Chapter Nine #2
Elsie never had this, a desire to share such details about someone as a means of holding on to them for a little while longer.
There was the grief that came after Albert’s arrest, sure.
Grief for the future, the life she thought she had mapped out in front of her.
Grief for a past self, for the privilege of ignorance.
But the very worst thing, the thing Elsie found hardest of all, was how cowardly Albert had been when he was caught.
He’d admitted that the girls were dead, eventually.
But rather than taking ownership of their murders, he maintained that each of them had died through some misfortune of circumstance, not his own violent acts.
Elizabeth Bird: oh, she’d simply fallen down the stairs, and he’d had no choice but to dismember her, to bury her body—he’d had a job to preserve, after all, a wife to protect.
August Jones: she was a real klutz. She’d flipped out—way overkill—when she got shocked by him there, with her, in an alley late at night.
He couldn’t be blamed if she grabbed the knife he was carrying for self-defense—the streets of San Francisco could be dangerous after hours.
He couldn’t be blamed if, in the struggle, the knife slipped and went in, there, just under her rib.
Still, Elsie never felt that she’d lost as much as Beverley and Margot.
When their husbands’ crimes were revealed, Beverley lost the father of her children and Margot lost financial security: a large house, status, money, power.
But being a murderer’s wife gifted Elsie something—a layer of armor that, until then, she’d been lacking.
She’d felt out of place, being English in America, ever since her family moved over when she was just eight years old.
Compared to the American proclivities for casualness, for confidence, she felt meek and underwhelming, painfully polite.
But Albert’s crimes, Albert’s cowardly behavior post-arrest, emboldened her.
What gall he had to think he could manipulate people, manipulate the truth, manipulate her.
The lies, the crocodile tears in court, the pleas for Elsie to stay with him—they were pathetic.
It was then that she finally knew she was stronger than him.
She glances around Cheryl’s room again. She’s not entirely sure what she is hoping to find. A diary, perhaps? Some note Cheryl wrote before she left her family’s house for the final time? But who is she kidding? The cops have already been here; she’s not even the first reporter to be in this room.
So she decides to ask the question again, thinking of those people dressed in running gear and sneakers outside. “Mr. Herrera, was there anyone on Cheryl’s track team, or anyone else you knew of, who might have wished your daughter harm?”
His eyes snap up.
“Maybe someone she argued with? A rival on the track? Maybe even someone who had feelings for her, but those feelings weren’t reciprocated?”
“Why are you asking that?” His posture stiffens. “You’re saying this was Cherry’s fault because she didn’t want to go out with some guy?”
“No, no.” She rushes to correct herself. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Get outta here. I already answered those questions.”
His sudden anger alarms her. She takes a deep breath. It wasn’t supposed to go like this.
“Mr. Herrera, I apologize. That’s not what I meant.”
“You’re not listening, just like the cops didn’t listen.”
“Maybe you could just tell me—” She blinks. “What do you mean, the cops didn’t listen?”
“About the bracelet. That’s what I said to Roachford. They didn’t want to know.”
“A bracelet of Cheryl’s?”
He pauses, frowns. Assessing her as if double-checking whether she can be trusted. “She wore it every day,” he says eventually. “In the shower, on the track, in the pool. Three initials, CJH. She never took it off.” He glances around the room. “Now it’s gone.”
She waits for him to continue, to banish her again, but he doesn’t, his fury dampened.
“When we had to go identify the body”—his frustration is audible—“she didn’t have it on. I asked if we could take it home with us. I figured they must have packed it away somewhere. But they said she wasn’t wearing any jewelry when she was…when she died.”
If Elsie were someone else, if she were maternal like Beverley, she would reach out for him, comfort him.
“Do you have any photographs of Cheryl wearing the bracelet?” This is what she can do to help.
“Sure.”
“Then there may be something we can do.”
—
Outside, the early-evening sun paints the sky a clementine orange. It will be dark soon, and Elsie can see that people are readying their candles.
As she passes them, some of the guilt she felt on arriving at the vigil lifts. If she can convince Hunter to run a story about Cheryl and the missing bracelet, if she can convince him to print the photographs, to ask the public for help, that might bring about new leads.
As she walks away from the house, she sees that the figure she saw hovering on the periphery when she arrived is still there.
Something crystallizes in the air around her.
She looks back toward the house. By now, everyone else has gathered in the front yard, around the tables, flames lit.
She looks to the figure again. Male, she can see, purely by the height and posture.
He has thin hair to his shoulders and wears a scruffy-looking jacket. Strange, she thinks, in this weather.
Not wanting to draw attention to herself, she crosses the street and heads in the direction of her car.
Maybe she can wait there, watch him for a while.
Every so often, as she walks, she turns her head, checking that he hasn’t moved.
Each time he remains in the same position, half shielded by a lamppost and watching the crowd with an uneasy intensity.
Then his head turns abruptly, and their eyes meet. Even from a hundred yards away, it sends a chill through her blood. Immediately, the man takes off.
Elsie glances at her car. She could get in, start the engine, trail him that way. It would take only seconds to get the key into the ignition, but she already knows she doesn’t have seconds to spare.
She turns on her heels and begins to follow him. What was this person doing hiding, watching, while Cheryl’s friends and family mourned?
He is tall, she notices as she follows him, and as slim as a rod.
He has an unusual gait, as if his bones don’t bend.
But he is quick, quicker than her, and she struggles to keep him in her sights as he turns a corner at the end of the street.
She hurries to catch up, rounding the corner just as he is getting into a vehicle, a utility van that he had parked out of the way, under an oak.
There is a logo on the back of his vehicle, a company advertisement of sorts, but from this distance it is blurred and indecipherable.
Elsie takes the splutter of the engine as her cue, and she runs, heels pounding the sidewalk.
When she is close enough, she pulls out her notepad, leafing past scrawled notes and puzzle clues, then takes a pencil and quickly sketches what she can see.
When the truck has disappeared, Elsie’s ears pounding with the echoes of adrenaline, she moves her hand away from her notebook and reveals what could be their very first piece of evidence.