Everything She Feared, page 17
Taking a moment to study their driver’s license photos, Pierce tapped her pen on her notebook. She thought how several trails webbed in the park to the one used by the Sunny Days group. What were Hamilton and Croft doing in the park at that time? Did they see Anna and Katie?
Maybe they witnessed something concerning the girls?
“My guys came back clean,” Pierce said. “What about yours?”
Concentrating on what was on his monitor, Benton didn’t answer.
“Carl?”
“This could change everything,” he said.
“What do you have?”
“My guy is John James Smith, forty-one, a registered sex offender. He resides in Seattle, ten blocks from the Sunny Days Youth Center.”
“What the—?” Pierce said.
“My words exactly.”
36
Seattle, Washington
“Can we get pizza, Mom?”
Tired from cleaning the house and masking her alarm from what she’d discovered earlier under Katie’s bed, Sara forced a smile.
“Sure, honey. We’ll get the usual, okay?”
“With dipping sauce, please.”
Katie had gotten home around 5:30 p.m. Tamika was going to her father’s place for the night, so there was no chance for a sleepover. When their pizza came, Sara asked Katie about her visit while they ate.
“Tamika’s got this mosaic kit and that’s what we did.”
“You made mosaics?”
“Uh-huh, a panda, a butterfly and a tiger. They’re pretty. It was fun.”
“Cool, what did you guys talk about?”
“You know, songs we like, our friends, movies and stuff.”
Chewing her last bite of pizza, Sara looked at Katie.
“Wasn’t Tamika curious about what happened at the park with Anna?”
Studying the crust of her piece, Katie shrugged. “Not really.”
“Seriously, she didn’t ask about it?”
“I didn’t want to talk about it. Can we have some ice cream?”
After they finished eating, Sara began clearing things, putting plates and cutlery in the sink. She sent Katie upstairs to wash her face and hands. Then with the pizza box in the recycling, dishes done, Sara went to a drawer. She sat on the sofa in the living room, struggling to remain calm.
Katie bounced down the stairs to the living room, her eyes going to the spiral-bound drawing book Sara had on her lap. “What are you doing with that?”
Following her gaze to the book, Sara said: “I found it when I was picking up your clothes in your room.”
Katie reached to take it, but Sara placed her hand on top.
“Give it to me.”
“No, I think I better hang on to it.”
Katie looked at Sara. “It’s mine.”
“I’m keeping it for a little while, honey.”
“Why?”
Sara patted the sofa beside her.
“Sit with me. I want to talk about the pictures you drew.”
Hesitant, Katie sat as Sara turned the book’s pages.
“Why’re you snooping on me?”
“I wasn’t snooping, honey. I found this when I was picking up your clothes under your bed for the laundry.” Sara turned more pages to the birds, trees, butterflies and hand tracings Katie had made. “I remember these—they’re nice.”
Sara continued to the next pages.
“Why did you put the book under the bed like you were hiding it?”
“It’s private.”
“But you’ve shown me the birds and things you’ve drawn before,” Sara said, turning the page to the stick people. “But not this one, you’ve never shown me this new one.”
Sara blinked as she and Katie looked at Katie’s depiction of the tragedy at the park with two stick people.
The house fell silent.
“Honey, why did you draw this? What does it mean?”
“It’s private. You spied on me.”
Again Katie tried seizing the book from Sara.
“Give it back, it’s mine!”
“Stop.” Sara pulled the book back. “I wasn’t spying on you. But you have to tell me why you drew this.”
“I already told you. I have bad thoughts.”
Sara couldn’t stop now. Jabbing her finger at the sketch, she said: “Katie, I need you to tell me the truth about what happened.”
Katie shook her head, clamping her mouth. Watching her, Sara feared the answer. Maybe because she now believed she knew the answer. And all this time, since the day she rushed to Sparrow Song Park, she could never bring herself to say the words. Until now, glimpsing at the sketch, feeling the words rising in her throat, like an eruption she couldn’t control. Sara stabbed at the sketch as if it were the horrible truth.
“Are these your bad dreams, your bad thoughts? Did you—Katie, did you push Anna?”
Katie screamed. “Stop it! Stop, stop, stop!”
Katie blasted from the sofa and thudded up the stairs, slamming her bedroom door, leaving Sara alone on the sofa.
Her skin numbed, the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Through her tears she stared at her daughter’s notebook—feeling its weight pressing down, its heat burning her.
37
Seattle, Washington
Sipping coffee at his desk, Ryan Gardner scrolled through folders on his computer, stopping at the video of his interview with Cody Barlow, retired sheriff of Tall Tree County, Montana.
Ryan had located Barlow in a mobile home park near Tucson, Arizona, and called. Barlow agreed to talk to him but only in person, so Ryan made his way to Tucson. A few years after he’d recorded the video, Barlow died from colorectal cancer.
But he came to life now on Ryan’s laptop.
Here was white-haired Barlow on a recliner in his double-wide trailer, black-and-blue-plaid Western shirt, black-framed glasses and with a small smile under his gray walrus mustache. Ryan found his gentle, almost high-pitched voice calming.
