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Jim Derby's house commanded the edge of a hill overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca, an always choppy passage that divides Washington from British Columbia. It was a big house with shingled siding and a river rock chimney. Atop its second story was a widow's walk framed by ornate ironwork. It was the kind of place that drive-bys admire and covet.
Pitched in the front yard was a campaign sign as big as a car: THE DERBY WINNER YOU WANT.
Birdy parked and walked up the long cobblestone path. She wondered how a sheriff could afford such a place. A congressman, yes. They had a zillion ways to earn a fortune through sweetheart deals made when their constituents were home dealing with the real-life problems of their respective districts.
She knocked and Jim Derby opened the door.
“What do you want?” he asked, clearly not happy to see her. “It's late.”
“I think you know why I'm here, Sheriff.” Her tone was flat, without emotion. Her eyes stared hard at him. He had to know why she was there. It wasn't a social call.
“It sounds like you're threatening me,” he said.
Witch hazel scented the air.
“Are you going to invite me in or are we going to have this conversation out here where the neighbors might hear?” she asked, refusing to yield to fear.
Jim Derby looked warily over the hedge next door. A light beamed from the porch.
“Come in,” he said.
“Who's there?” a woman's voice called as Birdy followed the sheriff into a living room that had been turned into campaign central. Mailers, bumper stickers, and yard signs blanketed the coffee table, the sofa, and a credenza that ran the length of a bay window that overlooked the Strait.
“No one, Lydia,” he said calling into the hallway. “Just a staffer.”
“All right then,” she said.
He turned back to Birdy. “My wife doesn't need to hear this. I made a few phone calls after you left. I know what you're up to. I just don't know why. I'm guessing that someone from the other side is trying to smear me. I get it. That happens. Don't be used. Despite Tommy being a family member, you and I are on the same team.”
“Are we? My team doesn't frame people for murders they didn't commit.”
“You better back off, Ms. Waterman,” he said.
“Doctor,” she shot back.
He looked flustered, maybe for the first time ever. “Fine, Doctor, back off. No one framed anyone. Are you working for the Democrats or not? Is this about hurting my chances for reelection?”
“No,” she said. “But it does give me a little bit of comfort knowing that what you did to my cousin and Anna Jo will stop you from winning the derby, as you like to call it.”
“Just wait a second. You don't know what you're talking about.”
“I found out that Anna Jo was seeing someone. Someone she didn't want her parents to know about. It was you, wasn't it?”
Derby took a step backward, but said nothing.
Birdy pressed on. “It wasn't that Anna Jo was embarrassed about who she was seeing. It was the other personâyouâwho was embarrassed about seeing her, a Makah girl. She meant nothing to you. She was trash to you, wasn't she?”
“I want you to leave,” he said. “I will call my deputies and have them pick you up for threatening an officer.”
Birdy gripped her keys. She'd planned on jabbing them in his eyes if he got violent with her. Instead, he was cowering behind the shields of the men and women who worked for him. Probably like he'd always done. Like he did to Patricia Stanton. “Fine,” she said. “People like you ruin the law for everyone who actually gives a damn. You killed her and you set up Tommy.”
“Get out!” he said, his voice rising to flat-out anger.
Again, Birdy felt her keys.
“Wait,” came the woman's voice from the other room.
Birdy spun around and faced Lydia H. Derby, the woman who graced every campaign poster; the woman her husband wore like an accessory. She was a slender woman with dark-dyed hair and a flawless, powdery white complexion. She wore brown velvet sweatpants that she somehow managed to make stylish. She was the ultimate dream wife for a man with higher aspirations.
“Lydia, this is handled. Dr. Waterman is leaving now.”
Lydia's face stayed calm
. Botox? A controlled wariness that had been practiced over the years? Resignation that what she was going to do was something that had to be done? Birdy didn't know.
“This is going to come out,” Lydia said. “I suppose it should. Owning up to something will set you free. Isn't that the truth, Jim?”
His eyes pleaded with her. “Lydia, don't.”
Birdy held up her hand without the keys to stop him from saying anything more. “Mrs. Derby, you overheard what we were saying, didn't you?”
“Every word,” she said.
“I'm right, aren't I?”
She shook her head. “No, you're half right.”
It didn't track. “Half?” Birdy asked.
“Jim did frame Tommy Freeland, but he didn't kill Anna Jo.”
“Then who did?”
Lydia looked at her husband. By then Jim Derby had dissolved into a chair by the credenza.
“I did,” she said.
Birdy thought she didn't hear quite right. “What? You?”
Lydia Derby glanced at her husband, his face buried in his hands. “A couple of days earlier I followed Anna Jo to that love nest Jim kept with her.” Lydia said, stopping a beat as her husband jabbed a finger at her.
“Shut up, Lydia!” he said, snapping back into the moment.
“You'd like to shut me up,” Lydia said before returning her attention to Birdy. “I don't know how special Anna Jo Bonners was. All I know is that she was ruining my marriage. I had a little boy to think about. You were about to ruin my life, Kenny's life. I only wanted to threaten her with the knife. But something just took over. She was sitting there, waiting for Tommy or something. I just grabbed a knife from the kitchen and started ...”
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Anna Jo Bonners was dressing. She was young, beautiful. She was unencumbered by children, with a slender body that had never carried a baby.
“I know who you are,” Anna Jo said, barely glancing at Lydia.
“Leave him alone,” she said.
