The Red Queen Dies

by Frankie Y. Bailey

  Pettigrew nodded. “But this photograph caught my eye. The woman Swede had his arm around looked a lot like the girl whose sketch we have. In fact, she could have been her slightly older sister. Or the woman who became her mother.”

  “Turns out she was,” Yin said, joining the conversation. “Her mother, that is.”

  Pettigrew took a sip of his coffee. “The mother’s name was Laurie. She married the mobster Swede sometimes hung out with when he was flying high”

  Yin said, “Laurie stayed married to the mobster for almost twenty years. Until she died a couple of months ago.”

  “Of a drug overdose,” Pettigrew said. “An accidental overdose while being treated for depression.”

  “We found Laurie’s mother in a nursing home,” Yin said. “Her mother said that her daughter had been unhappy for a long time. She started drinking heavily about the time she got married. Spent years in and out of high-priced treatment centers drying out.”

  “So the overdose that killed her could have been the result of combining alcohols and medication,” Baxter said.

  Pettigrew said, “Laurie’s mother said her granddaughter, Samantha, came to see her after her mother died. She hadn’t seen her granddaughter in years. Always thought of her as headstrong and spoiled.”

  “So she was surprised,” Yin said, “when Samantha came to see her and wanted to know if her mother had ever talked about a man named ‘the Swede.’”

  “What did the grandmother tell her?” McCabe asked.

  “Nothing,” Yin said. “She didn’t tell her anything because she said she was afraid for her.”

  “Afraid of what?” Baxter said.

  “Afraid of what the man her daughter had married would do if her granddaughter asked if he was really her father.”

  “But you think Samantha went looking for the Swede,” McCabe said. “And found him.”

  Pettigrew settled into his chair and picked up his ORB. “If we were cynical types, we might wonder how Laurie died. Whatever happened, her daughter left home a few days later.” He paused. “Her father, or the man she had always thought was her father, expressed his concern when we spoke to him.”

  “What did he say about his daughter’s whereabouts?” Baxter asked.

  Yin replied, “The man said he has no idea where she is. But is worried sick about her. Can’t imagine why she might have contacted Jorgensen. Neither he nor his late wife had seen the Swede in years. His daughter had never met him.”

  “That’s what the man said,” Pettigrew said. “when we reached him on his yacht off the coast of Spain.”

  “I wonder if the two thugs got anything out of Jorgensen about the girl’s whereabouts,” Baxter said.

  Pettigrew shook his head. “I think that day when we talked to him in the hospital, he thought she was safe.”

  “If she’s lucky, she still is,” Yin said.

  “What she should have done,” McCabe said, “was get Lisa Nichols to give her some pointers about assuming a new identity.”

  The three men looked at her.

  Pettigrew said, “Something about her still bothering you?”

  “It’s all too easy,” McCabe said. “She has this syndrome. She mixes medications. She gets side effects and she kills three people. Bethany and Sharon to avenge her sister. Vivian Jessup because what?”

  “Because she was afraid Jessup wanted Thornton. Or because she thought Jessup might be suspicious,” Baxter said.

  “Ashby was more suspicious,” McCabe said. “But she went after Jessup.”

  “She had already killed twice,” Yin said. “What’s one more?”

  Pettigrew said, “One more opportunity to get caught. Which might be an argument that she was no longer thinking rationally.”

  Baxter said, “And so she went after someone else she hated or feared.”

  McCabe said, “That’s the narrative, isn’t it? The story that her high-priced attorney is already previewing for the media. Melanie/Lisa loved her little sister. Tried to protect her when their mother couldn’t. Years later, she comes back to Albany, and one afternoon, she encounters one of her sister’s tormentors in an ice-cream parlor. Hears Bethany’s name and realizes she was the girl who had bullied her sister. And Melanie/Lisa decides in her irrational mental state to avenge her sister.”

  “And then,” Baxter said, “she kills the other girl, Sharon, because she thought Sharon had been involved, too.”

