Chapter Sixty
Present Day
Across the glass partition, Mary Beth stares down at her orange jumpsuit as she seems to mull over the question.
Midge waits.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mary Beth says at last, looking up with a shrug.
“Gordy Klatte. The Walking Man. If you didn’t kill them, who did?”
Mary Beth remains stoic. Silent.
Midge shifts gears. “Let’s backtrack. Why were you in Mulberry Bay the night Gordy was killed?”
“Who says I was?”
“You were caught on security camera footage.”
“Then I guess I was there.”
“I’m trying to figure out why. You were living in Syracuse. You were clean. You had a good job.”
“I was a freaking waitress, Midge.”
“At one of the best restaurants in town.”
“Sounds like you’ve been snooping into my past.”
“It’s not really considered snooping when it’s your job.”
“Yeah, well, call it whatever you want. If you know all about me and my life, why are you here asking questions? Oh, right . . . it’s a friendly visit. I forgot.”
“You were doing great, Mary Beth. You really were. You turned your whole life around. What went wrong? Why are you here?”
“You know why I’m here. You were there that night. You put me here.”
“You were willing to take the blame for Gordy’s death. You didn’t deny it. And you were willing to kill me, Mary Beth, to protect someone. Who is she?”
She flinches. “I wasn’t going to kill you, Midge.”
“You held me at gunpoint.”
“Because I knew you were armed. I was counting on you to use your gun on me. Suicide by cop. Isn’t that what they call it?”
Shaken, Midge says, “I don’t believe you.”
“I really don’t care what you believe. It’s the truth.” She frowns. “But why don’t you believe me?”
“Maybe I don’t want to. Because it’s so much worse.”
“Worse than my threatening to shoot you?”
“In some ways. Do you know how traumatic it would be for me to take your life, Mary Beth? I’d be grilled about whether my actions were justified.
I’d have to deal with liability, legal issues.
I could be suspended or lose my job. Aside from that, can you imagine the emotional burden I’d carry, knowing that I was the instrument of your death?
I’d spend the rest of my life reliving it, wondering if I could have done something differently. ”
“I wanted to die, Midge! Don’t you get it?”
“Then why did you try to take me down when I went for your gun? Why didn’t you just let me take it and turn it on you?”
“I spent years of my life on the street, Midge, then in prison. Old instincts die hard. Someone catches you off guard and makes a grab for you, you don’t stop to analyze it.
You react. So, yeah. I botched it. It wasn’t the first time.
You can’t sit here and tell me how great I am when you know better than anyone that I never was good at anything.
” She lifts her left arm, palm facing Midge.
The white skin along her vein is marked by slashing scars. “See? Not even killing myself.”
Midge stares at the marks. “You did that? When? How?”
“A long time ago, and not with kiddie safety scissors, but you’d think so, right?” she says with a bitter laugh.
A long time ago . . . Scissors . . .
Someone was just saying something about that. About Mary Beth?
No, Caroline.
Last night, Talia and Kelly were reminiscing about Caroline needing scissors that were specially made for lefties.
Midge stares at Mary Beth’s wrist.
Her left wrist, bearing self-inflicted wounds that came from her right hand.
That wasn’t her in the security camera footage, wearing Caroline’s bracelet. She isn’t left-handed, like Caroline . . . or like the person who came to Mulberry Bay to kill Gordy Klatte.
In this moment, the inmate sitting across from her isn’t her would-be executioner, or a cold-blooded murderer. She’s a girl Midge once knew, a lively girl whose little sister adored her. A girl perpetually longing for fun and for freedom, her spirit suppressed in a lifeless, loveless home.
“Do you remember Mason Bauer?”
“No. Should I?”
“He was the pastor at Congregational.”
“When?”
“In the late nineties.”
“It must have been after my time. I left here in the spring of ’97.”
“Because you were pregnant, and your parents sent you away to a place where you were forced to hand over your newborn child.”
“Are you asking me, or telling me?”
“I know what they did to you, Mary Beth. It isn’t just cruel and reprehensible, it’s illegal. And I’m going to look into it. But I need the facts. So is that how it happened? Like I described? They forced you to let strangers adopt your baby?”
“My son,” she says softly. “Born on Christmas. He was perfect.”
Her sorrow is palpable. Despite everything, Midge pities her.
She waits a moment to ask the next question, as much for Mary Beth to regain her composure as for herself.
“Do you know where he ended up? Your son?”
“Yes. It was an open adoption. I was supposed to be allowed contact. He was in Cleveland.”
Midge thinks of Hannah Fletcher, who disappeared as a teenager and resurfaced in Ohio. Of Astrid Stanton, who went to college in Ohio.
