The Girl in the Woods (8 page)

B
irdy Waterman was good with color. She always had been. Before she decided on a career as a forensic pathologist she had dabbled in the art world. She loved painting. Watercolors mostly. One year she and her sister, Summer, painted Salish-inspired designs on scraps of driftwood to sell to the tourists who came to Neah Bay for fishing or whale watching. They sold quite a few pieces, but it felt compromising and dishonest. The hottest sellers had nothing to do with their own culture, but owed more to what was expected by those who wanted something to match a sofa or comforter cover. When she started painting with authenticity that fit how she felt, Birdy found she really didn’t like the subjective nature of the art world. Everyone had an opinion. Nothing, quite ironically, was black and white.

Science
was
. Science was conclusive and incontrovertible.

The office was quiet. Her assistant had gone for the day and the coroner was away at a conference in Maui. Who knew there were so many trade shows and conferences for those who deal with the dead? Always in such lively and lovely places, of course.

While she worried what might be going on with her nephew, there was no place on earth she’d rather be than right there in her office trying to figure out what happened to the girl from the hoarder’s house on Olalla Valley Road. Grateful that the office coffeepot was working again, she poured herself a big steaming cup.

In front of her, fanned over her ancient Boeing-surplus-store desk, were photographs she’d taken of the foot found in the forest. With the maggots removed, the foot appeared smaller than when the kids found it.

It was a pale gray and white. Not hideous, just so very sad.

As she tilted a close-up taken on her autopsy table, the pink lacquer on the nails came at her like falling cherry blossoms. She was all but certain that the color matched the bottle that sat on her desk next to a hairbrush that had been bagged and tagged.

A visual examination wasn’t enough, however.

She took off one of her good luck gold hoops, picked up the phone, and tapped the buttons for the state crime lab where the foot had been transported.

Percy Smith answered.

“Percy, Birdy here,” she said.

“Yup, I know,” he said in his chirpy upbeat voice. “We have caller ID now.”

“Of course,” she said.

“Hey, are you going to invite us up to your new digs?”

Birdy looked over at the calendar. She didn’t like to be reminded that the move was coming up. She liked where she was just fine.

“Yes,” she said. “But we’re not ready yet. We’ll have some kind of an open house after we get settled in and have all the kinks worked out.”

“You don’t sound all that excited, Dr. Waterman.”

“I don’t know,” she said, looking around. “This sort of feels like home.”

“Think of all that new equipment,” he said.

“Right,” she said. “But we do all right with what we have here. Anyway, of course, you’ll all be invited to come and take a look. In the meantime, I’m calling about that foot.”

“Figured. We put her in the footlocker,” he said, waiting a beat.

Birdy didn’t laugh at his pun. She’d heard enough of those already.

“Sorry. Couldn’t resist.”

“Were you able to turn up anything?” she asked, ignoring the apology for his lapse.

“Female, but you already indicated that in your report. About twelve to nineteen years old.”

“Sixteen,” she said.

“Could be.” He went on. “The toenail polish—or is it fingernail polish that’s been applied to a toe? Anyhow, the polish is made by Mayfair. Color is called—”

“Car Nation,” she said, cutting him off.

“You know who she is,” he said.

“I think so.”

“Who?”

“Missing girl from South Kitsap. I went with one of the detectives to her house.”

“Wow, that cross training is really something up there,” he said.

“It wasn’t because of that,” she said, not happy that everyone in the world seemed to know they’d endured mandatory team-building sessions. “Anyway, the girl is Darby Moreau. I saw the fingernail polish in her backpack. I have her hairbrush; I’ll pack up some samples for you to confirm it’s her DNA.”

“Okeydokey,” he said.

Birdy moved on. “Can you tell me anything about the cut?”

She could hear Percy flip through some papers.

“Okay, so like you know, the tissue is in bad shape,” he said. “But I did see some striations on the bone that indicated whoever did it wasn’t some professional butcher, if that helps.”

“Tell me more,” she said.

