Heart of Ice (33 page)

“Sissy,” Allison echoed. “Lindsay told me that’s what they were still calling her at Spurling. When I heard that on the tape, I was shocked.”

Allison looked at Nicole’s beautiful face, her slanted eyes and high cheekbones, and wondered how she could have gone forward if Elizabeth had succeeded in ending her friend’s life.

“Elizabeth didn’t have much of a home life. Her parents never married and seem to have spent most of their relationship taking out restraining orders on each other. When she was seven, her father shot her mother and then himself. Elizabeth said she was a witness.”

“Oh, how terrible.” Allison felt an unexpected pang for the girl Elizabeth had been. Had she been born a monster or had circumstances made her one? Or had she chosen her path?

Nicole shrugged. “Well, we’ll never know for sure if she really did witness it. Elizabeth clearly knew that brought sympathy for her. And she has a long record of falsely accusing others of a variety of activities, either in bids for sympathy or simply to get them in trouble.”

She turned a few pages. “When Elizabeth was thirteen, her four-year-old cousin Mikey came to live with her and her grandmother when his parents ran into some personal troubles. By all accounts Mikey was an extremely attractive child. And Elizabeth was expected to take care of him. Instead, a few months later she drowned him in the duck pond when they were on an outing at the zoo. Elizabeth had everyone believing it was a tragic accident.”

“That’s the part Lindsay told me about,” Allison said. “She knew about his death and how a little girl might have witnessed it. And Lindsay said that’s why Elizabeth killed that second child—because she was a witness.”

“That’s right,” Nic agreed. “The same day Elizabeth murdered her cousin, she was also babysitting a neighbor’s three-year-old, Hannah. A few weeks later Elizabeth told Hannah she was going to teach her how to swim. Instead she drowned her in a neighbor’s backyard pool while the folks were at work.”

Allison pursed her lips. “I don’t even know how you were able to read that part. I mean, when you think about what nearly happened with Makayla . . .”

“
Ironic
isn’t even the right word, is it?” Nicole scrubbed her face with her palms, then let them drop with a sigh. “When no one found the girl’s body right away, Elizabeth tripped herself up being a little too helpful to the FBI. She actually led them to Hannah’s body. The girl was wearing a yellow swimsuit that her mother said did not belong to her. Her clothes were next to the pool, neatly folded. The autopsy revealed no signs of sexual abuse. They might have chalked her death up to another accidental drowning—except they did find bruises on her body. And when they looked at Elizabeth, they found scratches and bruises on her arms and legs.”

“It’s still so hard to believe. A thirteen-year-old multiple murderer.” Allison had heard of a few kids who had killed that young, but she couldn’t remember any with more than one victim.

“That’s why the judge sent her to Spurling. They had a reputation for performing miracles. Of course, after the school was shut down, it was clear the only miracles they performed were on their own numbers.”

Allison grimaced. “Lindsay has told me a few stories.”

“Elizabeth was released from Spurling when she turned nineteen, because back then Oregon law forbade incarcerating female juvenile offenders over the age of eighteen. After she graduated she successfully petitioned to have her juvenile record expunged. At that time, even murder and sex crimes could be expunged. And she changed her name to Elizabeth Avery.”

“And does Elizabeth Avery have a criminal record?”

“No.” Nicole flattened her hands against the manila envelope.

“Do you think she went straight?” Allison asked.

Nicole’s smile was devoid of humor. “Are you kidding? I think she switched to crimes that people might not be so willing to go to the cops over. Like Cassidy told me that Elizabeth tricked her into buying her a whole new wardrobe by claiming she had forgotten to bring her credit cards to Nordstrom. And she even had me writing checks straight to her for the swimming lessons, instead of to the gym. I think the more we dig, the more we’ll find.”

“Then why do you think she turned to murder?”

“I forget that you haven’t met Ian McCloud, her boyfriend. He’s a tall, dark, handsome, rich, well-connected lawyer. When Elizabeth met him, I think she saw him as the one thing that would complete her. A sociopath like Elizabeth is empty inside. She thought if she married Ian it would show to the world that she was the perfect person she always longed to be—beautiful, rich, assured, admired, catered to. And she was willing to do anything to make that dream come true.”

