The Book of Cold Cases, page 10
When there was a break in Washington and Ransom’s arguing, Black leaned toward Beth and said, “Tell me about your father’s death.”
Her world tilted. For a second it was tempting, even easy, to pretend it was just the two of them, talking privately with no one else around. Just her and this sympathetic man, asking her about the day her father died. She could open her mouth and tell him everything that was inside her, all the bad things that she kept locked away.
Then she glanced at the tape recorder, whirring quietly on the table. She looked at Washington, standing with his arms crossed, and Ransom, sitting in the folding chair next to hers. She could smell old coffee and stale cigarette smoke and something stuffy and rancid, like bad breath. And she remembered that day. She remembered the feeling of drowning, of sinking deeper and looking up, knowing she would never swim to the surface.
She turned back to Detective Black, her voice mechanical. “Someone robbed my father and killed him.”
Black was still leaning forward, his upper body angled toward her, as if they were alone. “Whoever did it used the same gun for these murders,” he said. “The ballistics will prove it.”
Beth held still, not looking away. This was another game. They didn’t have the ballistics report, not yet.
“Beth, tell the truth,” Black said. “We’re trying to help you.”
That was where he made a mistake, because she knew he was lying. She looked him in the eyes. “You don’t want to help me,” she said. “No one wants to help me. No one ever has.”
There was a second of quiet, the tape recorder the only sound. Detective Black actually looked surprised. He’d had a good life, she realized. Parents, maybe even grandparents, who loved him. A sibling or two. She could see it all: track team, stern but loving teachers, kisses behind the bleachers with a pretty girl. A few silly drunken experiences that were written off to high spirits, then losing his virginity to another pretty girl. Eventually, the police academy and making detective when he was barely thirty. He had the lean physique of a man who exercised instead of growing a paunch, and he didn’t smoke. He saw bad things, sure, but he was saving people and putting the bad guys away. Saving the world.
This case was a problem for him, but it was one he would solve. Because in the end, the world always turned out the way he wanted it to.
Beth thought of her empty house, quiet now that her parents weren’t screaming at each other anymore. She thought of the hours sitting alone in her room as a child, her hands over her ears, trying to make it all go away inside her head. She thought of her father’s blood all over the kitchen floor. A lake of blood, deep and red, because it had gurgled out of him as he died. It had taken a cleaning crew three days to remove it. Ransom had made the arrangements while Beth and her mother stayed at a hotel.
And when it was cleaned up, Beth and her mother moved back in.
She always thought the house smelled coppery after that. She saw shadows in the kitchen, smelled her father’s cologne mixed with blood. She was thought to be an improper young lady, because she couldn’t cook, could barely make toast that she washed down with wine. No one had considered that she simply hated the kitchen at the Greer mansion and couldn’t stand to be inside it.
Tell the truth. We’re trying to help you.
Detective Black had never been as angry as Beth was right now.
“Do you own a gun?” Detective Washington asked for the hundredth time. He hated her, but at least his anger was something she understood. When she didn’t answer, he said, “We know your father owned one.”
Under the table, Ransom touched Beth’s knee. Just the side of his pinky finger tapping her once—his keep-quiet signal.
Beth looked at Washington. “Fuck you,” she said, her voice icy-calm.
Washington looked like she’d slapped him, and Ransom sighed. “We’re leaving now,” he said. “This interview is over.”
* * *
—
Outside the police station, there were two photographers this time, plus a reporter shouting questions. Ransom looked unimpressed as he took Beth’s elbow and led her to his car.
“Damn the papers,” he said. “Some hack is writing a line about a ‘lady killer’ right this minute. I swear to God I’d like the world to surprise me, just once.”
Beth got in the passenger seat. “You have nothing to say about what I said back there?”
Ransom got in, the car bouncing with his weight. His seat was set as far back as it would go to accommodate his long legs. “It would have been better if you were a little more ingratiating, I admit,” he said, “but that was a low blow, so I’m not one to lecture.”
