“I agree, but Uncle Mike wasn’t stupid. He had good cop’s instincts. So does Joshua Black.”
“Black doesn’t think Beth is the Lady Killer. He told me so.”
“He doesn’t think she’s completely innocent, either.” Michael smiled. “And so we come around to the beginning again. Over and over.”
“How far did you get in the Linwood Street property records?” I asked him.
He took a deep sip of his beer. “You don’t give out easy assignments, do you? Trying to figure out what was in every building on Linwood in 1951, when Mariana Greer was nineteen, looking for something that could have been a private mental hospital—it’s a challenge, even for a research geek like me.”
I slumped in my chair. “I’m wasting your time, aren’t I? I’m sorry.” He had other jobs, other clients, and I was asking him to work on this because of something a bitter old woman had told me. “I don’t even know why I’m pursuing this. I’m not a cop, or a journalist, or an investigator.”
“I’ve read the Book of Cold Cases.” Michael’s voice was quiet. “You’re a writer, Shea. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”
I swallowed hard, my cheeks heating. I’d never thought of myself as a writer—just as a blogger with a strange hobby. But Michael thought I could do this. Detective Black thought I could do this. Maybe the only person who needed convincing was me.
“At least send me an invoice,” I said.
Michael shook his head. “I told you, the chance to crack the Lady Killer case after forty years is payment enough for me.”
He paused, and there was that moment—that one moment, perfect and still, when I could have told him everything. Michael had told me so much, given me so much. I could tell him about me. The reason I had so many hang-ups that he didn’t understand. The reason I’d been afraid to meet him. The reason I was alone. I could tell Michael that I was Girl A.
Hi there. Are you cold?
The blood in my mouth when the man hit me that day, my hands scrabbling on the car door handle as I tried to jump out into the snow.
The shocking impact when I hit the snowy pavement and the dry crunch as I got my boots beneath me and started to run.
The plumes of my breath in the air as I ran and hid, certain that the man was circling the block, getting out of his car, coming after me. The creeping cold as I ran into a garden shed and stayed still, trying not to make a sound.
I could tell Michael all of that, because for better or for worse, it was the truth about me. But we were sitting here face-to-face at last. He was handsome, and he understood me—at least part of me—and we were trying something new. It wasn’t the time to tell him.
It didn’t escape me that I could talk about any number of gruesome murders, but I couldn’t talk about the murder that had almost been mine. Actually, I could talk about those other murders because I couldn’t talk about the one that had almost been mine.
Besides, Michael wasn’t telling me everything about himself, either. No one did. Everyone kept secrets, at least for a little while.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
October 2017
SHEA
“Let’s talk about the evidence,” I said, turning on the recorder on my phone.
It was Saturday, we were at the Greer mansion, and Beth was sitting on the sofa. She was wearing black full-length yoga pants and a black tee, her feet bare. She was lithe and elegant, ageless. She looked like a movie star—Meryl Streep, perhaps—graciously submitting to an interview. “Why?” she asked me. “I think you’ve read the trial transcripts.”
“More than once,” I said. The house was silent around us—no pipes or electric hums, no far-off barking dogs. Except for the sound of a clock ticking on the wall, the Greer mansion was the quietest place I had ever been. My eyes kept traveling to the shadows in the corners, and my ears kept straining for any kind of sound.