Pretty Girls (38 page)

The man squirted a glob of lubricant onto his palm and started to stroke himself. He cleared his throat again. There was something eerily businesslike about the routine, as if he was getting ready for another day at the office.

None of this would make it into the final clip. This was pre-production. These were the mundane details that Paul had edited out.

The masked man turned to the camera. Claire fought the urge to jump out of the way. He put his face close to the lens, which she gathered was something of a trademark, like the lion roaring for MGM. The man smiled for the audience, his teeth flashing against the metal zipper. Then he walked over to Anna.

Anna screamed.

He waited for her to stop. The sound wound down from her throat like a siren.

He used his finger to pry open a wound on her belly. She screamed again. The man waited again, but he wasn’t unmoved. His cock had gotten harder. His skin was flushed with excitement.

“Please,” Anna begged. “Please stop.”

The man leaned in, his lips close to Anna’s ear. He whispered something that made the girl flinch.

Claire sat up in the chair. She used the mouse to rewind the movie. She turned up the sound. She pressed PLAY.

Anna Kilpatrick was begging, “—stop.”

The man leaned in, his lips close to Anna’s ear. Claire dialed up the sound. She leaned forward, too, her ear as close to the computer speaker as the man’s mouth was to Anna’s ear.

The masked man whispered in a soft drawl, “Tell me you want this.”

Claire froze. She stared blankly at the metal shelves with their ancient equipment. Her vision blurred. She felt a sharp, sudden pain in her chest.

He repeated, “Tell me you want—”

Claire paused the movie. She didn’t rewind. Instead, she clicked on the magnifying glass to manually zoom in on the masked man’s back.

This was the unedited footage. Paul hadn’t yet filtered the light or corrected the sound, nor had he erased any identifying marks, like the constellation of three moles underneath the killer’s left shoulder blade.

The kitchen phone started to ring.

Claire didn’t move.

The phone rang again.

And again.

She stood up. She left the garage. She pulled the door closed behind her. She walked into the kitchen and picked up the phone.

“You lied to me,” Paul said. “I had one of my people check the inventory from the crime scene. The keytag wasn’t on there.”

Claire could only hear the words “one of my people.” How many people did he have? Were Mayhew and Nolan the tip of the iceberg?

Paul said, “Where is it, Claire?”

“I have it. Hidden.”

“Where?”

Claire reached up and turned around the fake air freshener so she was out of view.

“Claire?”

“I’m leaving the house now. You are going to send me a photograph of Lydia every twenty minutes, and if I see that you’ve touched one hair on her head, I will upload the entire contents of the USB drive to YouTube.”

Paul scoffed. “You don’t know how to do that.”

“You don’t think I can walk into any copy store and find some pimply geek to do it for me?”

He didn’t answer. She couldn’t hear road noises anymore. He had stopped the car. He was pacing. She heard his shoes crunching on gravel. Was Lydia still in the trunk? She must be, because Paul had abducted Lydia for leverage and killing her would take everything away.

Suddenly, Claire was struck by a thought. Why had Paul taken Lydia in the first place? If he was really watching the Dunwoody house, then he knew that Lydia had only entered the scene less than a day ago. Even without that, Claire was the one who knew where the USB drive was. Claire was the one who could get it for him.

So, why hadn’t he taken Claire?

She had no doubt in her mind that under even the slightest threat of physical harm, she would’ve told Paul that Adam had the drive. But Paul hadn’t taken Claire. He had made the wrong choice. He never made the wrong choice.

“Listen.” He was trying to sound reasonable again. “I need the information on that drive. It’s important. For both of us. Not just for me.”

“Send me the first picture of Lydia, unharmed, and we’ll talk about it.”

“I could cut her into a thousand pieces before she dies.”

That voice. It was the same tone he’d used with Claire in the alley, the same sinister drawl she’d heard on the speakers before Paul could edit his voice into a stranger’s. Claire tasted her heart in her mouth, but she knew she could not show this man any fear.

