I closed my eyes, feeling two distinct sides of myself at war. On the one hand, I absolutely did not believe in ghosts or the supernatural. It was regular, everyday earthly evil that kept me up at night.
But on the other hand, to believe it was a fun-house trick was to believe that Beth Greer had some strange, psychopathic wish to deceive me. And—I could admit it to myself—I didn’t want to believe that.
I didn’t want to believe she was a liar, and I didn’t want to believe she was a serial killer. Which was exactly what Beth wanted.
“I can go over there and check it out, if you like,” Michael said.
“No.”
“Are you saying no because you don’t want to ask for help from a man?”
“That isn’t it.” That was kind of it. “Beth and I have only just started talking. If I bring someone over to dismantle her house, looking for levers, she’ll stop talking to me.”
“Of course,” Michael said. “The carrot and the stick. That works entirely in her favor.”
Once again, I pictured Michael as an old-school gumshoe, sitting on a park bench somewhere, trying to look casual as he followed a subject. He was holding a newspaper in front of his face, watching from behind it. A turtleneck—I definitely pictured him in a turtleneck. Dark brown, with a blazer over it. The picture was so vivid it felt real. “Beth has held up her end of the bargain so far,” I argued. “I’m on my way to interview Detective Joshua Black right now.”
“At least I don’t have to worry about you when you’re with him,” Michael said. “I envy you, to be honest. Black is a legend in the Claire Lake PD. He’s been retired for years, but they still talk about him. He’s put countless thieves and rapists away, worked every big murder Claire Lake has ever seen. His work on the Sherry Haines murder was practically a textbook on how to catch a killer.”
My body went cold and my head went light. There was a thready pulsing sound in my ears. I held the phone, silent.
“Shea?” Michael said. “Are you there?”
“Yes,” I managed. “He worked . . . He worked that case? I didn’t know.”
“Sure, he worked it,” Michael said. “We don’t have a big detective force in Claire Lake, and we don’t have that many murders. Especially child murders. You sound strange. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” I looked out the window, saw the piers and the water. “This is my stop. I have to go.”
I screwed that up, I thought as I got off the bus and inhaled the cold, salty smell of the ocean. Michael probably thought I was crazy. Then again, he thought that already. I had to forget about it and get a grip for this interview with Joshua Black.
Black’s address was one of the houseboats on the downtown piers. I walked along the grid of wooden slats, following the signs with twee names like Ocean Lane and Saltwater Avenue. Black’s boat was trim and tidily kept, though the decorations weren’t overly fussy. A single man’s dwelling.
I knocked on the door, and he answered right away. Though Black was over seventy now, he looked a lot like the handsome man I’d seen in photos. He had the same cheekbones and dark eyes, but his hair was white. Still, his face had changed somewhat. It was thinner, the roundness of his young man’s features gone. The effect was just as pleasing, but in a different way.
I looked at him and tried to remember if I recognized him, if Detective Black’s was one of the many faces I’d seen after I’d escaped the car when I was nine. If he’d worked the case, been the lead, then I must have been brought to talk to him at some point. But everything was a terrified blur, and there were so many strangers’ faces in the days and weeks that followed the abduction—police, doctors, psychologists, social workers. I’d sat numbly and told my story over and over, gotten in the car with my parents and gone to office after office. I hadn’t known who anyone was, and I hadn’t asked many questions. I had only wanted all of it to be over.