Unspeakable (41 page)

Olivia patted his arm. “Let's worry about that later. Mr. Stampler, eventually Collin will need to see someone a lot more qualified than I am. I have a list of therapists—”

“No, no, no, you're the only one I trust with him,” he interrupted. “He's been through so much. Please, stick with him. Can you see him tomorrow—at this same time?”

Olivia nodded. “Certainly.”

“Thank you.” He glanced toward the kitchen. “Why was he talking in that—that voice?”

“I've listened to Wade Grinnell on tape, Mr. Stampler. And that's how he sounds. I'm convinced sometime in his life—maybe when he was just a toddler—Collin heard a recording of Wade's voice. Maybe he even heard Wade's confession. Do you know any way that could be possible?”

He rubbed his forehead. “I couldn't say. His poor mother, she hung around with some pretty disreputable types. Maybe one of them had a recording of this criminal. But Collin told me he'd never even heard of this Wade character until his friends hypnotized him.”

“If he heard something that scared him, Collin may have suppressed it,” she said. “He seems to have the sixties references down pat. Did he ever show an interest in that period?”

Mr. Stampler shrugged. “Well, he likes that show about the ad men.”

“
Mad Men
?”

He nodded. “When he was a little boy, his mother used to park him in front of the TV all the time. He'd watch the old shows on that Nickelodeon channel. You know,
Dick Van Dyke, Dobie Gillis
, and
I Love Lucy
? Whenever he stayed with us, that was all he ever wanted to do. And he's a born mimic. I think it's what made him such a good actor. . . .” He noticed Collin emerging from the kitchen and fell silent.

Slump-shouldered, Collin approached them. He grimaced as his eyes met Olivia's. “I'm really so sorry about what I did in there.”

“That's all right,” she said, patting his shoulder. “We know it wasn't you. I think we made some real progress today.”

Collin nodded. “I emailed you the session so you can look at it again if you want.”

“Olivia says you must have heard a recording of this Wade character at one time,” his grandfather chimed in.

Collin shrugged. “Maybe, but I don't remember.”

“Well, we'll work on it tomorrow,” Olivia said.

Collin looked at his grandfather, who nodded in agreement.

“I think we ought to start paying her, don't you?” Mr. Stampler asked.

Collin didn't say anything. He just buried his face in his grandfather's shoulder and hugged him.

A few minutes later, Olivia watched them from the doorway as they started down the front walk toward the street, where the car was parked. Mr. Stampler put his arm around Collin's shoulder. They were just about to get inside the BMW when Collin whispered something to his grandfather. Then he turned and ran back to her.

“Are you okay?” Olivia asked. “What is it?”

“Something in that session,” he said, a bit out of breath. “Before I went under, I said something about Dave and me.”

She nodded. “Yes, your imaginary friend—from when you were little.”

“Grandpa said I must have heard a recording of Wade's voice at one time or another. Well,
Wade
and
Dave
—they kind of sound alike, don't they? We were outlaws together. Do you think that's how it started—I heard his voice and made him my imaginary friend?”

“It's possible,” she replied. “It's definitely possible. We'll look into it tomorrow.”

He started to turn toward the car, where his grandfather was waiting. But he hesitated. “There was something else in that session,” he whispered. “You asked Wade how he tied them up. Then later, he said somebody besides him knew the whole story about the killings.” Collin sighed. “Yesterday, I fell asleep during study period, and I had a dream. I was Wade, and I was killing this family in a hotel. In the dream, I was talking like Wade. I stood over the woman, who had her hands tied behind her. She was trying to scream out past a gag in her mouth. And I said—in Wade's voice—I said, ‘Fucking kill her already. She's making too much noise.' ”

Olivia gazed at him, and a chill raced through her.

“I can't help wondering who he was talking to,” Collin whispered. “And now I think I know. Wade Grinnell didn't kill all those people by himself. I think he had a partner.”

 

 

The BMW started down Alder Lane and disappeared around the corner.

Standing on the front stoop, Olivia was still trying to process what Collin had just told her. It made sense. The second person who knew the truth about the killings was a second killer.

I'm no firebug,
Wade had told her. Had that been his cohort's specialty? Had they helped each other out? Had one liked to start fires while the other bound, gagged, and executed his victims? Olivia glanced at the charred, black front door. She thought about her dead in-laws, killed in an inferno, and Sheri Grinnell, swallowed up in a blaze before she could even get out of bed. Olivia realized there was every possibility the firebug was still alive.

