Gregg Olsen - Fear Collector

Sissy, bleary-eyed but wired like Grand Coulee Dam, stayed by the phone in the kitchen all night praying and hoping. A couple of neighbor ladies sat with her for part of the evening, though they left when she lay down on the sofa to pretend to get some rest. She didn’t eat, either. She couldn’t. Something inside told her that there would be no good outcome.

№ 10 percent.

Conner got into his silver Mazda 626-the one in which he’d taught Tricia to drive-and drove all over the PLU campus, the streets of Tacoma, and even as far as Lakewood, south of the city. He was armed with an anguished look on his suddenly haggard face and Tricia’s Stadium High School senior portrait, pulled from the hallway in its honey oak frame. In time, most Tacoma residents could identify the image of the girl, either by name or just with a sad shake of recognition.

“Is that the girl who…?”

Grace returned to her sister’s case file, the one her mother had made. Sissy had once told her that the collection had been made over time-whenever a detective on the case retired she’d make a play for more access. Open investigation files were never shared with victims’ families or the press. Not anyone. There was good reason for that, too, but Sissy had a way about her. She could be the freshly-baked-cookies-in-hand type with teary eyes and a need to know, or she could turn those eyes to glacial ice and criticize the cops for not doing their jobs. Whatever worked. It was always about that.

Grace supplemented the file, page by page, over time, with trips into the records room. She didn’t care if the nosy records clerk turned her in. There were worse violations that could be written up about any number of the people who worked at the Tacoma Police Department-all the way to a famous case in which the chief of police sexually harassed and abused his staff and murdered his wife when he could no longer control her. That was huge, of course, and had been covered widely by the media. The other transgressions were smaller. One police officer routinely viewed porn on his laptop. One stole from a fallen officers’ fund. Grace only took what she felt was rightly hers-her family’s history.

She studied the witness statements. Her mother’s was twice as long as her father’s.

She was supposed to be here Saturday morning, 10 am sharp. Like always. We were going to get my hair done and go out to lunch…

Grace could never remember a time when she and her mother had done that sort of mother/daughter activity. Their relationship, while close, was a bond formed because of tragedy, not because of her mother’s loving nature. Certainly, her mother loved her; there was no doubt about that. The difference was they didn’t do things like get their nails done or go to the salon for a color and style.

A student at the university, Melissa Reardon, twenty-two, had told detectives how she’d found Tricia’s purse and keys-the first concrete proof that Tricia was not a runaway, but a victim of something terrible. Melissa’s statement had been taken in her dorm room on Sunday, a full day after Tricia hadn’t shown up for the appointment with her mom.

My work study job requires me to pick up trash in the parking lot on Saturday mornings. The school doesn’t want any parents to see any evidence of drinking and whatnot. I found Tricia’s purse. I know it was Tricia’s purse because when I opened it, it still had her wallet and ID. I took it to campus security for lost and found…

Close friend Peggy Howell’s interview was more innocuous, not really adding much to the investigation-though Peggy would tell her story over and over to the media. A female detective, who died in a tragic accident on Interstate 5 a year later, had interviewed Peggy at her mother’s place on Ruby Street in Ruston.

Tricia and I had talked about going to a party off campus that night, but when I saw her around 6 pm, she’d changed her mind. Said she had a stomachache. I think she was going off to see a boy or something. We were best friends, but I don’t know who it was.

It was Phillip Marciano, a world literature professor at the university, whose statement put him in the hot seat during the early part of the investigation. His voice was recorded during three interviews at his office on campus and one, a very short one at his home near Browns Point, north Tacoma.

She was one of my best students. We had coffee-nothing more-two or three times a week. I last saw her Friday afternoon after class. She’d been over at her parents’ house, was upset with her mother or father about something. I don’t know what. I think she wanted to talk a little, but I didn’t think that boundary should be crossed.

As Grace well knew, Dr. Marciano had become the subject of considerable scrutiny for a couple of reasons. First, his wife, Jackie Marciano, had, only four weeks before Tricia disappeared, made a complaint to the university that he’d been involved with a student. Second, the class for which Tricia had been enrolled convened on Thursdays. Not Friday. Investigators put the screws to the professor, but he never faltered, never changed his story. Detectives were all but certain they’d caught him in a lie, but they were wrong. The reporting officer had made an error when transcribing his handwritten notes to the typed report. The professor had, in fact, said he’d last seen the missing young woman on Thursday. Further digging turned up another error in his favor-his wife had lied. She had been the one having an affair with a neighbor and thought by casting aspersions on her husband, she’d be in a better position to retain a larger chunk of his state pension.

The file was thick, at least two hundred pages by Grace’s estimation. Page after page of false hope, innuendo, and empty promises of resolution stared up at her-and all the others who read the documents trying to tie Tricia’s disappearance to a crime-Ted Bundy? Another killer? Kidnapping? It could have been any of those things.

Or none of them.

It was possible that she’d just vanished because she’d wanted to. Maybe she’d been sleeping with the professor? Maybe he’d told her that it was over? Maybe she’d been so hurt she’d just decided to go away and never be found. People did that. Not often. But they did. Parking attendants at airports all over the world find cars whose drivers never, ever return to claim them. They just get on a plane and leave.

Did Tricia do that?

Though her sister’s case file had been started before she was born, Grace could see how some of her own files might turn into the kind of documents that she’d scattered about to study and read, long after the fact.

She knew she’d be judged by those who still loved their missing and who still ached for a resolution.

The families want an answer. Even the worst possible answer.

Grace sat up in bed reading. Shane was doing the same thing. Neither gave a single thought to the idea that they might have sex or even talk about what had transpired throughout the day. They’d kept in touch with text messages already. Grace had come from dinner at her mother’s and Shane from a long day dealing with bureau politics at the Seattle field office. Their bedroom window faced the water, and when an enormous freighter bound for Asia passed-an occurrence that usually stopped them from doing whatever they were doing to watch-it was barely noticed. Both were deeply immersed in what they were reading. Shane was editing an afterword that he’d written for a book by a forensic pathologist, a friend from his days before Grace. Grace, maybe rightly so, was normally skeptical about the pretty and accomplished author/friend, but that night she made no mention of her. No slightly sarcastic quip along the lines of “You’re not bringing her into our bed, are you?”