Page 172 of Everything She Feared

“It never went smoothly,” Pierce said.

“We were one step away from her, but reality is more complicated than the movies,” Benton said. “What’re your thoughts on your first homicide?”

“You learn. About investigations. About people,” Pierce said. “How is Elizabeth doing, Carl?”

He smiled. “She’s just started therapy with a new drug that has a seventy percent survival rate. We have hope,” he said. “And you? You’ve got plans.”

“We’re going to Arizona next month to see family, join in some celebrations and ceremonies. Give my son a chance to show off his new drum.”

Pierce showed Benton a picture of Ethan with his drum.

“Very nice,” Benton said. “Very cool.”

One afternoon, in the months that followed, Ryan Gardner drove his mom and dad into the countryside at the edge of Hartford, Connecticut.

They stopped at a small cemetery in a well-kept churchyard, shaded with stands of red maple and black birch trees.

They walked along the soft grass to a new stone that was inscribed:

Carrie Arleen Gardner

Feb. 21, 1973–1995

Eternally loved daughter and sister

Ryan’s mom lowered herself and lovingly brushed dried leaves from the base. They stood there listening to the birdsong as butterflies flitted among the bluebells and wild geraniums that bordered the grounds. A long silence passed until Ryan’s mother broke it.

“She would’ve had her own family and a wonderful life. But we finally have her home with us.”

Ryan put an arm around his mother.

She’d never been the same after losing Carrie, but today he saw a small light flicker in her, soothing an unending aching.

His father looked like a man who had been repeatedly broken and reassembled. But he was going faithfully to AA and Mom had invited him to move back home. Standing at Carrie’s grave, Ryan’s dad took his mom’s hand, and it warmed him.

Ryan shut his eyes and he was with Carrie inside the photo booth at the Westfarms mall as she hugged him and they laughed so hard.

We’re all together again. We’re going to make it.

Across the country, there were similar moments at cemeteries in Boston, Baltimore, Denver and beyond to Manchester in the United Kingdom. In each case, after the recovered remains of Frank and Lydia Worrell, Willow Eve Walker, Brent Porter, and Sharon Lance and Jeremy Dunster had been returned, their respective families and friends had gathered to remember them.

With the case drawing attention, the family and friends of Anna Shaw also held a candlelight memorial service to honor her memory.

But in a remote corner of Montana, one death went unmourned.

By arrangement through King County, Magda’s remains were returned to officials in Big Sweet Water for internment. Herman Vryker’s remains had been returned to his family in Idaho after his suicide years ago. But his uncle refused Magda’s remains for burial next to Herman in Hayden Lake. As a result, authorities in Montana thought it best if Magda were buried alongside her adoptive parents, Nelson and Scarlett Kurtz, in Big Sweet Water’s cemetery.

But the plan outraged locals, who didn’t want the reviled Magda resting near their loved ones, nor the notoriety that would surely accompany it.

Magda’s remains were incinerated; no stone or marker was erected.

She’d left this world the way she’d come into it, with no one knowing who she truly was.

Now that Ryan had found Carrie, now that he’d tracked down Magda, he had the ending he’d sought for so many years.

He returned to Seattle, where he set out to write the book encompassing the horror, the anguish, the memories, hope and love that he, and the others, lived with every day.

Central to the story were Sara, Katie and Marjorie. Like him, they were victims, too.

---