“Not much more to tell,” he said. “Whoever cut her was somewhat tentative. That can mean it was a first time or that they were grossed out by what they were doing—I know I would be.”

“Post or anti mortem?”

Percy hesitated. “Pretty sure, post.”

“That doesn’t sound conclusive,” she said, drumming her fingertips on the edges of the evidence photos on her desk.

“Sure enough that if I testified in court, I’d say so,” Percy said.

“Can you rule out animal activity?”

“Nope. Not at all. I think you’ll need to find the rest of the body to determine that. Anything new with the search for the rest of her?”

Of course she would have told him that. It was the kind of question that irritated. A teenage girl doesn’t just vanish, leaving only a foot behind.

That was about to change.

 

 

The last time Darby Moreau’s mother saw her daughter, the sixteen-year-old was doing her homework as she always did. Tess Moreau held that final image in her brain as though it were a photograph.
No, an etching.
It wasn’t exactly real, or rather she wouldn’t allow her memory to capture the last visage in bold strokes of light and color. Just the black and white of what she’d seen when Darby looked up from her geometry assignment and smiled at her.

“You about ready to call it a night?” Tess asked as she poked her head into Darby’s room. She was tired from a long day of organizing what couldn’t be organized and was distracted by a box of Beanie Babies (“with the tag protectors!”) that she’d found at a barn sale at the other end of Olalla.

“Just about, Mom,” Darby said. “I’m all caught up, but I’m doing a little looking ahead on the next geometry Mr. Barringer will want us to do. I don’t want to get behind before the week even starts. You know me.”

Tess walked in the room and put her hand on her daughter’s shoulder, feeling her silky hair. A gentle and sweet caress.

“You don’t have to be perfect,” she said.

“No one’s perfect, Mom,” Darby said. “Besides, those people who actually think they are perfect are really full of crap.”

Tess made a face, but kept her hand right where it was.

“Don’t talk ugly, Darby.”

Darby shrugged a little. “That’s not ugly, Mom. Hang out at South in the commons between classes if you want to hear ugly.”

“I don’t think so,” Tess said as she started to retreat from the only neat space in the house.

Darby grinned. Her braces had come off the month before and her bright perfect smile still looked like magic to her mother. “No. No, you wouldn’t,” the teenager said.

Tess turned away and started down the hall, but Darby called out to her.

She stood in the door frame. “Mom, I was thinking we could organize the stuff in the living room tomorrow night.” She paused and waited for her mother’s inevitably delayed response.

Tess moved toward her. “I like the idea, but, honey, I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

The girl gripped her mom’s hands and stared up into the eyes that looked like her own, just sadder.

“Mom, you just have to start,” Darby said. “We can do it together. I can teach you.”

“I know you can,” Tess said. “You can do anything.”

Deep down, Tess knew she couldn’t. No one could. No amount of wishing, yelling, begging, threatening, or cajoling could get Tess to rid her house of the clutter that consumed most of the airspace.

After Birdy Waterman and Kendall Stark left with Darby’s hairbrush, some makeup, and a few other odds and ends, the recollection of that last evening together brought a stream of tears down Tess’s cheeks. She scanned the room for a box of tissues, but she couldn’t find any despite the fact that somewhere in that house she had a case of Kleenex. She picked up a lace curtain from the couch and dabbed at the corner of her eyes. This was all her fault. A social worker from the county, a young woman with straight black hair that she pinned back over her shoulders, and gorgeous almond eyes that never once ridiculed, told Tess in the kindest way possible that her daughter would eventually abandon her if she couldn’t change.

“It won’t be because she won’t love you anymore. Clearly she does. She will leave because,” the social worker said in a low, kind voice, “leaving is the only way for her to relieve her stress. It is the only coping mechanism she has. When she goes—and she will—you’ll have to take responsibility for it. I know you don’t want that. No mother would. You can change, Tess. You have to.”

