The Book of Cold Cases, page 6
There was a roaring inside my skull, like someone had opened the hatch of a spaceship. A presence and an absence at the same time. Everything and nothing at once.
It was my biggest secret, the thing I never talked about. Ever. I had just told my biggest secret to Beth Greer.
I couldn’t read her expression. It didn’t crumple into pity, which was what I’d dreaded. If anything, she looked thoughtful, with no emotion at all. In that moment, she had the face of a woman who just minded her own business, and I had the crazy thought that sometimes it was a relief to be friends with someone who didn’t have any emotions.
“Is that the end of the story?” she asked.
Cold sweat broke out on my hands, and my stomach turned. For a second, I thought I might throw up. “Yes,” I said. “That’s the end of the story.”
I wondered if she knew I was lying.
Who was I kidding? Of course she knew.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
September 2017
SHEA
“Okay,” I said, pulling out my cell phone and turning on the recorder. “Let’s talk about the Lady Killer murders.”
“Let’s,” Beth said, her tone dry.
I looked at her. “I don’t suppose there’s any point in me asking you if you committed them or not?”
She didn’t blink. In the merciless light from the windows, her high cheekbones and large eyes were especially striking. “You’ll form your own conclusions,” she said. “Everyone does.”
I looked around at the old-fashioned figurines, the expensive dark wood paneling, the now-vintage print of a racing horse on the wall. “You were living in this house when it happened,” I said. “Alone.”
Beth waited. She had a talent for stillness.
“Your parents had died, and you’d been on your own for two years,” I said.
“Is there a question in there?”
“Didn’t you hate it?” I asked. “Living in this house?” It was oppressive in here. Beautiful in a way, but oppressive. Like the house of someone who’s died. Everywhere you turned, you could see the windows with their cold, bleak view, and even with the light coming in I found myself wishing Beth would close the curtains again. “Your mother must have decorated this place,” I reasoned. “You were living with your mother’s decorations after she died. You’re still living with them.”
I looked back to Beth to see her watching me from her seat on the sofa, her expression unreadable. “No one has ever asked me that before,” she said. “Did I do it? That’s all anyone wants to know.”
“I just can’t imagine it,” I said. “Living in my parents’ house after they were gone. After all that tragedy. Why didn’t you move?”
Her gaze shifted to the windows. “It’s such an easy thing to say. Just pack up and leave. I’ve said it to myself a thousand times. But some places hold you so that you can’t get free. They squeeze you like a fist.” She turned back to me, something quietly stark behind her eyes. “Sometimes you just get stuck. For years, even. Like you and your silly car phobia.”
I opened my mouth to get defensive: My phobia isn’t silly. But I stopped myself, sensing a trap. Was this misdirection? If so, from what?
I cleared my throat. “I suppose it would be hard to leave the house your parents lived in.”
Beth seemed almost amused at that, though I didn’t know why. “Are your parents dead?” she asked.
I shook my head. “No, they’re in Florida.”
The ghost of a smile touched the corner of her mouth. “Should I bother making a joke about how that’s the same thing?”
“I don’t think you need to.”
“Then I’ll refrain.”
She was charming. Really charming. According to everything I’d read, sociopaths often were. I had to remember that. “What was it like for you at that time?” I asked her. “After your parents’ deaths, and before the murders?”
“I was numb,” Beth said. “I was nineteen when my father died, twenty-one when my mother died. In 1977, you didn’t go to therapy or grief counseling. I was a legal adult and I’d inherited a lot of money, so everyone assumed I must be just fine. There was no one to look out for me, and I didn’t know how to look out for myself. There were some people my age that I knew, people my parents would have hated. They started showing up, or maybe I invited them—I don’t remember. They’d come here, and we’d drink. Or I’d go to a party and we’d drink. There was no one to stop me, and it never crossed my mind to stop myself. I just knew I didn’t want to be sober.”
“The papers portrayed it like you were partying without any guilt,” I said.
“Of course they did. I told you, I had tits and an ass, so I wasn’t a real person. A girl who had lost her parents couldn’t possibly be spiraling, unable to cope. Easier to write that she’s a slut. It sells more papers. The cops, too—they all thought the fact that I drank and partied meant I was evil. If I were a man, they would have had sympathy. They probably would have joined me.”
“Even Detective Black?” I asked. Detective Joshua Black had been one of the two main investigators on the Lady Killer case, and he’d gone on to be a detective for thirty more years. I’d seen dozens of photos of him from that time: young, dark-haired, suits with wide lapels and wide striped ties, a serious frown on his face every time he saw a camera. Frankly, he had been kind of hot. I knew he still lived in Claire Lake, though he was now retired. His partner on the Lady Killer case, Detective Melvin Washington, had died in 1980. I’d never had any luck getting an interview with Detective Black or getting any copies of the Lady Killer case file. According to the Claire Lake PD, the case was still open, which meant the files weren’t public.
“Black was a cop,” Beth said. “He still is, even though he pretends he’s retired. He’s always been too nosy for his own good.”
“I think cops are supposed to be nosy,” I said, thinking of Michael.
