The Book of Cold Cases(97)

“Do you know what’s interesting?” Beth said, her tone imperious again, as if I hadn’t spoken. “Joshua Black won’t speak to me, but I saved his life. To this day, I think Lily would have killed him if she got the chance. Because Lily disappeared, he got to spend thirty years on the job catching criminals. Catching murderers. Like the man who tried to murder you.”

There was silence on the line. I couldn’t think of anything to say.

“Good night, Shea,” Beth said, and then the line went dead.





CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN


Eight Months Later

Christmas Eve 2018





SHEA


The day the story ended, I was standing in line at CVS, waiting to buy aspirin.

It was raining. They said it was a winter storm, the rain ice-cold, the streets dangerous. The advice on the news was to stay home for Christmas, tuck in with your family, and don’t leave the house. I had planned to do that—I was about to spend the next two days with Michael, sipping wine and watching TV with Winston Purrchill on my lap. I’d only leave to visit Esther and Will and my new nephew, Zach. It had been a wild, stressful, wonderful year, and I was going to unwind. I just needed some aspirin first, because no matter how much time passed, my knee and my elbow still ached.

The line was six people deep, and I stared at nothing as I waited, thinking about the book I was writing. An agent had contacted me after the Rolling Stone article ran, and we’d shopped a proposal to publishers. Four months later we had a deal, and now I had to write the rest of the book. Once this book about the Lady Killer case was finished, the publisher was already interested in hearing a pitch from me for another book, about a different case. Apparently, I was a true-crime writer and podcaster now instead of a doctor’s receptionist. I still wasn’t sure how that had happened.

Everyone in line moved up, and my phone started buzzing silently in my purse. Whoever it was, I didn’t feel like talking right now. My knee and my elbow were throbbing, and I wanted to go home. But my phone buzzed, then buzzed again. On the TV mounted on the wall, the man talking about the terrible weather was interrupted, and I heard the words “Beth Greer.”

I looked up at the screen. A news anchor was talking. Beneath him was the headline: beth greer dead.

“. . . died suddenly and shockingly,” the anchor said. “Miss Greer’s car was seen driving erratically on Claire Lake Road. When the car stopped and medics arrived, Miss Greer had already passed away. It’s thought she had some kind of medical emergency, possibly a heart attack or a stroke, while driving. Beth Greer first came to fame here in Claire Lake when she was accused of being the so-called Lady Killer—”

Everything went cold. My head spun. In my purse, my phone buzzed and buzzed.

“Excuse me,” said the woman behind me in line. “It’s your turn.”

I walked to the counter. I put the box of aspirin down. Then I turned and left.

Damn it, Beth, I thought as I walked unseeingly out of the store and into the parking lot. You and your goddamned aneurysm. I got soaked as I walked to my car, a sensible little Honda I’d bought when I got my driver’s license. The safest car I could buy, because no matter how much I vanquished her, deep down, part of me was still that terrified nine-year-old girl.

Only yesterday I’d gotten the news: The DNA from the body found at Claire Lake was a familial match to Beth. The woman’s body, with violent blows to its skull, was Beth’s relative. Beth had used every delay tactic her lawyer could come up with to put off giving a sample of her blood, but in the end she’d given it. She had been buying time.

The noose had been closing in on Beth. It was almost completely closed, in fact. But in the last moment, she’d slipped away, this time for good.

I got soaked by the rain as I fumbled for my keys. I dropped them, and I bent to the concrete, feeling for them with numb fingers. My hair was wet in my eyes, water dripping into my coat down the back of my neck. My broken elbow and my broken knee pulsed with old, unhealed pain. A headache pounded in my temples. I picked up the keys and mopped the water off my face as the rain came down harder and my teeth started to chatter.

I finally opened the car and got in, slamming the door and sitting in silence as the rain pounded the roof. Where had Beth been going when it happened? The news said she’d been on Claire Lake Road, which wound inland by the lake at the base of the cliffs. What was she doing there? Was she going to the place where she had left Lily’s body?

Had she been trying to escape again? I got in the car a dozen times without any belongings except the clothes on my back, trying to run.

Had she known when it started happening, or had it all been too fast? Had there been pain?

On the passenger seat next to me, my phone buzzed and buzzed. I could see the display where the phone had half slid from my purse: Michael. Esther. Joshua Black. Michael again.

Beth Greer was dead.

Months ago, I’d gone to Anton Anders’s parole hearing. Michael had gone with me. I didn’t have to face Anders himself, but I’d read my prepared statement to the parole board. I’d told them that Anton Anders was a rapist and a murderer who had tried to kill me. The fact that it was over twenty years ago now didn’t matter; what mattered was that I’d almost died. What mattered was that if he went free now, I would never feel safe. I would go back to hiding in my condo, back to taking the bus. I’d go back to living half a life, when the only thing I’d done “wrong” was walk home from school. I’d told them I didn’t think that was justice. I’d said that true fairness in the world wasn’t possible, but letting Anton Anders have his freedom wasn’t even close. I’d said that it was a pretty simple decision to at least be more fair than that.