Shocking True Story (34 page)

The look on David R's face made it clear he was no dummy. He knew we were attempting to get around the rules. A slight smile formed on his lips.

“Only yes or no,” he said.

“Great, now we're getting somewhere. The name is Jett L. Carter.”

Oddly, the clerk didn't have to look up her name. He seemed to know instantly. He picked at his niblet teeth.

“Never an employee,” he said.

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

“What's it to you?”

“Just want to find out a little information, that's all.”

Valerie smiled at the clerk.

“Miss Carter has applied to be our nanny and we're just running a check on her,” she said. “Can't be too careful.”

The man remained stony. If my wife's warm smile couldn't melt his reserve, then I doubted anything could. “I can't say anything about her. State law, you know.”

Val tried once more. “Let's put it this way, would you hire her to take care of your children? Do you have children, sir?”

“Any other applicants?” he finally asked, giving an answer the only way he could. The guy was by-the-book.

“None we're considering,” she said.

The clerk stared at his computer terminal. “You're not hearing it from me. But I'd run an ad or something. Would be wise.”

♦

A WOMAN IN A WHITE SMOCK with almost blue hair ran out to the car just as we started to pull away. We had seen her in the office, lurking among the file cabinets behind David R., so Val instinctively reached for her purse, in case she had left it on the counter. It was next to her feet on the car floor.

“Folks, I hope I'm not intruding,” the elderly woman said. Light rain fell on her starched, white uniform.

“Can we help you?” I asked.

“I think I could help you.” Her face was lined with years and worry. Her hands were gnarled and grey like the driftwood limbs Taylor and Hayley liked to gather and decorate with wiggly eyes.

“I'm probably out of line talking to you folks about your potential nanny, but no one has ever asked about Jett Carter.”

“Do you know her?” Val asked.

“Can I sit in your car? I'll tell you where to drive.”

Lynette Watson was a semi-retired nurse's aide who had worked at Maplewood since it opened in the mid-1960s. The brick and stucco buildings had been a Catholic girls school in the years before the state purchased it as a foundling home. Mrs. Watson was hired on to work with the babies, many of whom were Hispanic, orphaned when an apple processing plant blew up in an explosion caused by fermenting applesauce in 1968.

“I worked on the floor with those little kids for ten years before some idiot in Olympia decided to turn the facility into a home for troubled kids—
throwaway kids,
they called ‘em. I hated the very idea of it... special needs didn't sound much better, it set them apart. These kids, at least most of them, could have done a lot better if they weren't set apart from the rest of the world.”

She directed us behind a building that had once been the school's steam plant.

“Park here,” she instructed.

I pulled the Honda into a space and turned off the ignition.

“Sad to think of anyone as a
throwaway
anything,” Valerie said as she turned in her seat to face the old lady.

Nurse Watson nodded. “I always thought so. I always saw good and value in every kid that came in through those double doors. From the beginning with all those babies, to the end to those mixed up kids from the other side of the mountains. Even after they sent us the fire starters and the stomach carvers.”

Nurse Watson explained that in the early 1990s, Maplewood dropped another notch lower. For a two-year period, the doors were swung open to offer supervised shelter to children with severe emotional issues. Some of the kids had been abused in the worst ways a human being could conjure; some had been neglected by the cruelly indifferent. All had been through the hellish system called family court and had been sentenced to serve time—a prison sentence—really, at Maplewood.

I didn't know it had been a reformatory and I said so to the blue cotton candy-haired nurse's aide.

“It was only a
corrections institution
—that's what we were supposed to call it—for eighteen months. Jett came to us during that time. She came and stayed. She was lonely. God knew she had some issues. Her mother and sister came a few times. And her father... the poor mixed-up girl never came to terms with what happened to him.”

Mrs. Watson told us that after the state's trial run of using Maplewood as a kid's jail ran its course, most of the kids were shipped off to the boys' and girls' institutions on the west side of the mountains. The move made sense, in many ways. Most of the kids came from the cities and towns along the coast.

“A few petitioned to the state for their kids to stay here at Maplewood. Mrs. Carter was one of those who wanted her daughter to stay right where she was. Jett took it hard, but she told me she understood. I always thought it was because Connie didn't want to see her daughter that often.”

