Gregg Olsen - Fear Collector

Her nightgown provided only the thinnest layer of warmth and she nearly turned back to get her robe. But she didn’t. The pull to the scrapbook that her mother and father had created about Tricia’s disappearance and murder was impossible to avoid.

She opened it to the first page of the white and pink book. It was a strange color scheme, she thought. She wondered if it was a baby book that had been turned completely around and converted to a death book of sorts.

The eyes of her sister in the missing poster stared at her. The dot pattern was large, probably from the pages of the News Tribune, but it still didn’t obliterate the lovely and haunted look in Tricia’s eyes.

“Can’t sleep?”

Grace swiveled around and looked up at Shane, standing behind her in his underwear. “No. I guess not,” she said.

Shane stepped closer and put his hand on her shoulder, his eyes tracing the pages of the book. “I’d be an idiot to ask what’s on your mind, because I already know. Want to talk about it?”

Grace nodded. She felt the strange flush of emotion coming to her, but she fought it. It was like the boy who’d rescued a girl from a stabbing and held it together like a champ until he spoke to his mother. Love and a safe place always invited a person to let go.

“Ted had something to do with my sister’s death,” she said, a single tear rolling. “I think my mom’s been right all along.”

He turned her chair to face him. “You know that’s not true, Grace. You know Bundy and his crimes are among the most investigated cases in history. More FBI, more local PDs, historians, all of them have had a crack at trying to identify all his vics.”

She nodded. “Yeah, I think I do know that,” she said. “Thanks for the support, Shane.”

“I’m just saying what you already know.”

She looked up at him. No more tears had fallen, nor would she allow them. She loved Shane more than anything, but he didn’t understand what her life, a life in the shadow of a dead sibling, had been like. Nor did he really understand her need to figure out once and for all what it was that drew her to law enforcement, to homicide.

“Look,” she said, her fingertip tapping the poster image in the scrapbook.

He patted her shoulder, but not in a condescending way. “I’ve seen it,” he said, “very sad. It will always be sad to me.”

“The necklace with the dove,” she said, her eyes now locked on the page.

Shane didn’t quite get where Grace was going. He put his arm on her shoulder. “Right,” he said. “The necklace.”

“Bundy had taunted my mom with a reference to that necklace.”

“You can barely make out the dove,” he said.

“In fact,” she said, now looking into her husband’s eyes, “you can’t.”

Shane leaned closer and focused his sleepy eyes. “I guess you’re right. But I don’t think I’m following you.”

“My mom was fixated on that letter from the minister. The dove letter.”

“I know,” he said, trying to be patient at a very, very late hour.

“My dad said that if Ted was trying to push her buttons from the grave he’d used the missing poster as a reference. You know some little detail to make her feel that he knew something. Or better yet, was holding something back.”

“But if he didn’t get the dove reference from the poster, where did he get it? The newspaper?”

Grace set down the ice-cream-store-colored album and led her husband back to the bedroom. “No. The newspapers never mentioned it. The necklace was something only the killer could have known. They were sure that Ted had kept it after Tricia’s murder.”

“As a trophy.”

She nodded.

“But you’re saying now that he didn’t.”

“I’m not sure what I’m saying. I’m just thinking out loud here. If Ted was taunting Mom and Dad with the dove comment it wasn’t coming from him seeing it on the poster-that was always what the original case detectives told them.”

“So if not from the poster, from someone else?”

“Maybe,” she said, taking Shane’s hand as they walked back to the bedroom.

“A real possibility was someone in prison. Someone he met. He wasn’t in isolation until Florida, death row.”

Grace slipped under the covers and kissed Shane.

“Maybe it was just a coincidence,” she said letting her eyes close. “Maybe my mom and dad were wrong all these years.”

Shane lay still, listening. He could feel her body going limp as she fell into much-needed slumber.

Tavio Navarro started a new job-a complete yard remodel with a stone pool, a fountain, and a pergola that would frame the garden view of a large home in North Tacoma. He wasn’t responsible for the pergola. Another contractor had been hired for that. In another time or place, Tavio would have been overjoyed with the prospect of such a prestigious job. He wasn’t just a yard boy anymore. He, with his company, Green Ways, was seen as one of the better landscapers in the area, an up-and-comer who not only designed yards of distinction, but did so with a mind for easy maintenance. That was key. Less watering. Less pruning. More time for the home owners to enjoy the benefits of their gardens. A few of his workers chided him for designing them out of regular weed and water service, but he laughed it off.

That day, however, he wasn’t laughing at all. Tavio had been a wreck ever since he found the dead, dismembered girl along the Puyallup River. He’d questioned Michael, but he seemed evasive and angry at the mention of anything related to what he said was the worst mistake of his life.

The girl on the news looked like Catalina and her eyes haunted Tavio. So had her mother’s pleas for help on TV. He wondered if Catalina’s mother had begged the same way when she heard her daughter was missing. He wondered how hard she’d cried when her body was found three days later.

Three days after he and his brother moved from Yakima.

Those had been the darkest of times. They had no money. No food. And they had the specter of the law chasing after them. When they picked cherries in Wenatchee or apples in Cashmere, they never did so without repeated glances over their shoulders.

But no one came calling. No one went looking for them. They just disappeared. They were given a chance to start over and make a new life-a new life with the ghost of Catalina always hovering near, whispering that she did not love Michael; whispering that one day he would face her and he would pay for what he’d done.

Tavio told his trio of workers to get busy.

“This section,” he said, pointing to a weedy patch of lawn near the new water feature, “needs to be done today. Vamonos! ”

The workers-two young men straight from Guatemala, and Michael-nodded and did as they were told.

Tavio watched his brother as he instructed the boys. His heart was heavy and he felt sick to his stomach.

“Going to the store,” he said. “Be back in un momento.”

There were few pay phones in the area, but he knew of the one in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven. He parked his truck and went to the phone, depositing the coins that had warmed deep inside his pocket. He dialed 911 and told the dispatcher that it was not an emergency.

Though deep down, he felt that it was just that.

“Detective, uh,” he said, “Alexander. The lady police officer on TV.”

Grace Alexander was at her desk, a small cubicle that was more office worker than TV cop. She knew the irony of the world’s view of police work. Everyone assumed that detectives drove nice cars, wore expensive clothes, and worked in an environment befitting stars. The truth was that while the Tacoma Police Department boasted a state-of-the-art facility-interview rooms with two-way mirrors, a forensic lab that rivaled what the state crime lab had-it was decidedly mundane. She had a collection of Mariner bobbleheads on one side of her cubicle desk and a picture of her and Shane when they’d summited Mt. Rainier that summer. It hadn’t been that difficult of a trek, but it still came with some bragging rights.