Only Ever You (20 page)

“How do you feel?” the man on her left asked. “Any pain?”

Yes. Her chest was pounding again and Bea could feel sweat pouring down her neck and back. She shook her head, hoping her distress didn’t show.

“She looks pale,” the second man said. “She should be seen by the paramedics.”

“Let them help you,” Jill Lassiter said and offered a hand to help Bea up from the chair. Bea put her hand in the other woman’s, trying not to look at her.

“Thank you so much for coming out to search,” the woman said, squeezing Bea’s hand, giving her a sad smile. “We really appreciate it.”

Bea mumbled something, but it didn’t matter, the men were hustling her away and down the driveway, where other volunteers milled around alongside police officers. People stared with frank curiosity and Bea saw a cameraman, relegated with the rest of the media to the center of the cul-de-sac, turn in her direction.

“I’m really okay,” she insisted. “Please stop dragging me.”

The men were young, both of them in their twenties or early thirties, and the suggestion that they’d do anything of the kind to an older woman obviously offended their sense of themselves because they stopped at once. One of them, a guy prematurely balding, thrust his beaky face into hers and tried to follow the movement of her eyes. “You’re probably dehydrated,” he said. “You need to get all of that water in you, and then you’ll feel better.” He moved his hand to the bottle and she quickly raised it and took another gulp, anxious to prove that she didn’t need any further assistance.

She caught a glimpse of the roly-poly family heading at a slow pace out of the cul-de-sac and seized the opportunity. “Thanks, but there are my friends.” She pointed at the family disappearing down the road, raising her hand as if one of them had signaled to her. “I’ve got to go.”

She walked away without looking back, moving as quickly as she could, which wasn’t very fast at all, not with her chest hurting this way. She drank more of the water, some of it splashing onto her chin, and it actually helped, but what she really needed were those tablets, those damn nitroglycerin tablets that she’d forgotten to slip in her pocket. She wondered if the men who’d helped her were watching and wished that the roly-poly family would slow their waddle. They were like a family of overgrown ducks, bottom heavy each one of them, and surely she could catch up.

Mama duck suddenly paused, bending over to tie her shoe, and Bea called, “Hello there,” not having to work hard to sound friendly. The mother looked around in the midst of checking her other stretched-out tennis shoe, and almost lost her balance.

“Careful!” This time it was Bea catching someone. “You don’t want to fall.” The woman’s arm was plump and pliable. It reminded Bea of a loaf of soft-baked bread. She felt a genuine surge of affection for these people and remembered an old toy. “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down,” she murmured, too low for the family to hear.

At last, in the privacy of her car, she found the little vial of pills and swallowed one. The young police officer barely glanced at the car as she drove past, and once she was out of sight she floored the accelerator. It had all taken too long; Avery would be waking up by now.

They were doing roadwork again just before the turnoff. She sat behind a row of cars, waiting five full minutes before the laconic-looking young woman holding the pole with the
STOP
sign turned it to
SLOW
. Bea ignored that sign, speeding into the left turn, the car screeching as she pulled onto Fernwood Road. She sped up the hill, banging over potholes, screaming past an old man walking along the side of the road. She slowed down, then, but it was too late. He’d taken notice. She could see him in the rearview mirror, an elderly man bundled up against the cold, holding tight to a walking stick as he stared after her car.

Maybe he saw her turn off at 115, but then she disappeared beneath the trees, winding up the narrow, pebbled road as fast as she could. Finally she reached the house. The garage door was partially open again. It had a tendency to stick and she’d forgotten to make sure it closed all the way. She pulled in now before it fully rose. She could hear banging and wailing as soon as she opened the door to the house. Cosmo came running down the stairs, barking furiously in time with the noise, a furry percussion instrument jumping against her leg. Bea limped down the hall as fast as she could, reaching out to one of the basement’s steel support columns for balance. The child’s cries got louder the closer Bea got to the door. She’d thought it was soundproof; had anyone heard it outside?

“Down!” She shooed Cosmo away, fumbling to slide back the bolt on the door. Avery scrambled, bawling, wild-eyed and mouth open, to the far corner of the bed, and pressed her back against the wall. “All right,” Bea called above the noise, “It’s all right, I’m here.”

