Snow Creek(65)

Josh: I don’t know what to say.

Ellie: I shouldn’t have said that, babe.

Josh: I wish my parents were dead.

Ellie: If mine were gone, we’d be together, wouldn’t we?

Josh: Forever.





I indicate the timeline. “Two weeks later her parents were dead, and Ellie was presumed drowned.”

Sheriff narrows his brow as he thumbs through the pages.

“They don’t plot to kill their folks?”

“Not online,” I answer. “The phone was used only for another few days. The last call, however, was between Joshua and Ellie. We don’t know what they said. At some point after they talked, it was tossed into the neighbor’s yard where I recovered it.”

I look at my phone.

“Joshua has been released from the hospital, arraigned on first-degree murder charges for his mother’s homicide. He’s not talking.”

“I wonder why,” Sheriff says.

Marley nods.

“The interesting ones never talk until they’ve been in custody for a few years.”

I smile.

“Yeah, it’s kind of lonely there.”





Forty-Three





Aunt Laurna, Ellie and her lawyer—resplendent in an Italian suit that I’m immediately convinced the likes of which have never crossed our county line—sit in a row behind a table in the jail’s visiting room. Ellie’s youthful beauty has been eclipsed by her jail-issue jumpsuit. She wears no makeup. Laurna, the foolish do-gooder, is dressed in a smart suit of her own, a thick gold chain around her neck, equally costly, and garish gold earrings dangle like wind chimes.

As I sit down, I can’t help but label each of the three.

Denier.

Killer.

Mercedes.

Mercedes introduces himself. His name is Clifton Scott; he’s a partner with blah, blah, blah.

“I’m representing Ellie here,” he says.

I change his name to Obvious.

Laurna nods at me but doesn’t say a word. I wonder if she’s hired the high-priced attorney out of guilt for coming forward after seeing Ellie’s picture. Her loyalties are a mystery. The girl sitting to her left killed her sister and brother-in-law. I’m thinking now that their family album is a book of horrors.

Ellie just sits there, smugly and silently. It passes through my mind that this might be a new role for her. No longer the one pushing buttons herself but enlisting a lawyer to do so. I set that aside straight away. She had Joshua do her bidding.

“Why are we here?” I ask.

“I’ve negotiated a deal with the prosecutor’s office.”

“I’ve heard you were trying.”

“Well, that’s why we’re here, Detective.”

I know that the deal is contingent on Ellie’s disclosure on a matter related to the case. I also know that she’s going to do time in our system for the assault on her accomplice, Joshua Wheaton, and threatening an officer. And yes, the murders of the Wheatons. She’s tangled up in that too.

“We have evidence that proves she wasn’t there when the Wheatons were killed, but that’s not what we need to tell you.”

“You don’t need to tell me anything, Mr. Scott.”

“No. I don’t. But in exchange for the information I’m going to tell you, the prosecutor has agreed to lesser charges and an immediate extradition to Clallam County, where they will charge my client with the second-degree murder of her parents.”

None of this surprises me. Girls like Ellie always manage to land on their feet.

“Okay, fine,” I say through slightly clenched teeth. “Testifying against Joshua Wheaton isn’t exactly a surprise to me. I figured she’d flip the second she had her fingers and palms scanned and had a mug shot taken.”

Clifton Scott gives me a condescending half smile manifested out of reasonably natural veneers. Laurna pats Ellie on the shoulder, wind chimes tinkling. Ellie shrugs and her belly chains rattle the table.

The lawyer speaks up. “Ellie has agreed to give you the name of Mrs. Wheaton’s killer.”

I crinkle my brow. “We know who that is already. What we don’t know is the location of Sarah’s body.”

“I’m prepared to tell you both, Detective.”



The drive to Leavenworth, Washington, is among the most beautiful in a state known for its scenery. The highway cuts up and through the Cascades, with drifts of snow and conifers stunted by altitude and ice.

Before leaving, Sheriff told me to contact local law enforcement and asked if I needed backup from here. I told him I’d already made the call and that I was fine.

“Bring me back a murderer,” he said.

“Will do.”

“And one of those German pretzels too.”

“That goes without saying.”

Leavenworth is distinctly an American oddity. Nestled in the Cascades along tumbling Icicle Creek, it bills itself as a Bavarian village, a gamble to save the town from dying by mandating a makeover. It worked. It’s a town dripping in gingerbread, beer steins; women in dirndls and men in lederhosen. Every business from the grocer to one of the countless cuckoo clock purveyors is required to adopt the Bavarian theme in signage and architecture. Whether it makes sense or not.