It made him sick to his stomach to think he’d ever touched that woman, or allowed her to touch him. Their entire history together had been tainted by her compulsive need for attention and the vicious acts it fueled.
The damage she had done was irreversible. Unforgivable. And he wanted nothing to do with her.
Twelve years’ worth of lies was more than enough.
Susan had moved to Ludlow from Salcedo in her junior year of high school. The shy girl who sat in the back of class. Who quietly ate French apple pie in the corner booth at the Hungry Spoon.
They didn’t become romantic until many years later, when they bumped into each other at the University of Nevada. Susan was working as a research assistant and Pope was guest lecturing.
The shy girl had turned into an equally shy but beautiful woman, and Pope felt the testosterone kick in the moment he saw her. It took him a while to convince her to go out with him, but she finally relented. It wasn’t until that first date that he noticed a slight limp in her gait.
He hadn’t mentioned it the first night, but when he finally did, several dates later, she told him she’d had an accident as a child, but didn’t elaborate.
He asked her about it again, over the next several years, but she would never go into much detail and Pope hadn’t pressed her. He saw no reason to make her relive a painful experience she so obviously wanted to forget.
But even as Anna told him of Jillian’s final moments, Pope never thought to equate little Suzie’s twisted leg with his ex-wife’s limp. Why would he?
Yet there was no denying the name printed on the witness statement in his hand.
And Susan was thirty-eight. Just the right age.
During the trial, when her lawyers tried to blame her crimes on Munchausen by proxy, an expert witness had testified that the causes of the syndrome were largely unknown. But MBP was often considered a cry for help, fueled by anxiety and depression and feelings of inadequacy.
Could Susan be as much a victim of this red-hatted son of a bitch as McBride was? Had that moment in the alley shaped her life forever? Warped her mind?
Even if it had, Pope didn’t care.
None of it brought Ben back.
“Come on, Danny. You know we have to do this.”
“We? You’re the cop. You deal with it.”
“She won’t agree to see me. She never liked me much in the first place, and after Ronnie and I testified against her…”
“Forget it, Jake. It’s not gonna happen. So you might as well turn this car around right-”
“I’ll go with you,” McBride said.
Pope swiveled his head, saw the intense look on her face.
“If she knows something. If she can help us find this freak…”
“I wouldn’t trust a thing she says.”
“We have to try,” McBride insisted. She reached a hand between the seats, squeezed his arm. “You said yourself that you think he might be after me. That he might try again. If not me, then maybe someone else. Another Kimberly.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I think I do. I saw the way you looked out that window this morning. I’ve seen the pain in your eyes. And, believe me, I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I didn’t think it was important.”
Pope said nothing. Didn’t know what to say.
She kept her fingers wrapped around his arm, and he welcomed it, but she was asking too much.
Then he thought about little Evan shouting out her name in the car. He thought about her close call on that football field, and nearly losing her to a somnambulistic trance. He thought about Evan’s little sister and what that fucker had done to her. And Jillian Carpenter.
How many more of his victims were out there?
McBride had asked him earlier if he believed in fate. Could this be fate giving him another opportunity to do what was right? To change his own destiny? To help change hers?
He’d worked so hard at shutting himself off these last couple years. Pushing his friends away. His family. As if the only way he could avoid injury was to inflict a little damage himself.
Maybe it was time to put an end to that. No matter how repulsive the thought of seeing Susan in the flesh might be.
“Even if I agree,” he said, “there’s no guarantee she’ll talk to me.”
“She will,” Jake told him.
“And how do you know that?”
“Because I remember the way she looked at you in that courtroom.” He paused. “She’s still in love with you, Danny.”
But Jake was wrong.
After they arrived at the WCF reception desk, a string of phone calls were made and word came back that Susan Pope didn’t want to see anyone, including her ex-husband.
Pope silently celebrated.
Jake insisted that the guards try again, even threatened to call a friend in the governor’s office (although Pope wasn’t quite sure that such a friend really existed), and the deputy warden herself came out to explain that short of a court order, there was nothing she could do to compel a prisoner to see them.
McBride flashed her credentials. “This is important,” she said. “Part of a federal investigation. Can you please try one more time?”
“I doubt it’ll do any good. I’m told she hasn’t been herself lately. Been showing signs of severe mental distress.”
“Tell her it’s about Jillian Carpenter.”
The deputy warden sighed. “All right. One last time. But it’s my understanding that she was fairly adamant about this.”
“Trust me,” McBride said. “She’ll change her mind.”
3 1
They were buzzed through half a dozen security gates before they reached the visiting room. The facility was decades old, smelling faintly of disinfectant and vomit.
This was Pope’s first visit to the place, and the long hallways and grated windows reminded him, oddly enough, of high school-although he doubted they had much of a senior prom.
A prison trustee in an orange jumpsuit was dumping a trash bin when they entered. She regarded them warily, exchanged a look with the guard escorting them, then quickly finished her business and left the room.
Jake stayed by the door with the guard. Pope and Anna took seats in front of a Plexiglas wall that was divided into visiting stations, each with an intercom.
They waited ten full minutes before a door beyond the glass opened and Susan was escorted inside. She was also wearing a jumpsuit-this one red-her ankles and wrists shackled.
Pope’s stomach clutched up the moment he saw her-a simple reflex, triggered by an intense, uncontrollable feeling of hate. This was the woman who had killed his boy. His Ben. That she was still walking the earth was a crime in itself.
It took everything he had to keep his cool. He kept reminding himself that he was here for McBride, and for Evan and Kimberly and their dead mother and babysitter.
He waited for Susan to make eye contact, but she was oblivious to him. She kept her gaze on the floor, her unkempt hair hiding her face as she shuffled over to a chair opposite them and sat.
When she finally looked up, Pope was surprised.
