“I will.I’m not afraid of her.”
They pulled apart, and Annie sniffled.They stared at one another, and Emily suddenly knew she had found a friend for life.She couldn’t wait to visit with Annie on the outside.To meet her son, go for a walk through High Park in the spring and talk about anything, everything else.
The bell rang, slicing through the tender moment with obnoxious force.
“Well,” Annie said, rolling her shoulders back.“I’ll talk to you soon, I guess.”
“I’m going to try to confront Stone this afternoon,” Emily said as their fellows all stood and headed noisily for the doors.“I don’t know what will happen.But if I’m still here at supper, I’ll eat with you today, okay?”
“Okay,” Annie said, smiling, and for the first time, Emily saw true joy in her face.
As Emily exited the dining hall, making her way toward the chapel for prayer time, a sudden throat-clearing behind her made her whip around.
June was standing several feet away, lurking near the blind corner by the classrooms.“Those sound like some big plans,” she said.
Emily frowned at her.“June, how long were you—?”
“What do you expect that woman to do once she’s cornered?”June demanded, brows narrowed over unblinking eyes.“She’s gonna bite, that’s what.Trust me.I know.And Stone’s got the sharpest teeth in this place.Bribery’s one thing.Theft, another.But you try this, kid, and somebody’s gonna get hurt.”
Emily scoffed.“That’s a bit rich, coming from the woman who set fire to the building,” she said, taking no care to file down the edge in her voice.She’d had about enough of June Jones’s self-righteousness.
June hissed like an angry goose and stepped toward her.“To helpyou!”Emily was aware a couple of other inmates were watching them.
“To help everyone in here!”Emily fired back.“To get the right people to pay attention!To get this place shut down!”
June pinned Emily with her sharp green-eyed gaze.“The most dangerous people are those with either plenty or nothing to lose, and Stone’sgot plenty.Her job is everything to her, she needs the money to pay those creditors or she’s liable to end up in here with us.”
“Iknow,” Emily fumed, her anger coming out hot.“And she belongs in the psych ward!That’s why—”
“You’ve pushed far enough, you’ve got the evidence you need,” June said, voice low now.“Wait it out, and if there’s an investigation, that friend of yours might get released anyway.But if you try to blackmail Stone, I tell you right now, you’ll end up in an unmarked grave, kid.”
“I know what I’m doing,” Emily said firmly.
“Do you?”June spared her one more appraising glare before she swept past, leaving a trail of doubt in her wake.
CHAPTER 33
RACHEL
Clinton, Ontario—June, 1996
Rachel stands from her desk and faces the corkboard on the wall behind her.She stares at it for a while as one of the old light bulbs in the drop ceiling hums overhead.It started doing that four months ago, and was annoying at first, but as Rachel’s request to have it replaced has gotten bumped farther down the maintenance list behind Green’s own priorities, she’s found it actually provides a welcome sort of white noise right above her as she puzzles over cases.
She fingers the five strips of paper in her hand, on which she’s written the names of the women from the Mercer prison who died or were unaccounted for in the records from the mid-fifties until the prison shuttered in 1962.Her eyes slide over to the board beside it, the Stacy Cooper case that she still can’t bring herself to dismantle.Because she knows, in her gut, that it isn’t over yet.Knows that she’ll spend the rest of her career trying to solve it.
She reaches for a box of thumbtacks.She pins the names up, one by one:
JESSICA HAWKINS
ELSIE CHALIFOUX
ANNIE LITTLE
WILMA CARDINAL
EMILY RADCLIFFE
She stands back, eyes narrowed at the list, which currently means nothing to her.But, as always, she knows the connections will emerge, one after another, as the breadcrumbs of the trail get closer and closer together.
