Pretty Girls: A Novel Page 18

  “Paul kept them upstairs in his office. Two big boxes of files and God knows what else. I recognized one of the names on the labels.” Claire’s gaze shifted to the side the same way it did when she was little and she was trying to hide something.

  “What name did you recognize?”

  Claire looked down at her hands. She was picking the cuticle on her thumb. “The woman’s name was familiar to me. I saw her on the news. A story, I mean, not actually her. She came forward because normally the news wouldn’t print, I mean, interview—”

  “Claire, use your words.”

  Claire still would not look up. “Paul was collecting information on a lot of women, and I know that at least one of the women was raped.”

  “How do you know?”

  Claire finally looked her in the eye. “I saw her name on the news. I don’t know her. Paul never mentioned her to me. She’s just this stranger who’s been raped, and Paul has a file on her. And he has a lot of files on other women, too.”

  Lydia felt a sudden cold come over her body. “What kind of information was he collecting?”

  “Where they work. Who they date. Where they go. He hired private detectives to follow them without their knowledge. There are pictures and reports and background checks.” Claire obviously felt cold, too. She stuck her hands deep into her front pockets. “From what I saw, he checks in on them once a year, the same time every year, and I keep asking myself why would he have them followed if not for a reason, and what if that reason is that he raped all of them?”

  Lydia felt like a hummingbird was trapped in her throat. “Does he have a file on me?”

  “No.”

  Lydia studied her carefully. Claire had always held on to secrets like a cat. Was she lying? Could Lydia trust her about something so important?

  “They’re in my office.” Claire hesitated. “Not that I’m saying you should look at them. I mean …” She shrugged. “I don’t know what I mean. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’ve pulled you into this. You can still go. You should probably go.”

  Lydia looked down the driveway. Rick’s truck was parked in a turn-around by the front of the house. He wouldn’t let Lydia drive the van until he changed the wiper blades, which kindness she had returned by letting a special agent with the FBI record his license plate number.

  Rick had crossed paths with the various law enforcement agencies during his time as a heroin addict, because he’d managed to sell almost as much as he’d used. Nolan would need to block out a few hours to read his rap sheet. And then what would he do? Go to the gas station and harass Rick until his boss had to let him go? Swing by the house to interrogate him, and maybe run a check on his neighbors and find out that Lydia lived next door?

  And then Dee would be pulled into it, and the Mothers would find out, and the people who worked at Lydia’s shop would be harassed, and maybe her clients, who would make lame apologies about how they couldn’t let a woman being investigated by the FBI give their poodle a sanitary shave because it was too complicated.

  “Pepper?” Claire had her arms crossed low on her waist. “You should go. I mean it this time. I can’t involve you in this.”

  “I’m already in it up to my neck.”

  “Pepper.”

  Lydia climbed her way back through the garage. Instead of going down the driveway, she headed toward the house. She had dealt with her share of cops, too. They were sharks looking for blood, and by the sound of it, Claire had two boxes of chum in her office that might just get Agent Fred Nolan off all of their backs.

  NINE

  Claire slumped down into the overstuffed chair in her office as she watched her sister go through Paul’s collection of files. Lydia seemed energized by the prospect of uncovering more lurid details, but Claire felt as though she was suffocating under the weight of every new revelation. She couldn’t believe that only two days ago, she had watched Paul’s coffin as it was lowered into the ground. Her body might as well have been buried along with him. Her skin felt desiccated. She had a deep chill in her bones. Even blinking was a challenge, because the temptation to keep her eyes closed was almost too much to resist.

  She stared at the burner phone in her hand. At 12:31 in the morning, Adam had responded to her text about the files with a short, “Okay.”

  Claire didn’t know what that “okay” meant. The USB drive was waiting for him in the mailbox. Was Adam reserving his judgment until he saw what was on it?

  She dropped the phone on the side table. She was sick of all these unanswered questions, and angry that instead of grieving for her husband, she was questioning her own sanity for loving him in the first place.

