The Book of Cold Cases(22)

“At least I don’t have to worry about you when you’re with him,” Michael said. “I envy you, to be honest. Black is a legend in the Claire Lake PD. He’s been retired for years, but they still talk about him. He’s put countless thieves and rapists away, worked every big murder Claire Lake has ever seen. His work on the Sherry Haines murder was practically a textbook on how to catch a killer.”

My body went cold and my head went light. There was a thready pulsing sound in my ears. I held the phone, silent.

“Shea?” Michael said. “Are you there?”

“Yes,” I managed. “He worked . . . He worked that case? I didn’t know.”

“Sure, he worked it,” Michael said. “We don’t have a big detective force in Claire Lake, and we don’t have that many murders. Especially child murders. You sound strange. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” I looked out the window, saw the piers and the water. “This is my stop. I have to go.”

I screwed that up, I thought as I got off the bus and inhaled the cold, salty smell of the ocean. Michael probably thought I was crazy. Then again, he thought that already. I had to forget about it and get a grip for this interview with Joshua Black.

Black’s address was one of the houseboats on the downtown piers. I walked along the grid of wooden slats, following the signs with twee names like Ocean Lane and Saltwater Avenue. Black’s boat was trim and tidily kept, though the decorations weren’t overly fussy. A single man’s dwelling.

I knocked on the door, and he answered right away. Though Black was over seventy now, he looked a lot like the handsome man I’d seen in photos. He had the same cheekbones and dark eyes, but his hair was white. Still, his face had changed somewhat. It was thinner, the roundness of his young man’s features gone. The effect was just as pleasing, but in a different way.

I looked at him and tried to remember if I recognized him, if Detective Black’s was one of the many faces I’d seen after I’d escaped the car when I was nine. If he’d worked the case, been the lead, then I must have been brought to talk to him at some point. But everything was a terrified blur, and there were so many strangers’ faces in the days and weeks that followed the abduction—police, doctors, psychologists, social workers. I’d sat numbly and told my story over and over, gotten in the car with my parents and gone to office after office. I hadn’t known who anyone was, and I hadn’t asked many questions. I had only wanted all of it to be over.

But it was almost certain that Detective Black and I had met twenty years ago, that he’d been one of the people to interview me and have me tell my story. It was certain that he knew my name, because I hadn’t changed it. Maybe he’d forgotten; it was a long time ago. But when I looked in his eyes, I knew he hadn’t forgotten at all.

“Shea Collins?” He held out his hand, and I shook it. “It’s nice to see you again.”

My throat was tight, my tongue clumsy and dry in my mouth. “I don’t remember you,” I said, the words spilling out of me. “Not specifically.”

“I didn’t think you would,” he said. Then he stepped back. “Come in.”

The inside of the houseboat was small and neat, a bachelor’s space. There was a sofa and a TV, a coffee table that likely served as a dining table. There was a galley kitchen to the left and a partition with, presumably, a bedroom behind it. From the window over the kitchen sink, I could see nothing but water.

“Have a seat,” Black said, indicating the sofa. I sat down, realizing that I was obeying because I thought of him as a cop. The cop who had worked—had solved—the Sherry Haines case. The man who, at some point, had interviewed me. I pressed my palms together between my knees.

“Can I get you anything?” Black asked, walking to the galley kitchen.

“No, thank you.”

“We’ll get something out of the way first,” he said in the easy manner of a man who has conducted hundreds of interviews with strangers, most of them hostile, as he poured water into his glass. “I remember you from the Sherry Haines case, but we’re not here to talk about that today.”

“No,” I managed.

“I understand. You want to talk about the Lady Killer case. You asked for an interview before, I think. A year or so ago.”

I nodded. “I’m a blogger. Not as my day job. As my hobby.” I stopped talking, realizing that for once I was with someone who didn’t need an explanation about why I liked true crime. If anyone would understand, it was Detective Joshua Black.

Black turned around, the glass in his hand. “I recognized your name when you made the first request,” he said frankly, “but I make it a policy never to talk about that case with anyone. This time, though, I got a personal request from Beth to meet with you, and I was too curious to turn it down.”

This part had me completely baffled. “You have a relationship with Beth,” I said, and it didn’t come out as a question.

Detective Black leaned against his tiny kitchen counter. “We live in the same town,” he said. “We’ve both lived here all our lives. Claire Lake isn’t a very big place.”

“So even though you investigated her and testified at her murder trial, the two of you are friends.”

He laughed, though the sound had little humor in it. Instead I heard layers of complexity I didn’t understand. “We aren’t friends.” He gestured at the view out the kitchen window. “Did you know that these houseboats were originally put here by Claire Lake’s homeless people?”