She reached for the child, trying to soothe her, but the little girl only wailed louder, kicking out, her small foot making contact with Bea’s chin. She cried out in pain, stumbling back, clutching her face for a moment while she waited for her vision to clear. Her ears rang from the noise. Between the child and the dog the neighbors were probably calling the police.

“That’s enough—there’s no reason for crying like that.” Bea grabbed the child’s legs and yanked her flat on the bed. “Stop it!” she shouted, straddling Avery. “Stop it right now!” She used the weight of her body to hold down the child’s legs and captured Avery’s hands in one of hers, holding them above the girl’s head. The child was hysterical; she had to silence her. Bea held her free hand over the child’s mouth. She could feel the little girl’s teeth against her palm for a split second before Avery bit her. “Aaugh!” Bea snatched her hand away, shaking it, as the child’s cries burst forth again.

Panic mounting, Bea snatched a pillow from the bed and pressed it against the child’s face. “You have to stop,” she begged, pushing more firmly as Avery tried to dislodge her by jerking her head right and left. “Be quiet,” she begged, pressing the pillow more firmly against the child’s face. “Just be quiet.”

chapter twenty-two

DAY EIGHT

No one would tell Jill and David what had been found in the volunteer search, but afterward, the atmosphere changed. The FBI field agents who’d joined the investigation and helped coordinate the search had left. The recording set up in the dining room was virtually abandoned. By the morning of the eighth day a lone officer sat at the table drinking a cup of coffee and reading the paper. Finley muttered into her cell phone in the living room and the young, acne-scarred officer watching the front door wouldn’t meet Jill’s eyes. Ottilo stood talking to a crime-scene tech in the kitchen, but stopped, abruptly, when she and David walked in the room.

“What’s going on?” David asked as the tech brushed past them. Jill felt Ottilo’s scrutiny as she poured mugs of coffee for both her and David, but when he spoke it was in that perfectly reasonable voice that she’d learned to distrust. “We’d like you both to come down to headquarters today and take a polygraph.” He waved his hand in a casual gesture as if he were swatting away a fly. “It’s standard in cases like this, just a formality.”

David said, “We need to talk to our lawyer first; I want him present.”

“Lawyer?” Ottilo repeated the word as if it were profanity, eyebrows rising along with his voice, but Jill didn’t believe his surprise. “I’m not sure why you want an attorney with you, Mr. Lassiter, but I have to tell you that any delays could impede our investigation.”

“We’re not delaying anything,” David said. He pulled out his cell phone to call Andrew.

Ottilo glanced at his watch. “Suit yourselves, but tell him to meet you there. We’ve got this scheduled for eleven.”

“The police station is only ten minutes away,” Jill said.

“Not the Fox Chapel station,” the detective clarified. “Allegheny County Police headquarters. We’ve got a polygraph expert there.”

He insisted on giving them a ride and David finally acquiesced. It was early morning, gray and drizzling. Surprisingly, only two news trucks sat parked outside the house and no reporters could be seen. “Probably afraid of melting their makeup,” David muttered, and Jill managed a small laugh. Anything to push away the feeling that what was already a nightmare situation had suddenly gotten much, much worse.

Initial interviews had been done at the Fox Chapel police station, the left side of an attractive redbrick building with a neatly manicured lawn and lovely trees out front. First Jill, then David had given official statements while sitting at an oval table with the detectives and another officer present. Andrew had been there, too, but more as a supportive presence. Even when they’d been asked to sign their statements it had seemed more of a formality than anything else. This change in location signaled that this was not a formality, no matter what Ottilo claimed.

The Allegheny County police had their headquarters in Point Breeze, in an old industrial park not far from Jill’s studio. She’d passed by the area plenty of times without paying any attention. The limited media presence back at home had lulled her into complacency. She wasn’t prepared for the crowd of reporters rushing toward the unmarked car as they pulled into the lot next to the building. The crowd jockeyed for their attention, one man even banging on the trunk of the car. Jill jumped at the noise, flinching from the crowd. “How did they know we’d be here?” she whispered to David.

