Victim Six. Gregg Olsen
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Tulio came in and saw us. He thought something was going on.”
“But nothing was, right?”
“Right, I mean, I wish. But no, nothing. He just lit into her, saying, ‘If I ever catch you touching another man, I’ll do what they do to whores back in El Salvador!’”
“And what did you take that to mean?” she said.
“I don’t know exactly. I went online and looked up what they do to cheats in El Salvador, and I found something about how a woman can go to prison for six years if she gets caught cheating on her husband.”
“But Tulio and Celesta weren’t married.”
His break over, Scott got up to return to the kitchen. “They acted like it. Or at least he did.”
Maria, who turned out to be Maryanne Jenner, a student at Olympic College in Bremerton, rang up the bill at the cash register by the front door. The recorded mariachi music blared from the bar, and Kendall had to strain to hear the young woman.
“I hope you don’t put much faith in what Scott says,” she said. “He’s had a thing for Celesta, and she wouldn’t give him two seconds of an hour.”
“Was Tulio the jealous type?”
“Look,” the young woman said, “I’ve never seen it. Not from him. Others, yeah.” She handed her the change, and Kendall pushed it back to her.
“Thanks. One more thing, Detective.”
“What’s that?
“I think she’s dead too. She’d never just run off. Celesta wasn’t that kind of girl.”
All cops know that if Oscars were handed out to workers in any profession other than moviemaking, it would be to homicide detectives, who must approach suspects with an unyielding poker face, or ratchet up sincerity to win over those on the brink, or feign anger to force a meltdown of defenses. Kendall had liked Tulio Pena and believed him. She did not believe or like Scott Sawyer, but it was her duty to follow up on what he had said.
It wasn’t going to be a good cop/bad cop scenario when Kendall and Josh met with Tulio for a follow-up interview based on the information provided by Scott Sawyer and Maryanne Jenner at the Azteca Restaurant. Josh remained disinterested in the case, sure that Celesta had ditched her boyfriend for greener pastures.
Or at least where she didn’t have to quite literally work greener pastures.
Kendall told Tulio that they found some evidence and he needed to come down as soon as possible. He was in the little room within thirty-five minutes of her call, still wearing the white Mexican wedding shirt that was his restaurant uniform.
“Tell us what you did with Celesta,” Kendall said, looking dead-eyed at Tulio as they sat across from one another in a small, windowless interrogation room in the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office.
“What I did with her?”
Kendall forced all her emotions to flatline. “Yes. Did you fight?”
“I don’t know what you are saying.”
“Did you tell someone that you would make her pay if she ever left you for another man?”
“She would never.”
Josh was snapped back into the moment by the adrenaline coming from across the table. “We have a witness who says so.”
Tulio was caught completely off guard. He pushed back his chair. “Who? Your witness is a liar!”
“Look,” Kendall said, finding her way back into the interview, “we have a good idea what happened. You argued in the woods, didn’t you. She told you she wanted to leave you, correct?”
“She never.”
“Did you beat her? Did you choke her?”
His eyes were filling with tears. “I love her.” The compact man across from the detectives shrunk before her eyes. “No. I did not.”
Josh jabbed an accusing finger at him. “What did you and your brothers do with her body?”
By then Tulio had stood up. “We did nothing.”
“It is only a matter of time,” Josh said. “We will find out what you’ve done with her.”
Kendall saw genuine emotion in Tulio’s eyes, and her instinct was to tell him that everything would be all right. That they’d find her. That they didn’t really think he killed her. Tulio got up and went toward the doorway, stopping before passing through.
“You don’t believe me. But I am not lying.”
Kendall felt a twinge of shame as Tulio made his way out of the building. She did believe him, but there was nothing else to go on. Something had happened to the young woman in the woods near Sunnyslope.
For the next two days an angry and confused Tulio did what he’d been told: he waited. He and his brothers returned to Sunnyslope and yelled out Celesta’s name. They called the police a couple times a day, but got the same response from the deputy who’d gone out to see them following that first call. So Tulio did what he’d seen others do in cases in which the police stonewalled.
He called the newspaper.
And while Tulio was seeking answers, the man who had them kicked back and enjoyed what made Washington such a lovely place in the spring.
Never too hot.
Never too cool.
He did all of the things that other men did. He drove to work. Drank beer. Barbecued. Went out on his boat in Puget Sound. Hauled in crab pots brimming with Dungeness beauties. He even took his boat up to Hood Canal during the short-lived shrimp season. He considered heading toward the Theler Wetlands in Belfair, where he’d dumped his victim, but he thought better of it.
Mostly, however, he reveled in what he’d done and what he’d do next. He knew the smartest killer would never kill in his own backyard. He likened it to how a dog wouldn’t defecate in his own kennel. How a drunk tries his best to get to a toilet rather than vomit anywhere where cleanup would be required. A smart killer doesn’t discard a victim too close to home. He’d researched what had been the downfall of others who’d aspired to the kind of greatness that he did. He wasn’t sick, just clever. The others hadn’t refined the rules as he had.
He wrote them down on a scrap of paper in his office at the shipyard.
Never kill someone who will be missed.
Never tell anyone.
Never kill in close proximity to another kill.
Never kill someone with a child.
Never kill someone in your family.
As he contemplated his next move, the man with the sharp blade knew that at least one of his rules would be violated, but he carelessly dismissed it. Clever as he was, he felt that set of laws he’d adopted served a mighty purpose.
They kept others in line.
Chapter Nine
April 3, 9 a.m.
Port Orchard
At twenty-four, Serenity Hutchins knew that her return to Port Orchard to work on the city’s weekly newspaper, the Lighthouse, was the necessary first step in her media career. A stepping-stone sunk into familiar ground. It wasn’t about being a failure when she wasn’t hired by a major Northwest daily. Starting at the Lighthouse was merely the best she could do for now, especially in an industry floundering in a failing economy. She’d come home, but she was not the same person who had graduated from South Kitsap High. She was no longer the girl who’d squandered her high school years dating a football player who’d claimed that she’d be his bride once he turned pro.
Which,