CHAPTER 36
Killer, killer, killer . . .
The word sprang from my chest in sync with my frantic heartbeat as I paced the jail cell like a caged bird. It was cold in here, but the shivers that racked my body had little to do with temperature and everything to do with the fear that shook me to the marrow of my bones. The realization that I was in this alone. The fear that I would never get out of this place.
Did they have enough to charge me with murder?
How much had Tori told Detective Taylor about Halloween night at Theta House?
My baby . . . she’d said the baby was mine. God, I was so stupid not to go along with that in front of Detective Taylor.
My hands balled into fists as I thought of the jabbering sisters on the Rose Council. Courtney, Tori, and Violet. They’d been quick to point the finger at me. They had made a Theta Pi promise to keep the secret—a serious oath—but in the process of protecting one sister they had thrown me to the lions.
What had Detective Taylor said? Someone had called in an anonymous tip. More like anonymous lies. That I’d hooked up with Dr. Finn? It gave a sick taint to a relationship that had nothing creepy about it. Which lovely sister had made that call?
With arms crossed against the insidious chill in my bones, I cut a path between the empty bunks and the stainless-steel toilet as I tried not to freak out about being in jail and facing murder charges. What would happen with my finals . . . the rest of the term? My student loans? In the back of my mind I remembered a counselor warning me that everything would go to shit if I got arrested. And I’d given her that bland smile, dismissing the notion as ludicrous.
I’d been a fool.
Why hadn’t I gone along with the lie? If I’d told the detective that I’d been pregnant, if I’d gone along with my sisters’ lies, I could have told them where the baby was. I’d been so stupid! I needed to start owning that lie, not so much to protect myself but to protect the baby. Rebecca.
Her new, hopeful life was the only bright spot in this mess. I didn’t want to use her, but I needed to own that lie to protect her.
I turned toward the cell door, a thick, transparent Plexiglas barrier with bars in the middle. Detective Taylor and Officer Caldwell had tried to get me to talk, but I had closed up like a clam and asked for a lawyer. That was the last exchange we’d had, probably hours ago.
What the hell were they doing out there?
Where was the encouraging, bespectacled attorney who always showed up to defend suspects on TV shows? And what about that single phone call? They had taken away my cell phone and wallet, offering me nothing in return.
Eventually, that door would open and they’d either call in a lawyer for me or escort me to a phone.
Would I call my father and lay my troubles down on him? That was pointless. Neither he nor my brother, Joe, had the resources to pay a lawyer. G-Dan may have been a cool dude on the jazz scene, but I couldn’t count on him to bail me out.
And now here I was, a twenty-year-old sophomore in college, and I had no lifeline. Granted, I had my sisters, some of them closer than others, but this wasn’t like borrowing a sweater or asking for the answers to the Astronomy quiz. Bail money? Like that would ever happen.
I turned away from the scratched-up door and, breaking my resolve not to touch anything in this cell, sat on the edge of the bunk. The wooden bedframe pressed through the thin wafer of mattress. Everything in here was hard and cold, devoid of softness.
A deep breath did nothing to calm me as my heart beat sickeningly against my ribs. Liar, liar . . . Someday I would learn to be a better liar.
* * *
When she was in high school, a boy had accused Defiance of having ice in her veins. She had laughed, which pissed him off even more. That had been the end of that romance. Tonight, she used that innate calm to stay rational. That was why, when her friends wanted to form a search party and send all the sisters out looking for Emma, Defiance had decided to call the police first. The notion that you had to wait twenty-four hours was a myth, and she knew the police here in Pioneer Falls to be responsive to the needs of college students, their bread and butter.
“I’m calling to report a missing person,” she told the cop who answered the phone. “She’s not answering her phone and she missed an appointment.” When she gave the name, he repeated it and told her that Emma wasn’t missing after all. “Your friend is here at the downtown precinct.”
He made it sound so casual, like students popped into the police station every day. “What is she doing there?”
“Well, right now she’s being held for an investigation.”