“It’s different when it’s directed at you,” Beth said. “When you’re sitting in a cold room in a police station with a bunch of men asking you about your sex life. I didn’t even have a sex life to speak of, as a matter of fact. I know the story goes that everyone was screwing like crazy in the seventies, but I had to be careful. I was terrified of ending up like my mother.”
“What does that mean?” I asked. I knew almost nothing about Beth’s mother. “Why were you scared of ending up like your mother?”
Beth raised her glass and drained it. Maybe I was imagining things, but I thought she was stalling for time, maybe because she regretted she’d said that. “My mother never wanted to get married,” she said at last. “But it was the fifties, and my grandparents were rich. They expected her to marry well. She met my father, and that was that. More of a business deal than anything else. And a year later, she had me. She was trapped.”
I watched Beth’s face. The pain etched on it was buried deep, but I thought it was real. I also thought she didn’t want to talk about this anymore.
“Where’s your bathroom?” I asked, just to get a breather for both of us.
“Down the hall to the right.” Beth looked up, and her gaze moved past me, to something over my shoulder. Her eyes were unbearably bleak for a moment, and I wondered what she was thinking.
Then she broke the gaze, looked at me, and held up her glass. “Get me a drink in the kitchen while you’re up, if you don’t mind. Grapefruit juice and soda, with ice.”
That voice—her I’m-rich, people-do-what-I-say voice—it should have annoyed me. But instead it didn’t occur to me to question her. I took the glass from her hand and stood.
Beth’s gaze moved past me again, and I had the uncanny feeling that someone was behind me. But I turned and no one was there. There was just the heavy furniture, the cold light from the windows, the old print on the wall next to the doorway to the corridor. I walked down the hall.
The bathroom had a beige tile floor and a heavy sink, the taps inlaid with turquoise. It was spotlessly clean, not a hint of clutter. I glanced at myself in the mirror, also framed with turquoise. I didn’t look any different than I normally did. I was tempted to open the medicine cabinet behind the mirror and snoop through it, but I didn’t. I dried my hands and left the bathroom, wandering to the kitchen.
This was also unchanged from the late seventies, though like the bathroom it was perfectly clean. The cupboards were pale blue, and the counters were dark brown. The laminate floor was cream. The windows over the sink looked to the side of the house, which was crowded with trees. From here you couldn’t see that end-of-the-world view, or the ocean, or the road. Just thick trees, as if you were isolated in the woods somewhere. I put the glass down on the counter and realized that this was where Beth’s father had been murdered, where a maid had found his body when she came to clean the house.
My spine went cold, and behind me I heard a noise.
A squeak, and then rushing. Water. Someone had turned on a tap.
Maybe Beth was in the bathroom, though I hadn’t heard her get up and follow me. I stepped back to the kitchen entrance and looked down the hall.
The bathroom door was open, the sound of the running water coming from inside. I walked into the hall and looked. The water was running in the bathroom sink, both taps turned on. But there was no one there.
“Beth?” I said.
“Are you getting my drink?” Beth’s voice came from the living room.
I hadn’t turned those taps on, and neither had she.
Steeling myself, I walked briskly into the bathroom, turned the taps off, and went back to the kitchen. I opened the fridge, poured Beth’s grapefruit juice. Added soda, then opened the freezer and added ice. There was almost no food in the fridge except for a few take-out containers and premade meals. No wine or other alcohol, either. The fridge must have been on some ultrahigh setting, because I was struck with an icy blast that I imagined I could even feel on my back. My fingers were so cold they were clumsy, though I moved as fast as I could, my stomach turning uneasily as I put everything in Beth’s glass.
I finished with the drink, closed the freezer, picked up the glass, and turned around. Then I stood still, my breath in my throat.
All of the cupboards behind my back were open. Four doors above the kitchen counter that hadn’t been open when I walked in. Four more doors on the lower level beneath the counter. They had all swung open to the same precise degree, the doors aligned like soldiers. The entire room was silent, and nothing moved.
It wasn’t Beth. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t anyone.
A cold draft hit me again, this time a breeze. As if a window had been left open somewhere. But why would the air be so cold? It wasn’t that cold outside. And yet the wind was so distinct I felt it lift the tendrils of hair that weren’t tied back in my ponytail.
In the bathroom, the taps turned on again. I stood frozen, holding the drink forgotten in my hand, listening to that sound as my heart hammered in my chest. For a second, I felt like I had gone back in time to the seventies, to the house’s heyday. I would walk out of this kitchen and find a different world, one filled with Jell-O salads and The Waltons on TV.
Except the Greer mansion wasn’t a house of rosy brown and orange nostalgia. A man had been murdered here. Right where I was standing.
I put the drink on the counter and walked to the bathroom again, my feet moving mechanically. I almost expected to see Beth in there—except a teenage Beth, slim and youthful, wearing a T-shirt and jeans with embroidery on the pockets, her hair long down her back. But just like before, there was no one there.
I put my hand on the tap, and blood splashed into the bowl of the sink. It mixed with the water, red and rancid, swirling down the drain. I jerked my hand away. I wasn’t bleeding. Yet the blood still ran, as if someone were dumping it into the water, or rinsing bloody hands. The cold air hit the back of my neck, along with a rotten metallic smell, and I nearly gagged.
