Pretty Girls (55 page)

They were in the house on Boulevard. Helen was making lunch in the kitchen. Claire was supposed to be helping Lydia pack Julia’s things, but she had easily fallen back into the old pattern of letting her older sister do everything.

“Look how tiny she was.” Lydia smoothed out a pair of Jordache jeans. She splayed her hand at the waist. Her thumb and pinky finger were only inches from the sides. “I used to borrow these.” She sounded astonished. “I thought I was so fat when she died.”

When she died
.

That’s what they were saying now—not
When Julia disappeared
or
When Julia went missing
, because the DNA had confirmed what they had known in their hearts all along: Julia Carroll was dead.

Last week they had laid her to rest beside their father. The ceremony was small, just Claire, Helen, Lydia, and Grandma Ginny, who kept freaking Lydia out by telling her she was just as pretty as she remembered. They had taken Ginny home after the burial and met Dee and Rick at the Boulevard house. Christmas was only a week away. There were presents under the tree. They sat at the long dining-room table and ate fried chicken and drank iced tea and told long-forgotten stories about the departed—the way Sam used to hum every time he ate ice cream and how Julia had forgotten all the notes before her first piano recital. They heard stories about Dee, too, because they had missed seventeen years of her life and she was such an interesting and bubbly and smart and pretty young girl. She was clearly her own person, but she was so much like Julia that Claire still felt her heart skip a beat every time she saw her.

“Hey, lazybutt.” Lydia dumped a drawer full of socks on the bed beside Claire. “Make yourself useful.”

Claire sorted the socks with a deliberate slowness so that Lydia would get annoyed and take over. Julia had loved little-girl patterns with pink hearts and red lips and various breeds of dogs. Someone would get good use out of them. They were donating their sister’s clothes to the homeless shelter, the same shelter she had volunteered for the day Gerald Scott had decided to take her away from them.

And Paul, because the photograph in the barn proved he was an active participant in their sister’s murder.

Lydia had relayed all the other details that Paul had confessed to in the garage. They knew about their father’s staged suicide. They knew about the notebooks. The letters Helen had written to Lydia that were never delivered. Paul’s plans for Dee when she turned nineteen. At some point, Claire had chosen to pull a Helen and stopped asking questions because she did not want to know the answers. There was no difference between the blue pill and the red pill.

There were only degrees of suffering.

Paul had been a violent psychopath. He was a torturer. He was a murderer. His color-coded files had been investigated and he’d been proven to be a serial rapist. The files in the basement storage area had led the FBI to offshore accounts with hundreds of millions of dollars deposited from customers all around the world. Claire had guessed correctly about Paul’s franchising the system. There were other masked men in Germany, France, Egypt, Australia, Ireland, India, Turkey …

Past a certain point, more detailed knowledge about the volume of her husband’s sins could not make Claire’s burden feel any heavier.

“I think this is yours.” Lydia held up a white T-shirt with RELAX written in black letters across the front. The collar had been cut out
Flashdance
-style.

Claire said, “I used to wear that with the most amazing pair of rainbow-colored leg warmers.”

“Those were my leg warmers, you brat.”

Claire caught the shirt Lydia threw at her head. She held it up in front of her. It was a good shirt. She could probably still wear it.

“Have you thought about what you’re going to do?”

Claire shrugged. This was a common question. Everyone wanted to know what Claire was going to do. She was living with Helen at the moment, not least of all because her mother’s neighbors were much less likely to talk to the press, which is what everyone in Dunwoody who’d ever met Claire or even seen her cross a room was doing. The women on her tennis team sounded devastated for the cameras, yet they all somehow managed to get their hair and make-up professionally done before appearing on film. Even Allison Hendrickson had joined the fray, though no one had yet made the obvious joke about Claire’s violent propensity toward kneecaps.

At least no one had but Claire.

Lydia said, “That teaching job at the school sounds nice. You love art.”

“Wynn thinks I’ll be all right.” Claire rolled onto her back. She stared up at the Billy Idol poster taped on the ceiling above the bed.

“You’ll still need to get a job.”