That was almost amusing. Ransom was very much one to lecture. “They’re going to hate me no matter what I do,” Beth said. “Don’t you see that? I could be sweet, and those ‘lady killer’ articles are still going to get written.”
Ransom looked thoughtful as he pulled out of the lot, narrowly missing one of the photographers. Beth thought it was probably an intentional near miss. “I do see that,” he said. “People need someone to take their problems out on. You see that a lot when you’re a lawyer. Since you’re young and rich and lovely, you’re as good a target as any. It’s only going to get worse from here.” He signaled and made a turn, heading up the hill to Arlen Heights. “All I ask is that you don’t employ your sailor mouth when talking to the media, and definitely not if you ever talk to a judge.”
“You think they’re going to arrest me,” Beth said.
“They very much want to arrest you. Two men are dead, and you’re their only lead. The ballistics report might convince a judge to sign a warrant, and it might not. That’s the gamble they have to take.”
Beth pressed her lips together, looking out the window. “They’re going to get my handwriting,” she said.
“Sure, but not today. Just stay home, Beth, and don’t let this make you crazy. That’s all you have to do.”
“I can’t stay home,” Beth snapped. “I have things to do.”
“All of that driving around you do? Going nowhere? It needs to stop. Unless you want the press following you.”
Don’t let this make you crazy. Easy for him to say. “What if they’re right?” she asked, Ransom’s holier-than-thou wisdom getting on her nerves. “What if I really shot those men, and by defending me you’re setting me loose to do it again?”
Ransom didn’t even blink. “If you did it, they can damn well prove it, and not by getting you in an interview room and throwing Julian’s murder in your face, trying to make you cry. That was pure bullying back there, so I’m going to remind you, Beth—don’t ever talk to the police without me. That goes for reporters, too, but it goes ten times over for cops. If you talk to them alone, even your money won’t save you.”
There was more lecturing as Ransom drove her home, his version of fatherly advice: Don’t date. Don’t talk to strangers of any kind, because strangers will repeat everything you say to the nearest reporter. Don’t write letters, because they could be intercepted. Be careful what you say on the phone.
Beth listened in silence, watching out the window. The words flowed over her, because she was stuck on one thing he’d already said.
In the interview room, they’d been trying to make her cry about her father’s murder. But she hadn’t felt like crying at all.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
September 2017
SHEA
Sylvia Simpson worked at a law firm in downtown Claire Lake. Even though she was past retirement age by now, she was listed on the firm’s website as the assistant to one of the senior partners. But I definitely had the right Sylvia, which she confirmed when she replied to my Facebook message.
We met on a weekday afternoon. Our offices were only a few blocks apart, and I managed to take a break and slip from behind my desk. “Ten minutes,” Sylvia had written to me on Facebook. “That’s all I’ll give you. Meet me outside my office at three.”
Her firm was one of the nicest in town, the offices in a restored two-story Victorian house close to the ocean. At three o’clock, I stood on the front walk in my scrub top, wondering if I should go inside, when the front door opened and a woman of possibly seventy came out. She was wide and hard as a block of concrete, her white hair pulled back and her eyebrows drawn on in dramatic arches. She wore a gray wool skirt and jacket that were likely very expensive and still managed to look unflattering. She took a pack of cigarettes from her purse and motioned me around the corner of the house without a word.
“Surprised?” she asked me as she pulled out a chair on a small patio. She lowered herself into the chair and pulled out a cigarette and a pack of matches. Her voice was husky and low, intimidating. “An old woman like me, working. Caught you off guard.”
She hadn’t offered an introduction or a handshake. I pulled out a chair for myself and sat, feeling the cool, damp breeze from the ocean breathe past us. “Not really,” I said.
