“I called it a report, they saw it as some childless, jealous nurse’s pettiness. Like I said, different time. Nurses get a leetle more respect now. Just a leetle. And to be fair, Camille, I didn’t push it. I was just off a divorce, I needed to keep my job, and bottom line was, I wanted someone to tell me I was wrong. You need to believe you’re wrong. When Marian died, I drank for three days. She was buried before I hinted around again, asked the head of pediatrics if he’d seen my note. I was told to take the week off. I was one of those hysterical women.”
My eyes were suddenly stinging and wet, and she took my hand.
“I’m sorry, Camille.”
“God, I’m so angry.” Tears spilled down my cheeks and I rubbed them away with the back of my hand until Beverly gave me a tissue pack. “That it ever happened. That it took this long for me to figure it out.”
“Well, sweetheart, she’s your mother. I can’t imagine what it must be like for you to come to grips with it. At least it looks like justice will be served now. How long has the detective been on the case?”
“Detective?”
“Willis, right? Good-looking kid, sharp. He Xeroxed every single page in Marian’s files, quizzed me until my fillings hurt. Didn’t tell me there was another little girl involved. He told me you were okay, though. I think he has a crush on you—he got all squirmy and bashful when he mentioned you.”
I stopped crying, wadded up the tissues, and tossed them in the trash next to the reading girl. She glanced into the basket curiously, as if the mail had just come in. I said my thanks to Beverly and made my way out, feeling wild and in need of blue sky.
Beverly caught up to me at the elevator, took both my hands in hers. “Get your sister out of that home, Camille. She’s not safe.”
Between Woodberry and Wind Gap was a biker bar off exit 5, a place that sold six-packs to go with no call for ID. I’d gone there a lot in high school. Next to the dartboard was a pay phone. I grabbed a handful of quarters and phoned Curry. Eileen picked up, as usual, that voice soft and steady as a hill. I started sobbing before I got more than my name out.
“Camille, sweetheart, what is it? Are you okay? Of course you’re not okay. Oh, I’m so sorry. I told Frank to get you out of there after your last call. What is it?”
I kept sobbing, couldn’t even think what to say. A dart hit the board with a solid thunk.
“You aren’t…hurting yourself again? Camille? Sweetheart, you’re scaring me.”
“My mother…” I said, before collapsing again. I was heaving with sobs, purging from deep in my belly, nearly bent over.
“Your mother? Is she all right?”
“Noooo.” A long wail like a child. A hand over the phone and Eileen’s urgent murmur of Frank’s name, the words something’s happened…horrible, a silence of two seconds and the crash of glass. Curry got up from the table too quickly, his tumbler of whiskey wobbling to the floor. Just a guess.
“Camille, talk to me, what’s wrong.” Curry’s voice was gruff and startling like hands on both my arms giving me a shake.
“I know who did it, Curry,” I hissed. “I know it.”
“Well, that’s no reason to cry, Cubby. The police made an arrest?”
“Not yet. I know who did it.” Thunk on the dartboard.
“Who? Camille, talk to me.”
I pressed the phone to my mouth and whispered, “My mother.”
“Who? Camille, you have to speak up. Are you at a bar?”
“My mother did it,” I yelped into the phone, the words coming out like a splatter.
Silence for too long. “Camille, you are under a lot of stress, and I was very wrong to send you down there so soon after…Now, I want you to go to the nearest airport and fly back here. Don’t get your clothes, just leave your car and come home here. We’ll deal with all that stuff later. Charge the ticket, I’ll pay you back when you get home. But you need to come home now.”
Home home home, like he was trying to hypnotize me.
“I’ll never have a home,” I whimpered, began sobbing again. “I have to go take care of this, Curry.” I hung up as he was ordering me not to.
Richard I tracked down at Gritty’s having a late supper. He was looking at clippings from a Philadelphia paper about Natalie’s scissors attack. He nodded grudgingly at me as I sat down opposite him, looked down at his greasy cheese grits, then back up to study my swollen face.
“You okay?”
“I think my mother killed Marian, and I think she killed Ann and Natalie. And I know you think that, too. I just got back from Woodberry, you fuck.”
The sorrow had turned to outrage somewhere between exits 5 and 2. “I can’t believe that all the while you were making time with me, you were just trying to get information about my mother. What kind of sick fuck are you?” I was shaking, the words stuttering out of my mouth.
Richard took a ten out of his wallet, tucked it under the plate, walked to my side of the table, and took my arm. “Come with me outside, Camille. This isn’t the place.” He walked me through the doors, to the passenger side of the car, his arm still on mine, and put me inside.
He drove us in silence up the bluff, his hand shooting up whenever I tried to say something. I finally turned away from him, aimed my body at the window, and watched the woods flash by in a blue-green rush.
We parked in the same spot where we’d overlooked the river weeks before. It roiled down below us in the dark, the current catching the moonlight in patches. Like watching a beetle hustle through fall leaves.
