Authors: Lis Wiehl
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Women Sleuths, #Thrillers, #General, #Christian, #Suspense, #ebook, #book
Her hand whipped out. In it was a fresh-picked marijuana leaf.
“There was a cultivated patch of pot less than a half mile from where you lived. Don’t deny it—I know it’s yours.”
Chambers’s eyes widened—and Allison’s did too. This put a whole new spin on things. Chambers, with all of his talk of God, must have been trying to pull the wool over her eyes.
“They tell me there are five hundred plants there, with a street value of a half million dollars. Now you tell me, Tim—would someone kill to keep half a million dollars safe?” Nicole answered her own question. “Hell, yeah. So Katie blundered into your little agricultural operation, and you caught her. Did she run from you? Is that what happened? She ran from you and you tackled her, and then you hit her in the throat?” She slashed her hand sideways for emphasis. “Did you watch her die? Did you?”
Nicole’s face was inches from his. “They said she wouldn’t have been able to scream, wouldn’t have even been able to talk. But she would have been able to think. And she would have been able to feel her body shutting down. Do you know what it feels like to have no air, Tim? It’s supposed to be the most terrible feeling in the world.”
“I didn’t!” Chambers’s eyes were despairing. “I tell you, I didn’t kill her! That’s not my pot, and I didn’t kill her!”
C
assidy was not the kind of woman who belonged on an ATV. She realized this as they bounced and jutted over roots and stones. She had one arm around Andy’s waist, and with the other she held tight to his camera. More equipment was strapped on behind her.
As they cut through the forest, following a faint path only Andy could see, wet bushes slapped at her denim-covered legs. Mud flecked her face. So much for her carefully applied makeup. Overhead, she heard the sound of a helicopter. Whatever channel it was, they were going to be kicking themselves when they saw that Cassidy had gotten the story first—again.
Twenty minutes later, she was doing her stand-up. They had to hurry to get the tape back to the studio in time for the noon news. More than that, Cassidy had to show Jerry that she was still bringing him scoop after scoop. There was no way she was just going to lie down and let Madeline McCormick walk all over her.
“It was a lonely life,” Cassidy told the camera lens, “but a simple one. And for a fifty-five-year-old Vietnam vet named Tim Chambers, it was the only life he thought he could have and still keep his daughter with him.
“Portland police say Chambers and his ten-year-old daughter have lived here, deep in Forest Park, for years. Not in a tent, but in an elaborate camp dug into a steep hillside.”
She swept out her arm as Andy panned the camp. “They had a shelter, a rope swing, and a tilled vegetable garden. And this creek was where they got the water to clean and cook with.”
Leaning down, she dipped her fingers into the water, which was bone-chillingly cold. “They placed rocks around this small pool to collect water and store perishable foods.”
Straightening up, Cassidy gestured behind her. “They lived inside this shelter.”
As Andy followed her, she walked over and pulled open the door.
“The father taught his daughter using the encyclopedia you see here.” She pointed at a red plastic shopping basket that held a stack of old World Book encyclopedias. “They slept in sleeping bags on these two cots.”
Despite her puffy down coat, it was only through force of will that Cassidy was keeping her teeth from chattering.
The camera panned around the tiny space. In addition to the cots, there were a makeshift table, a large metal pot, a handsaw, and an old wooden apple crate that now held canned goods.
“Authorities say the two went into the city once a week to stop by the bank, attend church, buy groceries, and pick up a few odds and ends at Goodwill.”
Cassidy could not imagine it. Nicole had said something about a “pit toilet,” whatever that was, and she just hoped they didn’t stumble over it.
“Police were amazed to find them clean, well fed, and healthy. To be certain the girl was not being maltreated, authorities split up the two and questioned them separately. They say the girl is well-spoken beyond her years. They were also examined by a doctor and evaluated by state welfare workers. They fingerprinted both of them and did a thorough national background check. Everything was negative. Tim Chambers receives only a small disability check for post-traumatic stress disorder related to his service in Vietnam. He told authorities he chose to bring his daughter to the woods rather than subject her to the streets or risk being separated from her if he went to social services.
