CHICAGO

August 1979

SHE LAY AWAKE THURSDAY NIGHT, THE NEWLY EMPTIED GARAGE RUNNING through her mind. All that was left were the only things that mattered—Samantha Rodgers’s necklace and Clarissa Manning’s driver’s license—both of which Angela had hidden. Thomas had barely spoken to her since he found her in the laundry room, so she had no idea if he knew she’d found the relics.

In addition to the image of the now-barren garage shelves constantly blinking in her mind, Dr. Solomon’s voice played over and over in her ears, like a record stuck and repeating. She hadn’t slept the previous few nights and finally, with the bed empty next to her while Thomas continued his purging downstairs, fatigue overcame her and she drifted into a fitful trance.

Her sleep-deprived mind took her back to the hidden storage room in the Kenosha warehouse. She walked through the dingy, unlit space, the gray light of early morning barely brightening the windows high in the rafters. When she headed to the back of the warehouse, she twisted the handle on the storage room door and it creaked open. When the groaning door hinges quieted, Angela heard something else. It was a soft moaning. She stepped into the dark storage room and found Clarissa Manning hanging from one of the twin nooses. Help me, the missing girl said. She was holding a bundle of something in her arms. Angela walked closer to see what it was. As her eyesight adjusted to the darkened space, she saw an infant child wrapped in the green tarp that had been hanging in front of the door. As she reached for the bundle, the baby began to shriek.

Angela bolted upright in bed. She gasped for breath as if finally surfacing from minutes beneath water. Clarissa Manning’s moans and soft pleas for help from her nightmare were replaced now by the growl of Thomas’s truck. She threw the covers to the side and raced to the window. She saw Thomas pull his truck down the alley, the bed filled with boxes and cartons from the garage and the basement.

Angela quickly dressed. She knew she had only a small window of time. When she raced down the stairs, she saw that Thomas had been through every corner of the house. Angela had forgotten her file folder at Catherine’s on Sunday morning, when she raced out of the house after Bill had come home. Now she was happy to have left the research file behind. If she had kept it hidden in the bedroom trunk, where she had always placed it when she was not working on it, Thomas would surely have discovered it. Angela badly wanted to bring that file with her, but knew there was no way to retrieve it. She had no time.

Clarissa Manning’s driver’s license had not been moved since she stuffed it down the front of her pants. She retrieved it now, and ran down the basement steps. When she reached the landing, she saw that Thomas had been through every inch of the space. Drawers were opened and the contents spewed haphazardly to the sides and onto the ground. Shelves were emptied, and Angela could hardly remember what had once filled them. An eerie chill came over her body as she imagined all the evidence she might have been living with for the past two years. She wondered how many more items had been stashed here, and whether she could have done anything to thwart Thomas’s reign of terror, which she was sure had been going on for a decade. On the now-empty shelves may have been everything she needed to prove her theory. Still, though, she believed she had enough.

She ran to the washing machine and lifted the lid. The clothes she had put there the previous morning were flat and damp, the spin cycle having stuck them to the walls of the drum. She ripped one item after the other free until she heard a clanking within the machine. Angela reached in and found Samantha Rodgers’s necklace. A slight bit of peace found her gut, now that she knew Thomas hadn’t discovered it.

Back upstairs, she spent thirty desperate minutes jotting notes about her discoveries over the last week. Angela had passed the dark hours of night listening to Thomas rustle through the house, moving from the basement to the backyard and out to his truck as he emptied the house of evidence. She had listened, and prayed. Drifted between panic and fitful sleep, where she had dreamt of Clarissa Manning hanging from a noose. She fought against her urge to run and scream and cry. She had held her breath, and formulated a plan.