The Book of Cold Cases(75)

“Another victim,” I said.

“Read the last part,” Michael said.

The final paragraph stated that Gage had lived in Phoenix for four years, ever since he retired. He had moved from Claire Lake, Oregon, where he had spent all of his career running a department store.

If Gage was from Claire Lake, and Lily had killed him in Phoenix—if she was his killer, which Ransom seemed to think—then it wasn’t random. Lily had tracked Gage to a different city. She had targeted him. Why?

Ransom Wells had kept this article in his file all these years. Why?

I looked up. My eyes locked with Michael’s, and we asked each other the question silently before I said it aloud. “Lily’s father?”

“I checked the dates,” Michael said. “Mariana was nineteen when Lily was born. Lawrence Gage lived in Arlen Heights then. He would have been forty-three.”

I thought of Ransom saying, Mariana was taken advantage of, pure and simple. She was practically a child. And then she was ashamed.

“He could have known Mariana’s family,” Michael said. “He was wealthy and ran a department store. They would have moved in the same circles.”

He could have been a friend of the family, which meant he could have met teenage Mariana. Perhaps he had assaulted her; perhaps he had only fooled her. The result was the same either way. Lawrence Gage went on with his life as if nothing had happened, and Mariana was sent to the Elizabeth Trevor House for Women to have her baby in secret. A little girl.

And then, years later, had he woken to see that little girl grown into a woman, standing over him in bed with a gun to his face?

What had driven Lily to the extremes she’d gone to? It was convenient, and so modern, to simply say that mental illness had been the reason. When mental illness was combined with a neglectful and possibly abusive childhood, you had a recipe for a serial killer, or so the research said. You had someone you could put in a box, someone you could point to and say: See? Look at that person. That person isn’t me.

But there was nothing in these papers that said Lily had ever been diagnosed by a professional. There was nothing to say she’d seen a psychiatrist at all. For all her love for Lily, Mariana had never taken her to a doctor or a social worker. There was nothing to show that either Mariana or Beth had ever tried to help her. There was nothing that spoke to how much Lily might have suffered. There was nothing to show that, after being born in secret to the wrong woman at the wrong time, Lily had had any chance at all.

“Lily’s father isn’t named on the birth certificate,” I said. “If Lily found out who he was, it must have been from Mariana.”

Michael looked at the date in the newspaper clipping. “Lawrence Gage was murdered three months after Mariana Greer died. If Mariana had told Lily that Gage was her father, Lily had known it for three months by then. I wonder what took her so long?”

I rubbed my forehead, trying to process everything. I was tired. There were too many gaps in the timeline—too many months and years when Lily had just dropped off the map in a way you could still do in the midseventies, when there was no internet and there were no cell phones. In 1975, a simple fake ID and a crossing of state lines would allow you to start a new, anonymous life.

Michael, who was following my train of thought without realizing it, kept talking as he shuffled through the papers. “Between Gage’s murder in 1975 and Thomas Armstrong’s murder in 1977 is a complete blank. Where was Lily? What set her off to start the Lady Killer murders? And where is she now?”

“I told you, she’s dead,” I said.

Michael narrowed his eyes at me. If he suspected it was Lily I’d seen at the Greer mansion, the presence I had felt, he decided not to ask. Instead he said, “I’d like to see some proof of that.”

“I’d like to see a lot of things,” I replied. “Let’s add it to the list.”



* * *



—

The last pages Ransom Wells had given me were records of charitable trusts. One was a charity for orphaned girls; another was to support single mothers in poverty. Another was a charity to provide mental health services “for teenage girls at risk.” Another was for victims of violence. All of the charities were run by numbered companies. And, according to Ransom’s paperwork, all of the numbered companies were owned by Beth Greer.

I had wondered more than once what Beth had done with her time over the past forty years, since she’d never married or had children and she had no need to work. This was the answer.

“Why did he give us this, do you think?” Michael asked, reading over the papers. His laptop was sitting on the coffee table, and outside it had long ago gone dark.

“This is the story,” I said, feeling bitterness as I looked at the records. I pointed to the newspaper article about Lawrence Gage. “Lily is the villain.” I pointed to the charity records. “But not Beth. He wants us to see Beth as the heroine, the one who selflessly saves orphans and single mothers. She’s the sweet one, not a killer like her sister.”

I shouldn’t be surprised. Ransom had told me he’d be loyal to Beth to the end.

Michael put the file down. “It’s late.”

I looked at the clock on my phone. It was nearly ten thirty. “I’m sorry,” I said, getting up and grabbing my coat, my cheeks burning. “I’ve overstayed my welcome.”