“Science project,” he laughed when Kendall once told him that if he didn’t watch it, “the blob you’re growing over there will overtake this office.”
Next door, Kendall’s desk was in order. A framed photo of her husband and son, a ruffled pink and white African violet that defied the odds and never stopped blooming under a banker’s lamp with a green glass shade, and a small Roseville pottery vase that her mother had given her for a pen and pencil holder commanded a pristine work surface. Her notebooks were color coded and filed in alphabetical order. A desk drawer was stocked with PowerBars, green tea, and low-sodium ramen for the days when she was too busy, too absorbed with a case, to leave for a bite.
“Missing brush picker?” Kendall said as she hung her coat on the hook behind the door.
Josh nodded. “Yup. Only in Kitsap.”
Kendall continued looking through a small stack of messages. “What’s the story?”
“Missing since early yesterday. Boyfriend’s here. Let’s chat him up.”
She’d been his favorite thus far. She’d been passive at first, as he commanded her to be.
“Like you’re dead. Okay? No fight. Or I’ll kill you. Just that simple. Easy to understand, right?”
“Please don’t hurt me. Please, I’ll do what you want.”
“You’re a good girl,” he said as he tightened the leather straps around her wrists.
“You’re hurting me!”
“Are you going to keep talking? I told you to shut up.”
“But it hurts.”
He took a spool of duct tape and scraped at it with a pocketknife, searching for the start of the roll.
“More than a thousand uses for this stuff,” he said, finally pulling a long piece. “Bet the makers don’t know about this one.”
Her eyes flooded with tears, and she struggled on the mattress that he’d offered her. Pinpricks in the wall allowed a sprinkling of light to fall over the room, the dank place where she was being held captive.
On the floor next to the mattress were a green blouse, blue jeans, and a brand-new box cutter, still wrapped in its Home Depot cello bag. All ready to go.
Chapter Four
March 30, 1:40 p.m.
Port Orchard
With a jacket over his restaurant uniform, Tulio Pena sat quietly in the secured area adjacent to the detective’s offices, next to a pasty-faced young man holding a large plastic bag marked with his name in large letters. After seven months as a guest of the county jail, the man with the bag was waiting for his mother to take him home. Tulio, nervous and beside himself with worry, tried to make small talk with the just-released inmate.
“My girlfriend’s missing. That’s why I’m here.”
The young man fidgeted. “Bummer. I’m sorry.”
Tulio nodded.
“I’m starting over again.”
“Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
The Kitsap detectives emerged from the hallway.
“Mr. Pena?” Kendall asked.
Tulio jumped to his feet so quickly that it startled the young man on the seat next to him. He dropped his bag.
“I’m Tulio Pena. Please help me.”
Kendall nodded understandingly. “That’s why we’re here. Let’s go somewhere we can talk.”
The trio found space in a small interview room. Kendall offered the young man coffee or a soda, but he declined. He only wanted one thing.
Celesta.
Tulio’s dark, almost-black eyes were bloodshot. It had been almost a full day since his Celesta vanished from the woods. When he first reported her missing, he was told that little could be done for twenty-four hours. It didn’t seem right, but he understood it. He and his brothers scoured the woods the rest of the day and that morning. When twenty-four hours had elapsed, on the dot, he was in the interview room.
“Something has happened to my girlfriend Celesta,” he began.
Kendall reviewed the reporting deputy’s report. “We’re here to help, Mr. Pena. It says she, you, and your brothers were harvesting brush out near Sunnyslope?”
“Sí,” he said, before quickly correcting himself. “Yes.”
“Were you licensed to pick there?” Josh asked. “You legal here?”
Kendall wanted to kick Josh under the table. The question would have to be asked, of course, but not right then and not with an accusatory tone. It had nothing to do with the fact that a young woman was missing. At least, not in any way she could imagine.
“Yes. Yes, we are, and yes, we had permits.” There was a flicker of indignation in the young man’s eyes.
Kendall soothed him, or at least tried to. The last thing the county needed was a complaint that could spiral into a lawsuit.
“I think what my colleague is getting at is, was Celesta familiar with the woods? The area?”
Tulio focused on Kendall. “Oh. Yes. She had been there before. She didn’t get lost. She couldn’t have gotten lost. She made it back to the van. We found her stuff.”
Again Josh pushed. “Your girlfriend and you, did you have a fight?”
Tulio shook his head. “No, never.”
“Was she angry about going out there to pick brush?”
“No. She liked to help. We were sending the money back to her family in El Salvador. Here’s her picture, taken last month. You will put it on TV and in the papers, right?”
He slid a photo across the table.
“She’s very pretty,” Kendall said, looking at the image of a smiling Celesta Delgado. Glossy dark hair. White teeth. Lips that were generous and brown eyes that sparkled. Beguiling eyes, she thought.
“Once we determine if she’s missing, we’ll do a media release. No guarantees that anyone will run her picture,” Josh said. “A dozen people go missing every day. Most come home when they are good and ready to.”
The young man’s eyes pooled. “She’s missing. She’s in trouble.”
The detectives took down Celesta’s description and noted that her brush bag was found just inside the trailhead, heavy with neatly bundled salal.
“You go to work, now,” Josh said, his tone condescending. “We’ll call you at work if we need more information. Understand?”
Tulio stood. His hands trembled a little, and he put them in his jacket pockets, in an attempt to steady himself. “I have a cell phone.”
Kendall looked at Josh, a cold stare to indicate that he had stepped over the line.
“Good,” she said. “Keep it with you. I’ll walk you out.”