Unspeakable (26 page)

On the parking level, she found her car and unlocked it with a beep. Then she climbed in behind the wheel. “Thanks for waiting,” she said into the phone. “What's going on?”

“I'm at Mike and Cathy's,” he whispered. “I'm in one of the kids' rooms upstairs. Corinne's down at the buffet. . . .”

“Well, thanks for the update,” Olivia said dryly.

“I'm just saying, in case I have to hang up suddenly.”

“Did you talk to her about her little visit to my office building on Thursday night?”

“Yeah, and Corinne says she doesn't know what you're talking about. She doesn't even know where your Seattle office is.”

“She figured out where I worked in Portland, and where I parked my car,” Olivia said. “She can be quite resourceful. Is this why you're calling me now—to tell me that I've got it all wrong about your sweet, unassuming girlfriend?”

“God, no,” he sighed. “I didn't mean—”

“A little over an hour ago, you were telling me that she's a raving lunatic.”

“I'm not siding with her or anything. I just thought you should know it's possible she didn't do what you said she did. Please, babe, this is all coming out so wrong. It's not why I phoned you. . . .”

Olivia felt a little heart-flutter when he called her
babe
. It had always gotten to her when he'd used that term of endearment—especially while making love. She hated that the sound of his voice saying that word still had an effect on her.

“You lost the right to call me
babe
three months ago,” she said evenly.

“I'm sorry, it just slipped out.”

“So—why exactly did you call me?”

“It was awkward after the memorial—what with Corinne in front of the church, watching us like a gargoyle the whole time. We'll be here in Poulsbo until Monday morning, and then we're spending the night in Seattle. Corinne is seeing some friends at four-thirty Monday afternoon. I'm wondering if I could meet with you around five o'clock.”

“I'm sorry, I can't,” Olivia heard herself say. “I have to meet a client at five on Monday.”

“Can't you cancel or rearrange it?” Clay asked.

“No, he's a special client,” she said. “And right now, he needs me a hell of a lot more than you do, Clay. Have a safe trip back to Portland.”

Olivia clicked off before he had a chance to say anything.

In her purse, she found the piece of paper with the phone number on it. She punched in the number, and counted four ringtones before his recorded greeting answered:
“Hi, this is Collin, and I'm sorry I can't pick up right now. So please leave a message after the beep, and hopefully we'll connect later. Thanks for calling!”

He didn't sound like a goofy teenager in the recording. He sounded like the professional actor he was. But the greeting was interrupted by a couple of static breaks. One glance at the phone told her that
Bischoff, Clayton
was trying to call her back.

Olivia ignored him. She waited for the beep, and left a message for Collin Cox: “Hi, this is Olivia Barker. I can see you Monday in my office at five o'clock. Let me know if that works for you. Also, I need to find out if you're friends with someone named Ian who claims to be a cop. He came up and spoke with you after the memorial service this afternoon. Let me know, okay? We can talk about it when we get together. You have my number. Give me a call and let me know if you can make it. Take care, Collin.”

She switched off her phone and stashed it in her purse. Then Olivia sat back and drummed her fingers on the steering wheel.

She desperately wanted a cigarette.

 

 

Inside the idling black Saturn, he lit up a cigarette and watched Olivia Barker across the street.

She emerged from a cheesy little convenience store not far from her office, Madison Val-U Mart. Just outside the glass door, she unwrapped something and tossed the wrapper in the trash. He could now see she'd bought a pack of cigarettes. She took one out and lit it. She stayed under the store awning, but wandered closer to her car in the small lot. It was still raining lightly. She really seemed to be enjoying that cigarette.

He chuckled and took another drag from his Winston. On the seat next to him, he had half a box of popcorn from the ferry ride this afternoon. In the backseat he had an overnight bag. For now, he wasn't putting any of his personal items in his trunk—not until he gave it another thorough cleaning. Those scent dogs at the Seattle ferry terminal the other day had obviously picked up some remnants of the dead Ryan kid. Maybe it was a bit OCD, but he didn't want anything from that kid rubbing off on his stuff.