“Chambers has reportedly told authorities that he knew Katie Converse’s body was nearby, but was worried that if he alerted anyone about it, he would lose his home—as he has. Is he a suspect? Authorities aren’t saying, but they haven’t charged him with anything and have released him from custody. They do say they aren’t sure what will happen to them next, but there is some speculation that Tim’s fears could come true—and that he and his daughter will end up separated.”
She looked into the camera, her expression serious and determined. “I’m Cassidy Shaw, reporting from deep inside Forest Park.”
T
he Lincoln High School auditorium looked like it had been decorated for the prom, not for a girl’s funeral. Bunches of purple balloons trailing purple crepe paper streamers hung from the walls. Nic remembered the Converses telling her that purple was Katie’s favorite color. The closed casket sitting on stage, however, was white and gold, draped in white roses.
When Wayne had told Nic about the plans for the funeral, he said, “Valerie chose not to see the body.”
She and Allison had tried to talk him out of viewing his daughter’s remains too, but Nic had heard that he had disregarded their advice.
“She said she wanted to remember Katie the way she was. And she’s right. Because whatever is in that casket isn’t Katie. My baby isn’t in there anymore. But we’re going to give her one hell of a send-off. This is going to be every party Katie will never get to have. This will be all her birthdays, her prom, and her wedding all rolled into one.”
Now neighbors, students, teachers, businesspeople, and strangers sat shoulder to shoulder, stood in the stairwell, crowded the balcony, and filled the lobby. Scattered among them were FBI agents and cops, looking for clues, looking for suspects, looking for answers—and finding only anguish. Nic had been given a place near the front, where, if she half turned, she could see most of the audience. Twenty feet from her, Wayne, Valerie, and Whitney sat surrounded by aunts and cousins, grandparents and friends—but alone in some fundamental way.
The service began with a slide show projected on two ten-foot screens set at each side of the stage. Between the screens sat a grand piano and fifty-person choir, with the casket on a dias behind them. Accompanied by classical piano music, photo after photo of Katie flashed by.
An infant Katie on her belly, head raised, wearing nothing but a diaper and a triumphal smile. A five- or six-year-old Katie in a Tigger costume, grinning, with her hands held in mock claws. Katie behind a podium, but still so young that only her eyes were visible. The photo of her with George Bush that Nic had seen in her room. Katie holding aloft a trophy. And finally the photo from the vigil: Katie with eyes as blue as the sky behind her.
In every photo Katie was smiling, but Nic began to wonder just how real those smiles had been. Was it her imagination, or was Katie’s expression a mask that hid a deeper sadness in her eyes?
After the slide show, a friend of Katie’s recited a rap poem he had written. Another played the trumpet, but halfway through lost his breath to emotion. After trying and failing to start again, he let his trumpet fall to his side and began to weep softly, his head bowed, his shoulders shaking. Finally, the officiating pastor led the boy away, but by that time the crowd was undone by grief and drama.
Girls wailed with their arms around each other. Boys with reddened eyes awkwardly wiped their noses on the sleeves of their ill-fitting suits. Still other kids snapped photos with their cell phones. Nic just hoped they didn’t leave the service, go across the street to where the hundreds of reporters had gathered, and offer to sell the photos to the highest bidder.
Then the pastor—who did not seem to know Katie well, if at all—read a letter from Portland’s mayor. The letter quoted a biblical passage: “The righteous are taken away to be spared from evil.”
Spared?
Nic thought cynically. She remembered Tony saying Katie could have lived for minutes after the blow that shattered her larynx. How she would have tried to speak or scream, but nothing would have emerged but the faintest of sounds. What could be more evil than that?
As the service drew to a close, Wayne got up and began to enumerate Katie’s virtues, pawing through note cards, naming off awards and honors, frequently losing his place. Finally, he set the cards down. When he looked out at the audience, his eyes were wild, his face wet and red.
“Why? Why? Why?” Wayne shouted. The mic whined with feedback. He pounded his fist on the podium. It sounded like the beating of a giant heart. “I accept dying, I know we all have to die. But this way, the way Katie died! Why?”
