Betrayal (13 page)

Taylor's jaw practically skimmed the floor. “Beth! Why did you have to say
that
?”

Beth brightened a little, but only for a second. “Just came to me. Never mind. No one will think it's true.” She waited a beat. “No offense, you know, but for obvious reasons.”

Taylor wasn't sure what obvious reasons she was talking about.
The fact that she didn't have a boyfriend? Or was it that she couldn't get one?

“Do you think you're a suspect?” Taylor asked. “That doesn't make any sense.”

“Well, there's the tie business. And we had a big fight. Me and Olivia. Queen Bree summoned Olivia to the party early. We got into it. Words were said. It was, well, not good. I was so angry about her wanting to hang out with Brianna. They'd gotten so close, and I felt left out.”

Tears started to roll down her cheeks.
Actual Beth Lee tears. Until the last few days, that had been a rare occurrence.

“It's okay,” Taylor said reaching over to the tissue dispenser and offering one to her friend.

“You don't get it,” Beth said, taking the tissue. “Of course you don't. You've always had someone. I had Christina, and then she died. Then my dad died. I just thought that Olivia would be mine, you know? My mom and I arranged for her to come. We Skyped all summer. I thought we were getting kind of close.”

Taylor hugged Beth. “I'm sorry,” she said. “But I'm sure that the police know you didn't have anything to do with, you know, the stabbing.”

Beth pushed away and looked at the mirror, her eyes still tracking Taylor's. “You must think I'm pathetic,” she said, dabbing her eyes and turning the tissue black with mascara.

“I don't. And I do understand. Lately with Hayley always hanging out with Colton, I'm alone most of the time too. I don't like sharing Hayley with him. I really, really don't. But Colton is a decent guy and, well, I know that relationships change.”

“I said some awful things to Olivia that night about British food—yuck—Pippa's overrated butt, and something mean about Nicki Minaj. I told Olivia that I wished she'd go back home on the
Titanic
and hoped it would hit another iceberg. I don't think she heard me, but I might have said something to the effect that I wished she would drop dead.”

“No! You didn't!” Taylor said, her voice rising. Her mind reeled, wondering who, if anyone, had heard Beth say those scary, prophetic words.

Taylor grabbed another tissue and provided it to Beth, who took it with a quick nod. “Who knows that you fought with Olivia?” she asked.

Beth ignored the question. “I had it out with Brianna at the party too.” She stopped herself. “Do I look like I've been crying? I don't want anyone to think I'm a big baby.”

Taylor patted her softly on the shoulder. Beth liked everyone to think she was aloof, tough, sardonic, and above all of the stuff that teenagers obsess over. She wasn't, of course. No one at Kingston High was. No teen
anywhere
was.

“No, you look fine. No one will know. Now, please, answer me. Who knows about the necktie and that you fought with Olivia?”

Beth looked directly into Taylor's eyes. “No one but the police,” she said. “You're the only other person I've told.”

“All right, I swear to keep it confidential. You and me, Beth, we're like sisters.”

Just then Beth gave Taylor a quick hug, which surprised her. Beth had never spontaneously hugged her before. Sure, it was a quick, hard little gesture, but it was Beth genuinely letting her guard down. Letting someone on the inside. It made Taylor smile.

Beth gathered herself together, put her earbuds back in, and the two of them went for the door.

“What are you listening to?” Taylor asked.

Beth shook her head. “Nothing. I just don't want to talk to anyone. It's a defense mechanism, I guess.”

“I'm glad you talked to me,” Taylor said, her own blue eyes glistening with emotion. Not tear territory, but the kind of dampness that comes when something good happens.

“I'm glad you're not pregnant,” Beth said.

STARLA LARSEN PUSHED OPEN THE DOOR to the very last stall. She had chosen it because it was the farthest away from the well-used bank of mirrors, and she didn't like anyone to hear her pee. As she sat there, she took in every word Taylor Ryan and Beth Lee had been saying. She understood why some musicians said they'd practiced singing in the bathrooms. In a place where no one really wants to hear what the next person is doing, it was the ultimate irony that one could hear the sound of a pin drop against the tiled floor of a girls' bathroom.