“Huh.” Sylvia lit a cigarette, inhaled, then exhaled, not bothering to blow the smoke away from me. “You’re bluffing, but it’s fine. If you think I’m old, you should see my boss. He’s even older than I am. I’ve been his assistant for thirty-five years, and when he goes, I go. I’m the only person he trusts.”
“That’s nice,” I said, pulling my phone from my bag. “Do you mind—”
“Put that thing away.” Her voice was flat, hostile. I put the phone back. “How old are you, anyway?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“A baby,” she said, almost angrily. “Julian Greer was already dead by the time I was twenty-nine, and I was looking for a new job. I was looking for a new husband, too, because the first one had pushed me down the stairs one too many times.” She gestured at me with the lit end of her cigarette to make her point. “Record that, why don’t you?”
This was going to be a fun ten minutes, I could tell. “I want to ask you about Julian,” I said.
“Such a nice man. Handsome, too.” Sylvia took another drag on her cigarette and shook her head. “I worked for him for four years. I saw everything—everything. You’re lucky, because you’re talking to the only person who knew what was really going on. Even those police who came to me after Mr. Greer died didn’t know their asses from a hole in the wall, and they didn’t bother to ask. Because who cares what the secretary knows, right? Well, let me tell you, we know everything. So listen up, Miss Twenty-Nine.”
“My name is Shea,” I said.
“Are you going to listen, or are you going to talk?”
I sighed. “Listen. I’m going to listen.”
“Good. The first thing you need to know is that nothing was Mr. Greer’s fault. It was all because of that woman he married.”
I blinked. “Mariana Greer?”
“She was the worst thing that ever happened to him. Everyone knew it. Sure, she had money, and I suppose she was beautiful, but she didn’t have class. He used to come to work exhausted because they’d had a fight and he didn’t get any sleep. I’d put calls through from her, and she would be in tears, yelling at him about something. At work. It was a damned disgrace.”
I watched her. Beneath her gruff exterior, Sylvia was lit up and righteous. This was her cause, the thing she’d waited decades to talk about. I decided to play into it.
“What was the wife’s problem?” I said.
It was exactly the right question. Sylvia glanced at me and took another drag of her cigarette, drawing out the drama. When she spoke, she relished the words. “Oh, she had problems, all right. When Mrs. Greer’s mother died, she didn’t leave her fortune to her daughter. She left it to Mr. Greer, her daughter’s husband. What does that tell you?”
To me it sounded sad, but I kept my face blank with confusion. Sylvia scoffed at me and tapped her temple with her fingertip.
“Mariana Greer was crazy?” I asked.
“Why else would her own mother leave her inheritance to her husband instead of her? She wasn’t competent. Mr. Greer had a file of papers the mother had left to him. I didn’t see all of it, but some of the papers had to do with his wife being sent away somewhere when she was eighteen.” Sylvia made air quotes with her fingers at the words “sent away somewhere,” her cigarette waggling in the air. “He didn’t know about that before the wedding—I can guarantee it. It was only after they were married and her mother died that he learned his wife had been a mental patient. A damned mental patient—can you imagine? I felt sorry for that man.”
I itched to go home to my laptop, or to call Michael. I’d never seen evidence that Mariana Greer had been mentally ill. “What happened to those papers?” I asked.
“Mr. Greer got rid of them sometime before he died. Burned them probably. The shame.”
“What about the daughter? Did you ever meet her?”
“No. But we all know what happened with her, don’t we?” Sylvia said smugly. “And we all know why.”
“You think she committed those murders.”
Sylvia stubbed out her cigarette in the plastic ashtray on the table. “With bad blood like hers, who else do you think did it? Santa Claus?”
I couldn’t say why she made me angry exactly. Certainly, I was no defender of Beth, and Beth didn’t need or want my help. For all I knew, Sylvia Simpson was absolutely right.
Still, I said, “You went through his papers, didn’t you? Julian Greer’s private file from his mother-in-law. He never showed that to you. You snooped.”