At the sight of Wayne’s anger, the standing-room-only audience grew silent.
“God took my first wife from me, and now He’s taken my baby girl. For no reason!”
Nothing but muffled sobs answered him. Nic looked at Valerie. Her head was high, her expression blank. Whitney’s mouth gaped wide as she wept, her face crimson and swollen.
Finally, the pastor touched Wayne on the elbow and murmured something in his ear. Wayne, his head hanging, shuffled back to his seat beside his wife and remaining daughter.
December 1
I
t’s over. I can’t stop crying.
He tells me to hold on to the future.
I think the future is a long way away & it never really gets here.
W
hen Cassidy answered Allison’s knock, she was dressed in an old terry cloth robe and not wearing any makeup. Her eyes looked small and tired. In one hand she held a remote control and in the other a water glass half filled with what Allison thought was red wine.
Nicole pushed impatiently past them both. “Okay, we’re here,” she said, turning to face Cassidy. “What’s so important you needed us both to drop everything and come over?”
Cassidy closed the door behind them. “You know that feature we do called ‘Nasty Neighbors’? It’s all people who steal their neighbor’s papers or collect junker cars. Because of the whole Katie Converse thing, I’ve got a huge backlog of submissions, so I was trying to get caught up today. I was logging tapes when I found this.”
She pointed the controller, and the big-screen TV at the far end of the living room came to life.
What appeared on the screen was the corner of someone’s lawn. The scene was unwavering, as if the camera were on a tripod. There was nothing else on-screen besides the yard—no people, no clues, not even any other houses. Just a lawn and a hedge, a sidewalk, and beyond that a little slice of street. At the edge of the screen, a curtain. Viewed through a window. A lawn and nothing moving.
So why was it so important?
Allison squinted at the date in the corner. It read 12/13.
The day Katie disappeared.
The back of her neck tingled. It was like watching a movie, waiting for the killer to jump out of his hiding place. Allison half expected to see Katie appear, walking Jalapeño, or maybe being hustled into the back of a windowless van.
But twenty seconds ticked by, thirty, and nothing changed. Nicole huffed impatiently. Cassidy took a sip from her glass. The lawn was a rich dark green, except in the corner centered in the camera. That part was patchy, more brown than green.
“This guy decided to videotape his lawn,” Cassidy said. “He was sure that when his neighbor came home from work at 4:00 p.m. she let her dog out and let it—encouraged it, in fact—to poop on his lawn. So he set this up with an auto timer.”
“And?” Allison prompted.
“And here’s his proof. It’s why he sent it to us.”
A pretty young woman with a spaniel on a leash walked into the frame. She was bundled up in a long black down coat, but her legs were bare and she wore high-heeled pumps. No sound. But Allison could see her lips moving, see her bending down, and Allison knew she was urging the dog to hurry. Finally, it squatted and did its business. And then she pulled it out of the camera’s view. As she did, she nearly collided with a man rushing down the sidewalk. He wasn’t out for a jog, not in a suit and a heavy overcoat. His face was twisted, his eyes wild, his mouth open as if he were panting.
Senator Fairview. Running in a panic.
“Where is this?” Allison said sharply. “And what direction was he coming from?”
“Northwest Portland,” Cassidy said. “And one block behind him is one of the entrances to Forest Park.”
Allison thought of how Fairview had danced around, never telling them the truth. There was no way he could deny this videotape.
“Give it to me.” She held out her hand. “I’m taking this to the grand jury so they can indict him.”
Cassidy walked to the player, popped out the tape, and handed it over.
As Allison’s hand closed on it, Nicole narrowed her eyes.
“That was easy. That’s gotta be a big scoop. And you’re just giving it up?”
Allison was about to defend Cassidy when she realized the other woman wasn’t saying anything.
“Is this a duplicate?” Nic demanded.
Cassidy took a sip from her glass before replying. “It’s not a dup.” Another sip. “The dup’s actually at work. That’s the original.”
Nicole wagged her finger threateningly. “You’re
not
thinking of airing this!”
“Hey, it’s my scoop.” Cassidy’s voice was mild. “I’m the one who found this tape, not you.”