“I can’t imagine getting over something like that,” I said.
“You do not get over it, you do not forget. It is not a photograph you paste in an album and put on the shelf to examine only on occasion. It is with you always, like the air you breathe. You must learn to accept it and move on in order to live life according to God’s will.”
“God’s will?”
Mrs. Rogers smiled slightly and I realized that I wasn’t the first person to question God’s will in her presence.
“God does not murder young women, Mr. McKenzie. He does not tell children to drink and drive. He does not cause inactive, overweight men to die of heart attacks. We”—she tapped her breast—“are the cause of the world’s ills. Not God. I do not hold him responsible.”
I do! I didn’t speak the words, yet Mrs. Rogers seemed to hear them just the same.
“Did you lose someone close, Mr. McKenzie? Someone you loved.”
“My mother. My father.”
“How did they die?”
“She died slowly of cancer when I was very young. He died quickly of a brain tumor a few years ago. They say the tumor could have been growing for years.”
“For years,” Mrs. Rogers repeated. “I wonder how many extra years he was given.”
Not damn near enough, my inner voice answered.
“I didn’t come here to talk about that,” I said.
“What did you come here to talk about?”
“Elizabeth. I’d like to find out what happened to her.”
“Chief Bohlig said—”
“I don’t believe him.”
“Why not?”
“Pretty young women are not kidnapped off the street and just killed, Mrs. Rogers. They are sometimes robbed and killed. They are more often abused and killed. Sometimes other things happen. But they are not just killed. Not by transients. Not by strangers. I think she was killed by someone she knew.”
Mrs. Rogers shook her head.
“I have thought long about that, about the possibility that Beth was murdered by someone she trusted.”
“What have you decided?”
“I do not believe that anyone who knew Beth could have hurt her.”
“So, you think someone killed her at random for no particular reason?”
“Mr. McKenzie, do you believe in evil?”
I’ve heard the question before. It had often been bandied about in the squad room and in the corridors of the Ramsey County Court House. For most people, evil is abstract, a theoretical means of describing human behavior that is otherwise incomprehensible to them. To others it is very real, in the way drugs and guns and anthrax letters and airplanes crashing into skyscrapers are real. Only I had been a cop a long time and I knew better.
“No, ma’am,” I said. “I do not believe in evil. I believe in motive.”
Mrs. Rogers thought about that for a moment.
“Whom do you suspect?” she asked.
“Your daughter was seeing Jack Barrett.”
“No,” Mrs. Rogers said abruptly. “I do not believe that. I know Jack’s heart. He could never have done such a thing.”
I was surprised by how glad I was to hear Mrs. Rogers’s defense of Barrett, yet just the same I said, “Witnesses said Elizabeth and Jack had an argument the night Elizabeth was killed.”
Mrs. Rogers shook her head, refused to consider the possibility. I let it slide.
“Were there any other boys who were interested in your daughter?” I asked. “Boys who were jealous, perhaps?”
“I believe that most of the boys were interested in Beth and that many of them were jealous because she would date only Jack.”
“Did any of them bother her?”
“No.”
“Did any call, send letters, follow her?”
Again Mrs. Rogers shook her head.
“What about girls? Did Elizabeth have any enemies?”
“All high school girls have enemies. It is the politics of their age.”
“Anyone in particular?”
“No.”
“Afterward, did anyone act strangely? At the funeral perhaps.” I noticed something move behind the woman’s eyes. “What?”
“The day after the Seven won the championship, just after the town threw them a parade, Josie Bloom came to see me.”
“What did he do?”
“He hugged me. I opened the front door and found him there. He said, ‘Mrs. Rogers, I am so sorry,’ and he hugged me and he cried for a very long time. The entire town was celebrating the basketball team. It did not wish to be reminded of Beth. So, for Josie to do that—I was very touched.”
Josiah Bloom the alcoholic, who dedicated his game to Beth.
“Mrs. Rogers, I found a bouquet of red roses at the site where your daughter’s body was found.”
“You did?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“About a half hour ago.”
“How odd. Who could have left them?”
“That’s what I was going to ask you.”
“I have no idea.”
“Has anyone left flowers at the site . . . ?”
“Since Beth was killed?”
“Yes.”
“Like a shrine?”
“Yes.”
“No. This is the first I’ve heard of anyone—Who would do such a thing? Why now, why after all these years?”