“You do stakeouts and follow mysterious people,” I said.
He smiled a little. “It was fun making you curious about my cases, but the fact is that I mostly do insurance work, taking pictures of people who claim they’re in chronic pain while they lift furniture or go waterskiing. It isn’t very glamorous. That’s why I like taking your assignments—because it feels the most like real detective work. And working on the Lady Killer case is a dream for me. Does that answer your question?”
“Yes,” I said. “You put up with a lot from me. I’m sorry I’m so weird.”
Michael shrugged as the waitress put his pint of beer in front of him. “It’s okay. You probably have your reasons.”
I didn’t want to talk about my reasons. Not tonight. “Were your father and uncle cops in Claire Lake?”
“Yes, they were. If you’re asking if they worked the Lady Killer case, my father was in uniform at the time. He did things like canvassing neighborhoods looking for witnesses, that sort of thing.”
“Your father worked the Lady Killer case, and you didn’t think to tell me?” I said, incredulous. I thought of the photo of Beth’s arrest, the uniformed cops in the background. “Was he there the day Beth Greer was arrested?”
Michael’s voice was tight. “Most of the Claire Lake PD was there that day. And, yes, my father was there as well.”
“Are you kidding me? Can I interview him? I think his memories would be valuable.”
His expression had gone carefully blank, though his posture stayed casual. “You can’t interview my father, since he was an alcoholic who died at age forty-eight.”
I was such an idiot. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. Even if my father was still alive, you wouldn’t find it very pleasant to interview him. Not about this.”
“Why?” I read his expression. “Your father thought Beth Greer was guilty.”
“That’s one way of phrasing it. To the day he died, he referred to Beth Greer as ‘a murdering whore.’？”
I blinked. The words shouldn’t have shocked me, but they did. “What about your uncle?” I asked. “What did he think?”
“My uncle Mike, who I’m named after, fell off a ladder in 1977 and needed back surgery. He was off the job for six months, then confined to a desk for eight months after that. So he didn’t work the Lady Killer case at the height of it. That always bothered him, because when the murders were happening, everyone in Claire Lake was afraid and it was all hands on deck. He hated that he wasn’t part of the hunt. He died last year.”
I glanced at my drink, which was warm now, the ice in it melting to slivers. “Did your uncle think Beth was a lying whore?”
“Mike was more soft-spoken than my father, but he thought Beth Greer was guilty. He thought she got away with murder.” Michael frowned, thinking back. “He always said that it was difficult to understand unless you were in her presence, but Beth was hard. She didn’t care about any of the victims, any of the deaths. She wasn’t even surprised when they arrested her. And through the arrest, the trial, all of it, she always knew more than she let on. Mike said that if Beth Greer didn’t do it, she sure as hell knew who did.”
I thought about that. About Beth coming to my office to buy me lunch unexpectedly, assuming I would go with her. About how she had wanted something, and how she’d shaped the conversation to avoid the pitfalls she didn’t want to get into. About how she had never once mentioned the Lady Killer victims in any of our conversations, as if they didn’t matter to her. “It’s an interesting theory,” I said, “and Beth gives me the chills sometimes. But hard people, who don’t care about others, don’t cover for other people’s crimes. They don’t go to trial in a capital case for someone else. That doesn’t add up.”