Page 69 of Snow Creek

“Murder–suicide. Of the ilk we’d never could have imagined.”

Thoughts of what I’d seen start to tighten my throat.

“You okay?” he asks.

“I don’t know. I really don’t. I go there to find Ida’s killer, so hopeful about that. So wanted to for her children and sister. Then… then this.”

“We’ll get Merritt Wheaton.”

I glance at the rearview mirror.

I am crying.

“You need to come back here,” he orders.

“I can do this.”

“It’s not that, Megan. There’s someone here to see you. A woman wants to talk to you about her missing daughter. Thinks you can help. And only you. She specifically said she wanted the detective on TV.”

“I’ll stay here and wait. Sounds like another fame seeker.”

“A fan, maybe,” he teases me, trying to bring me out of the darkness of my discovery. “But a serious one. Deputies will be there…” He pauses and calls out to Nan. “When will those two be there?”

“Ten minutes,” she says.

He repeats it, forgetting that Nan could work part-time as a foghorn.

“Come on back, Detective,” he says one more time.

I promise I’ll return as soon as the scene is secure. I look out as I put the car in gear. It’s beautiful here. I can hear the water of Snow Creek as it careens down from the mountains to Port Townsend Bay. I think of how I’d dreamed of a big case as I waded through the property crimes that marked my routine. I’d wanted more than anything to make something so very wrong, right. And now this. In the mostly undisturbed magnificence of the Pacific Northwest is a spate of murders, dark and ugly as any could imagine.

Be careful for what you ask.

I drive back to the house and wait for the deputies to arrive.

My car window is open halfway, and it lets in the summer air, scented with spruce, fir and blackberries. I lower it all the way. Next, I push the buttons that roll down the passenger’s side, and the two windows in the back. I want air to pass over me. I want it to clean me. To take away the residue of the work that I do. It isn’t about the way the house or Amy and Regina smelled. It is the idea of how murder in its various forms clings to people. For the rest of their lives. I’ve known this since I was a teenager.

I know it from the job I do.

My hands shake a little. This is not good, I think. Not good at all. Listening to the tapes, dealing with the Wheaton family, and now the Torrances’ murder–suicide. So much in such a little time. Maybe too much? Maybe I do have a limit.

I turn onto the main road and head to the office, hoping against hope that the woman will be brief, and the lab results will be ready.

Thirty-Two

Laurna Volkmann is waiting by the front desk. She’s in her forties, slender, with coral nails and matching lipstick. Her hair is blond and shoulder length. She’s wearing a pale pink sweater and white pants.

It doesn’t take but a beat before she’s on me.

“Detective Carpenter,” she says. “I saw you on the news.”

I nod.

“I also saw my niece.”

Right away, almost without warning, she starts to break down. I lead her to the same room where I interviewed Ruth Turner. She’s already smeared her makeup by the time we get there. I push a tissue box in her direction. She takes one, then another, and dabs at her eyes, trying her best to keep the morning’s work intact.

Laurna opens her mouth and her words come at me. Each is delivered on its own, a loose chain of what happened to her sister’s family.

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