Victim Six - Gregg Olsen A Waterman & Stark Thriller

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heard the sound of car doors slamming somewhere nearby. They assumed more competitors were on the way, but they never saw anyone.

      Around 2 P.M., Celesta decided she had to use the bathroom. She loathed squatting in the woods. She told Tulio she was going back in the direction of the van, where she’d seen the remnants of a shed that would provide some kind of privacy.

      “All right,” he said. “Two more loads, and the day is done.”

      “Good, because I’m tired.” Celesta lugged her latest batch of greens over her petite shoulder and disappeared down the same deer trail they had followed into the clearing.

      Even in the midst of a spring or summer’s day with a cloudless sky marred only by the contrails of a jet overhead, the woods of Kitsap County were always blindfold dark. It had been more than eighty years since the region was first logged by lumberjacks culling the forest for income; now it was developers who were clearing land for new tracts of ticky-tacky homes. Quiet. Dark. Secluded. The woods heaved quietly in a darkness that hid the fawn or the old refrigerator that someone had unceremoniously discarded. Patches of soil were so heavy with moisture that a person stepping off the nearly imperceptible pathway would feel his shoes being nearly sucked from his feet.

      The woods were full of dark secrets, which is exactly what had attracted him in the first place. He’d noticed the brush pickers when he’d been out on the hunt several weeks before, when he had an urge to do something. A crammed-full station wagon was parked on the side of the road as close to the edge as possible without going into the ditch. They poured from their vehicle, talking and laughing, as if what they were about to do was some kind of fun adventure.

      He sized up the women.

      Most were small.

      Good.

      Most were thin, reasonably pretty, and young.

      Also good.

      Some didn’t know English—at least not enough to speak it with any real fluency.

      He took it to mean that they were likely illegals.

      Excellent. Who would care if one of those went missing?

      A few days later, he returned to the place where he knew more of them would come. From across the road, he watched the pretty dark-haired girl get out of the van, flanked by three young men.

      A challenge.

      He liked that too.

      Later, when he felt her body go limp in his arms, he smiled.

      Good girl, he thought. Give yourself to me.

      A half hour or more passed, and Tulio wondered why Celesta hadn’t returned. The air had warmed up considerably, and he’d stripped down to a sleeveless T-shirt. He called out for his brothers, and the three of them gathered up their impressive haul of cuttings.

      “She must be waiting back at the van,” he said.

      An hour had elapsed by the time they made it to the clearing.

      “Celesta?”

      No answer.

      Tulio put his bag down and unlocked the Astro van.

      “Where are you?”

      Leon, the youngest, hurried over to the vehicle, waving a pair of gloves and a cutter that were obviously Celesta’s because she’d used pink nail polish to apply her initials and a tiny rendering of a daisy.

      “Look, I found these. She left them there,” he said, indicating an area of gravel near the path into the woods.

      Tulio took the gloves and stared into his brother’s worried eyes. “What happened? This doesn’t make sense. Something’s wrong. Something has happened to Celesta.”

      Chapter Two

      March 30, 10 a.m.

      South Colby, Washington

      “Now, that’s attractive,” she thought.

      Kendall Stark sat in her white Ford SUV in the school parking lot and fumbled in her purse for a toothpick. Nothing. She checked the glove box. Again nada. A sesame seed from a morning bagel had lodged between her front teeth. Coming up empty-handed, she used the corner of one of her Kitsap County sheriff’s detective business cards. Tacky as she knew it was, mission accomplished. She reset her rearview mirror and got out of her car, proceeding toward the front office of South Colby Elementary School. She said hello to Mattie Jonas, the school secretary, who in turn handed her a clipboard with a signup sheet.

      Son’s spring conference, she wrote for the reason of her visit.

      Mattie nodded. “You know the drill. Gun-free zone. No exceptions, even for Kitsap County’s finest.”

      With her mind on the meeting, Kendall had forgotten to remove and store her Glock in her car’s gun safe, something procedure called her to do. While the school secretary looked on, she removed the magazine, set the safety, and put the gun into a metal lockbox that the secretary had provided for that purpose.

      “We don’t worry about you,” Mattie said, locking the box with a key she kept on a chain around her slender wrists. “I mean, you and the other cops are on the side of right, but a rule’s a rule.”

      “Of course,” Kendall said.

      “How’s your mom?”

      Kendall sighed. “Good days and bad days. More bad days lately, I’m afraid.”

      Mattie didn’t press for details. It was clear Kendall didn’t want to go into it. It was a question that came at least once a day. Most people in town knew her mother. Port Orchard was small enough that on any given day, paths would cross with those who shared histories. Mattie had been an assistant in Kendall’s mother’s fifth-grade classroom many years ago. Mrs. Maguire—never Ms.—was a favorite of anyone who had her. Bettina Maguire was a marmalade-colored redhead who taught her pupils with the fervor of a preacher and the kind of self-deprecating humor that made other teachers standoffish and jealous.

      Kendall walked the familiar corridor to Classroom 18 and turned the knob, her heart beating a little faster as she went inside. Lori Bertram’s classroom was a riot of construction-paper cutouts and the smells of all things that seven-year-olds live for: Paste. Sour green-apple candy. Guinea pigs. Lori Bertram had been teaching at South Colby for the past six years, but she still carried the enthusiasm of a first-year teacher. Ms. Bertram was a brunette with pointed features and a splatter of freckles over the bridge of her nose. A charm bracelet with all fifty states, something she used as a teaching tool, jangled whenever she moved her arm.

      “Good afternoon, Ms. Stark,” she said, motioning toward one of those impossibly small chairs. Green eyes sparkled through wireless frames.

      Kendall Stark was there about her son Cody, an autistic boy who was easy to love but a challenge nonetheless. He was blond-haired and blue-eyed, like his mother. His head was like a small pumpkin, so round and perfect. In photographs, he was the ideal. A cherub. The Gerber baby. The image of the child that young women always dreamed would find their way into a perfectly appointed nursery. He was almost one when the doctors first diagnosed the possibility of “delayed development.” If only. At two, the autism was confirmed. The diagnosis, at first, was a torpedo speeding toward every dream Kendall had for her son. It would never change her love, of course, but in her darkest hours she knew that her son was born to suffer in some way. It broke her heart.

      To outsiders, at least, it appeared to take longer for Steven Stark to come to terms with the idea that their son was “different from the others.” An advertising salesman for a hunting and fishing magazine out of Seattle, Steven used to be the kind of man who was all biceps and bravado. Snowboarding. Bungee jumping. Driving fast cars. He was drawn to whatever gave him a challenge, a rush. He had assumed that when he became a father, he’d be able to relive the excitement of the things that didn’t seem to be in the dignified realm of adulthood. He loved his son

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