The overnight bag was there in case he decided to spend the night in Central Washington. He had to make a return trip to Leavenworth before dark so he could finish the job he'd botched the other evening. He figured he might want to grab a shower and some shuteye—after he'd killed the old lady tonight.

Right now, he was focused on someone about fifty years younger. He watched Olivia Barker finally toss the cigarette on the pavement and grind it out with her shoe. She fished the pack out of her purse and went over to the trash can again. She looked like she was about to toss the new pack into the garbage, but hesitated. After a moment, she shoved the cigarettes back in her purse and walked back to her car.

He waited until Olivia's VW turned left onto Madison. Then he slowly pulled out and followed her. Someone cut him off, darting into the space between him and the VW. But he didn't mind. It would be harder for her to spot him now.

She continued down Madison and took a right onto Lake Washington Boulevard. He knew where she was headed—to her father's house on Alder Lane in the Denny-Blaine neighborhood, where a lot of cake-eaters lived. He guessed Walter Barker's classic two-story colonial was worth about 1.5 million. Surrounded by trees and lush gardens, the house was nestled along a narrow, hilly side street and had a majestic view of Lake Washington and the mountains. He'd already scoped the place out this morning while Olivia Barker slept. He'd even taken a little stroll around the garden after her father had left to play golf—at 6:45 on a cool, drizzly October morning.
Another fanatic
. Collin Cox's grandfather was the same way. What was with these retired guys and their golf?

Walter Barker was seventy-one. He'd been a marketing big shot for KOMO-TV before retiring six years ago. The wife, Jane Gallagher Barker, had croaked two years later at age sixty. According to the obit he'd read, they had three kids and two grandchildren at the time. The married one with the kids lived in Pittsburgh. Next in line was Olivia, and then a brother, Rex, several years younger. He was away at college right now.

A few online articles about a shooting at the Portland Wellness Cooperative in July included the wounded therapist's maiden name. Otherwise he might not have made the connection between Olivia Barker the hypnotherapist and Olivia Bischoff the shooting spree survivor. It gave him a better understanding of her background and her vulnerabilities.

What a funny coincidence, the name
Bischoff
had come up in the obituary for the Pelham clan. Earlier today, after the service, he'd watched Olivia talk to that blond guy who looked like an ex-jock. He knew it must have been her husband. And the ditzy blonde in the blue and black polka-dot dress hanging all over him earlier was probably Corinne Beal—and the reason Olivia had moved in with her daddy. He'd read a short article online from
The Oregonian
about how Corinne Beal had wrecked Olivia Bischoff 's car—as well as her marriage.

He followed Olivia until she turned onto Alder Lane. He knew she was going home. There was no need to tail her any farther, though she did intrigue him.

He had the old lady to take care of in Leavenworth.

Even if he could linger here, Olivia Barker would certainly notice if he followed her on that little, winding street. With cars parked along one side, it was almost like a narrow alley.

A fire truck would have a tough time getting down there.

The thought of that made him smile.

T
he
Seattle Times
article she read online was ten years old. Celebrating the fortieth anniversary of the Seattle World's Fair, it featured a
Century 21 Exposition Timeline.
The article was the only search result Google listed for the Wade Grinnell, who had died fifty years ago—the same Wade Grinnell she'd supposedly met through Collin Cox on Thursday night.

She sat in front of her laptop at a little desk space at the end of the long, dark granite countertop in the kitchen. Six years ago, her dad had had the kitchen remodeled: stainless-steel appliances, granite countertops, black-and-white tiles, a butcher-block island that doubled as a breakfast bar, and a big picture window that looked out at the garden and patio. One wall was covered with menus from different restaurants where Olivia's parents had eaten in the thirty-eight years they'd known each other. This little desk area, looking out at the garden, used to be her mother's writing nook. Her mother had gotten to enjoy the new kitchen for only about sixteen months before she'd passed away.

