The Book of Cold Cases

“The woman sitting twenty feet away from me, reading a book, was Beth Greer. And in 1977, she’d been Claire Lake’s most famous murderer.”

After St. James establishes the status quo life of Shea, the protagonist, she upsets that status quo by introducing Beth Greer into her life. This is where the story truly begins. Beth and her story are irresistible to Shea, a true crime blogger, and will also be the catalyst for Shea’s personal transformation throughout the novel.

“Rich didn’t mean happy, but no one cared about that, least of all the cops who looked at her and saw the girl who would turn them down if they talked to her in a bar.”

Beth identifies two distinct reasons she receives so little sympathy and understanding in the course of the Lady Killer investigation. One is the assumption that because she has money she could not be unhappy, or if she is she has no excuse for that unhappiness. The second is that the police, as men, held her money and beauty against her, as it made them feel inferior. Beth knows that her beauty and wealth shift the power dynamic in her favor, and men resent her for that.

“‘What else did you find?’ I asked, thinking about what had happened when I was nine. The Incident, I called it. My name hadn’t made the news, as far as I knew.”

Beth has told Shea that she checked her out before their meeting. Shea, who never tells anyone about her near-abduction when she was nine, fears that Beth has discovered her secret. For the first time, Shea calls the event The Incident, which signals to the reader how greatly it impacted her life and is still doing so.

“Beth swallowed. ‘Get me out of this,’ she told him. ‘Not just for me. Get me out of this so I can lay the ghosts to rest.’”

Beth has just officially hired Ransom Wells to be her defense attorney. Because he is her family’s lawyer, he and Beth share a wealth of unspoken knowledge and family history. When Beth speaks of laying ghosts to rest, the reader may assume she is speaking of her parents but will realize later that she is referring to Lily, the family ghost who is still very much alive.

“As I talked, Winston Purrchill sauntered around the perimeter of my condo like he was inspecting it, his gait unconcerned. Then he hopped up to my kitchen table and sat, placing himself directly on top of the file I’d made of the Lady Killer case, where it rested in its permanent place on the table.”

Shea has been left a cat by her neighbor, and, after considering taking it to a shelter, she decides to keep it. This is a major step in Shea’s transformation, as she brings the cat into her world and makes room for it in her life. It is also notable that the cat plants himself between Shea and the Lady Killer case because as the case continues the cat will prove to be a major source of tension relief for Shea.

“She was thought to be an improper young lady because she couldn’t cook, could barely make toast that she washed down with wine. No one had considered that she simply hated the kitchen at the Greer mansion and couldn’t stand to be inside it.”

Throughout Beth’s life, she has been consistently judged and found wanting by her parents and by the Claire Lake community. This judgment, in part, occurs because she does not behave according to the feminine ideal—in this case, because she does not cook. Beth points to the lack of empathy she receives and that no one has considered she simply does not want to be in the kitchen because her father was shot in that room.

“But the cat wasn’t just annoyed. He tensed, got his feet under him, and crouched low, his sleek body pressed down in terror. His tail bloomed wide as the fur on it stood up. He hissed, gave a low growl, and bolted off the bed and out of the room.”

Shea’s cat is reacting to something on the recording of Shea and Beth’s interview. When Shea plays it back, she hears another voice under their voices. This event continues Shea’s supernatural experiences in the Greer mansion, but it also serves the purpose of showing the reader that these experiences are not just in Shea’s or Beth’s heads because the cat hears it too.

“Men hated it when she said ‘fuck.’ Women hated it, too, but it was more fun to shock men, watch the expressions on their faces as their opinion of her changed. And it always changed.”

Beth is in the car with Joshua Black, who is driving her home from the bar. She loses her temper and unleashes a stream of profanity. In this scene, St. James once again positions Beth outside of the feminine ideal. However, in this case, Beth puts herself there knowingly, even gleefully, showing that she will use these expectations to subvert circumstances when she chooses.

“‘I can never quite seem to get rid of them,’ Beth said. ‘I get so far, and then…well. Not all the answers you want so desperately are going to come from me. Some of them are going to come from this house.’”

Beth is telling Shea why she has not yet gotten rid of her mother’s clothing. Later in the novel, the reader will realize that she means this quite literally. She has tried to get rid of things before and even tried to leave, but she has only been able to get so far before Lily returns everything, including her, to its place.

“Which one are you today? Mariana would say when they were little girls. Are you bitter, or are you sweet?”

This motif will come up throughout the novel in a variety of contexts. Lily references it in the note she leaves at the Thomas Armstrong murder, and its use tells Beth immediately that Lily is responsible. Beth also considers this saying, as she realizes it is safer and better to be the bitter girl though at first she wanted to be sweet.

“‘She was the shame of my mother’s life. She was the person who ruined mine.’”

Beth is explaining Lily’s relationship to her family and her impact on their lives. Lily was born to Mariana out of wedlock and given up for adoption. Mariana was never able to get past her feelings of shame and guilt, and they eventually led to her death. In addition, Lily is responsible for the crimes Beth was accused of and has haunted her throughout her life, even after Beth kills her.

“‘You make them afraid of you.’ Lily squeezed the teddy bear’s neck briefly, then put it down. ‘Then they won’t pick on you anymore. It’s easy. I’ll show you how.’”