Her cell phone rang, and she headed back into her father's study. She grabbed the phone from his desk and glanced at the caller ID:
Harborview Hospital
.

She wondered if they'd moved Corinne from University of Washington Medical Center. She clicked on the phone, expecting Clay on the other end. “Hello?”

“Olivia?” the man said. He sounded half-asleep.

“Yes?”

“Hi, it's Ian Haggerty,” he murmured. “Somebody shot me after I left your place last night. I—I'm at Harborview. Could you maybe come see me?”

“I
was set up,” Ian said, sitting in the elevated hospital bed. He wore an ugly pale green gown, and had a pulse oximeter clipped on his index finger. He looked tired and scruffy. He'd admitted to being a little out of it, because of the painkillers they'd given him. The doctor had said he was lucky the bullet hadn't struck any vital organs. They were keeping him in the hospital tonight to make sure the stitches held and he didn't develop an infection. They were letting him go tomorrow afternoon.

“What do you mean you were ‘set up'?” Olivia said. She sat on a hardback chair at his bedside. “From everything you've told me, it sounds like a holdup.”

“No, that's how they wanted it to look for the security cameras,” Ian said, his voice scratchy. “It was an ambush. They—they were sitting in the car when I pulled up to go into the store. They were waiting for me. When they came in, I didn't react. I was still trying to figure out what was going on. All at once, one of the gunmen was coming at me, and he said, ‘Are you trying to be a hero? You're off duty.' ”

Olivia squinted at him. “How did he even know you're a cop?”

“That's my point, exactly,” Ian said, coughing a bit. “It was a setup. The other one by the counter completely turned away from Sanjay and had his gun aimed at me. They didn't come in there to rob the place. They came in there to kill me.”

“But how did they know you'd be in the Val-U Mart at that particular time?”

“Because I'm in there practically every night around the same time.” Ian let out a weak chuckle. “I never realized how pathetic that sounded until just now—admitting it to a woman I'm trying to impress.”

“I sleep in the room I thought I'd left behind at age twenty-two,” Olivia said, patting his shoulder. “There's a poster from
Titanic
hanging over my bed. I'm in no position to judge.”

“Thanks,” he replied, reaching for his water glass. He took a sip through the straw. “They must have been watching me for a few days to get down my routine. Don't you see? It's the same way they tried to make it seem as if your husband's girlfriend trashed your office and set fire to your house.”

“Of course, the photograph,” Olivia murmured—almost to herself. Now it made sense that someone had taken the “intimate” photo of her and Clay, and then sent it to Corinne. They'd wanted to get a reaction out of her—and certainly they had. Clay had said Corrine confessed to pouring acid on the car. Olivia had been ready to blame everything from that night on her—until Ian had planted the seeds of doubt in the hallway outside her office yesterday.

Olivia shifted restlessly in the chair. “There's a glitch to this. I mean, the police might get Corinne for dousing my car with acid. But for the other things, there's no guarantee their case would stick. The evidence against her is just circumstantial.”

“It doesn't matter. If you and your dad had died in that fire, the police would still have a suspect—and a distraction from the real reason you were targeted. See what these people are trying to do? You die because your husband's crazy girlfriend set fire to your house. I'm shot to death in a convenience store holdup. Your niece and her family died in a house fire, because her father smoked. And while hitchhiking, Fernando Ryan was picked up by some psycho, who slit his throat. Corinne is just part of the smoke and mirrors. She'd only have to be a suspect for a while—to keep people from seeing that all these deaths have one thing in common. All the victims got close to Collin Cox—too close as far as someone is concerned.”

He started coughing again, and took another swig of water. “You think I'm crazy, paranoid—or maybe it's the painkillers talking. But the holdup guy who was killed last night didn't have any ID on him at all. My friends over at the East Precinct have been comparing his postmortem photos to some mug shots. They're pretty sure he's a hit man with underworld connections and several aliases. He's not just some schmuck who tried to hold up a convenience store. Someone hired him and his friend to do a job—on me.”

“I don't think you're paranoid, Ian,” she assured him. “What you were saying the other day seems to make even more sense now.”

“Then you won't object to what I've done.”

She gave him a wary look. “Well, that depends on what you've done exactly.”

“I've asked a private detective friend of mine to look after you and your dad for the next few days. His name's H. M. Langely—Hank. I used to work with him, and when the department got downsized, Hank got laid off. He's trying to make a go of it in the private detective business, but times are tough, you know? Anyway, he's a nice guy, and good with a gun. Would you object if he stayed with you and your dad for a few days? It would sure make me feel better, knowing you have someone watching over you.”