There was a knock on the conference room door, and then Leif stuck his head inside. The last time Allison had seen Leif, he had had his arm around Nicole while she clutched Makayla and wept. But now their relationship seemed strictly back to business. Although Allison secretly hoped that wasn’t the case.

“I’ve got something for you guys,” Leif said. “Portland PD got in touch with me a couple of hours ago. They were called to the scene of a suicide this weekend. Some kid named Clark Smith who worked at a grocery store. He left a note—in what his parents say is his own handwriting—about what was wrong with his life. He was found hanging from his bed, a pillowcase over his head, and the cord from his laptop around his neck and tied to the bed.”

So far, Allison wasn’t hearing anything to explain why Leif had interrupted them.

“Don’t suicides sometimes do that?” she asked. “Cover their eyes? It’s like they don’t want to see what they are doing.”

“Yeah. But want to know what was on the list of things wrong in his life? He says he killed a man in Forest Park.”

Nic’s head jerked back. “This guy’s the one who killed Decicco?”

“It looks like.”

“Why would he do that?” Nic frowned. “Does the note say?”

“No.” Leif shook his head.

“Elizabeth is behind this. She has to be,” Allison said, thinking of how she had manipulated them all.

“His parents say there is no way this kid committed suicide. No way. His mom says he was saving money to go to art school. And get this—” Leif pressed his lips together and then said, “She says he told her that he had a new girlfriend. The first girlfriend he’d ever had.”

Elizabeth. It had to be. But how would they ever prove it? Allison was determined to pursue justice for every victim she could.

“I’m going to go back over the scene with the evidence recovery team,” Leif told them. “If there’s anything there, we’ll find it.”

“Thanks, Leif,” Nic said.

After he left, Allison thought that Nicole seemed open to talking, so she decided to take advantage. “I’ve been thinking about your surgery Friday. Are you nervous?”

“I trust my doctor,” Nicole said, leafing through Elizabeth’s file and not meeting Allison’s eyes.

It didn’t really answer the question, but Allison could tell it was the only answer she was going to get. “Are you sure you don’t want one of us at the hospital with you?”

“I’m sure.”

“Cassidy and I both love you. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” Lifting her head, Nicole gave her a smile that was equal parts joy and sadness. “I know.”

CHAPTER 56

Portland General Hospital

A
s she lay on the gurney being pushed down the hospital corridor, Nic realized she did not expect to wake up from the surgery.

This was not a logical conclusion based on research. It was a gut reaction, so deep and primal that reasoning with it did no good. No matter how many times Nic told herself that all signs pointed to the cancer being in an early stage, or that she trusted Dr. Adler’s expertise, she was still convinced that she was going to die during surgery. It didn’t matter how much reading she had done on the Internet, how many pamphlets she had perused, or that no one else seemed to think that her heart would stop right on the table.

She still believed she was going to die.

As she watched the ceiling tiles slide by, Nic realized she had lied to everyone, including herself, about how terrified she was. Even fighting with Elizabeth in the pool hadn’t been as bad as this. Then, Nic had been all action. Now she was forced to wait. Forced to wait for what a secret part of her was convinced would be her end.

But still she had persisted in lying, telling Cassidy and Allison and her parents that she was fine, and that she did not need or want anyone at the hospital for what was just the first step on a long journey. Now she doubted she had fooled anyone.

Least of all herself.

She had lied in an attempt to turn her bravado into the real thing. She was like one of those alchemists in the Middle Ages that Makayla had studied, the ones who believed they could turn lead into gold.

During the admissions process, Nic had still managed to act calm and composed, an act she maintained as she was prepped for surgery. But as the anesthesiologist’s assistant pressed the button to open the double doors leading to the surgery suite, she began to cry.

It wasn’t fear that she would wake up without her breast, or that she would wake up to hear that the cancer had spread far more than Dr. Adler had thought. It was the idea that she wouldn’t wake up at all. That it would all end here, today.

A team of gowned and masked people lifted her from the gurney to the operating room table. The last thing Nic saw were the blindingly white lights of the two large operating room lamps. What a cliché, she thought, as the anesthesiologist put the mask over her face and asked her to count backward from 100. Her last sight on Earth—or anywhere else for that matter—was going to be the same lamps she had seen in every movie or TV show about someone going under the knife.

