Page 87 of The Lost Girls of Willowbrook

Her eyes widened. How was that possible? Then she remembered the rank, sour odor when she first arrived, how she’d searched for the source but couldn’t find it. Now she knew. The smell had been coming from Alan’s corpse. Her stomach clenched. “Why would Wayne want to kill him? I mean, he was an asshole, but—”

“Tell me what happened,” he said. “Give me every detail.”

She told him everything she could remember: how she had been getting the spare key out of her mother’s jewelry box so she could give the other one back to the super, how she decided to look for money, how she stepped in blood and saw more on the bed skirt, how she found Alan under the bed.

“I woke up early because I thought I heard Eddie leaving for work,” she said. “Then I found Alan and I wondered if what I’d heard was the person who killed him. I was terrified because I didn’t know if he was still in the apartment. But if Alan has been dead for a while, it must have been Eddie leaving after all.”

Detective Nolan raised his eyebrows. “Did you say Eddie?”

She nodded. “Yeah, he came by after Officer Minor dropped me off. I’m not sure what time he got there, but he was waiting outside when I left to go to the store. He wanted to buy me breakfast, so we went to the Top Hat to get something to eat, then he slept on the couch because I was scared to be alone and—”

“Are you talking about Eddie King from Willowbrook?”

“Yes,” she said. “I know I probably shouldn’t be hanging around with him, but he was the only one who would listen to me. If it weren’t for him . . .”

Detective Nolan pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut as if stricken by a sudden headache.

“What?” she said. “You don’t believe me?”

“It’s not that,” he said. “It’s just—”

“What is it then?” she said, on the verge of tears again. “Did something happen to Eddie? Is he dead? Did Wayne kill him too?”

He took the notebook out of his coat pocket and grabbed a pen from the desk, his frown lines growing deeper. “No, he’s not dead. What time did you say he was at your apartment?”

“It was a little after one in the morning when I went outside and he pulled up beside me. I was walking to the store to pick up a few groceries, but he offered to take me to breakfast.”

He wrote down the information. “You said he pulled up beside you?” he said.

She nodded.

“In what?”

“A red Mustang. I was surprised because it looked brand new. I didn’t think he could afford it working at Willowbrook as a janitor. But he said his family is rich. His uncle works there, too, so that’s how he got the job.”

Nolan kept taking notes, his face unreadable. “And he took you to the Top Hat?”

She nodded.

“Did you see anyone you know at the diner? Talk to anyone?”

“Just the waitress, Iris. She said Alan told everyone I was visiting his sister out on Long Island. That’s why no one was looking for me when I was at Willowbrook. But Alan doesn’t . . . didn’t have a sister.”

“When did Iris talk to Alan?”

“She didn’t. She overheard my friends talking about it. She thought Eddie was my cousin.”

“Any idea when your friends might have talked to Alan?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a few days after I went to Willowbrook? Iris didn’t say when they were there, and I didn’t ask.”

“Do you know Iris’s last name?”

“No.”

“I need your friends’ names and addresses.”

She gave him Heather’s and Dawn’s information. “I’m not sure who else was with them, but they’re the ones who would have asked Alan about me.”

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