She smiled. “You really are looking out for me, aren't you?”

He nodded, and then tipped his head back on the pillow.

Olivia took his hand in hers. “If it's okay with my dad, it's okay with me. Thanks.”

A squat, fifty-something, copper-haired nurse came to the door with a vase full of flowers. “Excuse me, these just arrived for you, Ian. And you have another visitor waiting.”

She set the flowers on the table at the foot of his bed. Then she headed out the door.

“I guess I'll leave you to your other visitor,” Olivia said.

“Can you see who the flowers are from?” he asked. “Is there a card?”

Olivia found the card—amid the bouquet. “It says, ‘I knew this would happen when you joined the police force. Are you sure you don't want me to fly in? Love, Mom.' ”

He chuckled feebly. “Be careful going home. I'll send Hank over this afternoon.”

She nodded, but then hesitated before turning to the doorway. “Yesterday, you said all of this might have to do with Collin's mother and her boyfriend getting killed. You were saying the people close to Collin are being targeted because he might have told them something about the Friday the thirteenth murders. Is that right?”

Ian shrugged. “At least, that's my theory, though I'm sure it's got some holes in it. I still can't figure out why they haven't actually gone after Collin.”

“Ask yourself this,” Olivia said. “You got close to Collin back in July when you were guarding the house. Why did they wait until yesterday to go after you?”

“What are you trying to say?”

“I have a feeling this doesn't have anything to do with the murders on Friday the thirteenth. All of this started ten days ago, when Gail and her family died in that fire.”

“Well, if it's not about the murders of Collin's mother and her boyfriend, what do you think it is?” Ian asked, almost sitting up in the hospital bed.

Olivia didn't answer.

He studied her. “You can't tell me, because it's confidential. It's something between you and Collin—isn't it?”

Olivia took a deep breath and nodded. “I'm sorry. Take care. I'll be back tomorrow.” Then she hurried out the door.

Heading down the hospital corridor, she spotted Sanjay from the Madison Val-U Mart. He was in the waiting area, holding on to a foil balloon with
Get Well Soon
on it. He didn't notice her. Olivia was glad, because she couldn't talk to anyone right now. She just kept walking toward the elevators.

She remembered what Orin Carney had told her—about how the police and certain people in power back in 1962 had done their best to bury any news of the Rockabye Killings. And now, fifty years later, somebody was trying to eliminate everyone who knew that Wade Grinnell had returned—through Collin Cox.

Olivia thought about her poor, sweet niece, unwittingly hypnotizing Collin for the first time. How could she have known the chain reaction she'd initiated?

How could she have known the killings were about to start?

“Where the hell are you?” Clay growled into his cell phone.

Noshing on pretzels and nursing a vodka and tonic, he sat at the bar in the small, dark lounge off the lobby of the Commodore Inn. Though the woman behind the bar was all smiles, she was too scrawny and mannish for him. On the TV behind the bar, they showed a soccer game on mute, and old music from
Saturday Night Fever
played on the speakers.

Stampler had phoned about an hour ago, saying he'd talked to his grandson—and maybe they could come to an agreement about dropping this whole thing. He'd bumped up their meeting time to 7:15. But when Clay had shown up at twenty after, there had been no sign of the old man. Had Stampler gone to the wrong hotel bar?

“What happened?” he said on Stampler's voice mail. “Did you get lost? I'll wait here for five more minutes. Then I'm going back to my room. Maybe
The Seattle Times
or KING-5 News would like to know your famous grandson's involved in some kind of extortion or blackmail. I'm not going to be jerked around here.”

Clay clicked off. He ate a few more pretzels, finished his vodka and tonic, and listened to “Disco Inferno.” He kept looking over his shoulder toward the lobby. “Screw it,” he muttered under his breath. He paid his bar tab and headed back to his room on the first floor. As he stomped down the long, dimly lit corridor, he heard an ice machine churning. He pulled out his key card, slipped it in the slot under the knob, and opened the door.

Stepping inside the room, Clay felt a chill. He'd left a light on by the bed, which had an ice-blue, beige, and plum spread. The paisley pattern and colors matched the drapes. Clay let the door shut behind him.

Suddenly, the bathroom light went on.

Clay could only see the man's silhouette as he stood in the bathroom doorway.

“Sorry,” the stranger said, stepping toward him. “I couldn't let anyone see us together.”

Frozen, Clay saw it was Stampler, looking sort of feeble and sad.

