Callie #2
There’s a blast of frigid night air as he unzips the tent. She watches the zipper work all the way around the edge. How careful he is to close it up completely, not let any more cold in.
When he comes back he says that he’s tired, wishes her a goodnight but does not touch her.
She spends the next hour, two, on her back listening to the noises of the woods.
She’s finally about to drift off when she hears a howl, high and clear.
A coyote. She puts her hand on Adrian’s arm but he doesn’t stir.
The animal howls again, louder, and the noise makes her shiver from within the sleeping bag.
The next morning things have thawed a little.
He kisses her on her cheek when she wakes, a chaste peck, tells her he’s made coffee.
They sit in camp chairs by the edge of the water and the silence, if a little fraught, doesn’t feel awkward, or punishing, the way it had the night before.
He tells her about the kayak route he has planned.
That the last time he took it he saw an eagle’s nest. She tells him that sounds good, but finds herself distracted.
She’s thinking of Sabrina’s notebook, wishing she had brought it with her, but she had left it at Jane’s when she stormed out after Jane’s confession, and she can’t bring herself to ask for it back, to talk to Jane just yet.
The star drawing had looked so familiar to her, but she can’t place it.
A logo? A symbol from a band? Where would she have seen it before?
“Hey,” he says. “You with me?”
“I—no. Sorry. It’s this case.” He turns from her, looks at the river with his hands on his hips. She waits for him to tell her to go. That she knows the way. She can leave the kayak with the car, find a way home.
“Tell me about it.”
“It’s—It’s pretty upsetting. A baby was found dead in the woods. It’s been unsolved for thirty years. Are you sure you want to know?”
“You can give me the basics. If it’s on your mind this much maybe you need to talk about it.” He sets himself in the camp chair again. “So. Let’s talk.”
So she does. She tells him about Jenna disappearing.
About the DNA results linking her to Baby Doe.
She describes finding Annabelle. The tap on her window.
All the things she didn’t get to tell Jane, has been holding close.
She’s so tired of secrets, her own and everyone else’s.
If he wants to be in her life he deserves to make an honest choice, to know every ugly detail.
“I don’t know how to move forward with this one, how to find Sabrina, without offering up Annabelle.
Without blowing her cover. And I don’t want to do that.
I thought I did, at first. When she was still an abstraction to me.
But now? She’s made a life. Has three kids.
What good would come of her being punished?
What does justice look like for someone like her?
Even if she’s tried and not convicted of anything, the disgrace, the shame …
it would ruin her. But I also get the sense that there’s something I’m not seeing about Sabrina.
Something glaring and big and I just need a little more time and I could do it all—spare Annabelle, find out what happened to her sister.
She’s convinced he killed her. And if he did.
… then, I’m the daughter of a murderer. The daughter of a lost mother and a very bad man. ”
Adrian is quiet for a long time, and she feels it coming. The same conclusion Jenna’s men always made. That there is too much drama, too much damage, for them to contend with.
Adrian clears his throat. “Shit, Callie. I’m so sorry. And to think you’re letting me sit here going on about eagles.”
“I like hearing about the eagles. I just … I’ve never had this feeling before. Like I don’t know how to do my job. That it’s my job to keep people from finding out the truth. That I don’t want to know the truth.”
“Well, you have time to figure that out, right? It’s not like you need to track someone down before they do it again, some crazy serial killer on the loose. Like you said. She’s a mother. She’s got a life. And as far as finding the father goes … Whoever he is, he’s got nothing to do with you.”
“Aside from fifty percent of my DNA. And I was wrong about my mom. I mean yeah, she suffered, and because of that, I suffered too. But she also survived so much and I never saw that. She had been sober and I just … drove her off the rails. I can’t get away from this idea that I’m like him, whoever he is. I ruin people.”
“You’re not responsible for what happened to your mom. It’s awful, but it’s not your fault. You don’t ruin things. Listen to how much you care about all of these people. You’re loyal and generous to your core. You aren’t bad. You can’t tell yourself that.”
She exhales, leans her head against his chest. He’s right.
There’s time. What’s happened to Annabelle has happened.
She can try to work out Sabrina’s end of the story.
Time to figure out how she’s going to handle this situation with Jane.
Time to figure out if she can stay here, knowing what she knows, what her future might look like if she has to resign from the department.
Who she might be if she doesn’t have a gun and a badge and a bad guy to chase down.
They paddle all afternoon. They don’t see any eagles, but the river is beautiful, placid and austere.
They pass by stands of Atlantic white cedars, ghostly and ethereal, their pale bark silvery in the light, visit a place where the stream pools into a pond shaped by beavers, have the lunch he packed on the sandy banks.
That afternoon they pack up the tent. “Can’t we stay?” she asks Adrian.
“Live off of the land?”
“We’d figure out the logistics.”
He takes her by the shoulders. “We’ll figure them out back home, too.
I’m not trying to pressure you. I know your situation is complicated.
Me, my work—I’m tied to the water. Tied here.
My house. The university a half hour away.
Sometimes it’s hard for me to see outside of that, that other people have choices in their life that are still up in the air, or things that are evolving.
You’re the only thing that is up in the air for me.
It’s exciting and it’s scary. And I love you. ”
“I’m not up in the air,” she says, leans in and kisses him. In the clarity of the light it does all feel so simple.
They paddle back down the river slowly, taking in the sounds of the woods, to the flutter of birds in the trees.
She feels peaceful but knows that the peace belongs to the woods, that the closer they get to the truck the more she’ll feel the weight of all that’s waiting for her on shore.
You have time, she tells herself, a mantra, and tries to concentrate on the sounds of the paddles dipping into the water.
