The Book of Cold Cases(9)

Logically, I knew he had a point. I wrote about sociopaths and psychopaths almost every night; I had a layman’s understanding of how they worked, like any normal woman who had a first edition of Small Sacrifices on her bookshelf. I knew that even though Beth was a woman over sixty, there was no guarantee that she wasn’t dangerous. The problem was that I wasn’t completely convinced she was a killer in the first place.

“If Beth were a man,” Michael said, “you would never have approached her.”

I laughed, even though his insight was as sharp as always. “I can’t even approach you, and I’ve been working with you for over a year.”

“I’m not a serial killer,” he said.

“See, that’s exactly what a serial killer would say.”

“A fair point. Do you want to run my fingerprints and DNA? I can probably arrange something.”

The oven timer beeped, and I turned it off. “That’s what a serial killer would say, too,” I said. “Make a grandiose promise he can’t keep, because it sounds so convincing.”

“All right. I’m offended, but at least you’re thinking the way I want you to think when it comes to Beth Greer.”

I promised him I would be careful, and I hung up. But as I pulled my lonely dinner out of the oven, listening to the wind splatter rain against my windows—as I prepared for yet another lonely night in the darkness—I admitted to myself that anywhere Beth Greer led me, I was more than willing to go.



* * *



—

The call came at one in the morning. I had just drifted off when the phone rang on my nightstand. It was a number I didn’t recognize.

My heart in my throat—a one a.m. call had to mean Esther or my parents were dead—I answered it. I recognized the voice on the other end immediately.

“It’s Beth.”

I sat up. “Beth?”

“I’ve been reading your website,” she said, ignoring the fact that she’d woken me up. “I’ve been reading what you wrote about me.”

I rubbed my face in the darkness. When I wrote the article, I’d never imagined it being read by the real Beth Greer. “What did you think?” I asked.

“You got some things right and some things wrong. You didn’t talk to Detective Black. Or to Ransom.”

Detective Joshua Black had worked the Lady Killer case. Ransom Wells had been Beth’s attorney. Both were still alive, and both were still in Claire Lake. “I tried. Neither of them would talk to me.”

“They will when I tell them to,” Beth said. Her voice carried the perfect confidence of a woman born rich and beautiful, who even now was used to people doing what she wanted.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Are you telling me you’ll get me access to both of them?”

“Yes, because I’m going to grant your interview,” Beth said. “We’ll start on Sunday. Be at the mansion at ten. I don’t cook, I don’t make coffee, and I don’t have servants, so bring your own shit.” There was a click. She had hung up.

I stared into the darkness, the dead phone against my ear.

It was happening.

I was going to talk to Beth Greer.





CHAPTER SEVEN


September 2017





BETH


Beth Greer hung up the phone and put it on the bed next to her. Then she stared into the darkness.

She was in the master bedroom of the Greer mansion. Forty-five years ago, this had been her parents’ bedroom. This very bed had been their actual bed. Beth had never replaced it. That was strange, she knew. The bed was old now, with a musty smell. The blankets were gray from hundreds of washes. On the nightstand was her father’s ashtray, huge and heavy glass, and on the dresser was a jar of her mother’s cold cream, nearly fifty years old now, long dried out and desiccated. At least Beth’s pajamas were her own, fine silk ones that were the best money could buy. They were kept in a dresser drawer atop her mother’s old nightgowns.

Beth drew her knees up to her chest, hugged them. She hadn’t taken a sleeping pill tonight; she’d been on the internet on her laptop, reading Shea Collins’s article about her, and she’d lost track of time. Now it was late, too late. She could take a pill now, but she’d still hear the noises before she dropped to sleep.

It was best to take the pill before the noises started, so you didn’t hear them at all.

Something moved in the hallway outside. It was a soft sound, and Beth’s fingers squeezed the blanket, a reflex. She was used to the fear—she’d been living with it for so long. Decade after decade. For as long as she could remember, really. All the way back. She didn’t know what a life without fear would look like. Beth knew the contours of fear intimately, its shifting shapes, its taste and its smell.

You’re not leaving.

You’re not talking.

Those were the rules. But she was about to break the second one, wasn’t she? She was going to talk—to Shea Collins, who had read so much about her. Who knew everything and nothing at all.

There was a footstep in the hall outside the room, and a dragging sound. Beth closed her eyes, even though it made no difference in the pitch-blackness. She had turned the lock on the bedroom door. She had. She remembered doing it, remembered the cool feel of the latch against her fingers. Or was she remembering last night? Or the night before?