Sylvia didn’t even blink. “And you should thank me for it, because now you know the truth.” Her voice was calm, but her cheeks were flushed and the chair made a loud noise as she pushed it back. “I know I’m an old battle-axe, but I was a good secretary to Mr. Greer. They say his own daughter shot him in cold blood. She’s just as crazy as her mother was. She should have gotten the death penalty as far as I’m concerned. Now I’m going back to work.”
“Which mental hospital was it?” I called to her retreating back as I stood. “I’d like to go through the records.”
Sylvia was done with me, but she couldn’t resist one parting shot. “Do you think her rich family would send her to one of the public ones?” she said scornfully over her shoulder. “Of course they didn’t. It was a private place. I don’t remember the name of it, but it was on Linwood Street. I don’t know why she matters, but good luck.”
Fifteen minutes later, I was back behind the reception desk at work, feeling strangely exhausted. Sylvia’s grievances, held for decade after decade, were heavy. I couldn’t imagine carrying that weight all the time.
Still, when no one was looking, I took a second to pull out my phone and text Michael: I’m going to need some help pulling property records for Linwood Street. Specifically from the 1950s.
This was my only bit of luck: Linwood Street was one of the now-gentrified streets downtown, and it wasn’t very long. It definitely didn’t have a hospital building on it. My recall of it was that it was mostly stately homes. One of those homes might, in the fifties, have been the discreet kind of place where a rich family could send their teenage daughter to have a mental breakdown.
I don’t know why she matters, Sylvia had said.
I didn’t, either. I wasn’t sure why I was doing this. It was some kind of instinct. Beth’s father had been murdered by the Lady Killer; Beth’s mother was possibly mentally ill. All of this was part of the woman who fascinated me, the woman who—I could admit it—scared me, not least because some cold part of me actually liked her. What that said about me, I didn’t even want to think about.
* * *
—
I split the property records on Linwood Street with Michael—he took half and I took half. I spent most of that evening sorting through online records while lying in bed with my laptop, Winston by my side. By one in the morning, I hadn’t found what I wanted and my eyes could barely focus, but I wasn’t ready to sleep.
I clicked open the digital file I had of the 1981 TV movie made about the Lady Killer case. It was called Deadly Woman, and I watched Jaclyn Smith, as Beth, face off against a soap actor who looked at least forty-five and was supposed to be playing Detective Black.
“I’m telling the truth,” Jaclyn said. Her hair had been dyed red for the role, and her eye makeup was frosty, her lashes clumped and dark.
“We’ll see about that, Beth,” the soap actor said as dramatic music soared behind his lines.
Jaclyn leaned forward, the camera going into dewy soft focus on her beautiful face, the music swelling higher. “You’ve got to believe me!” she cried. She was wearing a cream blouse with ruffles at the neck and the cuffs; red blush had been dabbed on her cheekbones. Her voice went up a notch as she shouted: “You’ve just got to!”
“Listen, Beth,” said the soap actor. “I’d like to believe you, but nothing you say adds up. You wrote those notes. You know you did. You’re lying so much you don’t even know what’s the truth anymore. But I do. And the truth is, you shot those men!”
I sighed and paused it, freezing on a frame of Jaclyn Smith’s face right before she got angry. In Deadly Woman, Beth was a manipulator, a heartless killer, a siren, trying to work her wiles on poor Detective Black and failing in the face of his moral superiority. It was all right there in the title.
I smoothed my fingertips over the top of Winston’s head, then rolled over in bed and picked up my other early-eighties artifact, a book called Who Was the Female Zodiac? It was written in 1984 by a journalist named Henderson Metterick, and it was the only book ever written about the Lady Killer case. It had been out of print for decades, but I’d found a hardcover copy on eBay a year ago, the pages yellowed and fragrant with over thirty years of age. The book was a hack job of useless speculation, overwriting, and almost comically offensive misogyny, filled with words like she-devil and phrases like Beth Greer’s exotic, overpowering allure.
