She needed to talk to Shea again.
She got back into her car and drove home. At first, when she turned off the ignition in the driveway and stared at the curb where the garbage bag had vanished, she sagged in defeat. Then she got angry—that old ice-cold anger she’d had all her life, that had gotten her in so much trouble and still made her feel alive.
She got out of the car and started toward the house in the rain. She stared at the house as she walked, letting it see her gaze roaming over all of its ugly lines, hating it. She nearly snarled as she and the house stared each other down. Then she walked through the front door, which was open, and into the hushed darkness inside.
The first thing she saw was the magazines stacked on the credenza again. She knew that when she went upstairs, she’d see her mother’s cold cream and her father’s ties exactly where they’d been, as if she’d never put them in the trash. And the ashtray . . . that damned ashtray would be on the bedside table. How many times over the years had she tried to throw that fucking cold cream out? Too many to remember.
So Beth and the house would go another round, then. She’d expected it. But this wasn’t going to go on forever. She knew that now.
She’d almost let her anger drain—almost—when she saw the wine bottle on the coffee table.
Red wine, her favorite. Though, of course, any wine would do. Beth would drink anything at all, given the chance. And the house knew it.
She stared at that bottle, gleaming in the half-light of the drawn curtains, and for a minute she wanted that wine so badly she would have done anything for it. She could practically taste it on her tongue, could feel the slide of it down her throat. She would have sold her soul for that bottle.
She closed her eyes. Things are changing, she told herself.
She walked to the table and grabbed the bottle, willing her hand not to shake. In the kitchen, she ignored the blood on the floor, tracking through it in her nice shoes. She ignored the breeze from the broken door and the huddled shape that she knew was her father’s body against the lower cupboards. She flinched away from it and stood at the sink, yanking the cork from the bottle and upending it over the drain.
The wine gurgled down the sink. It looked like blood. From the corner of her eye, Beth saw that her father’s body was gone.
“Fuck you,” she said to the house, to her memories, to all of it.
She stood there until all of the wine had been drained from the bottle. Until the blood was gone from the floor, her tracks vanished like they’d never been. Until the door shut and the breeze stopped. Until it was over.
Then she put the bottle down and put her head in her hands, because she was alone all over again.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
October 1977
BETH
The cops didn’t like that she had a lawyer with her this time. Ransom seemed to fill the tiny interview room, his big frame taking up all the space. Detective Black looked uncomfortable, and Detective Washington looked furious. Beth sat silent, letting the men go at each other’s throats.
“We want a handwriting sample,” Washington said.
“No,” Ransom replied.
“We’ll get a warrant.”
“When you have one, please present it. Until then, we decline.”
Washington looked at her. This was the tactic, Ransom had warned her: address her directly, bypassing her lawyer, and get her to react. “We can get your handwriting, you know,” he said. “Your checks at the bank, any letter you’ve written to a boyfriend. Your lawyer is just delaying.”
“I defer to him,” Beth said. “He’s so very wise.”
Washington looked like she’d cussed at him, and even Ransom glanced at her, his eyes narrowed.
“We’ve already searched the house,” Washington said. “We’re processing everything we found. We’re going over the car inch by inch, too. Whatever we find there will indict you. Do you understand?”
“Don’t answer that,” Ransom said. “Don’t answer anything.”
Beth stayed still. She couldn’t think of anything they would find in the house, aside from her mother’s family china and her father’s old papers, which she had never had the guts to read or throw out. Still, it had been a violation, the cops emptying drawers and flipping mattresses. They’d bagged and cleared her empty wine bottles as if they were evidence of something. Evidence that she drank too much. Was that going to be used against her, too? Probably.
Detective Black cleared his throat. He was wearing navy blue today, a suit that wasn’t new but looked well taken care of. Beth wondered if he pressed his own suits, since he didn’t wear a wedding ring. Or maybe he had a girlfriend who did it for him. If she was pressing his suits, he should definitely marry her.
There was something wrong with her, thinking these thoughts while she was being questioned for murder. Then again, the fact that there was something wrong with her wasn’t news.
“I think we should back up,” Detective Black said reasonably. “We’re all here for a discussion. To clear some things up. Arguing won’t get us anywhere.”
“This entire discussion is egregious,” Ransom said, bringing out his big lawyer words. “There’s nothing connecting my client to this crime, or to the previous murder, or to either of these victims. You’re wasting everyone’s time when you should be finding a killer.”
“We have the notes,” Washington said, his gaze hostile on Ransom. If it were possible, or legal, for Washington to throw Beth’s lawyer out the window, it was clear he would gladly do it. “We could easily eliminate your client as a suspect if she gave a voluntary handwriting sample. And we’d like a psychological analysis.”
They went back and forth, playing their masculine game of one-upmanship as Beth tuned out. She looked at Black, and his eyes caught hers. He sighed a little, letting her see it, waiting for his partner to run low on steam. In return, she shrugged: There’s nothing we can do about either of them. She liked that he didn’t fidget, didn’t smoke or pace; he had no theater about him. His gaze didn’t travel down her body, but it stayed on her long enough that she felt the urge to twitch. Was it lascivious? She couldn’t tell. Maybe, faced with the option of looking at either her or Washington and Ransom, he’d decided that she was the one in the room he’d rather look at.
When there was a break in Washington and Ransom’s arguing, Black leaned toward Beth and said, “Tell me about your father’s death.”
Her world tilted. For a second it was tempting, even easy, to pretend it was just the two of them, talking privately with no one else around. Just her and this sympathetic man, asking her about the day her father died. She could open her mouth and tell him everything that was inside her, all the bad things that she kept locked away.
Then she glanced at the tape recorder, whirring quietly on the table. She looked at Washington, standing with his arms crossed, and Ransom, sitting in the folding chair next to hers. She could smell old coffee and stale cigarette smoke and something stuffy and rancid, like bad breath. And she remembered that day. She remembered the feeling of drowning, of sinking deeper and looking up, knowing she would never swim to the surface.
She turned back to Detective Black, her voice mechanical. “Someone robbed my father and killed him.”
Black was still leaning forward, his upper body angled toward her, as if they were alone. “Whoever did it used the same gun for these murders,” he said. “The ballistics will prove it.”
Beth held still, not looking away. This was another game. They didn’t have the ballistics report, not yet.
“Beth, tell the truth,” Black said. “We’re trying to help you.”