“What do you mean?”
Nelly ran her hands through her short dark hair. “Always with the criticism. Always with the harsh words. I thought it was my bad luck, you know? One lousy marriage after another. That’s why I started collecting good-luck charms.” She jangled the turquoise-and-silver bracelets on her wrists. “But now I suspect it’s me. That I attract it somehow. Is there a victim gene? I wonder.”
“So it’s only harsh words? He never physically harms you?”
Nelly touched the mottled bruises on her neck. They had faded since Kate had first seen them. “Only when I piss him off.” She had the laugh of a drunken librarian—there was a swaggering hush to it. “I do that sometimes,” she admitted. “Piss him off.”
“But you just said…”
“I know what I said.”
“But it contradicts your statement…”
“My statement? Is this an interrogation? Am I under arrest?”
“No.”
“I contradict myself a lot. Don’t you?”
It was true. Most people contradicted themselves. But Kate kept her poker face on and didn’t back down. “Then you admit he hits you?”
“It’s not the same thing,” Nelly explained. “My first two husbands beat the living crap out of me. Derrick gets pissed off occasionally. Once in a while, in the middle of a fight, he’ll take a swipe at me. But only if I provoke him. He doesn’t beat me as a rule. Mostly, he’s super-critical, and that gets my mouth running. So I’ll say something nasty. But look. It’s a mutual thing with us—not me cowering in a corner and him stomping on my head, like it was before.”
“Okay,” Kate said. “And you swear he’s never lost his temper with Maddie?”
“I’m telling you, he wouldn’t raise a finger.”
“I find that hard to believe, given Maddie’s history of self-harm.” Kate had seen it many times before—a child mimicking the behavior of her abuser and learning to hurt herself.
“Derrick’s been good to her,” Nelly said with an exhausted shake of her head. “It’s hands-off when it comes to my child.”
“But you finally admitted he hit you, after you swore he didn’t.”
“He loves Maddie. She doesn’t piss him off the way I do.”
“How often does he hit you?”
“I don’t know. Couple times a year. Believe me, it’s like a honeymoon compared to the other two.”
Kate couldn’t tell if she was lying or not. The whole problem was sorting out the falsehoods from the truth. Untangling the threads of a messy, contradictory life.
She braced herself for the next question—a tricky step. “Let me ask you something, and please don’t be offended. It’s protocol in situations like this. Did any of your husbands sexually abuse Maddie, to the best of your knowledge? Is it possible? Sometimes we deny the things that are the most painful for us to admit…”
“No! And I’m not in denial,” Nelly barked, tamping out her cigarette with an exaggerated gesture. “I know what goes on inside my own home. Are we done?”
Kate stood her ground. “You haven’t been to the hospital to visit Maddie. Could I ask why? I know she’d love to see you.”
“I don’t know,” Nelly rasped. “Maybe I’m scared?”
“Of what?”
“What if she doesn’t get better?”
“But your presence will help her get better,” Kate reasoned.
“No, it won’t.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I worry…” Tears sprang to her eyes. “What if it’s my bad luck that’s doing this to her? I mean, what if it’s contagious? My terrible luck. This time, I told myself to stay away…”
“But that’s…” Kate bit her tongue.
“Ridiculous? Superstitious garbage? Is that what you were going to say?” Nelly grimaced as if she were in physical pain. “Just fix her. Please. I’m begging you. Fix my baby girl. That’s all I want.”
“I understand. But you have to come see her,” Kate insisted. “It reflects poorly on you if you don’t. Please understand… I’m trying to help you.”
Nelly’s face reddened. She sucked in a sob. “Okay.”
“Do you promise?”
“Yes.” There was panic in Nelly’s voice.
“Thanks for the coffee.” Kate stood up, then paused for a moment. “One last thing. Who is Maddie’s father?”
Nelly’s eyes widened. “Does it matter?”
“I think so, yes.”
She shook her head. “Who cares? He’ll be dead tomorrow!”
Kate drew back. It felt like a punch to the gut. “Are you talking about Henry Blackwood?”
Nelly shuddered. “Please go. Now.”
Kate nodded, her worst fears confirmed. She put a hand on Nelly’s shoulder. The woman was trembling. “Please come see Maddie.”
“I promise.”
29
KATE WENT HOME TO an empty condo. She sat on the edge of the bed and took off her ring. Her finger itched, and she rubbed the prickly skin. She closed her eyes and heard the sound of rope twisting. She saw her sister’s face.
She took a shower and started dinner. While she was chopping vegetables, the doorbell rang. It was the UPS guy, carrying a large cardboard box.
The package was from Detective Dyson. She sliced through the packing tape and opened a box full of police files, thick heavy folders containing hundreds of photocopied pages.
At first, she tried to ignore them. She ate her dinner in front of the TV and watched the news, but it was all too depressing. She loaded up the dishwasher, started a pot of coffee brewing, lit a cigarette and sat on the living room floor. She opened the box and spread the files out before her, embarrassed by her morbid sense of curiosity.
There were nine victims between the ages of six and sixteen; mercifully Savannah’s file was missing, but Kate mentally included her in the tally. Two of the girls had been murdered, four were missing, two were ruled as suicides, and one was an accident. The accidental death had occurred eighteen years ago in Blunt River; a six-year-old girl named Susie Gafford had fallen into an unmarked well on a neighbor’s property. Kate wasn’t sure why Palmer had included it, so she set it aside.
The second incident happened seventeen years ago, when a teenager named Emera Mason decided to thumb her way to a rock concert in Boston. She disappeared en route without a trace.
Sixteen years ago, Savannah Wolfe was brutally murdered.
Fourteen years ago, eight-year-old Vicky Koffman disappeared from a small community just north of Blunt River.
Twelve years ago, a preteen from Wilamette committed suicide by jumping off a cliff. The girl’s cousin was arrested for manslaughter, but the case against him had fallen apart, and Lizbeth Howell’s death was ruled a suicide.
Ten years ago, fourteen-year-old Hannah Lloyd went missing from her home. Six months later, her skeletal remains were found in The Balsams. Her head was shaved. Tucked into the folder were several gruesome crime-scene photos of the girl’s remains. Kate couldn’t tear her eyes away. Hannah Lloyd didn’t look like a person anymore. The primary suspect was a pudgy, balding twenty-eight-year-old with an aura of sleaze about him. Also included were newspaper articles about the trial ending in a hung jury, and about his apparent suicide a few years later.
Eight years ago, another girl from the county went missing. Maggie Witt, age nine, was playing in a park when she wandered away from her friends, never to be seen again.
Six years ago, eleven-year-old Tabitha Davidowitz was killed in a freak accident, or perhaps it was a suicide. She either fell or jumped off an abandoned building in the old factory district and landed on top of a car. The girl couldn’t have weighed more than sixty pounds, but she’d crushed the hood of the car and broken every bone in her body. The incident occurred in the middle of the night in an isolated part of town, and her remains hadn’t been found until forty-eight hours later.