Pretty Little Wife(29)
“My father became obsessed with a girl named Amelia. He’d watch her. Acted like a father figure to her and claimed he needed to because her parents were divorced and her dad lived out of state. My father would go to Amelia’s events. I didn’t know that then, but found out later when I looked at the trial transcript as an adult.”
She stopped long enough to catch her breath. To see the concern on Tobias’s face and the resigned, knowing look on Ginny’s.
“My father was deluded, or so his attorney said. He talked about how once he figured out I’d had my period that Amelia likely had hers, which meant she was ready for him.” Lila blew out a long breath, trying to hold steady and get through this. “He said he was in love with Amelia and was convinced she felt the same about him.”
“I assume he acted on his sick feelings,” Ginny said in a quiet voice.
“He kidnapped her. Picked her up from school and, of course, she got in the car like she had a thousand times before.” The police said he admitted he told Amelia they were going for an early dinner. She was his secret weapon in teasing Amelia along. He promised they were going to get her then eat. “He owned a construction company and brought a trailer to sites. He kept her hidden in the back of one of the older trailers at the lot. Raped her repeatedly.”
Tobias put a hand on her arm and squeezed. “He put her through some sort of fake marriage ceremony first, which he took photos of. Had her dressed up as a bride.”
He’d actually tried to explain to the prosecutor that the fact he waited to force her to have sex until after his bizarre wedding ritual made him the good guy. Lila could never forget that part of reading the testimony. Any part of it.
“After eleven days, all while he was out with the search teams pretending to try to find Amelia, she tried to escape. When he got back, she was screaming. He panicked and hit her with a crowbar to get her to stop. The hit killed her.” It was all an accident, he claimed. He loved her and would never hurt her. He totally ignored the horrible things he did to her, how he’d hurt her and scared her.
Tobias cleared his throat before offering the rest. “He dug a hole to bury Amelia. He was found a day later, lying in the hole and holding her body, saying he couldn’t let her go.”
“To this day, when he tells people his wife died, he’s not talking about my mother. He’s talking about Amelia.” That was the horrific punch line to the sordid tale.
“Amelia . . . She was your friend,” Pete added in a soft voice.
The word whipped through Lila. Best friend, but that fact only made what happened next worse. “She lived on our street. She’d been to my house a million times. We’d played together since kindergarten.”
Ginny never looked at the papers or the wall. Not anywhere but at Lila as she talked.
Now Lila returned the stare. “Wouldn’t you want to change your name and forget it all?”
Chapter Eighteen
THE INTERVIEW WENT ON FOR ANOTHER FIFTEEN MINUTES, BUT the emotional drain from the father-as-murderer reveal made progress tough. They all sat there thinking about the crime back then, assessing what it meant now. Ginny watched a shadow envelop the room and knew the others saw it as well.
Charles Gan, the elected sheriff and Pete and Ginny’s boss, stepped out of his office and watched Lila and Tobias leave the building. In his late fifties, his face showed every year of his time on the job. The omnipresent frown and wrinkled forehead were so familiar to Ginny that she got thrown off stride when Charles actually smiled, which was almost never.
He had weathered tough election cycles and one devastating year when a traffic call ended up with him working his son’s death scene. He never talked about family. Never drank. He lived for the job and didn’t tolerate mistakes on his watch.
He also wanted a “win” because the Karen Blue disappearance and the resulting bad press, questioning missed leads, had every law enforcement officer in New York on edge. “Where are we?”
Pete shrugged as he handed his gathered paperwork on Lila’s father’s past over to Charles. “With the missing husband? Nowhere, but we do have a better handle on the wife.”
Charles hummed as he read. The noises of the room, the phones ringing and officers moving in and out, faded into the background when he lifted his head. “Looks like she testified against her father. That sort of thing has to mess a kid up.”
“So does having your father rape and murder your best friend.” But Ginny knew there was way more they hadn’t talked about. She doubted that Lila and her mother got support from many sources. They likely were ostracized, made to feel like freaks and criminals.
She didn’t have to read the case specifics to know Lila shouldered the blame, took it on, at least in part, herself. Ginny heard it in every word, how they sounded ripped out of Lila when she talked about this one issue. Saw the thumping pain in Lila’s eyes as she relayed the bit of information she shared.
Charles nodded. “Is this father still alive?”
“In prison in Colorado, where Lila—then known as Carina Fields—grew up.” Pete flipped to the next page and pointed at a line there. “Only child. Went to live with a relative in Florida after her mom died.”
Ginny hadn’t gotten that far because she hadn’t wanted to show that much interest in the information while in front of Lila. “Died how?”