But not Roberta’s husband. The files, the photographs, a killer’s self-aggrandizing letters to police and the media – the College Hill Strangler investigation itself – continued to decorate tabletops, nightstands, and every surface of her basement walls for another decade. After Jerry’s death, the department seized it all. All that Roberta and her children were left with were the memories – of Jerry, and of the case he could never put behind him.
After all these hours of all these nights over all these years, she honestly didn’t know what to believe about the facts surrounding her husband’s death. But she knew that, regardless of who pulled the trigger on Jerry’s gun, William Summer was responsible for what happened to her and her family.
The repeat she was watching of a sitcom about nothing ended, and the network moved on to a drama about police officers who solved crimes by analyzing physical evidence. Roberta changed the channel with a click of the remote control, then took another sip of vodka.
She glanced at the digital clock that sat on the top of the television. Nine o’clock. Pretty soon Ellie would be calling to check in on her. Just as she always did.
THAT SAME NIGHT, in New Iberia, Louisiana, another mother was thinking of her daughter. Evelyn Davis sat on a small settee in her art studio, next to her daughter’s best friend, Suzanne Mouton.
On further reflection, Evelyn thought, perhaps Suzanne was no longer Amy’s best friend. In fact, Suzanne may never have been Amy’s best friend at all. Suzanne had been part of Amy’s group in high school. That much she was sure of. She remembered how the other members of the group always loved to call this particular girlfriend by her full name. Suzanne – pronounced the Acadian way, Susahn – Mouton. It did have a very nice sound to it. But Suzanne Mouton had always just been one of the crowd, not one of the two or three girls who took shifts being inseparable from Amy.
The reasons Evelyn was close to Suzanne now, nearly fifteen years later, had more to do with the fact that Suzanne had been the only one of Amy’s friends to stay in Louisiana. And when Suzanne’s own mother died when she was a junior at LSU, Evelyn Davis had stepped in to help her get through it.
Amy’s trips home had already begun dwindling back in college. At the time Evelyn assumed that her daughter was just too busy with her classes at Colby to fly all the way down from Maine. But then Amy’s visits became briefer, even during breaks.
Evelyn couldn’t say she was surprised that she and her only child had grown apart. Amy had always been her father’s daughter. Like her father, she would have preferred to live in Houston. Or in San Francisco or New York for that matter. Anywhere but what she called “da buy-you.” She worked hard to avoid picking up a regional accent, sure it would hamper her once she finally escaped the land of sugar cane and gators.
And her hatred of Louisiana had always translated into resentment toward her mother. Amy knew that Evelyn was the one who insisted that the family stay in the only state she had ever known. It had been a condition when she married Hampton. Evelyn had insisted, ironically, because her own mother needed her.
Something had begun to change in Amy, however, just in the last few years. Possibly it was because she was finally living in a city of her choosing. Or perhaps it was the job at the museum, which Amy loved so much. Evelyn, after all, was the parent who had encouraged her interest in art. Or maybe it was simply the process of growing up and realizing that every story, every person, and every marriage has two sides.
But now all that was moot. Evelyn had to pack a bag, fly to New York, and return her daughter’s body to the town she always hated.
“Thank you so much, Suzanne, for being here.” The tissue that Evelyn held was shredded to pieces.
“Of course I’m here.” Suzanne handed Evelyn a new tissue and tossed the other in a wastebasket. “Are you sure you don’t want me to fly to New York with you? I could make J.D. watch the kids for a few days.”
“I’ll be fine. Hampton’s flying up there from Dallas.”
Suzanne was silent, but her expression said enough. She felt sorry for Evelyn – not just because of what happened to Amy up north, but because Amy’s father couldn’t cut short the deal he was brokering in Dallas to mourn with his wife. Evelyn had learned not to complain. She, after all, was the one who insisted that he keep his law firm’s Lafayette office as home base. Travel was part of his life. He knew it was hard, he explained – for both of them – but it just didn’t make sense for him to spend a day traveling home, just to leave again for New York. They’d meet tomorrow at LaGuardia instead.
“If I tell you what I need to bring, Suzanne, can you pack a bag for me?” Evelyn asked. “I just can’t bring myself to leave this room. I shouldn’t have changed it. She should have had her bedroom. Her things should still be here. An artist’s studio – what vanity.”
Suzanne did her best to console her, but they both knew there was nothing one can say to a mother who has to bury her child. Her only child. Her baby, strangled in an alley and left beside a Dumpster like garbage.
“How could this have happened?” Evelyn was sobbing now into her tissue. “She was always so careful. Ever since she left for college, she was always so very, very careful. She was in her thirties, and still-”
Suzanne made soothing noises and patted Evelyn gently on the back as she cried. People overused the word ironic, but Amy Davis becoming a murder victim was indeed ironic. A statistic. Another woman killed while walking alone at night in an area where others would say that single women ought not walk alone. It was ironic because Amy had always been, as her mother said, so very, very careful. She was so careful about letting men get to know her that she was still walking alone at night.
“All these years, Suzanne, she could never trust anyone. Maybe if that awful business had never happened. Maybe she wouldn’t have been in the city. Or at least she wouldn’t have been alone.”
Evelyn knew that Suzanne, of all people, remembered the incident to which she referred. Amy had learned her lesson. She had to be careful. Careful with men. Careful with trust. Careful with the unpredictability of human emotions. These were valuable lessons, but Amy had learned them too young, and she had probably overlearned them. Plenty of women were unmarried after thirty, but Amy had never even had a serious relationship. She was too careful, too untrusting, too unwilling to be vulnerable.
Evelyn’s crying had subsided and her breathing was more regular now. She stood, straightened her sweater set, and began to gather the things she would need for her trip. “I will pack my own bag, but I do need one very huge favor. Can you make room in your home for a cat? He’s a Persian. I did my best to lobby Hamp, but he’s allergic.”
7
FIRSTDATE’S CORPORATE OFFICES WERE HOUSED ON THE EIGHTEENTH floor of a midsize tower on Rector and Greenwich streets in the city’s financial district. A red-haired receptionist stood guard behind a sleek black desk that rested between the elevator and a set of double glass doors. Through the glass, Ellie spotted a dozen or so workers clicking away on keyboards in cookie-cutter cubicles on the floor, with a few private offices scattered along the perimeter.
The redhead wasn’t much of a guard. She hunched in her high-backed chair, twirling a lock of wavy hair with her fingers, speaking animatedly into her cell phone. A couple of light taps of Ellie’s nails against the receptionist’s desktop triggered nothing but a nod. A flash of her detective’s shield finally caught the woman’s attention.
“I’ll call you right back.” The redhead flipped the phone shut, straightened her posture, and asked how she could help. McIlroy asked to speak with someone who might be able to assist them with some profile names that had come up in an investigation.