The Book of Cold Cases(33)

Jaclyn leaned forward, the camera going into dewy soft focus on her beautiful face, the music swelling higher. “You’ve got to believe me!” she cried. She was wearing a cream blouse with ruffles at the neck and the cuffs; red blush had been dabbed on her cheekbones. Her voice went up a notch as she shouted: “You’ve just got to!”

“Listen, Beth,” said the soap actor. “I’d like to believe you, but nothing you say adds up. You wrote those notes. You know you did. You’re lying so much you don’t even know what’s the truth anymore. But I do. And the truth is, you shot those men!”

I sighed and paused it, freezing on a frame of Jaclyn Smith’s face right before she got angry. In Deadly Woman, Beth was a manipulator, a heartless killer, a siren, trying to work her wiles on poor Detective Black and failing in the face of his moral superiority. It was all right there in the title.

I smoothed my fingertips over the top of Winston’s head, then rolled over in bed and picked up my other early-eighties artifact, a book called Who Was the Female Zodiac? It was written in 1984 by a journalist named Henderson Metterick, and it was the only book ever written about the Lady Killer case. It had been out of print for decades, but I’d found a hardcover copy on eBay a year ago, the pages yellowed and fragrant with over thirty years of age. The book was a hack job of useless speculation, overwriting, and almost comically offensive misogyny, filled with words like she-devil and phrases like Beth Greer’s exotic, overpowering allure.

This, I realized, was where it got tricky. Because the Beth I knew was possibly a murderer, a liar, a sociopath. But there was no other way to put it—everything that had been written about Beth for the last forty years was infuriating. I wasn’t an angry person, but Who Was the Female Zodiac? made me want to kick Henderson Metterick in the balls, even though he’d been dead since 1991.

“Fuck you, Henderson,” I said out loud, because it felt good. On the bed next to me, Winston Purrchill’s ears swiveled toward me, but he was too lazy to open his eyes.

With the laptop still frozen on Jaclyn’s face, I flipped through the book again, opening the photo section in the middle. Henderson might be a terrible writer and a woman hater, but he’d somehow gotten hold of good photographs. There was Beth as a little girl, posed on a chair, wearing her school uniform. The caption said she was age six.

I turned the pages, looking at more photographs. There was a photo of the Greer mansion, with a predictable caption about how rich and miserable the Greers were. Here was the first victim, Thomas Armstrong, posing with his family, dressed in a suit with a wide collar, sideburns on his cheeks. Then the second victim, Paul Veerhoever, a man with a round face and pale blond hair. He was standing next to his wife, a beautiful woman with curly brown hair tumbling past her shoulders. They were at a party somewhere, each of them holding a glass of wine and smiling awkwardly. I wondered what had happened to the wives of those men, what kind of lives they’d gone on to have. Both of them had left town, I knew. I hadn’t been able to track down either of them.

And here, again, was Beth. This picture was taken the day she was arrested in December 1977; it was a shot of Beth being led down the front steps of the Greer mansion, her hands cuffed behind her back. Detective Washington, frowning through his mustache, had her by one arm, while Detective Black, looking serious and troubled, walked at her other shoulder. His posture was almost protective, like he was shielding Beth from everything around her. Beth was wearing a belted trench coat that ended at midthigh, her red hair down, hoops in her ears. She had a solemn expression on her face, but there was no other way to describe her but radiant. Her skin was pale and flawless, her eyes large and dark, her mouth slashed with a shock of sexy red lipstick, her hair in a sensual cloud around her face. She looked like a goddess, and she was utterly, almost unnaturally calm.

I could see Beth’s resemblance to Mariana in that photo. Mariana, who Sylvia Simpson said had been crazy.

I stared at the photo for a long time, taking in the faces. I felt like I’d been there that day, like I could smell the cold damp of the winter air and see the flashing of the police lights. Behind Beth and the two detectives were uniformed officers, young men who looked stern and excited. That must have been quite a day.

I reached to my bedside table and picked up my phone. I hadn’t relistened to the recording of my interview with Beth. If I couldn’t sleep, I may as well transcribe it. I pulled up the recording app, found the recording, and played it.

    MY VOICE: Okay. Let’s talk about the Lady Killer murders.

BETH’S VOICE: Let’s.

ME: I don’t suppose there’s any point in me asking you if you committed them or not?

BETH: You’ll form your own conclusions. Everyone does.



Winston lifted his head, his ears swiveling and his eyes blinking open. “Sorry, buddy,” I said as the voices kept talking. “I know it’s late.”

But the cat wasn’t just annoyed. He tensed, got his feet under him, and crouched low, his sleek body pressed down in terror. His tail bloomed wide as the fur on it stood up. He hissed, gave a low growl, and bolted off the bed and out of the room.

“Winston?” I said, and then I heard it. Something on the recording.

I picked my phone up and put it closer to my ear. Beth and I were talking—about my parents, about her parents. But in the background was a shushing sound. I turned up the volume and pressed the phone to my ear, wondering if the recording had picked up wind, or had created noise because of a technical problem.