Snow Creek(62)
And she wore it the next time. It stuck in my mind and I might have figured out their relationship without the phone.
And without Bernie’s discovery.
Her eyes flicker a little, but she betrays no discernible emotion.
“Techs will unlock it and we’ll follow your text trail, Ellie. It will lead us to Josh, and you know where else it will go, don’t you?”
She’s stone.
“You killed your parents.”
“You don’t know anything, Detective. You’ll see.”
She’s defiant. She’s playing tough, but I see behind the mask. I see a sociopath who knows she’s undone. She knows that there will be no way to wriggle out of it.
“Where’s Sarah?”
Her eyes meet mine directly for the first time.
“I wouldn’t know. They were all gone when Joshua took me.”
“Took you?”
She releases an impatient sigh to let me know she’s frustrated.
“That’s what I said, Detective. He held me captive. He raped me. I was a prisoner.”
She’s sticking to her story. A flimsy one at best.
“The phone, Ellie. What you’re saying won’t hold up. You know that, right? We’ll follow the trail you left on this phone.”
She watches as Mindy’s van pulls away. Next, the ambulance pulls out.
The officer taps on the window.
“I really don’t care what you think or what you find,” she says as I turn around to face her. “I’m glad it’s over.”
“It’s far from over, Ellie. For you, this is only the beginning.”
Forty-One
My hand needed five stitches. I’m grateful that I wasn’t injured elsewhere. I don’t want the doctors at the hospital to see the other marks on my body, scars that were waypoints on my fight for survival. It’s the same reason I don’t go to the beach. I wonder if anyone has noticed that and assumes that I have some kind of body dysmorphia or am a cutter.
I would actually love for either of those to have been my problem.
At least those would have been options of my own doing.
Very little evidence was recovered from the Wheaton residence and outbuildings. Bernie’s belief that Joshua and Ellie were having sex, however, was backed up by DNA collected from Josh’s bed. It appeared that Ellie brought nothing from her old life when she arrived in Snow Creek. A burn barrel in the yard, however, was filled with some of the remains of Ida and Merritt’s clothing. The wedding photo that had been reframed was there too.
“Ellie’s got a lawyer from Bellevue,” Sheriff says as he scoots into my office with the daily paper and a couple of blueberry muffins his wife made.
“She says it’s the lemon that makes them.”
I smile. He’s probably eating his third muffin of the day.
“A lawyer from Bellevue,” I repeat. “Sounds pricey.”
“Rolex-type guy.”
“Aunt Laurna?”
He takes a big bite. “Yeah.”
I shake my head and put down the muffin. “Her niece killed her sister and brother-in-law.”
“The aunt refuses to believe it.”
“She’ll be in for a rude awakening when we unlock the phone.”
“Could be. Remember, it’s not our case. It’s Clallam’s.”
Of course, I know that.
“Right. We’re opening the phone for our case, and if we stumble onto something that’ll help Clallam, we’re good with that, right?”
He eats the rest of his muffin.
I dial Laurna right away. She answers after several rings. I don’t even bother with a hello.
“Laurna, what’s going on? You know what Ellie did.”
“Look, Detective, I saw it was you and I wasn’t going to pick up. I am told by Ellie’s lawyer that I shouldn’t talk to any police. It could hurt her case.”
I’m exasperated, and my tone shows it. “What case? You know what she did, Laurna.”
She breathes into the phone.
She’s thinking. Deciding. Maybe preparing a lie.
“Yes, I do. I know. She said she was abused. I believe her. I have a way of connecting with her that allows me to see through the veil of any lies she might be telling.”
My heart sinks lower and lower. I don’t even know what to say. I hold my tongue and let her finish.
“She’s my sister’s child. I don’t have any of my own. Surely you can understand that every young person’s life is worth fighting for.”
I want to tell her she’s right, the kind of PC remark that fills Twitter when people are outraged.
I don’t.
“Take care, Laurna,” I say, hanging up.
Good luck with that, I think.
Forty-Two
At 11 p.m. my phone pings on my nightstand.
I think I was asleep, but I’m not sure. I’m in that state somewhere between thinking about the events of that day and revisiting old wounds by facing things that I thought better forgotten.
It’s Marley Yang from the crime lab.
“Detective Carpenter, my techs got the Burbank girl’s phone opened. Tons there. Sending what I have now. Want to go over it in person. More work to do. Need direction. I’ll be at your office at 7:30.”