“You mean like you do? I'm giving him what he wants and needs. I know about your type. Needy. Always thinking of yourself. No wonder he laughs about you when we're in bed.” Anna Jo started for the door. “You know what's so funny? I don't give a crap about Jim. I'm looking for a good time. You might try it sometime, Mrs. Derby. Jim says you have no passion.”
“Please,” Lydia said. Her body was so tense, she thought if she breathed any harder her breastbone would shatter into a million little pieces.
“I do what I want to do,” Anna Jo said. She was not really a malicious girl, but somehow the fact that Lydia was so upset made her feel good. Jim Derby's wife's tears only served to egg her on. Lydia's anguish gave her power.
“We made love in his car the other day,” she said. “You ever try that?”
Lydia was shaking. “Stop it or I'll stop you.”
Anna Jo just didn't seem to care. “That's a laugh. You couldn't satisfy your manâhow do think you'll find the courage to stop me? Go home, Mrs. Derby.”
That was when Lydia saw the knife. It was like an antenna transmitting its presence from the open kitchen doorway. Without another second to think it through, she grabbed it from the cutting board, spun around and plunged it into Anna Jo's midsection. The first cut brought a muffled scream, a kind of guttural spasm of noise that undulated over the cabin's cedar floorboards. The second brought eye contact, a look of horror and disbelief.
“What are you doing?” Anna Jo said, grabbing at Lydia and the knife as she sank to the floor. Blood splattered over her bra as she moved her hand over her breast to stop the bleeding.
“You're getting what you deserve!” Lydia said as she stared down at the girl fighting for her life.
“Stop! You're killing me!” Anna Jo said, as she tried to regain her footing. Halfway up, she slipped on her own pooling blood.
The scene was beyond frenetic. Lydia stood over Anna Jo, working the knife like a piston. Over and over. Twenty-seven times. Later, when she spoke of what she'd done, she was unsure if Anna Jo's last words were really as she remembered them or if they had melded into some twisted fantasy of what had happened in Ponder's cabin all those years ago.
“Finally, got some passion,” Anna Jo said.
Or maybe she didn't say anything at all. She died after the second or third stab into her carotid artery.
Lydia looked up as her husband entered the cabin.
“Good God, what did you do, Lydia?” Jim Derby asked, his eyes terror-filled as he dropped down next to his lover.
“I fixed your mess. Now you clean it up,” she said.
Jim reached for Anna Jo's blood-soaked neck for a pulse.
“Anna Jo?” came a voice outside the cabin.
It was Tommy.
Jim led his now silent, almost catatonic, wife toward the back door.
“I'll clean up your mess, Lydia. I guess I owe you.”
In a beat, he'd returned, pretending to see Anna Jo's body for the first time. Tommy was crying and trying to give his girlfriend mouth to mouth. His whole body was shaking. He picked up the knife and looked at it like it was some kind of mysterious object.
“Get out of here, and get rid of the knife. I'll clean this up.”
“Who did this?” Tommy said.
The detective hooked his hand under Tommy's armpit and lifted him to his feet.
“Just keep your mouth shut. I'll help you,” Jim said. “Get rid of the knife and get out of here.”
“My husband later told me how he rearranged the crime scene. How he'd wiped away my footprints. Blamed his own on an uncharacteristic lapse in detective protocol. He called Tommy's appearance at the cabin a gift,” Lydia said, looking at Jim. “I believe you said he was the âperfect patsy,' ” she said.
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With Birdy looking on in the expansive comfort of the Derbys' magnificent living room, Lydia was crying her heart out as she confessed to what she'd done. She was literally crumbling into pieces, but Jim “Mr. Family Man for All People” just sat there. He didn't even try to calm his wife. Birdy wondered what he was thinking aboutâhis political career diving into oblivion? He certainly wasn't thinking about Lydia.
Or Tommy.
Or Anna Jo.
He got up went for a desk drawer and got his gun.
“I'll say I thought you were an intruder,” he said, coming toward Birdy.
“No, you won't,” she said. She held up her cell phone. “I've had this on speaker. Your old friend Pat-Stanâthe one you said was deadâis listening and recording this entire conversation.”
“You asshole, Jim Derby,” came Pat-Stan's voice over the cell phone. “I've already called the policeâand not your bunch of deputies. The state patrol is outside now. Let's see who has a leg to stand on in court.”
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Tommy Benjamin Freeland took his last breath a week after getting word in his Spokane hospital bed that his cousin Birdy had cleared his name. The medical staff said their patient was unable to respond verbally, but he nodded slightly and managed the briefest of smiles. They were sure he understood.
Birdy had wanted to go see him, but a homicide case involving a high school boy in Port Orchard kept her planted in the autopsy suite. She left work when she got word of Tommy's passing.
Birdy wasn't a crier, but she couldn't stop just then. She hurried to her car and drove down the steep hill toward the water. Her mind rolled back to the boy she'd knownâthe one who had taught her how to fish a creek at night with a flashlight and, in one of her more disgusting lessons, how to dress a deer with only a pocket knife and a whetstone.
She parked the Prius behind the old abandoned Beachcomber restaurant and looked out at the icy, rippling water of Sinclair Inlet. She knew that she'd done all she could. She had been so late to come to the realization that Tommy had needed her all those years. It made her sick and sad.
Tommy, we let you down. I let you down....
A young bald eagle, its feathers still a root beer float of brown and white, swooped down to the water and grabbed the silvery sliver of a fish. Its wings pounded the air like the loudest heartbeat imaginable as the bird lifted a small salmon and carried it upward to the cloud-shrouded sun.