SeattleâSaturday, 6:10 p.m.
T
he
Seattle Times
article she read online was ten years old. Celebrating the fortieth anniversary of the Seattle World's Fair, it featured a
Century 21 Exposition Timeline.
The article was the only search result Google listed for the Wade Grinnell, who had died fifty years agoâthe same Wade Grinnell she'd supposedly met through Collin Cox on Thursday night.
She sat in front of her laptop at a little desk space at the end of the long, dark granite countertop in the kitchen. Six years ago, her dad had had the kitchen remodeled: stainless-steel appliances, granite countertops, black-and-white tiles, a butcher-block island that doubled as a breakfast bar, and a big picture window that looked out at the garden and patio. One wall was covered with menus from different restaurants where Olivia's parents had eaten in the thirty-eight years they'd known each other. This little desk area, looking out at the garden, used to be her mother's writing nook. Her mother had gotten to enjoy the new kitchen for only about sixteen months before she'd passed away.
Olivia had R.E.M. on her brother's old boom box in the corner of the counter. Soon her father would be back from the supermarket, and he'd start dinner on the grill outside. Olivia had the house to herself for now. On a yellow legal pad, she'd scribbled down some notes from the timeline snippets she'd read:
7/9/62 â Ronald & Betty Freitag murdered @ El Mar hotel. 2 kids killed. Less than $100 stolen.
Â
8/8/62 â Five die in fire @ Hotel Aurora Vista. Brandon & Irene Pollack (Irene survived) & kids.
Â
10/11/62 â Wade Grinnell killed by train, running from police. No arrest, no conviction.
The El Mar murders reminded Olivia of the Clutter family killings in Nebraska in 1959, the case Truman Capote wrote about in his book
In Cold Blood
. It was the same sort of bizarre, senseless tragedyâan entire family tied up and executed for less than a hundred dollars.
But Olivia was more concerned about the deadly fire at the hotel, which seemed too similar to the blaze that had killed her in-laws just days ago. Obviously, Collin was concerned about it, too. She remembered back when Collin Cox was in
The Night Whisperer,
there had been stories about a curse that had plagued the film set. One of the main actors had died, and a house they'd used for several scenes had mysteriously burned down.
Olivia didn't believe in curses. Bad luck and bad judgment, yes, but not curses.
Every explanation for what was happening to Collin Cox seemed far-fetched. She didn't know a single therapist who had encountered a patient with multiple personality or dissociative identity disorder. The most famous cases, which had influenced the books and movies
The Three Faces of Eve
and
Sybil
, had since been determined to be faked or fictitious. Some experts regarded Albert DeSalvo, the Boston Strangler, as a true case of multiple personality disorder. But that was up for debate. She only knew a few basic things about dissociative identity disorder. One of them was that people with DID were supposed to be highly susceptible to hypnosisâmore than any other clinical patients. Hadn't Collin told her that he'd been to five hypnotists before herâwith no results?
In Monday's session, she'd have to ask him about some of the DID symptoms: memory loss, childhood traumas, and frequency of headaches. She'd need to find out if he was ambidextrous, and if he had a history of childhood abuseâsexual or physical.
She didn't think he had dissociative identity disorder, but then, if he did, she was way out of her league. All the other explanations seemed even weirder.
Wade Grinnell had died long before Collin Cox was born. Olivia didn't believe the dead could come back and take possession of the living. And she wasn't much on reincarnation either. She couldn't think of any grounded, logical explanation for what was happening to Collinâwhich brought her back to her very first assessments of his case, before she'd even known he was Collin Cox. Was it possible he hoped she'd help him come up with some kind of psychological excuse for something terrible he'd done? Was he trying to lay the groundwork for an insanity plea? He'd been associated with several grisly deaths recently. It was possible he'd set fire to Sue and Jerry's house. Who better to provide him with a defense than a relative of the victims? Meanwhile, the police were still looking for clues in his friend Fernando's murder. And though the case seemed closed, there never had been any arrests or convictions for the murders of Collin's mother and her lover.
She didn't want to believe that Collin was a murderer. She hoped to God he wasn't manipulating her that way. But it was quite possible.
After all, he had been a very good actor once.
Olivia stared at the computer screen. The trouble with Google was sometimes it didn't pick up old newspaper and magazine articles unless they'd been archived. If she wanted to read more about Wade Grinnell, she'd have to go to the library and look through microfiche files of old
Seattle Times
and
Seattle Post-Intelligencers
.
She looked up the Seattle Public Library hours for Sunday. The downtown branch was open from noon until six tomorrow.
She heard the front door open and automatically sprung up from her chair, almost tipping it over. She hadn't realized how jumpy she was until just now.