“A mountain range between the two of them suited her just fine, right?”

“Exactly. I had great hope for the girl. When she turned twenty-one and was eligible for release, I was optimistic. For me, the greatest hope came from the fact that her mother and sister were in prison at that time. Hooray! I hate to say it and I'm glad that they didn't kill anyone. I don't wish anyone ill will. But Jett needed to start over. Completely over. You understand? A fresh start. She needed to get out of here. She had a boyfriend at the institution and involvement with him wasn't doing her any good. He was released six months before she was and I was glad. She was a nice kid. As far as a nanny for your kids, you couldn't ask for a better one. There's a gentle heart in that girl.”

Valerie and I could have asked a million questions, but we were too shocked to think of any. The reason there had been so little about Jett in the book I was writing was because no one knew her. No one had seen her since she was eleven. I wondered if Raines knew about her incarceration at Maplewood. What had the girl done to deserve a decade of court-ordered supervision?

I tried to call Raines from my cell phone but we were out of range. It was almost 4 p.m. I knew our girls would be home from school and getting ready for Halloween. God, I almost forgot it was Halloween! I imagined the girls running around the house in the last minute Trick or Treating frenzy. Taylor was going as an
American Idol
contestant, all messed hair and attitude, and Hayley was dressing in a bright green leotard and sweatshirt, a dill pickle—free range, I presumed.

It was Hayley who answered after I went back inside and dialed from the Maplewood office phone.

“Hi, Dad!”

“Hayley, don't tell anyone where we are. I mean
anyone
where we are. Okay?”

I didn't want to alarm Jett. She had kept the secret of her incarceration at Maplewood for a reason, embarrassment probably. I would leave it out of the book.

“Is Jett there?” I asked as casually as I could.

“Yeah, right here. You want to talk to her?”

“No. Just let her know we'll be home soon. Been out taking pictures of the fall foliage.”

“I'm not a tattletale, but Taylor is hogging all of Mom's makeup.”

“You girls share, all right?”

I didn't tell them to stay out of Val's stuff. I didn't want to fight a losing battle over the phone. I promised we'd be home in time to go Trick or Treating that evening. I was certain that after Hayley hung up she trotted down the hall to tell her sister that I said it was her turn with the makeup. I could hear it all the way from Maplewood

“Dad says you're in trouble. Big trouble.”

♦

THE DAY-LONG RAIN HAD SENT FIFTEEN cubic yards of mud and rock over the westbound lanes of the highway across the mountains. It was not a major slide and the traffic inched past it. It did cost us time. At five-thirty, the cell phone once more within range, I called Martin Raines at home. I knew that unless he was at the gym, he'd be there. He was. April put him on the line. I told him what Valerie and I had learned at Maplewood.

“No shit?” he said. “I had no idea.”

I asked if he'd look into Jett's file—if one existed—to see what he could scare up.

“I don't feel good about relying on a source so heavily when they aren't one hundred percent truthful. She's the book's hero, for crying out loud.”

“I thought I was the hero,” he shot back.

I had dug myself in a bad spot. “You are. You are the cop hero. There's always got to be a family hero, too. Like the big brother in
Deadly Score
.”

Raines bought it. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Hey, I'm going in to get my racquetball gear. I'm off tomorrow. I'll look into it.”

I thanked him and told him that if he turned up anything to sit tight. Val and I would detour a bit to get to Timberlake.

Valerie and I stopped at a McDonalds drive-thru where the mountain highway met the interstate. It was six p.m. We'd be home around nine. Thankfully, we had missed the bulk of commuter traffic. I had Chicken McNuggets and put the sauce between my legs, so that I could continue to drive and eat at the same time. Valerie dipped the chicken into the hot mustard.

“Hey, I could learn to like this,” I joked as her hand brushed against me.

“Bet you could. Should have ordered the twelve-piece.”

We laughed. And I drove on to the Edmonds ferry, and on to Port Gamble, wondering how I could have ever doubted her. How I could have ever thought she could have killed anyone. I was a lucky man.