He looked grim. “It’s a tactic—the police probably alerted them.”

Suddenly Andrew was there, striding down the sidewalk like he’d come straight from court, his arms outstretched to block them from reporters, long dress coat open over a double-breasted suit, polished wing tips hammering the pavement, cold wind ruffling his pale hair. “The Lassiters will not be answering any questions!” he said loudly. Jill had never been so happy to see him.

As if they’d only just noticed the media’s presence, police officers emerged from the building and began shouting at the reporters. “Back up! Get back!” Andrew and Detective Ottilo ushered Jill and David into the station ahead of them, stopping only once they were inside with the doors firmly closed behind them. Andrew clapped David on the shoulder and took Jill’s hands in his. “Okay? Hanging in there? This is terrible, but you’re going to get through it.”

Jill tried to smile, but couldn’t. The lobby reminded her of the DMV or another government agency, except for the framed photos of uniformed police officers and a large Allegheny County Police Department seal. Beyond the lobby it was like any other boring office complex, with cubicles and metal desks, and industrial carpeting underfoot. Ottilo led them down a hallway and Jill caught a glimpse of Sophia’s picture mounted on a whiteboard alongside shots of the Lassiter home. It was disconcerting to see an enlarged shot of Sophia’s room; she recognized the pink bedding. Ottilo led them past that room, ushering them through another door.

They were in a large room with a window against the back wall and rows of filing cabinets lining another. At a square table in the center, a small man with tightly cropped red hair stood with his back to them setting up a computer monitor with wires connecting it to a metal box, which was attached in turn to something that looked like a blood pressure cuff.

“This is Detective Boyle, our polygraph expert,” Ottilo said, and the man turned and blinked at them, nodding his head in greeting with a tight smile. He had a slightly upturned nose and freckles and wore a green tie.

“It will take approximately forty-five minutes to administer the test,” Boyle said in a surprisingly deep voice. “I’ll take you one at a time. You’ll be asked a series of questions and this—” He tapped the computer monitor. “—will record the truth of your answers. Your responses will register via this equipment.…”

He went on and on, pointing to each item on the table with small, freckled hands. Watching him made Jill think “leprechaun,” and she was afraid that she’d say it out loud, as if she had selective Tourette’s, and she could feel hysterical laughter bubbling up inside her. God, what was wrong with her? There was nothing funny about this. She pressed her lips together and looked away.

Andrew interrupted the technical spiel. “My clients are cooperating only because they have nothing to hide, but they’d prefer not to waste any more time than is already being wasted here.”

The little detective looked offended, but he only said, “Who wants to go first?”

Jill glanced at David before Andrew answered for them, “I’d say David.”

“Okay, Mrs. Lassiter. If you’ll come with me, we’ll have you wait in another room.”

Andrew caught her arm before she left the room and whispered, “Don’t say anything to anybody. Do you understand? Don’t get fooled into having any kind of conversation.”

Jill followed Ottilo down the hall to a windowless room, empty except for a rectangular table and three straight-backed chairs. “It shouldn’t be too long,” the detective said as he left, closing the door behind him.

She took a seat at the table and imagined what David was doing in the other room. A large, round clock ticked away high on the wall and she stared at it, trying to calculate how long Sophia had been gone. She pulled out her cell phone to call Tania, but there was no coverage in the room and she slipped it back in her purse. Her fingers tapped against the scarred tabletop. She was reminded of all the different waiting rooms where she’d sat anxiously awaiting news—the bland peach walls of the waiting room at the fertility clinic, the cold blue chill of the emergency room, and the nautical-themed reception area at the adoption lawyer’s office. But there had been other people in those rooms, magazines to read or some piece of wall art to stare at—blurry beachscapes were popular—while listening to soft music playing in the background.

The police made no attempt to soften anything. Harsh fluorescent lighting, nothing to distract her from the endless ticking of the clock. There was a camera mounted in one of the corners. She stared at it, suddenly conscious of her appearance, the clothes that she’d picked without really seeing them—jeans and a sweater and boots that were scuffed. She pulled her feet under her and smoothed a hand over her hair.