Yeah, that checked out from everything he knew about Jenny Folcrum. The papers back then had covered the little girl extensively, with teachers all saying she was mature beyond her years and extremely intelligent. She probably had to have been, the lack of parenting requiring her to fend for herself from an early age.

  Wally sat back down in his seat and leaned back in the chair, balancing on one leg. “Like one night Lee was over, and we were playing poker. He’d brought Jenny, and she’d wanted to play but Lee told her no, so she was watching something on TV, and whatever it was, it was violent. I walked by to get a beer, and there was some guy getting decapitated on the screen, and I asked her if she wanted to watch something else, like cartoons.” He swigged a sip before continuing. “She looked at me like I was the stupidest shit on the planet and said that it was fine and I should get back to the cards because Leewood would need to go home soon, that it was getting late and he had work in the morning.”

  Wally gave Tim an incredulous look. “Can you believe that? Like he was the kid and she was giving him his bedtime.”

  Tim rubbed his fingers along his temple, thinking it over. “This is the first I’ve heard or read about their dynamic. Everyone else has said he was a pretty distant and uninvolved parent, that Jenny sort of fended for herself.”

  “I’m not sure who was fending for who in that house.” Wally shook his head, then paused, listening to something. “Hot damn, I think that fucking peckerbird is back. You hear that shit?”

  Tim shook his head. “No.”

  Wally pressed on the arms of the chair and stood. “Well, I’ve got one chance to get this fucker before he ruins my olive tree. You need anything else from me?”

  “Just one question, then I’ll be out of your hair.”

  Wally tilted back his beer and finished it off, gesturing for Tim to continue.

  “Do you think Leewood killed those girls?”

  He slammed the empty bottle down on the table, then reached for a shotgun leaning against the wall and shook his head. “Not a chance.”

  CHAPTER 25

  PERLA

  I didn’t even know about Grant’s family. I mean, it’s not like we all sit around and talk about each other’s siblings. My brother was USC’s quarterback in 1987, and no one seems to ever want to talk about that, so why would I ask Perla about Grant’s sister? But yeah, someone said something to me yesterday, so I guess now the whole neighborhood knows. I guess I could have figured it out, you know, because of his last name. But there are a lot of people named Wultz. I had a teacher in elementary school with that last name. Miss Wultz. She was a total bitch.

  —Laurelin Hodgkins, entrepreneur

  My watch buzzed and I looked away from Dr. Maddox to glance at the caller ID. Grant.

  “I’m sorry, my husband is calling me. Let me send him a text.”

  She didn’t respond and I looked up at her. Her lips were pressed together in a flat line of irritation.

  “He’s with our daughter,” I said tightly. “Something might be wrong.”

  “Oh sure.” She waved off the response, but the annoyance was telegraphed by the rigid set of her frame and the cluster of lines on either side of her mouth.

  I tapped back a response. Can’t answer. At the doctor’s for my annual exam. All okay?

  I placed it on my knees, on the platform created by my soft pencil skirt. “Okay. What were we talking about?”

  “Your husband. You were telling me about when you got pregnant.”

  “Oh. We don’t need to talk about that. I just thought it was important to mention that Grant never wanted to have a child. Sophie was an accident, one he wasn’t pleased about.”

  “Getting pregnant can be very disruptive to someone’s life, and to a relationship,” she said gently, as if I were tender on the subject.

  I wasn’t. The real truth of the matter was that Grant had been positively giddy over the news of my pregnancy.

  I had anticipated his elation, which was why I didn’t tell him I was pregnant. I had planned to terminate the pregnancy as soon as I could get the paperwork handled and the appointment made. Then Christmas Eve came. The Christmas Eve that changed everything . . .

  I stood on the cabin’s front porch and watched as the snow came down. The moon was full, and the fresh layer of snow glowed, an undisturbed white carpet that stretched between the pine trees.