  Lydia clearly had no such reservations. She was sitting on the floor going through the plastic boxes, her expression the same as every Halloween night they’d shared as kids. She had the colored folders stacked by name on the floor in front of her. The colors corresponded to years, which meant that over the last six years, Paul had paid to have eighteen women stalked.

  Or worse.

  Claire did not tell Lydia that this was likely the tip of the iceberg. While they were out in the garage, she had remembered the storage room in the basement under the main house. Claire had forgotten about the room because she’d only seen it once when they first moved in. This fact would probably sound unbelievable to Lydia, but the basement was huge. There was a screening room, a full gym, a locker room with sauna and steam room, a massage room, a wine cellar, a billiards room with both a pool table and a ping-pong table, a guest suite with full bath, a caterers’ kitchen at the base of the elevator, a stocked bar, and a seating area large enough to comfortably accommodate twenty people.

  Was it any wonder that Claire had forgotten about a room the size of a jail holding area?

  Paul was too organized to be called a hoarder, but he liked to keep things. Claire had always chalked up his collections to having lost everything when his parents died, but now she was seeing a more sinister motivation. He’d built shelves downstairs in the storage closet to hold the many plastic file boxes that he’d been filling since his time at Auburn. When they’d first moved into the house, he’d shown Claire the artifacts he’d kept from their early years—the first birthday card she’d ever given him, a note scribbled on paper that recorded the first time she’d ever written him the words “I love you.”

  At the time, Claire had found his collection awfully sweet, but now all she could think about was that there were dozens of boxes down there, and that three women a year for the last eighteen years would mean fifty-four more folders filled with fifty-four more unspeakable violations.

  There was one file that Lydia would never see. Her sister was disturbed enough by the contents of the folders. If she found out that Paul had done the same to her, there would be no going back.

  “Are you all right?” Lydia looked up from the report she was reading. “Do you want to go lie down?”

  “I’m fine,” Claire said, but her eyelids felt heavy. Her body was so tired that her hands were trembling. She had read somewhere or heard somewhere that criminals always go to sleep after they confess their crimes. Concealing their bad acts took up so much energy that having the truth laid bare brought on a deep, sweet sleep.

  Had she confessed to Lydia? Or had she just shared a burden?

  Claire closed her eyes. Her breathing got deeper. She was awake—she could still hear Lydia greedily thumbing through pages—but she was also asleep, and in that sleep, she felt herself dipping into a dream. There was no narrative, just fragments of a typical day. She was at her desk paying bills. She was practicing the piano. She was in the kitchen trying to come up with a grocery list. She was making phone calls to raise money for the Christmas toy drive. She was studying the shoes in her closet, trying to put together an outfit to wear to lunch.

  Through all of this, she could feel Paul’s presence in the house. They were very independent people. They’d always had their own interests, done their own things, but Claire always felt reass
ured when Paul was close by. Light bulbs would be changed. Faults would be cleared from the security system. The remote control would be deciphered. Trash would be taken out. Clothes would be folded. Batteries would be charged. Big spoons and little spoons would never mingle in the silverware drawer.

  He was such a sturdy, capable man. She liked that he was taller than she was. She liked that she had to look up at him when they were dancing. She liked the way she felt when his arms were around her. He was so much stronger than Claire. Sometimes, he would pick her up. She would feel her feet lift off the ground. His chest felt so solid against hers. He would tease her about something silly, and she would laugh because she knew that he loved hearing her laugh, and then he would say, “Tell me you want this.”

  Claire jerked awake. Her arms flew up as if to ward off a blow. Her throat felt scratchy. Her heart clicked against her ribs.

  Morning sun streamed into her office. Lydia was gone. The plastic boxes were empty. The files were gone.

  Claire lunged toward her desk. She opened the drawer. Lydia’s file was still hidden inside. Claire’s relief was so pronounced that she wanted to cry.

