The Book of Cold Cases, page 15
PART II
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
December 1977
BETH
She tried going out at night. She crept out of her own house like a criminal, getting in her car and driving around Claire Lake as it slept. But even at night she was noticeable, her big Cadillac gliding through the silent streets. Ever since the night with Detective Black, the police had almost always been on her tail, and even during her night drives, she’d see headlights behind her. So she gave up and went home.
She’d gone last night, not getting home until almost four. The tension was going to kill her; alcohol was the only thing that killed it. She was lying on the sofa, halfway through a bottle of wine and blearily watching TV with all of the curtains closed at two in the afternoon when the phone rang. She reached a hand to the end table and picked it up. “Hello?”
There was the sound of breathing on the other end of the line. In the background, wind and traffic, as if the call was coming from a roadside phone booth.
And just like that, she knew who it was. She knew what voice would be on the other end, even though she hadn’t heard it in two years. The voice she’d been searching for. The voice she hated. The haziness of the wine started to drain away.
“Lily,” Beth said.
The voice on the other end was beloved and terrifying, strange and also as familiar as her own. “They’re coming for you,” Lily said.
The police. She was talking about the police. “They’re coming now?”
“Yes, they are.”
“How do you know?”
“They think they’re so discreet.” The voice was disgusted. “Honestly. I could see them from the road.”
Beth sat up. If Lily was talking about the road, then she was near the house.
No, she couldn’t be. But she’d driven past. While Beth had been sitting on this sofa, drinking and waiting, Lily had driven past before finding a phone booth. How many times had she done that, when Beth had been looking for her for so many days?
“You bitch,” Beth said.
“Maybe, but I’m sitting here while you’re about to be arrested. This is all your fault, Beth. You could have stopped it.”
She wasn’t drunk now, not at all. Panic tried to climb up her throat. “I didn’t do all of this. You did.”
“Only because you made me.” Lily sighed into the phone. “I even left a note. Did you read it?”
Of course she had. The note had been in all the papers. Am I bitter or am I sweet? Ladies can be either.
Which one are you today? Mariana would say when they were little girls. Are you bitter, or are you sweet?
And the girls would have to choose. Lily always chose bitter, which would make Mariana laugh and shake her head.
Beth would say she was sweet. Mariana never laughed at that. She’d just nod and say, “How nice.”
“Why are you calling?” Beth asked Lily now, listening to her breathe on the other end of the line.
“I want to know what you’ll do,” Lily said. “Whether you’ll run. Whether you’ll break. Whether you’ll talk.”
“I could tell them everything.”
“Will you tell them how you could have stopped it?” Lily asked. “You’ve been looking for me, haven’t you? Driving the streets, searching. Too bad you didn’t find me. You should have looked harder.”
She should have. She knew that now. She’d been panicked and half-drunk, and for some reason she’d thought she’d have more time. But now she was out of time.
Was that the crunch of gravel, the low hum of a motor? More than one? There wasn’t a lot of traffic in Arlen Heights, especially in the middle of the day. The police were coming, and Beth’s time was up.
Lily’s voice was clear, unhurried, as if she knew Beth would obey even as the police closed in. “You’re not leaving, Beth,” she said. “You’re not talking.”
“I hate you,” Beth said, her throat choking and her eyes burning with unshed tears.
“No, you don’t,” Lily said. “You really don’t.”
Beth put down the phone, her breath sawing in her throat. Her palms tingled with sweat. She needed to call Ransom.
There was the sound of another car outside. Lily was a liar, but she wasn’t lying about this. Beth was about to be arrested for murder.
This is all your fault, Beth.
You’re not leaving. You’re not talking.
And just like it had during the police interview, the fear snapped and the anger took over. That cold, comforting rage.
Beth went upstairs, changed her clothes. Put on dark high-waisted jeans, a cream blouse with a pattern of brown diamonds on it, her favorite shirt. Red lipstick. Hoops in her ears. There were more sounds now, low voices at the side of the house. Did they think they were being stealthy? Lily was right; it was ridiculous. Did they think she would run? Where did they think she would go?
Beth put on heeled boots, and then as a final gesture she put on her trench coat, belting it at the waist. She picked up her purse. She walked to the windows in the living room and dragged open the curtains.
There were men outside. Uniformed cops, bracing in position. They looked startled at the sight of her.
Beth gave them a wave.
She walked calmly to the front door and opened it. There were cops here, too, on the lawn. A brown Pontiac at the end of the driveway, pulled up behind her Cadillac. Marked cruisers parked farther down the street. A crowd of neighbors was gathering, and the press was already here, two reporters and two photographers flashing pictures of Beth standing in her doorway. As she watched, a van pulled up two doors down and a female reporter got out, followed by a TV cameraman. The woman left the cameraman behind with his heavy equipment and jogged up the street in her high heels when she saw Beth.
Beth watched the chaos building in front of her house, feeling oddly calm. She wondered if Lily would drive by again, just to see the scene she’d created. It would be a crazy move, but you never knew what Lily would do.