Olivia had R.E.M. on her brother's old boom box in the corner of the counter. Soon her father would be back from the supermarket, and he'd start dinner on the grill outside. Olivia had the house to herself for now. On a yellow legal pad, she'd scribbled down some notes from the timeline snippets she'd read:

The El Mar murders reminded Olivia of the Clutter family killings in Nebraska in 1959, the case Truman Capote wrote about in his book
In Cold Blood
. It was the same sort of bizarre, senseless tragedy—an entire family tied up and executed for less than a hundred dollars.

But Olivia was more concerned about the deadly fire at the hotel, which seemed too similar to the blaze that had killed her in-laws just days ago. Obviously, Collin was concerned about it, too. She remembered back when Collin Cox was in
The Night Whisperer,
there had been stories about a curse that had plagued the film set. One of the main actors had died, and a house they'd used for several scenes had mysteriously burned down.

Olivia didn't believe in curses. Bad luck and bad judgment, yes, but not curses.

Every explanation for what was happening to Collin Cox seemed far-fetched. She didn't know a single therapist who had encountered a patient with multiple personality or dissociative identity disorder. The most famous cases, which had influenced the books and movies
The Three Faces of Eve
and
Sybil
, had since been determined to be faked or fictitious. Some experts regarded Albert DeSalvo, the Boston Strangler, as a true case of multiple personality disorder. But that was up for debate. She only knew a few basic things about dissociative identity disorder. One of them was that people with DID were supposed to be highly susceptible to hypnosis—more than any other clinical patients. Hadn't Collin told her that he'd been to five hypnotists before her—with no results?

In Monday's session, she'd have to ask him about some of the DID symptoms: memory loss, childhood traumas, and frequency of headaches. She'd need to find out if he was ambidextrous, and if he had a history of childhood abuse—sexual or physical.

She didn't think he had dissociative identity disorder, but then, if he did, she was way out of her league. All the other explanations seemed even weirder.

Wade Grinnell had died long before Collin Cox was born. Olivia didn't believe the dead could come back and take possession of the living. And she wasn't much on reincarnation either. She couldn't think of any grounded, logical explanation for what was happening to Collin—which brought her back to her very first assessments of his case, before she'd even known he was Collin Cox. Was it possible he hoped she'd help him come up with some kind of psychological excuse for something terrible he'd done? Was he trying to lay the groundwork for an insanity plea? He'd been associated with several grisly deaths recently. It was possible he'd set fire to Sue and Jerry's house. Who better to provide him with a defense than a relative of the victims? Meanwhile, the police were still looking for clues in his friend Fernando's murder. And though the case seemed closed, there never had been any arrests or convictions for the murders of Collin's mother and her lover.

She didn't want to believe that Collin was a murderer. She hoped to God he wasn't manipulating her that way. But it was quite possible.

After all, he had been a very good actor once.

Olivia stared at the computer screen. The trouble with Google was sometimes it didn't pick up old newspaper and magazine articles unless they'd been archived. If she wanted to read more about Wade Grinnell, she'd have to go to the library and look through microfiche files of old
Seattle Times
and
Seattle Post-Intelligencers
.

She looked up the Seattle Public Library hours for Sunday. The downtown branch was open from noon until six tomorrow.

She heard the front door open and automatically sprung up from her chair, almost tipping it over. She hadn't realized how jumpy she was until just now.

“Pop?” she called, hurrying toward the front of the house.

“I have hunted and gathered,” he announced, stepping into the foyer with two bulging cloth grocery bags. Despite a slight potbelly and his thinning gray hair, her father was still dashing. He dressed sharp and was always very personable. At church and the supermarket, Walt was a regular Beau Brummell with the widows in the over-sixty set.

He'd be grilling chicken breasts and vegetables for dinner tonight. He asked Olivia if she could make her “special wild rice recipe.”