“You have good sources tracking me down on this, son. Word on the law enforcement grapevine is that you’re a good guy. That, and your personal connection to the whole damn thing, made it an easy decision for me to help you.”
“Thank you. I appreciate it.”
“Aside from Bill Hooten, who was sheriff at the time, and Cal Nixon, who was deputy, no one knows the whole story I’m going to tell you. Are you all set there, Ryan?”
“We’re all set. Go ahead.”
“Well, like I said on the phone, it was late summer that year and still warm when the four children, all of them about seven or eight, had decided to explore and play at a secluded corner of a neighboring acreage.”
“Can you confirm who they were?”
“Sure, it’s been so long and there are no statutes, and given what we now know, what the hell. I got my old notebooks to help me. Here—Judy Ayers, Bobby Rickard, Nancy Vaughan and Magdalena Kurtz. I’ll copy the spellings down for you.”
“Great, thanks.”
“So the kids go out to this section, some people called it the Old Settlement, because it was first settled by immigrants. But there’s nothing out there except for a few rickety outbuildings, overgrown by tall grass.
“The kids get out there. They said they were looking for treasure in the old buildings and playing around the property when it happened—Nancy just vanished from the surface.”
Barlow stopped to blink at the memory and stroke his mustache.
“She’d fallen down a well. It took forever for the kids to get help. Bobby ran to Red Wheelock’s place and Red called us. We soon got a team out there, paramedics, fire department, well-service experts. We could see her, and we had her mother call down to her, but she wasn’t responding, wasn’t making a sound. The rescue crew lowered listening devices but couldn’t pick up a sign of life.
“Working as fast as we could, we rigged things up, fashioned a harness chair and lowered Billy Dix, this skinny firefighter, down on a rope with water, medicine. Billy musta went down a hundred feet. We could hear him gasping, shouting—it’s bad, it’s bad!—saw his camera flash. We needed pictures for the case and for possible rescue, but—”
Barlow paused again.
“It was a recovery, not a rescue. She was deceased. Her parents were there—their screams... They wanted to go down the hole to get her. We had to hold them back. Lord, it was just so damned awful. Eventually we got her out. Later I looked at Billy’s pictures, at how she was all twisted, her feet up by her ears. Doctor said her spine was snapped.”
Barlow removed his glasses, drew his sleeve to his eyes.
“Something like that you never forget,” he said. “Later, as part of our investigation, talking to Nancy’s folks and the kids, we learned there was a bit of history between Nancy and Magdalena, or Magda, as she was called.”
“Is this about the doll?”
“You know about it?”
“I’d heard something about it. I’m trying to get a copy of a confidential report.”
“I’ve seen it and may be able to help you with that,” Barlow said. “I’ll tell you what we learned about the whole thing.”
He related an incident that happened several months prior to Nancy’s death. It concerned Nancy’s birthday party and a missing doll that Magda had stolen. When forced to return it, Magda had removed the doll’s head and hands.
“So there was some bad blood between the girls. That explained why Nancy was at first reluctant to go to the Old Settlement that day. It turned out Magda wanted her to come. Magda had convinced Bobby and Judy that she’d been to the old buildings earlier with her dad and there was likely jewels and money hidden in the building.”
“She made it sound exciting,” Ryan said.
“She did, convincing Bobby and Judy, who were Nancy’s best friends, to come, and they convinced Nancy to come. When they got there, they looked around inside, then Magda told Bobby and Judy to stay inside while she and Nancy looked outside.”
Barlow adjusted his glasses.
“Not long after, Bobby and Judy heard Magda shouting ‘I found some treasure!’ They left to join her, seeing Magda standing still and waving for Nancy to come closer to her. The place was overrun with wheat grass up to their waist so when Nancy approached she didn’t see how it canopied over a few rotting wood planks, gaps between them, covering the well. She stepped on them and went right through.”
“Bobby and Judy witnessed it?”
“Yes. The thing was, they said Magda just stood there looking down, not reacting, while they were crying, screaming down to Nancy, hysterical.”
Ryan thought for a moment.
“What was the treasure Magda found?”
“A couple of quarters.”
“Quarters?”
“Yeah, but they were newer ones, not old timeworn coins.”
“Really? What was going on in your mind as you investigated?”
“You first look at the facts, or the facts as we know them.”
“Which were?”
“It’s a fact the well was dug by settlers, then abandoned. Landowners are supposed to locate unused wells, seal and cap them. But along the line, other than a few planks, that wasn’t done with the Old Settlement well. So we had a dangerous well. Magda and her father told us they had no prior knowledge of the well.”
“So it was a tragic accident?”
Barlow adjusted his glasses and stroked his mustache. “I think Magda lured Nancy to her death.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Payback for the doll.”
“But she’s, what, seven years old or so, just a child?”
“We couldn’t ever prove a damn thing. Nothing came of it, so yes, on the books, it’s an accidental death.”
Barlow’s jaw tightened, he gritted his teeth and he looked off, leaving Ryan to think he was recalling those disturbing photos of Nancy.