“How the hell did you get in here?” he barked.

Collin's grandfather nodded toward the sliding glass door that led to the parking lot. “When I was a young man,” he said. “I became very skilled at breaking into hotel rooms.”

Clay squinted at the glass door—open a few inches. The paisley-patterned curtains fluttered a little. When Clay turned around again, he saw the old man with his hand up. He was holding something.

“Wait—”

That was all Clay could say—before the old man brought the policeman's nightstick crashing down on his head.

It was about two months too early for “The First Noel”—sung by Perry Como and a choir of backup singers—but Olivia let it play on the reel-to-reel box. There was always a chance that Wade or Sheri Grinnell might interrupt the Christmas music with some revealing announcement.

Her father and Hank Langely were in the study, watching a movie. The two of them got along great. Together, they'd grilled some steaks for dinner—all the while talking over each other about the best way to cook them. It had been amusing to see them out there, especially Hank, a sweet, harmless-looking, fifty-something guy with receding hair, hound dog eyes—and a shoulder holster. After dinner, Hank had called Ian, just to assure him everything was quiet.

Sitting in front of the laptop, Olivia pored over a 1999
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
article she'd found online:

Now that Collin's grandfather was involved in his therapy, Olivia wanted to know more about Andy Stampler. The article focused mostly on his business ventures and civic contributions. But Olivia was more interested in the Wire and Cable magnate's personal life.

She found out he was younger than she'd thought. Born in 1945, he'd been the son of a dead war hero and his heiress bride. Andy—as the article referred to him—had lived with his grandparents and his mother in their estate on Shilshole Bay. Olivia wondered if it was the white house Collin had mentioned—the one up the hillside path from his “safe place” shack.

Andy started at Anderson Military Academy in Redding, California in 1962, but Olivia wasn't sure if that meant he'd actually missed the Seattle World's Fair—as Collin had said. He could have come home over the summer. He spent the Vietnam years stationed in Europe, where he met his French bride. He brought her and his father-in-law's cable manufacturing business to the States. He opened up a factory in North Kitsap, and business boomed.

In 1983, his thirty-two-year-old wife died of ovarian cancer. Olivia assumed that for the next eight years, Penelope “Piper” Stampler had been raised by a nanny or a series of nannies, which may have accounted for why she'd turned out so screwed up. Stampler remarried in 1991—to Dierdre “Dee” Hanna of Houston. Then he retired to much fanfare in 1999.

The article had been written before Collin Cox became famous. There wasn't much in there about Andy Stampler's grandson—or his wayward daughter, for that matter.

The Christmas tape ended and Olivia got up to put on a new tape. She'd become an expert at threading the tapes through all the little spools. As she turned toward the reel-to-reel player, something in the side window caught her eye.

Olivia froze.

She saw a man quickly duck back into the shadows, behind the foliage. Olivia gasped as a small tree branch slapped against the windowpane. She could hear his footsteps outside. “Hank!” she cried, her voice shrill. She raced toward the front of the house.

Ian's detective friend and her father were already in the foyer, heading for the door. Hank had his gun drawn. They must have heard the man out there, too. “Call nine-one-one,” her father said. “Tell them we have a prowler. . . .”

 

 

He stared at Clay Bischoff, lying on his side on the beige carpet. Clay was beginning to stir. He moaned past the washcloth in his mouth. An old belt strapped his ankles together, and his hands were tied behind his back—in a regular knot.

Andy had always tied up the husbands and children, but Wade had liked tying up the wives. The sailor knot had been mentioned in one of the newspaper articles about the slayings. Wade had gotten a big kick out of that.

Clay groaned in agony. Andy remembered the same muffled moaning from some of those tourists. Wade had always whacked the husband over the head first, and then revived them when everyone else in the family had been tied up. Andy once suggested to Wade that they cover the children's heads with pillowcases so they didn't have to see their faces. But Wade wouldn't hear of it. Wade called all the shots.

He'd been the scrawny rich mama's boy, and Wade—a few months older—had been the swaggering hood who got into trouble all the time. They'd landed in the same class, because Andy's grandfather had figured a few years in a public high school would toughen him up. When Wade had first approached him after the last bell one day, Andy had figured the class hood was about to shake him down for some extra money. To his utter surprise, Wade just wanted to talk and hang out. They kept their growing friendship a secret. Andy couldn't let his grandparents know that he was keeping company with someone who had already been arrested several times before his sixteenth birthday. And Wade didn't want to be seen in public with the class wimp—a position Andy retained even after he'd started growing and filling out a little.