“Pop, it's Rice-A-Roni,” she said, sitting back down in front of her computer. “Sure, I'll fix some. . . .”

Keeping his jacket on, her father stepped outside to the patio and started up the grill. Olivia leaned back in the desk chair. It looked like she had yet another exciting Saturday night ahead of her. At least it was better than last week, when her dad had had a date with one of the widows—and Olivia had stayed at home alone.

Her father stepped back inside and started to unload the groceries. “Is that the same thing you were working on when I left for the store?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, typing in the words “reincarnation, past lives,” for a Google search. “It's research for a new client. You don't believe in reincarnation, do you, Pop?”

“I don't know, sometimes, I guess.” He put some beer in the refrigerator. “The older I get, the more I wonder about stuff like that. Why do you ask? Does this new client think she was Cleopatra or something?”

“It's a young man,” Olivia said. “I hypnotized him, and while he was under, he turned into someone else. His voice, his looks—he just sort of morphed into this person. And it's a real person who has been dead fifty years. By the way, for the record, we aren't having this conversation. . . .”

Her father took a stainless-steel bowl from the cabinet. “I thought it was only when you were a licensed
therapist
that you couldn't talk about your patients.”

He was right. Olivia didn't have any confidentiality requirements as a hypnotist. But in this case, she knew it was more than just hypnotherapy. She was going out on a limb for Collin Cox. Her father didn't know her new client was a onetime movie star. And he shouldn't know. She'd probably said too much to her dad already.

“Sounds like a Bridey Murphy thing,” he mused.

Half-turned in her chair, Olivia squinted at him. “Why does that name sound familiar? Didn't she have something to do with ghosts?”

“Oh, it's right up your alley, sweetie.” At the butcher-block island, he tossed the chicken breasts and some marinade in the bowl. “It happened to this housewife from Colorado, back in the early fifties. Someone hypnotized her to make her remember things from her childhood. . . .”

“Hypnotic regression,” Olivia said.

He nodded. “I'll take your word for it. Anyway, this Colorado woman started talking in an Irish brogue. She said she was Bridey Murphy of County Cork, and she'd died in the 1850s or thereabouts. I think she even did an Irish jig for him—or so the story goes. Well, this woman had never been to Ireland, but as Bridey, she remembered places and people from the old sod way back when. And they found out later that a lot of the stuff she recalled was genuine.”

He started cutting up carrots and zucchini. “All this went on when I was a teenager. It became a big fad. There was a Bridey Murphy book and then a movie. They had songs about her on the hit parade. There were even Bridey Murphy parties where people dressed up as whoever they were in their past life. Folks had séances, and all sorts of crazy things.” He picked up the bowl with the chicken and the plateful of vegetables. He nodded toward the patio and the grill. “Could you get the door for me, sweetie?” he asked.

Olivia stood up and opened the door for him. “So what happened with this Bridey Murphy case?” she asked.

The bowl and plate in his hands, Walt hesitated in the doorway. “I think it turned out to be a hoax or something,” he said. “How long do you need to make your special rice?”

Olivia stared at him for a moment, and then she worked up a smile. “The Rice-A-Roni takes twenty-five minutes, Pop.”

“Well, if you don't mind getting started on it now, that's perfect.”

She nodded. “Will do.”

Olivia left the door ajar after her father stepped out to the patio. She wandered over to the laptop and the notes she'd scribbled on the yellow legal pad about Wade Grinnell, the long-dead teenage murderer from Collin Cox's past life.

Her father's words still echoed in her ears:
“. . . it turned out to be a hoax or something.”

Frowning, Olivia was about to turn away and start the Rice-A-Roni. But something in her notes caught her eye:

She couldn't help wondering if Irene Pollack was still alive.

