Page 38

THIRTY-SEVEN

Eva Owens waited for them on her front porch, smiling brightly as Josie and Trinity made their way up her front walk. The exterior of her single-story brick home was festively adorned with Halloween decorations. The jack-o’-lanterns lining the steps were intricately carved, reminding Josie of Dex’s creations, though not nearly as breathtaking. Eva caught her looking at them.

“I know Halloween is next month, but it’s my favorite time of year! I like to get started early. My granddaughter did those for me. She’s a teenager now but still comes over and carves them just to make Nana happy.”

“They’re awesome,” Trinity and Josie said at the same time.

Eva laughed, brown eyes twinkling. She was slight, probably over eighty, with thick, short white hair. One of her hands rested on the handle of a cane while the other extended toward them. Josie shook first.

“Twins,” Eva said. “You must be the detective.”

Josie nodded. They were identical twins and both wearing jeans and sweatshirts, yet, anyone who looked at them could immediately tell that Trinity was the television personality. Even without the added stress of her husband being missing, Josie had perfected the insomniac, workaholic police officer vibe.

Eva shook Trinity’s hand. “The reporter. Come on in.”

Sunlight bathed the small living room. Plants sat on every table and windowsill. Piles of paperback books stood in columns beside the couch and recliner as well as along the walls. No television. A wrought-iron plant stand was tucked into one corner. On its surface was a small tabletop fountain that trickled water over faux rocks. The steady sound filled the otherwise silent space.

Josie and Trinity sat side by side on the couch while Eva settled into her recliner. “I’m so sorry for all that your family has been through,” she said. “It broke my heart to learn that Roe’s little girl turned out…the way she did. For so long, I wondered what became of her. My hope was that she had had a good life. That might have made up for all the tragedy, but life doesn’t work like that, does it? It was naive of me to think that way. Anyway, I’m glad you’re here. I’ve tried to draw attention to Roe’s case for years. We’re both getting up there in age. Time is running out.”

Josie’s phone chirped. She’d spent the ninety-minute drive to Eva’s house answering texts. Tilly Phelan had called her again. She’d let the call go to voicemail and then proceeded to pester Turner, instructing him to call the poor woman back. Then she demanded information about the Gina Phelan case. She knew she had no right to request it, but her control was already in tatters.

“Do you have to get that, dear?” asked Eva.

Josie smiled apologetically. Her heart raced as she punched in her passcode, wondering if it was news about Noah. Then she realized if Heather had anything to report, she’d call instead of text. Josie’s pulse slowed as she saw a message from Turner.

Five texts in an hour constitutes harassment.

With a sigh, she tapped out a quick response. It was 90 minutes. Call Tilly Phelan. Then tell me what I want to know and I’ll stop.

“Sorry,” she mumbled to Eva.

Eva waved a hand toward her. “Don’t worry. I imagine both of you have urgent things to tend to most of the time.”

Trinity rested her hands on her thighs and leaned forward. “Why did you want to bring attention to Roe’s case?”

Probably for the same reasons Trinity was so interested in it, even without the Lila connection. Roe’s origins were completely unknown, not to mention the identity of the man—or men—who’d fathered her children.

Eva pursed her lips momentarily, considering her words. “I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start by saying that I don’t, in any way, condone what Roe did. I have always believed she should be held accountable for her crimes, and she is serving her time.”

Another text from Turner arrived. Josie read it as surreptitiously as she could.

I already called her. Oh, and FYI, you’re off the Phelan case. Or did you forget?

“We understand,” Trinity told Eva.

Josie pressed her lips tightly together so she didn’t curse out loud.

What happened to the guy who doesn’t care about getting in trouble?

Got Gina P’s phone records. No red flags.

What about calls the day she died?

Really, Quinn?

Josie was aware by the silence in the room that both Trinity and Eva were waiting for her. Luckily, Turner answered without any further coaxing.

About an hour before she was killed, she made 2 calls to an old law school friend who’s a DA in Montgomery County. They didn’t talk. She left two messages asking the friend to call back. The Phelans think she was preparing for criminal charges in the quarterback case.

With a tight smile, Josie said, “I’m sorry, just a second.”

That’s all you’ve got?

Call me later, sweetheart.

That meant he’d found something else and was willing to share it.

Her thumbs typed the words “thank you,” even though she really didn’t want to give Turner another reason to gloat, but before she could hit send, a new message from him popped up.

Happy?

She erased the “thank you” and replied, No.

Shocking. Don’t you have something to do besides harass me?

Josie smiled, which felt weird and unsettling. Turner was helping her while still being every bit the asshole she’d come to know and detest. In fact, his infuriating douchebaggery was the only thing in her life that was the same as it had been before Noah was abducted. In a strange and twisted way, it was comforting. This one last vestige of normalcy made it easier for her to hold onto the conviction that Noah’s absence was only a temporary crisis. Soon, she’d get him back. She’d put their lives back together.