  She touched her fingers to her cheek. She was crying. Her tear ducts were on constant standby for anything that would send them over. Instead of giving in to it, Claire shut the drawer. She wiped her eyes. She stood up. She straightened her shirt as she made her way to the kitchen.

  She heard Lydia’s voice before she saw her. She was obviously talking on the phone.

  “Because I want you to stay at Rick’s tonight.” Lydia paused. “Because I said so.” She paused again. “Sweetheart, I know you’re an adult, but adults are like vampires. The older ones are much more powerful.”

  Claire smiled. She had known Lydia would be a good mother. She sounded just like Helen before Julia disappeared.

  “All right. I love you, too.”

  Claire stayed in the hallway long after Lydia had ended the call. She didn’t want her sister to have any fears about being overheard. If Claire was going to continue to lie about knowing every single detail of Lydia’s life, she could at least do a good job.

  She smoothed down the back of her hair as she walked into the kitchen. “Hey.”

  Lydia was sitting at the bar. She was wearing reading glasses, which would’ve been funny if Claire wasn’t a couple of years away from needing them herself. Paul’s files were scattered across the kitchen island. Lydia had Claire’s iPad in front of her. She took off the reading glasses as she asked, “Did you sleep all right?”

  “I’m sorry.” Claire didn’t know what she was apologizing for; there were so many things to choose from. “I should’ve helped you go through all of this.”

  “No, you should’ve gotten some sleep.” Lydia started to lean back in the chair, but she caught herself before she fell over the low back. “These are the stupidest chairs I’ve ever sat in.”

  “They look good,” Claire said, because that was all that had ever mattered to Paul. She went to the video screen on the kitchen wall. The flashing time read 6:03. She pulled up the mailbox camera. Adam hadn’t been by yet. Claire didn’t know what to make of that, because she still didn’t know which files Adam was after.

  She told Lydia, “The USB drive is still in the mailbox.”

  “You have a camera in your mailbox?”

  “Doesn’t everybody?”

  Lydia gave a sour look. “What was the name of the woman you saw on the news?”

  Claire shook her head. She didn’t understand.

  “In the garage, you said that you recognized a woman’s name from one of the files because you had seen her on the news. I looked them all up on your iPad. Only two had news items.”

  Claire spitballed an explanation. “She was in Atlanta.”

  “Leslie Lewis?” Lydia pushed an open file folder across the counter so that Claire could see the woman’s photograph. She was blonde and pretty and wearing thick black glasses. “I found a story about her in the Atlanta Journal archives. She was staying in a hotel during Dragon Con. She thought she was opening her door for room service, but a guy pushed his way in and raped her.”

  Claire looked away from the woman’s photo. Quinn + Scott’s downtown offices were near the convention site. Last year, Paul had sent her pictures of drunken people dressed like Darth Vader and the Green Lantern clogging the street.

  Lydia slid over another file: another pretty, young blonde. “Pam Clayton. There was a story in the Patch. She was jogging near Stone Mountain Park. The attacker dragged her into the woods. It was after seven, but it was August so it was still light out.”

  Paul’s tennis team occasionally had games in the park.

  “Look at the dates on the files. He hired the detectives to follow them on the anniversaries of their rapes.”

  Claire took her word for it. She didn’t want to read any more details. “Did the attacker say anything to either of them?”

  “If he did, it wasn’t in the articles. We need the police reports.”

  Claire wondered why Paul hadn’t asked the private detectives to track down the reports. Lydia’s file contained her arrest records and all the ancillary paperwork. Maybe Paul figured it was a bad idea to tip his hand by asking all of these different detectives to check up on all of these women who had been raped. Or maybe he didn’t need the reports because he already knew exactly what had happened to them.

  Or maybe he was getting the reports from Captain Jacob Mayhew.

  “Claire?”

  She shook her head, but now that she had the thought in her mind, she couldn’t get rid of it. Why hadn’t she studied Mayhew’s expression while he watched the movies? Then again, what good would it do? Hadn’t she learned enough about Paul’s duplicity to realize that her judgment could not be trusted?

