Pretty Girls

by Karin Slaughter

  “No, I’m not okay, you motherfucking piece of—­” Claire’s voice strangled around the words. She went into a coughing fit that brought up enough blood to spray the back of her hand. Claire stared at the red lines streaking across her pale flesh.

  Paul asked, “Is that blood?”

  Claire spun around the room. Was he inside the house? Standing outside?

  He said, “Look up.”

  Claire looked up.

  “A little to your left.”

  Claire spotted what looked like an air freshener on top of the refrigerator. There was a stem of green eucalyptus leaves carved on a taupe vase. One of the leaves had been cut all the way through to accommodate a camera lens.

  He said, “There are more. All around the house.”

  “This house or the Dunwoody house?”

  Paul didn’t answer, which was answer enough. He had been watching her. That was why there wasn’t a colored file with Claire’s name on the label. Paul wasn’t hiring detectives to stalk her one month out of the year. He was stalking her every single day of her life.

  She said, “Where is Lydia?”

  “I’m calling you from a comsat phone with a scrambler. Do you know what that is?”

  “Why the fuck would I know what that is?”

  “Comsat is an abbreviation for a series of communication satellites,” he explained, his voice maddeningly pedantic. “The phone relays calls through geostationary satellites instead of land-­based cell towers. The scrambler masks the number and location, which means this call can’t be traced, not even by the NSA.”

  Claire wasn’t listening to his voice. She was listening to the ambient noise. She didn’t need the NSA to tell her Paul was in a moving car. She could hear road noises and the sound of wind that always seeped in no matter how expensive the vehicle.

  Claire asked, “Is she alive?”

  He didn’t answer.

  Her heart twisted so tight she could barely breathe. “Is Lydia alive?”

  “Yes.”

  Claire stared into the lens of the camera. “Put her on the phone. Now.”

  “She’s unavailable.”

  “If you hurt her—­” Claire felt her throat tighten. She had seen the movies. She knew what could happen. “Please don’t hurt her.”

  “I’m not going to hurt her, Claire. You know I would never do that.”

  Tears finally came because for just a second, just the tiniest second, she let herself believe him. “Let me talk to my sister right now or I will call every goddamn law enforcement agency in the book.”

  Paul sighed. She knew that sigh. It was the one he gave when he was about to give Claire what she wanted. She heard the sound of a car pulling over. There was a rustling noise.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m doing what you asked.” The car door opened and closed. She heard other vehicles speeding by. He must be on the Atlanta Highway. How long had Claire been out? How far away had he gotten with Lydia?

  She said, “Your father killed my sister.”

  There was a squeaking sound as a door or a trunk was opened.

  “It’s him in the video, isn’t it?” Claire waited. “Paul, tell me. It’s him, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Paul said, “Check the phone.”

  “What?”

  “Lydia’s phone. It’s in the den. I hooked it up to the charger because the battery was low.”

  “Jesus Christ.” Only Paul would kidnap someone and charge their fucking phone.

  Claire set the telephone down on the table. She went into the den, but instead of looking for the cell phone, she scanned the perimeter of the room. Another air freshener was on top of a veneered cherry bookshelf by the front door. How had she not seen that before? How had she not seen any of this?

  Lydia’s phone made a chirping sound. Paul had left it plugged in on the table by the couch. The screen showed a text from an unknown number. She swiped the notice, and a photo of Lydia came up.

  Claire cried out. Lydia’s forehead was bleeding. One eye was swollen closed. She was lying on her side in the trunk of a car. Her hands were zip-­tied in front of her. She looked terrified and furious and so alone.

  Claire looked up at the camera on the bookshelf and stared all of her hate through the wires and straight into Paul’s black hole of a heart. “I’m going to kill you for this. I don’t know how, but I’m going to . . .” Claire didn’t know what she was going to do. She looked back down at the picture of Lydia. This was all Claire’s fault. So many times she had told Lydia to leave and she hadn’t meant it once. She had wanted her sister to keep her safe, and she’d ended up leading Lydia right into Paul’s hands.

  She heard a car pull into the driveway. Claire’s heart leapt. Lydia. Paul had brought her back. She opened the front door. Plywood. There was a sliver of light around the edge. If Claire craned her neck the right way, she could see through the crack and into the driveway.

