10th Anniversary (Women's Murder Club 10)

Genes? Jeans? This kid was criminally deluded. I was afraid that if I opened my mouth, I’d lash out at her.

I put my hands through my hair and took a moment to get a grip on my anger. I couldn’t remember when I’d felt so frustrated, but I didn’t want to shut this kid down by letting her see the fury in my eyes. It was the time to let Conklin work his magic with women.

Conklin said, “Is the baby alive, Avis? Do you know where he is?”

“He’s alive. I don’t know where he is, though.”

Conklin said, “Okay, Avis. Let’s see if we can figure it out together.”

“A lot of what I said before was true. I hid my pregnancy. I didn’t even tell Jordan about it for five months. Then I told him, and he started to go asshole on me. ‘How do I know it’s even mine?’”

“Men can be jerks,” Conklin said.

Avis nodded. “I went out to Prattslist and found an ad.”

“There was no ad,” I said.

“It wasn’t the ad I told you about,” Avis said. “It was a different ad and it was only three weeks ago. I contacted these two women. A couple. They were looking for a baby and they would pay twenty-five thousand dollars.”

“Names?” I said.

“Toni and Sandy.”

“That’s it?” I said.

“You contacted two women,” Conklin said to the teenage idiot on the couch. I looked at the door. With luck, the kid would tell us everything we needed to know before her parents came home.

Right now, Jordan Ritter was facing jail time. Avis Richardson was looking at juvie. And the last thing we needed was a thousand-dollar-an-hour lawyer sticking his fingers in the pie.

“They picked me up a block from the school, but — but they didn’t drug me or anything. They said they had a place where I could give birth in peace. I fell asleep in the back of the car.”

“When you woke up,” Conklin said, “did you know where you were?”

“Not at all. It was dark. It was remote. I was in labor. I got into bed and for about six hours, I screamed my head off. I gave birth to the baby. I held him. He was absolutely the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. And then I gave him to Toni and Sandy. They were nice and they really wanted him.”

I’d reached my limit. Did this child care at all about her son? No.

I shouted, “That’s the last you saw of that baby? You have nothing else to tell us? Is any of what you told us true? If you gave birth with these nice women in attendance, explain to us why you were found bleeding out near the lake.”

“That part was all my fault,” said Avis Richardson.

Chapter 61

HALLELUJAH. Avis Richardson was finally about to take some responsibility. If she admitted something that led us to her baby, I thought I could possibly forgive her for driving us crazy for the past week.

How about it, Avis? Gonna give us a break?

I went to the fridge in the kitchenette, brought back a bottle of soda, and poured three glasses, no ice.

“Toni said she and Sandy would stay with me until I felt well,” Avis told Conklin and me. “Then they were going to take the baby home.”

“Did they say where home was?” Conklin asked.

“Nuh-uh,” Avis said.

I was still comparing and contrasting Avis’s new story with what she’d told us before, and the two versions hardly matched up.

The French-speaking man was on the cutting-room floor. The kidnapping was history. The father of her baby was her English teacher. Avis had answered an ad from two women, and now Avis said she had given up her baby voluntarily.