Andrea looked at the group photo again. She had never noticed before but they were all wearing shades of the same colors.
The clique.
Emily had been cropped out of the picture. Forty years had passed since Ricky had beaten the life out of Emily Vaughn and she still could not stand to look at the girl’s face.
Andrea put down the photo. She walked up the stairs.
Ricky was still at the sink. Her back was to Andrea, but she asked, “Everything okay, hon?”
“Yeah.” Andrea had heard a false ease in the woman’s tone. “I was just thinking about something.”
“What’s that?” Ricky’s voice still sounded off.
“They tell you at the academy to never make assumptions. I think someone made a really bad assumption about Emily’s case.”
Ricky kept her back to Andrea. “Yeah?”
“I don’t think the person who raped her at the party is the same person who killed her.”
Ricky looked into the window over the sink. She found Andrea’s reflection in the glass, using it like a mirror.
“Emily had something she called her Columbo Investigation. She kept notes on everybody who might know what had happened to her at the party. I assumed it was a notebook, but it wasn’t, was it? It was her address book.” Andrea waited for a reaction, but there was none. “She had it with her when she was attacked, only the police never found it. She was naked. Her purse was missing. Do you know what happened to it?”
Ricky said nothing, but she had to know what was in the console drawer.
“There were black threads on the shipping pallet in the alley.” Andrea paused. “Did you wear a black tux that night, Ricky? You already told me that you were at the prom.”
Ricky’s head dropped. She stared down at the sink. She was still gripping the counter. The rubber bracelets and silver bangles had settled around her hands. The light picked out the faded scars where she had tried to slit her wrists.
Bible’s words came back to Andrea—if they’re homicidal, they’re suicidal.
“You should—” Ricky coughed. “You should go, okay? I need to get some rest.”
“It’s been forty years,” Andrea said. “Aren’t you tired of living with the guilt?”
“I—I don’t—” Ricky coughed again. “I want you to leave. Please leave.”
“I’m not leaving, Ricky. You need to tell me what happened. This isn’t for the judge or Judith. You need to tell me for yourself.”
“I—I don’t know what you’re—I can’t, okay? I can’t.”
“You can,” Andrea insisted. “You’ve suffered enough. How many times have you tried to kill yourself because you can’t live with what you did?”
Ricky was bowed over by the weight of her guilt. She pressed her forehead to the edge of the sink. “Please, don’t make me.”
“It’s tearing you up inside,” Andrea said. “Say the words, Ricky. Just say the words.”
The kitchen went silent. A clock ticked somewhere. Ricky finally took a deep breath.
“Yes.” She spoke in a raspy whisper. “I killed her, okay? I killed Emily.”
Andrea opened her mouth, but only for air.
“I told her to stay away from Nardo.” Ricky leaned her elbows on the sink. She put her face in her hands. “I saw her talking to him outside the gym. Flirting with him. Pushing his buttons. She couldn’t—she couldn’t stay away from him. Why didn’t she just stay away from him?”
Andrea said nothing.
“I didn’t mean to—” Ricky coughed into her hands. “I only wanted to warn her, but I—I lost control. She wasn’t supposed to be there. I told her not to come and I—I couldn’t stop myself. Everything happened so fast. I don’t even remember going into the alley. Picking up the board. I was so angry. So fucking angry.”
Andrea knew that Ricky was capable of that kind of rage. What she did not know was what had happened next. Emily Vaughn had weighed 152 pounds at the time of her attack. There was no way that Ricky had moved Emily on her own.
She asked, “Did your brother help you move her body from the alley?”
Ricky shook her head, but said, “That’s why he left. He was terrified that someone had seen him or … that he would be arrested, and he knew he couldn’t … that he would have to tell the truth about …”
Andrea listened to her voice trail off into more sobs. “Why did you take off her dress?”
“Blake said there could be evidence or … I don’t know. I did what he said. We burned it all behind the house.” Ricky sniffed. “He was good at that kind of thing, figuring out the angles, finding details that other people had overlooked.”
Andrea couldn’t disagree. He had managed to cover Ricky’s tracks for forty years.
“I’m sorry,” Ricky whispered. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
Ricky’s shoulders started to shake again as she cried. The woman never cried so hard as when she was crying for herself. She was docile for the moment, but there was no telling how long that would last. Andrea put a firm hand on Ricky’s shoulder. She was about to escort her outside, but then she noticed a splatter of dark liquid across the dirty dishes in the sink.
Andrea’s first thought was that it was dishwashing liquid, but then she noticed the partially dissolved pills streaking through the black like constellations.
Ricky coughed again. Bile dribbled from her lips, ran down her shirt. Her eyelids were fluttering. She was swaying on her feet.
Andrea’s head swiveled toward the red pill bottles on the counter.
The Valium. The pain meds.
All three bottles were empty.
The gurgle from Ricky’s throat was eerily similar to the one Nardo had made at the diner. She started to collapse. Andrea grabbed her around the waist. Instead of guiding her to the floor, Andrea gripped her left fist in her right hand and drove both hard into Ricky’s abdomen.
“No—” Ricky heaved into the sink. Melted pills and chunks of undigested food splattered onto the dishes. “Please—”
Andrea gave her another quick upward thrust. Then again. Then again, until Ricky spewed a stream of vomit onto the floor. The orange and yellow pills formed a nauseating rainbow across the linoleum. Andrea put all of her strength into another vicious thrust.
Ricky gagged so hard that her body convulsed. She kept gagging, convulsing over and over until nothing more would come out. All she could do was start crying again, wailing like a lost child.
“Why?” she begged. “Why didn’t you let me go?”
“Because,” Andrea said. “You didn’t earn it.”
11
ONE MONTH LATER
Andrea sat at the bottom of the stairs inside her Baltimore apartment building. Her phone was to her ear as she listened to Bible describe Judge Esther Vaughn’s funeral service. The cancer had taken her faster than anyone expected. Or maybe the woman knew when to make an exit. She had given a full statement to the prosecuting attorneys. She had recorded her dying declaration. Then she had gone home to her house in Baltimore, had a light lunch with Judith and Guinevere, then lain down for a nap and never woke up again.