Prison had not been kind to her. The beauty he had once known was replaced by a haunted, disheveled wreck. He was reminded of photos he’d once seen in a magazine-before and after mug shots of methamphetamine addicts. She seemed to have aged twenty years.
The hatred he felt immediately morphed into pity. Not sympathy, just pity. And it was laced with a contempt so strong he had trouble containing it.
Susan’s brain finally registered who she was looking at. She blinked a couple of times, then-to Pope’s horror- broke into a smile.
“Danny?” she said, her voice distorted by the intercom. “You came?”
Pope forced himself to reply. “Hello, Susan.”
“I thought they were lying to me. Is it really you?”
“In the flesh,” he said.
“They always lie to me, you know. My lawyers. Trying to get me to come out. But I don’t want to come out. I just want to stay in my room. I’ve got everything I need there.” Her smile widened. “Except you, of course.”
Pope was ready to offer his own contribution to the smell beneath the disinfectant, but Susan spoke in a kind of singsong, faraway voice, and he was pretty sure the deputy warden had been right. She wasn’t all there.
To prove it, she said, “Where’s Jillian? They told me Jillian was here. Was that another lie?”
“Jillian’s dead,” Pope said. “She’s been dead for twenty-eight years.”
“Yes, yes, but I asked Ben and he said I should check anyway. Just to make sure.”
Pope felt his gut tighten again. “Ben?”
“You remember Ben, don’t you? Our boy? He talks to me all the time. Mostly in my head, but he’s there. I know he is.” Another smile. “He forgave me, Danny. He forgave me for what I did.”
All right. Enough of this. Choking back a curse, Pope started to rise, but McBride quickly put a hand on his knee and he sat back down.
That was when Susan noticed her for the first time. She stared blankly at McBride, but then her expression began to change, recognition spreading across her face.
“Oh, my god,” she said. “It wasn’t a lie. Jillian?”
Pope and McBride exchanged a quick glance.
“You look so different. All grown-up. But it’s you, isn’t it? I’d recognize those eyes anywhere.” She turned to Pope. “The eyes are the mirror of the soul, you know. They really are.”
A chill ran through him. What had always been something of an innocuous saying suddenly took on new meaning. New weight.
This was all too creepy for words.
McBride, however, had the good sense to go with it. “How are you, Suzie? I’ve missed you.”
Susan seemed startled by the sound of her voice. As if it were a slap to the face. Then she surprised them both by starting to cry.
“Oh, god,” she said. “Oh, god…”
Pope and McBride exchanged another look.
“What’s wrong, Suzie?”
“All these years,” she sobbed. “All these years I’ve wanted you to come back so I could tell you how sorry I am.”
“For what?”
“It was all my fault. I yelled at you that day, but if it hadn’t been for me, if you hadn’t been trying to help me, the bogeyman never would’ve gotten you. He would’ve gone away and left us alone.”
“Bogeyman?”
“That’s what he is, you know. They always tell you he hides in the closet and under the bed, but that’s not true. He’s everywhere. Always watching.” She paused and sniffed back her tears, wiping her nose on the sleeve of her jumpsuit. Then her gaze drifted toward the ceiling. With a surreptitious gesture to a surveillance camera in a corner behind her, she looked at McBride and said, “You’d better be careful. He’s watching you right now.”
This woman was completely unrecognizable to Pope. The Susan he’d once known was buried so deep, he doubted she’d ever come out again.
And he knew that they were wasting their time here. She could babble on for hours and they’d get nothing of value from her. All he wanted to do was leave.
But then she surprised him.
“I used to watch him, too,” she said. “For a long, long time. Before I met Danny. Before Ben was born. I watched him for years and years and years. He’s left a trail, you know, and I kept very good track of him.”
McBride leaned forward. “I don’t understand. What trail? How?”
“All I had to do was look for the sign. It wasn’t easy, but I always managed to find it.”
“What sign?”
Susan lowered her voice conspiratorially. “The wheel,” she said. “The gypsy wheel.”
Pope and McBride exchanged yet another look.
“I saw it when he took you. On his neck? I’ve seen it over and over again. It’s always there, but it changes.”
“Changes?” McBride said.
Susan nodded vigorously. “Yes, yes. Eight spokes, twelve spokes, fourteen spokes. It’s all there in the book. Every single bit of it.”
“What book?”
“I tried to get them to bring it to me. But nobody would listen. They all think I’m crazy.” She paused, turning to Pope. “Do you think I’m crazy, Danny?”
Crazier than a goddamn loon. But he was intrigued now. Maybe there was something to what she was saying after all.
“Tell us about the book,” he said.
“It’s all there. I kept it for years and years and years.”
“A book about the bogeyman.”
“That’s right,” she said. “After he took Jillian, I was always afraid he’d come after me. But I was too young to do anything about it. So I stayed in my room a lot. Kept a light on at night. But when I got older, I started tracking him. Through every victim I could find. And I kept tracking him until one day I realized he wasn’t interested in me at all.”
“How did you know that?” McBride asked.
“Because of the eyes. His victims all had your eyes.”
McBride was suddenly silent and Pope could see that she was as creeped out by this as he was. And despite Susan’s obvious mental deterioration, they both knew that what she’d just said might not be crazy talk.
“What exactly is in this book?” Pope asked.
“I just told you. Everything. Everyone he hurt. It’s all there. I tracked him for years.”
“And where can I find it?”
“I tried to get them to bring it to me, but they wouldn’t listen.”
“Your lawyers? Do they have it?”
If Susan’s attorneys were successful in their bid for a new trial, they might be able to use this book as evidence of a sustained diminished capacity. Although two minutes in a room with her would pretty much prove that.
“No, no,” Susan said. “I hid it. A long, long time ago. Right before Ben was born.”
“Maybe I can bring it to you.”
“Really? You’d do that?”
“Just tell me where it is.”
“But if I told you, it wouldn’t be a secret.”
“You can trust me,” he said. “I won’t tell anyone.”
Susan considered this a moment, but her thoughts seemed to wander to another time and place, and when they returned she looked from Pope to McBride, then back to Pope again, and frowned. Suspicious.
“How do you know Jillian? I never told you about her.”
No shit, Pope thought. There were quite a few things she’d left out. But he was losing her and needed to get
