The Book of Cold Cases

This chapter is told from Beth's point of view, in the present setting of the novel, 2017. She has just spoken to Shea and hangs up the phone. Her bedroom was her parents', and it is still just as they left it. She begins hearing noises, which is normal, and she usually takes a pill to escape them. She sits in bed and listens to something that is coming down the hallway, trying every door. She tries to remember if she locked her door and hears the doorknob rattle, then a voice says, "Please." It is followed by the sound of her mother crying, even though her mother has been dead for over 40 years.

It is 1977, and Beth is being interviewed by Detectives Joshua Black and Melvin Washington at the Claire Lake police station. She tells them that the night of the first murder she was at home alone, drinking, and that the same is true of the night of the second murder. Detective Washington implies that she might have driven drunk and not remembered because a witness described her car, a 1966 Buick.