Copyright © 2010 Gregg Olsen

Exact date and time unknown

Somewhere in rural Washington State

“Quiet, bitch,” he said. “Be a good girl and do as I say.”

His words came at her with the smell of sweat and motor oil. They were delivered in a strangely calm, almost soothing, cadence.

The young woman was terrified, her body, her very presence, shrinking under his power.

“Don’t!” she said, the words falling from her trembling lips.

“Good girl,” he repeated.

Tears rolled. A coppery flavor filled her mouth. It was as if she tasted spare change, yet her mouth was empty. She was bleeding where he had struck her.

And her pleas for help were called out only in her head, God, help me!

No answer. Just a slow fade. A curtain pulled. A moon eclipsed. Then absolutely nothing at all.

That was before. Just how long ago, she couldn’t be sure. Her memories were a mosaic. They came to her, not the seamless movie reel she had imagined people saw in their mind’s eye when their final moments came and their life flashed before their eyes, but in tiny shards and splinters: Her high school graduation. How she and her best friend Danita had bought a bottle of screw-top wine from a mini-mart near the Tacoma Dome, where the ceremonies were held. They’d guzzled it in Danita’s old car. Real tough, she’d thought. The only bad thing she’d ever done in a childhood of helping her mother raise her siblings, making solid-B grades, and working part-time jobs when she could fit them in between her household chores.

What did I do to deserve this? she asked herself in a blip of lucidity.

Her mind jumped to how her mother had sat her, her brother, and her sister in a neat row on the old floral davenport that faced the relic that was their TV. Mom snapped off a soap opera and fought back tears. The other kids were younger, but she knew right away before she opened her mouth what this little family meeting was about.

“Your papa and I…”

Another splinter drove into her. She recalled how she’d stolen a handful of candy corn from a bin in the produce section in the market when she was seven. She never told anyone that she’d done so, but to that very day the sight of the triangular orange, yellow, and white Halloween confection made her stomach churn with guilt. She never stole anything again, never broke any law. One time when she was stopped by a state trooper, she cried because she thought she’d been speeding and was going to get a ticket. Instead, the affable cop with a soup strainer of a mustache told her that her taillight was out, flashed a smile, and waved her on to the nearest repair shop.

“Need to be safe,” he said. “Have a daughter of my own and wouldn’t want her driving with a winking tail light.”

Some thoughts materialized as if underscored by the divine, reminding her not to steal, that parents don’t always stay together, that there are good men out there too. Some were more random. Things that came to her that felt like filler, a recap of moments that had never been important. She lost her car keys the week before. She threw up on a merry-go-round when she was four. She hated ravioli from the can and could remember the slap she got from her aunt when she told her so at the dinner table.

Shutting her eyes did nothing. The images still bombarded her.

Stop, she thought. Think. Think. You don’t want to die. Not here, not in this place.

The man on the other side of the wall that separated them had his own flood of recollections. He steadied himself by leaning against the small doorway. The rumble of an old refrigerator’s ice machine soothed him like one of those cheap motels with Magic Fingers attached to the bed frame. Drop in a quarter, ride the pulsating massage. Feel good. He thought of her begging for mercy.

“Don’t do this. You don’t want to do this!”

But he did want to. So very, very much.

He remembered how, after that, everything had been about the killing.

Even when he’d watch TV and a potato chip commercial would come on, he’d rewrite the familiar tagline in his head: Nobody can kill just one.

In the shadows, the young woman was growing a little stronger, a touch more coherent. She felt the rumbling of something outside the space that held her prisoner. She was on her stomach. Her hands had been bound by tape. Her feet too. She realized that she was breathing hard. Fast, out of fear. She told herself to slow down. She didn’t want to pass out. Not like before.

She remembered his hand reaching around her as he held her from behind. He’d had what looked like a dirty T-shirt balled up in his fist. At that moment she had known she was probably going to die.

He had pinched her neck and pressed the fetid cloth to her mouth and nose. Tequila? Cleaning fluid? Acetone? She felt the wooziness that comes with too much to drink and maybe too little sleep. She felt her knees starting to bend, although she commanded them to stay locked. The world around her started to grow faint. She couldn’t even hear his breathing, at once so labored and hot against the back of her neck.

I don’t want to die. Why are you doing this to me? Who… what are you?

Of course, no words came from her bruised and bloodied lips. Her interior monologue was screamed through the fear in her eyes only. She was falling. The lights were going out.

Help me. Please, someone.

Then nothing.

Her last thoughts were the darkest that had ever gone through her mind.

I hope he only rapes me. Yes, only rapes me.

Her wits were nearly gone, but she knew the ridiculousness of her thoughts. She had a friend who’d been raped in a restaurant parking lot. It was nothing to wish for, but in that moment it was the only hope that she had.

She wanted to live.

March 29, 8 a.m.

Near Sunnyslope, west of Port Orchard, Washington

The early mornings in the woods of Kitsap County, Washington, were wrapped in a shiver, no matter the season. The job required layers and tools. The smartest and best-prepared brush pickers started with an undershirt, another shirt on top of that, a sweater or sweatshirt, and a jacket. Gloves were essential too. Some were fashioned with a sewn-in cutting hook to expedite the cutting of thinner-stemmed plants like ferns. A sharp knife or a pair of good-quality loppers made easier the business of cutting woody stems like evergreen huckleberry, salal, and in the Christmas-wreath season, fir and cedar boughs. As the day wore on, pickers shed their clothing, a layer at a time. Picking was hard work, and a good picker was a blur, cutting, fanning, and bundling, before bagging floral gleanings in thick plastic bags.

Instead of garbage in those bags, of course, there was money.

Pickers often left indicators they’d been through an area. Empty bags of chips emblazoned with Spanish words that touted the snack’s flavor. Sometimes they left torn gloves or leaky boots in the forest. Some left nothing at all.