Tess folded herself into a sliver of a bare spot on the denim blue sofa in the living room. She clutched the tear-soaked lace curtain and let out a cry loud enough to rattle her Precious Moments collection in the overloaded whatnot shelf that had been her mother’s. She needed to let it all out. Every last bit of her regret. It was deep inside of her, coiled like a snake she’d swallowed when her husband and baby died. She needed to focus on Darby and wherever she might have gone.

C
onnie Mitchell was in the middle of her planning session. It was an hour-long period that the teachers’ union had somehow managed to hang on to, despite the cutbacks that left its members hoping against hope that they’d not only be able to teach young people, but would be able to pay their mortgages. Connie was a lovely woman with short, dark hair that she spiked a little—she was the fine arts teacher, after all. With the exception of large, flashy jewelry, she favored a simple, monochromatic look.

In a very real way, she embodied what she taught the budding artists in her class.

“Simplicity with a sparkle, that’s how you command a viewer’s attention. Throw too much dazzle at them and well, they are turned off and overwhelmed.”

When one kid, a resolute attention-seeker with destructive tendencies, created a multimedia project that used everything in the classroom and bits of the rubberized track around the football field, she praised him for his ingenuity.

And reported him for defacing school property.

Connie liked sparkle and creativity, but she also liked order.

When Kendall Stark poked her head inside the classroom, she saw Connie standing like a statue in front of the room looking at a row of student work that she’d laid out on the floor. Kendall watched as the art teacher reordered the pieces like the judge on a dog show.

“Are you ranking them?” Kendall asked.

Connie didn’t look up. “There’s no ranking in art,” she said.

“But you’ve shuffled them,” Kendall said. “I saw you.”

“Just looking for a more pleasant way of presenting this as an experience,” Connie said. “Parent and Guardian Night is next week.”

Kendall introduced herself as a member of the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Department. She didn’t use the words “homicide investigator”—that pairing usually brought a measure of panic. And rightly so.

Connie looked up and studied her visitor. “You’re here about Darby?”

Kendall was surprised. “Yes, how did you know that?”

“We have a lot of students here and word travels fast,” Connie said, looking once more at the artwork on the grungy and dinged linoleum tiled floor. “I thought she was sick.”

“Why did you think that?” Kendall asked.

“Attendance office called her mother. I checked.” The teacher switched the first two paintings and then surveyed the entire row one more time. “But she isn’t sick, is she? Has she run away?”

Kendall had liked the sequence before the teacher moved the first two, but she didn’t remark on it. She wasn’t an art critic, but she knew what she liked. Nothing on the floor appealed to her. They were dark, moribund. Two had images of violence; at least it appeared as if they did. Nevertheless, they were not gallery bound. The mothers would store them until their children moved away and then unceremoniously toss them.

Like her mother had done to her stuff.

“Why would you think that?” she asked.

Connie led Kendall over to her desk and sat down. “Beanbag there.” She pointed to a black pleather orb, but the detective preferred to stand.

“We got close,” Connie said, her clear brown eyes riveted on her classroom visitor. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Kendall let that comment slide. She’d circle back to it later. It was the kind of comment that usually led to a shutdown of information, and she wasn’t going to let that happen right then. She eyed the beanbag, but doubted it would be easy or graceful to extricate herself from it.

“We’re concerned about her. Her mother is concerned. She’s vanished.”

Connie looked worried. “Where is she?” she asked.

“That’s what I’m here to find out. Tell me about her. Tell me about Darby.”

Connie stood up and paced. “I love that girl. She is special.”

Love. Special.
Those were pedophile code words.

“How so?” Kendall asked.

“We have a mix of students here,” Connie said. “This is a big school. We’ve got a lot of kids who think they are entitled. They want to be the next American Idol or think they are the second coming of Mackle-more. They want to be famous, make a lot of money.”

“Everyone has dreams, Ms. Mitchell, right?”

“True. So true. Darby is wiser, older than her years. She has a wry, sardonic kind of sense of humor. She understood the balance and order of the universe. You could talk to her about things that were important. She isn’t like a lot of the kids I have now in class.”