“Why Cleveland?” she asks Mary Beth.
“What do you mean, why? It’s where I was.”
“When you gave birth?”
“Yes. At the Golden Bridge Maternity Home. A lot of the adoptive parents were local.”
“You said you were supposed to be allowed contact? Did they go back on that, then?”
“Sort of. It’s . . . it wasn’t just them.
It was me too. Anyway, he’s twenty-six now.
I just hope he has a happy life. He sure as hell doesn’t need someone like me barging into it.
” She clears her throat. “This isn’t why you’re here.
You aren’t asking about my son, offering to look into what happened at Golden Bridge, out of the goodness of your heart. ”
“I told you why I’m here. I’m trying to figure out who you’re protecting.”
“I’m not protecting anyone. That’s not how I roll.”
“It’s how you rolled with Caroline. When she told you she was pregnant, you wanted to make sure that what happened to you wouldn’t happen to her. You helped her run away so that she could keep her baby. The two of you were going to raise it together. Is that correct?”
No reaction from Mary Beth.
“Caroline had told you about our deal with her—that in exchange for our keeping her secret, she promised to meet us at Haven Cliff exactly a year later, so that we’d know everything had turned out okay for her.”
“What does any of this have to do with Gordy Klatte?”
“His killer’s DNA was under his fingernails. It didn’t belong to you.”
No response.
Midge clears her throat. “Remember the pastor I was just asking you about? Mason Bauer?”
“It’s his?” She looks surprised. Relieved.
“It’s his daughter’s.”
Mary Beth’s eyes widen, and her jaw drops.
Midge clears her throat. “Mason Bauer has a history of sexual assault on minors. Did you know that?”
The mask of indifference is back. “I didn’t know him. How would I know that?”
“Right. You weren’t around that last year or two of Caroline’s time in Mulberry Bay, when he was there. She looked up to him. She was . . . close to him. I’m afraid . . .” Midge can’t bring herself to say it.
For a long moment, all is still.
Then Mary Beth says in a whisper, almost to herself, “I didn’t know. You can believe what you want to believe, Midge, but I didn’t know.”
“There’s something else. Gordy’s killer was also a partial match to your DNA.”
Mary Beth looks down. She’s trembling.
“The killer is female. It would be a half sister, if you have one. Or your aunt, your grandmother, your granddaughter. Your niece.”
Mary Beth’s flinch at that word tells Midge all she needs to know.
Maintaining her composure, she goes on. “You said that on the night Caroline disappeared, she changed her mind about leaving and letting you help her raise the baby she was going to have?”
Or did she already have it?
Midge doesn’t bother to ask the question. She knows the answer. And Mary Beth’s lips are sealed between her teeth.
She goes on, “You were losing your sister—the only person who was ever kind to you. And you felt as though you were about to lose your baby all over again. The two of you quarreled. Caroline somehow fell—or did you push her in a fit of rage?—into the empty pit where that swimming pool used to be. Is that right?”
Mary Beth shakes her head, tears brimming in her eyes. “I didn’t push her! I would never have pushed her! It was an accident! She fell!”
“But after she disappeared, searchers combed every inch of Haven Cliff. You know what I’ve been wondering? How did they miss finding her in that pool? I think I know now.”
She leans close to the partition, gaze locked on Mary Beth.
“The searchers missed her that night because she wasn’t there. She did leave Haven Cliff on prom night. She was with you. She lived a whole year. She . . .”
Midge breaks off, shaking her head. Compartmentalizing.
“Then, on the anniversary in June 2000, she came back to meet us, just as she promised. She had her Walkman with her, with the new Britney Spears CD in it. Maybe you came with her, or maybe you followed her. It doesn’t matter. That’s when she died. A year after she disappeared.”
Midge rests both hands on the table in front of her and leans so close, her cap’s brim brushes the glass.
“You didn’t mean to. I know that, Mary Beth. It wasn’t your fault. You never meant to harm her. She died because you loved her. Because she told you she was leaving you and coming home to Mulberry Bay. Home to us. Talia, Kelly, and me. And you didn’t want to let go. So you—”
“Guard!” Mary Beth screams. “Guard! No more of this! Not without my attorney!”
“It’s all right,” Midge says, pushing back her chair. “We’re finished here. For now.”
Her heart is racing. Her heart is broken.
She knows why Mary Beth is protecting Gordy’s killer.
She knows that Caroline lived a year after her disappearance.
She knows that she didn’t lose her baby.
Her child was born.
Her child lives on.
Her child is Ceto.
A stone-cold killer.