The Book of Cold Cases(83)

I pulled out my phone and turned it on. I ignored all of the missed texts and messages from Michael, from my sister. I called Beth.

“I’m at your house,” I said when she answered.

“I know,” Beth said.

“How do you know when you’re in Portland?”

“So you looked at my file,” Beth said. “I wondered if you would. I admire you for it. It’s what I would have done if I were you.”

“How did you know I’m at your house?”

“I have a motion sensor that triggers whenever someone comes up the driveway. I’d like to know if someone is going to burn the house down. That way I can cheer them on.”

I scanned the front of the house. “Are there cameras?”

“Lily smashed all the cameras a long time ago. I never tried again.”

“She doesn’t like her picture taken,” I said.

“She never did. That photo I sent you is one of the only ones I have of her. Lily didn’t like to see herself on camera.”

“Maybe they can do a computer reconstruction of her face,” I said. “That is, if they found her skull.”

There was a long moment of silence on the other end of the line. “Oh, Shea,” Beth said, and her voice was impossible to interpret. “I see you’ve been paying attention.”

“What did you do?” I shouted into the phone.

“I stopped her.”

In front of me, a light went on in the upstairs of the Greer mansion, where no one was home.

“You stopped her?” I said.

“Yes. No police with their burden of proof. No trials and no lawyers. No more hospitals that didn’t fix her, then let her out again. I stopped her. Me. Because I was responsible, and I always had been. I was responsible for every single death, just like you’ve felt responsible ever since you escaped your abductor’s car.”

That was an unexpected punch to the gut. Because she was right—I did feel responsible. It made no sense, but guilt doesn’t have to. It simply exists, weighing you down and choking you until you can’t breathe anymore.

Another light went on in the house, this one on the other side, the light beaming out of the window and glowing on the leaves of the trees. It should have been a comforting sight, but it wasn’t.

I watched the light go on downstairs in the living room. The lights in the house were getting brighter, the white glow blasting through the windows and into the lowering gloom. My cheeks were numb now, and so were my hands, the hand holding my phone so cold I couldn’t feel where my fingertips touched the plastic. The wind grew sharper, and the first splatter of rain hit my skin, harsh and cold.

“How did you do it, Beth?” I asked. “How did you kill her?”

“You have so many questions,” Beth said. “Go ask her. She’ll tell you.”

Lily was in there, lighting up the windows and wandering the halls. If I went in, it would just be her and me.

Then again, maybe that was what I’d come here for. To talk to Lily alone.

As if someone knew what I was thinking, the front door of the Greer mansion opened with a click. It swung wide, the light spilling onto the front porch. She was inviting me in.

I knew I shouldn’t go. I wondered if she’d kill me. I wondered if she’d try.

I wouldn’t let her. Lily didn’t get to kill everyone.

“You may as well do it,” Beth Greer said in my ear. “She wants you to, and you know you aren’t going to say no.”

“Is that what you want?” I asked.

“What I want is for this to be over. I want to stop doing penance. It’s time for the real story to come out, and you’re the one to tell it. If you have the guts.”

I looked at the house. What was I going to do? Go home? Lock my doors and hide, like I’d been doing for twenty years? Spend the rest of my life in hiding?

If I did that, what would I have to live for? What kind of life had I chosen since that cold winter day when I was nine?

“Screw it,” I said to Beth, and I hung up the phone. I dropped it in my bag and walked to the front door, not giving myself time to think. I’d been thinking too long, too hard. I’d done nothing but think. Where had it gotten me?

I stepped through the door expecting to be blinded by the bright light inside, but the Greer mansion looked the same as always. It was dim and clean, untouched and faintly musty. I stepped into the corridor as the front door slammed shut behind me. “Lily?” I said.

There was no answer. I walked into the living room, taking in the burnt orange sofa, the squat coffee table with its angled legs, the shelf of awful figurines on the wall. The curtains on the windows were closed. The silence was oppressive, like someone was watching me.

I turned toward the corridor, the stairs. I could go into the kitchen, but I didn’t want to. There was a bad, coppery smell coming from there, and it made my stomach turn. I had the feeling that if I went into the kitchen, I’d see something I didn’t want to see. How had Beth ever come back into this house? Why didn’t she tear it down, brick by brick?

The stairs creaked under the soles of my sneakers as I climbed. I reached the landing and looked down the corridor. The upstairs hall was dim and silent, the doors closed. The quiet was so heavy it was a living thing, pressing into my skin and trying to push down my throat.