  Pettigrew said, “It makes a crazy kind of sense. If she was suffering from the side effects—”

  “If she was,” McCabe said. “And if she had the drugs in her system, then she might very well have had side effects. But it was damn convenient, wasn’t it?”

  She reached for her ORB. “Kelsey, hi, remember when I said we didn’t need that information any more about Melanie Jacobs’s coworkers at the company she worked for?… Right. I’ve changed my mind. Would you see if the company can provide us with some names?… Thanks, Kelsey.”

  McCabe turned back to her three colleagues, who were looking at her with bemused expressions. “I shot the woman,” she said. “That gives me the right to obsess about whether she was temporarily insane or a cold-blooded killer.”

  “Okay,” Baxter said. “But the lou thinks we are working on—”

  “We are,” McCabe said. “We can go over what we have on that one while I’m waiting to hear from Research.”

  * * *

  “They’ve found someone,” McCabe said when Baxter came back from his lunch run. “Research has found one of Melanie Jacobs’s former coworkers.”

  Baxter handed McCabe the sandwich she had asked for. “Good. Maybe we can wrap this up and you can stop obsessing.” He grinned and held up his hands. “Your word, not mine.”

  “True,” McCabe said, “So let’s eat first.”

  * * *

  The woman’s name was Nancy Corrigan and she had not liked Melanie Jacobs (aka Lisa Nichols). That much was clear from the way her mouth puckered when she heard Jacobs’s name.

  Ms. Corrigan lived in North Carolina now, but she had heard about the Albany serial killer case. “I was wondering if I should call,” she said. “But my husband said it wasn’t important and I should stay out of it.”

  “What wasn’t important?” McCabe said.

  “The pregnancy test. A few days before she quit, I saw her in the ladies’ room. She was reading a pregnancy test. She tossed it in the trash can. But I fished it out and looked. It was positive.”

  37

  Monday, November 11, 2019

  Clarence Redfield said he would come to the station that afternoon.

  He arrived an hour or so later, looking thin and drawn. “Why do you want to see me?” he asked.

  It was the same question he had asked McCabe when she’d contacted him.

  McCabe gestured toward a chair at the table in the interview room. “Please sit down, Mr. Redfield.”

  He sunk into the chair. “Are you worried that I’m going to start threading again about your investigation? I wouldn’t come off looking particularly good, given the outcome.”

  “You loved her,” McCabe said.

  “Is your partner listening in while we have this little chat? Should I have brought my attorney?”

  “There’s something I need to tell you, Mr. Redfield. I thought you might rather hear this in private.”

  “Hear what?’

  “That Melanie was pregnant when she left Albany.”

  “You’re lying,” he said. “You’re lying. She would never have gone away if she … She left because she couldn’t let her sister go off alone with their mother. She left to take care of Johnnie Mae.”

  “And maybe because she didn’t want you to know that she was pregnant. Didn’t want to have a baby.”

  “No, you’re wrong. She would have wanted our baby.”

  “I need to show you something.” McCabe touched the console. “This is surveillance footage taken nine years ago at an abortion clinic in New Mexico.
The FBI had the clinic under surveillance because it had received threats from a radical pro-life group.”

  She watched Redfield’s face as he saw Lisa—Melanie—going into the clinic.

  “I’m sorry,” McCabe said. “But if you intend to testify for her, you should know what she—”

  “Go to hell.”

  Redfield lurched to his feet. He opened the door and walked out of the room.

  McCabe sat down at the conference table. She wasn’t particularly proud of herself.

  * * *

  She was sitting at her desk in the bull pen when Redfield came back. He said, “I think … I think I know why she did it.”

  McCabe glanced at Baxter. “Do you want to make a statement?”

  Redfield dropped down into the chair beside her desk. “I just want to tell you this before I change my mind.”

  “Tell us what?” McCabe asked.

  “About something that happened a few days before Johnnie Mae ran away from the science camp. Melanie and I went by to pick Johnnie Mae up at the camp. But when we got there, Johnnie Mae wasn’t out front. Melanie asked me to go look for her.”