  Instead of Paul, she saw a brown sheriff’s patrol car. Her view was narrow. The front windshield was dark against the afternoon light. She couldn’t tell who was inside. The driver stayed behind the wheel for an interminably long time. Claire heard her breath stuttering out as she waited.

  Finally, the door was opened. A leg came out and rested on the concrete drive. She saw a tooled leather cowboy boot and dark brown pants with a yellowish stripe going up the side. Two hands grasped the door surround as the man pulled himself out of the car. He stood there for a moment, his back to Claire as he checked the empty road. And then he turned around.

  Sheriff Carl Huckabee put on his Stetson hat as he walked up the driveway. He stopped to look inside the Tesla. He took in the charger plugged into the side of the car and followed the extension cord with his eyes to the front porch of the house.

  Claire pulled back from the door, though there was no way he could see her. Huckleberry was older and more stooped, but he still sported the same finely combed, linear mustache and too-­long sideburns that had looked out of date even in the 1990s.

  He had to be working with Paul. It made a sick kind of sense that the man her parents had run to for help was the same man who had strung them along all these years.

  Claire ran back to the kitchen. Before picking up the phone, she grabbed a sharp paring knife off the floor. She put the phone to her ear. She held up the knife for Paul to see. “I’ll slice open his neck if you don’t give me my sister back right now.”

  “What are you talking about?” Paul demanded. “Whose neck?”

  “You know who I—­” Claire stopped. Maybe he didn’t know. The point of putting cameras on the outside of your house was that ­people would see them. Paul was only concerned with what was going on inside.

  “Claire?”

  “Huckabee. He just pulled up.”

  “Fuck,” Paul muttered. “Get rid of him right now or you’ll never see Lydia again.”

  Claire didn’t know what to do. “Promise me she’ll be okay.”

  “I promise. Don’t hang up the—­”

  Claire hung up the phone. She turned around and faced the open kitchen doorway. The paring knife went into her back pocket, even as she asked herself what the hell she thought she was going to do with it. Her mind was overwhelmed with fragments of thoughts she couldn’t chase away. Why had Paul pretended to be murdered? Why had he taken Lydia? What did he want with her?

  “Hello?” Huckabee’s heavy footsteps pounded up the porch stairs. “Anybody here?”

  “Hi.” Claire heard the scratchiness in her voice. There was still blood coming from somewhere inside her throat. She kept thinking about Lydia. Claire had to keep calm for Lydia’s sake.

  “Miss Carroll.” The sheriff’s expression had changed from one of curiosity to wariness. “What are you doing here?”

  “It’s Mrs. Scott,” she correc
ted, hating the sound of the name. “This house belonged to my husband. He passed away recently, so I—­”

  “Thought you’d ransack it?” He was looking at the mess Claire had made of the kitchen. Silverware, pots and pans, Tupperware, and anything else that had been inside a drawer or cabinet was now littering the floor.

  He lifted his foot, which had crunched some of the broken glass from the back door. “You wanna tell me what’s really going on here?”

  Claire started twisting her wedding ring around her finger. She tried to put some authority in her voice. “Why are you here?”

  “Got an emergency call, but there wasn’t nobody stayed on the line.” He tucked his thumbs into his belt. “Was that you?”

  “I dialed it by accident. I meant to dial information.” Claire stifled a cough. “I’m sorry I wasted your time.”

  “What’s your husband’s name again?”

  “Paul Scott.” Claire remembered that the name on the property deed was different. “The house is held in a trust with his law firm. Buckminster and Fuller.”

  The sheriff nodded, but he didn’t seem satisfied. “Looks like it’s been boarded up for a while.”

  “Did you know my husband?”

  “I knew his mama and daddy. Good ­people.”

  Claire couldn’t stop twisting her wedding ring. And then she looked down at her hand, because the Snake Man had taken her ring. How had it gotten back on her finger?

  “Mrs. Scott?”

  She squeezed her hands into fists. She wanted to yank off the ring and grind it in the garbage disposal. How had Paul gotten the ring back? Why had he put it on her finger? Why were her shoes off? And the key fob in her pocket? Why was there a fucking pillow under her head when she woke up from her husband knocking the shit out of her?

  And where in God’s name was he taking her sister?