And one could certainly overhear Beth Lee spill her guts about Olivia.

Starla went to the mirror, her crystalline blue eyes focused not so much on what she was doing as she washed her hands, but what she was thinking. Starla reapplied some cinnamon gloss to her lips and fidgeted with her halo of blond hair. When Katelyn's death was tied to her mother and brother last year, it was more than embarrassing. Starla had to work double-hard to maintain her in-crowd status. Like her mother, Mindee, Starla was looking for a little redemption. Served with that? A side of revenge, of course.

As she threw a million-dollar smile at her reflection, Starla thought about what to do with this tantalizing tidbit. Her mother had already gone to the police. So scratch that. Going to the police was so yesterday.

LATER, WHEN HER KILLER REPLAYED the night Olivia Grant was stabbed to death, it brought a sense of euphoria that hadn't been expected. Murderers had long talked about the thrill that came with stealing another person's life. There was something darkly magical about seeing the eyes of a human being move from fear to anguish and then to peace. It was like being God, creating a storm of terror and letting it wash over another person, and then, just as quickly, allowing the terrified to find complete and final peace. The killer liked that. No,
loved
that. It was a rush better than any pharmaceutical could provide. It was far above the mix of adrenaline and laughter that comes from the scariest and best amusement park ride. Tower of Terror in Disneyland? Forget it. Skydiving with an unreliable parachute? Not even close. Skiing down a mountain in front of an avalanche's white wall? Nada.

Even better than sex.

The murderer had a specific intent, a purpose that really had nothing to do with the rush that came with the act of doing it. That had been a surprise. As the water ran in Brianna's bathroom sink and the blood flowed downward into the swirling cyclone of the drainpipe, the feeling was undeniably good.

The sensation of being all-powerful on that Halloween night had been an unexpected bonus.

Chapter 14

THE WASHINGTON STATE CRIME LAB IN OLYMPIA, the state capital a hundred miles south of Seattle, was a kind of way station for all major criminal court cases—the midpoint between the crime scene and the courtroom. All of the evidence collected by Annie Garnett and her team from the Connorses' house at 2121 Desolation View Drive in Port Gamble in the early morning hours of November 1 was processed at the county's lab in Port Orchard and then sent to Olympia for further analysis. The fact that the victim was from another country had flagged the case as one with “special sensitivities.”

A slaughtered American girl would warrant great care, but the Olivia Grant case required just a bit more. International incidents were an albatross for any jurisdiction.

Fourteen containers, each holding pieces of potential evidence collected from the four-thousand-square-foot Connors residence, were checked in and sent to the appropriate lab for additional analysis. Most of what was gathered the night of the murder and throughout the morning after Halloween was mundane, however, and would likely never be part of any court proceeding. Case in point: thirty-two red plastic drinking cups, taking up the space of two boxes.

It, without a doubt, had been
some
party.

Seven objects, however, were of special and considerable interest: the multiple pieces of a broken crystal vase; Olivia's slip, which was literally a bloody mess; Brianna's robe; Beth Lee's kimono; and three men's neckties—one of which had been retrieved from the victim's mouth.

Cheryl Raines, a veteran lab worker with twenty-one years of experience to her credit, carefully removed all seven items from their plastic packaging and logged them into her evidence ledger. It was crucial that from the minute these items were recovered from the crime scene, each time the evidence was handled was noted on the tag. Chain of custody was important because if the evidence was compromised by less than attentive supervision, it was akin to handing the perpetrator a “Get Out of Jail Free” card, especially if he or she had a good defense attorney. And judging by the crime scene photos it was clear that much of the evidence had been disturbed by the throng of investigators. Compromised evidence was a defense attorney's best friend.

After Olivia's slip was hung on a clothesline to dry in a lab designed to preserve blood on a garment, Cheryl carefully spread it out on a stainless steel table. Although now stiff and wine-brown with dried blood, the fabric was once a shimmery white sateen. The tech could also see a scattering of loose sequins caught on the slip in various places and threads that didn't match the fabric.

Next, Cheryl turned her attention to the slices in the material. She counted the number of slashes at three, although it was hard to tell if another irregularity in fabric had been caused by a knife or was simply torn as the British girl tried to get away from her killer. None of the cuts went all the way through to the other side.

