CHAPTER THREE
ALICE
August 2, 2018
Four days after the kidnapping
After they left the beach and Ruby’s body behind, Nakamura made no effort to break the silence on the short drive over to the Burke residence. She liked that about him. The way he could sit with his own thoughts without needing to fill the air with pointless words.
It was a different kind of quiet from what she’d become so familiar with back in DC.
Alice had never been particularly emotional. Her family members were middle-class New Englanders through and through, and they liked to express themselves with passive-aggressiveness rather than weeping and hysterics. Sports were the only acceptable excuse for passion.
It had prepared her, though, for the police force. To fit in, women had two options: out-guy them or slip into the role of station mom. She’d never liked picking up dirty socks or pouring coffee, so she went with the former option. She told raunchy jokes and smoked cigars when they were handed around and swore like a sailor raised in the gutter.
Tommy Hughes had been her first partner right out of training. He was a burly man, with thick biceps and tree-trunk thighs, who had won every beer-chugging contest he’d ever entered. Visually, they were quite the pair.
He’d been unhappy to be saddled with someone who had a vagina, though he couched the criticism in words like new and inexperienced. Working with him those first two weeks had been hell, filled with snide innuendo, like every time she disagreed with him she must be “on the rag,” and wouldn’t she prefer a nice desk job or a position with the sexual violence unit?
Alice had finally forced herself along on a night out with the squad. She’d matched Tommy drink for drink and then took a shot while he was slumped over the table. The next morning she’d had the type of hangover that bespoke of permanent liver damage and the respect of the entire station. Like a light had switched on.
Then Lila had been taken.
It had been one moment of distraction, a hectic day at the mall, a bored little girl. She’d found out later that the man who had killed her daughter hadn’t gone there to take Lila specifically. He’d been looking for an opportunity, and she’d provided it to him.
Two days of hell had followed until they’d found Lila, discarded by the side of the road as if she hadn’t even been worth the time to hide.
After that, there were no more nights drinking. No more high fives after cases. No more nasty insults that hid approval beneath filthy curses.
It had just gotten very, very quiet. As if they were worried she was one wrong word away from shattering and spilling the crazy everywhere. As if they were worried it would get all over them.
Hughes had requested a new partner not long after they arrested Lila’s killer. The next seven had rotated out quickly, none of them lasting longer than three months.
The most galling part of it, though, was that she had not once cried, not once broken down in front of them. They simply thought they knew how she would act, but suddenly she was a different person. Suddenly, Alice was roughing up suspects and pulling her gun when it wasn’t necessary. “One of these days she’s going to snap,” a former partner had told the chief. Alice had overheard because he’d wanted her to. “Someone’s gonna get killed, and you won’t be able to cover it up.”
As if she’d ever be so careless.
Alice pushed the thoughts away. Just like she’d pushed away the ones from the beach. Just like she pushed so many away. There was no room in her mind to deal with them. Emotions, as always, were the enemy, dangerous and deceptive. They clouded judgments, they altered reality, they directed focus from what was important.
Long ago, she’d learned the beauty of compartmentalizing all those messy feelings.
Instead, she thought about the crime scene. Not about the long days before when they’d all but lived and breathed Ruby Burke, and not about the impressions that came later. Just for now, she thought about only the crime scene. Clothes still on. Shoes still on.
No obvious signs of struggle aside from the single, violent blow to the head.
Face covered.
Nice sheets.
There was a direction this was headed. She’d read it on the chief’s face. She’d read it in Nakamura’s questions. She’d read it in the awkward distance the other officers had placed between themselves and Charlotte.
The woman was being tried and found guilty.
“You’re sure you’re okay to take lead?” Nakamura asked when they were five minutes away from the Burke house. She’d been running the case when it was a disappearance. But now it was a murder.
“Of course,” she said. Her tone was sharp, defensive, and she didn’t try to soften it. This wasn’t a discussion.
“No one would blame you . . . ,” Nakamura tried again. Unwisely.
They didn’t know the details of Lila’s case here in Florida. It hadn’t caught national attention, perhaps because Lila’s skin had been light brown instead of lily white. Or maybe it was because Alice had struggled to afford the little one-bedroom apartment they’d shared instead of owning three mansions with a vacation home to spare. Whatever the reason had been, Nakamura and the others knew only the basics of what had happened.
It was enough, though. Even when it was just a kidnapping, Deakin had pulled her aside after giving Nakamura the case, told her no one expected her to work it under the circumstances.
“No one would blame me,” she repeated.
Nakamura pounced, misreading the reason her voice had turned slow and circumspect. “You’ve only been here a few months. No one even expects you to take lead on a murder investigation, let alone on one like this.”
“One that hits so close to home, you mean,” Alice said.
“Yeah.” Nakamura nodded.
“No one would think I was too weak or too emotional to handle important cases if I sat this one out, right?” Alice said. “And since this will be the only little girl to ever be murdered in this city, I don’t have to worry about being passed over for cases in the future.”
