What neither Olga nor Tammi knew was that the mistake had already been made.
Coffee rings and a spherical grease spot indicating a doughnut had been consumed while someone reviewed the autopsy report turned Olga Morris's stomach. She wondered if she'd ever get to the place where'd she be so callous as to be able to eat breakfast over the kind of descriptions and images that came with such reports. In her office at the Meridian Police Department, she spread the pictures and documents across her desk. Photos of Lorrie here. Shelley there. A stack of the medical examiner's reports, the interviews conducted by the police in the early stages of the case-when it had been a missing persons case and not yet a homicide. She squared up the edges of each pile of papers and photos. It dawned on her as she moved from one stack to the next that it almost looked like she was playing some freakish version of solitaire.
She knew then the images would never leave her. The bodies, wrapped in plastic, and out in the sun had swelled and burst. Water had chilled the exposed body parts-Shelley's right hand, in particular. Clumps of hair had fallen from her head. Decomp was a nightmare far beyond the imagination of anyone who'd never seen a rotting body.
Who had the stomach to eat an old-fashioned doughnut and look at these?
As she scanned the color 8 x l Os, Olga noticed that a ligature of some kind the ME thought that the marks, smooth, but with a single striation down the center, indicated an electric cord had cut so deeply into Shelley's wrists that her hands were nearly severed. Lorrie's body had incubated in the plastic wrap, so it was harder to tell. It appeared she'd suffered the same fate. Both had been brutally raped and shot in the back of the head in what laypeople always called execution-style.
Some execution, Olga thought as her unblinking eyes scanned. With what these girls went through they probably were grateful for it to end.
The ME suggested that both women had died about the same time-but not right after their disappearance. It was tough to pinpoint exactly when they did die. Because of the plastic tarp, the sun had literally cooked their bodies, the greenhouse effect accelerating the decomposition process.
Based on the ME's guess-blowfly larvae, tissue decay, and a copy of the Meridian Herald dated July 18, the girls had been dead only a month when discovered. Maybe six weeks. The newspaper, Olga and others surmised, had been used to absorb a puddle of blood-probably at the scene. Since neither victim's head held a single bullet, ballistics would be of no use in tracking the killer. The gun was probably in the bottom of the river, or somewhere. Olga was fixated on the cording used as the ligature.
Find the cord, find the killer.
The detective knew that in most instances when a killer used electrical cording it was either an extension cord or some cut from a table lamp or other small household appliance. It was usually just the right length-three feet to tie up a victim.
She looked around her office. A poster of Mt. Baker hovered above her desk, its white conical form silhouetted against a fiery sunrise. The bookcase behind her was overstuffed with training manuals, some photos of her cats, and two notebooks that kept cold cases always within the swivel of her office chair. Her credenza was set up as a mini hot beverage bar, with an electric teakettle, a wicker basket of dried noodle soups, hot chocolate, instant coffee, and teas. She eyed the teakettle and its electrical cord, but thought better of it.
What can I use?
Olga ran her fingers through her short hair, pondering the scenario she was about to employ. She could go down to Property and get a spool of twine, but that was a hassle and she was the type of woman who wanted to do what she wanted, when she wanted to do it. The answer was on her desk. The telephone. She unhooked the wire from the jack and disconnected the phone. Just then Stacy Monroe appeared in the doorway.
"Phone problems?" Stacey, a patrolwoman with a husky voice and warm demeanor, poked her head inside Olga's office. "That happened to me last week"
Olga smiled. "No. No problem. But you're just in time to lend me a hand-literally-with a little experiment. You game?"
Stacey's eyes moved over the photos and files on Olga's desk. Clearly she was intrigued.
"Warner and Smith?" she asked.
The detective nodded, and stepped around from behind her desk, the phone wire now coiled in her hand. "I'm just playing around," she said. "I'm glad you're willing. Why don't you sit here?" She pointed to the edge of the desk. "I'm going to tie you up ""
Stacey let out a nervous laugh and sat down. "Not like I haven't done that before"
Olga gave the officer a slight wink. "Oh really?"
"Kidding! God, you know my life. You know my husband."
"Yes, I've met Frank" She smiled. "Just how did we get on this topic, anyway?"
"I don't know. You were about tie me up ""
"That I was. Put out your arms" Keeping the end of the length in her left hand, Olga started wrapping the beige wire around Stacey's outstretched wrists. Once. Twice. Three times. She stopped and craned her neck to better view the photograph of Shelley Smith's disfigured and decomposed wrists. "Looks like he wrapped around five or six times," she said, almost to herself. "I expect pretty tight, too, but I won't do that to you"
"Good," Stacey said, suppressing a smile. "Something to look forward to later."
Olga played along. "Aren't you just full of surprises?"
The women laughed, cutting the tension of what they were really doing. Olga was mimicking the actions of an unknown killer while poor Stacey who'd just wandered onto her shift had made the mistake of coming by to say hello.
Olga stepped back and admired her technique before unspooling the cording. Stacey stood up and rubbed her wrists. As gentle as Olga had been, the wire still hurt a little. Her wrists were red.
Olga fished a ruler from the top drawer of her desk.
"Almost twenty-four inches," she said.
"Good? Bad?"
By then, Olga had started for the door, scooping up her black saddlebag purse, detective's shield, and a tan Gore-Tex coat that was all about function rather than fashion. It was raining outside.
"Bad, I'd say. Bad for someone who works at Builders' Center."
"Huh?"
"You'll see. Thanks, Stacey." With that, her coat swung over one arm, Olga Morris was gone.
Chapter Nineteen
1:05 n.M., twenty-one years ago, Meridian, Washington
The sky was a colander. Olga Morris scanned the parking lot of the Builders' Center off Railroad Avenue as she sought a vacant spot close to the door. Her coat, while waterproof, lacked a hood. Her short hair guaranteed a chilly splash on her scalp. She maneuvered her dark blue Chevy into a reserved parking spot. She did so somewhat reluctantly, but the thought of getting drenched won out over the prospect of being caught taking advantage of the silver and gold shield she carried in her purse.
Inside, she rushed past the contractor's help booth, and a swarm of shoppers filling their carts with caulking, lumber, and the miscellaneous provisions of home repair. The detective was grateful that she was an apartment dweller and hadn't been forced into the nest-building trap so many homeowners had embraced unwittingly.
Forget a caulking gun; I d rather carry a Glock.
She made her way to Arnold Davis's office, a small room behind a ten-foot-wide two-way mirror that allowed the fifty ish manager with gorilla-haired knuckles and a tuft of trolldoll hair protruding from his open collar to keep an eye on the selling floor.
"I'm back, Arnie. Miss me?"
She took off her coat and shook it slightly. Rain puddled the linoleum tile floor. "And I'm soaked!"
Davis looked up from his Tupperware bowl of macaroni salad. Mayonnaise collected at one corner of his tight mouth, and Olga's gaze zeroed in on it in such an obvious manner that he scrambled for a napkin. The room smelled of garlic.