The Book of Cold Cases(52)

He was right. We had a lot of work to do, and all of it was important. And it was possible I was wrong.

But I wasn’t wrong. I had heard Mariana’s voice. Is she bitter, or is she sweet?

Sometimes she was so sweet, but other times . . . Well, I don’t like to think about it.



* * *



—

When my phone rang hours later, at one o’clock in the morning, I wasn’t sleeping. I knew who was calling. I picked up the receiver and said, “Beth?”

“I can never sleep,” Beth said. “Can you?”

I sat up, wide awake. “I won the game,” I said.

“Did you?” Her voice didn’t have its usual fight. She sounded tired, so tired.

Still, I pushed on. “Your mother had a child before she married your father. You have a sister. I’m going to find her.”

Beth sighed. “You’re going to regret that. But, then, it’s too late. You’ve already met Lily.”

Lily. “Is that her real name?”

“What a curious question,” Beth said. “It’s the only name I’ve ever known her by. And I’ve known her a long, long time.”

“She’s dead, isn’t she?”

“If you already know the answer, why are you asking the question?”

My spine tensed. Next to me on the bed, Winston Purrchill gave me a look of displeasure as I disturbed his sleep. “I saw her,” I said. “Standing behind the house. She was blond. Pretty, I think. She went over the edge. Is that what happened, Beth? Did she jump?”

There was a short, bitter laugh on the other end of the line. “Lily would never have killed herself. That would have been too easy. She was showing off, trying to scare you. You’re lucky. You should see what she does to the people she doesn’t like.”

And there it was—the crux of everything. When you looked beneath the files and the records and the search for proof, this meant that the pretty girl I’d seen with her blond hair blowing in the wind had been the deadliest serial killer in Claire Lake history. She had shot two men point-blank in the face. She had killed Julian Greer and left him to bleed on the floor.

“Who was she?” I asked Beth.

“There are so many answers to that question.” Beth’s voice was slurring a little. She sounded drunk, but she didn’t drink. She must have taken a pill. “She was the shame of my mother’s life. She was the person who ruined mine.”

“And yet you covered for her crimes. You went to trial for her. You nearly went to death row.”

“I had my reasons,” Beth said. “If you knew Lily, you’d understand.” She paused, and then her voice lowered to a slurred hush. “I think I hear her now.”

“Beth?”

There was quiet on the line, rustling. Then Beth said, “Come tomorrow, and I’ll tell you. It’s time. This is all going to be over soon, and I’m so damned tired.”

I felt a bolt of alarm at the idea. “Beth, I don’t want to come to that house.”

“No, but you will.” Despite the drugged tone of her voice, she still had that imperious way of talking. “You will. Here she comes.”

She hung up. I stared into the darkness, thinking about Beth spending the night alone in that house, with whatever lived there. About spending every night there for forty years.

Tomorrow—today, technically—was Saturday. I could get up in a few hours, get on the bus, and go to the Greer mansion to hear everything.

Or I could stay home, and avoid whatever waited in that house for me.

I lay back on the bed, stared at the ceiling, and wondered which one I would do.





CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX


November 1960





BETH


At age six, they told Beth she was lucky. She was living in a big house high above the ocean, with a backyard that looked over the water. She had a room all to herself and no siblings to argue with. She had all of her parents’ attention and never had to share it. She went to private school, where she wore a uniform of a navy blue skirt and a dark green sweater that was very becoming against her red hair. Beth is pretty and extremely bright, her teachers told her parents, though it puzzles us why she doesn’t talk much in school.

Oh, don’t worry about that, her mother told the teachers. Beth is just lonely. It’s how she’s always been.

In the evenings after school, Beth would sit in her room and study a little—everything was so easy—but mostly she’d look out the window. Her parents didn’t want her company; children were to be seen, not heard or really spoken to. Her parents didn’t want each other’s company, either, and most nights one or the other of them was out. That didn’t bother Beth, because she believed that was the way everyone’s parents were.

So Beth would sit alone in her window seat, looking over the darkened back lawn, which sloped down to the ocean. The lawn was vast and green and empty. It did not have a swing set or even a patio. The house ended, and there was just green and then endless water, as if the world were waiting to swallow the house whole.

Beth did not play on the lawn. She didn’t practice cartwheels on the grass or go down to the ocean and put her toes in the cold water, balancing in her bare feet on the wet rocks. She didn’t take her dolls out there to have tea or pretend she was an explorer with her stuffed animals as her assistants. She wasn’t expressly forbidden to do those things—her parents paid little attention to what she did, even when they were home—but the fact was, she didn’t want to. The lawn wasn’t a good place.