Gregg Olsen - The Bone Box

There was an irony in the return address that never failed to elicit a sheepish wince from most anyone who received something postmarked there. Maybe even a sardonic smile. A reaction .

The town from which the letter had been mailed was Walla Walla, a southeast Washington city with the somewhat ironic nickname “a place so nice they named it twice.” While Walla Walla might be nice-it had a burgeoning wine industry, vistas of ruggedly beautiful landforms, and a state champion youth basketball team-it was known mostly because it was home to the state’s oldest and toughest penitentiary. The most notorious killers and rapists, violent offenders of any kind, were housed in a razor-wire-and-sharpshooter-rimmed complex that was all about doing time, paying for their crimes.

In her modest Beach Drive rental in Port Orchard, Washington, Kitsap County Forensic Pathologist Birdy Waterman kicked off her sensible shoes, turned the CD player to a Stan Getz track, and rummaged through her refrigerator-a cache of zombie food that indicated a life too busy with things other than cooking. Selecting a Coors Light, she looked out at the water of Puget Sound and watched as something under its shimmery gray surface caught the attention of a flock of gulls. Birdy had seen the address on the envelope dozens of times, of course. But this was a first. It was a letter addressed to her , not one she’d put in the mail to the prison each November when Tommy Freeland’s birthday came around. She instinctively wiped the rim of the beer bottle and took a gulp as Getz’s sax glided through the chilly air of the drafty old beach cottage.

It was Friday. She had no plans but to eat, go to bed, maybe dream about one of the cases she’d been working-a three-year-old girl whose mother claimed she’d been abducted from the bedroom of their Chico, Washington, home. Tulip Lawson’s remains had been discovered by clam diggers ten days after she’d been reported missing. Little Tulip’s body was now stored in the chiller at the morgue, Birdy’s grim domain.

The letter sent from the ditto-named town in the southeast corner of the state beckoned. Birdy slid into her new sofa, a Pottery Barn camelback that she’d ordered to fit the smaller space of the old house’s living room. She’d never ordered furniture from a catalog before-now she was hooked. No more endless browsing. Just click and order.

She swallowed some more beer and reached for the letter. In a very real way, she’d long hoped to hear from Tommy one day. It was one of the reasons she sent those birthday cards, year after year. Her other reason was deeper-and one she never gave voice to. It was to assuage her guilt a little. It wasn’t that she had done anything wrong. She had told the truth.

The truth . She’d learned then, at a very young age, that sometimes the consequences of telling the truth are too difficult to bear. Her testimony at her cousin’s trial was one of the key points that had helped send Tommy Freeland to the land of inmates, wineries, and basketball hoops.

A place so nice they named it twice.

The letter was typed, which surprised Birdy. She hadn’t known Tommy knew how to type. She really didn’t know much about him at all. He had been a nineteen-year-old high school dropout when he was sent to prison.

As the sax soared and the gulls circled, Birdy read.

Birdy, I bet you are surprised to hear from me. Yeah, I got all of your birthday cards and the notes. At first I thought maybe you’d been required by someone to send them. I also thought that maybe you were being cruel and ironic. After a while, I figured you were just being you. I’ve had twenty years to think about what happened to Anna Jo and how it was that I ended up here. I would like to say I’m sorry for all of it, but I can’t because I know I didn’t do it. I couldn’t have done it. I don’t blame you for what you did. I don’t really blame anyone. I’ve learned a lot about life here in prison and one of the biggest things is knowing that forgiveness is the only way through salvation. You might not be religious, but sometimes forgiveness is something different than God stuff. Anyway, I am not a liar. I am not a murderer. I guess you know that I’ve been up for parole and all they want me to do is admit to killing Anna Jo. I can’t do it. I can’t admit to something I didn’t do. So, I’ve never asked you this. I don’t have any money to ask anyone else. Will you help me? Will you come down here? — I know we’ve never really talked since before the trial. I want to talk to you. I put your name on my visit list. All you have to do is fill out this form and you can come.

He signed it: Yours, Tommy .

As Birdy looked down at the visitor’s registration form, two things struck her. One, her eyes were slightly moist. She was no crier. She never had been. There was something about continually seeing the worst that human beings do to each other that forced a person to wall up their emotions. Protection mode , she called it. It wasn’t that it didn’t hurt to see a strangled child, a mangled car crash teenager, or a woman beaten to death by her boyfriend. All of those things hurt like hell, but Birdy never cried about them. Not her job to cry, she told herself. Her job was about making sure that the prosecutors had all the evidence they needed to stop the perpetrators from doing it again.

Birdy dried her eyes.

The next thing she knew was she was reaching for a pen to fill out the form. It was as if Birdy’s response was completely automatic. There was no dissecting the pros and cons of seeing him. No need to analyze his invitation. And, she knew, it was more than curiosity that would take her there.

She simply had to see him.

The rental house on Beach Drive had been built in 1951 and it looked every bit of its vintage-asphalt shingles, aluminum-frame windows, and a screen door that couldn’t stop a sparrow. It was, in the kindest possible terms, cozy. It would take a coin toss to determine which of the two bedrooms was larger. The closets were miniscule. The kitchen had been built at the time when people gathered around a table in a little nook to discuss their days.

Birdy, at thirty-four, lived alone. She had no one to gather around the built-in nook. While others considered her too smart, too pretty, too wonderful to be single, being single was just fine with her.

She’d rented the bungalow with the idea that it was a temporary residence and she’d find something bigger, better, and more in keeping with her desires for privacy. She worked with a real estate agent to find a more permanent residence, but didn’t find what she wanted. The gray and white house facing Sinclair Inlet and Bainbridge Island was home. She’d clipped a few ideas from home-decorating magazines in hopes the Seattle owner would eventually decide to sell the house to her. She’d be ready.

That night before she tucked in, Birdy went into the second bedroom. It was ceiling-high with boxes, books, and furniture that she still hadn’t found a place for since her move from Seattle. She’d planned on setting it up as a guest room, but the need for guests seldom materialized.

Birdy flipped on the switch and scanned the overstuffed room for the box that held the odds and ends of cases that troubled her. Her father had made the box to hold the tools he used for carving toy figures he sold to tourists for extra money. The container was precious, but so were its contents. She looked inside at the file folders that filled a third of the box, the manila folders protruding like the spine of a dead animal.

Not all these cases had been failures insofar as the courts were concerned, but something about each of them troubled her. There was the young woman who drowned in a boating accident off Agate Pass-her best friend and husband reportedly had done all they could to save her. The case troubled Birdy not for the facts as presented at the inquest, but for what happened two years later. The best friend and the distraught husband got married, left town, and used insurance proceeds to buy a ranch in Arizona. There had been no evidence to suggest that the woman who drowned had been murdered-at least not at the time of the inquest. Drownings without bruising to show a struggle or wounds to show a major fight were frequently difficult cases for prosecutors. It was never about the drowning, but about what happened before and after.