by Matt Witten
“Thank you for taking my call, Agent Hernandez.”
“Of course.”
“I’m calling about the murder of my daughter, Amy Lentigo.”
“Yes, I have the file up on my screen. I’m sorry about your loss.”
“Agent Hernandez, I believe we may have made a terrible mistake.”
“I’m listening, ma’am.”
Susan poured her heart out, telling him everything: her husband’s lack of an alibi, his questionable behaviors, the cuts on his arms, Jansen’s recanted confession, and now, above all, the necklace. By the end, she was near tears.
Agent Hernandez said, “It sounds like you’ve been through incredible emotional turmoil, Ms. Lentigo.”
She wiped her eyes. “Yes, I have.”
“May I ask, have you and your ex been having issues lately?”
“What?!” Hadn’t this guy been listening to her? “No, that’s not what this is about,” she said, offended. “Until yesterday I hadn’t even seen him for nineteen years.”
“But it would be very understandable if you still resent him for leaving.”
Susan gritted her teeth, trying to control her fury. “What’s your email address?” She took out her scrap of paper and a pen. “I’ll send you pictures of the two necklaces. You’ll see they’re the exact same.”
“Ma’am, sending me pictures won’t prove anything.”
“But it’s enough evidence that you can get Emily’s necklace, right? You can get a search warrant or whatever!”
“Ms. Lentigo—”
Susan spoke in a rush. “And then you can do a DNA test on the necklace. I know it was a long time ago, but when Amy was killed, she did a lot of bleeding—”
“Look—”
“—and there’s a lot of little grooves on the necklace where—”
Hernandez raised his voice and spoke extra emphatically, to stop her. “It’s not uncommon for the victim’s relatives to experience doubts when the perpetrator is about to be executed. It’s a solemn matter to take somebody’s life, even when it’s completely justified—”
“I need you to reopen my daughter’s case,” Susan said, just as emphatically. “Right now—”
“Do you really want to live with confusion and uncertainty for another twenty years while this scumbag who raped and killed your daughter—”
She jumped up from the bench, unable to sit still anymore. “I’m afraid Danny’s new daughter may be at risk. I didn’t save Amy, but I won’t let this little girl Emily get hurt!”
“Ma’am, I really do understand this is a stressful time—”
“Give me your goddamn email address!”
Susan heard Hernandez sigh. “Fine. Send me the pictures, and I’ll see what I can do.”
She shook her head, exasperated. “You’re not gonna do anything, are you?”
He hesitated, and she knew she was right.
“Go fuck yourself,” she said, and slammed down the phone.
She stood there trying to figure out her next move. Then she grabbed her suitcase and headed across town to the library.
But when she got there, she was in for a shock. The library was still closed—and it was closed all day. On a Tuesday? Tamarack must be more strapped for cash than it looked.
So how would she find Agent Pappas’s phone number? She didn’t know where he lived now. She wasn’t even sure where he had lived back then. It was somewhere near Albany, which would have put him in the 518 area code.
Standing on the library steps, she called directory information again and discovered there were nine Robert Pappases in 518. Great, another twenty-five bucks on her phone bill. She took down all the numbers and began calling.
The first number belonged to a Robert Pappas who worked as a hospital nurse. The next number just kept ringing. The third one belonged, according to the annoyed widow who answered the phone, to a Robert Pappas who had died. He hadn’t been an FBI agent when alive. By the time Susan was done, she had reached four wrong Robert Pappases, two numbers that just kept ringing, two where she left a message, and one that had been disconnected.
This wasn’t working. To find the right Robert Pappas, she needed help. She needed a computer and internet access. Where can I get that in this town?
From Kyra.
But her flip phone didn’t have email capability, so she couldn’t email Kyra. And she didn’t have the girl’s phone number. She would have to go to the high school and find her somehow.
She checked her watch. The bus west was leaving Tamarack in twelve minutes. If she went to the high school, she’d miss it. She’d be stuck in this town one more day.
