“Did he have life insurance?”
The sheriff shook his head. “Nope, didn’t leave a penny to his wife.”
“Was she a suspect at all?”
Again, Montgomery shook his head. “She worked full time at the plant. She’d clocked in that morning and worked on the line until five that evening.”
“How about Greta?”
“Well, she was harder to pinpoint. Greta attended school that day and claimed she returned to the trailer that night. There was no one to verify her whereabouts that evening, but you’ve got to remember Greta was a teenage girl. How did she lure him up there? How did she push him off? It seemed like an unlikely scenario and one I gave zero thought to until Matt died.”
“And then you wondered if Greta was behind it?”
Montgomery shrugged.
“I mulled it over a bit. I asked around about Greta and Peter’s relationship. It sounded tense. A few of the residents in the trailer park thought Peter had a thing for the girl. I wouldn’t have put it passed him to act on those urges, but if he did, she never told anyone. At least no one who came forward and reported it.”
Bette checked into a hotel overlooking Lake Superior. The wind had picked up throughout the day, causing the water to churn and crash. She watched it smash against the dark rocks jutting from the surf.
Bette wondered if the woman she met could have done the things people believed. Slit her boyfriend’s throat? It didn’t seem plausible. The girl had only been sixteen. The grown Greta was thin. The sixteen-year-old version had probably weighed a hundred pounds.
And then there was Peter Budd. Montgomery had described him as big and paunchy. He probably outweighed Greta by more than a hundred pounds. Greta’s boyfriend, Matt, played football and in their photos Matt stood a foot taller than his lanky girlfriend. How could she have killed them both?
Bette had stopped at a convenience store and bought a nightshirt, toothbrush, toothpaste, a comb and a bottle of wine. She pulled the wine from the bag and dropped the other items on the bed, walking to the window.
“Where are you, Crystal?” she whispered, leaning her forehead against the glass.
She uncorked the bottle of Cabernet and started to pour a glass.
A knock sounded on Bette’s door and she jumped, nearly spilling the dark liquid onto the beige carpet. She set the wine on the table and walked to her door, peeking through the viewing hole.
40
Then
Crystal listened as Greta paced outside her room. Up and down the hall, the sharp slap of her shoes on the wood floor. The woman sometimes said things as if she were speaking to someone else.
“Of course,” Greta suddenly shouted. “But I’ll kill her when I’m ready!”
Crystal curled into a tight ball and imagined a white light swirling around her, protecting her and the baby. She’d done the little visualizations for years, any time she was injured or someone was ill. She imagined they were wrapped in a ball of white light. It was a light so strong that evil, hatred, darkness could not enter.
When Greta finally flung the door open, Crystal cringed, sure she’d streak into the room with a knife and start sinking the blade into Crystal’s back.
Her hands had been bound again while she slept, this time in front of her. She’d tried to work them free, but the zip ties were so tight they bit into her wrists. She stopped her rocking as Greta paused at her bedside.
“I saw in the newspaper that you have a sister,” Greta said, sitting on the bed and smoothing the hair away from Crystal’s face. “I have a sister too.”
“Bette?” Crystal whispered.
She tried to imagine Bette at that moment. Bette didn’t handle stress well. She would be going crazy trying to find Crystal.
“Bette. She’s desperate to find her sister. She’ll do anything.” Greta laughed. “People are so naive. As if appealing to a captor on television will help. Most people are dead within hours of being abducted. Can you imagine how many days, years, of people’s lives are wasted hoping their sister or their mother or their daughter will come home? Wake up, people!” Greta shouted. “They’re never coming home.”
Crystal’s eyes filled with tears. They slipped over her cheeks and soaked the mattress.
“We’re going to take a little trip today,” Greta announced, pulling on Crystal’s bound hands until she stood.
Her legs felt weak, but she stepped into the hall in front of Greta, recoiling when she saw a single wood chair at the end. A child-sized doll sat in the chair with long dark hair braided into pigtails. The doll watched them with glassy blue eye. Bits of plastic had flaked off her chin and one cheek. She wore an ugly gray dress with black stitching.
Greta didn’t address the doll as they passed it, but Crystal was sure she was the object Greta had been ranting to minutes before.
Crystal watched the sprawling brick buildings topped by sharp spires. As they walked closer, Crystal’s heart galloped in her chest. Her muscles grew taught beneath her skin, and she wondered whether she’d ever be found if she died in one of the abandoned buildings.
Bette and her father would never know what became of her. Weston would never know. She’d be a mystery, a hindrance to all their future happiness.
The mere thought of her sister made her knees go weak. She stumbled and almost fell, but Greta grabbed a handful of her hair and jerked her up. Crystal cried out and lifted her bound hands toward her head, wincing.
“If it hurts, then don’t fall,” Greta snapped.
Greta stopped at a brown metal door and pulled a ring of keys from her pocket. She inserted one into the lock, shimmied her hand and shoved the door open. A long dark corridor lay empty before them. Crystal felt the nearness of those who had left, the jumble of nurses, doctors and administrators filtering through the doors as a wave. The sadness, despair and fear of the patients shuffled out. Some of them wanted to leave and leapt for joy when they fled the building. Others grabbed at the doorframes, clung to the orderlies and sobbed like children.
Crystal’s head throbbed with the onslaught of feelings that overwhelmed her as Greta forced her into the hallway. The walls were brick, the floors carpeted but worn thin.
Tall windows had already been shattered by stones thrown by teenagers. Broken glass speckled on the dirty carpet. Wheelchairs, desks, file cabinets, and clothes lay scattered in the halls and rooms. The building looked as if the occupants had barely bothered to take their coats as they left.
“This was the children’s ward,” Greta said, waving her hand at a mural of the Seven Dwarves. “And Maribelle stayed in this room.”
“Maribelle is your doll?” Crystal asked, though she knew that wasn’t quite right. Maribelle was the doll, but she’d once been… “Your sister,” Crystal breathed as the realization came to her.
A yellowed cot stripped of its bedding leaned against one wall. Another cot stood tall next to its frame. A plush yellow Big Bird, its arm torn off to reveal a plume of white stuffing, rested among scattered drawings and broken crayons.
“What happened to your sister?” Crystal asked.
Greta kicked the Big Bird. It tumbled into the dark crack beneath the bed.
“Loose lips sink ships,” she murmured.