Mortal Danger

with the media about that new information, saying only that the deceased suspect had a history of violence with a sheriff’s office. It was not John and Turi with that history, and it wasn’t Pierce County he was talking about; it was Curry County, and it was Kate Jewell whom John Branden had savagely attacked.
    Gardiner told Pierce County detectives that he tried to keep in touch with Kate at least twice a year, and that he had a current address for her. But first, he wanted to call her and break the news of the tragedy in Gig Harbor to her.
    “I believe I owe her that,” he said.
    What had happened to ignite John into causing thebloodbath the police had found was a mystery to the Washington State investigators. Randall Nozawa couldn’t tell them much; he was fighting for his life as his surgery stretched to eight hours.
    And he was blind. He had lost the first eye in the automobile accident three years earlier, and now his remaining eye was gone, shot out at close range.
    One had to wonder if John Branden—whom the newspapers were calling “The Mysterious Mr. Williams”—had deliberately aimed for his “best friend’s” good eye, intending to blind him.
    Those who knew and loved Turi Bentley were overwhelmed with grief. She was the last woman in the world anyone would ever expect to die violently. The shock waves rolled over Gig Harbor and then spread out. Grown women recalled how nice Turi had been to them when they were little girls. Church friends spoke about Turi’s devout faith in God. A young woman who lived in Priest River recalled meeting Turi only once, but she said she had looked forward to living close to her in Idaho.
    Turi’s genetic heritage would have suggested that she would live into her nineties. Losing her at such a relatively young age was a bitter blow to hundreds of people and brought extreme pain to her children and grandchildren.

Chapter Fourteen
    While most Gig Harbor and Pierce County police investigators were still asleep in the early morning hours of Saturday, March 31, 2007, and while Randall Nozawa was slowly regaining consciousness in one of the bedrooms of John and Turi’s house, Kate Jewell was wide awake at 5:30 a.m. She realized that this day marked the one-year anniversary of her father’s death at the age of eighty-three.
    “I’m lying in bed,” she remembered, “and thinking how much I miss him.”
    As she sometimes did, she talked silently to her father; it was half prayer, half communication with Harold Jewell: Dad, I know you’re in a better place. I often feel you looking out for me. I pray that from where you are you can help me put an end to this. I want to come out of hiding. I need to take my life back.
    It had been almost eight years in a peculiar kind of exile for Kate; she was caught in a space in time, on an island where she was still, essentially, living a lie—not to deceive anyone deliberately, but to survive.
    Always a journal keeper, Kate would write down her thoughts later that morning:
    I think back to last April, a few weeks after my dad’s death. I’d been walking the beach in Florida, thinking about Dad and “talking” with him as I walked along the water’s edge. I recalled hearing Dad say “I love you” just as I looked down to spy a heart-shaped piece of shell. I picked it up, marveled at this gift, and still treasure it today. Maybe when it’s later, I’ll take a walk on one of our gravel beaches and find another sign that Dad’s still with me—possibly a heart-shaped rock.
    My tear-filled lids close and I drift into restless sleep. Suddenly, I’m in my home in Oregon. I see John. He’s chasing me with a knife. He’s going to kill me! I must escape! I run the trackless steps of dreams, going nowhere, terror mounting. I try to wake myself up and find I’m paralyzed. Pain radiates in my chest. Panicked, I try to assess the situation as the pain on my right side subsides and deepens on my left.
    My God, am I having a heart attack? No. I’m too healthy—heck, I swim a mile a day. I have to wake up and get out of this.
    Suddenly, my heart seems to stop as I sense John just outside my bedroom door. My worst fear is realized; he’s found me! But I still can’t move….
    I then sense his anger, its intensity permeating my entire body with red-hot rage. Before I can formulate a thought of what to do, his anger passes, the pain eases, and I can move. I feel intense relief as I’m able to bring myself back to full