Authors: Rebecca Drake
“What the hell?” the guard repeated, coming closer.
Holding her sleeve against her nose, Jill crouched down next to the bundle. The liquid had come from here; it stained the sheeting, puddling near the bottom in a sickening way. She could hear the guard breathing through his mouth, loud and labored, and she had to swallow down the bile that rose in her own throat as she struggled to pull back the sheeting at the top of the package. She knew what it was before she saw the thatch of iron gray, knew what it was even as she kept pulling the sheet, stopping only when the whole head appeared.
Gagging, she dropped the sheet and reared up, bumping into the guard who’d come forward to look.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “That’s Frank, the husband.”
DAY TWENTY-THREE
Even expecting it, Jill couldn’t help crying out and stumbling back, her hands pressed against her mouth, but the vomit came anyway, spilling from her onto the cheap carpeting.
“Now that’s something more to clean,” the guard complained.
“She killed him.” Jill’s legs folded, and she dropped to the floor. “She killed her own husband.” If she could kill her husband, this woman was capable of anything. Jill thought of Sophia’s bloody nightgown and retched again, head down and eyes watering, her stomach feeling as if it were being pulled inside out.
The security guard muttered an oath and retreated back down the hall, complaining about the mess. Jill staggered after him, away from the body. She couldn’t think, she couldn’t breathe. The guard was in the kitchen talking on a cell phone.
“Riverview Estates, off Allegheny River Boulevard in Verona.” He paused, listening. “No, I didn’t do CPR.” Another pause. “’Cause he’s dead.”
Jill had to go before the police got there; she had to leave. She reached in her pocket for the keys and found the ring. She could show the police the ring! The ring tied this woman to Sophia. But why would the police believe her? Ottilo would listen to her story with his usual impassive expression, and then he’d arrest her.
She shoved the ring back in her pocket and ran to the front door but not before the guard stepped in front of it, blocking her path. “You’re not going anywhere!” he snapped. Over his shoulder Jill could see fresh snow covering the windshield and hood of Leo’s car. The guard narrowed his eyes at her. “I don’t know how you knew about that body, but you can explain it to the police. They’re on the way.”
And they were. The promise of a dead body had gotten the police moving; already she could hear sirens. The guard turned to look out the front door, eager to flag them down.
Jill scanned the apartment wildly, searching for another way out. She had to leave. She saw a sliding door hidden by cheap sheers and ran to it, fiddling with the lock before it finally gave and the door slid back with a squeal. “Hey! Stop right there!” The guard lumbered after her.
She dashed out only to stop short on a small square of concrete patio completely encased by a wooden privacy fence. Jill hesitated for a split second before shoving a rickety metal table—the only thing on the patio—against the fence and scrambling on top. The guard made a grab for her, hand on ankle, but she shook him loose, getting over the fence and dropping onto the snow-covered ground on the other side. It looked soft, but wasn’t.
Sharp pain flashed in both her knees, but she had no time to linger. Jill struggled to her feet and did a wide loop around the building, searching for her keys in the pocket of the jacket as she ran. The Impala’s door locks were snow-covered. She swiped it off, shoved the key in, and yanked open the long, wide driver’s door just as the security guard came huffing out the front door of 7B.
“You can’t leave!” he shouted as she threw herself into the car. She slammed the door, pushed down the lock button, and thrust the key in the ignition. The Impala stalled as the security guard ran toward her, arms waving. “C’mon, c’mon,” Jill muttered, trying again. The guard reached for the car door, but slipped as he stepped off the curb. The Impala started, roaring to life. The guard scrambled backward on his hands and feet, like a large crab. He was still shouting, but she couldn’t hear him over the noise of the motor.
She pulled out with tires slipping and squealing in the snow. A trio of police cars, lights flashing, turned into the complex. Jill yanked up the collar of the jacket, hunching a little as she sped toward the exit. The Impala passed one side of the guardhouse as the first of the police cars passed the other. She caught a glimpse of a police officer’s face turned toward hers, mouth agape, and then she was gone, racing back up the side road that she’d taken down to the river, getting back on Allegheny River Boulevard.
