15

I caught some sleep at my desk while Derek and Eliza Turner were processed. It had been an awful rush at the Turner residence to get the parents into the paddy wagon, secure whatever physical evidence we could from the scene and remove Monica. The worst thing that could have happened would have been for the press to turn up while we were there, to discover what Derek and Eliza had done, to leak this to the world before we could use it to our advantage.

Within the hour, the Turner house was shut up, the phone disconnected, the curtains drawn. Neighbors, who had gawked from their windows, quickly lost interest. When I woke around midday there were no journos on the front steps of the station. If we were lucky, we might have pulled it off without the country knowing what had occurred.

As I slept, Eden took her rage out on the treadmill in the station gym. I found her in the hall outside the glass doors to the cardio section, towelling down her neck and breathing through her mouth.

“You feel better?” I asked.

“No,” she replied.

I didn’t either. We were both angry. I had spent many restless hours thinking about Courtney, about her parents, about what it must have felt like to have a child ripped from your life. I felt sick now thinking about how they could have set up the killing of Courtney in Monica’s place. Had they allowed the killer to abduct her right off the street, as he seemed so skilled in doing, or had they taken her and Monica to the door of his chop shop? Come on, girls, we’re going for a little ride. Had he even taken them anywhere? Had he conducted the operation right there in the garden shed? I wanted to hurt Derek Turner. I wanted to twist his bones. All the tears, all the heartache, now seemed like a personal insult to Eden and me. Maybe the Turners had been hurting. Maybe they had genuinely felt something about the situation. I understood favoritism happened in families—particularly with stepparents. Hell, I wasn’t that naive. But to murder one child for another? How much trouble could Courtney have been?

I followed Eden to the ladies’ changing rooms and stood outside while she showered and slipped back into her clothes. She came out and walked right past me, pulling her long inky hair up into a ponytail. We didn’t speak as we entered the interview observation room. Derek Turner was sitting at the table with his wrists cuffed, his wide hands clutched around a half-empty paper cup.

“Someone gave him coffee?” Eden asked.

There was silence from the men and women who stood around the observation room, watching the man through the mirror. No one admitted to giving Derek Turner a coffee. It might not have seemed like a big thing to anyone else, but I felt, as I was sure Eden did, that the coffee cup should have been rammed down the man’s throat.

I followed Eden through the side door into the interview room. We sat down. Derek looked at us, expecting something, but I didn’t speak and neither did Eden. It was hard to know what to say. Eden was looking at her hands, straightening her fingers to examine the nails.

“I haven’t asked for a lawyer,” Derek offered.

“Were you there?” Eden asked without lifting her eyes. Derek seemed to tremble. He drained the rest of his cup of coffee and let out a great long sigh.

“Were you there when he put her to sleep?”

“No,” Derek said, his voice already straining. “No, I wasn’t there.”

“Weak stomach?”

Derek shivered and rubbed at his nose. His breath was steadily increasing, seeming to catch in his throat as he talked.

“One of our children was going to die, okay? You understand that? We’d already come to terms with the fact that she was going to die. She had a rare blood type and aside from that she was way down the donor list. A man came to us and told us he could fix it. He said it would take him some time but he could find us another kid to take her place. We didn’t . . . we didn’t like the idea of killing someone else’s kid. Courtney was giving us so much trouble at the time. She was such a fucking bitch. She was just . . . she could be unbearable.”

There was silence on our side of the table. Derek wiped at a tear and sighed again.

“Courtney had never liked me, ever since she was little. She was just like her idiot father. She was always wild. When Monica started getting sick, she started abusing teachers and skipping classes and throwing tantrums at school. The head teacher asked us to get her assessed, you know, for being mentally ill or something. I knew she wasn’t mentally ill, she was just a fucking brat. She was . . . I don’t expect you to understand.”

“Good,” Eden said. There was a long moment of silence. Derek seemed to be off in his own world, staring at the coffee residue staining the bottom of his cup.

“It was his plan, all of it,” Derek trembled. “He told us to get the girls out of their school, move away, change their names but don’t do it with the registry so that they wouldn’t find her on the list. Wait—so people would forget us. We weren’t a very social family anyway. We waited as long as we could. Monica was really sick. He called and I told him we couldn’t wait any longer.”

“So months of planning went into this,” Eden said.

“Yeah.”

“Months,” I said.

“Yeah,” he murmured, scratching his neck. “Look, we didn’t kill anyone else’s kid. I don’t know why you can’t see that. He told us he could find us someone and we’d never have to know who it was. But we didn’t want that. We didn’t want to hurt anyone.”

“Je-sus.” I laughed madly, covering my face with my hands. I felt like I was watching a terrible joke unfold. Like some serious hilarity was being attempted and was failing dismally before my eyes. Maybe I was tired. Hacking laughs erupted out of me. I ran my fingers up through my hair, scratching at my scalp.

I guess Derek was confused by the whole situation. He’d probably seen interrogations on television where the cops talk a lot, insinuating things, threatening things, leaning over the accused and pointing their fingers in his face. Eden and I sat still in our chairs and looked at the ground. I didn’t know about her, but I almost didn’t want Derek to confess. I didn’t want to hear what he’d done or what he felt. I just wanted to jump across the space between us and punch his teeth in.

“So, um . . .” he said, trying to spur some reaction. “So this is where we start talking about some kind of deal, isn’t it?”

Eden’s face snapped towards Derek.

“A deal?”

“Yeah, you know, like a deal for my, um . . . for my confession and all that?”

“Oh no, no, no. Honey, no.” Eden laughed. “No, Mr. Turner, you’re going to prison for a long time, there’s no question about that. A long time. It doesn’t really matter what the sentence ends up being. In a year, you know, maybe two, someone’s going to come into your cell in the middle of the night and put a sharpened toothbrush handle through your neck. That’s what happens to people who kill children, Mr. Turner. They don’t cut deals.”

“But I can help you.” Derek shuddered, tears falling unchecked down his wide cheeks. “I can help you find him. I know what he looks like.”

“Yeah? So do we. He’s a handsome prick.”

“He’ll call me. He said he would call, on the first of every month after the operation for six months, you know, to check on Monica. I can make him come to me. I can help you trap him. You have to cut a deal with me. You have to.”

Eden stood up from her chair so fast it skidded out from under her legs and hit the wall behind us. I remained sitting while she tugged Derek Turner forward by the collar of his sweat-stained shirt until his nose was inches from her own.

“What you have to do, Mr. Turner, is pray. You better pray to God you have the chance to help us and that I give you something, anything, in return, because from here on in you’re going to have to beg for everything you ever get. You’re going to have to beg for . . . Every. Last. Breath.”