Birdy Waterman's accompanying autopsy report indicated that Olivia Grant had been stabbed once in the throat and three times in her chest and abdomen. The wounds were consistent with the incisions in the slip.

Cheryl snapped photographs of a small ruler placed along each of the slices in the blood-drenched fabric and by the thread and sequins before running each item underneath a microscope.

Through a magnifying lens, Cheryl easily confirmed her hunch. Neither the sequins nor the ivory-colored thread came from the slip. They'd come from another garment.

What else had the dead girl been wearing that night?

The shards of the vase, it turned out, were easier to re-assemble than Cheryl had originally thought. Almost all of the pieces had been recovered, and it was immediately evident that none had been used to murder Olivia. The pieces were thicker than the wounds noted in Dr. Waterman's report, which meant the murder weapon was still out there.
Somewhere.

Seeing a single red smear along one edge of a splinter of crystal glass, Cheryl tested for blood.
Positive
. A quick run through the samples of the principals collected by Kitsap County provided a clear and indisputable match to Brianna Connors, the hostess of the party.

The blood on the trim of Brianna's robe was a match to the victim, but it was much too small an amount to have been worn during the violent attack that left Olivia on a slab in the morgue.

The final thing Cheryl did before clocking out was photograph and examine the kimono and the three ties under ultraviolet light. Under her examination, Cheryl noted a red spot on a sleeve of the kimono. She also noted that two of the three ties were without any blood, DNA, or anything. She found a single black fiber on the third one, the one marked with Olivia's saliva, which tested positive for blood.

It was Olivia's, of course.

AT FIRST, BRIANNA CONNORS, and to a lesser degree Drew Marcello, seemed to revel in the swarm of attention that came with the glow of the media's unblinking spotlight. Everyone wanted a sound bite from the not-so-grieving best friend. Overnight, the Kingston High School student had become bigger than Paris-Lindsay-Nicole-Winona-Snookie-Britney and all of those annoying TV Teen Moms combined. It wasn't for a good reason, either.

The hashtag
#WORSEBFFTHANBRIANNA
started trending on Twitter almost immediately after the story hit the news about Brianna's indifference to what had occurred in her bedroom:

“Look,” Brianna told a reporter in a sit-down TV interview that she insisted was her last until the mess sorted itself out, “I get that I'm not all crying about it like you want me to be, but it isn't like I don't have feelings. I don't know what you all want from me. I feel like I'm being attacked for being different. I'm not a lawyer—my dad
is
—but criticizing me for the way I grieve and how I look could be considered a hate crime.”

The story played even better in the UK. Fleet Street in London trumpeted the tale of the British girl murdered in a tawdry sex game in the US as an example of American culture gone wrong. A reporter who knew her way around the Internet better than her American counterparts found an old online journal that Brianna had kept in the dark ages of social networking—on MySpace. Before Facebook, before Instagram and Pinterest, she had posted pictures there, mostly of “hot shirtless” (as if there were any other kind) Abercrombie guys. She called herself Easy-Breezy.

Headline writers in the UK could have kissed her for that moniker, and British tabloids covered the newsstands with the scandal:

EASY-BREEZY SAYS “I WANT YOUR SEX!”

EASY-BREEZY SAYS “I DON'T KNOW HOW MANY LOVERS I'LL HAVE!”

BEDROOM DOOR WIDE OPEN—as his mother Shania insisted— Colton James looked at the articles with girlfriend Hayley on his homebuilt laptop and clicked through the links provided by the
Daily Mail
newspaper in the UK. As available as “Easy-Breezy” proclaimed to be in the articles they'd just read, the high school girl they knew didn't seem so wild. Others at Kingston were far wilder. As they read on the screen capture of the suddenly-deleted MySpace page, they saw that the reference to “I want your sex” was a joke Brianna had made about her father's George Michael CD collection. The “don't know how many lovers” comment so boldly touted on the front page of the paper was pulled out of a sappy post Brianna had made about not knowing how many boyfriends she'd have before she found the one she'd marry. She was only thirteen years old at the time.