The Book of Cold Cases(70)

“Where have you been?” Mariana was asking, too excited to wait for an answer. “You’ll have to tell me everything. Are you okay? I’ve been so worried about you. When did you get back?”

“This morning.” As Lily spoke, she looked past their mother at Beth, a smile in her eyes. We know a secret, that smile said.

She was ruining everything, everything. She was a monster. “Mother,” Beth said, holding Lily’s gaze.

“Beth, please.” Mariana barely glanced at her. To Lily she said, “Why don’t you come in? I’ll make you a lemonade.”

“Mother,” Beth said, louder.

Mariana turned and snapped at her, her good mood from their outing gone. “Beth, you’re being rude.”

“No, please,” Lily said. She put her hand on Mariana’s arm, and Mariana stared at the contact, stunned. “I want to hear what she has to say. What is it you’d like to tell us, Beth?”

Beth stared at them. At Lily, so thin and waifish under her poncho after years on the road. At Mariana, beaming at this one small touch from her daughter, her firstborn. The bitter girl, not the sweet.

She killed Julian. Beth was supposed to say the words. She broke into the house and shot him in the face. She shot your husband and left him dead on the kitchen floor. Don’t you care? Doesn’t anyone care?

No one would believe her. And if she could ever prove it was true, it would kill Mariana. It would crush her forever.

It was over. This nice day, her mother’s attention, the possibility that anything good could start to happen. Beth had been a fool to enjoy herself, even for a few hours, but she couldn’t bring herself to regret it. She could still feel the warming sun in her hair, still hear Neil Diamond on the radio, still hear Mariana say “honey.” She could still feel that echo of the moment when she looked like she could conquer anything.

She still liked the illusion, even though she knew the truth. She couldn’t conquer anything at all.

“Welcome back, Lily,” she said. “How long will you stay?”





CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE


December 1977





BETH


Jail wasn’t as bad as Beth had thought it would be.

She didn’t have to talk to people, for one. She didn’t have to argue or justify herself or make good impressions on people. She didn’t even have to make decisions anymore—Ransom, out there somewhere in the freedom of the real world, made most of her decisions for her. She didn’t have to plan a schedule or decide what to wear or what to eat. She didn’t have to wake up every day in the Greer mansion, breathing its stuffy air and looking at the reminders of her parents in every room. She didn’t have to see the kitchen floor, picture the way the blood had looked pooled on it. She didn’t have to see Mariana’s beautiful clothes in her closet, never to be worn again. She didn’t have to think about anything at all.

Not that Beth wasn’t thinking—she was. Her memories were sharp and detailed, tormenting in their precision. It should have been an overwhelming blur, too much to take in, but for once Beth’s brain wouldn’t shut down, wouldn’t disappear into panic or numbness. She was awake now, maybe for the first time in her life.

Ransom told her the arrest had happened because of the gun. The ballistics had matched the gun from Julian’s murder to the two Lady Killer murders. They didn’t have the gun itself, but they had someone who had seen Beth at the second murder scene. So they’d taken their gamble.

Beth was angry—she knew that. Buried deep down, somewhere beneath the endless buzzing and thinking in her brain, were the hot coals of fury, powering everything. It was sobriety that made things clearer—the forced sobriety of being incarcerated with no access to alcohol. It wasn’t until a few days had passed in her cell that Beth realized her hangover had completely cleared up, that for once she wasn’t a little bit drunk or a lot drunk or living the aftereffects of being drunk. She slept deeply despite her surroundings, and she ate every bite of jail food. She could think for the first time in years. It wasn’t pleasant—if someone had handed her a bottle of wine, she would have upended it and drunk the whole thing, no questions asked—but it was unavoidable. If Beth was going to be forced to think clearly, she may as well try to come up with a plan.

Besides, while she was in the depths of this jail cell, she was safe from Lily.

Beth knew she wasn’t acting the way a terrified, wrongly accused woman was supposed to act—eating, sleeping, not weeping or falling apart. She knew that every guard who saw into her cell, every person she spoke to, was making and spreading a scathing impression of her. She’s cold. She doesn’t talk, doesn’t cry. She doesn’t even look worried. She isn’t sorry those men are dead.

Detective Washington hated Beth, especially after the circus of the arrest. He was furious, as if the whole thing were Beth’s fault. Ransom was high on a wave of outrage, working at his most expansive decibel level. The uniformed cops treated her with a mix of salaciousness and callousness, like she wasn’t a person at all but a pinup photo in a magazine. And Detective Black was miserable, painfully unhappy about the indignities Beth was subjected to, uncomfortable around his partner and the other cops, unable to do anything about it. He was so twisted up Beth almost felt bad for him. Almost.