“You’re awake,” the nurse said, coming along the other side of my bed. “We need a moment, please,” she said to Michael.
“Shea, this is crazy. If Beth didn’t confess, there’s no way you can know this.”
“Lily killed all of them, including Julian,” I said. “We’ll give them everything Ransom gave us. We have to re-create the timeline and look for murders we didn’t know about before. Mariana was an accident. She drank too much, or maybe took medication, after a fight with Lily. She thought she was going to find Lily, to apologize to her, when she got in that car.”
“Um,” the nurse said, probably shocked. But I wasn’t looking at her. I was looking at Michael.
His gaze held mine. He guessed how I knew, maybe. I had too many details. I had seen it.
But like he’d said before, if I wanted to tell him, I would.
“This is it, isn’t it?” he said. “This is the end after all these years.”
“This is the beginning,” I said as the nurse lifted my arm. “Call them. Now.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
From the Claire Lake News Online, October 2017:
POLICE INVESTIGATION IN ARLEN HEIGHTS SPARKS QUESTIONS
Police were recently seen entering the Arlen Heights home of Beth Greer, who was acquitted of a series of murders in 1978. They were inside the home for several hours, apparently with the authority of a warrant.
Carl Contreras, chief of police with the Claire Lake Police Department, declined to give a statement except to say, “I cannot comment on any ongoing investigation.”
Greer was arrested and tried for the murders of Thomas Armstrong, 31, and Paul Veerhoever, 36, in 1977. She was found not guilty. The murders have never been solved.
“She’s quiet,” a neighbor, Winifred Platts, said of Greer, who has lived in her childhood home since the acquittal. “The press used to hang around after the trial, but they went away and it’s been quiet ever since. We don’t see her much, just at the store or whatnot. She doesn’t seem to have any friends. We’re not happy to have a murderer in the neighborhood, but she had her day in court. If she didn’t do it, then I guess she didn’t. But I don’t like this police search at all.”
Claire Lake Police will not comment on whether the warrant is connected to the so-called Lady Killer murders. Because of double jeopardy laws, Greer cannot be charged with those murders a second time.
“So what does it mean, then?” asks Timothy Garge, another neighbor who was busy raking his lawn. “Did she kill someone else? That’s just great. If she doesn’t sell, we might have to.”
* * *
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From the Oregon News, October 2017:
“There’s nothing to find at my house,” Beth Greer said.
. . . The law of double jeopardy would apply to the murders of Armstrong and Veerhoever, though it would not apply to any other crimes Miss Greer might be accused of that arise from the investigation at her home.
Miss Greer issued a statement through the office of her attorney, Ransom Wells: “The search of my home was legal persecution, pure and simple.” The statement was not given personally by Wells, who his staff say is in declining health, but sent by email to local media outlets. “I have lived a quiet life for forty years, ever since my acquittal at trial. I have harmed no one. This has been brought on by a blogger named Shea Collins, who is seeking fame based on lies about crimes she claims I’ve committed. All of it is categorically false, and I’m considering legal action to protect myself.”
Collins apparently runs a website called the Book of Cold Cases, which contains several articles about the Lady Killer murders along with articles about other famous unsolved crimes. Collins appears to be a Claire Lake resident, though attempts to reach her for comment were met with silence . . .