She didn’t know what to do, where to go. This madwoman had Sophia, she had to have her, but where had she gone? Jill tried to slow her breathing, to calm down enough to think rationally. She didn’t know what to do, where to search next. All she had to prove a connection between this woman and Sophia was a cheap plastic ring. Her mouth tasted sour from throwing up, her stomach sore and roaring its emptiness. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten. She pulled into a Sheetz station and went inside. A pimply-faced teen manned the cash register, paying more attention to the wall-mounted TV than to his customers. Jill hunched her shoulders and ducked into one of the aisles, trying to focus on the row after row of chips and other crappy snacks, but her ears were tuned to the news broadcast. “Snow, snow, and more snow in the forecast,” a bubbly announcer chirped, “but first the roundup of today’s top stories.” Jill picked up a protein bar and stepped to the freezer case that ran the length of the back wall to find bottled water.
“Hey!”
Her head jerked up at the shout. She looked back, fully expecting to see the teen staring at her, but he was addressing an older woman carrying a small poodle. “You can’t bring that dog in here,” the teenager said, hand rising to pick worriedly at one of his boils.
“She’ll freeze if I leave her in the car in this weather,” the woman protested.
The dog yipped as if to confirm her story.
Little furry mutt—it was against the rules, but she didn’t care
. The security guard telling her about Bea Walsh’s dog. And all at once Jill realized—the woman with the dog at the park on the day Sophia disappeared—it had to have been Bea Walsh.
Jill brought her purchases to the counter, head down as she handed over the money. The teen rang her up, too focused on arguing with the old woman to do more than glance at her. Meanwhile the announcer was still talking. Jill looked up when she heard, “The search continues”—expecting to see a photo of Sophia, but it was a crash scene—“for the cause of the deadly bus accident in West Virginia.”
“Do you need a bag?” The teen handed over her change.
Jill shook her head, grabbing her bar and water and ducking out the door. Back in the Impala, she pulled out before tearing open the wrapper on the protein bar and wolfing it down. Her stomach pain eased a little. She gulped the water, trying to steer the boat of a car with one hand while she got the cap off. It was relief to wash away the sour taste.
Jill tried to think logically, order all the facts. She thought of David and the way he’d talk about facts and supposition, and the conclusions one could reasonably expect a jury to reach. Fact: David had an affair with Lyn Galpin. Fact: Lyn Galpin had given birth. Fact: their adoption attorney provided a death certificate for Sophia’s birth mother. Fact: Lyn Galpin was dead. Fact: Lyn Galpin was Sophia’s birth mother. Supposition: If Lyn Galpin was Sophia’s birth mother then David was the birth father.
Jill felt another wave of nausea; how could he have fathered a child with someone else while he was with her? It would explain his sudden about-face on adoption. He’d never been interested, not before what happened to Ethan, even when they’d spent all those agonizing months trying and failing to conceive. She’d always been open to it, had known she’d have no trouble loving any child, but David hadn’t wanted to discuss it, had gotten annoyed when she brought it up. Back then she’d concluded that the mere suggestion of adoption somehow called into question his masculinity.
And later, after Ethan? Jill’s eyes filled remembering those first awful weeks after his death. They hadn’t talked about another child then; it would have been obscene, as if they were trying to replace their son. The truth was that they’d barely talked at all, both of them moving as if in a trance, arranging the funeral, the burial, the return to an apartment both empty and tainted. They’d lived under the same roof and slept in the same bed, but Ethan’s death had separated them as effectively as if he’d been the glue holding them together.
Until that day seven months later, Jill remembered it vividly, when David came home from work one evening and asked if
she
would consider adoption. “We could get a newborn,” he’d said. “A new baby.” She’d shaken her head at first, an automatic no to the thought of anyone in Ethan’s place. They’d been sitting in their dining room, a place rarely used. They’d always eaten in the kitchen with Ethan pulled up next to them at the small, round table, first in a bouncy seat and then a high chair. She hadn’t been able to eat at that table after his death. Too many shared meals, too much laughter. It hurt to remember him, the pain coming at odd moments, stinging and sudden, like being grazed by a jellyfish. The surprise of how things so small, so seemingly harmless—a stuffed toy they’d missed when they packed everything away, a little hat lying on a closet shelf—could cause so much pain. She’d become avoidant because of it, staying away from anything that reminded her of Ethan.
