I could find no objection to that.
“What happened to Martina Cannon’s friend back in Seattle was a terrible thing, and I have no doubt that this is the man who did it.” We both looked down at The Defendant’s honed, carnivorous features. “It’s a total mystery how he pulled it off, to be honest with you. I feel for Martina, and I feel for the families of the girls who went missing. But it has absolutely nothing to do with what happened here.”
I nodded numbly.
“And one more thing,” Sheriff Cruso said in a firm tone that wasn’t unkind. He was looking at me with worried, pitying eyes. He was in his midthirties, but there was a baby-faced softness to his cheeks that telegraphed a sort of Leave It to Beaver wholesomeness. I could picture him drinking a glass of milk at the breakfast table, his wife removing the mustache left behind with her thumb and a smile. “I have to watch what I say here, because Martina Cannon has deep pockets and friends in high places, but I’ll leave you with this.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and clasped his hands together, pointing conjoined index fingers at my chest. “I’d advise you not to spend time alone with the woman, Pamela. I’d advise you not to spend any time with her at all, for your own safety.”
RUTH
Issaquah, Washington
Winter 1974
After the second girl went missing, the Seattle police chief warned women live on Channel 5 not to venture out after dark. It was March in the Northwest, the sky blue-black by four in the afternoon. That the call to stay at home for three-quarters of the day coincided with the height of the women’s lib movement in downtown Seattle did not seem to me like any coincidence.
I trailed my mother through the stationery store, checking my watch only when she wasn’t looking. The grief group was meeting in thirty minutes, but if she felt hassled, she would spite me by dawdling. She’d already changed her mind twice on the calligrapher as we worked out the invitation wording for my father’s garden-naming ceremony at Issaquah Catholic, where he’d been the high school history teacher for eighteen years before he died last summer.
For the one-year anniversary of his death, Issaquah Catholic had planted hydrangea bushes in the front yard of the old clergy house, which for a time had served as a rehabilitation station for fugitive slaves who had escaped the South. It was an important piece of the school’s history, and my father had made up his lesson plan in such a way that the unit about the Underground Railroad fell in the springtime, when it was warm enough to conduct his class in the unkempt yard outside the sagging white cottage. The new history teacher planned on continuing this tradition, and the school had sprung to clean up the grounds and install a plaque dedicating the space to my father. This sounded more like landscaping than a garden, but I was trying to hurry my mother along and kept that observation to myself. Besides, I hated to remember the clergy house and all the abasement that occurred under its rotten roof.
“Have you spoken to CJ about it yet?” my mother asked when we were finally in the car on the way to Frances’s house.
CJ was my ex-husband. He’d been in my older brother’s class at Issaquah Catholic. It was of the utmost importance to my mother that CJ attend the ceremony so that all the nuns would think we were still happily married.
“I haven’t,” I admitted, squinting like a bad dog caught tearing up a couch cushion. “But I will.”
My mother pulled into a Chevron station abruptly, failing to signal, and someone smacked a horn, a short burst of indignation. My mother put her hand up in the rearview mirror and waved apologetically. “Can you please take care of it this week, Ruth? I’ve been asking for months. It’s not like you are so busy.”
My mother had a way of making me feel like I was both too old to behave the way I did and also too young to be trusted out of her sight. “I promise.”
“And please apologize to Martha on our behalf and tell her we are so sorry about this.”
Martha. My ex-husband’s new wife. I nodded dutifully, my eye on the time. The grief group was meeting in seven minutes, and we had half a tank of gas. There really was no reason we had to stop at that moment. In a small, penitent voice, I asked, “Is there any way you could fill up after you drop me off?”
My mother turned off the engine and heaved her door open. “I completely forgot that I told your brother I’d take the kids to the winter sale at Frederick’s tonight. Your nephew desperately needs a new coat.”
She was blushing violently when she got out of the car. Funny, for all the lies my mother expected me to tell, she could hardly stand to tell one herself.