You have time, she tells herself, after they’ve loaded up the equipment and secured the boats, as she starts to feel the tug of her phone in the glove compartment. She bargains with herself, that she’ll wait until they hit a paved road to check it.
But she breaks her promise and Adrian laughs as she releases the latch on the glove compartment.
She powers her phone on and for a second it seems as though nothing has happened in her absence.
No one has called her, no one has sent her a message.
But then, she gets a second bar of service and the notifications flood in.
She can’t keep up, names flashing before her as they load—a missed call and voicemail from Healy.
Four texts from Jane, three missed calls, two voicemails.
She steers her attention to Jane first, because even though Callie is still furious with her, she can’t help but worry.
The first text: Look, I know you’re still pissed but I really need to talk to you about something. Can’t be over text. Can you come by? D is out.
The second: Cal, please. I wouldn’t get in touch unless it was important. It’s about the case.
The third: I just realized you might be on your camping trip. But fuck, Cal. Something else came up. There’s something you need to see.
The fourth message is from Healy.
We got a match on your cold case. Making an arrest tomorrow.
Tomorrow. The message was sent yesterday. It’s 3:00. Which means Annabelle was probably already arrested today.
She can barely hit send on the call, her fingers are trembling.
Healy picks up with a sing-song hello. “I was wondering when I was going to hear from you.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before … Why didn’t you warn me you had DNA evidence?” She would never had made that promise to Annabelle if she had known. That promise to protect her.
His tone shifts. “Why would I need to warn you? This is good news, Hauser.”
“I thought you said you didn’t find any matches.”
“Things change. That’s why DNA works. The databases are always growing.”
“I—she … It was my case, Healy.” She knows she sounds ridiculous, petulant.
“I believe the files were with my department, had been with my department for some time now. And once her kid submitted the sample for genetic testing.… well, it was a slam dunk. Kid didn’t opt out of anything, naturally.
No one does, who has time for all that fine print?
So it went into all the other public databases. And Rebecca made the match.”
Callie closes her eyes, sees the photographs on Annabelle’s wall. It must have been the daughter. Eighteen years old. A legal adult, she could submit her sample without needing permission from her parents.
She scrambles. “You really think you’ll get a conviction? I mean, do you have enough evidence? Isn’t this all a bit … rash?”
“Hauser, why do I feel like we have a problem here? We have conclusive DNA evidence linking Annabelle Riley to the child. She’s also got a fake passport and fake birth certificate, has been going by a different name for thirty-some-odd years.
We can ding her on a bunch of other charges if we feel like it.
And look, my department is under a lot of pressure.
We need to close cases. We need all the straight-up solves we can get.
You want us to be able to go after the murderers and rapists?
We need a budget for that. For a budget, we need good numbers.
I won’t pretend that I don’t feel a little bad for the family here, okay?
But she’s a criminal, and what I do is put away criminals. You know how this goes.”
A new idea occurs to Callie. “The DNA. Wouldn’t her profile be similar to Sabrina’s? How can you tell which sister gave birth to the child if a mother has an identical twin? That has to affect your case.”
Healy sighs. “She already told us the baby was hers. She talked before her lawyer even showed up.”
She thinks of her morning with Annabelle. How she had seemed torn: desperate to tell someone the truth, and desperate to keep her secret. Had a part of her been relieved to feel the cuffs cinch around her wrists? Been relieved to just say it? The baby was mine.
She can’t think of anything else to say.
She has no right to tell him that he’s not allowed to do his job.
She’s the one who asked him to look into this case in the first place.
But that was before … before she had sat in Annabelle’s living room.
Before she knew there had been a second sister.
When she thought she was chasing down a double homicide, when she thought she would emerge from the whole process triumphant and self-righteous, carrying the banner for justice. Redeemed.
And now. Now she’s ruined a woman’s life. Her children’s lives.
Another text from Jane when she hangs up:
I guess you’ve been busy. I just saw this. Another link to TikTok. For real, Jane? she thinks. This, now? But then her eyes focus on the title of the video. Cold Case, Mother Abandoned Infant: SOLVED!
The user is Rebecca Nixon.
She didn’t, she wouldn’t. “No,” she says out loud. “No no no no no.”
“What’s wrong?” Adrian asks. He pulls over, leans across the console. She hits play on the video, a wave of nausea already rising from her gut, sweat prickling at her hairline.
Rebecca claps her hands together. She’s got her nails done to match her lipstick. Crimson. The video has already gotten over 500,000 views.
Do I have one for you all today. A monster was walking free among us. A monster who murdered her newborn child. I have conclusive DNA evidence that a woman abandoned her baby to the elements and has been living as the perfect mother up in Westchester, New York.
This case has gone unsolved for over thirty years. And now, with the power of technology, I’ve blown it wide open. The authorities made their arrest of the suspect this morning. I will be cooperating in any way I can to bring justice to this life lost too soon.
By the time she finishes watching the video it has ten thousand more views. Callie watches it again, and it’s got fifteen thousand more. Nixon didn’t give Annabelle’s name, but it’s been leaked in the comments. Callie had promised discretion and now the whole world knows.
The commenters are feverish, dogs snapping at the smell of blood.
One of them posts Annabelle’s address. Another, a link to a local news article about her volunteer work.
Even her daughter’s name, her husband’s bowling league, the daughter’s Instagram handle tagged in the comments.
Callie hits report on the comments as fast as she can, even as she feels how futile it is. None of it can be undone.
She can’t breathe. She’s vaguely aware of Adrian’s hand on her back. A pack of motorcycles blow by them and she’s relieved for the noise, the way the sound outside the car feels exactly like the roar inside her head.
There’s nothing she can do. And everything is her fault. She should know better than anyone that control is always just an illusion. That the truth always seeps out, no matter what you do to keep it close.