The doors of the brown Pontiac opened, and Detectives Black and Washington got out. They were wearing suits, and both of them looked unhappy. This circus wasn’t what they’d wanted; someone somewhere must have leaked information to the press. Beth took a grim satisfaction in the frowns on their faces, the angry displeasure in Washington’s eyes. What did Beth care about a few photographs if this mess embarrassed them?
As the detectives came up the driveway, yet another car pulled up to the curb. Ransom got out, his hair a little disheveled and his tie askew. He saw her on the front porch and pointed at her. “Don’t say anything, Beth!” he shouted. “Not a word!”
“Miss Greer!” the female reporter called to her, jogging up the driveway behind the detectives, flanking them. A flashbulb went off. “Miss Greer, do you have anything to say on the day of your arrest for the Lady Killer murders?”
“Get out of here,” Detective Washington growled. The reporter fell back a step but didn’t leave.
Beth put her hands in the pockets of her trench coat and watched. Ransom started across her lawn toward her, his expensive shoes sinking into the damp grass.
“Detective Black!” one of the other reporters shouted. “What evidence do you have that Beth Greer is the Lady Killer? Was she having an affair with the victims?”
“What the hell is going on?” shouted the man who lived two doors down, his face going red as he stood in the street. “This is a good neighborhood!”
As if in response, another police cruiser came around the corner, this one flashing its lights and blaring its siren. Someone in Arlen Heights had called the police—on the police. The uniformed cops on the lawn shouted, and Black and Washington turned and waved their arms at the cruiser, signaling it to shut up. It, too, pulled over, and the siren went quiet, though the lights still flashed, flickering over the sunny day. Another reporter showed up, and another camera flashed. The TV cameraman had gotten his bulky equipment up and running and was now shooting the whole scene.
Washington gestured to one of the uniforms. “Help us out over here.” The uniform hurried over, and Washington said, “We need you to handcuff her.”
“We don’t need handcuffs, for God’s sake,” Detective Black said.
“It’s a goddamned murder arrest!” Washington barked at him. “I don’t care what she looks like, we’re handcuffing her!”
“You will not!” Ransom was climbing the front porch steps now. He was out of breath and his shoes were wet, but Beth could see instantly that he was in his element, that this kind of moment was the thing he lived for. He elevated his voice to a theatrical boom so the reporters could hear it. “The police will not mistreat my client!”
“Get out of the way, Wells!” Washington shouted. “And someone turn those fucking cherry lights off!”
Beth looked at the reporters’ faces and knew they’d all heard the profanity, that it had been caught on record on the TV camera.
“No handcuffs,” Black said as the uniformed cop took his handcuffs out. Beth kept her hands in the pockets of her trench coat. Ransom was standing beside her now. Flashbulbs were going off, mixing with the lights from the police car, and more reporters were shouting questions.
“We’re doing this,” Washington said. He grabbed the cuffs from the uniform and strode up the porch steps, reaching out to grasp Beth’s arm. His grip was hard and painful as he jerked her hand from her pocket.
“Elizabeth Greer, you’re under arrest,” he said, beginning to drone on about courts of law and rights to remain silent.
“Hands off my client!” Ransom shouted. “She is offering no resistance! Are you getting this on the tape? Did you get that?”
Beth let Washington spin her, yank her other hand out of her pocket. She let herself go limp, like a doll, as his grip bruised her. He cuffed one wrist, then pulled the other behind her back. Beth caught the wince of shocked disgust on Detective Black’s face and realized Washington was going far off the script. He wasn’t supposed to use handcuffs, and if he used them he was probably supposed to cuff her hands in front. With her hands cuffed in the back, she looked like a common criminal, like someone caught breaking windows or fondling children. Even though she was accused of two murders, Black didn’t think Beth was a common criminal. She could see it on his face.
The cuffs were cold, and they bit into her wrists. Beth didn’t wince. She rolled her shoulders, shifted her weight so the cuffs didn’t pull as hard.
This is all your fault, Beth. You could have stopped it.
“I want the record to show that my client is cooperating,” Ransom was bellowing. “We have here on the footage that the police are assaulting her. My client may file charges.”
Washington was pulling Beth down the steps now, and Black quickly took her other side as reporters crowded in. There were more flashes mixing with the police lights, microphones shoved in her face.
“Beth!” one reporter shouted. “Beth, do you have anything to say? Anything at all?”
She could feel Ransom’s wrath from three feet away, could feel Detective Black stiffen against her right side. Telegraphing to her to be quiet.
This was the moment, she realized. She wasn’t just a rumor anymore. She wasn’t just a headline. Now she was a murderer.
Lily had made her a murderer.
Beth leaned away from Washington, angling her body toward the microphone. The pose, with her hands behind her back, outlined her figure for the cameras, even with the trench coat on. She knew it as well as she knew her own body in the mirror. She kept her voice calm, as if she were talking to someone boring at a cocktail party. “The police can manhandle me all they want, but it still doesn’t make me guilty,” she said.
There was a murmur of reaction, more shouted questions, and then Washington was putting her into the back seat of the brown Pontiac, his hand on her head. “Watch it,” she heard Black say to him.
