Page 63 of They Say a Girl Died Here

The City Center Garden Hilton. That’s where the Millers were staying; she’d seen it on the poster up in the church. If the pastor was seeing them, maybe he was staying there too. She turned the volume up on the soap Grandma was watching and went out into the hall, googled the hotel, and called reception. Her heart was beating hard.

“City Center Garden Hilton, how can I direct your call?”

“Oh, hello.” Anna kept her tone light. Friendly. “I was wondering if you could put me through to Pastor Keene. I think he’s staying with you. Can you tell him it’s Anna Maybourne?”

“Certainly, I can do that.” The receptionist clicked her through to some holding music and then almost immediately she was back. “Actually, he’s right here. Just came into the lobby. One moment.”

So he was there. Before she could hang up, his rich voice—unmistakably his—came on the line. “Hello?”

Shit. Anna was flustered. “Oh, hi. It’s Anna. Anna Maybourne.”

“Anna, is everything all right?” That concern. It was genuine. In the background she could hear children chattering loudly. The Millers. She’d gotten it wrong.

“Yes. Yes, I only wanted to thank you for the talk the other day. It helped me a lot.”

“Oh, I am glad. And my door is always open. I’m afraid I can’t chat now, though. We’re going for barbecue and the kids are a little overexcited. I’ve agreed to take them to the zoo tomorrow to give their folks a day to themselves.”

“That’s lovely. Have a good weekend.”

“You too, Anna.”

She ended the call, her face hot. It was a four-hour drive to Omaha. It was nearly eight p.m. now. Was he really going to eat dinner for a couple of hours and then drive all the way back to kill her, then get back to spend a day at the zoo? No way.

She stared at the bolted door. Who was the phantom enemy now? If it wasn’t Pastor Keene, then who was it? And why bother killing her? It wasn’t like she knew anything concrete or anyone was taking her suspicions seriously.

In the kitchen, she went through the scant videos on YouTube of news reports and interviews filmed around town in the days after both murders. Most were taken outside the sheriff’s office. There was Dr. Burdett, already using a cane for his arthritis when Lila had been murdered. The sheriff, exhausted and diminished, trying to smile and be polite in the face of all the questions, two deputies close by him. One older, whom she didn’t recognize, and Pete, slimmer and with more hair.

Behind them, a bunch of teenagers loitered, caught up in the drama. She couldn’t see Melissa or Jamie, but Todd was there. Maybe he’d had a crush on Lila. Probably a lot of the boys had. The report interviewed a few people around town, none of whom she knew, although one took place outside the diner, and she was sure she could make out Jeannie watching through the windows. It was the usual stuff. A small farming town in shock. The police doing all they could.

She watched twice through and then searched for similar on Bonnie. There were a few more clips, but they mainly focused on reports about Michael Cairns being shot during the robbery and the revelation that he was responsible for the murders of two girls in the nearby town of Harper’s Creek. There was more of Sheriff Adams and Pete the deputy, both looking tired but smiling at the cameras, glad that justice had been served for the awful tragic loss of two young lives. Various people around town. The doc again. Miles and Jeannie. A shot of the school. She watched it again. Something was bugging her and she couldn’t figure out what. There was something here that she was missing. She rubbed her face, exhausted. Think, Anna. Think.

“I’m going to bed now, Claire.” Grandma in the doorway, fragile and ghost-like in her thin robe. “I’m so tired. Can you help me?”

“Of course I can.” She took Grandma’s arm, gently guiding her to her room. It was because of her that Grandma was so confused and tired, and it made her heart hurt. They were very different women and they hadn’t understood each other, but Anna had been stupid to ever doubt that Grandma loved her. Now the old woman had proved it too many times. Anna couldn’t let that have been in vain.

It was when she was tucking Grandma carefully under the covers that she realized what was bugging her about the YouTube clips. Of course. Suddenly she was pretty sure she knew who’d committed one of the murders. How could she have been so blind?

“I have to go out, Grandma,” she said softly. “I need you to stay in bed. Will you do that? It’s important. I have to get proof.”

“Yes.” Grandma clutched her hand, suddenly animated. “Get out of the house. Stay out. I can rest if you’re not here.”

Anna squeezed back and nodded. She understood. If she wasn’t here, then she couldn’t get murdered in the basement. “I love you, Evelyn.” She kissed Grandma’s cheek and pulled the blanket up under her chin, and by the time she reached the door, the other woman’s eyes were already shut. In the hallway Anna watched the clips on her phone again. She was right. There it was. Plain as day. She might not know who murdered Lila. But she was pretty sure she knew who killed Bonnie.

Heart racing, she undid the bolt and chain and pulled the door open, a wave of damp heat washing into the house. If it didn’t rain soon, the town would implode, she was sure of it. All this tension had to end tonight. It had to. She locked the front door, the best she could do to keep Grandma safe inside, said a silent prayer, and headed toward town.

77

As Anna waited outside the sheriff’s office, hidden in the gloom of the parking lot, she watched Roz sitting behind her desk, the lights inside bright. It was taking forever for her to go for a bathroom break—hopefully she still had her UTI—and Anna used the time to google abortion clinics at women’s shelters in Omaha. There was only one.

“Hi,” Anna said, when a woman picked up. “I’m sorry to call late, my name’s Bonnie Buchanan.” She hoped the young woman on the other end of the line didn’t know anything about the girl who once helped out there and ended up murdered.

“I was wondering if you had the medical record for a termination I had with you around three years ago. If so, could you forward it to me? I need it for some current gyno issues.” Anna didn’t know if that was even a thing, but it was worth a shot. She handed over Bonnie’s date of birth, the internet having provided that among a plethora of other personal information, as if the dead deserved no privacy, and waited.

“I’m sorry, I’ve got no record of you in our system. Are you sure you had the procedure here?”

“I was pretty sure but not certain. I had some, well, some addiction issues at the time, and I’d actually forgotten the clinic name.”

“I’m sorry, but you weren’t a patient with us.”