It wasn’t just wishful thinking, either. Her daughter fit the profile of Ted’s so-called type-not only in her physical appearance, but her personality, too. Most of the girls whom he’d killed were the kind who could be called upon to be helpful. Tricia was without question the kind of girl to give a stranger directions, help an injured student with his books, provide money for an emergency phone call.
There was one more bit that played into the possibility that Ted had been Tricia’s captor and murderer. After Bundy was apprehended, a detailed accounting had been made of every traceable moment of his life. Every receipt with his name on it, every phone call that he’d made or answered, was logged into a master file by the King County Sheriff ’s Department, which had assembled a major task force to catch the man who’d been murdering pretty young women in Washington state.
On the day that Tricia disappeared, a credit card receipt from a gas station in Shelton was logged into evidence. Shelton was less than an hour away from the Pacific Lutheran University campus. While it didn’t carry as much weight as a charge slip from Tacoma, it was very, very close.
A clerk who’d sold Ted seven dollars of gas and a Mars candy bar said that he hadn’t been traveling alone. It provided the third leg of the stool on which the possibility that Tricia O’Hare had been a Bundy victim rested. The transcription between King County Detective Gerry Montrose and Super Seven Gas station attendant Lee Wong was the go-to piece of evidence for Sissy and Conner O’Hare, and later, Grace. The choicest bit of the transcript appeared on the twentieth page of the twenty-page document.
DETECTIVE MONTROSE: Did you actually talk to Mr. Bundy?
LEE WONG: Weird that you call him mister. Guy’s a real dick. Yeah, I did talk to him. I remember how he waved me away when I approached his car. I went over to him, you know, to see if he wanted oil. MONTROSE: Waved you away?
WONG: Yeah. Like I said earlier, he jumped out of his car to pump his own gas even though he was at the full-serve pump. The dick said, “I’ll do it myself. No oil needed.” Then he actually pushed me back from the car like he thought I was going to fight him for the dipstick or something.
MONTROSE: Was he aggressive with you?
WONG: No, and it doesn’t matter if he was. I pack a thirty-eight. You practically have to, working at a gas station or mini-mart these days. Customers will kill you if they don’t like the way you screw on their gas tank lid. And yes, in case you’re going to ask it, I have a CW permit.
MONTROSE: Good. Did you get a look inside the car?
WONG: Not really. I mean, I sort of think he had someone sleeping in the backseat. I can’t be sure because I didn’t get a real look. You know, out of the corner of my eye when he was hassling me about the oil fill-up.
MONTROSE: So you didn’t see anyone, really? Just more like an impression?
WONG: Yeah, an impression. That’s a good way of looking at it. I got the impression of a girl sleeping in the back. Now…
MONTROSE: Now, what?
WONG: Now, I guess I wonder a little if it might have been a girl. Maybe a dead one. If she was dead, then I’m sorry for her family. If she was alive, well, I don’t even want to think about how bad I feel. You know, how I could have maybe done something.
MONTROSE: You would have no way of knowing, either way. Don’t beat yourself up.
WONG: Okay. Thanks.
[End of transcript.]
And then there were the letters. The Ted Letters.
“Can I take these, Mom?”
Sissy scrunched up her brow and thought a moment. “Oh, I don’t know. I loaned them to The National Enquirer and it took more than a year to get them back. Goodness, I was stupid. I should have photocopied them.”
“I’m not the Enquirer. I’m your daughter. Besides, the Enquirer paid you. I seem to recall that you got ten thousand dollars for your group.”
“I’m a tough negotiator,” Sissy said, a slight smile on her face. “Yes, you can borrow them. Not sure what you’re looking for, but yes, if you think it will help, take them.”
Grace looked down at the letters. Her mother had tied them with a periwinkle blue ribbon, like some young girl might have done to a batch of love letters. These, however, were far from love letters. These were letters from the devil.
“I’ll bring them back in a few days, Mom,” Grace said as they walked back up the stairs, away from the pool table that wasn’t really a pool table, from a war room that had never ceased to be the central location for a group of men and women bonded by the murders of their children.
“Don’t forget to turn out the light,” Sissy said.
“Lights out, Mom. Lights out.” Grace turned down the switch and the room behind them went completely black.
CHAPTER 19
Sissy O’Hare wore a platinum locket around her neck. A gift from Conner the year after everything happened, the locket was heart-shaped and when opened revealed a photograph of the child she would mourn forever. Grace had never known a time when her mother hadn’t worn the locket. She’d also seen her open it, look at it, and with tears streaming down her cheeks, snap it shut and close her eyes. Grace, though jealous of her murdered sister, always hoped that Sissy was remembering something beautiful about Tricia. As jealous as she could be-and as foolish as it was-she loved her mother. Some solace was needed. The locket was a symbol of loss, love, and the awareness that everything precious could be taken away by anyone, at any time. There was never any doubt that when her mother passed on, she would be buried with the locket around her neck. It was such a part of her.
Although Sissy’s memories of her eldest daughter varied, as those of most mothers do, there were two etched in her brain so deeply that for the longest time others struggled to surface. The first was the day Tricia had gone missing.
It was the first of October. Vine and big leaf maples had started to turn the previous week, and the snap of autumn made all Pacific Northwesterners think of New England and what truly splendid fall colors might look like if the region had more deciduous trees. Pumpkins for carving and apple cider served in big, red mugs fueled the fantasy. Conner had gone to work, and Sissy and Tricia were alone at the breakfast table. Sissy had made her daughter’s favorite-a toad-in-the-hole fried in so much butter that if the cholesterol police had been invented back then they surely would have handcuffed Sissy and taken her away to serve time for overindulging her daughter.
Tricia didn’t have classes until noon, so mother and daughter used the extra time to talk about everything that interested them-Tricia had just switched her major to art history, the same degree that Sissy had earned at Western Washington State College in Bellingham. They talked about the merits of Cezanne over Van Gogh.
“Van enough already,” Sissy had teased.
“I know you don’t like his work, but you have to admit he had an ear for good painting,” Tricia joked lamely.
Her mother laughed anyway. Tricia kissed her mother on the cheek, picked up her backpack, and went to wait along the curb for her friend, Carrie, to take her to work.
As she went out the door, Sissy made a comment about Tricia’s attire, and that was it.
It wasn’t until after 7 PM that day that Sissy began to worry about Tricia. She was usually home from class by five-and if she was going to be late, there was never a time that she didn’t phone her or Conner to let them know.
“Carrie and I are going to hang out on campus for a while. There’s a cute guy that she wants to accidentally meet,” she’d said one time, quickly adding, “Again.”
“How’s that accidentally meeting someone actually working for her?” Sissy asked.
“You know Carrie, Mom. She’s no quitter.”
“That she’s not,” Sissy said.