“Beth, I’ll follow you,” Ransom shouted. “Don’t say anything.” He turned and hurried back to his car, shaking his head as reporters followed him, trying to get him to comment.
It was awkward sitting in the car with her hands cuffed behind her back. Beth shifted on the seat, trying to brace herself without pinning her arms and twisting her shoulders as the detectives got in front and Washington put the car into gear.
“We need to switch her cuffs,” Black said as the car inched down the driveway, crowded with people.
“No, we don’t.” Washington shot back. “She’ll live. We’re not getting her back out of the car now.”
Black was silent as they finally pulled free of the crowd of people, which was starting to disperse. From the window, Beth could see reporters running back to their cars, the TV cameraman getting a last shot of the car backing out before lowering his camera and turning back to his van.
“Beth, are you all right?” Detective Black asked her.
She ignored him. The neighbors were talking, and thanks to the reporters her arrest would be all over the news by six o’clock. She had been arrested for murder, a catastrophe that meant life as she knew it was over. Everyone thought she was the Lady Killer. She was on her way to jail, and then to a trial, which she could very well lose. She had just been publicly humiliated, dragged from her front porch and pushed into a police car in a spectacle of an arrest. It was all because of Lily, who by now was probably on the road out of town, the pay phone she’d called from sitting empty.
And still, as Arlen Heights receded in the background, Beth could only think one thing:
That was goddamned fun.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
October 2017
SHEA
In the first days after my last visit to the Greer mansion, I was afraid.
I kept my cracked phone in the bottom of my purse, unable to look at it. I went to work and back in silence, sitting alone on the bus with my bag in my lap. I stopped listening to audiobooks, because I didn’t want to hear about death anymore. Instead I sat with a roaring in my ears, as if something were going to happen any second and I had to be ready.
I forced myself to concentrate at work. I never went out after dark. I checked my security system multiple times before going to bed. And when I finally slept, my dreams were full of blood and a familiar voice, saying: Hi there. Are you cold?
No matter how many times I awoke thrashing and sweating, Winston Purrchill was always on the bed next to me, regarding me with his sleepy eyes, drowsily wondering what was wrong. I fell asleep over and over with my hand on his soft fur or my face next to the solid curve of his back, watching the rise and fall of his breathing, listening as the low, uncouth rumble of his purr drifted off into sleep. I would have lost my sanity without my cat that week. If Alison or her ex-husband ever showed up to take him back, they would do it over my dead body.
And then something changed. Maybe I got tired of the fear; maybe it just lost its grip. But instead of being afraid, I got mad.
I thought about those blows against the door of Julian’s study, and instead of terror I only felt anger. I couldn’t explain it, and I couldn’t even trace it to a source—I was suddenly furious at everything. At Beth. At the man who had tried to abduct me when I was a child. At whoever had killed Thomas Armstrong and Paul Veerhoever and left them by the side of the road like trash. At all of the murderers—so many of them—who got away with it and left the victims to end up on the Book of Cold Cases, one after another. It all tumbled together in my mind. I’d never been this angry, and now I started to see what I’d been missing.
After I got home from work one day, I got a text from Michael. I had to pull my cracked phone from the bottom of my bag to read it. There’s some missing information in the online property records. We’ll have to try the records office downtown to see if they have the archive.
Okay, I texted back.
Sending you an email now, he wrote. There are two addresses that are missing records prior to 1960. I’m sending you everything I have.
Okay, I wrote again.
His next text came back right away: Are you all right?
Of course Michael knew something was wrong. I stared at the words, wondering what the answer was. Based on what was going on in my head, I seemed to be going crazy. But to tell the truth, I wasn’t so sure.
I looked at the crack on my phone screen. I’d dropped my phone when something—maybe something dead—had banged on the door of Julian’s study. I’d thought about getting my phone fixed or replaced, but I hadn’t done it yet. Suddenly I wasn’t sure I was going to.
I opened a drawer in my desk, pulled out the number Detective Joshua Black had given me, and dialed it before I could lose my nerve. “It’s Shea Collins,” I said when he answered.
“Shea.” His voice sounded pleased. “What can I help you with?”
There were a hundred questions I could have asked him, but that wasn’t why I called. Instead I said, “Have you ever hated Beth?”
“On and off for forty years.” He said it without missing a beat, and I immediately knew I had called the right person. “Are you in that phase right now?”
“I’m so angry,” I admitted as I gripped my cracked phone. “I can’t stop. I don’t know what to do about it.”
Detective Black was quiet for a long minute, his breaths somehow soothing on the other end of the line. Then he said, “Shea, I’m going to say something, and you’re not going to like it. But it’s my job to tell the truth.”
I swallowed. “Go ahead.”
“Anton Anders has a parole hearing coming up.”
It was my turn to be silent, the emotions churning in my gut robbing me of words.
“You don’t want to go,” Black said. “I’ve seen it so many times with victims. And for some of them, it’s the wrong thing to go. But you need to go to that hearing.”