Wade was always daring him to do one risky thing after another. Who could stand on the railroad tracks longer—after the Northern Pacific line passed the crossing two blocks down? Andy never won the challenge. Wade had gotten him to shoplift everything from a six-pack of Hamm's to a $49.99 Timex at the Bon Marché counter. Then there was the time the two of them almost got caught peeking into homecoming queen Evie Caletti's bedroom window. It was all over the school the next day. Wade and Andy's hideout was the shack in the woods below Andy's grandparents' house. The place had a couple of sleeping bags rolled up. They kept it stocked with a transistor radio, several
Playboy
s, cigarettes, and an array of items they'd stolen.

One spring afternoon, Wade had talked him into giving a hot foot to a wino passed out in a brick-paved alley down near the waterfront. Always eager to impress his friend, Andy stole a can of lighter fluid at a nearby shop. He doused the sleeping man's dilapidated shoes with the fluid, then lit a match and threw it at him. Cracking up, they ducked into an alcove and watched. Andy had expected to see the shoes ignite, and then maybe the old derelict would leap to his feet and start dancing around to stomp them out. Instead the flames exploded from the man's shoes—and suddenly rushed up his pants leg to his waist. It happened so fast, the old rummy didn't even jump to his feet until he was half on fire. Screaming in agony, he did the funny little dance Andy had been expecting. But the blaze only swelled and his threadbare coat ignited, too. Flames and black smoke swallowed him up. He staggered down to his knees on the pavement brick. The smell of his burning flesh was horrible. He stopped screaming and flopped facedown.

Andy and Wade tore out of there before anyone could see them. They didn't stop running until they were five blocks away—in a doorway in another alley. Shaken and trying to get his breath, Andy was horrified by what he'd done. How could the fire have consumed the man so quickly? Then he realized the vagrant must have spilled booze all over himself recently. His shoddy clothes were probably soaked in alcohol. Andy felt sick to his stomach.

But Wade started laughing. He imitated the way the vagrant had been flailing around. “I can't believe you killed him, man!” he cackled. “You're a goddamn menace to society! That was so great!” Wade laughed so hard, he lapsed into a coughing fit.

Andy realized he'd won Wade's respect. He also realized he'd never been so excited in his life. He started laughing, too.

Killing all those tourist families had been Wade's idea. He didn't think they had any right to be happy. Plus he and his sister had been evicted from a nice, affordable two-bedroom apartment on Capitol Hill so the landlord could turn it into a hotel for the World's Fair crowd. For their first kill together—the old rummy didn't count, his death was an accident—Wade made him knock on the newlywed couple's door at the Gilbert Arms Hotel. “You've got that respectable, boy-next-door look,” Wade had explained. “They'll open the door for you. . . .”

And they did.

Wade had a gun that had belonged to his dead father. Not once in all the killings did he ever have to fire it. After the father had been knocked over the head, the families were always very cooperative.

“Just cooperate with me here,” Andy said, standing over Clay Bischoff. He wanted to move him onto the bed.

But Olivia's estranged husband was anything but docile. He tried to scream out past the washcloth gag in his mouth. He struggled, kicked, and banged at the wall so the neighbors would hear him.

Andy remembered Wade whispering that to him when one of their victims had started freaking out. Her husband wouldn't die—no matter how many times Wade stabbed him. Andy usually just tied up the families and let Wade do his thing. That was the agreement. He did that for Wade, and Wade helped him set up the fires. Andy had become very skilled at making Molotov cocktails, strategizing exactly how to block all the exits, and initiating a deadly blaze without so much as burning his finger. But he wasn't used to killing this close. For a few moments, he didn't know what to do with the screaming, squirming woman. Wade had the knife. So Andy grabbed a pillow and held it over the woman's face. It was such a relief when she'd stopped struggling.

That had been the last family they'd killed together.

He had a knife with him now—in the pocket of his Windbreaker.

Clay Bischoff twisted and rolled around on the floor—like a little kid having a tantrum. Andy gave up trying to move him to the bed. He tugged at the belt around Clay's ankles, and pulled at his arm until he was able to turn him over on his stomach. It was a major undertaking. He narrowly avoided getting kicked.

At last, he had him facedown on the carpet. Catching his breath, Andy pulled the switchblade out of his pocket.

His screams muffled, Clay rocked back and forth on the floor. Andy stabbed him in the back—between his shoulder blades—again and again.

It was such a relief when the struggling stopped.