She remembered David reaching his hand across their dining room table and grasping hers. “We need to do this, Jill. We need someone to love again.” And she’d burst into tears because she’d known it was true—the loss of Ethan had been like having her heart torn away and she needed another child to fill that awful, gaping hole. Neither of them mentioned going through the hell of trying again on their own. When he said that he’d heard about a young woman who wanted to give up her child, that Andrew could arrange a private adoption, Jill had never stopped to question the convenience of it all. How could she have failed to recognize that the similarities between Sophia and David were more than just a happy coincidence?
Jill gulped the rest of the water, crushing the bottle in her hand, feeling another surge of anger at David—the elaborate lies he’d told! What would he have done if she’d refused to consider adoption? If Lyn Galpin was Sophia’s birth mother, then Bea Walsh was her grandmother. That was motivation enough to take her. But Bea wouldn’t hurt her, would she? Except she’d killed her own husband.
Jill watched the streets pass outside, trying not to think about Ottilo unfolding that bloody nightgown. Bea Walsh hadn’t left Pittsburgh when she vacated the Riverview Estates. She stayed so she could abduct Sophia. But where? Jill passed a small strip mall with a grocery store on one end and a savings and loan on the other. An accounting firm, a yoga studio, a bakery. It was all a blur until a billboard caught her eye. She braked hard, pulling off the road, and the car directly behind her blared its horn in protest. She stared up at the billboard. It was an ad for a local real-estate firm. The same real-estate firm that had been on the flyer she’d found in the kitchen at the townhouse.
DAY TWENTY-THREE
Top Ridge Realty sat, incongruously, on flat ground, boxed in by a Chinese restaurant and a tanning salon. The middle-aged woman behind the front desk stood up with a smile that faded when Jill asked her question.
“Bea Walsh? She’s not my client, but I can check our database and see what comes up.” She plopped back down with a resigned expression and pulled on the pair of reading glasses dangling from a chain around her neck.
It was a long shot, but Jill had nothing else to go on. She bounced on the balls of her feet while the woman clicked away at the keyboard. Even with the glasses the woman squinted at the computer screen. “Walsh, you said? No, I’m not showing any Walsh.”
“You’re sure?” Jill leaned over the counter trying unsuccessfully to see the screen. “Maybe it’s under the first name, Bea.”
“Bea Walsh, Bea Walsh … yep, here it is.” Her lips pursed as if she’d bitten a lemon. “Apparently she’s one of Patsy Duckworth’s clients.”
“Can I talk to Patsy?”
The woman scowled, taking off her glasses. “Sure, if you can find her.”
“She’s not here?”
“Nope. Just because she’s a top producer, she thinks that she doesn’t have to show up—”
Jill interrupted, “Do you know when she’ll be back?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. She’s supposed to be here now. I got called in to man the phones when she didn’t show up. So, of course, I came. Because I don’t like to let people down—”
“Did Bea Walsh buy property from Patsy Duckworth?”
The woman’s eyes narrowed, but she slipped back on her glasses and looked at the monitor. “No. She didn’t purchase a home.”
The sense of defeat drained Jill’s energy. She leaned against the desk, but the woman wasn’t done looking at the screen. “She’s not a buyer,” she repeated. “She’s a renter. In one of Patsy’s listings.”
Jill looked up. “Do you have that address?”
“I can’t give out personal information,” the woman said primly. She looked Jill over, her gaze lingering on the ratty jacket. “How do you know Bea Walsh?”
Jill said the first thing that came to her mind. “I’m her daughter.”
“Really?” The woman didn’t bother to hide her skepticism. “Then how come you don’t
have
her address?”
“Um, I’ve been away. She emailed it to me, but my computer crashed.”
“Hmm.” The woman stood back up. “I’ll have to check with our manager. She’s actually in the midst of a closing right now. Why don’t you call the office tomorrow, and I’ll let you know what she said.”
“It’s urgent that I reach her today,” Jill said. “Please.”
The woman gave her another once-over before relenting. “Okay, I’ll head back to the boardroom and see if I can interrupt her for a minute. Just wait here, miss—?”