“What do you mean? Special? Different?” Kendall was leading Connie to where she needed to go.

“Vulnerable, but strong. Resilient. I saw a lot of myself in her—you know when I was younger and trying to find my identity.”

Again, Kendall let that slide.

“She spent a lot of time with you,” she said, adding a quick, “here.”

“Yes, she did,” Connie said. “She is my best student. Certainly this year. There’s always one. Sometimes two that stand out.”

“Does she have any friends, other than Katie Lawrence? Others who might know what, if anything, out of the ordinary was going on in her life?”

“Other than Katie? No. I think she had a crush on someone, though.”

“You’re being vague here, Ms. Mitchell. I need you to be direct. I need you to tell me what a sixteen-year-old girl was doing at your house?”

Connie sprang to her feet. “What are you getting at? She was never, ever at my house! That’s improper. Are you saying that because I’m a lesbian?”

Kendall didn’t care if the art teacher was gay, but there were instances—very few—when female predators plucked the vulnerable from the classroom.

“Look, I don’t care if you are gay or not,” Kendall said. “It makes no difference to me. But if you were involved in any improper way with Darby, you have some explaining to do. And depending on what the investigation turns up, you will probably be out of this classroom before your art show.”

“You have it all wrong,” Connie said, her eyes now wet with tears. “I was never involved. I’m in a committed relationship. My girlfriend and I are getting married this summer. Darby wasn’t gay. Darby never, ever came to my house.”

“She told Katie that she did,” Kendall said.

Connie was pacing back and forth, scrambling, trying to extricate herself from what she surely knew was a career-ruining accusation.

“Look, I think she had a boyfriend. I think, well, she didn’t tell me who. She said she thought she might be in love. She didn’t tell Katie. She couldn’t. She and Katie were sort of the outcasts and she didn’t want Katie to be hurt that this boy liked her. And that she liked this boy.”

“You seem to have gotten awfully close to Darby.”

“I told you,” Connie said defensively. “I saw a lot of myself in her.”

As the teacher wrapped her arms around her now heaving chest, Kendall noticed her fingernails. The color. It was so familiar.

“Did you give Darby gifts? You did, didn’t you?”

“No. No. I’m telling you.”

“When she disappeared she wore the same polish that you’re wearing now.”

Connie looked down at her hands.

“Oh. I did. I gave her a bottle.”

“That’s a little personal, isn’t it?”

Connie put her fingers to her lips. She motioned for Kendall to follow her to a small room in the back of the classroom, where she flung open a storage locker.

Inside were row upon row of nail polish. All colors. All in order of light to dark. It was like a cosmetic display on steroids.

“I don’t understand,” Kendall said.

Connie’s words were caught in her throat and she struggled a little to get them out.

“I don’t like to talk about it,” she started to say, before stopping herself.

“Take a moment,” Kendall said.

“It’s okay. Darby and I had so much in common. My being a lesbian had nothing to do with it. My mom is a hoarder too. She sends me this shit all the time. I used to throw it away, you know . . . just clean sweep it away from my life.” She stopped and caught her breath. “I don’t do that anymore. I know my mom can’t help it. I bring it here. I give it away.”

Kendall felt a rush of sympathy. If they had been friends, she would have hugged that woman right then. She didn’t, of course.

“Please don’t say anything about my friendship with her,” Connie said. “I can assure you Darby never, ever came to my house. I never saw her not even once outside of this classroom. And yes, we spent a lot of time together. I’m worried about her, detective. You have to find her.”

Kendall believed the art teacher.

“We’re doing the best we can,” she said. She didn’t tell her about the foot, the polish, what had happened to Darby Moreau. It wasn’t something she could tell, not in the middle of the investigation. She knew that when the news broke, Connie Mitchell would be heartsick.

“Which boy?” she asked. “Do you know?”

“What?”

“Which boy was she crushing on?”

Connie shook her head and closed the cabinet.

“I don’t know. She never said.”