Well, fuck it. Even if she left tomorrow, she’d still make it to Hodge Hills in plenty of time, on Friday—
Her phone rang. She reached for it quickly, thinking it might be Kyra, but then remembered Kyra didn’t have her number either. It was her mom.
She didn’t pick up. Just thinking about Lenora made her discouraged. What if her mom was right that she was being an idiot about this whole thing?
But then she took a breath and squared her shoulders. She had to be strong. For Amy.
For Emily.
And shit, for Curt Jansen.
The Monster.
She walked to the high school, set her suitcase behind the same oak tree where she’d left it earlier, and went up the front steps. A security guard she hadn’t seen before was standing just inside the door. She was a fit, well-muscled woman in her forties.
The guard smiled. “Good morning, how can I help you?”
Susan smiled back. “I’m here to see Kyra. It’s a bit of an emergency.”
The guard gave her a sympathetic look. “What’s Kyra’s last name?”
Susan had prepared herself for this. “Kyra Mitchell. She has a shaved head and lots of tattoos?”
The guard frowned slightly. “I know who you mean, but that would be Kyra Anderson.”
“Right,” Susan said, trying to act a little embarrassed but not too embarrassed. “Mitchell was her mother’s maiden name. Anyway, I need to see her. It’s important.”
“What’s this about? Are you a relative?”
“Yes, I’m her aunt.”
“What kind of emergency is it?”
“I really shouldn’t say. It’s a personal matter.”
The guard’s frown deepened. “I’m not sure about this. Why don’t you have her mother call the school?”
Oh God. “Could you at least give Kyra a message for me? It’s …” She wanted to say, “It’s a matter of life and death,” but wasn’t sure how the guard would take that. She gave an ingratiating smile. “I promise, it’s really, really important.”
Come on, I’m a middle-aged woman, don’t tell me I look dangerous.
The guard bit her lip. Finally she said, “Okay, I guess we can do that.”
“Thank you so much!”
Susan tore off a piece of her scrap paper, wrote down her name and phone number, and handed it to the guard. She wasn’t sure if students were allowed to keep their cell phones in school, but hopefully Kyra would find a way to reach her.
Twenty minutes later, her phone rang with a number she didn’t recognize. She snatched it out of her purse and said, “Hello?”
“What’s up?” Kyra asked.
Susan launched right in. “The agent I told you about is retired and the FBI won’t give me his information. I don’t know where he lives now, but I’m guessing it’s somewhere in the Northeast, or maybe Florida.”
She paused for breath and was about to beg for help when Kyra cut in. “I can skip out of school at one forty-five. I’ll meet you at the corner of Main and Caroline.”
“I can’t tell you how much—”
“Yeah, I gotta run. If I’m one minute late for math, that dickhead gives me detention.”
Susan spent the next two hours calling all the Robert Pappases she hadn’t gotten through to and hunting for a computer she could borrow. There were three hotels on Mai
n Street including the one she’d been kicked out of last night, but none of them had computers in the lobby that the public could use, like the Wagon Wheel Motel back in Luzerne.
Then she went to Starbucks, found an empty cup to carry with her so she’d look like a customer, and asked an elderly man sitting in a far corner if she could borrow his phone. “My phone ran out of batteries,” she explained with her warmest smile.
He gave her the phone and she googled “Robert Pappas.” But there were so many Robert Pappases to wade through, and even when she tried “Robert Pappas FBI,” the internet was slow, and she wasn’t used to swiping on a phone screen and typing on that tiny keyboard. Then after ten minutes, the man had to leave Starbucks and take his phone back, so she wasn’t able to get the information she needed.
At one forty-five, when Susan saw Kyra walking toward her at Main and Caroline, she had so much anxiety built up she didn’t even say hello.
“I’m thinking if we google ‘Robert Pappas FBI,’ that’s the best idea,” Susan said. “Or we can try ‘Robert Pappas Albany,’ or—”
Kyra looked at her, eyebrows raised.
“What?” Susan said defensively.
“Random question: When’s the last time you ate?”