“Now my turn for the cliché,” Richard said, his profile to me. “Yes, I was first interested in you because I was interested in your mother. But I genuinely fell for you. As much as you can fall for a person as closed off as you are. Of course, I understand why. At first I thought I’d formally question you, but I didn’t know how close you and Adora were, I didn’t want you to tip her off. And I wasn’t sure, Camille. I wanted time to study her a bit more. It was only a hunch. Purely a hunch. Gossip here and there, about you, about Marian, about Amma and your mother. But it’s true that women don’t fit the profile for this kind of thing. Not serial child murder. Then I started to look at it differently.”
“How?” My voice dull as scrap metal.
“It was that kid, James Capisi. I kept coming back to him, that fairy-tale wicked witch of a woman.” Echoes of Beverly, Brothers Grimm. “I still don’t think he actually saw your mother, but I think he remembered something, a feeling or subconscious fear that turned into that person. I started thinking, what kind of woman would kill little girls and steal their teeth? A woman who wanted ultimate control. A woman whose nurturing instinct had gone awry. Both Ann and Natalie had been…tended to before they were killed. Both sets of parents noted uncharacteristic details. Natalie’s fingernails were painted a bright pink. Ann’s legs had been shaved. They both had lipstick applied at some point.”
“What about the teeth?”
“Isn’t a smile a girl’s best weapon?” Richard said. Finally turning to me. “And in the case of the
two girls, literally a weapon. Your story about the biting really focused things for me. The killer was a woman who resented strength in females, who saw it as vulgar. She tried to mother the little girls, to dominate them, to turn them into her own vision. When they rejected that, struggled against that, the killer flew into an outrage. The girls had to die. Strangling is the very definition of dominance. Slow-motion murder. I closed my eyes one day in my office after writing down the profile, and I saw your mother’s face. The sudden violence, her closeness with the dead girls—she has no alibi for either night. Beverly Van Lumm’s hunch about Marian adds to it. Although we’ll still have to disinter Marian to see if we can get more solid evidence. Traces of poisoning or something.”
“Leave her be.”
“I can’t, Camille. You know it’s the right thing. We’ll be very respectful of her.” He put his hand on my thigh. Not my hand or my shoulder, but my thigh.
“Was John ever really a suspect?” Hand removed.
“His name was always swirling around. Vickery was kind of obsessed. Figured Natalie was kind of violent, maybe John was, too. Plus he was from out of town, and you know how suspicious out-of-towners are.”
“Do you have any real proof, Richard, about my mother? Or is this all supposition?”
“Tomorrow we’re getting the order to search the place. She’ll have kept the teeth. I’m telling you this as a courtesy. Because I respect and trust you.”
“Right,” I said. Falling lit up on my left knee. “I need to get Amma out of there.”
“Nothing will happen tonight. You need to go home and have a regular evening. Act as naturally as possible. I can get your statement tomorrow, it’ll be a good help to the case.”
“She’s been hurting me and Amma. Drugging us, poisoning us. Something.” I felt nauseous again.
Richard took his hand off my thigh.
“Camille, why didn’t you say something before? We could have had you tested. That’d be a great thing for the case. Goddammit.”
“Thanks for the concern, Richard.”
“Anyone ever tell you you’re overly sensitive, Camille?”
“Not once.”
Gayla was standing at the door, a watchful ghost at our house atop a hill. With a flicker she was gone, and as I pulled up to the carriage porch, the light in the dining room switched on.
Ham. I smelled it before I hit the door. Plus collard greens, corn. They all sat still as actors before curtain. Scene: Suppertime. My mother poised at the head of the table, Alan and Amma to each side, a place set for me at the opposite end. Gayla pulled the chair out for me, whispered back into the kitchen in her nurse’s garb. I was sick of seeing nurses. Beneath the floorboards, the washing machine rumbled on, as ever.
“Hello, darling, nice day?” my mother called too loudly. “Sit down, we’ve been holding dinner for you. Thought we’d have dinner as a family since you’ll be leaving soon.”
“I will?”
“They’re set to arrest your little friend, dear. Don’t tell me I’m better informed than the reporter.” She turned to Alan and Amma and smiled like a congenial hostess passing appetizers. She rang her little bell, and Gayla brought the ham in, gelatin-wobbly, on a silver serving tray. A pineapple slice slid stickily down its side.
“You cut, Adora,” Alan said to my mother’s raised eyebrows.
Wisps of blonde hair fluttered as she carved finger-thick slices, passed them around on our plates. I shook my head at Amma as she proffered me a serving, then sent it on to Alan.
“No ham,” my mother muttered. “Still haven’t grown out of that phase, Camille.”
“The phase of not liking ham? No, I haven’t.”
“Do you think John will be executed?” Amma asked me. “Your John on death row?” My mother had outfitted her in a white sundress with pink ribbons, braided her hair tightly on both sides. Her anger came off her like a stench.