“Maybe.” Paul’s assets had been frozen. The Dunwoody house had been seized. Wynn Wallace had explained that sorting out the ill-gotten gains from Paul’s legitimate business holdings would take years and likely consume millions in legal fees.

Of course, Paul had obviously considered that when he structured his estate.

Claire told Lydia, “The life insurance policies were owned by an irrevocable trust that Quinn and Scott paid for. There’s a clear paper trail. I can draw from it any time.”

Lydia stared at her. “You can collect on Paul’s life insurance policies?”

“Seems only fair. I’m the one who killed him.”

“Claire,” Lydia warned, because Claire wasn’t supposed to joke about getting away with murder.

And as far as she knew, Claire had certainly gotten away with it. Not to brag—because Lydia wouldn’t let her do that, either—but if Claire had learned one thing from her previous sojourn into the criminal justice system, it was that you didn’t have to talk to the police unless you wanted to. Claire had sat in an interrogation room and remained silent until Wynn Wallace had arrived at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s regional office and helped her come up with a legally sound defense for arson and murder.

Good thing, because apparently, committing a felony in the act of a murder generally meant you ended up on death row.

Claire had ended up in the passenger’s seat of Wynn Wallace’s Mercedes.

Paul had started the fire. Claire had shot him in self-defense.

Lydia was the only witness, but she’d told the investigators that she’d blacked out, so she had no idea what happened.

Between the rain and the firemen who soaked the smoldering embers of the Fuller house, there wasn’t a lot of pesky evidence to poke holes in the story. Not that anyone was paying close attention to Claire’s crimes by then. Her timed email with the Tor link was already making the rounds. The
Black and Red
had picked it up first, then the
Atlanta Journal
, then the blogs, then the national news stations. So much for her fears that no one would click an anonymously sent link.

Her biggest regret was that she had included Huckleberry in the email list, because according to witnesses, Sheriff Carl Huckabee had been sitting at his computer reading Claire’s email when he grabbed his chest and died of a massive heart attack.

He was eighty-one years old. He lived in a nice house that was paid off. He’d seen his children and grandchildren grow up. He’d spent summers fishing and winters at the beach and pretty much enjoyed all of his other twisted hobbies with absolutely no impediments.

If you asked Claire, Huckleberry was the one who’d really gotten away with murder.

“Hey.” Lydia threw a sock at Claire to get her attention. “Have you given any more thought about seeing a real therapist?”

“‘With a poster of Rasputin and a beard down to his knee?’”

“More like ‘Kid Fears.’”

Claire laughed. They had been listening to Indigo Girls on one of the hundreds of mix tapes Julia had kept in a shoebox under her bed. “I’ll think about it,” she told Lydia, because she knew that the twelve-step program was important to her sister. It was also the only reason Lydia was able to stand there folding Julia’s clothes instead of curling into a ball in the corner.

But as Claire had told her court-appointed therapist during their last mandated session, her quick temper had ended up leading them to Julia. Maybe one day, maybe with a real therapist, Claire would work on her anger issues. God knew there was plenty enough to work on, but for right now, she wasn’t inclined to get rid of the very thing that had saved them all.

Who the hell would?

Lydia said, “Did you see the news?”

“Which news?” Claire asked, because there was so much that they could barely keep up with it.

“Mayhew and that other detective were denied bail.”

“Falke,” Claire provided. She didn’t know why they were still holding Harvey Falke. He was absolutely a bad cop, but he was just as clueless as Adam Quinn had been about Paul’s illegal business. At least that’s what Fred Nolan had told Claire after the Big Boys came down from Washington and interrogated both men for three weeks.

Could she believe Fred Nolan? Could Claire ever believe another man for as long as she lived? Rick was nice. Lydia had finally asked him to move in with her. He was taking care of her. He was helping her heal.

And yet.

How many times had Claire done the same thing for Paul? Not that she thought Rick was a bad man, but she’d thought Paul was a good man, too.

At least she was certain on which side of the line Jacob Mayhew fell. His house had been raided. The FBI had searched his computers and found links to almost all the movies that Paul had ever created, plus many of the international ones.

