Beneath Her Skin by Gregg Olsen (ebook reader for manga txt) 📗

Colton thought a moment before answering. There was always a risk in telling Starla something. Information was her currency. Gossip. Truth. Whatever she could use, she did. She was, Colton knew, an info-parasite.

“Messed up, maybe,” he said. “But not half as much as the SOB who was sending her those taunting emails.”

He wanted to tell her that the sick SOB who sent them was her mom’s boyfriend, but he didn’t.

“Wow,” she said, her eyes no longer as large, but shuttered a little as if she were concentrating on something important. Or as if she were trying to narrow her focus on Colton to see just what it was that he knew. “That’s totally scary.”

Colton brushed past her. “Yeah.” He didn’t look back at her anime eyes. He just went to class, letting Starla think about what he’d found on her dead friend’s hard drive.

Moira Windsor ate a couple of mint-flavor Tums she had fished out of the Paradise Bay house’s medicine cabinet. She had eaten too much. Too fast. She heard the ping of a new email being delivered and quickly returned to her computer.

From: S. Osteen

To: Moira Windsor

RE: Farm to table article

Ms. Windsor, I got your email about the farm-to-table story you’re doing. I’d be glad to assist you in any way that I can. I see buying local food as a key to our future longevity on this planet. Please feel free to call me or email me if you’d like to meet. I live near the Bremerton Airport.

Moira picked up her phone and tapped out the telephone number provided. After a few pleasantries and some confirmation about what she wanted, Savannah Osteen invited her to come over.

“When can I come? I’m kind of on deadline.”

“Anytime,” Savannah said. “I work out of my home.”

Moira pounced. “How about today?”

Savannah paused, thinking it over. “Today’s fine,” she said.

“How about now? I’m not doing anything and I can be there in half an hour. I was thinking it would be a nice day for a drive.”

“Partly sunny days like this are a treasure this time of year,” Savannah said. “Sure, come on over.”

She provided directions and the address, and Moira was out the door.

About the time the Port Gamble High School students were looking for their second latte of the day, pathologist assistant Terry Morris made a run to the Albertson’s store on Mile Hill Road for maple bars, because he loved those better than anything and could easily eat two on his morning drive to the Kitsap County Morgue. He didn’t care how sticky his fingers got, because he could just lick them clean in the parking lot. Who cared if anyone saw him? He wasn’t a people person, which is why he selected a career in the coroner’s office. He’d figured he might be a dead-people people person.

That sticky, sweet maple bar run took longer than he’d planned. Terry wasn’t good at planning, period. He wasn’t really good at being the pathologist’s assistant either, but he’d been hired and was on three-month probation. He was already getting the vibe from Dr. Waterman that he wasn’t exactly winning her over.

He tossed his greasy bakery bag into the trash by the morgue’s back door and looked inside through the window.

Good, Dr. Waterman wasn’t in there hacking away through the first autopsy of the day.

Terry was late for the autopsy of a burn victim from a house fire in Bremerton. But not too late, he thought, since it hadn’t started.

He was glad he had those maple bars. Hanging around a smelly corpse might kill his appetite for lunch.

He went upstairs, where Dr. Waterman and the county office administrator were conferring about something in the kitchen. Terry scurried past to put away his things, wiping his hands on his trousers along the way. He hoped she didn’t notice he was late.

But she did.

“Glad you made it into work today,” Dr. Waterman called out from the kitchen.

“Car trouble,” he lied.

“I have some things bagged and ready for shipping to the state crime lab,” she said. “Please get them processed and meet me downstairs in the autopsy suite. Everything’s on my desk. Let me know if you have problems managing that, all right?”

What a hag, he thought, though he didn’t say it out loud.

“No problem, Doctor,” he said, thinking that a real doctor would be helping living people, not literally picking their brains. But, hey, that was just him.

He found four bags labeled with the case information for Robin Ramstad, a gunshot victim found in a wooded area outside of Port Orchard. The incident was before his time, which was just fine with him. Terry didn’t know much about it, and, frankly, didn’t care.

He started boxing up the evidence for shipping when Dr. Waterman called out again.

“Heading downstairs,” she said. “See you there when you’re done.”

Terry scowled inwardly. He hated how passive-aggressive she was. She was always telling him what to do. She was so bossy.

It didn’t occur to him that she was bossy because she actually was his boss.

“Be right there,” he said, shoving a fifth bag into the box, before sealing it with strapping tape and signing the chain-of-custody paperwork.

He rushed downstairs, his hands still sticky and his annoyance still in full force.

What escaped him was that the fifth item, a Ziploc bag containing a pregnancy test wand, had nothing to do with Robin Ramstad.

Chapter Forty

There was no getting around it. Starla Larsen wanted everyone out of her way. She practically stiff-armed the kids in the hall as she rummaged in her hobo for her cell phone. The look of determination and pure venom in the cheerleader’s eyes would have made a two-year-old cry for her mother. Teenage girls at Kingston High School? Pretty much the same result. Starla was just that scary right then as she hurried out the door and over to a hedge of evergreens near the bridge that served as the school’s entryway. Her heels stuck in the mud, and that only