Rust spots were already blooming around the pitted wheel wells. That was how much her Sheriff Gray thought of her. She didn’t deserve a better car. In any case, she wouldn’t need it much longer.
She’d learned about Monique from Michael Rader. Michael had led her to Monique, and Monique had led her to Rylee.
The plan had gone well. She’d befriended Monique and convinced her to find Rylee in Port Townsend and warn her about Michael. Monique had asked her to help and, of course, she’d agreed. Monique would go ahead, and she would come in a few days’ time. She needed the time to locate Monique’s daughter and obtain the drug she would need to create the perfect crime scene.
She focused the binoculars again. She watched as Rylee talked to Sheriff Gray. He was old and tired looking. He should be retired. She might help him along. But not yet. There were others she had to deal with first.
She watched Rylee’s face closely and was disappointed when she didn’t go pale or cry. In fact, the bitch didn’t show any emotion. She was either a sociopath or very good at hiding her feelings.
Another deputy had shown up before Rylee. He was guarding the front door. This one was a bruiser. She’d like to meet him in a dark alley. The thought made her laugh. One of Alex’s sayings was, “You wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley.” She liked dark alleys. She’d worked in plenty of them when she was on the street. “Never again,” she said out loud.
The sheriff and Rylee spoke to the big deputy at the door and then went inside. Now she’d settle back and wait. She’d left plenty of evidence of who the victim was. Plenty to point to Rylee and identify her to the sheriff. But the bitch would probably talk her way out of it. She changed names like she was ordering off a menu. She was slick.
She hoped it wouldn’t take long. She still had to get far from here and steal a car. Monique’s had, unfortunately but necessarily, been left behind.
Six
I look at all the picture frames on the dresser. When I first met Monique, she showed me a photo taken a week before the kidnapping of her daughter Leanne. In it, Leanne was sitting on a driftwood log at Point Defiance Park in Tacoma. She was looking over her right shoulder with a wary but somewhat shy pose. Leanne and her father had moored a sailboat off the point and taken a skiff in for a picnic. This was that picture.
The sheriff said Monique had only been here a couple of weeks. Why did she bring all these photos with her? They must comfort her. I have two photos of Hayden. They don’t comfort me.
Another picture frame is lying face down. I imagine it will be a picture of Leanne too. Maybe it was too painful for Monique. I approach the crime scene tech.
“Can I look at that?”
“It hasn’t been fingerprinted yet,” he says, and turns back toward the bathroom.
I lift the frame while he’s not looking. It’s a picture of a young woman who bears a strong resemblance to the murdered Leanne Delmont. A boy is in the background playing on monkey bars at some park. She’s smiling and clapping. The boy is maybe four or five. The glass is fractured into a spiderweb. I put it back like it was.
Sheriff Gray gives me a cautioning look and clears his throat. He speaks to the tech: “Let her look in the bathroom and we’ll get out of your hair.”
“Yes, sir.” The tech isn’t happy but he calls the other tech out of the bathroom. “Don’t touch anything. And be careful of the blood.”
I already don’t like him. I straddle the blood on the carpet like I’d seen the other tech do. I lean forward and try not to touch the doorframe. I feel like a contortionist, and although it’s almost a month since I was shot, my chest seizes. Pain radiates out from my solar plexus and runs down both arms, but I have time to see all I want to see.
Monique’s body hangs from the shower head. A piece of white electric cord is wrapped around her neck; the end with the plug is draped over her shoulder. She is a short woman and her toes barely touch the tub. Her skin is all in one piece, lying in the tub beneath her. One piece. Like