He glanced at her, but his eyes were hidden behind his sunglasses. By now, he’d caught on.
“No one would leave tissue boxes in my locker because cops are well known for respecting delicate sensibilities, right?” Alice continued. “No one would watch to see if I was going to the shrink more than was necessary. No one would dare start telling stories about my shaking hands when I drew on a suspect. Because it’s normal to need to sit out some cases, right? Because it’s not just me being emotional.”
The car was silent. Whether he suspected she was drawing on personal experience or not didn’t matter. He could picture it; he’d been a cop for more than twenty years.
“Yeah, no one would blame me,” Alice said, turning her attention back to the road. “Just shut up and drive.”
They didn’t speak again until Nakamura pulled to a stop a few doors down from the Burke house. “This place, man,” he said when he threw the car into park.
They’d been there off and on since Ruby had been reported missing, but it seemed that neither of them would get over the sheer absurdity of its grandeur.
The mansion was a story higher than its neighbors, a visual representation of the pissing contest it was engaging in. The style, with its thick, prominent columns and wraparound porch, was more suited for Alabama plantations than St. Petersburg’s quirky architecture, and something told Alice that was the whole point.
She’d been on the job only a week before someone mentioned Sterling Burke. A particularly gossip-addicted desk clerk hadn’t even paused for a breath after his introduction before he was spilling the details on the judge, who had a reputation for going easy on frat boys while sentencing anyone to the max with a skin color darker than pure white snow.
“Southern boy, through and through, our dear Sterling,” the clerk had drawled, with just the right hint of affection that Alice was learning meant pure disdain in these parts.
It was true what they said. But it was also true that Sterling was a born charmer, a politician without the politics, a charismatic preacher type proselytizing about better times gone by, but without the manic religious slant.
The first time she’d met him had been at a fund-raiser for the police department, two months ago. Her attendance had been mandatory, and she’d spent the majority of the night holed up in a dark corner behind a plant, eating bacon-wrapped shrimp she’d bribed a waiter to bring her before anyone else.
But on her way back from the bathroom, the chief had grabbed her elbow, pulling her into a little gathering of people. One that happened to include Judge Sterling Burke.
From what she’d heard and knew about the man, she’d expected something else: a sleazy veneer, perhaps, to hide his rotting, putrid soul.
Instead, he was pleasant. He was handsome, distinguished.
“Welcome to St. Pete,” he’d said as he shook her hand. His had been warm and dry, and he’d pumped her palm a few exuberant times to show just how welcome she should feel. She was good at spotting snakes, even ones who wore the careful camouflage of charm, but he didn’t ring any alarms for her. “We’re a little nutty here, but once you’re in, you’re in. It’s like family that way.”
Alice had murmured something that may have been taken as agreement as she slipped her hand back in her pocket.
“How are you finding it?” he pressed.
Alice shifted but kept her face neutral. “Hot.”
Sterling laughed as if it was actually a funny joke and nudged her ribs with his elbow.
He was kind. Friendly.
He’d treated everyone in their little circle the same, with that warm, attentive gaze. Even when the governor stopped by to hover at his elbow, a pup waiting to be acknowledged, Sterling had finished listening to the story a uniformed officer was telling him.
The judge was likable without trying too hard, engaging without coming off like he was climbing ladders. It threw Alice off-balance.
That was also the night she’d met the matriarch. Hollis Burke.
Where Sterling was warm, Hollis was ice. Where he schmoozed, she intimidated. Where he joked, laughed, teased to ease any tension, she reveled in the anxiety, the nervousness, the fear being in her presence caused those around her.
When the governor’s wife, a tiny bird of a woman who stuttered through her introductions, moved into Hollis’s target range, she was spared no mercy.
“Julia, hello, dear,” Hollis said, kissing the air above the woman’s hollow cheeks. “Should you be out tonight?”
“What . . . what do you mean?” Julia tugged at the hem of her ill-fitting blazer.
“Surely, you’re ill, dear?” Hollis’s voice dropped to an exaggerated whisper. She wanted everyone to hear.
“No,” Julia said, her eyes flicking to each nearby face of each person who was trying to ignore the put-down.
The exchange had been sour and petty and had reminded Alice of countless others she’d overheard in DC. She’d felt pity for the delicate woman, but mostly she’d felt like she’d actually found her feet for once. This, she understood. Human nature at its finest.
“Oh.” Hollis’s red-slicked lips formed a perfect O, and she let her gaze slide down over Julia’s beige suit that even Alice knew wasn’t appropriate for the ball. “My mistake.”
They were a pair, Sterling and Hollis. People flocked to them, to bow and scrape and kiss at their knuckles in order to receive just a hint of acknowledgment. That’s all it seemed to take.
That had been apparent two days ago when the governor and his wife had planted themselves in the chief’s office, demanding to know why the station’s newest cop had been placed on such an important investigation as Ruby Burke’s disappearance. It was after they left that Deakin had called her in to ask if she was sure she was all right handling the case. No one would blame her if she needed to step aside.
