He'd used the same line, or a variation thereof, over and over. "There's plenty of me to go around, once I'm exonerated," he said more than once.
Olga Morris sat still in her spectator's chair just behind the prosecution's table, her blood boiling. She'd already testified so she had nothing more to say officially. But she could barely contain herself as she overheard the twitters of Walker's burgeoning fan club. No one called him "Dylan Daniel Walker" in the three full-names fashion that was usually accorded to the suddenly notorious.
Instead they dubbed him "Dylan" or "Dashing Dylan," which finally morphed in to just plain "Dash"
The adulation made her skin crawl in unqualified revulsion. She knew that part of the problem was America's fascination with a handsome killer. The media fostered that kind of twisted thinking. Victims were pretty. Killers were ugly. But every once and a while the good-looking stumble. Ted Bundy was often described in press accounts as handsome and charming. But Dylan Walker was no Ted Bundy. Or rather, Ted Bundy was no Dylan Walker. If a photo lineup was made of Tom Cruise, a young Robert Redford, or Paul Newman, Dylan Walker, and Ted Bundy and a woman was requested to pull out the most handsome and least handsome in the array, Bundy and Walker would be the ones pulled-and Bundy would be on the losing end of the deal.
Even though there had been endless discussion about Walker, most of it was based on his looks, not his life. Not much was known about him. He'd been raised by a grandmother in Seattle. He was an only child. He had excelled at school, but barely graduated. He'd been deeply religious. And after those formative years, the trajectory of his life became exceedingly murky. Olga dug in deep but since he never held a job very long, never filed a tax return, didn't have any credit cards, and never had any close relationships, no one could really track where he lived at any given time.
Or what he d been doing.
Olga thought of him as one of those sharks she'd seen at the Vancouver Aquarium about two hours' drive from Meridian. He commanded the tank with stunning and relentless evil, cold eyes following every twitch of movement in the swirling clear waters of the expansive tank. Slowly he swam, almost bored and disinterested. He worked alone. Quietly. Stealthily. It was as if he wasn't even paying attention to anything at all. But he was. He did what he was born to do: kill. He did so quickly, effortlessly, and then moved on, crimson staining the water. As if it was nothing. He was an evil thing of beauty; lean and streamlined. That's what Dylan Walker was, the detective believed, a cunning predator with no attachment to anyone or anything. He was a killing machine.
7:15 A.M., twenty-one years ago, Seattle
"You know you want to go with me tomorrow."
Tina Winston was shy about going to the Walker trial all by herself. Sure she was an independent woman, but she also knew that joining the media circus was out of character. She thought she could summon the courage only if one of her best friends, Bonnie Jeffries, came along. Plus the long drive, about two hours, would be more fun with Bonnie in tow. She even dangled an offer of dinner at the new restaurant just south of Meridian.
"Come on," Tina pleaded. "It will be fun. The place is absolutely spectacular. The chandelier in the lobby is made of one thousand Waterford goblets turned upside down. It sparkles like diamonds against velvet."
Bonnie made a face. "Oh, I don't know," she said. "I have a lot to do around here tomorrow." Carrying her handheld phone, she wandered her living room, and then down the hall to the laundry room as she listened to Tina try to convince her. Even so, her mind was elsewhere. She wondered how one person could make such a mess. She worked four 10-hour days to ensure that she'd have Fridays to get the place ready for the weekend.
"My days off are precious, you know."
Tina pressed Bonnie. "What have you got planned?"
"Nothing much. I've got a ton of cleaning to do"
"Precious days off? So you want to spend it cleaning your house?"
Bonnie let out a little laugh. "Not everyone can afford a housekeeper." It was a bit of a dig. Bonnie was a low-level manager. Tina ran her own gift-basket business and she was making big money doing it, having landed an upscale retailer as a major account.
"Not fair. You could have joined me, you know," Tina said referring to her offer of a partnership four years ago.
"Don't remind me" She pinned the phone between her chin and shoulder and reached for the laundry basket. She turned on the water.
"Don't you ever feel you're in a rut?" Tina was going for the kill. She knew that Bonnie's life was work and nothing else. She didn't have a boyfriend. No kids. No social scene to speak of outside of church.
Bonnie watched the washer tank fill. She measured the detergent.
"Okay, you got me," she said. "I'll do it. Let's go check out Dylan Walker. He's cute for a killer."
"Stop that. He's not convicted. And I don't think he will be. He's a victim of an overzealous police department. You know the type that wants to put someone-really anyone behind bars"
Bonnie dumped her clothes into the washer. The lid bounced shut. "That's your theory."
"Yes, and I'm sticking to it," Tina said, her mood now elevated because Bonnie had agreed to go. "See you at seven"
Bonnie looked at herself in the mirror. She dropped her robe and stared hard. She was fifty pounds overweight, with a roadmap of stretch marks across her abdomen. In the dim light of evening, she tried to imagine herself as someone prettier. Like Tina. But Bonnie knew that the god of good genes had saddled her with her mother's nondescript fea tures and her father's big-boned frame. She had a plain face, pleasant brown eyes, and dark curly hair. Tina was pencil thin and strawberry blond. Whenever they went out together, men gravitated toward Tina. Bonnie had tried all diets from Weight Watchers to a liquid protein shake to the Scarsdale diet. She'd try in earnest for a couple of weeks, but in the end she'd give up. She'd been to so many free makeovers at cosmetic counters across downtown Seattle that she probably could work for any of the big makeup manufacturers. She hated how she looked. Part of her also hated Tina.
What does one wear to a murder trial? Bonnie Jeffries mulled it over for a minute, searching for control top underwear and her best bra. She selected a pair of black slacks and an aqua blouse; both were loose enough to make her have that just-lost-weight sensation that she welcomed above anything. Loose clothing was like dieting without having to do without. Bonnie was barely thirty, but she looked like someone's middle-age mother. She stacked up her clothes for the next morning on her dresser and trotted off to the kitchen. Rum Raisin ice cream out of the carton sounded so good.
Chapter Twenty-one
12:25 EM., twenty-one years ago, Meridian, Washington
It was as difficult a call as a detective can ever make, aside, of course, from the bone-chilling one that comes in the middle of the night and begins with, "I'm sorry to be phoning you with this news. Your child was involved in a very serious car accident . . ."
Olga Morris had never imagined the verdict would have been split, though the four long days of deliberation had sent a surge of worry through her system to the point of near overload. Dylan Walker was guilty; she knew it with every fiber of her being. He was a cold-blooded killer. He was a killing machine in an appealing package. Dylan Walker was no more human than that. He'd been found guilty, thank God, but despite the best efforts of a prosecution that had done its homework, he was only convicted of a lesser chargetwo counts of second-degree murder.
This is ludicrous, Olga thought. Since when did binding a couple of women with wire, wrapping their bodies like pupae, and dumping them in a river to escape detection look like anything but first-degree murder? The TV and newspaper pundits exalted the defense for punching holes in the case by bringing in the other possible suspect, but even more so for getting it into the heads of some jurors that Dylan Walker had never planned to murder anyone. That it was some kind of accident. What were they thinking?