“Well …”
“Don’t sweat it, I’ll pay. I gave up on my twenty bucks a long time ago.”
They headed to a cheap, non-touristy, fast-food joint a few blocks down Caroline. Susan ordered a hamburger and fries and thought it was the most delicious thing she’d ever eaten. Even better than the Cheerios two nights ago. She scarfed it down in about three minutes.
Kyra was googling and doing whatever magic teenagers did when they were on their phones. Meanwhile she asked Susan, “What makes you so sure this Pappas guy will put his balls on the line for you? You’re trying to make him look like a jerk. Like he fucked up the case and put an innocent man in prison.”
Susan gulped down her last French fry and thought about Pappas. He’d always been good to her. She remembered sitting on a bench outside the courtroom one day while the trial was in recess. Danny and Lenora had gone off somewhere, and Susan was by herself, looking up at everybody passing by, and feeling so alone. None of these people knew what it felt like to lose a daughter this way. She began crying quietly, wet tears rolling down, when Agent Pappas saw her. He walked up, sat down beside her, and held her hand.
“I’m hoping he helps me anyway,” Susan said. “He was a good guy.”
“Couldn’t have been that good if he busted the wrong dude.”
Susan didn’t want to argue about this. She pointed at Kyra’s phone. “Any luck?”
Kyra looked up. “Is your guy widowed with two daughters?”
Susan’s pulse quickened. “He was married back then, but he had two daughters, yeah.”
“He lives in Vermont. There’s no cell phone listed, but I got his landline. Want me to dial it for you?”
Susan swallowed. So much was riding on this call. If she couldn’t convince Agent Pappas, she didn’t know what she’d do.
“Okay,” she said, pumping a fist to summon up courage. “Let’s do this.”
She drank some Coke to bring moisture into her dry, nervous mouth. Kyra dialed Agent Pappas’s number and handed over the phone.
Susan waited. She heard a ring, then another one, and then a voice that sounded familiar, even all these years later. She started to speak back to it until she realized it was Agent Pappas’s recorded voice.
“Hello, you’ve reached Robert Pappas,” his voice said. “I’m on a road trip to North Dakota and I’m not picking up messages, but I’ll be back next week.”
North Dakota?!
The phone beeped. Susan didn’t feel ready to leave a message—and why should she, if he wasn’t picking them up? So she hit the red button to stop the phone call.
Then she looked up at Kyra in wonderment. “He’s going to North Dakota.”
Kyra raised her eyebrows. “To the execution? But if he’s retired, why would he—”
“He always said Amy’s murder really affected him. And it was a big deal for his career; he got promoted after that.” Susan pushed her empty plate away from her and made a decision. She felt so relieved to finally have a plan. “I know what I’ll do.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ll go there, too, just like I was gonna do anyway. I’ll get Agent Pappas to convince the FBI to reopen the case. I bet he still has contacts.”
Kyra frowned. “Does it really work like that?”
Susan slammed her fist on the table harder than she meant to, making the dishes jump. “It has to. This guy is getting executed!”
Two teenage kids eating burgers a couple tables over stared at Susan. Kyra waited for them to look away, then said quietly, “I think you’re gonna need more evidence than what you got.”
Susan said sarcastically, “Well, yeah, if I had the actual necklace, I could just—”
Then she stopped. She got a light in her eyes.
“What?” Kyra asked.
“If I had the necklace,” she said slowly, “I could give it to Agent Pappas. He could test it for Amy’s DNA.”
She was breathing deeply, her mind working, trying to decide if the idea she’d just come up with was smart or insane, and if she really had the courage to do it.
I have to, she thought. I have to at least try. If I don’t do this, I’ll be haunted ’til I die.
Kyra stared at her. “Jesus, now what are you thinking? I hope you’re not gonna ask me to rip the necklace off Emily’s neck.”
Susan shook her head. “No. You should go home.”
As Kyra sat there nonplussed, Susan stood up and put on her coat. “Thanks for the meal. I really appreciate it.”