She said, “You want me to go away with you.”

It was Paul’s turn to be silent.

She had found his weak spot, but not on purpose. Claire was just now seeing the motivation behind Paul’s wrong choice. As usual, the answer had been right in front of her all along. He kept saying that he loved her. He had hit Claire, but not with all of his strength. He had sent the men to break into the house during the funeral so Claire wouldn’t be there. He had made the wrong choice and taken Lydia because the right choice meant hurting Claire.

He might be able to punch his wife in the face, but he couldn’t torture her.

She said, “Promise me you didn’t participate in any of the movies.”

“Never.” His hope was as tangible as a piece of string between them. “I never hurt them. I promise you on my life.”

He sounded so persuasive, so sincere, that Claire might have believed him. But she had seen the uncut movies—the raw footage before Paul changed the sound and edited down the scenes and filtered the skin tones and distorted the voices and slyly altered blemishes so that the true identity of the masked man would remain unknown.

Claire knew what her husband looked like when he neatly laid out his tools for a project. She knew the roll of his hand when he jerked himself off. She knew the three tiny moles under his left shoulder blade that she could feel when she lightly stroked his back with her fingers.

Which is why she knew without a doubt that the masked man was Paul.

Claire told him, “Send the pictures. I’ll let you know what we’re going to do when I’m ready.”

“Claire—”

She slammed down the phone.

vi.

I am sorry my handwriting is so difficult to read, sweetheart. I’ve had a very minor stroke. I am okay now, so please don’t worry. It happened shortly after I finished my last letter. I went to sleep scheming my great plans and woke the next day to find that I could not get out of bed. I will admit only to you that I was frightened (though I am really okay now). I experienced a momentary blindness in my right eye. My arm and leg refused to move. Finally, after a great deal of struggling, I managed to rise. When I called your mother to wish her happy birthday, my speech was so unintelligible that she immediately called an ambulance.

The doctor, who assured your mother that he was, in fact, old enough to shave, said that I had experienced a TIA, which of course further infuriated your mother (she has always been hostile to abbreviation). She coaxed him into speaking English, which is how we found out that a TIA, or mini-stroke, stands for transient ischemic attacks.

Attacks as in plural, your mother clarified with the poor man, which explained some of the weakness and dizziness I’ve been experiencing for the last week.

Or month, between you and me, because now that I think back on my last visits with Ben Carver, I recall some odd exchanges that indicate there were times when my speech must have been unintelligible with him, too.

So perhaps we have our answer as to why Ben Carver stopped my visits and wrote that inscription in the Dr. Seuss book. His mother suffered a massive stroke a few years ago. He must have been attuned to the signs.

There is kindness in so many unexpected places.

Can I tell you that I am the happiest I have been in a good, long while? That your sisters rushed to my side, that my family surrounded me, enveloped me, and that I was finally reminded of the life we all shared before we lost you? It was the first time in almost six years that we all gathered in a room and did not hurt for the lack of you.

Not that we have forgotten you, sweetheart. We will never, ever forget you.

Of course, your mother has used the TIA as an excuse to berate me for my continued tilting at windmills (her words). Though stress is a contributing factor to stroke, and though I have always had high blood pressure, I believe the fault rests firmly on my own shoulders for not getting enough sleep and exercise. I have been skipping my morning walks. I have been lying awake too late at night, unable to turn off my brain. As I have always told you girls, sleep and exercise are the two most important components to a healthy life. Shame on me for not taking my own good advice.

I suppose you could call it a silver lining that your mother has been by the apartment every day since I got out of the hospital. She brings me food and helps me bathe. (I don’t really need help bathing, but who am I to stop a beautiful woman from washing me?) Every day, she says all of the things that she has been saying to me for almost six years: You are a fool. You are going to kill yourself. You have to give this up. You are the love of my life and I cannot watch you draw out your suicide any longer.

As if I would ever choose to leave any of you by my own hand.

