Pretty Broken Things

by Melissa Marr

  The Red Light is temporary, too. I’ll get a degree. A career. Freedom. That will be enough, and then I’ll be old enough to access my account, too.

  “And you’ll dress appropriately,” Sterling adds. “Use my account. Indulge yourself—”

  “Indulge you, I believe is what you mean to say.”

  “Dress like my daughter,” she continues blithely. “Speak like my daughter. Give me three days of—”

  “How much?”

  Sterling sighs yet again. “Don’t be vulgar, dear.”

  And I wonder if that sigh used to work on me. Admittedly, she wasn’t going to win any parenting awards, but most people’s parents fail in something. Sterling Morris wasn’t particularly awful, but when she accused me of trying to seduce her latest windbag of a boyfriend, I realized that she was everything I never wanted to be.

  A mother doesn’t turn on her daughter.

  A mother doesn’t choose money over her child.

  Her needs weren’t ever particularly deep. She wanted to be dressed in the designer du jour, seen at the right restaurants, and fawned upon by men who could afford her—or who were embarrassingly young. The latter were the ones who met her at the beach house rather than in public.

  “Shall we discuss vulgarity then?”

  “Two thousand, Tessa. That’s what I will pay my child to pretend to be an adult.”

  “Five.”

  Sterling said nothing in response. If I didn’t know my mother, I might feel sympathy for her. She’d failed us both though, and I was enough like her that I couldn’t forgive her.

  “Five or hang up,” I told her. I could use the money, and somehow it didn’t seem the same as accepting the fund that was in my name. This was a one-time business transaction.

  “And you’ll pretend to be the loving, polite daughter.” Sterling’s voice was no longer cajoling or falsely kind. Here was the woman who had raised me. “Dress appropriately, speak politely. Talk to your old friends. Be everything I would expect in a daughter.”

  “As long as there are witnesses, I will. If it’s just us, no.”

  “What would that cost me?”

  “You can’t afford it.”

  “The money and ticket will arrive this week,” Sterling said, and then she hung up.

  16

  Juliana

  After the burial of the Creeper’s last victim, after the upheaval of admitting that my life is under scrutiny by both a killer and the police, life somehow resumes a normalcy that seems unnerving in its calmness. It feels more like the quiet before disaster, and I half wonder if I want the disaster. I am better suited for a crisis than a lull.

  Henry has already followed up on the letter from Darren, who has subsequently had his mail privileges further limited. I know a letter ought not to upset me as it did. He’s behind bars. Words cannot hurt me in any real way—but I think that we allow so many little attacks by those who can claim power. He is still trying to do so, power over my sister after her death and power over me. Would Sophie want him to worry and pray over me? I don’t know, honestly. My sister was broken by the million little ways he shaped her. By the time of her death, she seemed like a stranger to me.

  And I guess I started to look at her life and the lives of the dead women on my table more closely. How many times had some person taken away their control? Their voices? Their freedoms? Sophie and the women whose lives I study as I think about the Creeper have made me look at the places where I am asked to surrender my power.

  Andrew walks in the door of the coffee shop a few blocks from the police station with a black eye. My first thought is that it looks oddly attractive with the vaguely-confused librarian look he’s always rocking.

  “Ouch.” I motion to his eye.

  He drags a chair out and drops into it. “I’m clumsy sometimes.”

  The tenderness that had come over me when I saw him vanishes at his lie. “Seriously? Clumsy?”

  Andrew looks down awkwardly.

  “I’m not trying to . . . I don’t want to fight, but don’t lie to me.”

  “It’s a family thing.” He offers me a smile that is anything but happy. “That’s all I can tell you, Jules. We both have limits.”

  I’m not sure what to do with that, but he has the knack for making me feel guilty if I get angry, as if he waits for my temper so he can air a grievance he’s held in silence. Last time he accused me of only seeing him for sex. That isn’t true. We go on normal dates. I just don’t want to share a home with him.

