The Fear Collector by Gregg Olsen Page A

seem to want me anymore. I told her it wasn’t good for me to get all excited and not make love to her, but she laughed at me. She said that she didn’t want me. She wanted some other guy. I tried to kiss her some more and she slapped me . . . laughing at me. I told her, ‘No, don’t laugh. I love you.’ But she kept laughing so I grabbed her and well . . .”
    “Did you rape her? Did you do that to her?” Tavio could scarcely believe that his brother could do such a thing to a woman, a girl. It was disgusting. Vile. Against everything that their parents had taught them.
    Michael locked eyes with his brother. “I didn’t rape her. I made love to her. She just got so mad at me. So embarrassed.”
    Tavio looked directly at the scratch marks on his brother’s face, but said nothing about them.
    “How did she die, Michael? What did you do to her to kill her?”
    “It was an accident. It was. I was making love to her and her head hit a rock and I didn’t know it. I thought she was just finally, you know, relaxing.”
    There was something insane about what Michael was saying, but Tavio saw no way out of it. He did not want his brother’s head cut off . . . or whatever they did in Washington.
    “Let’s hide her now.”
    Catalina weighed no more than ninety-five pounds, but her dead body felt like a ton. The Navarro brothers dragged her to the edge of the riverbank where there was a shallow pool—a place marked by candy wrappers and pop cans—where young kids liked to swim. The morning light had brightened considerably and anyone close by could easily see that they were not a couple of kids swimming, but two grown men and a dead girl. Tavio held her feet; Michael had hooked his hands under her armpits. Her head, at once bloody and pale, hung limply from her slender neck. With each step, it swung, like a bell counting off the moment of her final good-bye.
    “I’m sorry,
mi corazón
,” Michael said.
    Tavio just looked at his brother with disbelieving eyes. The words meant nothing. He meant nothing just then. It was hollow. Empty. Just words to soothe his own guilty heart.
    Straddling the rocks, they waded out and gave the body a decisive shove, sending it down the lazy waters of the river to a place where someone would find it. Not soon, they hoped. But they didn’t want her to never be found. She was a girl from their village. She’d given up everything to start over in the United States.
    She’d given her life.
    Neither brother knew a thing about DNA right then. Later, they would wonder if the police who found her body would have thought to have taken a sample. If they did, would they somehow find Michael Navarro?
    And if they did find him, would they cut off his head?

C HAPTER 11
    I t was early the next afternoon, that time of day when nothing happens, the so-called dead shift. Snickers bar in hand from her trip to the employee vending machines, 911 dispatcher Luna Demetrio was barely in her chair when she picked the next call from the console that fed calls from all over Tacoma and Pierce County, one desperate caller at a time.
    LUNA: What’s your emergency?
    CALLER: I need to tell somebody something bad happened.
    LUNA: All right, sir. Can you tell me your name?
    CALLER: (muffled noise, no answer)
    LUNA: You there? I hear you breathing, are you all right?
    CALLER: I’m not going to give my name. I’m calling from a pay phone. I’m going to leave the second I’m done with you so don’t send someone.
    LUNA: I can barely hear you. Please speak louder. What’s your emergency?
    CALLER: I think, I mean, I’m pretty sure there’s a dead body by the river. I saw it.
    LUNA: What river?
    CALLER: I didn’t know we had more than one. The Puyallup. Off River Road. Over by the bridge there’s a gravel lot.
    LUNA: Sir, please tell me your name.
    CALLER: No. Good-bye.
    The call ended one minute and twenty seconds after it started. Luna typed up a message that was transmitted to the first responders for calls of