Trouble. Defiance had seen it coming. “You’ve arrested her?”
“I’m not at liberty to give information right now.”
“What do we need to do to get her released?”
“The procedure is that she’ll be arraigned by a judge tomorrow.”
She ended the call, looking from Isabel to Patti to Angela to Darnell. “Emma needs our help.”
* * *
My eyes opened when I heard the noise at the door of the jail cell. I must have dozed off at one point because now the clock on the wall said that it was 2:25. The blur on the other side of the Plexiglas door turned out to be Detective Taylor.
“Come with me,” she said. Back to the interview room with its pockmarked ceiling and camera. She offered me water or soda. I wanted tea to ward off that middle-of-the-night chill. I settled for water.
Detective Taylor seemed to have softened, but then maybe that was just exhaustion fraying her concentration. “I did some checking on you,” she said. “How come you’re not telling me the whole truth?”
It was a complicated question, one with too many answers. I stared down at the table, wondering how much she had found out. How bad was it?
“I tried to reach your father. He’s a hard man to track down. But I did get to speak with Mr. Joseph Danelski.”
I let out the breath I’d been holding. Maybe it was awful . . . or not so bad at all.
“Your brother, Joe?” she prodded. “He told me that you did have a baby late Halloween night, just like your sorority sisters said. There was no documentation on the birth because everyone was afraid to go to the police or the health center. But your baby didn’t die. You brought her up to Tacoma on the train and left her under their care on November first. He and his wife are in the process of legally adopting her.”
My baby . . .
This time I jumped on the fabricated story. The gift of a lie that Tori and Violet and Courtney had given to me.
“That’s right,” I said quietly. “I had a baby in the sorority house. Lydia helped deliver it.”
That day in the gorge, something wickedly creative came over me as I considered the future of the baby girl. Who would take care of her? Who would love her, not in that storybook way, but in the real day-to-day grit of kissing her grubby hands and allowing her to tumble so that she could learn to take her first steps and learn to walk? Would a clinic or police station connect her to a mother and father who would love her to the moon and back?
Maybe. But that would take time, and I couldn’t let her suffer a single minute without love when I knew where to find it.
The hike out of that gorge with the weight of her on my chest had been like climbing to heaven. Difficult, yes, but exhilarating. Courtney had accidentally left her wallet in the pocket of the backpack, and I used her cash to buy diapers in town. At the school bookstore, I found an extra-small T-shirt and a Merriwether beach towel to swaddle her in. The last of the cash went to a bus ticket to Portland.
Without blinking I evolved as a criminal, from kidnapper to thief. In Portland, I used Courtney’s credit card to pay for the train ticket north as well as chicken noodle soup for me. At a pharmacy near the train station I found disposable bottles already loaded with infant formula. The baby didn’t seem interested in drinking, but I was glad to see a small bit of the liquid disappear. Mostly, she wanted to sleep. I got that. We napped together as the train rocked us into her future.
“Emma.” Taylor’s voice brought me back. “How come you didn’t tell me the truth, when it would have gotten you off the hook? And don’t tell me it’s because of the shame involved in teen pregnancy. I get that, but would you go to jail for it?”
“I had to protect her,” I said. That much was true. “The baby, Rebecca is her name. She needed an advocate.”
“But you could have come to us when she was born. We would have gotten you both medical attention. I know a social worker who handles adoptions.”
“I . . . I just couldn’t.”
“Now I know there’s embarrassment about teen pregnancy. And I can’t imagine the trauma of giving birth in a damned sorority house with a bunch of squealing girls. But there’s no shame in what you did, Emma. No shame in bringing a baby into the world.”
I closed my eyes, but that didn’t stop the tears from spilling down my cheeks. If only that were true; if only things were that simple. I had not given birth to baby Rebecca. My baby had been gone before he or she was the size of a peanut. A process that had brought me tons of relief, and an ocean of regret.
She pushed a box of tissues across the table.
“While it’s highly irregular to take a newborn across state lines without a birth certificate, it sounds like your brother and sister-in-law have helped you work that out.”