  “I’ve been patient, haven’t I? When you shut me out, I wait.”

  “You have,” I allow. It’s a long-standing issue. I was far from receptive to his initial attempts at inviting me to his place or meeting him at mine. There are things worse than a black eye, and after Sophie, I verge on paranoid. It probably doesn’t help that I see them on photo after photo, M.E. report after report, body after body, and I don’t ever want to be one of the women in such photos.

  “So, can’t you be patient with me too?” Andrew reaches out and takes my hand.

  I meet his gaze. “Not if you lie to me. I don’t need every answer, Andrew, but I don’t lie to you. You don’t get to lie to me either.”

  “Fair enough . . . I was punched.”

  “By?”

  “A relative. That’s all I’m saying.” He shakes his head. “We both have our secrets, Jules. I can agree not to lie to you, but that doesn’t mean I’ll tell you everything. There are good reasons I don’t introduce you to any of my family members.”

  Talking about his family is absolutely forbidden. I know that, but I guess I thought he didn’t see them, that they were far away or something. “Do they live here? I thought--”

  “Don’t.”

  “You saw a family member, and now you have a black eye. I care about you, you know?”

  He nods. “And I love you. That’s why I’m not answering questions about this.”

  As usual, I ignore how easily he says he loves me. I can’t say it, not unless I’m sure. “I won’t judge you. A lot of folks have relatives who are embarrassing. A drunk? Argumentative? What? A junkie?”

  “Let it go.” An unfamiliar tone creeps into his voice, more aggressive than I have ever heard him when he spoke to me. “Trust me, Juliana. Just let this go.”

  For the first time since I fell into his bed, I wonder if I was wrong about him. I wonder what Henry turned up when he investigated Andrew. A brief guilty thought flickers in my mind: I could ask.

  My nerves are on edge, and I know that. Logic says I’m being foolish to doubt Andrew. Reliable, patient Andrew.

  Being under observation is making me see horrors in every shadow, in the eyes of people I meet and people I know. Everything becomes suspect. Everyone is a potential villain.

  Seeing threats in every face, wondering if each person who stares too long is a danger . . . I can’t be that person. I won’t. Secrets are not a thing I can handle right now. I need answers, not more secrets.

  “If you want to touch me again, you’ll tell me the truth.” I feel a twinge for drawing a line, but whatever he’s hiding was enough to make him try to lie to me.

  Andrew gives me a sad smile. “I suspect you’ll need to use me before that happens . . . and Jules?” He waits until I meet his eyes. “I won’t tell you no when the time comes. I don’t have conditions the way you do. I love you, and I accept you for who you are. I know you can’t say the same, though. I’ve known from the beginning.”

  We stay like that, me ignoring the complications he’s just thrown between us and him watching me with a tender expression and a black eye. I don’t know what I’m supposed to say or do. With the dead, I know. With mourners, I know. With the police, I know. Andrew, however, has pushed me off kilter.

  “You know we’re not the only ones desperate to find her,” Andrew says after the quiet grows too heavy to ignore.

  I look at him. “Her?”

  “Teresa.”

  This is what we do when we
fight. He says his piece; I say mine. Then we put it aside for whatever distraction we can accept. Andrew doesn’t need to get into an elaborate explanation of how and why he’s bringing up the missing heiress. All he does is offer me the topic so we can move on. I let out the breath I’m holding and accept the distraction.

  “I was thinking about him sending you that letter. Maybe he thinks you know more than you do. About her. Or maybe he just knows you’re paying attention—which means he’s watching you.”

  I shudder. Usually the way Andrew sounds so sure makes me feel comforted, but this . . . isn’t. “I don’t know how I could know anything the police don’t.”

  “You talked to Sterling.”

  “A lot of people talked to her.” Meeting Teresa’s mother was painful. She wasn’t cold, but she had reached the point of self-delusion. It was embarrassing to watch. She’d claimed that her daughter was dating a “criminal element,” and he was obviously convincing her daughter to stay hidden. On some level, Sterling Morris was certain that her daughter wasn’t the victim of a serial killer—and her parting shot that I looked like his type, too, made me hate her more than pity her.