Mrs. Pollack-Martin's apartment was in the east wing of Riverview Manor. So he picked a vehicle on the west side of the parking lot, near the front. He didn't want the car alarm to wake her up. He just wanted it to distract the young, dumb-looking desk clerk for a few minutes.

It was so quiet and still as he worked his skeleton key in the lock of the Lincoln Town Car. For a few moments, he thought he'd actually break into it without any problem. But then the alarm suddenly went off with a shrill, piercing wail. He saw several lights go on in windows on the west side of the big chalet. He raced for the bushes along the front of the building. He wore a black running suit so he easily blended in with the foliage. Catching his breath, he waited until the desk clerk hurried out with his cell phone. “Yes, yes, I'll see what I can do,” he was saying.

While the clerk headed for the Town Car with its lights blinking, the man ducked into the front lobby. He heard several phone lines ringing as he hurried for the stairwell. Outside, the siren-like wail of the car alarm became an incessant
beep-beep-beep
. But it seemed to fade as he made his way up the steps in the cinder-block stairwell.

The old lady lived four flights up, so he took his time. He'd come with nothing—except a knife and his skeleton keys. From the other night, he already knew the layout of her apartment and the locks on her door. Even if she had the door double-locked, breaking in would be a cinch. He'd decided to suffocate her with a pillow. His knee on her chest would keep her from moving, and cut off the breathing, too. He needed to make sure it looked like she'd died in her sleep. There couldn't be any sign of a break-in. He'd been hiding in the bushes minutes ago, and now made a mental note to take off his shoes once he got into her apartment.

At the top of the stairs, he pulled a pair of surgical gloves from his pocket and put them on. Stepping into the fourth-floor corridor, he listened for the car alarm, but couldn't hear it anymore. Someone down the hall had a TV on. Otherwise, it was deathly quiet. He skulked down the hallway to unit 405, and took out his skeleton keys. They hadn't changed the lock, which meant if she'd reported a break-in Thursday night, no one had really taken her seriously. He found the same key he'd used last time, and unlocked the door.

Inside the darkened apartment, he hesitated and looked around for the cat. It was nowhere in sight. He figured the old lady might sleep with it. Gently closing the door behind him, he slipped off his shoes and crept toward the bedroom. The door was closed. He slowly turned the knob, and the door squeaked on its hinges as he opened it. A streetlight from outside filtered through the sheer curtain, enough for him to see the full-size bed.

“Shit,” he hissed.

It was neatly made—and empty.

He checked the bathroom, just in case she was hiding. No sign of her, no sign of the damn cat either.

Returning to the living room, he switched on the light.

On her desk, he noticed an old answering machine by her telephone. The message light was blinking. He pressed the
Play Messages
button.
“You have five messages!”
the automated voice announced.
“Tuesday, nine-fifty . . .”

He clicked on
Next,
and got the automated voice again:
“Wednesday, five-forty-two . . .”

There was a beep, cutting him off. It meant she must have picked up when he was in the middle of leaving his message.

The automated voice came on once more:
“Thursday, ten-thirteen . . .”

There was a beep, then:
“Friday, one twenty-two . . .”

A beep cut her off, too.

The last message was yesterday evening:
“Friday, six-forty-one . . .”

Mrs. Pollack-Martin must have picked up the phone at that point, too, because there was another beep.

“End of messages!”
announced the automated voice.

Obviously, the smart old biddy had taken Collin Cox's advice and gotten out of town this morning. It sounded like she didn't even want her friend snooping around in the apartment on the off-chance that she might get mistaken for her.

With a little investigating, he could probably hunt her down. But it was quite apparent she didn't want to make any trouble. She just wanted to disappear. She probably didn't even know why her life was on the line. Certainly, that chubby girl and the Latino kid had been clueless as to why they'd had to die.

Right up to their last breaths, they'd had no idea.

He switched off the light, put his shoes back on, and locked the door after himself. He'd avoid the front desk and climb out a window on the first floor.

He told himself the old lady would come back eventually.

Then so would he.