I know instinctively that your mother does not want to hear what I’ve found out about Paul’s father. She would dismiss the theory as one of my harebrained and pointless pursuits, like chasing down the man who runs the Taco Stand or pushing Nancy Griggs so hard that her father threatened to file a restraining order. (She graduated summa cum laude, sweetheart. She has a good job, a thoughtful husband, and a flatulent cocker spaniel. Did I tell you that already?)

So I keep my thoughts to myself and let your mother cook for me and bathe me and she lets me hold her and we make love and I think of our lives together after I finally have proof that even Huckleberry will have to believe.

I will win back your mother. I will be the father that Pepper needs me to be. I will convince Claire that she is worth more— deserves more—than the men she has long settled on. I will once again be an example to the women in my life—make them know what a good husband and father can be, and make my girls look for that in the men they choose rather than these worthless pieces of flotsam that continually wash up on their lonely shores.

This is what I will have when all of this is over: I will have my life back. I will have my good memories of you. I will have a job. I will take care of my family. I will take care of animals. I will have justice. I will know where you are. I will finally find you and hold you in my arms and gently lay you down in your final resting place.

Because I know what it feels like to finally have a genuine thread to pull, and I know in my heart that I can pull that thread and unwind the whole story of your life after you were stolen from us.

These are the threads that I am picking at: Gerald Scott was a peeping Tom who looked at girls just like you. He took images of them. He must have stored all of these images away somewhere. If those images are still around and if I can gain access to them and if I find one of you, then that could be a solid lead that helps us understand what really happened that night in March that seems not so long ago.

I am not sure whether or not Paul knows about his father’s peeping Tom proclivities, but at the very least, I can use the information to get him away from your baby sister.

I feel very strongly about this, sweetheart: Paul is not good for Claire. There is something rotting inside of him, and one day—if not soon, then in five years, ten years, maybe even twenty—that rot will eat its way to the outside and spread into everything he touches.

Though you know that I love you, my life from this point forward is devoted to making sure this terrible, rotting devil never gets the chance to spread his evil to your two sisters.

Do you remember Brent Lockwood? He was your very first “real” boyfriend. You were fifteen. The boys you liked before Brent were the innocuous, asexual types who could pass for any member of whatever boy band you were listening to at the moment. I would drive you on dates in the stationwagon and make the boy sit in the back. I would glare at him in the rear-view mirror. I would make monosyllabic grunts when he called me Dr. Carroll or expressed an interest in the veterinary arts.

Brent was different. He was sixteen years old, half boy, half man. He had an Adam’s apple. He wore acid-washed jeans and kept his hair high mulletted Daniel Boone-like in the back. He came to the house to ask permission to take you out on a date, because he had a car and he wanted to take you out in that car alone and I would never let anyone do that until I looked him in the eyes and made certain that I had scared the ever-loving shit out of him.

I know you find this hard to believe, sweetheart, but I once was a sixteen-year-old boy. The only reason I wanted a car was so I could get girls alone inside of it. Which was a completely understandable, even laudable, goal to all the boys my age, but felt completely different when I was a man, and a father, and that girl was you.

I told him to get a haircut and get a job, then come back and ask me again.

A week later, he was back at my door. His mullet was lopped. He had just started working at McDonald’s.

Your mother cackled like a witch and told me next time, I should be more specific.

You spent hours in your room before that first date with Brent. When you finally opened your door, I smelled perfume and hairspray and all of these strange, womanly smells that I never expected to come from my own daughter. And you were beautiful. So beautiful. I scanned my eyes across your face looking for disagreeable things—too much mascara, too-heavy eyeliner—but there was nothing but a light brushing of color that brought out the pale blue of your eyes. I can’t remember what you were wearing or how you had styled your hair (this is your mother’s domain) but I do remember this breathless feeling in my chest, as if the alveoli inside my lungs were slowly collapsing, slowly depriving me of any oxygen, slowly depriving me of my little tomboy who climbed trees and ran after me when I went for my morning walks.