“Pop?” she called, hurrying toward the front of the house.
“I have hunted and gathered,” he announced, stepping into the foyer with two bulging cloth grocery bags. Despite a slight potbelly and his thinning gray hair, her father was still dashing. He dressed sharp and was always very personable. At church and the supermarket, Walt was a regular Beau Brummell with the widows in the over-sixty set.
He'd be grilling chicken breasts and vegetables for dinner tonight. He asked Olivia if she could make her “special wild rice recipe.”
“Pop, it's Rice-A-Roni,” she said, sitting back down in front of her computer. “Sure, I'll fix some. . . .”
Keeping his jacket on, her father stepped outside to the patio and started up the grill. Olivia leaned back in the desk chair. It looked like she had yet another exciting Saturday night ahead of her. At least it was better than last week, when her dad had had a date with one of the widowsâand Olivia had stayed at home alone.
Her father stepped back inside and started to unload the groceries. “Is that the same thing you were working on when I left for the store?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, typing in the words “reincarnation, past lives,” for a Google search. “It's research for a new client. You don't believe in reincarnation, do you, Pop?”
“I don't know, sometimes, I guess.” He put some beer in the refrigerator. “The older I get, the more I wonder about stuff like that. Why do you ask? Does this new client think she was Cleopatra or something?”
“It's a young man,” Olivia said. “I hypnotized him, and while he was under, he turned into someone else. His voice, his looksâhe just sort of morphed into this person. And it's a real person who has been dead fifty years. By the way, for the record, we aren't having this conversation. . . .”
Her father took a stainless-steel bowl from the cabinet. “I thought it was only when you were a licensed
therapist
that you couldn't talk about your patients.”
He was right. Olivia didn't have any confidentiality requirements as a hypnotist. But in this case, she knew it was more than just hypnotherapy. She was going out on a limb for Collin Cox. Her father didn't know her new client was a onetime movie star. And he shouldn't know. She'd probably said too much to her dad already.
“Sounds like a Bridey Murphy thing,” he mused.
Half-turned in her chair, Olivia squinted at him. “Why does that name sound familiar? Didn't she have something to do with ghosts?”
“Oh, it's right up your alley, sweetie.” At the butcher-block island, he tossed the chicken breasts and some marinade in the bowl. “It happened to this housewife from Colorado, back in the early fifties. Someone hypnotized her to make her remember things from her childhood. . . .”
“Hypnotic regression,” Olivia said.
He nodded. “I'll take your word for it. Anyway, this Colorado woman started talking in an Irish brogue. She said she was Bridey Murphy of County Cork, and she'd died in the 1850s or thereabouts. I think she even did an Irish jig for himâor so the story goes. Well, this woman had never been to Ireland, but as Bridey, she remembered places and people from the old sod way back when. And they found out later that a lot of the stuff she recalled was genuine.”
He started cutting up carrots and zucchini. “All this went on when I was a teenager. It became a big fad. There was a Bridey Murphy book and then a movie. They had songs about her on the hit parade. There were even Bridey Murphy parties where people dressed up as whoever they were in their past life. Folks had séances, and all sorts of crazy things.” He picked up the bowl with the chicken and the plateful of vegetables. He nodded toward the patio and the grill. “Could you get the door for me, sweetie?” he asked.
Olivia stood up and opened the door for him. “So what happened with this Bridey Murphy case?” she asked.
The bowl and plate in his hands, Walt hesitated in the doorway. “I think it turned out to be a hoax or something,” he said. “How long do you need to make your special rice?”
Olivia stared at him for a moment, and then she worked up a smile. “The Rice-A-Roni takes twenty-five minutes, Pop.”
“Well, if you don't mind getting started on it now, that's perfect.”
She nodded. “Will do.”
Olivia left the door ajar after her father stepped out to the patio. She wandered over to the laptop and the notes she'd scribbled on the yellow legal pad about Wade Grinnell, the long-dead teenage murderer from Collin Cox's past life.
Her father's words still echoed in her ears:
“. . . it turned out to be a hoax or something.”
Frowning, Olivia was about to turn away and start the Rice-A-Roni. But something in her notes caught her eye:
8/8/62 â Five die in fire @ Hotel Aurora Vista. Brandon & Irene Pollack (Irene survived) & kids.
She couldn't help wondering if Irene Pollack was still alive.
LeavenworthâSaturday, 11:18 p.m.
Mrs. Pollack-Martin's apartment was in the east wing of Riverview Manor. So he picked a vehicle on the west side of the parking lot, near the front. He didn't want the car alarm to wake her up. He just wanted it to distract the young, dumb-looking desk clerk for a few minutes.