This quote is from the first meeting between Beth and Lily, when they are just six and eight years old. Very quickly, St. James conveys the idea that, though young, Lily is already dangerous and smart. Her understanding of how to manipulate Beth’s classmates through fear, combined with the restrained violence of her squeezing the teddy bear’s neck, shows the reader how dangerous Lily is even though Beth is too young to realize it.

“Even though Mariana never told the end of the story, Beth knew the sweet girl was the one who got eaten. The bitter girl was the one who survived.”

Beth has learned one of the truths about being a woman—women are caught, between being what society wants you to be and suffering as a result, or pushing back against it and being shunned and castigated. This is something Beth learns early on not only from Mariana’s relationship with Lily but also through her experience with the Lady Killer trial. Although Beth was a sweet child, she became bitter as a means of self-preservation.

“‘Being a girl is the best,’ she said, ‘because no one ever believes you’d do something bad. People think you’ll do nothing, which means you can do anything. I’ll show you.”

Lily at a very young age understands fairly clearly the way society views women. She has also already figured out how to exploit it, which is something she will continue to do throughout her life. In this conversation, she is offering to show Beth how to do the same.

“‘We get to be a girlfriend.’ Her voice rose, shrill. ‘Oh, he seemed so nice. He seemed so charming. I never believed he could hurt anyone. Why don’t you ever hear of a woman in a clock tower?’”

Lily is frustrated by society’s constraints that only permit women to be witnesses to the actions of men. With her reference to the clock tower, she shows this frustration is more specifically about the fact that women are not allowed to be bad. She is clearly ready to move into a societal space where she takes action, but the actions she wishes to emulate are like those of Charles Whitman, the man who infamously shot people from the clock tower at the University of Texas at Austin.

“‘What you don’t understand, Shea, is that everything is my fault. All of it. I didn’t pull the trigger, but I might as well have. Everything is on me.’”

Beth grapples with her feelings of guilt throughout her life. She feels as if she is the only one who knew what Lily was capable of, and by saying nothing she has assumed responsibility for everything Lily has done. It is these feelings that keep her trapped in Claire Lake and stop her from moving on.

“Beth stared at them. At Lilly, to thin and waifish under her poncho after years on the road. At Mariana, beaming at this one small touch from her daughter, her firstborn.”

Lily has reappeared in Beth and Mariana’s life after Julian’s death. Beth and Mariana have just started to reconnect, and Beth has had some hope that they can rebuild their life. However, when she sees Mariana’s reaction to Lily and the tiny bit of affection Lily offers her, Beth realizes that Mariana will always prioritize Lily.

“Beth knew that tone. Lily was feeling victorious, untouchable. This was when she was at her weakest.”

After Beth is arrested, Lily calls her at the jail. Beth has been expecting the call, but her response to Lily’s taunts is not to be afraid. She is more calculating now, partly thanks to Lily’s training. She recognizes Lily as a dangerous adversary but shows in this quote that she knows her well enough to be able to effectively fight back.

“When mental illness was combined with a neglectful and possibly abusive childhood, you had a recipe for a serial killer, or so the research said. You had someone you could put in a box, someone you could point to and say: See? Look at that person. That person isn’t me.”

Shea ruminates on the way that society sees serial killers. She points out that it is human nature to try to simplify the motivations of other humans, who are very complex. She understands that we do to differentiate between ourselves and those whose actions we do not understand and to convince ourselves of how very different those others are.

“She didn’t want Lily to see the testimony about the dangerous, psychotic woman who had done this, and possibly get angry. And she didn’t want Lily to see Detective Black.”

Beth is relieved that the media is being kept out of the courtroom during her trial. She does not want to risk Lily’s anger when she sees how the prosecution is defining the killer, and she does not want Lily to see Joshua Black because she is afraid he will be in danger. As the reader discovers, one of the main reasons Beth told no one about Lily is that she was afraid of what Lily would do to Joshua in retaliation.

“It was right there, in my inbox: the reason Beth Greer had agreed to talk to me, to have the entire story come out right now. Lily had been found.”

Shea has wondered throughout her interactions with Beth why Beth had finally decided to tell her story 40 years after the fact. When she remembers a forgotten crime alert and reads it, she realizes human remains have been found by the shore of Claire Lake. From this, she concludes that the remains are Lily’s and that Beth is telling her story at last because her crime is about to be revealed, which will raise the specter of the Lady Killer murders again.

“Lily had gone into her clock tower at last.”

When Beth hears about Thomas Armstrong’s murder, she knows immediately Lily murdered him. She references Charles Whitman, who shot people from the clock tower at University of Texas at Austin because Lily had once wondered why women can never be the person in the clock tower. St. James uses these historical references to place Lily’s actions in context and as a way of illustrating Lily’s mental state.

“I stopped her. Me. Because I was responsible, and I always had been. I was responsible for every single death, just like you’ve felt responsible ever since you escaped your abductor’s car.”

Beth is confessing, somewhat indirectly, that she killed Lily. For Beth, killing Lily was a way to acknowledge her responsibility for Lily’s actions as well as the responsibility she has as the only one who can stop her. She draws a parallel, here, between herself and Shea, understanding that Shea has always felt responsible for the girl who Anton Anders murdered after Shea escaped.