“He broke into my sorority house,” I said. “He murdered two girls, and he severely beat and disfigured two others. Then he went down the street and attacked one more. I heard a noise, and I went to investigate. I saw him, clearly, before he fled.”
Sammy grunted his sympathy. “That shouldn’t have happened.” His hands drummed out an anxious rhythm on top of the Formica table, and he looked out over the parking lot once more. Then he lifted his butt and dug around in his back pocket, retrieving his wallet. He licked a finger and counted three ones, enough for the pie and a tip. Fanning them out on the table, he said to Tina, “Prefer to do this in the car.”
Tina seemed confused. “Do what?”
“The money,” Sammy reminded her. “You said you had some.”
* * *
When we picked Carl up from The Stew Pot, he was sparking with as much excitement as we were. We compared notes and found that we had heard more or less the same story about Frank Tucker. But Carl hadn’t known about Seattle PD coming here and taking evidence back with them to Washington. That part we gave him.
Carl was pinching his lips contemplatively as we approached the signs for the airport. “Should I go to Seattle?” he wondered.
Tina looked at him in the rearview mirror. “Now?”
“Why not? I’m already halfway there.”
Tina and I glanced at each other. It was true.
“It just feels like this story is so much bigger than I first realized. I mean, he’s up to ten, twelve victims? Spanning multiple states? And if it started in Seattle, and Seattle has evidence of a cover-up happening in Colorado, maybe they’d cooperate with me. Maybe they’d want everyone to know it was Colorado that screwed things up, not them.”
“I can give you the names of the detectives you’ll want to try and talk to,” Tina said. “Don’t mention that you know me.” She laughed the way you do when something is distinctly unfunny.
I raised my hand. “So does this mean I should move ahead with pressing charges against Roger?”
“Yes,” Tina and Carl said at the same time.
That weekend, that moment, is something I’ve thought about every day for the last forty-three years. It was my responsibility to protect the girls, The House, Denise’s and Robbie’s reputations and their memories. I went with my instincts, and my instincts were wrong. That rattled me. Still rattles me.
PAMELA
Tallahassee, 2021
Day 15,826
The twentysomething security guard glances away from a game of Candy Crush long enough to see me place my bag on the belt, then goes right back to the game. I set the metal detector off, and he sulks at this second interruption. He peels his eyes away from the screen and jerks his chin at my feet. “Haveta take those off.”
I try not to think about how many things this underpaid and uninterested guard doesn’t catch as I remove my boots and shuffle through on the sides of my feet. I’m cleared.
I am met in the waiting room by an attendant who asks me to sign a waiver before getting on the bus. I sign without reading any of it. Once I hit the stage in life where biopsies and scans and anesthesia became a once-or-twice-a-year occurrence, I learned to spare myself the fine print. There are risks involved with everything, and needing to know all of them is a surefire way to drive yourself nuts. What I came here to do may as well be an emergency surgery, a tumor that has to be removed immediately if I want to live with myself.
It’s a short, bumpy bus ride to the recreational yard, where there is an herb and vegetable garden walled with wire. He’s gotten into gardening over the years, and this is how he spends his outdoor hours. No shovels or pointed tools, I am assured by the attendant who had me sign the waiver. Obviously, he adds with a chummy laugh, and I want to tell him it’s not actually obvious. You would be amazed how easy this country makes it to hurt someone if that is your goal.
When I spot him, he’s wearing a wide-brimmed hat in tanned canvas, watering bouquets of dark dinosaur kale with a garden hose, and I am appalled. Not just because the hose could be repurposed into a garotte, but because he looks so peaceful on this sunny spring day, and I am running on two hours of jagged sleep. We both know the clock is running out, and yet I am the only one with something to lose when it does.
He sees me and shuts off the water. At first he approaches slowly, poking higher the underside of his hat’s brim so that he can see if it’s really me. He begins to move faster—he is charging me, actually—and I’m thinking about all the fine print I refused to read in the waiver I signed, how I cannot hold anyone but myself accountable for bodily injury or even my death, when I taste blood.
RUTH
Aspen
Winter 1974
Evening descended on the walk back to the hotel. Tina and I were up against a shiv-like wind that chapped our faces and stripped the branches of their iced sleeves. But under my wool coat and Tina’s wool sweater, I was burning up, agitated, and thirsty. The champagne had hit my system like a live wire, startling dormant sensations from their slumber. I was tormented by the image of that old man lathering Tina’s pubic hair while his family set the table for dinner downstairs. It wasn’t late enough for bed, and we had decided to hang out in the lobby for a little while longer, but I was working up the courage to lie to Tina. I needed to escape from her, just for a little while, to sedate the wild animal clawing at my skin from the inside.
We entered the lobby, stomping and scraping our wet boots on the carpet runner, to find a few guests warming up before the molten fireplace. From the other side of the room, a stocky woman with a blunt haircut called out to Tina.
“Marlene!” Tina waved. She leaned into me. “That’s Frances’s cowriter on the book.”
I seized my opportunity. “Go say hi. I want to run upstairs and change out of these wet socks.” I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered for show.
I made my way to the elevator with short quick strides, the way you do when your stomach is upset and you need a bathroom now but you don’t want anyone to know you need a bathroom now.
I punched the button and squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn’t stand to see if anyone else joined me while I waited for the elevator to arrive. There were fifteen floors, and we were on the twelfth. If we had to stop on the way, I would have a conniption. I heard the brake release with a dull clank, and I opened my eyes, relieved to find that I had the car to myself. I pulsed the button for twelve with my thumb, over and over, though I knew it wouldn’t make the thing move any faster.
Someone slipped inside just before the doors clasped. It was the same woman I’d ridden the elevator with that morning, the one who had mouthed of course at me in the mirror when the cardiologist assumed she was there to ski. She pressed the button for fourteen; at least I wouldn’t have to stop for her.
“I hate when people do that to me,” she apologized. “But we’re better off riding together.”
I turned to her with a blank look. She gave it to me right back.
“You do know about the woman who went missing here last year?” She arched an eyebrow expectantly, sure my memory could be jogged. But I had no idea what she was talking about. The woman filled me in. “Her name was Caryn Campbell. She was here with her fiancé. For the conference. They came back from dinner and were going to sit and read in the lobby by the fire for a bit. She went to grab a magazine from her room. She got on the elevator, and that’s the last time anyone saw her alive.”
The floor felt like it was pushing against my feet, insisting it was there, as the elevator’s brass arm began its count. “Was she ever found?” I heard myself ask.
The woman shook her head grimly. “Not alive. No.”
The elevator clutch released at my floor, but my head still felt pressurized and heavy. The doors opened.
“Let me walk you,” the woman offered. “My name’s Gail, by the way. Gail Strafford.”
“Ruth Wachowsky,” I told her. We stepped off the elevator and went left down the orange-and-yellow diamond-patterned runner. “Did the police catch the person who killed her?”