“Ms. Lentigo, what the fuck are you up to now?”
Susan wasn’t about to tell her. “Goodbye, Kyra.”
As she walked out the door, she could feel the girl’s eyes boring into her. But she ignored that and didn’t look back.
What Susan planned to do tonight was dangerous. She couldn’t risk something bad happening to Kyra.
She would do it alone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 30, PRESENT DAY
AFTER HER LATE lunch with Kyra, Susan wasn’t super hungry when five thirty came. But she figured it would be smart to load up, so she went back to the church for another AA meeting and another plate of noodles.
She had never been to AA before yesterday. Today was a “step meeting” where everybody was talking about the ninth step, “making amends.” One woman spoke for several minutes about owing amends to her parents, who were already dead.
Susan wondered if she owed amends to Amy for not knowing Danny was a murderer. If he was a murderer. She started feeling sick to her stomach, either from the noodles or all this amends talk, and left the meeting early. “Keep coming back,” a friendly elderly woman in the last row called to her as she walked out.
She took some deep breaths and firmly ordered herself to ignore all the confusion and anger, at both Danny and herself, swarming inside her. Just get that necklace, she told herself. Get it and hand it over to Agent Pappas and let the truth land wherever it does.
She headed back to the all-night diner, where the counterman gave her free coffee. The diner was so normal, and the counterman, despite his biker look and gruff manner, had turned out to be such a helpful guy that her stomach began to settle down.
But at eight o’clock she needed to leave, so she could scope out the situation at 89 Ash. She asked the counterman if he would hold onto her suitcase for a few hours.
“Why, where are you going?” he asked, one eyebrow raised.
“I’d tell you but then I’d have to kill you,” Susan said, with a lot more insouciance than she felt. Really, she was terrified. If she failed tonight, she didn’t have a Plan B.
Twenty minutes later, she was at 89 Ash. The sky was lit by a bright half-moon, so she had to be extra careful. S
he hid in the backyard this time, behind the trunk of a tall maple, so she could get a view of Emily’s bedroom. She knew it was Emily’s and not the ten-year-old son’s, because the walls were pink and there were dozens of stuffed animals.
The bedroom was empty for a long time. Susan waited in the darkness, stamping her feet quietly to keep warm, hoping the family’s large German shepherd wouldn’t hear or smell her and start barking.
Finally, Emily came bouncing into the bedroom. She was in pajamas, which made Susan nervous—had she already put her necklace away somewhere? Would Susan have to go through the whole house searching for it? But then she saw it was still swinging from Emily’s neck.
Then Danny came in and sat down next to Emily on the bed. He put his hands on her neck and delicately unclasped her necklace.
Susan groaned softly to herself, “Oh God.”
“That’s creepy, alright,” a voice behind her said, and she jumped.
It was Kyra, in black coat and black jeans. How had she managed to sneak up without Susan hearing? “What are you doing here?” Susan said.
“Same as you.” Kyra pointed at Danny. “He’s putting it in the drawer. This’ll be easy.”
Susan watched as Danny put the necklace inside a drawer of Emily’s bedside table. Then he closed the drawer.
She turned back to Kyra. “I can’t let you help me, Kyra. You’re just a kid.”
“So?”
“You have too much to lose. If you get arrested, you’ll have a criminal record.”
“I already have a record. For cutting my mom’s boyfriend when he came in my bedroom one night.”
Susan wasn’t sure what to say to that. Kyra turned away from her. They both watched as Danny stayed there in the bed with Emily. It seemed to Susan he was sitting way too close to her. He was her father, but were fathers supposed to act like this? Susan felt her head go wobbly.
But Kyra didn’t have any of the doubts Susan had. “What a fucking creep,” Kyra said. “If he doesn’t leave that bedroom in five seconds, I’m going in there.”
Susan pulled herself together. She had to be the grown-up here. “Nobody’s going anywhere, til at least midnight. If he catches us trying to steal that necklace, he’ll throw it away for sure.”