“It’s hard for me to explain,” Barlow said.
“That’s okay.”
“When I questioned Magda, my gut told me this girl wasn’t like any other child. Something about her was not right. And now, when I think to what Magda and that husband of hers went on to do to innocent people, like your sister and her friend, I realize as I stood at that well, watching them lift Nancy Vaughan’s body from the ground, I was witnessing the birth of something monstrous.”
38
Seattle, Washington
A fourteen-year-old girl walked Buddy, her beagle, every day on the trail through the park near her home in Olympia. On one walk she failed to secure his leash and Buddy chased a squirrel.
She couldn’t find him.
John James Smith was in the park that day and saw that the girl was upset over her dog. Smith was a stranger, but the girl had seen him in the park occasionally when she walked Buddy. Smith offered to help look for Buddy, suggesting they go in different directions. In a short time Smith said he’d found the dog and called the girl to a dense thicket.
Not seeing Buddy, or hearing panting or the jingling of his leash, the girl hesitated. But Smith urged her into the thicket, saying Buddy looked hurt. Concerned, she proceeded. When she got to it, she didn’t see Buddy. Smith pulled her to the ground.
Two female joggers, marines who’d served in Afghanistan, heard the girl’s screams. Rescuing her, they subdued Smith, fracturing several bones in the process. The women called police and paramedics. In the chaos Buddy returned to the girl and was a source of comfort as paramedics and police tended to her.
Smith was charged with assault. Olympia detectives investigating Smith linked him to other attacks where he had stalked girls, learning their routines, waiting for the chance to strike, then assaulting them in wooded areas or empty buildings and lots.
Smith was convicted and served time in prison.
Reading the report, Pierce studied Smith’s physical description again: white, six feet tall, one-hundred-eighty pounds, with a scar running over his left eye to his cheek from a victim who’d scratched him.
Looking at his photo in the offender registry, Pierce thought, Why was Smith at Sparrow Song Park at the time of Anna Shaw’s death?
Benton slowed their SUV, then said: “Here we go.”
* * *
The license plate captured by the park’s security camera matched the plate of the pickup parked on the street in Ballard.
A white 2012 Chevrolet Silverado 1500, two-door with a regular cab, belonging to John James Smith, a released inmate and registered sex offender. Pierce and Benton checked the truck’s interior.
Neat. Spotless.
Trading glances, they continued walking.
With the forensic analysis of the rock indicating Anna Shaw’s death was intentional, they still hadn’t ruled out Katie Harmon. She was the last known person to see Anna alive. But there was that gap in time when Katie ran for help. Someone else could’ve been involved. And placing Smith at the park, at the time of Anna’s death, had turned their investigation around.
The detectives found Smith’s truck after Pierce reached Rawley Grimes, Smith’s community corrections officer, a gravel-voiced man who sounded like he was scraping his way through the phone line.
“Why’re you asking? Has he deviated from his conditions? As his CCO, I need to know.”
“We just have a few questions.”
“What questions? ’Cause I got him adhering to the program.”
“We’ll let you know how things go when we’re done.”
Smith’s Silverado sat a few doors from a 1950s house that was enveloped with scaffolding and ladders. The front yard was covered with stacked sheets of lumber, shingles, bricks and other building material. A symphony of staple guns, power saws and hammering filled the air with clouds of sawdust and the smell of fresh-cut wood.
A van and pickup with the logo Diamond Ocean Remodel sat in the driveway as workers in jeans, T-shirts, hard hats and tool belts moved about.
Pierce stopped a worker inspecting a sheet of plywood.
“Excuse me. We’re looking for John James Smith.”
“J.J.?” The worker pointed his chin to a table saw.
The saw whined as Smith pushed a four-by-four-inch beam to the blade. Finishing the cut, he looked up to see Pierce’s and Benton’s badges. He switched the motor off.
“Got a minute?” Benton said.
Smith eyed them without speaking.
“Your CCO told us you were here,” Pierce said. “We got a couple of questions. Could you show us your identification?”
After showing them his license, Smith stood there waiting. Pierce pulled out her notebook, paged through it.
“Where were you on the morning of the tenth of this month?”
Smith’s focus shifted as he thought and blinked once.
“Here at work.”
“You want to rethink your answer?” Benton said.
“What’s this about?”
They turned to a bearded man about six two, his eyes going to their badges, his expression going cold.
“Who are you?” Benton said.
“Venner Robson. I’m the contractor. J.J.’s boss.”
“Could you show us some identification?” Benton said.
Robson pulled out his worn wallet. While Benton checked his driver’s license, Robson said: “What’s going on here?”
“We want to establish John’s whereabouts on the morning of the tenth.”
Robson thought for a moment. “Yeah, he was here. We’ve been on this site for several weeks.”
“Can you prove that?”
“I’ll swear to it in a statement.”
Benton’s eyebrows rose. “You’ll swear to it?”
“And so will the other guys on this site.” Robson turned to the house. “And the coffee truck guy who comes here every day, and our suppliers. So what’s this about?”
