AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“To this day, when he tells people his wife died, he’s not talking about my mother. He’s talking about Amelia.” That was the horrific punch line to the sordid tale.
“Amelia... She was your friend,” Pete added in a soft voice.
The word whipped through Lila. Best friend, but that fact only made what happened next worse. “She lived on our street. She’d been to my house a million times. We’d played together since kindergarten.”
Ginny never looked at the papers or the wall. Not anywhere but at Lila as she talked.
Now Lila returned the stare. “Wouldn’t you want to change your name and forget it all?”
Chapter Eighteen
THE INTERVIEW WENT ON FOR ANOTHER FIFTEEN MINUTES, BUTthe emotional drain from the father-as-murderer reveal made progress tough. They all sat there thinking about the crime back then, assessing what it meant now. Ginny watched a shadow envelop the room and knew the others saw it as well.
Charles Gan, the elected sheriff and Pete and Ginny’s boss, stepped out of his office and watched Lila and Tobias leave the building. In his late fifties, his face showed every year of his time on the job. The omnipresent frown and wrinkled forehead were so familiar to Ginny that she got thrown off stride when Charles actually smiled, which was almost never.
He had weathered tough election cycles and one devastating year when a traffic call ended up with him working his son’s death scene. He never talked about family. Never drank. He lived for the job and didn’t tolerate mistakes on his watch.
He also wanted a “win” because the Karen Blue disappearance and the resulting bad press, questioning missed leads, had every law enforcement officer in New York on edge. “Where are we?”
Pete shrugged as he handed his gathered paperwork on Lila’s father’s past over to Charles. “With the missing husband? Nowhere, but we do have a better handle on the wife.”
Charles hummed as he read. The noises of the room, the phones ringing and officers moving in and out, faded into the background when he lifted his head. “Looks like she testified against her father. That sort of thing has to mess a kid up.”
“So does having your father rape and murder your best friend.” But Ginny knew there was way more they hadn’t talked about. She doubted that Lila and her mother got support from many sources. They likely were ostracized, made to feel like freaks and criminals.
She didn’t have to read the case specifics to know Lila shouldered the blame, took it on, at least in part, herself. Ginny heard it in every word, how they sounded ripped out of Lila when she talked about this one issue. Saw the thumping pain in Lila’s eyes as she relayed the bit of information she shared.
Charles nodded. “Is this father still alive?”
“In prison in Colorado, where Lila—then known as Carina Fields—grew up.” Pete flipped to the next page and pointed at a line there. “Only child. Went to live with a relative in Florida after her mom died.”
Ginny hadn’t gotten that far because she hadn’t wanted to show that much interest in the information while in front of Lila. “Died how?”
“Uh...” He skimmed down the page then shook his head. “Doesn’t say, but it happened after the trial when her father was awaiting sentencing.”
Ginny couldn’t imagine, but she couldn’t afford to get lost in sympathy either. “Devastating and awful, but none of this gets us closer to finding Aaron. I’d hoped the name change related to somethingshedid, not her father.”
“Right.” Charles handed the papers back to Pete.
“Pete has been checking video from around Lila’s house around the time of the disappearance.” They’d only started the process, but Ginny remained hopeful they would get more.
“No video from their street yet, but I’m checking the alarm videos from every house. I got one from the florist shop across the street from the entry to their development. You can see Aaron’s SUV turns left at the light out of their neighborhood before four in the morning on the day he went missing, which was way earlier than Lila said he usually heads out,” Pete said. “We pick the vehicle up again going through some lights and then see it heading toward the school and around to the back entrance, but that’s where we lose it.”
“We can’t actually verify where it went at the school, but we don’t see it again, which is odd since it’s not there.” Ginny knew “odd” was an understatement, but she used the word anyway.
“Check again.” Charles made a sound that didn’t give away what he was thinking. “Do we know Aaron was the one driving around that morning?”
Ginny had reviewed the video with that in mind. “No. You can’t tell, but it does look like only one person in the car. The shadowed outline suggests someone wearing a tie.”
“Good work. Keep on it.” Charles nodded. “Also, do somedigging into the father’s case and make sure it’s unrelated. I want us all to agree that what happened back then didn’t spin into something now.”
“Like revenge?” Pete asked.
“Possibly.” Charles turned to Ginny. “Also, the Ithaca Police Department offered us assistance on this, and so did the state police. Everyone is busy with the Karen Blue task force, but we can get reinforcements.”
“I appreciate it—”
He laughed, this hollow sound that lacked any sort of amusement. “No, you don’t.”