She texted, Piss off along with a smiley face.

Then she put her phone away. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Owens. You were saying you wanted to bring attention to Roe Hoyt’s case?”

Eva’s smile was strained. The wrinkles at the corners of her eyes deepened. “I want to bring attention to Roe’s case because I’ve always felt that there was so much more to it that got brushed aside in the rush to put her away.”

“What do you mean?” asked Josie. “Are you suggesting that she didn’t kill those infants?”

Sadness pooled in Eva’s eyes. “Oh no. She did it. From what your sister told me this morning, you know quite a bit about the case.”

“Only up to the trial,” Josie explained.

“Then you know that when she was found, she had an old head injury. That’s what caused her aphasia and the tremors in her right hand.”

“Have any of the doctors she’s seen over the years looked more closely at her head injury?” Trinity asked. “Beyond X-rays?”

“Yes,” said Eva. “I saw to it that she had both an MRI and a CT scan when those became available. Those confirmed an injury to her frontal lobe that had caused the tremors and also affected her brain’s language centers. Unfortunately, with an injury that causes aphasia, the first year afterward is the most critical in terms of getting treatment. Because of neuroplasticity. That initial time period is when you have the greatest chance of making some kind of recovery. Roe never had that. We don’t even know when it occurred. I was only nineteen when I started volunteering at the prison. She was, hands down, the most troublesome and volatile inmate. At first, all volunteers were told we couldn’t get near her, for our own safety. But I…”

Her eyes grew glassy as she drifted off. She turned her head toward the fountain. Josie had the sense that she was no longer in the room with them at all. After a long silence, she blinked, shifted in her chair, and returned her focus to them. “Volunteers were restricted to the program area but from the windows, I kept seeing Roe all alone outside during her recreation time, always curled up on the ground. She was unkempt. Any time a guard came to collect her she’d snarl at them, but in her quiet moments, I could tell she was bewildered. Afraid. I knew what she had done but the more I observed her, the more I wondered about what exactly was going on in her head.”

“You were curious,” Josie said.

“Yes.” Eva blew out a long breath, as if it had taken a lot to admit that. “I just wanted to understand where she came from, why she was the way she was, and what would drive her to commit such horrific crimes. She had no family, no friends. As a volunteer, one of my responsibilities was to advocate for inmates who had no one to help them. I wanted to do that for Roe. It gave me a way in, a way to learn more about her.”

“The prison let you?” asked Trinity. “Let you get close to her?”

Eva laughed. “Oh no. Not at first. It took a very long time before they’d let me into a visitor’s room with her. For months, we were on opposite sides of a glass partition, but it was impossible to communicate with her. I don’t believe she ever learned to read before she was incarcerated. With the areas of her brain that are compromised, she hasn’t been able to learn, so writing isn’t a possibility at all. They did allow her to draw—crayons only because she would stab with pens or pencils—but I never understood her pictures. The tremor made it difficult to figure out what she was trying to get across. Stick figures, I recognized. Always two.”

“One small and one large?” asked Josie.

Eva’s eyes widened in surprise. “Yes. How did you know?”

“There was a drawing in the file I have. They were standing next to one another.”

“That’s right, although sometimes the small one was on its side.”

“Did she ever draw anything besides the figures?”

“She drew shapes around them, all sizes, above or next to them. At least, I thought that’s what they were. Some were hard to identify but from what I could tell, she tried to draw squares, rectangles, and triangles. Her hand would twitch so badly, she often couldn’t draw straight lines, so I was left guessing as to what each thing represented. I would say, ‘is that the shack where you lived?’ ‘Is that a tree? A rock?’ and of course all she could say was, ‘Roe,’ so she’d point and repeat her name over and over. Then she would cry when I couldn’t understand what she was telling me. We gave up on that after a while.”

“That’s so sad,” Trinity said.

“It is,” Eva agreed. “Anyway, I finally convinced the prison to let me meet with her in a regular room. They reluctantly allowed it only because Roe had never been agitated with me. But then…” she pointed to a thin silver scar that went from her left nostril to the top of her upper lip, “she got me good.”

Trinity’s eyes widened. “You went back?”

Eva shrugged. “I probably had some kind of hero complex but I’m also stubborn. The bigger the challenge, the more I want to tackle it. The best way to get me to do anything is to tell me I can’t do it.”

Trinity’s elbow poked at Josie’s ribs. “Oh yeah, I know someone like that, too.”

Eva flashed a brief smile. “We went back to meeting with glass between us for years before we were allowed to meet without it again. I think that, to Roe, everyone she’d ever met had either hurt her or tried to hurt her. When she realized I wasn’t there for that, she started to trust me. It was a very slow process. I did what I could for her. Her communication skills have only marginally improved since we first met back in 1970, but to get back to your original question, she admitted to me, in the only way she could, that she killed her children.”