Claire had guessed correctly about the scale of the operation. Between Mayhew’s computer, the contents of the USB drive, and the VHS tapes from the garage, the FBI and Interpol were working to identify hundreds of victims who had hundreds of families all over the world who might one day find their way back to peace.

The Kilpatricks. The O’Malleys. The Van Dykes. The Deichmanns. The Abdullahs. The Kapadias. Claire always repeated aloud each of their names from each of the news stories, because she knew what it was like all those years ago when people had opened their newspapers and skipped over Julia Carroll’s name.

Congressman Johnny Jackson’s name was not one that anyone could avoid. His involvement in the snuff porn ring was still the lead story in every newspaper, webpage, news report, and magazine. Nolan had confided that there was some kind of plea deal being worked out to keep the Congressman off death row. The US Department of Justice and Interpol needed Johnny Jackson to corroborate the details of Paul’s business in various courts of law around the world and Johnny Jackson did not want to be strapped to a gurney while a prison doctor jammed a needle into his arm.

Claire was sorely disappointed that she would not be able to sit in the viewing room and witness every single flinch and whimper and sob as Johnny Jackson was put to death by the Great State of Georgia.

She knew what it was like to watch a bad person die, to feel their panic swell to a crescendo, to watch the dawning in their eyes when they realized that they were completely powerless. To know that the last words they would ever hear were the ones you said to their face: that you saw through them, that you knew everything about them, that you were disgusted, that you did not love them, that you would never, ever forget. That you would never, ever forgive. That you would be fine. That you would be happy. That you would survive.

Maybe she really should consider going into therapy sooner.

“Jesus Christ.” Lydia grabbed the socks away from Claire and started folding them. “Why are you so distracted?”

“Fred Nolan asked me out.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

Claire tossed her a stray sock. “It’s weird how the guy who seemed like he was into snuff porn was actually the only guy who wasn’t into snuff porn.”

“You’re not going to go out with him?”

Claire shrugged. Nolan was an asshole, but at least she would know it going in.

“Jesus Christ.”

“‘Jesus Christ,’” Claire mimicked.

Helen knocked on the open door. “Are you two squabbling?”

They both answered, “No, ma’am.”

Helen smiled the relaxed smile Claire remembered from her childhood. Even with the press hounding her door, Helen Carroll had finally found peace. She picked up one of Julia’s socks from the pile on the bed. There were two kissing dachshunds embroidered around the band. Helen found the match. She folded them together. The Carrolls weren’t sock rollers. They paired them together in a drawer and assumed they would manage to stay that way.

Lydia said, “Mom, can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

Lydia hesitated. They had been apart so long. Claire had keenly noticed that their rapport wasn’t as easy as it once was.

Helen said, “It’s all right, sweetheart. What is it?”

Lydia still seemed hesitant, but she asked, “Why did you keep all this stuff when you knew she wasn’t coming back?”

“That’s a good question.” Helen smoothed Julia’s quilt before sitting down on the bed. She looked around the room. Lilac walls. Rock posters. Polaroids stuck in the mirror over the dresser. Nothing had changed since Julia had left for college, not even the ugly lava lamp that everyone knew their mother hated.

Helen said, “It made your father happy to know it was the same, that her room would be waiting for her if she ever came back.” Helen rested her hand on Claire’s ankle. “After I found out she was dead, I guess I just liked coming in here. I didn’t have her body. There was no grave to visit.” She invoked Grandma Ginny’s words. “I suppose this was the only place where I could come to leave my grief.”

Claire felt a lump come into her throat. “She would’ve liked that.”

“I think so.”

Lydia sat down beside Helen. She was crying. So was Claire. They were all crying. This was how it had been since they had looked down that well. Their lives had been rubbed raw. Only time could thicken their skin.

Lydia said, “We found her. We brought her home.”

Helen nodded. “You did.”

“It’s all that Daddy ever wanted.”

“No.” Helen squeezed Claire’s leg. She stroked a strand of hair behind Lydia’s ear.