To Catch a Killer(10)

While I wait for her reply, I’m already prepping my bedroom.

I close the door and shove a thick three-ring binder into the gap between the bottom of the door and the carpet. With the door secured, I roll my desk chair into the roomy walk-in closet. Then I stand on the chair to reach a small knot of rope that blends in with the murky old plaster ceiling.

Pulling gently on the rope releases a wide trapdoor, and a sturdy wooden stairway unfolds from the attic. My phone vibrates with Rachel’s reply. GO AHEAD AND EAT. I’M STUCK HERE ANOTHER TWO HOURS.

Two whole hours!

Relieved, I fly up the wooden steps that emerge into the middle of a huge attic that spans both my bedroom and the guest bedroom next door.

It’s pitch-dark up here even in the middle of the day because I’ve covered the small round window at the peak in the roof. Rachel never comes up here, but just to be on the safe side, I’ve staged it to look like I don’t come up here, either. I shifted most of the boxes to the guest room side. Then along the stairs on my side, I’ve carefully arranged a pile of boxes, trunks, suitcases, tarps, and rolled-up rugs to act as a screen. If anyone sticks their head up here they’ll think there’s nothing to see on the other side of this pile but more junk and storage.

I tap my foot in an arch until I find the pedal switch. When I step on it, two lamps on the other side of the room blink on, bathing the area in a warm glow. I have separated the furniture and arranged it like a living room. There’s a smooth, red leather sofa, a coffee table shaped like a kidney bean, and end tables and lamps. Some nights I just come up here to lay on the sofa and read, pretending like it’s my own apartment. Other times I putter in the lab area I created from a desk and matching cabinet. But today, after everything that’s happened, I need the box.

I keep it in a large wooden cabinet that I can secure with a padlock. I do this so often that my fingers spin quickly through the combination. I remove the lock and set it aside. I pause for a couple of seconds, inhaling deeply and then forcing air out through tight lips. No matter how stressed and anxious I am, I never rush this part. It’s ritual. I want to feel it. Savor it. I need to make it part of me.

I sink to my knees and part the doors. On the bottom shelf is a simple white cardboard box, like the kind they use in offices to store files.

I take a pair of rubber gloves from the shelf and slip them on. Then I carefully slide the box out of the cabinet. I set it on the rug as gently as if it contained a baby.

In many ways it does. It contains baby me.

The day this box came into my life, it was as if the world cracked open and possibility was born. Today I worry where that will take us now.

*

Last summer, Sydney offered us a short temp job at the police department. Three or four days archiving regular files like bills and things. Spam, Lysa, and I were happy to earn some extra cash. It was boring work, but we made it fun—shredding the old files to make room for new ones.

Almost immediately I keyed in on the fact that this huge storage area held all of the police department files. The work files were on one side but the evidence files were on the other. There was no reason for anyone to think that we would wander into the evidence side. There was also no one else in the storage room with us for long periods of time.

At first I just wanted to find my mother’s evidence box, to know that it existed. So that one day, when I start my job as a forensic scientist, I can request the evidence and reopen her case. Evidence boxes are filed alphabetically by the name of the victim, so it only took me a few minutes to find the box labeled BLAKE, SARAH.

But it took two days to get up the nerve to actually open it.

Each night I would lie in bed and imagine what might be in that box. I hoped I might find something familiar, a memory or some link from me to her. What I actually found was … not that.

On top was a plastic sleeve containing clothing, stiff and stained with dried blood. Her blood.

That was more than I had bargained for. I closed the box and put it back on the shelf, vowing not to touch it again.

But when we got to our last day of work, with only two hours left on our shift, I realized my chance to go through the evidence from my mother’s murder was about to expire. Shouldn’t I take a look? Shouldn’t I know what was in there? With only fifteen minutes left on the job, I decided to steal that box.

Getting it was easy. Sneaking it home was a huge challenge. You can have secrets when your transportation is a sky-blue vintage Vespa scooter, just not secrets the size of a file box.

What evolved was a weird no-plan plan.

Each step just became the next most logical thing to do. I took an empty box from the trash pile and dumped the contents of my mother’s box into it. My stomach lurched when a huge knife in a plastic bag tumbled from one box to the other. I couldn’t bring myself to look at it closely, but I knew the blade was coated with dark, dried blood.

I placed my mother’s empty evidence box back on the shelf. No one was actively working her case, so it wasn’t likely that anyone would look inside. But if the box went completely missing, that might get noticed.

I borrowed the keys to Lysa’s car and, when no one was looking, I carried the box out and stashed it in her trunk. I didn’t even tell my friends about it right away. I waited to confess until we were celebrating the end of the job with ice cream sundaes.

Lysa was horrified. “You’ve made me an accessory,” she screeched.