  He paused. A muscle twitched in his cheek.

  McCabe said, “Did you find Johnnie Mae?”

  Redfield cleared his throat. “No, I asked one of the teachers, but … when I got back out front, Johnnie Mae was there. So were those two other girls.”

  “Bethany Clark and Sharon Giovanni?” Baxter said.

  “Yes. I didn’t know their names then. But it was Bethany who was smiling … smirking … at Melanie. I asked what was going on. And Bethany said, ‘Your girlfriend just threw up.’ Melanie glared at her. I’d never seen that look on her face before. Then she turned to me and said everything was all right. That she just had an upset stomach from something she’d eaten.”

  He fell silent.

  McCabe said, “Was that all she said, Mr. Redfield?”

  Redfield nodded. “But after our conversation today, Detective McCabe, I realize now that she was throwing up because she was pregnant.” His smile looked as if it would crack. “Embarrassing, isn’t it? A thirteen-year-old girl realized that, and I didn’t.”

  McCabe said, “Did Melanie tell you what happened when she and Bethany saw each other in the ice-cream parlor that day?”

  “She was in line, and Bethany was flirting with the young man behind the counter. She told him her name and wrote her tag number on a napkin. She … Bethany had changed a lot in nine years, grown up, but Melanie recognized her then. Before she could decide what to do, Bethany got her ice cream and left. But she came back as Melanie was leaving. They met in the doorway, and Melanie said, ‘Remember me? I’m Johnnie Mae’s sister.’”

  “What did Bethany say to that?” Baxter asked.

  “She just looked blank and said, ‘Johnny who?’”

  McCabe said, “I don’t suppose Melanie appreciated that answer.”

  Redfield shook his head. “She said she couldn’t get it out of her mind. She said Bethany was as much of a little bitch as she had been when she was a child. And she was alive and flirting in an ice-cream parlor, and Johnnie Mae had never had a chance to grow up.”

  “And, of course, Melanie had also given away her identity. Do you think that was why she killed Bethany?” McCabe asked.

  Redfield looked from McCabe to Baxter. “I was the only other person who knew. The only other person who might have revealed to Ted Thornton that she had once been Melanie Jacobs. But she knew she didn’t have to worry about me. She knew she could wrap me around her little finger.”

  “Unless,” McCabe said, “you knew she’d had an abortion. And then you might not have kept her secrets. Of course, she could have told Ted Thornton the truth. She must have known he was in love with her. There was a good chance he might have forgiven her for lying about who she was once he knew the whole story.”

  “But he might not have,” Redfield said. His Adam’s apple worked as he swallowed. “And Melanie hated being poor. She hated the way she and her mother and Johnnie Mae lived.”

  “So she had the life she had always wanted with Thornton,” Baxter said, “and she intended to keep it.”

  Redfield frowned. “No, I’m not explaining … It wasn’t just about having money. Melanie was afraid a lot of the time. Even as Lisa, the glamorous photographer, she was still afraid. That day at the planetarium, she said she couldn’t be alone again. She said Ted Thornton made her feel safe. She said he had money and power, and she knew that whatever happened, he would be able to take care of her and keep her safe.”

  “Did you tell her that you would be there for her?” McCabe asked.

  “Yes. But who am I compared to Ted Thornton? She said I didn’t understand. But I did.” He shrugged. “Her mother was mentally unstable. Maybe Melanie inherited that. Maybe that and the side effects from the drugs were enough to push her over the edge.”

  “That’s what her attorneys are going to argue,” Baxter said.

  McCabe said, “Are you still going to testify for her?”

  Redfield got up from the visitor’s chair beside her desk. “Or, as long as we’re considering possibilities, maybe she has always been a scheming, lying little bitch. And maybe the drugs just brought out what she is. Someone who would do whatever it takes to get and keep what she wants. Her survival, and to hell with anyone else.”

  He turned and walked out of the bull pen. They watched him go.

  “Think he’s still going to testify for her?” Baxter asked.