Late Thursday, October 31

OUR HOUSE WAS DARK AND STILL. A single light glowed from the porch as I went to the front door. The happy faces of my daughters' oh-so-perfectly-bland jack-o-lanterns had burned out. Val went around the house to the backyard to get Hedda, who was barking intermittently. I went to the front door where I found a Tupperware bowl filled with a dozen full-sized Hershey bars.
Please take one only! Happy Halloween!
read a card taped to the front of the brimming plastic container. I knew instantly it was Taylor who had made out the card. All of the o's had been fashioned with smiley faces. Taylor had been going through that phase for the past few weeks.

“They should be home by ten. I doubt Jett knows as many of the good neighborhoods as I do. Besides, tomorrow is a school day,” I said when I met Val inside.

A flashing red light indicated two messages on the machine. The first was from Gina, our neighbor.

“
Girls, pick up! Pick up. Cecile's still in makeup and is running a few minutes late. I'm going to give her a hot dog and we'll be right down. See you soon!”

In the background I could hear Cecile's chirp,
“My mom wants all of the candy corn we get!”

The second was from Martin Raines.

“Kever, call me when you get in. I can't find your cell phone number.”

I dialed his home phone and April told me that he was out with their kids Trick or Treating.

“Marty swears it'll be his last year,” she said, though it was clear she doubted it. “I'll have him call you when he gets back.”

“You want me to drive around and look for them?” Val asked when I got off the phone.

I shook my head and lied. “I'm sure they're having a good time, getting the basis for tomorrow's dental expenses. They'll be home soon. Let's sit tight. Jett is all right. Her problems are in the past. She's a friend.”

Gina and Cecile showed up about a half hour later. Cecile was dressed as a witch. She tinted her skin with lime Jell-O and she smelled of it.

“Where are Taylor and Hayley?” Gina asked.

“And Jett?” Cecile added.

“I thought they were with you, Gina.” I said.

Valerie pricked up her ears. She knew something was wrong and I knew that worried look on my wife's face all too well. I was usually the source of it.

Gina made a face. “We were running a little late so I guess they left without us. I thought they'd be back by now.”

I could feel my heart freefall.

“But Cecile
always
goes with the girls,” Val said. “They wouldn't have it any other way. They were looking forward to going with her—and Jett.”

Gina went to the kitchen to fix herself a cup of licorice tea in the microwave. “Yeah, that's what we thought, too. But when we got down here they were already gone.”

Neither Gina nor her daughter seemed alarmed. Cecile turned her pillowcase upside down and dumped its contents. A rainbow of candies spread over the floor.

“I got more than last year!”

Where are our girls? Be calm. Be calm. They are out with a friend.

Val and I said nothing more about our worries, nothing about what we had learned at Maplewood. Gina drank her tea and Val and I took turns answering the door and dispensing the candy from the Tupperware bowl. Each time the bell rang, we hoped our girls would be outside, tricking us by pressing the doorbell instead of coming right in. Every kid in America did that as they came home to the parent that had been stuck at the house passing out treats.

And just before ten, as Cecile and Gina were packing up to leave, the phone rang. It was Martin Raines. I waved goodbye to our neighbors and motioned Val to the phone.

“I got something,” he said. “I don't know how interesting it'll be to you, but it's all I could find. I found it in an incident report under Jett's father's name.”

“Did you know Buzz Carter supposedly jumped off the River Bridge?”

“Yeah. She told me about it. So did Connie.”

“Did you know she was there?”

“Connie?”

“No, Jett.”

My eyes met Valerie's. It was the instant of recognition that something terrible, far worse than I had imagined was happening.

“Go on,” was all I said.

“The man was drunk. God, his blood alcohol was through the roof. A guy—let's see—some mill-head reported that he saw a little girl lead him to the middle of the bridge...and push.”

I was flabbergasted. “What? I'm not sure I heard you right.”

“You heard me. The witness said he thought he saw the little girl push her father off the bridge. She ran off to a waiting car. The witness had been drinking and wasn't sure what he saw. The guy disappeared before investigators could get to him a second time. There were a few other notations that backed up the wife's theory that her husband had been a no-good drunk and her daughter was asleep at the Seahorse Motor Inn where they kept a room. So it was dropped.”