  A folder with photos of another body is under my hand. I tap it. Opening it without warning is not kind to do to people who are not in the business of dead bodies. “Ana Mendoza died at least three months ago.”

  Andrew gestures to the file. “What do you know?”

  I open it. The photos aren’t the best, but they still show more details than I’d like. Ana suffered. It wasn’t only the tattoo that made clear that she was one of the Carolina Creeper’s victims. She had bruises in varying states of healing and internal scarring where no woman should ever have scars.

  “She was definitely one of his.” I don’t share all of the pictures, but I point at the tattoo and the bruises on her arms. I point out a stab wound that is visible without showing her private areas. I do my best to respect the dead’s right to modesty.

  “He hurt her,” Andrew says. It’s a question as much as it’s not. He might not care about the dead women in the same way I do, but he’s squeamish about how they’ve been hurt.

  I think of the autopsy notes. “Hurt” isn’t enough of a word for what had been done to Ana. The M.E. could tell that she had sustained injuries for weeks. Not all of the women had revealed as many details, but Ana was found before all of the evidence was gone.

  The door to the coffee shop opens, and Henry walks in. It’s no coincidence, I’m sure, and it’s not just because the shop is near the police building. The reality of having a protective detail is that someone always knows where I am.

  It’s not like vanishing in the age of technology is easy. Most people are a text or call away twenty-four hours a day. There’s still the illusion that we can ignore those calls, that we can escape the world for even a few moments. It is an illusion all the same. I always check my messages. In my job, I have to.

  I have accepted that reality, but looking at messages isn’t the same as having my location be traceable at all times. Everything in me tenses at the admission to myself that until the killer is caught or I am dead, I will be a person who can be found in an instant.

  My hate for the Creeper grows.

  But he is not here to face my temper, and Henry is.

  Andrew tenses as Henry approaches. “Revill.”

  Henry nods, but he doesn’t speak to Andrew. Whatever politeness they sometimes manage is absent today.

  There are only two reasons that Henry would approach me when I’m with Andrew. Whenever he’s seen Andrew with me in public in the past, he's simply nodded and kept moving. Today he approached, and that means this is either about a case—or my safety. “Is there a call?”

  “No.” Henry meets my gaze in that way that says he realized most of what I was thinking. “No calls.”

  I take a breath, let it out, and try to force a smile to my lips.

  I want Henry, the whole department really, to let me have the illusion of privacy. “Do we need to do this?”

  “You know that answer.” Henry’s voice, a deep weighty thing at the best of times, makes his words feel ominous.

  Arguing with Henry in front of Andrew—or with Andrew in front of Henry—is on my list of things not to do. Ever. I can pretend their discord is simply that they don’t like one another, and undoubtedly, that’s part of it. So is jealousy. I’m not sure whose jealousy, and I’m not fool enough to ask. All I know for sure is that they both care for me. Beyond that, I’m not opening the discussion with either man.

  “Jacobs has to go over to court, so I’m around this afternoon.” Henry shrugs like it’s not a big deal, but he should be off duty today.

  I doubt Andrew knows that, though, so I don’t mention it. “So . . .?”

  “So, I thought if you wanted to go over those files of yours this afternoon, we can put in a few hours.” Henry glances at the folder that Andrew had closed at his approach. “Maybe I’ll see something you missed.”

  “Andrew?” I reach out for the file. “I need to head home anyhow, and there’s no sense in you driving and Henry following us.”

  Andrew gives me the same false smile he had earlier when I asked about his black eye. “You know I don’t mind.”

  “I’ll see you . . . tomorrow . . . though?”

  With a wry twist to his lips that feels like an invitation to argue, Andrew stares at me, and then at Henry, and then stands. “Sure.”

  Despite Henry watching us with undisguised curiosity, I grab Andrew’s hand. “Henry? I’ll meet you at your car.”

