Gina licked her cracked lips and looked up. She didn’t even like getting on a step stool to reach the highest shelf in her kitchen cupboards.
She put her stick in her left hand, reached up with her right and grabbed hold of the rusty iron rung. It was nothing more than a piece of bent rebar cemented into the wall. Who knew how long this well had been here or how long it had been abandoned and therefore not maintained in any way. Gina didn’t know if the rungs would even hold her.
She took a deep breath and pulled, got her good leg under her, and pushed herself upright. Colors burst before her eyes while black lace crept in on her vision. There were no words to describe the pain. Trying not to focus on it, she held on to the rung, hanging her full weight from her good arm as she lifted her good foot and placed it on the bottom rung of the ladder.
She had raised herself six inches off the bed of garbage. Her muscles twitched violently. Her stomach rolled with the bad food and bad water she had consumed. She had to fight hard to remain conscious.
Marissa shouted at her.
Gina looked up at the next rung. She would have to let go of the one she was holding in order to reach the next one. She would have to bring her foot up one, then spring upward to catch the next one with her hand.
She thought about what a miserable failure she had been in gym class. Marissa had been athletic enough to climb up the dreaded rope that hung from the gym ceiling. Gina could barely climb the stairs without tripping.
Holding tight she struggled to get her leg up where it needed to be. She panted a few breaths, then sucked one in, held it, and pushed herself upward, reaching for and grabbing the next rung up.
Gina hooked her arm through the rung and clung tight, her consciousness dimming again with the pain. If she got out of this alive, the first thing she would do would be to hire a personal trainer.
Of course, she would be destitute and homeless, but if she lived in her car, maybe she would be able to afford it.
Marissa’s laughter filled her head.
Gina’s own laughter startled her.
What the hell did she have to laugh about?
She had twenty-three feet left to go.
58
There were years of friendship contained in the box Mendez had pulled out of Gina Kemmer’s house. Years and years.
Vince spread the contents of the box out on a table that ran along one wall of the war room. He had removed the boxes of files pertaining to the See-No-Evil cases and put them under the table. One crime at a time.
Gina’s box contained framed photos, photo albums, and packages of photographs that had never made it out of the envelope from the drugstore that had developed them. All of Gina Kemmer’s life condensed into three-by-five and five-by-seven rectangles.
Vince went through them, separating them into groups—as to his best guess, at least. Family, school, friends, vacations.
Gina came from a nice, normal-looking family. Dad wore a crew cut. Mom wore cat-eye glasses. There were three kids: two boys and a girl—the youngest. They lived in a brown ranch-style house in Reseda, according to the loopy handwriting on the back. Reseda September 1969.
They vacationed at Big Bear and Yellowstone. There was Gina with Minnie Mouse at Disneyland. Robbie, Dougie, and Daddy at a Dodgers game in June 1972.
Funny the things that built a life. All these little moments knitted together. Another Christmas, another Easter, another Halloween.
He thought of his own family, and how many of these photos his girls had packed away in boxes. Photos without him in them. A familiar hollow ache filled the center of his chest. He made a mental note to call them on the weekend. They were always home Sunday night.
He would be in the next set of family photos. Him and Anne and the children they would have together. He thought of last night, sitting with his arms wrapped around Anne and Haley both.
He thought of Zander Zahn, who probably had no photos from his childhood—nor would he want any reminders of that painful, horrible time. He wouldn’t want even the memories—which was why he kept them locked away in his strange compartmentalized brain.
He surrounded himself with things instead of memories. Tangible things he could touch and hold. Things that would never leave him. How telling that room of human prosthetics—no whole person in his life, just parts and pieces made of plastic. They couldn’t hurt him.
Vince took a deep breath, sighed, and rubbed his hands over his face, turning his attention back to Gina Kemmer’s photographs.
He found the first one of Marissa dated 1971. Even as a young teenager she had been striking with her shining dark eyes and her dark hair falling around her shoulders in waves. She was dressed like a hippy in bell- bottom pants with a peace sign hanging around her neck and a leather headband across her forehead. Gina was in a similar getup. The back of the photo read—in schoolgirl handwriting—Missy and Me, Sept. 1971.
They had grown up together. Best friends. Like sisters. School. Boyfriends. Holidays. Trips.
So why the big lie? Why say they only met here in Oak Knoll in 1982? Who would have cared where they had come from? Who would have cared how long they had known each other?
And why had Melissa Fabriano changed her name? Had she just wanted to reinvent herself? Had she been running from someone in LA? Maybe her family hadn’t been as idyllic as the middle-class Kemmers of Reseda.
Maybe Haley’s father had been abusive. Maybe there was no blackmail scheme. Maybe the abusive father of her child had finally found her and put an end to her perfect secret life in perfect Oak Knoll.
Then why wouldn’t Gina have given up his name? She would have been in danger from him too. Why wouldn’t she just give him up?
The door opened and Mendez came into the room with a bag from Carnegie West Deli.
“If there’s a hot pastrami on rye in that bag, I’ll kiss you full on the mouth.”
“No tongue,” Mendez said. “I’m not that kind of girl.”
He set the bag on another table and started dragging sandwiches out of it.
“Finding anything?” he asked, nodding at the photographs.
“More questions than answers, so far. Gina and Marissa go way back. Gina and Melissa, I should say. They go back to seventh or eighth grade.”
“So why pretend they didn’t?”
“That’s my question. If Marissa was running from someone in Los Angeles, came up here and changed her