In one quick motion, I twisted the taps off. Then I went back to the kitchen, grabbed the drink with a numb hand, and walked back to the living room. Beth was still on the sofa, waiting. She looked at me curiously. “Are you all right?”
“Sure,” I said, trying not to think about what I’d just seen. The living room was stuffy, with no sign of a breeze. I handed Beth her drink. “This house . . .”
“It’s horrible, I know.” Beth took the glass and put it next to her. “Let’s continue. What else did you want to ask me?”
My phone was still sitting on the table. I hadn’t stopped the recording when I left the room. I picked it up and saw that it was paused. “Did you stop this?” I asked her.
“No,” Beth said. Her expression was calm as she looked at me. “You look pale, Shea. What’s the matter?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
October 1977
BETH
The Greer mansion, Beth thought, must be worth a lot of money. Her father had spared no expense when he’d renovated the place. Her mother had bought expensive furniture and decor. It was supposed to be the nicest, most beautiful house in the city.
Beth figured she should probably burn it down.
All of Arlen Heights was oppressive and gloomy this morning, the rain coming down on the carefully untended streets. The interview with the police detectives had been the day before. Since then, Beth had been driving, spending endless hours behind the wheel of her car. Searching, searching. She’d barely slept, and even though she was sober, she still had a headache behind her eyes that felt a lot like a hangover. She didn’t want to go home.
Just keep control, Beth. You can handle this. Just keep control.
She’d finally decided to come home and try to sleep. She felt jumpy and wild, unable to sit still, but when the Greer mansion came in sight, a chill descended. There was a car in her driveway, a big sixties Chevy, floating like a freighter. She’d know that car anywhere. And parked on the street in front of the house was a van she didn’t recognize. As she pulled into the driveway behind the Chevy, a man got out of the van, carrying a microphone. He was followed by another man with a camera on his shoulder.
Now she wasn’t jumpy anymore. Now she was just angry.
It was cold, her anger. Her parents’ anger had always burned hot, especially when they shouted at each other. Then they’d both storm out of the house, leaving Beth alone, and everything would go cold and silent. Beth had learned early which one she preferred. Which one kept her calm and served her purposes when she needed it instead of making her surrender control.
“Miss Greer!” The reporter was coming up the drive as she opened her car door and got out. The cameraman hurried behind him, only able to go so far before he ran out of cable. “Miss Greer!” the reporter shouted. “Do you have anything to say about the murder accusations against you? Are you the Lady Killer?”
Beth closed the car door behind her. She shoved her hands in her pockets, because she couldn’t think of anything else to do with them. Part of her thought that if she left her hands free, she’d slap the man across the face, right there on camera. It was the same anger she’d felt during the police interview, but this time she kept her foot on its neck by sheer force of will as it struggled to get free.
The camera was pointed at her, a large bulky thing that was snarled with cables and a huge lens. The reporter had his microphone pointed at her face. Beth savored the feeling of her anger, the cold in her bones. She leaned toward the microphone and said, “I’m just a girl who minds her own business.”
Then she turned away and walked up the drive where the camera couldn’t follow her. She circled the house to the backyard, where she knew Ransom would be.
* * *
—
He wouldn’t be in the house. He had never said as much, but Ransom Wells hated this house as much as Beth did. Beth walked past the dripping trees to the open lawn that led to the cliff over the sea. It was a view of flat green grass and churning, dark blue ocean far away off the shore, birds wheeling in the sky overhead. She shivered. The rain was letting up, but it was always cold back here, no matter what time of year it was.
Standing on the lawn was a man well over six feet tall, with big shoulders and a big body to match his height. His hair and beard were salt-and-pepper, though he was only in his thirties. He was wearing a suit and an overcoat. He seemed oblivious to the rain, like most of the lifetime residents of Claire Lake. He looked exactly the same as the last time she saw him, after her mother died two years ago.
At that time, he’d told her she was hiring him whether she wanted to or not.
I don’t need a lawyer, she’d replied.
And he’d said: You’re young, you’re beautiful, and as of now you’re alone and very rich. My dear, you need a lawyer more than anything.
“Ransom,” she said now, approaching him across the grass. “What are you doing here?”
He didn’t reply until she was standing next to him. “This is a beautiful view,” he said. “Your father always loved it.”
Beth waited. Ransom had a newspaper, now damp, folded under one arm. She tucked a windblown lock of hair behind her ear as the anger she’d felt for the reporter drained away. When Ransom had something to say, there was no power on earth that would make him say it faster.
Finally, Ransom spoke again. “I first met your father when he called me up to make an impaired driving charge go away. Did you know that? Not the most illustrious meeting.” His brows drew together as he looked at the ocean. He wasn’t a handsome man, exactly, but he was hard to look away from. “I didn’t think I’d like him, but I did. I got him off the drunk driving charge, because I’m good and that’s the way the world works. I’ve been sorry for his loss every day since he died. Literally every day. I’m as puzzled by that as you are.”
