Now That She's Gone by Gregg Olsen Read Free Book Online

Spirit Hunters. ”
    â€œI don’t see that happening.”
    â€œSo you’re psychic now too.”
    â€œEveryone is.”
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    Later that day, like a scratched CD that skipped without mercy, the interview with Brenda Nevins’s mother came back to her. She wondered what it was that had piqued the FBI’s interest in her single interview with the serial killer. What were they getting at when they kept trying to get information out of her?
    There wasn’t any.

C HAPTER S IX
    T he stark house in Harper, Washington, was as still as a slack tide. The old waterfront home was perched on a rolling hill overlooking the black waters of Puget Sound. It was after nine. Cody Stark was quiet as always when Kendall put him to bed that evening. The little boy was verbal, but often existed within his own world. He showed affection to his mother and father—there was none of the distance that other parents at the school complained about. Before Steven took the new job, Kendall thought that there was no one luckier than she. Certainly, her son had challenges that were beyond what some other parents could see themselves handling. But in reality, as far as the various shades of autism were concerned, Cody’s problems were light. He didn’t bang his head against the wall. He didn’t let his frustration with the world manifest itself in destructive behavior. He was sweet and compliant. A pleaser.
    Kendall poured herself a glass of sauvignon blanc, a wine that she had enjoyed immensely since Steven left. The only benefit of his departure. He’d always insisted that serious wine drinkers preferred only red. She didn’t like that about him at all. It was like he was judging her for what she liked, as if her choices were not in line with what he wanted his wife to be.
    There were other things on the list too.
    She was too involved in her job.
    Try telling a dead boy’s mother that you don’t have time to take her call.
    She was too concerned with her appearance.
    Only because he made such an issue of it.
    She wasn’t interested in his work.
    What work? He was unemployed half the time. Selling ads for the magazine was a dead-end career and he should have seen it sooner.
    She sipped the glass of wine and settled in at the kitchen table. A couple of raccoons scratched at the window.
    And you should never have started to feed them.
    Kendall hated what she was doing right then. She loved her husband. Steven Stark, she knew, was the love of her life. She didn’t want to start to think of reasons why she shouldn’t love him anymore. She didn’t have the facts. She didn’t know why he was dodging her. It might not have been a dodge after all. It might just be that he was busy in a new job trying to prove himself against some twenty-year-olds in a business that required around-the-clock devotion.
    It was a new world, after all.
    Kendall refused to get up to give the raccoons any marshmallows. Steven was definitely right about that. Wrong about the sauvignon blanc. She loved that wine and it didn’t stain her teeth. Oh, wait a second, maybe he was right? Maybe she was too concerned about her appearance after all.
    She shook her head, sending all those distractions to the far corners of the kitchen, and opened the file. Inside, she found interviews, one conducted by a detective long since gone to a new position in Idaho. She’d always considered Nick Mayberry a good deputy, and later a sergeant—one who peeled back every layer of a case. But this file was woefully thin in content. The interviews, Birdy’s just-added forensic report, and some photographs taken at the scene. Kendall remembered the case. Everyone in Port Orchard did. A genuine mystery lingers forever.
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    Katy Frazier was co-captain of the South Kitsap tennis team—no small feat for a sixteen-year-old. She was a straight-A student. She was pretty with long dark hair and hazel eyes that