  Our car was parked to the side, the windows already iced over even though we’d only been in the house for a few hours. I wrapped my arms tightly over my torso and considered going back inside and finding the gloves and scarf I had packed.

  “Wow.” Grant joined me on the porch, closing the cabin door tightly behind him and locking the knob. “It’s freezing out here. You sure you want to go into town?”

  “Yes.” I rubbed my hands together. “Better now than in the morning. What if we get snowed in?”

  He turned away from the door and wrapped his arms around me, hugging me to his chest as he briskly ran his hands over my arms, warming me up. He kissed the top of my head. “Okay, let’s go before the store closes. You okay to run through the snow?”

  I looked down at my new boots, my jeans tucked into their fur interiors, laced tight. “I’m good.”

  “Because I can carry you,” he offered.

  “No, let’s go.” I took his hand, accepting his help down the stairs, then gingerly stepped onto the snow, where I promptly sank knee-deep in the snow. Cursing, I turned to him for help.

  He was grinning as he traversed the stepping stones, stopping beside me and lifting me, fireman-style, over his shoulder. My stomach cramped from the position, and I thought, for the briefest of moments, about the three-month-old fetus inside me.

  Just ten more days, then I would have my appointment and it would be gone. No harm done. No one the wiser. Especially not my husband, who was opening my passenger door and carefully depositing me into the front seat. He paused before me, his mouth inches from mine, a goofy smile on his face, and when I moved forward, our lips touching, his nose was cold.

  We were almost at the grocery store, rounding the final curve, when the minivan ahead of us slowed, its taillights glaring red. Grant immediately braked, but our sedan went into a skid. I grabbed the door handle and inhaled, holding my breath as we careened forward. Grant yanked the wheel but nothing happened, the woods rushing up on us in a second.

  I woke up in the hospital, Grant beside me, his face gray with concern but his eyes shining bright with excitement. I was strapped to the bed, a neck brace keeping my spine in line, but my eyes moved, catching everything.

  Grant’s hand protectively on my stomach.

  The doctor’s mouth moving, his gritty voice sharing the age of the fetus.

  Undamaged by the crash. A miracle.

  They told me the news and took my tears as ones of joy. Grant covered my face with kisses and told me how much he loved me. How happy he was. What great parents we would be.

  I had almost died, and yet he couldn’t stop celebrating an embryo he hadn’t even known about twelve hours earlier.

  They kept me in the hospital for two months while my body healed and the baby grew fatter in my belly. Eating my nutrients. Fueling my husband’s joy.

  It was horrible, a prison sentence I couldn’t avoid and didn’t deserve. An invasion in the relationship and plans I had worked so hard for.

  “. . . new relationships and that dynamic,” Dr. Maddox continued, and I nodded as if I were listening.

  Grant texted back. Everything’s fine. Just call me when you’re free.

  “Now, how did Grant adjust once your daughter was born?” Dr. Maddox had chosen paisley capri pants and a gray jacket. The ensemble didn’t match. I tried not to obsess over it.

  “He learned to deal with it.” Another slight rewrite of the truth. Grant’s joy quadrupled the moment the screaming, red-faced infant came out.

  The pants had lilac accents, and this was why I only wore neutrals. Janice had taught me that. Wear expensive, quality staples. If you must add color, do it with accessories. Take my outfit today. Gray pencil skirt. White turtleneck. Red coral necklace. Black purse. Black pumps.

  Classic.

  Conservative.

  Quality.

  “‘Deal with it’?” She tilted her head. “You’re referring to Sophie? Sophie is the ‘it’?”

  A mistake. I cleared my throat. “Not Sophie. I was referring to the act of parenting. It was hard for him at first, but he got better—or rather, hid his distaste better. I’m not sure that he’s ever been happy being a father.”

  No, not happy. Boisterously ecstatic. Annoyingly exuberant. When the nurse deposited Sophie’s screaming body into his arms, his entire face changed into a combination of fear and love I had never seen before.

