Guilt By Degrees

92

“They’ll probably pronounce him in the next half hour or so,” Bailey said.

I clamped my jaws shut to keep from screaming in frustration. Chase Erling had been rushed into surgery, but it was a doomed effort-the kind they make out of duty, no real hope involved. The skinhead had managed to stab him five times in the head and torso.

My office phone rang. I snatched it up angrily. “Yeah.”

It was the mail room. A package-another response to my subpoena for records-had come in. Arturo, the mail room clerk, offered to drop it off on his way out. “Great, thanks,” I said with no interest whatsoever. Lilah’s medical records were of little import now.

When Arturo dropped off the slim package, I barely glanced at it. But after a moment I absently tore open the manila envelope and read the document.

“What?” Bailey asked, seeing my expression.

“Lilah was almost five months pregnant when Zack was killed,” I said.

Dr. Aigler had been the last to see Lilah and Zack at the clinic. It’d been his pleasure to give them the happy news that she was four months pregnant. But two weeks later, Lilah had canceled her prenatal checkup. When the office had called to reschedule, she’d said she was changing doctors-she’d send them the address of his office so they could forward the records. So the office had packaged her file and set it aside, ready for mailing. Which was why, when my subpoena was served, it’d taken a little longer to find it. They’d never heard from Lilah again.

“Didn’t she get arrested right after the murder?” I asked.

Bailey shook her head. “Not for a while. I can check, but it was at least three or four months.” She frowned. “And she definitely wasn’t pregnant when she went into custody.”

“According to Audrey’s records, Lilah never went back to work after the arrest.” I stared out the window. “She might’ve been able to find a doctor who’d abort it-”

“Wouldn’t be easy, though.”

“No.”

“So what happened to that baby?”

I leaned back in my chair, and we fell silent. But in the next moment, Bailey and I simultaneously stopped and stared at each other. Like a blast of cold wind that blows away the fog, the revelation left a view that was crystal clear. Finally, the last piece of the puzzle clicked into place.

“If she’d had that baby with Zack still around-,” Bailey began.

“She’d never be free of him,” I finished.

Bailey nodded.

“She did it. Lilah killed Zack.”

My cell phone buzzed in my hand. It was a text message.

Did anyone ever tell you that one month after Romy disappeared, a parking citation was issued to a red pickup truck just twenty miles away from your home? And that a black dog was in the cab?

Or that six months after that, a man in a red pickup truck was given a speeding ticket up in Eureka? And that his “daughter” was asleep in the backseat?

You didn’t know any of that, did you? And there’s more, so much more that I could tell you…

I stared at the message with such intensity, it got blurry. I could barely breathe.

“Rachel? What’s wrong?” Bailey asked.

But my heart was pounding so hard, I couldn’t speak. I handed her the phone.

If the kidnapper hadn’t killed Romy within the first forty-eight hours, there was a chance he hadn’t killed her at all. I had hope-real hope-for the first time in decades that my sister might be alive.

The sudden adrenaline rush left me trembling. I wanted to jump on this possible lead with all fours. But I couldn’t afford to dwell on it right now. I looked down at my shaking hands and willed them to stop. Because I had a message for Lilah.

I set my phone to camera mode, held it up to the hospital bed in front of me, and clicked. And sent Lilah the photograph of Chase Erling. Who had miraculously survived.

Then I typed: Don’t you wonder what else I know?