by Matt Witten
But it was too late.
Danny was gone by the end of January.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 29, PRESENT DAY
SUSAN GOT OFF the playground before the security guard could get interested in her again. But she wasn’t sure where to go next or what to do. She felt lost and bewildered, her soul reeling.
The Monster killed Amy. He confessed. The jury found him guilty. That question had been answered twenty years ago.
But …
“He found it.”
Five minutes later, she found herself back in the library at one of the public computers, googling “Amy Lentigo.”
The top website was from two days ago, an AP story headlined, “Condemned Man Still Claims Innocence.” It had a photo of Jansen, the way he looked now. His hair was going gray, as she’d imagined. His face seemed a little grayish too, maybe from lack of sun for the past twenty years. But the thing that hit her was his eyes. They looked sad, like she remembered them from the very first time she saw Jansen in person. They had lines on each side of them now. It made him look sort of … thoughtful.
She read what he’d said to the reporter. “False confession … ten hours … drunk and exhausted, just wanted to sleep … they didn’t have any real evidence …”
It was nothing she hadn’t heard before, both during the trial and whenever he filed an appeal. During the first few years, Agent Pappas called her several times to assure her the appeals would never go anywhere. The judge had conducted the trial with scrupulous fairness, and there was plenty of evidence: Amy’s bite marks on Jansen’s hand, the complete absence of any alibi, and above all, his confession.
Susan grabbed at her head. Again she told herself there was a simple explanation for Emily’s necklace that she just wasn’t seeing. Danny could never have done that to Amy. It’s impossible. I’m an idiot.
Maybe Danny contacted Jansen in prison and got him to reveal where the necklace was. And he never told Susan because he didn’t want to bring up bad memories.
That must be the answer. Susan felt comforted for a few moments.
But then she thought, That makes no sense. Danny wanted to forget about Amy. There was no way he would’ve contacted Jansen. And if Jansen contacted him, he would have told Jansen to go to Susan instead.
At least I think that’s what he would have done.
She hit the back arrow on the computer screen and clicked on a Post-Star article from twenty years ago. There was a picture of her and Danny standing in front of the courthouse addressing the media. Agent Pappas was off to the side.
She thought back to that time. She remembered how Pappas briefly suspected Danny before focusing on Frank and then Jansen. Danny’s alibi was almost as weak as Jansen’s, but he never had any marks on his hands or arms, what Pappas called “defensive wounds”—
She gave a start. That’s not really true. When Danny went down to the stream below the tannery searching for Amy, he slipped and fell and cut himself.
At least that’s what he said. And she always believed that’s where those cuts on his arms and wrists came from.
But what if … What if …
She was too upset to even finish the sentence. She looked down at the computer screen, but her eyes stopped focusing. She was picturing the night after Curt Jansen was arrested, when she had gotten into bed with Danny and said, “Thank God they caught him.”
He’d laughed.
And now that twenty-year-old laugh came back to her, ringing in her head. Maybe he was laughing at the FBI.
At his own private joke.
Sitting at the computer, Susan chewed on her thumbnail and wondered: What other things did I forget?
Or make myself forget?
She started to have trouble breathing, and she felt like the library, big though it was, was closing in on her. She got up from the computer and practically ran out of there.
She’d had a mental breakdown twenty years ago. Was she having another one? Was that what this was all about?
Once outside, she could breathe again. But there was nowhere to run, no one to talk to. On an impulse, which she knew immediately she might regret, she took out her flip phone and made a call.
Two rings later, she heard her mom’s voice coming over the phone. “Susan! Everything okay?”
Susan could picture her mom standing at the kitchen counter, talking into their ancient telephone/fax machine that Danny had bought for them in the mid-’90s. The fax machine had broken years ago, but the phone still worked.
“I’m fine, Mom,” she said.
Her mom said, “Oh good. I just found the cutest towel rack at the thrift store. You’re gonna love it.”
“Mom—”
“You hang the towel on a duck’s tail—”
“I’m in Tamarack. I went to see Danny.”
There was a pause, then Lenora said cautiously, “Well, isn’t that nice. How is he?”
Susan felt a need to keep moving. She walked away from the library, and away from Main Street. “I met his daughter, Emily. How well do you remember Amy’s necklace?”
“Pretty damn well, there’s a picture of it right here on the fridge. Why?”
Susan took a deep breath. “Emily is wearing a beaded necklace with a purple dolphin, a pink duck, and all the same exact beads Amy had.”
“Huh. So he made another necklace just like Amy’s. That’s sweet.”
Susan had already considered that possibility and rejected it. “There’s no way he did that,” she said emphatically. “Danny never made anything in his life. He’s the least crafty person I ever met.”
“So he had somebody else make it. Why are you so riled up?”
“Because what if it’s not a copy?” Susan stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “Danny’s daughter told me her dad found the necklace.”
“He did what?”
“He found it.”
“You must’ve heard her wrong.”
“No. I didn’t.”
“How could Danny have found where Curt Jansen hid it? You’re not making sense.”
