The Book of Cold Cases

It is 1977, and Beth is being interviewed by Detectives Joshua Black and Melvin Washington at the Claire Lake police station. She tells them that the night of the first murder she was at home alone, drinking, and that the same is true of the night of the second murder. Detective Washington implies that she might have driven drunk and not remembered because a witness described her car, a 1966 Buick. Beth gets angry and calls him an idiot. He tells her that they are comparing the ballistics from the murders to those of her father's murder, but she resolves to say nothing, ends the interview and leaves the station.

Shea spends the morning doing research on Beth Greer. She is looking at a photo of Beth as she left the police station after the interview described in the previous chapter. She reflects that it was the way Beth looked in that photo that made everyone believe she was guilty. She looks out the window and sees a man reading a book in a car in the parking lot of her apartment complex. She is about to take a photo of the license plate when she thinks of her sister Esther, who is concerned that she has stopped seeing her therapist. She takes the photo anyway. Later, when she leaves her apartment, her neighbor is sitting outside smoking. The man in the car is her neighbor’s ex-husband, who is waiting in the parking lot for her to change her mind about canceling some plans they had made. Shea advises her not to cave in to her ex-husband even though it may be hard in the short term.

On Sunday Shea takes the bus to Beth Greer's house. This neighborhood, Arlen Heights, is much different from the working-class Claire Lake neighborhood she grew up in. She is nervous about going to the home of a possible serial killer and has told Michael where she is going. She is surprised by the interior of the house, which does not seem to have changed since the 1970s.

Beth tells Shea that she is a recovering alcoholic, and she has been sober for eight years. She also tells Shea that she looked her up, and Shea wonders if she discovered information about The Incident, as she calls it. Beth asks Shea if she thinks Beth is innocent, and Shea replies that she feels like she can only see a part of the story. This impresses Beth, but before they go any further Beth asks Shea why she does not drive.

Shea, who never tells anyone the story of The Incident, surprises herself by telling Beth. Twenty years ago, at the age of nine, she had narrowly escaped being abducted. She had gotten into a man’s car, thinking he was taking her to her parents, and then managed to escape. She told the police, and the man, Anton Anders, was eventually caught and sent to prison. Anders is up for parole in just a few months. This story is her biggest secret—she has never told anyone beyond her family. Beth asks if that is the end of the story, and Shea replies yes, then wonders if Beth knows that she is lying.

Shea begins her interview with Beth by asking about the house and why she lives in it with her mother's decor. Beth says no one has ever asked her that and that everyone else only cared about the murders. Shea asks why she has never moved, and Beth replies that she has tried but has never been able to. Shea asks Beth what the time after her parents’ deaths was like for her. Beth drank and partied to escape her grief, but it was seen by others as a sign that she was cold and uncaring. She says that her life was not as wild as it was portrayed because she did not want to end up like her mother, but she does not elaborate on the statement.

Shea goes to the bathroom and then the kitchen, where Beth's father had been found dead. She hears the bathroom faucet turn on but knows Beth is still in the living room. While she is in the kitchen, she feels a cold breeze, and when she turns around the cupboard doors are all open. Then the bathroom faucet starts running again. When Shea returns to the bathroom and puts her hand into the water, it turns to blood, but when she turns it off, there is no blood in the sink or on her hand. She goes back to the living room and notices that her phone recording has been turned off. When she asks, Beth denies turning it off.

Beth returns home one morning to find a reporter in her driveway. Ransom Wells's car is also in the driveway, and she knows that he will be waiting for her in the backyard, as he never goes into the house. Wells is her family's lawyer and tells her she needs to hire him. He shows her the newspaper’s front page with the famous photo of her and tells her that public opinion is already against her. The police do not have enough evidence to charge her or they would have done so already. They discuss her interview with the police as well as the detectives and their competency. Beth agrees to hire Wells as her attorney, and he promises to do his best to get her acquitted.

Shea and Michael discuss what happened to her in Beth's bathroom. She suggests telekinesis, and he suggests that Beth had rigged the house ahead of time. Both explanations seem equally ridiculous. Shea tells Michael that Beth contacted Joshua Black, and he has agreed to an interview with her. Michael mentions that Black worked on the Sherry Haines murder, which makes Shea uncomfortable. She realizes that Joshua Black likely had interviewed her at some point after The Incident when she was nine. When she introduces herself to Joshua, he tells her he remembers her, but he is not surprised that she does not remember him.

Joshua tells Shea that he had only met the other detective the day after the Armstrong murder—Washington was a state police detective sent to help with the case. He mentions the notes left by the killer and the fact that the handwriting seemed like a woman's, but no one seemed to recognize that they were dealing with a female serial killer. He brings up the point that the killer left no fingerprints or trace of herself but then left a note, which is like a gift of evidence to the police. Neither Shea nor Joshua is able to come up with a convincing reason the killer would risk the note.

Shea realizes that Joshua does not believe that Beth is guilty. He mentions Julian's secretary, Sylvia Bledsoe, and Shea decides to try to find her. Black gives her his phone number and offers to help her. When Shea asks why, he tells her it is because she is Girl A, the girl that he interviewed for the Sherry Haines murder, whose identity was kept anonymous because of her age. He believes that she can get the answers he has never found.

After her visit to the Greer mansion, Shea has strange dreams about it all week. Her sister Esther calls and tries to set Shea up on a date for their dinner together, but Shea threatens to talk about true crime all night if her sister brings Shea a date, so Esther surrenders. While they are on the phone, Shea hears commotion outside her apartment door and nearly calls the police, but when she opens the door she finds a cat left by her neighbor, who is going to live with her mother. The note she left asks Shea to keep the cat, whose name is Winston Purrchill.

Shea calls Michael, because she has never had a pet and does not know what to do. She decides to keep the cat rather than taking it to a shelter. While they are talking, the cat sits on her Beth Greer file and will not move. Shea tells Michael that she is going to find Sylvia Bledsoe, Julian's former secretary, who is still alive and living in Clair Lake. Michael offers to go with her, but that would involve meeting him in person, which Shea is still not ready for, so she says no.