“That’s why Morgan didn’t invite you to her birthday party. I told her, are you sure you don’t want to invite Kelsie Bloy, and she said, ‘Mom, Kelsie isn’t friendly.’ And I said, ‘Well, you’re turning twelve years old, I guess you’re old enough to make your own decisions now.’ But I stuck up for you.”
Silence.
“You’re not going to wash those tear stains off your face?”
There was the sound of water running and a paper towel shooting out of its dispenser.
“That’s better. How’s your parents?”
“Fine.”
“Your dad still laid off?”
“Yeah.”
“Huh. Well, we’d better get back out there with the rest of ‘em. You excited to see some art today?”
“Well…” Abby detected the littlest bit of an uplift in the voice of Kelsie Bloy. The smallest twinge of happiness.
“Me neither!” A cackle from Nosy McBitch, followed by the swoosh of the door closing after them.
Abby came out of the stall and washed her hands. She tipped the attendant.
She was free.
Chapter 49
From the moment she bought her bus ticket and started heading north, the tall woman with pale blue eyes was never Abby Greer again. She wasn’t Barbie either. Deciding a person could call herself anything and explain it however she wanted to explain it, she became Beth. According to her birth certificate, Elizabeth was Barabara’s middle name, so it was reasonable enough that she’d go by Beth.
Beth deposited her money in a bank in Dubuque, Iowa, and rented a little apartment there on a month-to month lease as she figured out what she wanted to do with her life. She stayed there for four months, not working, not spending much. She bought a Honda Civic for $4500. She dyed her hair red and gained twenty pounds. That change was accidental. It was hard to eat right in Dubuque. She took yoga classes to make up for the greasy food, and she sat in coffee shops with a laptop computer she’d picked up, creating a new Facebook profile for herself. She sent friend requests to artists and musicians who were mediocrely famous since they’d accept anyone. Pretty soon she had two hundred friends, including some real people she’d met at the coffee shop and yoga classes.
Beth tried not to check the Florida news much, but now and again she couldn’t help herself from seeing how things were playing out.
Abby’s hair had been found all over Charlie’s apartment, in his truck and mail truck, Rake’s white van, and on the bits of duct tape at her suspected murder site, just outside of Grove, Florida. This forced the police to come up with an elaborate kidnapping scheme that involved her getting carted around from place to place. They found her iPod in Rake’s possession and her DNA, (which Randall Greer had on file along with her fingerprints, for safety’s sake, he explained) on a can they pulled from the fire.
If Charlie and Rake had told the truth about their connection with Abby from the start, someone might have listened. But at first Charlie said he only knew her from work. Rake said he’d never even heard of her. Once evidence began piling up against them, Charlie changed his story to the truth, telling the police that he and Abby had been in a relationship. By that point no one believed him.
He couldn’t produce a single photo, or a love note, or a sappy card. There was no history of their phones ever calling or texting one another.
The police and reporters decided Charlie’s ridiculous story was drowned out by facts. Like the fact that Abby had been afraid of him and had written a letter to prove it. And the fact that the day before she went missing Rake had googled how long it took an alligator to eat a person. And the fact that her wedding and engagement ring were found at the bottom of that pond.
Adding to the general population’s lack of trust in Rake and Charlie, was the story of Sara May Chilton. She was the college student who’d been attacked. She passed away three weeks after Abby’s murder. Abby’s story reinvigorated the police’s interest in Rake. When they searched his home they found Sara Chilton’s DNA on the dirty little puff in a pressed powder compact he’d kept as a souvenir from that night. The police found it in a box in his closet alongside other mementos they took to be souvenirs of similar crimes. Cigarette lighters and roller-ball lip glosses. Pairs of dirty underwear. His penchant for assigning queens from decks of cards to his victims, a habit he started in high school, was particularly incriminating. Four queens were held together with a pink paperclip, not counting the ones back at the crime scene. He’d actually written names on a couple of them. Erica Something was written on a queen of hearts with the Grand Canyon on the other side. Jenny Hooper said another queen featuring Mount Ru
shmore. The article Abby was looking at showed a photo of the fronts and backs of the cards, along with close-ups of the artifacts from the shoebox, and asked readers to please contact them with information about Erica, Jenny, or anyone else who may have been one of Rake Shucks’ victims.
The police asked Meggie if she knew about this box and all she could say was, “Why would anyone look in an old boot box? That stuff don’t prove anything. It’s just stuff he found. Anyway, they might just be from prostitutes.”
Charlie continued to stick to his story that he and Abby had been in a relationship, telling anyone who would listen that she had wanted to escape from her abusive husband. He swore that she was still out there somewhere alive and well.
She couldn’t help but wonder what Randall thought about Charlie’s story. Some of the things Charlie had to say about Abby’s relationship with Randall were specific and accurate, whether or not the police knew it.
A jury found Charlie and Rake both guilty of her murder, despite that her body was never found.
Meggie wasn’t found guilty of anything, including the very questionable death of her son Tommy.
Beth Walters bought a little house in Spring Green, Wisconsin. The house was only $92,000, and with a down payment of $35,000, its monthly payments were pretty easy for poor, divorced Beth to afford.
Spring Green was a cute, artsy place. Its residents were liberal enough to allow this new young resident to be, without prying much into her past. Neighbors were pleased to see her fixing up what used to be an eyesore. When she tore out the dying shrubs in her front yard and planted hydrangeas in their place, some anonymous stranger even gave her a thank you note.