“What if …” She stopped. She still couldn’t say the rest of it out loud, couldn’t even finish it in her head.
“What if what?”
She steeled herself. “What if Danny hid the necklace himself?”
Her mom was silent for a few moments, probably trying to figure out if she understood Susan right. Susan was about to say something more, but then Lenora’s voice, utterly appalled, came over the line. “What the hell are you saying?!”
The words poured out. “Mom, he never had an alibi—”
“Danny is not some psycho child killer! For chrissake, Susan!”
Susan gripped her phone so hard she was afraid she’d break it. “I know it sounds crazy, but there’s so many things I’m remembering now! Like …”
A long-submerged image flashed into her mind:
Danny, in their bedroom, giving her a surprise present, a big gift-wrapped box with a pink ribbon. Susan, excited, unties the ribbon and opens the box, expecting maybe a nice dress, like the one she pointed out to him the last time they were in Saratoga.
“There were things Danny wanted me to do …” Susan hesitated, embarrassed. “In bed, that I never told you about.”
She could see it so vividly now: Inside the box she finds a Catholic schoolgirl uniform, with white blouse and pink plaid skirt.
She looks up at Danny, bewildered. He wants her to wear this—when? When they’re …?
He gazes steadily back at her—
For one brief moment, Susan wonders who is this man that she married.
Then Danny gives her a smile, and her feeling passes.
But now, twenty years later, she was questioning her marriage all over again. She said to her mom, “I didn’t think it meant anything. And then Curt Jansen confessed—”
“Yeah, exactly. He confessed.”
“But then he recanted.”
“That was bullshit, you know that.
”
“I don’t want to believe it either, Mom, but maybe this is why I couldn’t move on all these years! I could feel something was wrong!”
She was yelling into the phone, and a couple teenage boys walking past on the sidewalk gave her a wide berth. She needed to be more quiet. What if Danny came by?
Her mom said, “You need to come home. This whole execution is too much for you.”
Susan shook her head, upset. “I don’t know who to talk to about this—”
“Nobody. Get in your car.”
If only.
“Get out of that town and quit imagining things. I never should’ve let you go off to North Dakota—”
“Okay, Mom,” Susan said with a sigh. God, her mom was so useless sometimes.
“What do you mean, okay?”
“I don’t know, just take care of yourself. Don’t forget your pills.”
She shut her phone and just stood there. A middle-aged couple walked past holding hands, talking about where they’d go for dinner tonight. What she would give to be the woman in that couple!
Her phone rang again. Her mom calling back, no doubt. She put the phone in her purse and let it ring.
I don’t think I’m having a breakdown. This felt totally different from how she felt twenty years ago. I really think it’s the same necklace.
She suddenly realized she was starving. All she’d eaten today were a couple handfuls of peanuts, chocolate chips, and cranberries. She got the baggie out of her purse and had three more handfuls.
She needed to do something. She needed a plan.
First of all, she needed to talk to somebody besides her mother. But everyone she knew back in Lake Luzerne would agree with her mom that she was crazy. Even Terri would think that. Back when Terri used to babysit for them, she had a little crush on Danny.
Officer Lynch might have listened to her—maybe. But he’d been a victim of the meth violence that swept through the lower Adirondacks ten years ago.
What about the police here in Tamarack? But Danny was a respected local real estate agent, giving five-thousand-dollar checks to the Police Athletic League. She was just a middle-aged woman in an old, worn coat passing through town with a battered suitcase and a wild story. If she wanted the cops to listen to her, she needed more than just a story—
Wait a minute. All at once, Susan realized what she had to do.
It meant returning to Emily’s school, so she grabbed her suitcase and hurried the fifteen blocks back there. Her right knee throbbed.
But when she got to the school, she was too late to do what she’d planned. The school had already let out, and Emily and the other kids had gone home.
Standing on the sidewalk, Susan resolved to come back here first thing tomorrow.
Maybe she was crazy. She sort of hoped she was. But she needed to know the truth.
Tomorrow morning, she’d come to the school and get evidence the cops would have to listen to.
They would have no choice.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 29, PRESENT DAY
BUT BEFORE TOMORROW morning came, Susan needed to make it through tonight. It was growing colder by the minute and her hunger wasn’t getting any less.
She went back to the library to warm up and counted all the loose change in her purse: three dollars and eighty-two cents. How will I ever last ’til Saturday?
No, don’t think about that now, just keep going.
She had never asked for a free meal in her life and she hated doing it now. But she walked up to the reference librarian, who was on her cell phone once again. Susan cleared her throat, and the woman looked up, annoyed.
“May I help you?”
“Yes, please. Are there any churches in town where someone without money can get dinner?”
The librarian pinched her lips and said through a frown, “I don’t really know. No one’s ever asked me that question.”
Susan wanted to throttle this woman. “Do you think I wanted to ask it?”
“I’m just saying—”
“Why don’t you find out the answer so you can help the next person who asks, you bitch.”