Then Nic slid down into a dreamless hole.

N
ic swam to the surface. Opened her eyes. The light was too bright and her eyelids too heavy. She let them fall closed.

A minute or an hour later, Nic woke up again. She didn’t know what time it was or even, for a moment, where she was. She had no sense that time had passed, no memory of anything. Her stomach was roiling, and her breast and underarm throbbed. Her breast! She brought her fingers up to her left breast, ignoring the pain of the IV needle stuck in the back of her right hand.

Still there. With a three-inch-long incision in it, and another in her underarm, but her breast was still attached to her.

She let her eyelids flutter open.

An old Korean lady with two long braids was sitting next to Nic’s hospital bed. She smiled at Nic, and the skin at the corners of her eyes pleated like fans.

“Hello,” Nic said. She wasn’t surprised. She wasn’t anything. She was in a kind of limbo, one filled with dull marvels like not losing her breast and finding a stranger sitting in her room.

The older woman held a finger to her lips, then took Nic’s hand. Her own hand was dry and warm.

At her touch, Nic came a little more awake. She was really and truly alive. Alive! She hadn’t died.

She didn’t realize that she was talking out loud until she heard herself. “I didn’t die,” she said hoarsely.

The older woman just smiled and gave her hand a gentle squeeze.

Nic wanted to say something more, but her throat wouldn’t let her.

It hurt to swallow. She felt like she had been punched in the throat. Like she hadn’t kept her guard up in boxing and had caught an elbow or a fist.

“Thirsty,” Nic managed, and the older woman let go of her hand, stood up, and got the white plastic water bottle, emblazoned with the hospital’s logo. She bent the flexible straw and put it between Nic’s lips.

“Thank you,” Nic said after several long swallows, and the woman set the bottle back down. Nic felt like she knew her, but she didn’t know from where.

“A friend of yours sent me,” the older woman said, as if Nic had asked a question. Her soft voice was oddly reassuring.

Nic could have asked what friend, but she was too tired to do more than nod. The fear was gone. She realized how much space it had taken up inside her head.

“I am here to pray for you.”

Nic should have protested, but no words came to her lips.

The older woman raised one eyebrow. “Is that all right?”

“Sure,” Nic said in a rough whisper. It still hurt to talk.

The old woman took Nic’s hand in her own, bowed her head, and began to murmur. The words were so soft that Nic couldn’t make them out. So soft they almost sounded like music.

Peace spread through Nic, as if she had been lowered into a warm bath. Her throat eased, and the two incisions stopped throbbing.

After an amount of time that might have been ten minutes or a hundred, the older woman got to her feet. She gently placed Nic’s hand on top of her belly. Then she smoothed out the covers and tucked the blanket under her chin. Nobody had tucked Nic into bed in decades, but it felt good. With a smile, the older woman leaned over and said softly, “Nicole, you are going to be okay.”

Then she turned and walked out of the room.

At first Nic couldn’t move or speak. It was like she was paralyzed. In the places where she had hurt—her throat, the back of her hand, the two surgical incisions—there was warmth where the pain had been.

Finally she pressed the button for the nurse.

“Who was that lady?” she said when the nurse came in. She wore blue scrubs and was carrying a short clear plastic cup with two pills in it.

“Who was who?”

“That older woman who was sitting with me when I woke up.” Nic cleared her throat. “Was she a chaplain or something?”

The nurse’s brow furrowed. “What are you talking about?”

“The woman who was here. Sitting with me. She was maybe Korean? She had two long braids, and she was wearing a red sweater. She just left.”

“Now?” The nurse’s voice was amused. “Honey, it’s the middle of the night. No visitors are allowed after eight.”

“Then it must have been someone who works here. Maybe a housekeeper? Somebody. Or a volunteer?”

“No volunteers come in at night either. It’s just us nurses, and there aren’t enough of us to do what needs to be done, let alone sit with someone.” She laid a cool hand on Nic’s forehead, as if checking for a fever. “Some people have really vivid dreams as they come up out of the anesthesia.”