“They have.” I sniffed. “They’ve been great.”
During the train ride north I had looked up safe haven and adoption regulations on my phone. Our situation hadn’t been ideal. If I had told them that the baby girl wasn’t actually mine, there was no way that Joe and Amy could have kept her. So I lied again. I said Rebecca had been born in the dorm under hellish circumstances because our student health center was so unaccommodating. I’m not sure if my brother believed me, but Amy accepted my story in a tearful hug. When we want something with all our soul, we see a clear path.
“So I was going to let you go in the morning since most of your story checked out. Then I got a call from your lawyer, and he demanded immediate release. Woo. That Laurence J. Stern? He likes to argue.”
“Who?”
“Your attorney from Portland.”
I balled up the damp tissue. I didn’t know what she was talking about.
“He wanted to post bail, but you weren’t even arraigned. I told him to calm down, that you were going home anyway.”
“Okay.” I nodded. It would be good to leave here. My friends were probably worried about me.
“So I do apologize for detaining you. I know you’ve been through a lot in the past few months. I don’t have a resolution on this case or on the matter of who killed Lydia Drakos. But before you go, I want to give you one last word of warning. Your friend Lydia . . . I don’t mean to scare you, but her death was no accident. It wasn’t rough sex or someone spontaneously grabbing her in a rage. We haven’t released all the details to the public, but she was choked by someone with strength. Someone strong enough to overcome her and crush her larynx. The bruising on her neck was extensive. It was brutal.”
Her grim tone muddied the lightness I felt at being released. “You don’t think it was a Theta Pi sister,” I said. “You think the killer was male.”
“I do. So what you mentioned about investigating Tori further? I don’t think it would be productive. Lydia wasn’t attacked by a female.”
“Then why do you still have a cop following me?”
“We don’t. Not since Thanksgiving.”
I frowned. “A new female cop was hounding me today. No finesse at all.”
“What did she look like?”
“Blond hair and strange glittery bronzer on her face.”
“Glitter Face? I met her last night. She’s no cop. That’s Professor Finnegan’s ex-girlfriend, and I’m beginning to think that she’s as crazy as he said.” She explained that Dr. Finn’s former girlfriend had been stalking him and had gotten it into her head that Finn and I had been seeing each other. “She’s the one who told us she saw you going down into the ravine carrying a baby. Finnegan dragged her in last night and made her confess that she’d made it all up.”
“That’s creepy.” I looked forward to giving Dr. Finn hell for his poor judgment in women.
“Well, just so you know, we are not going to have anyone tailing you in the future. Your lawyer, Mr. Stern, he insisted on that, and it wasn’t in our plans. So if you do find someone following you, be careful, and let us know.”
“Can I have my phone back, please?” It was probably exploding with text messages.
“On the way to the front desk.” Taylor stood and opened the door. “Take care of yourself, Emma. Your fans await you.”
I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I kept moving. Signed for my key fob, wallet, and cell phone. Slipped on my fleece jacket with a sigh of relief.
When I stepped out into the lobby and moved past the reception desk, the misery of the night fell away at the sight of my friends. Defiance rose from the chair, strong and determined as a goddess. Isabel jumped up with a sunny smile. Angela opened her arms wide and said, “Come here, girl.”
We fell together in a group hug that brought me back to tears. “You guys, how did you know I was here?”
“We were freaking out.” Isabel’s hoarse voice sounded more childlike than ever. “You disappeared from the face of the earth last night.”
“Defiance found you quickly,” Angela said.
“And Angela’s parents hired you a big-shot lawyer,” Defiance added. “Only it seems like you won’t need him.”
“But he’s there if you need him. Larry Stern. He’s worked with my mom for years.”
“Thanks. I can’t even tell you how glad I am to see you guys.” I straightened my spine, swiped at my tears, and then wiped my hands on the thighs of my jeans. I felt like I’d traveled thousands of miles in the past twelve hours. To hell and back.
It felt good to be back.