The woman’s jaw dropped. Susan wondered if she had overreacted, then decided she didn’t care. She went back to the computer and searched for free dinners in Tamarack. She didn’t find any, but there was an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting at five thirty at a nearby church. Maybe they’d have coffee and cookies or something.
At the meeting, she struck gold. Not only did they have coffee and cookies, there was spaghetti with butter and salad. She sat down and had two helpings as she listened to everybody share their problems. She wanted to tell them hers but felt like she probably shouldn’t speak.
She’d do her speaking as soon as she got the evidence she needed.
When the meeting ended, she headed outside and wandered. Around seven o’clock she came to an all-night coffee shop. They sold coffee in pretty big mugs for a buck twenty-five, so she ordered some. She sat there nursing her drink, getting refills, and thinking about her life. She couldn’t wait for morning to come so she could quit obsessing and get moving.
At nine o’clock the counterman, a hard-faced guy in his forties with a shaved head and thick scruffy beard who looked like a biker, came over. “Anything else I can get you?”
“Just another refill, please.”
But the counterman didn’t take her cup this time. “I can’t let you stay here all night drinking one cup of coffee.”
Susan didn’t feel like getting up out of this warm place just yet. There was a small bag of chips above the counter that couldn’t be too expensive. “How much are those chips?”
“They cost a buck.”
“I’ll have a bag.”
She rooted around in her purse for another dollar in coins. The counterman watched her, then looked down at her worn suitcase. “Where you headed anyway?”
“North Dakota.” She handed him a bunch of nickels and pennies. “This is a dollar even.”
Susan could see he wanted to count her money, but he decided to be polite instead and just put it away in the drawer. “You visiting family?” he said.
“Long story.”
“We got time, seeing as it looks like you’ll be here awhile.”
She gave him a smile, her thanks that he wasn’t kicking her out. Somehow she seemed to have turned a corner with this guy. Maybe watching her fish for pennies had awoken a little compassion in him.
Then she scratched her head, thinking about how to answer him. What was her “long story”? She wasn’t sure anymore.
“I’m going to see the execution of the man who …” She paused.
“The man who what?”
“Might’ve raped and murdered my daughter.”
The counterman blinked. “Might’ve?”
She saw a skinny Tamarack phone book on the shelf behind him. It gave her an idea of something better to do than just sit around all night.
“Can I borrow your phone book?”
His eyes widened, taken aback by her abrupt change of subject, but he said, “Sure,” and handed it to her.
She opened it up and found a listing for “Daniel Lentigo.” He lived on 89 Ash Street. She’d walked by Ash earlier; it was only five or six blocks away.
“Who are you looking for?” the counterman asked.
She thought about not answering him. But she figured the chances of him having a conversation with Danny before tomorrow morning were tiny. So she said, “Another guy who might’ve raped and murdered my daughter.”
The counterman stared at her, clearly trying to figure how nuts she was, as she grabbed her suitcase and headed out the door. Then he called out, “You forgot your chips.”
“Keep ’em.”
Ash Street turned out to be pretty long, and 89 Ash was almost a mile away. So it took twenty minutes or so before Susan got there, rolling her suitcase.
Danny’s front yard was dark, and she hid behind some bushes at
the foot of the driveway. She wasn’t totally sure why she’d come here but felt it was important somehow.
Danny’s new home in Tamarack was nicer than the house in Luzerne, and she couldn’t help feeling a pang of envy. Like most of the other houses on this street, it was a ’50s-style ranch, not that big but with a good-sized yard. There was a tetherball pole out front and a basketball hoop in the driveway low enough for a ten-year-old boy and a six-year-old girl.
Susan looked up at the hoop, remembering again that spring afternoon when Amy, in her pink dress, played basketball with Danny. It was a tiny moment in time that had somehow lodged in her memory all these years like a fish bone.
Susan on the front steps, content, watching her husband and daughter play together.
“Daddy, I wanna dunk! Lift me up!”
Danny lifts her high in the air above him, and Amy dunks the ball.
She shouts, “Monster jam!” Giggling.
Danny says, “Hurray for Amy!” Lifting her up even higher.
Amy calls out, “Daddy, let me down!”
Susan watches from the steps as Danny lets her down—
No, wait a minute.
There was something else stuck deep inside this memory, tucked way down, that she’d never quite been able to grab hold of. Maybe she hadn’t allowed herself to.
But now she did.
Danny doesn’t let Amy down. Not right away.
The memory poured into her.
Susan on the steps, watching.
Danny says, “How high can you go?” Lifting Amy still higher.
Amy yells, “Let me down!”
Danny looks up at Amy … looks …
Susan stands there, mouth open, thinking: Is he looking up her dress?!
Now, standing outside Danny’s house, Susan gasped for breath. She felt like she was choking. How could she ever have forgotten that?
She must have made herself forget. She pulled at her hair, remembering.
Amy yells, “Daddy, stop!” Danny finally lets her back down to the ground.
Susan blinks, upset.
Danny sees her standing there. “Hi honey,” he says.
She’s so confused. She decides she must have imagined the whole thing. She calls them in to dinner. They have a nice meal—