The Book of Cold Cases(12)

“Except you don’t know that, because you claim you can’t remember.” Detective Washington’s tone was tight and harsh. “You were too drunk, or so you say. So how do you know it wasn’t you?”

She looked up at him and met his eyes. The anger broke loose, and for a second she thought about how stupid he was. How he had no idea what he was dealing with, and now he was in the way. The words came out of her, cold with fury: “It wasn’t me, you idiot. I wasn’t in that fucking car.”

There was a second of stunned silence from both men. Panic, they could deal with; trembling fear, they were used to. They even expected lying and clumsy attempts to dodge questions. But anger was something they didn’t expect. It burned pure inside her, like fire fed with oxygen. She knew she should put it out, but instead she held Detective Washington’s gaze and she let it burn.

He looked back at her with shocked disgust, as if she were a zoo animal who had pissed on the floor. Anger and profanity. She should have stayed quiet.

But the anger was loose now, and she couldn’t find it in herself to be sorry.

Detective Black cleared his throat and took over again. “Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Veerhoever were shot with .22-caliber bullets. And I know this is confusing to you, because normally we wouldn’t question a nice young lady like yourself about something like this. Normally, you’d be the last person we’d think of.”

Beth held still, waiting. In the silence of the room, she could hear the whirring of the tape recorder.

Detective Black continued. “Your father died in 1973 in a home invasion. He was shot in the kitchen of your house while he was home alone. He was killed with a .22-caliber weapon. We’re going to pull the ballistics report from those bullets and compare it to these bullets. Do you understand?”

This wasn’t happening.

Oh, yes, it was.

“Perhaps there’s something you’d like to tell us,” Detective Black said.

“There’s nothing I want to tell you,” she said.

A lie, maybe. Part of her wanted to tell him what her life was like. That being drunk kept the ghosts away most of the time, but not all of the time. That the fear ate away at her sometimes, and so did the anger. That she had moments when she wasn’t sure what was real and what wasn’t.

But she wasn’t going to talk. Not about her father’s death. Not about anything. Some things needed to stay buried.

Some things had to stay buried.

“Did you know Thomas Armstrong?” Washington asked her again.

“No,” she said through numb lips.

“Did you know Paul Veerhoever?”

“No.”

“Were you seeing either of them?”

“No.”

“Were the notes from you?”

“No.” Now the anger had drained, and she was exhausted. She needed a drink. She stood up. “I’m not answering any more questions. I’m leaving.”

They let her go—Washington with anger, Black with resignation. She felt the eyes on her as she walked through the station. The conversations quieted again. One cop gave a low whistle. She was almost at the front doors when someone said, “You’ll be back, sweetheart. Next time will be worse.”

She walked outside and paused on the station steps, inhaling the air infused with the smell of the ocean. Getting her equilibrium back now that she wasn’t in that stuffy room anymore, looking at those two men.

It was starting.

Maybe she wouldn’t survive it.

Maybe she deserved it.

She headed toward her car to go home.





CHAPTER NINE


September 2017





SHEA


There was a photo taken of Beth on October 20, 1977, the day after Paul Veerhoever’s murder. Beth was exiting the Claire Lake police station after being interviewed by the cops. They hadn’t arrested her yet—that would come later, when the police were more certain they had a case they could win.

Beth was wearing a dark green blouse tied in a knot at her waist and high-waisted jeans, her hair tied back in a ponytail, gold hoop earrings in her ears. She was alone. Beth’s face was turned as she caught sight of the camera, and in that fleeting moment her eyes were narrowed, the top lids drooping down over the irises, the pupils inky black. She looked beautiful and sexy, and at the same time she looked hard. She looked like a murderess.

Beth wasn’t arrested that day, but when that photo ran in the Claire Lake Daily, the town made up its mind. That woman—that uncaring, unfeeling woman—was guilty. Everywhere Beth went between the murders and the arrest, she was photographed.

That first photo was the one I pulled up on Saturday morning as I drank my coffee and got out the notes I’d kept from my research on the Lady Killer case. I looked at Beth’s face again, comparing it to the woman I’d talked to in the park. There was no doubt that even though she was beautiful, Beth Greer was not a sweet, innocent victim. There was a steeliness to her that people had found hard to reconcile in a twenty-three-year-old, and that steeliness was still there today. The woman I’d met in the park hadn’t been flustered or even angry to find me following her. She’d simply turned the tables on me until I answered her questions.

I’ve met sociopaths in my line of work, Michael had said. The smart ones are experts at deception.