Page 45 of Water's Edge

Dr. A: Your mother came to accept you.

Me: I don’t know if she ever accepted me. Aunt Ginger said Mom never filled out the paperwork to give me up for adoption. I don’t know if that was on purpose or if she had other reasons for keeping me. She always doted on Hayden, my brother. She expected me to be her replacement when she wasn’t there. Maybe she always planned on abandoning us and thought I would take her place.

Silence.

Me: Aunt Ginger said my mom held me and told me she loved me and would never let anyone hurt me. Another lie. Aunt Ginger was sitting and was about to get up, but I stopped her. I didn’t need to know that Mom was going to give me up but changed her mind. I wanted to know how my biological father, Alex Rader, knew that my mother was having a baby. Me. I wanted to know why he thought I belonged to him. I told her that I’d spent my whole life thinking I was alone. I had no relatives but Mom and Dad and Hayden. I told her I needed to know everything so I can find my mom. And my stepfather’s killer.

Dr. A: Go on.

Me: Aunt Ginger is holding something back. Something big. But I also feel that she cares about me. That’s why she told me that right after my mom had me, a policeman came into the room with flowers.

I don’t need to hear the rest. Leann was lied to just like I had been. Where was her mother during all of this? Someone who got his daughter pregnant is not a one-time offender. He may have been, probably was, molesting her for her whole life. Did her mom know? Was she so money hungry that she turned a blind eye?

I had checked for a criminal history on Jim Truitt and he was clean. Not even a traffic citation. I didn’t see a bunch of alcohol in his house. As far as I know, he wasn’t a drunk or an addict. I’m convinced that Leann’s mom betrayed her, lied to her, just as my mom had done to me my whole life. We share a similar history.

I’m here to get justice for both of us.

Twenty-Three

It’s barely seven in the morning. I sit at my desk making computer inquiries while regretting the whisky from the night before. I am wiped out and didn’t sleep much. I have no doubt that I’ll pay all day for that. I hear Nan down the hall yammering with excitement that the donuts Sheriff Gray brought in include an apple fritter. Her favorite. To bring a dozen donuts without a fritter for Nan was to commit a major offense in an office that deals with homicides and other crimes.

It dawns on me that Nan wields a lot of power in the office. I think the sheriff is afraid of her. She’s the passive-aggressive type who gets even without one being even aware.

Silly me. I thought I’d given you that file.

He didn’t leave a number.

Oh. I thought the apple fritter was mine. I guess I was mistaken.

I turn my attention to the case. Jim Truitt said his daughter was tending bar in Port Townsend. There are more than a dozen bars in Port Townsend—even more in the surrounding area. Lucky for me, I try the Old Whiskey Mill on Water Street only a few calls in.

That’s where Leann worked.

The Old Whiskey Mill started life in the late 1800s as a hotel, the grandest in Port Townsend, at a time when the town was betting on being the terminus for the railroad, a distinction that went to the other side of Puget Sound, Seattle and Tacoma. Several businesses had been tried in the ground floor of the building, but none seemed to draw the money needed to keep it afloat. Then two sisters tried a bar. It was a hit, especially with law enforcement types, and the Old Whiskey Mill was off and running.

I spoke to a bartender who was filling in for Leann and gave him the bad news that she wasn’t returning to work. He was sorry, but he couldn’t tell me anything about her. Next, I talked to the owner, who told me Leann had worked there for only a month. She’d come to them from a coffee shop somewhere. The owner didn’t know which one and she hadn’t filled out a job application.

So how did her father know she was working in a bar if he wasn’t keeping track of her like he claimed?

I pull up more from the criminal database. Turns out, Steve Bohleber has a criminal record out of Indiana. He wasn’t a farmer, unless he farmed marijuana in Indiana, and it’s still illegal there. He did three years in Pendleton, a maximum-security prison in Indiana, for aggravated assault. He attacked a policeman. The policeman went to the hospital with a concussion. Steve went to prison. He was lucky to get prison.

The arresting officers were too kind.

Now he was in the wind. No one, including his parole officer, knew his whereabouts. No one cared. Except me.

Joe Bohleber has never been a farmer, either. He was arrested a couple of times for fraud and money laundering. To my way of thinking, it wasn’t a big leap to see him blackmailing Truitt. With what, exactly, I wasn’t sure.

There is something going on between those two. But what?

I check out Jim Truitt too. Newspaper archives are a great place to look for rich creeps like Truitt. He is barely a blip in thePort TownsendLeader. He was involved in some kind of land scheme over near Fort Flagler Historical State Park. The paper mentioned him as one of the investors. Interestingly, Joe and Steve Bohleber purchased the properties where they had their fishing cabins from a company where Jim Truitt was a partner.

They’ve done business before.

They both lied to me.

Lying to me is a serious mistake.

I also discover a stack of paperwork and get a good start on requesting placement information from Olympia regarding the adoption of Leann’s baby. Jim Truitt is a man with connections. Money. He knows people as well as spirits. He may have found a home for the child himself.

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