She thought she heard a noise and turned back into the hallway. There were several closed doors coming off it, and one of them had a child’s handwritten sign taped to it, with big blocky letters warning, ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK. Both cute and disturbing, risk being such a weighted word.
Kate knocked on the door. “Hello?” When there was no answer, she pushed it open and entered a child’s bedroom. Everything about it was too young for a fourteen-year-old: the walls were pink; the rug had a clown face on it; there were rainbow stickers on the bureau; there was a Little Mermaid hand puppet. On the wall Maddie’s name was spelled out in construction-paper cutouts. M-A-D-D-I-E.
Kate crossed the toy-cluttered floor and stood in front of the bureau, on top of which stood a Hello Kitty jewelry box stuffed with silver crosses and rosary beads. On the floor at her feet were dozens of mutilated plushies, their fluffy ears torn off and tufts of fur missing. The four-poster bed was the scariest of all—there were four men’s neckties tied to each post. She reached out to touch one, the twisted fabric stiff with sweat from little wrists and little ankles. Her heart leapt into her throat.
Kate fumbled with her phone and dialed Ira’s number, desperately wanting his advice, but couldn’t get any signal. She hurried out of the room and headed down the hallway toward the kitchen, hoping to get better reception. As she turned the corner, she slipped on something slick on the floor and landed flat on her back, the phone tumbling out of her hand. She hit her head and bit her tongue, warm blood pooling in her mouth.
She lay for a stunned instant, blinking up at the ceiling. That was odd. The kitchen ceiling was spattered with spaghetti sauce. She struggled to sit up, but her hands kept slipping in something. She finally wobbled to her feet and retrieved her phone, which had landed next to the kitchen island. She spotted an overturned box of Cheerios on the floor. There were smears of blood on the counters. There were bloody handprints on the fridge. Beyond the kitchen island was a widening pool of blood. She saw a skinny bruised arm and a curled hand, the fingers pale as petals.
Nelly lay dead in a pool of blood, her eyes open and unseeing. Her nose was broken. Some of her teeth were missing. There was a bloody hammer next to her head. She wore a bloodstained turquoise tank top and drainpipe jeans, and her bare feet were slick with blood. You could see where she’d tried to run away: crimson footprints zigzagged across the kitchen floor.
The room began to spin. Kate bolted out of the house and locked herself inside her car, where she dialed 911 with fumbling fingers. Panic took over. All she could see was Nelly’s face.
38
DETECTIVE RAMSEY JOHNSON WAS a compact man with a deep voice and an assertive handshake. He asked Kate a bunch of questions, and she told him about the tire tracks in the snow, the open front door, and the restraints on Maddie’s bed. He jotted it all down in a notebook full of cramped, indecipherable writing.
They stood talking inside the living room, while a team of officers trekked throughout the rest of the house, collecting evidence. The Wilamette PD had put out a BOLO for Derrick Ward’s pickup truck. Paramedics had arrived and pronounced Nelly dead. They were waiting around for the medical examiner to show up before they transported the body to the morgue.
“We’ll need your clothes for blood analysis,” Detective Johnson told her.
Kate was taken aback. “Everything?”
“Coat. Boots. The works.”
Adrenaline flooded Kate’s veins as the shock receded. The back of her winter coat was covered in dried blood. So were the soles of her boots. She’d never wear her navy-blue skirt again. “Okay,” she said reluctantly. “I have trainers and sweats in the car.”
“Hold on. Santos?” The detective waved a female officer over. “We’re ready for you now.”
Officer Maria Santos was on the short side, with a barrel chest and a boyish face. She had a no-nonsense demeanor and got straight to the point. “Stand over there, please. Turn around. Hold it.” She snapped pictures of Kate in her bloody outfit, then went to fetch the sweats and Nikes from the trunk of Kate’s car. When she returned, Santos told Kate to change in the den. “Just don’t touch anything.”
The den was full of Derrick Ward’s high school football trophies and overstuffed Naugahyde furniture. Officer Santos handed Kate a bunch of alcohol wipes to get rid of the remaining blood on her hands and held out a trashbag for Kate to deposit her stained clothing. Kate put on her sweats and trainers, while Santos twisted the bag shut and filled out a chain-of-custody form.
“Can I go now?” Kate asked with clammy anxiety.
“First, you have to walk us through what happened one more time.”
They went over her movements on entering the house, while Detective Johnson drew diagrams and took copious notes, and Officer Santos snapped pictures of the living room, the hallway, and Maddie’s bedroom. Kate pointed out where she’d fallen on the kitchen floor and was appalled to see the bloody snow angel she’d left behind.
“Can I go now?” she pleaded, trying not to look desperate.
The detective checked his notes. “We’ll call you if we have any questions.”
She thanked the female officer on the way out, but Officer Santos nodded indifferently, as if she’d already forgotten who Kate was.
Outside, the front yard was cordoned off with yellow crime-scene tape. Kate counted three or four officers spread out across the snow, documenting tire tracks and footprints, leaving little orange evidence flags in their wake. As she approached her car, the medical examiner’s van drew up and Quade Pickler got out.
“Hello again,” Pickler said, striding toward her, his breath fogging the air. “I heard you found the body?”
Kate nodded. “They already took my statement. I was just about to leave.”
He tapped a cigarette out of the pack and offered her one. “Smoke?”
“Thanks.” She took it, and he lit it for her, then he lit one for himself.
“These’ll kill ya.”
“Right.” She didn’t like him.
They stood together on the sidewalk, exhaling streams of smoke. Once you got past those judgmental eyes, Pickler was kind of handsome in a bland sort of way. In his late fifties, he had short, tousled gray hair that forked out in different directions, a square jaw, and a goatee. He had the same peppery smell as her dad. Old Spice.
“Why don’t you believe Palmer Dyson?” she asked. “About Susie Gafford?”
He grinned. “You cut a wide path through the bullshit.”
“Well? Aren’t you concerned? What if you were wrong?”
Pickler stared steadily down at her, nostrils flaring. “You can’t argue with the facts. I performed the autopsy myself. Victims of asphyxiation will often bite their tongues. They’ll scratch their own necks and faces in an attempt to break free. They’ll have defensive wounds on their hands and arms from fending off the perp. Even a little girl will put up the fight of her life, if you cut off her air supply. We didn’t find any defensive wounds, no trace beneath the nails. She didn’t scratch, bite or claw at an attacker.”
He paused to inhale the nicotine deep into his lungs. “After she went missing, we scoured the area for miles. Eventually the dogs started barking at an abandoned well shaft—some of the boards covering it were broken in. Local and state police showed up, fire trucks, ambulances. We took turns trying to reach her but it was a tight space. We finally lowered a camera into the shaft, and you could see her little braids and her dinosaur-print shirt on the monitor. She was all twisted up at the bottom of the well. We were hoping for a happy ending. But some things aren’t meant to be.”