  “Guess we’ll have to wait and see,” McCabe said. “Want to have another look at what we have on our arson case before we call it a day?”

  * * *

  McCabe waved to him as she pulled out of the garage. Sitting in his car, the cooling system on full blast, Baxter waved back.

  When McCabe was gone, he picked up his ORB, entered the code, and waited for a response.

  “Yes?”

  “Tonight?” Baxter said.

  “Concerning?”

  “McCabe.”

  “Usual.” The transmission ended.

  Baxter put his ORB down on the console and rubbed at the sweat on his upper lip.

  The annual UFO festival in Las Vegas had been held in one-hundred-degree weather. Now the November heat wave had spread east.

  Baxter reached for his water thermos.

  His throat was dry, scratchy. Maybe he was coming down with something.

  Or maybe he didn’t like the heat as much as he’d thought he would.

  * * *

  McCabe let herself into the house. She dropped her thermo jacket on a chair and stretched. Even with a couple of errands along the way, she’d actually gotten home at a decent hour for once.

  And she might want to leave again, McCabe realized as her father stomped into the living room holding one of his leather bedroom slippers.

  “Do you see this?” Angus said. “Do you see the teeth marks?”

  “Puppies will be puppies,” McCabe said.

  “I want that damn dog out of this house.”

  “We’re keeping him, Pop. It’s time we had another dog.”

  “When that fluffy ball of fur that your mother called a dog died—”

  “You cried,” McCabe said.

  “Tears of joy,” Angus said. “I am not going to walk that four-legged—”

  “The Wyatt kids down the street have agreed to be our official dog walkers.”

  “You’ve got an answer for everything, haven’t you?”

  “Not everything. What are we having for dinner?”

  “Is your nose broken?”

  “Smells like lasagna. But if you’re really mad at me, making your world-famous lasagna—”

  “He made his world-famous lasagna for your brother.”

  McCabe turned at the sound of her brother’s voice. Adam was standing in the dining room doorway. He was smiling.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi, sis.”

  “You’re weari
ng … I thought you didn’t like wearing the exoskeleton.”

  “Mai says I’m stubborn.”

  “So, uh, Mai’s still around.”

  “For now. Maybe for a while.”

  “And the next time you come, you can bring her so that I can have a look at her,” Angus said. “But I called you over here tonight to talk some sense into your sister.”

  Adam said, “So what are we going to name the dog, sis?”

  “Spot?” McCabe said.

  “Big Foot more like it,” Angus said. “And we aren’t going to name him anything, because you’re taking him back where you got him.”

  “Where is he, by the way?” McCabe said.

  “Asleep out on the porch,” Adam said. “Interesting-looking animal. Seems to be a mix of about half a dozen different breeds.”

  “Great Dane on his mother’s side, Dalmatian, Lab, and mutt on his father’s.”

  “And all likely to eat us out of house and home,” Angus said. “The lasagna’s ready. One of you make the salad.”

  McCabe walked over and tucked her hand into her brother’s arm. “If I haven’t said it, I’m glad you’re here.”

  Adam gave her a sideways glance and said, almost awkwardly, “Me, too.”

  “So, how’s the research going?”

  “Coming along.” He looked directly at her now, one eye covered by his pirate’s patch. “Someday I’m going to walk on my own two legs and feel them.”

  “Of course you will,” McCabe said. “Mai’s right. You are stubborn. Once you set your mind to something, you never give up.”

  Angus said, “Will you two stop yapping and—”

  “Make the salad,” Adam said. “We got it covered, Pop.”

  McCabe smiled at her brother. “Let’s go get dinner on the table. I’m starving.”

  * * *

  Sitting on his sofa, Beethoven playing in the background, a glass of bourbon within reach, Pettigrew rehearsed what he would say to his ex-wife.

  She had called to say she was in town and on her way over.

  “But this time, sweetheart,” he said in his best tough-guy imitation, “this time, I’m not going to play the sap for you.”

  Pettigrew sighed. He lifted his glass in a toast. “Here’s to you, Swede, from one poor sap to another.”