  I saw then the power Sophie had over him. Naively, I thought I would be able to use that power as a tool of manipulation. I didn’t realize that power was going to grow up and have its own ideas, its own desires, its own evil motivations.

  CHAPTER 26

  LEEWOOD FOLCRUM

  INMATE 82145

  On December 6, I was the first one at the scene. We got a 9-1-1 call from a neighbor who had heard girls screaming in the Folcrum trailer, which was in the Daisy Acres trailer park. I’d actually been to that specific trailer before, when Leewood’s wife died. We knocked on the door, but no one answered, so we started looking in the windows. I looked in one, which turned out to be Jenny Folcrum’s bedroom, and I could see the dead girls and Leewood. He was sitting in the doorway and holding Jenny in his arms, and he was crying. That’s something I don’t hear people talking about, but he was actually bawling. Bawling and saying that he was sorry. He said that over and over again, and then he clammed up and wouldn’t say anything to anybody.

  —Luke Plakenhorn, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

  “This motherfucker is more regular than a high school girl’s period.” I peered in the window of the visitor room and waited for Redd to unlock the door.

  “Next time, ask him to bring a few extra sandwiches. You’re eating better in there than we are.” Redd knelt on one knee, his movements slow as he worked the key into the lock. I glanced over at Johnson, who leaned against the wall and watched, one hand resting on his protective vest.

  Both men were hefty—two hundred pounds, at least. If I tried to run, I wouldn’t get far. The doors on either side of this hallway were locked, cameras recording the space, and between the two of them, I’d be flat on my back within sixty seconds, even if I did manage to land a swing during the process.

  It wasn’t worth the swing, and I wouldn’t cause trouble for either of these two. We had bad COs and okay ones, and they fell on the better end of that spectrum. They didn’t fuck with me and I didn’t fuck with them, and that’s how everything stayed smooth.

  “This guy some sort of reporter?” Redd twisted the key, and the tumblers loudly clanked open.

  “A researcher. Once I’m gone, you all can read about me in an academic journal somewhere.” I smiled down at him. “Well, not you, Redd. But someone who can read. Maybe Johnson has a friend who knows a friend who can sound out the big words.”

  Both men chuckled as Redd hefted upright, his breath wheezing.

  “You good?” I asked.

  “Shut the fuck up. You ready to go in?”

  “Ready.”

  He shuffled me back a few steps and nodded to Johnson, who swung open the door. On the other side of the glass, Tim Valden rose to his feet as if I were a king, making my entrance.

  “I went and talked to Wally.”

  Today, he’d brought Chick-fil-A. I’d never had Chick-fil-A. If it was in business when I was out, it hadn’t been in our town, and the idea of a fast-food restaurant based around chicken wasn’t something that appealed to me.

  That opinion changed the moment I bit into a fried-chicken sandwich worthy of a county fair gold medal. I set the sandwich down on its wrapper at the mention of Wally Nall. Bet he’d ended up losing all his hair.

  “He bald yet?” I asked.

  “Uh, no.” Tim linked his fingers together in front of him, his elbows sticking out from his body like two chicken wings. “Has a full head of white hair.”

  “Damn.” I shook my head and picked the sandwich back up. “What’d old Wally say?”

  “Some interesting things.”

  “Yeah? Like what?” There was also a pile of waffle fries, and I eyed them as I took another bite.

  “He talked about your wife, Jessica.”

  “Yeah, he didn’t really like Jessica.” I wiped at my mouth with one of the brown napkins. “He call her a cokehead?”

  “He said she did drugs and that you drank a lot.”

  “Real insider information you got there, Timmy,” I said sarcastically. “Your book’s going to be a bestseller.”

  He smiled, but the gesture was starting to run thin on the edges. “I’m not writing a book, Leewood. You know that. Everything you tell me, it’s only going to be read by the doctoral-review team and myself.”

  I didn’t really care if he shouted our conversations from the rooftop. I shrugged. “Yep. We partied. Call DFS.”

  “And he said that you and Jenny were close.”