It was so quiet and still as he worked his skeleton key in the lock of the Lincoln Town Car. For a few moments, he thought he'd actually break into it without any problem. But then the alarm suddenly went off with a shrill, piercing wail. He saw several lights go on in windows on the west side of the big chalet. He raced for the bushes along the front of the building. He wore a black running suit so he easily blended in with the foliage. Catching his breath, he waited until the desk clerk hurried out with his cell phone. “Yes, yes, I'll see what I can do,” he was saying.
While the clerk headed for the Town Car with its lights blinking, the man ducked into the front lobby. He heard several phone lines ringing as he hurried for the stairwell. Outside, the siren-like wail of the car alarm became an incessant
beep-beep-beep
. But it seemed to fade as he made his way up the steps in the cinder-block stairwell.
The old lady lived four flights up, so he took his time. He'd come with nothingâexcept a knife and his skeleton keys. From the other night, he already knew the layout of her apartment and the locks on her door. Even if she had the door double-locked, breaking in would be a cinch. He'd decided to suffocate her with a pillow. His knee on her chest would keep her from moving, and cut off the breathing, too. He needed to make sure it looked like she'd died in her sleep. There couldn't be any sign of a break-in. He'd been hiding in the bushes minutes ago, and now made a mental note to take off his shoes once he got into her apartment.
At the top of the stairs, he pulled a pair of surgical gloves from his pocket and put them on. Stepping into the fourth-floor corridor, he listened for the car alarm, but couldn't hear it anymore. Someone down the hall had a TV on. Otherwise, it was deathly quiet. He skulked down the hallway to unit 405, and took out his skeleton keys. They hadn't changed the lock, which meant if she'd reported a break-in Thursday night, no one had really taken her seriously. He found the same key he'd used last time, and unlocked the door.
Inside the darkened apartment, he hesitated and looked around for the cat. It was nowhere in sight. He figured the old lady might sleep with it. Gently closing the door behind him, he slipped off his shoes and crept toward the bedroom. The door was closed. He slowly turned the knob, and the door squeaked on its hinges as he opened it. A streetlight from outside filtered through the sheer curtain, enough for him to see the full-size bed.
“Shit,” he hissed.
It was neatly madeâand empty.
He checked the bathroom, just in case she was hiding. No sign of her, no sign of the damn cat either.
Returning to the living room, he switched on the light.
On her desk, he noticed an old answering machine by her telephone. The message light was blinking. He pressed the
Play Messages
button.
“You have five messages!”
the automated voice announced.
“Tuesday, nine-fifty . . .”
“Hello, Mrs. Pollack-Martin, this is Ruby at the Safeway pharmacyâ”
He clicked on
Next,
and got the automated voice again:
“Wednesday, five-forty-two . . .”
“Um, this is Collinâyou know, from the other day? I don't know how to tell you this without sounding crazy. But, well, you might want to go stay with a friend someplace. I think there's some people whoâ”
There was a beep, cutting him off. It meant she must have picked up when he was in the middle of leaving his message.
The automated voice came on once more:
“Thursday, ten-thirteen . . .”
“Hello, Mrs. Martin, this is Harold at the front desk. I've received a call from Ms. Stella down the hall from you. I'm sending up Claudio, our security man. He should be there in a minute. He's ringing me right now. I think he's found you. Never mind. Good-bye.”
There was a beep, then:
“Friday, one twenty-two . . .”
“Hello, Mrs. Martin, this is Magic Carpet Travel, calling about your plane ticket. Though it was so last minute, it still ended up working in your favor. . . .”
A beep cut her off, too.
The last message was yesterday evening:
“Friday, six-forty-one . . .”
“Hi, Irene, it's Rosie. Are you there? Okay, well, I don't mind looking after Smike for however long you'll be gone. Boy, this trip was sudden! Anyway, I'll swing by tomorrow morning and pick up Smike and all the kitty things. You sure you don't want me to water your plants? It almost sounds like you don't want me going into your place. . . .”
Mrs. Pollack-Martin must have picked up the phone at that point, too, because there was another beep.
“End of messages!”
announced the automated voice.
Obviously, the smart old biddy had taken Collin Cox's advice and gotten out of town this morning. It sounded like she didn't even want her friend snooping around in the apartment on the off-chance that she might get mistaken for her.
With a little investigating, he could probably hunt her down. But it was quite apparent she didn't want to make any trouble. She just wanted to disappear. She probably didn't even know why her life was on the line. Certainly, that chubby girl and the Latino kid had been clueless as to why they'd had to die.
Right up to their last breaths, they'd had no idea.
He switched off the light, put his shoes back on, and locked the door after himself. He'd avoid the front desk and climb out a window on the first floor.
He told himself the old lady would come back eventually.
Then so would he.