“A little,” I admitted. “But I’ll get used to it.”
“Then that makes one of us.” He sighed. “Shea Collins. You are a blogger, I understand, and you work at a doctor’s office. Where you need to be in just over an hour.”
“Yes.” I had my scrub top on under my sweater and my coat.
“You are also Girl A.”
A few weeks ago, I would have been beside myself with excitement to get an interview with Ransom Wells; he was my version of a rock star. Now, I only felt tired and a little sad. “So much for my hidden identity,” I said. “It seems everyone knows.”
“Actually, the secrecy was taken very seriously at the time,” Ransom said. “You were only a little girl, and no one wanted the publicity to ruin your life. I just happen to know everything and everyone. I always have.” He glanced at me. “Though you no doubt know, I did not defend Anton Anders. I didn’t work that case at all.”
“I know,” I said. If he had, I wouldn’t be talking to him now. I would never have come.
“The Anton Anders case was a very big deal in this town,” Ransom said. “I realize you can turn on the TV or surf the internet and read about murders that were even more horrible, killers that killed a hundred people. But in Claire Lake, especially among the police and the investigators, the Anders case was a lightning rod. It shaped how the police do business. As tragic as it was, it’s seen as a model of perfect police work, how an investigation can remove evil from society when it’s done right from beginning to end. It’s still discussed, still taught twenty years later. And Girl A is a part of that. That’s your legacy, like it or not.”
I thought about how scared I had been, at twenty-nine, when I’d realized I was alone in the dark outside the Greer mansion. How the simple idea of getting home had seemed insurmountable. I shook my head. I didn’t really care about police training. “I never chose that legacy. I never chose any legacy.”
“That’s because we don’t always get to choose. In fact, we rarely do.”
I looked at the houseboats, moving in the gray light. I wondered if Detective Joshua Black was in his boat right now, getting up. The man who had caught my would-be killer, living the later part of his life alone.
“I take it you’ve met him,” Ransom said, watching my gaze and reading my mind. “Joshua.”
“Yes.”
“How happy he must have been,” Ransom said. “To see you, alive and well and so lovely, twenty years later. He wouldn’t have let on, of course. But that meeting would have warmed his heart. He’s that kind of man.”
“Why is he alone?” I asked.
“He was married for fifteen years or so, but it didn’t work out. It never does with cops. They’re an ornery bunch, married to work, and most of them are uncouth and hard to stomach for long periods of time. Joshua was the exception, but even he couldn’t make it work. Dealing with death for a living is lonely. And there were no children.”
“He has some kind of friendship with Beth,” I said.
“That’s because he never truly believed she killed those men. And he was right.”
I looked away from the houseboats and at Ransom, taking in his sallow profile. “But he doesn’t know who really did it,” I said. “Beth has never told him. And neither have you.”
Ransom was silent, looking out at the water.
“Is that why she called you now?” I asked him. “Because I learned about Lily? I wonder how much you knew about her.” I watched his profile. “You knew everything, didn’t you? And you didn’t tell Detective Black, or anyone.”
“It’s true,” Ransom said. “We let it dangle as a mystery for forty years now. We didn’t do it to be cruel. We did it because when a man like Joshua Black is given too much of the correct information, he’ll run himself into the ground chasing it down. And then he’ll find things that he doesn’t want to know. There was no good in giving Joshua the answers, Shea. It would only have caused him pain, and it didn’t matter anyway. Because everything was already over.”