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He knocked on the door. And a moment later, it opened to a woman who matched the house. She appeared to be in her fifties, but the dark circles under her eyes and the hunch to her shoulders made her look well worn.
“Ms. Knapp?” Zach asked.
“Yes.” Her voice dripped with despair. “Are you the detectives?”
Zach nodded. “Is it still all right if we come in?”
She widened the door, and moved aside. “Please call me Anna.”
“Thank you, Anna.” Zach entered the home. “We appreciate you taking the time to discuss Lizbeth
with us.”
I hesitantly followed and tried my damndest not to let my repulsion in the house show. Not an easy feat.
“Please, will you have a seat?” She waved out to a couch that I wouldn’t sit on even if it had a layer of plastic over top of it.
I held back my desire to gag, and twirled my finger in my brown, shag-cut hair. “I’m okay here, thanks.”
Zach grimaced at me before he took a seat and shed all emotion as he turned to Anna. “We’re aware that this will be difficult for you to discuss, but we need you to remember anything you can from when Lizbeth died.”
“I’m not sure I can tell you anything that…” She peeked up at the ceiling. I followed her gaze seeing dark brown stains, and restrained my shudder. “…Max, was that who I spoke with?”
“That’s right. He’s the sergeant.” Zach smiled softly. “He told us the necessary information, but I’ve learned it’s always best to hear it directly for myself.”
In all actuality, I hadn’t heard all the details except that I was officially on my first cold-case.
“Well,” Anna paused, glancing down at her fingers as she fiddled them. “It started a year before Lizbeth’s death. She began to act differently.”
Zach pulled his pad of paper and pen from his pocket, and flipped the notebook open. “Can you explain that in more detail?”
I clasped my hands in front of me. Just because I was now part of team didn’t mean I would start acting like a cop in any official capacity. Let’s be serious now. I wasn’t really a detective.
Anna continued, “She’d talk to me about an evil presence around her.”
“Evil?” I gasped.
“I know how funny it sounds. At the time, it did to me, too. But looking back, Lizbeth just didn’t seem like herself, and maybe I should’ve listened to her.” Anna crossed her arms and shifted in her seat. “She used to be a very happy young woman. Full of life and spirit, but all of a sudden she seemed so dark.”
I gave my head a shake, trying to make sense out of her nonsense. “Dark how?”
“Depressed.” Anna exhaled. “She never came out of her room, and totally withdrew from life.”
“She was suicidal, then?” Zack asked with a gentle tone.
“I suppose you’d draw that conclusion from what I’m telling you now, but the truth is I never took her to be the type.” She gave a knowing look. “Like I said, she was well adjusted and quite happy.”
“But you just said she was depressed,” I countered.
“Yes, I did, but still, Lizbeth was a fighter. She used to tell me that this evil presence was overtaking her soul, and she tried so hard to fight against it.”
Zach made a face. I made one of my own. We were speaking English, yet gibberish would have made more sense.
Seeing that we were getting nowhere, and I suspected Anna had lost her mind a long time ago, I moved along. “Did her condition get worse?”
“It got so bad, my parents had no idea what to do. You have to remember it was a different time. The medications for depression that exist today didn’t back then.” Tears welled in her eyes, but they cleared just as quick. “My parents took her to a doctor, even admitted her into a hospital, but my mother couldn’t manage to leave her there. She thought love would bring Lizbeth out of her trouble.”
“Clearly, it didn’t.”