Never underestimate the power of Judge Sterling Burke. And his wife.
She wondered how many times she would learn that lesson.
CHAPTER FOUR
TRUDY
July 1, 2018
Twenty-eight days before the kidnapping
The absolute quiet in the mansion did little to reassure Trudy Burke that her family was asleep. So she held herself still, curled on the cold, harsh hardwood floor of her bedroom, her back against the wall. Moonlight filtered in through her white lace curtains, and she watched the patterns it created dance along her furniture as she controlled her breathing, syncing it with the steadiness of her heartbeats.
It had been a long time since she’d been scared of the dark, a long time since she’d realized the monsters that lived there were just shadows. The real ones stayed around long after the sun came up.
But there was always the nervousness that lingered in her fingertips, which made her realize that her room wasn’t actually her space. It could be—and frequently was—invaded with the ease of a slowly turning doorknob. So she waited. She waited while the house settled in for the night, and waited while Charlotte snuck out to wherever she was running off to, and waited until her mother, Mellie, collapsed into an alcohol-induced sleep. The thin walls had never been able to keep secrets.
And then she waited longer.
Only when she was as sure as she could be that she wouldn’t be disturbed did she finally move. Shifting to her knees, she shuffled over to her closet, avoiding the squeaky places in the wood that could betray her.
She dug past clothes that had fallen off their hangers and mismatched shoes that no longer had their mates until her thumb ran along the groove she knew so well.
Beneath the loose board lived a safe. It was a cheap thing she’d bought for twenty bucks at Walmart, but it was all she really needed.
Once she pulled it free from the small, dark space under the floor, she sat back on her heels and twisted the knob in circles until the little door popped up. Nestled against the black velour inside was a slim, silver laptop.
No one in the family knew about its existence, and Trudy prayed it would stay that way. If any of the girls wanted access to a computer, they had to use the one Hollis left in the living room, or venture into the judge’s office. Only Mellie ever did that.
So Trudy had saved up for hers.
Their bank accounts were monitored for any extra withdrawn cash, but all the Burke ladies had found ways to squirrel away money. It had taken Trudy two years to hide enough to get the laptop.
She shuffled over to the darkest corner of her room, her back once again pressed along the wall, with the laptop balanced on her bare legs. While she powered up the machine, Trudy listened for any new signs of movement. The house was quiet.
By muscle memory, she opened various sites and windows before clicking over to her blog. The very first day she’d bought her computer, she’d created the site. It was her baby, the only thing that kept her sane sometimes.
There were a few messages waiting for her; there always were. Sometimes she’d go days between feeling comfortable enough to bring the laptop out of the safe, so she wasn’t able to check as often as she’d like.
She scrolled over the past few weeks’ posts. They were standard—information on safe houses for victims of domestic violence, hotline numbers, answers to calls for help because of abuse-related suicidal thoughts. Those were the hardest ones. Because many of the messages she received were anonymous, she never knew what happened to the lost souls, the ones who knew the monsters too well.
The uncertainty was worth it, though, if she could help even one girl, if she could make a difference to someone who was even now curled beneath a comforter with wide eyes watching a slowly turning doorknob.
She’d answer the messages that had come in later, before she stowed the laptop for the night. But for now, she clicked over to the in-box she had set up to connect to the blog.
The address for it was just a string of letters and numbers that meant nothing and couldn’t be tied back to her. Someh
ow the email had ended up on a Pottery Barn subscription list, but other than spam from them, the only mail she’d received at the address was forwarded messages from her blog.
Except for recently.
Recently another address had been popping up with some frequency. The name the person used was nbeckett, but Trudy assumed it was as fake as her own. She’d googled it anyway and had come up with too many results to sift through.
The first email from N, as she had started thinking of the person, had come in through her blog. It had just been a list of resources in St. Pete for victims of sexual abuse. Trudy had known about most of them and kept a similar list linked on her site for anyone seeking help. But a few had been new to her, so she published it.
A few days later, another message came in with more information that looked legitimate. It took two weeks after that for N to send her an email address along with a note:
I have something I want to share with you, but don’t want it to be public. Message me? – N
Trudy wasn’t an idiot. It was Internet Safety 101 not to give out information just because some stranger behind a fake name asked for it. But she was somewhat secure behind her own anonymity. And N had proven to be a reliable source.
So she’d emailed.
After that, she began to realize N was leading up to something. From her blog, the person seemed to figure out that she had personal experience with the subject matter. Have you checked out any of these places? N had asked one time. It’s hard to save enough money to get away, isn’t it? A throwaway line at the bottom of another list. Probing, gently, to try to figure out Trudy’s situation.
Trudy never answered the personal questions. But she also didn’t try to hide as much as she normally would have.
There was an email from N now, bold and unread at the top of her in-box. The name was almost a comfort, after more than a month of correspondence.
She clicked into the message and squinted at the string of numbers. It was an address in Tampa, one she didn’t recognize.
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