drop the chamois and rush home to ask Taylor if she minded. She hoped she wouldn’t. She knew she
