I Will Find You(32)

Nope and double nope.

The name Hilde was derived from the more common name Hilda. No surprise there. The court documents from David’s case and all the pursuant media listed her as Hilde, but just to cover all the bases, Rachel tried Hilda Winslow. There were only two of them as well and neither fit the profile. Then she tried Hilde Winslow’s maiden name—women often go back to using that—but that too bore no fruit.

A dead end.

The siren—Rachel assumed that it was some sort of fire alarm—kept screeching.

Her phone buzzed. She checked the number and saw it was Tim Doherty, her old friend from her days at the Globe, calling her back. Tim had been one of the few to stick with her when the shit hit the fan. Not publicly, of course. That would have been career suicide. She didn’t want that for him or anyone else.

“I got it,” Tim said to her.

“The entire murder file?”

“The court documents and transcripts. There’s no way the cops are going to let me look at their murder book.”

“Did you get Hilde Winslow’s Social Security number?”

“Yes. Can I ask why you wanted it?”

“I need to find her.”

“Yeah, I figured that. Why not go the regular routes?”

“I did.”

“And you got nothing,” he said.

She could hear the lilt in Tim’s voice. “That’s right. Why? What did you get?”

“I took the liberty of running the Social Security number.”

“And?”

“Two months after your brother-in-law’s trial, Hilde Winslow changed her name to Harriet Winchester.”

Pay dirt, Rachel thought. “Whoa.”

“Yes,” he said. “She also sold her house and moved to an apartment on Twelfth Street in Manhattan.” He rattled off the address. “By the way, she turns eighty-one this week.”

“So why would a woman of her age change her name and move?” Rachel asked.

“Post-trial press?”

“Come again?”

“This murder was a big story,” Tim said.

“Yeah, but come on. Once her part was over there was no more scrutiny on her.”

The press was like the worst womanizer. Once it metaphorically bedded someone, it quickly grew bored and moved on to something new. A name change, while perhaps explainable, was extreme and curious.

“Fair,” he said. “Do you think she lied about your brother-in-law?”

“I don’t know.”

“Rachel?”

“Yes?”

“You got something big here, don’t you?”

“I think so.”

“Normally I would ask for a taste,” he said. “But you need it more than I do. You deserve another chance, and this world doesn’t like to give that to people anymore, so if you need anything else from me, you let me know, okay?”

She felt tears come to her eyes. “You’re the best, Tim.”

“I know, right? Talk soon.”

Tim hung up. Rachel wiped her eyes. She stared out the diner window, into the crowded parking lot, the siren still blaring in the distance. The world may eventually give Rachel another chance, but she wasn’t sure she deserved it. It had been two years since Catherine Tullo’s death at Rachel’s hands.

Catherine wouldn’t get another chance. Why should Rachel?

It had been the most important story of Rachel’s career. After an exhaustive eight-month investigation, the Globe’s Sunday magazine was going to feature her exposé of Lemhall University’s beloved president Spencer Shane for not only turning a blind eye over the past two decades to sexual assault, abuse, and misconduct by certain male professors but participating in a pattern of systemic abuse and cover-ups at one of the country’s elite institutions. It was a case so egregious yet so frustrating and slippery that Rachel grew obsessed in a way no journalist should. She lost perspective, not on the outrageousness of the crime and culture—there was no way you couldn’t be outraged about that—but on the frailty and decency of the victims.

Lemhall University, her alma mater, managed to get a lot of NDAs signed, so no one could or would go on record. While Rachel kept it from her editors, she herself had been pressured to sign one her freshman year after a disturbing incident at a Halloween party. She refused. The school mishandled her case.

Maybe that was where it started. She lost then. She wouldn’t lose again.

So she went too far.

In the end, the charges were too loaded for the Globe to publish because no one could slip past the NDAs. Rachel couldn’t believe it. She went to the local DA, but he didn’t have the appetite to take on such a popular figure and institution. So she went back to her former classmate Catherine Tullo and begged her to break her NDA. Catherine wanted to, that’s what she told Rachel, but she was afraid. She wouldn’t budge. So that was it. That was what was going to kill the entire story and allow an institution—an institution that had let Rachel’s own attacker skate—to remain unblemished.

Rachel could not allow that.

With no other alternatives available, Rachel went harder at Catherine Tullo: Do the right thing or get exposed anyway. If Catherine couldn’t put other victims first, then Rachel saw no reason to protect her. She would take the story online herself and reveal her sources. Catherine started to cry. Rachel didn’t budge. Half an hour later, Catherine saw the light. She didn’t need the money from the settlement. She didn’t care about the NDA. She would do the right thing. Catherine Tullo hugged her friend and sorority sister and told her that tomorrow she would give Rachel a longer interview and go on the record, and then that night, after Rachel left her apartment, Catherine Tullo filled a bath full of water and slit her wrists.