Criminal

You remember the names of the women who brought you down.”
    Air wheezed from Ulster’s mouth, but he was shaking with laughter, not fear. She had seen the look in his eyes a million times before—from her father, from Butch and Landry, from Bubba Keller. He was amused. He was humoring her.
    All right, doll. Run along now .
    Amanda stood on the bottom rung of the gurney so she could loom over Ulster the same way he had loomed over her.
    “You’re never going to see him.” He blinked as her spit flew into his eye. “He’ll never know you. I swear before God he’ll never know what you did.”
    Ulster’s smile would not fade. He took a deep breath, then another. His voice was a strangled gasp. “We’ll see.”

thirty-one
    July 23, 1975
    ONE WEEK LATER
    Amanda smiled as she pulled into the parking lot of the Zone 1 station house. A month ago, she would’ve laughed if someone suggested that she’d be happy to be back here. A week of crossing guard duty had taught her a hard lesson.
    She took one of the far spaces in the back of the lot. The engine knocked when she turned the key. Amanda checked the time. Evelyn was running late. Amanda should go inside the squad and wait for her, but she was thinking of this as their triumphant return. Having to spend five days in the grueling heat dressed in a wool uniform while lazy children tromped in and out of traffic had not negated the fact that they had caught a killer.
    Amanda unzipped her purse. She took out the last report she was ever going to type for Butch Bonnie. She hadn’t done it out of kindness. She’d done it because she needed to make sure it was right.
    Wilbur Trent. Amanda had named the baby because no one else would. Hank Bennett did not want to sully his family’s name. Or perhaps he didn’t want the legal entanglement of Lucy having an heir. Evelyn had been right about the insurance policies. With Hank Bennett’s parents dead and his sister murdered, he was now the sole beneficiary to their estate. He’d let the city bury his sister in a pauper’s grave while he walked away from probate court a millionaire.
    So, it fell to Amanda to buy Wilbur his first blanket, his first tiny T-shirt. Leaving him at the children’s home had been the most difficult thing Amanda had ever done in her life. More difficult than facing down James Ulster. More difficult than finding her mother hanging dead from a tree.
    She would keep her promise to Ulster. The child would never know his father. He would never know that his mother was a junkie and a whore.
    Amanda had never written fiction before. She was nervous about the details she’d put into Butch’s report, the blatant lies she’d told about Lucy Bennett’s life before her abduction.
    The boy could never know. Something good had to come out of all this misery.
    “What’s the skinny?” Evelyn stood outside the car. She was dressed in brown slacks and a checkered orange shirt that buttoned up the front. The bruise on her jaw had started to yellow, but it still blackened the bottom half of her face.
    Amanda asked, “Why are you dressed like a man?”
    “If we’re going to be running around the city, I’m not going to ruin another pair of perfectly good pantyhose.”
    “I don’t plan on doing much running anymore.” Amanda tucked the report back into her purse. She zipped the bag closed quickly. She didn’t want Evelyn to see the application she’d requested from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Her father had gotten his old job back. Captain Wilbur Wagner would be running Zone 1 again by the end of the month.
    Evelyn frowned sympathetically as Amanda got out of the car. “Did you go by the children’s home again this morning?”
    Amanda didn’t answer. “I need to wash my hands.”
    Evelyn followed her to the back of the Plaza Theater.
    Amanda gave a heavy sigh. “I only said that so you would leave me alone.”
    Evelyn held open the exit door, releasing the pornographic grunts of Vixen Volleyball . The two men standing in the lobby looked very startled to see them.
    “Your wives send their regards,” Evelyn told them, heading toward the bathroom.
    Amanda shook her head as she followed. “You’re going to get us shot one of these days.”
    Evelyn picked up their earlier conversation. “Sweetie, you can’t keep looking in on him every day. Babies need to bond with people. You don’t want him getting attached to you.”
    Amanda turned on the faucet. She looked down at her hands as