  Both men pause. Andrew’s smile evolves into something closer to genuine, and Henry gives me the same implacable look he reserves for any time he disapproves but doesn’t want to say that. I ignore all of it and gather my things.

  “I’ll be out front,” Henry says as he leaves.

  Once the shop door closes behind him, I step closer to Andrew. “I hate this.”

  “Move in with me. Let me guard over you. Shelter you.”

  I close my eyes and lean my head against his chest. “I don’t want to fight with you. Not about this or whatever you’re hiding or any of it.”

  He tilts my face upward and kisses me, gently not possessively. “He’ll keep you safe. Revill’s good at his job . . . but be careful. Okay?”

  I nod.

  These days, Henry is my colleague, my sometimes friend, and that’s all he can be. The past is over, and there is no future with a man who needs and wants things that I am not, no matter how much I'd wished I could be her. I’m not able to let go of my fears, and unless I can, Henry will only ever be my friend. I’m not sure Andrew believes that, and I’m fairly sure Henry doesn’t.

  I used to think I’d be his, and after we got passed the flinching at folks’ issues with a white woman and a black man—and in the South, it is still a point of tension—I thought we were done with our obstacles. I am the obstacle now, though. My fears. My refusal to let myself be consumed.

  Andrew is the safer choice. Andrew, steadfast and kind. Andrew who is staring at me in love, but not rage as I go off to spend a few hours alone with Henry.

  A woman doesn’t get very far in this world if she looks to men to keep her safe. Not that men don’t try. Not that they’re all bad. But I’m not a delicate blossom to be protected. No one who succeeds in this world is—and I will succeed.

  Andrew switches gears. “I can call my cousin over at the N & O.”

  The News and Observer is the paper in Raleigh, one third of the so-called Triangle.

  “I don’t think—”

  “I’ll just see if they’ll circulate Teresa’s picture again, maybe get one of those digital progression things to show ways she could look now. That’s how we’ll find Tess if she’s alive. Someone will see her. They’ll recognize her, and then . . . we’ll have a lead.”

  "Tess?"

  "Teresa. We'll find Teresa. The newspapers and—"

  “It wouldn’t hurt.” I don’t add that we ar
e more likely to find a clue forensically.

  Maybe a progression would lead to someone recognizing their Jane Doe as our missing heiress. I’m not so foolish as to think I’ll be the one to find her, but maybe someone will. Then her body will be in my hands.

  Like all of the victims’ bodies, Teresa’s body will lead to new information. Sooner or later, the Creeper will leave some trail that will let us find him.

  17

  A Girl with No Past

  Edward didn’t want me to see Sterling. The sheer idea of it made him unhappy. Edward unhappy was never a good thing. I wouldn’t say that I was truly afraid of him, not yet. I was just desperate for his approval.

  I’d moved in with him the week after Sterling’s invitation. I’d given up my jobs, my apartment, my classes. He was my world. I left the house sometimes, but only with him.

  “You could come with me.”

  “To your mother’s house?”

  “It’s a job. She’s paying me. I’ll dress up and say the right things, and she’ll give me a check.” I felt stupid telling Edward that I sold myself to my mother so she could parade me around as if we were a family.

  We were at his house. It was a four thousand square foot house with a three-car garage and shed. Behind it was a river that he would go out on with a canoe. The buildings were set back on a twenty-acre lot, and a privacy fence with a coded gate lined the front boundary. It wasn’t the sort of old money estate that my family called home, but it was moneyed enough that I asked more questions about Edward’s job. He worked at a tech company at RT, one he’d founded.

  He looked around the kitchen as we spoke. I had cleaned it while I cooked. It was perfect. He liked things to be perfect. “You’ve done a good job.”

  He pulled a box out of his pocket and slid it toward me. He liked to bring me presents.

  “May I eat?” I smoothed my hands over the skirt of my dress.

  “You may.” He nodded toward the plate he’d prepared for me. “Open your present first.”