  “What father-daughter ain’t?” I sat back in my chair and wiped off my hands.

  “Is that what you and Jenny had? A typical father-daughter relationship? Because I got to tell you . . . most fathers don’t take a knife to their daughter.”

  Anger swelled, but I learned years ago to contain that shit. It didn’t even make it up my chest. “I’m innocent—or didn’t you discover that in your research? Someone came into the house and did all that. It wasn’t me.”

  “Right. Even though your fingerprints were on the knife—”

  “I’m sure yours are on the knives in your kitchen.”

  “And you were sitting there, covered in blood, holding Jenny’s body when the cops arrived.”

  I sighed. “Find your child bleeding to death and tell me you won’t hold her in your arms.”

  “You didn’t find them, Lee. The police dug into this. Your defense team exhausted this. They looked for evidence of an intruder. None was found. No outside DNA or prints. No one came in, killed those little girls, then left. Didn’t happen.”

  He thought he knew so much. I shook my head. “Don’t know why you’re here if you already know everything.”

  “I’m here to understand why.”

  “Why the girls died?”

  “Yes.”

  “People kill people all the time. This isn’t a new thing, Timmy. Go bother one of the other three hundred convicted killers in this building.”

  “People kill people all the time . . . due to motive.” He spread his hands. “What was the motive?”

  “I didn’t have one.”

  “Exactly. So why do it?”

  I leaned forward and leveled him with a look. “Why are you here?”

  He blew out an irritated breath. “To understand your motivations.”

  “To understand my motivations for killing those girls?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’re wasting your time, because I didn’t kill them.” I glared at him, not knowing why I was even talking to the guy. Why did I care whether he believed me? Why didn’t I just tell him what he wanted to hear, then go back to my cell?

  Because then he’d leave.

  I started to stand, then sat back down. “Look, I can’t explain something that didn’t happen.”

  He groaned. “Listen, Leewood. I’m sure there’s some part of you that wants to tell your side of the story. The real story, not this bullshit that you’ve claimed for the last twenty years. In fact . . .” He made a big show of closing his notebook and reaching forward, turning off the recorder. “What if I make a deal with you? I won’t publish anything. Won’t include you in my research. I won’t breathe a word of anything you tell me, not until after you’re dead and in the ground.”

  “No,” I said flatly. “Doesn’t work for me.”

  “So, there is something for you to confess.”

  “I didn’t say that, but yes, there’s shit about this situation that you wouldn’t understand.”

  “I know that you’re dying.”

  I frowned and took a beat, processing the information. “Where did you hear that?”

  “It doesn’t matter, and I didn’t need to hear it from anyone. You’ve looked like hell, and getting worse each time I’ve come. How long have they given you? Months? Weeks?”

  I folded the wrapper around the final bite of the chicken sandwich and pushed it away.

  “Look, my dad passed from cancer. He thought he had two months left, then didn’t wake up the next morning. Whatever you have, life is delicate. You don’t know when it will end. Do you really want to take this to the grave? Once you die . . . that’s it. No one will have closure. No one will ever know the truth.”

  He thought that was a bad thing, but there was a reason I was keeping my mouth shut. The threat of death wasn’t going to change that. If anything, it meant I was almost to the finish line.

  “I’m sorry.” I stood. “Like I said, I can’t tell you about something that didn’t happen.”

  He stared at me, incredulous, as if I should be champing at the bit to confess everything. But his “offer” was a worthless one. I was in jail. It wasn’t like confessing to the crime would change that. Confessing the truth, though . . . that would.

  CHAPTER 27

  PERLA

  “You don’t ever talk about your father.” Grant’s voice came out of the dark, breaking the quiet hush of the room. I opened my eyes, and the shapes of the room came into focus. The blur of the overhead fan. The wall sconces. The rectangle divisions of the trayed ceiling.

  I considered pretending to be asleep. It had been a few minutes since we had said our good nights. It was feasible, and I closed my eyes, warming to the idea.