Snow Creek(34)

My stepfather was a good guy. Decent. Yet still a mystery.

Why would he take us on? There had to be something wrong with a man who would carry such a burden as to live on the run with my mother, me, and later, Hayden. I loved him in the way that one loves a trusted pet; one who might bite you, so you never get too close. He was solid. Caring. Yet he wasn’t my dad. He was Hayden’s dad. My stomach roils as I think of him nearly pinned to the floor of the kitchen with a knife, like some moth specimen in biology class at South Kitsap. I want to cry for him right now. He deserves that much, but I don’t.

I can’t think of anything but my biological dad and who he was. He was not dog-tag material. He was not the hero. Far, far from that. He was the villain, the worst, most despicable kind ever. The feeling that overtakes me right then as Hayden sleeps in the seat next to me is a mix of sadness, anger, and confusion: If I’m not the daughter of a hero, but the daughter of a killer, then what kind of person am I?





I sit motionless for a very long time. I almost don’t know the girl on the recording, what she’s thinking, where she’s going. How she plans to use that gun. It’s scary. Even though she’s a stranger to me, I know she is still deep inside me. I don’t blame her for what she’s about to do. I wish that I had one of Maxine’s cats right now. I’d hold it in my arms and tell it how much it means to have someone you can depend on. I’d pet it softly and take in the purrs, the motor-like sounds that would reassure me that there was more good to the world than the evil that seems to surround me.

I pour another tepid glass of wine and head for bed, hoping that slumber will give me relief from what I know is about to come.

Not from the Wheaton case.

I can handle that.

It’s what the tapes are about to disclose.

Who I am.





Twenty-Two





Warrant in hand, I don’t drive alone to the Wheaton place. I bring Bernadine Chesterfield, a social worker and victim’s advocate, a fixture at the county before I arrived. She’s in her late forties with bright red hair and eye shadow that I seriously think would scare off a victim. It’s an iridescent blue. Or is it purple? Pink? I honestly don’t know what hue it is or why she wears it with such abandon. She talks about her son in the Coast Guard. Her daughter lives in Portland crafting beeswax candles.

“I always knew that my beautiful little dreamers would do great things someday.”

“You are so lucky,” I tell her.

Okay, serving our country in the Coast Guard carries real honor, but beeswax candles? I think.

She goes on a bit more and then stops as we pull off the highway and head up Snow Creek Road.

“Confession, Megan.”

“Go on,” I tell her.

“There’s some weird stuff going on out here. Gives me the willies. Like Deliverance. Do you know that old movie?”

I shake my head.

“You should stream it. Seriously, you never know what you’ll find far away from town. Out here.”

“In the middle of nowhere?”

“Exactly.”

We pass Dan Anderson’s place. Yeah, I think, you never know what you’ll find.

I review what we’re doing. I do this because Bernie, as she likes to be called, is something of a loose cannon. She likes to play cop as much as she seems to enjoy her court-appointed duties. She also has a strange effect when comforting a victim; it’s almost like she’s enjoying her role too much. Like she’s getting off on the misery of someone facing the worst conceivable outcome after a tortuous wait, bouncing from hope to the inevitable reality of what’s really happening.

“Sarah is underage and we’ll need to consider that,” I say. “She’s scared about what might have happened to her mother and father. This will crush her. Joshua too. He’s mature but still, he’s only nineteen. The implications of their mother’s murder will not be lost on either one. While we are looking for their dad, we are not naming him a suspect. He’s a missing person.”

“A person of interest?” she asks.

I shake my head. “Let’s avoid the terminology, all right?”

She gives me a cool look, her eye shadow only adding to the effect. “Fine, though if they bring it up, our victim’s advocacy code says to always tell the truth. Never lie or trick the victim. That’s your job.”

I ignore her little snipe.

“Deputies Davis and Copsey will meet us there. They’ll work with me on the search. You’ll be there for the kids, all right?”

“Fine, but I have had some police training, you know. I could do more.”

Bernie brings up her extensive training all the time. Really. All the time. She had one class at the academy in Burien. It was one class!

“What you’re doing for the victims is far greater than anything I could do,” I say.

Stay in your lane, I think.

“I think you’re right,” she says, as we pass the cruiser with the deputies. “There really is nothing more important than lifting up the hurt and demoralized. It’s really who I am.”

Inside, I roll my eyes upward.

“I told them to wait on the road,” I say. “We’re going in first.”



Sarah is picking blueberries, and Joshua is burning trash in a burn barrel: a practice the county has prohibited for a decade or more. The folks of Snow Creek do what they need to do to get by. Going to the dump or, God forbid, having trash pickup doesn’t cross their minds.