  “Claire?” Lydia waited for her attention. “Did you notice something about the women?”

  Claire shook her head again.

  “They all look like you.”

  Claire didn’t point out that that meant they looked like Lydia, too. “So, what now? We’re holding these women’s lives in our hands. We don’t know if we can trust Mayhew. Even if we did, he didn’t take the movies seriously. Why would he investigate the files?”

  Lydia shrugged. “We can call Nolan.”

  Claire couldn’t believe what she was suggesting. “Better these women than us, you mean?”

  “I wouldn’t put it like that, but now that you—”

  “They’ve already been raped. You want to sic that asshole on them, too?”

  Lydia shrugged. “Maybe it’ll give them some peace knowing that the man who attacked them isn’t around anymore.”

  “That’s a bullshit excuse.” Claire was adamant. “We know firsthand what Nolan is like. He probably won’t even believe them. Or worse, he’ll flirt with them like he flirts with me. There’s a reason most women don’t go to the cops when they’re raped.”

  “What are you going to do, write them a check?”

  Claire walked into the family room before she said something she would regret. Writing some checks didn’t sound like a bad idea. Paul had attacked these women. The least she could do was pay for therapy or whatever else they needed.

  Lydia said, “If Paul had actually raped me, and I found out that every September for almost eighteen years, he’d been stalking me, taking pictures of me, I would want to grab a gun and kill him.”

  Claire stared at the Rothko over the fireplace. “What would you do if you found out that he was already dead and there was nothing you could do about it?”

  “I would still want to know.”

  Claire felt no temptation to reveal the truth. Lydia had always blustered about how tough she was, but there was a reason she was already numbing herself with drugs at the age of sixteen.

  Claire said, “I can’t do it. I won’t do it.”

  “I know you don’t want to hear it, but it makes me glad to know he’s dead. And to know how he died, even though it must
have been rotten for you.”

  “Rotten,” Claire repeated, thinking the word was borderline insulting. Rotten was being late for a movie or losing a great parking space. Watching your husband get stabbed and bleed to death in front of your own eyes was fucking excruciating. “No. I won’t do it.”

  “Fine.” Lydia started grabbing folders and stacking them together. She was clearly angry, but Claire wasn’t going to back down. She knew what it was like to be the focus of Fred Nolan’s interest. She couldn’t unleash that on Paul’s victims. There was already enough guilt on her conscience without throwing these poor women into the lion’s den.

  She walked farther into the family room. The sunlight was blinding. Claire closed her eyes for a moment and let the heat from the sun warm her face. And then she turned away because it seemed wrong to enjoy something so basic considering all of the misery they had uncovered.

  Her gaze traveled to the area behind one of the couches. Lydia had spread out some paperwork on the floor. Instead of more private detective reports, Claire was surprised to recognize her father’s handiwork.

  Sam Carroll had devoted an entire wall in his apartment to tracking down leads about Julia. There were photographs and note-cards and torn sheets of paper with phone numbers and names scribbled across them. In all, the entire collection took up around five by ten feet of space. He’d lost his deposit for the apartment because of all the holes the thumbtacks had left in the Sheetrock.

  She asked Lydia, “You kept Dad’s wall?”

  “No, it was in the second file box.”

  Of course it was.

  Claire knelt down. The wall had defined her father for so many years. His desperation still emanated from every scrap of paper. Vet school had taught him to be a meticulous note-taker. He had recorded everything he’d read or heard or witnessed, combined police reports and statements, until the case was as imprinted on his brain as the structure of a dog’s digestive system or the signs of feline leukemia.

  She picked up a sheet of notebook paper that had her father’s handwriting on it. In the last two weeks of his life, Sam Carroll had developed a slight palsy after a minor stroke. His suicide note had been barely legible. Claire had forgotten what his original penmanship looked like.