  “What’s this?” Huckabee touched his hand to his own cheek. “Looks like you got a shiner coming up.”

  Claire started to touch her cheek, but then she ran her fingers through her hair. Panic threatened to consume her. She could feel a physical pain in her skull from the strain of trying to process what had happened and what she needed to do next.

  Huckabee asked, “You need to sit down?”

  “I need answers.” Claire knew that she sounded crazy. “My father-­in-­law, Gerald Scott. You’re sure that he’s dead?”

  He gave her a curious look. “Saw it with my own eyes. At least, after the fact.”

  Claire had seen Paul die with her own eyes. She had held him in her arms. She had watched the life drain out of him.

  Then she had watched him punch her in the face.

  Huckabee leaned his shoulder against the doorjamb. “Something goin’ on here I need to know about?”

  The phone started to ring. Claire didn’t move.

  Huckabee shifted on his feet. He looked at the phone, then back at Claire.

  Paul wasn’t going to hang up. The ringing continued until the sound was like a chisel shaving down her eardrum.

  Claire picked up the receiver and slammed it back down.

  Huckabee raised one of his shaggy eyebrows. The man who for twenty-­four years had insisted that her beautiful nineteen-­year-­old sister had simply turned her back on her family and joined a hippie commune was suddenly suspicious.

  The phone started to ring again.

  Claire imagined Paul sitting in a car somewhere on the side of the road watching all of this and being absolutely furious that Claire wasn’t doing exactly what he’d told her to do.

  He should know her better than that by now.

  Claire slid the wedding ring off her finger. She placed it in front of the camera on top of the fridge. She turned around to face the sheriff. “I know what happened to Julia.”

  Huckabee was a heavy breather, obviously a longtime smoker, so it was hard to tell whether or not he sighed or just exhaled normally. “Did your mother tell you?”

  Claire leaned against the fridge so she wouldn’t sink to the floor. She felt the shock of his statement but worked to keep the turmoil off her face. Had Helen known about the tapes all these years? Had she kept it a secret from Claire? Had she hidden the truth from Sam?

  She tried to bluff Huckabee again. “Yes. She told me.”

  “Well, I’m surprised by that, Claire, because your mother said she wasn’t ever going to tell you girls, and I’m finding it hard to believe that a woman like that would go back on her word.”

  Claire shook her head, because this man knew there were videos of her sister being brutally murdered and he was lecturing her like she was twelve and he was disappointed in her. “How could you keep it from me? From Lydia?”

  “I promised your mother. I know you don’t think much of me, but I honor my word.”

  “You’re talking about your fucking word when I’ve been haunted by this for twenty-­four years?”

  “There’s no need to use that kind of language.”

  “Fuck you.” Claire could almost see the black hatred spewing from her mouth. “You kept saying she was alive, that she’d just run off, that we’d see her come back one day. You knew all along that she was never coming back, but you gave us hope.” She could tell he still didn’t understand. “Do you know what hope does to ­people? Do you know what it’s like to see somebody in the street, to chase after them, because you think she might be your sister? Or to go to the mall and see two sisters together and know that you’re never going to have that? Or to go to my father’s funeral without her? Or to get married without—­”

  Claire couldn’t go down that road, because she had married Paul, and the reason that Lydia hadn’t been by her side is because Claire’s husband had tried to rape her.

  Huckabee said, “Tell me how you really found out. Was it the Internet?”

  She nodded because that seemed most believable.

  He looked down at the floor. “I always worried the tapes would get put out there.” Claire knew she should get rid of the sheriff, but she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “How did you find out about them?”

  “Your father’s apartment. He had one of ’em loaded on his video player while he did it. I expect that’s what made him . . .”

  He didn’t have to finish the sentence. They both knew what her father had done. Now that Claire knew Sam Carroll had seen the tapes, had been watching them while he put the needle into his arm, she finally understood why. She could very well imagine her father wanting to end his life as he watched Julia’s being taken from her. The act had an appealing kind of symmetry.

  Was that the reason Helen had concealed the truth? Was she afraid that Claire would find copies of the tapes and end up following in her father’s footsteps? And Lydia—­poor, fragile Lydia. No one saw it at the time, but her addiction had never been about the high, it had been about the escape. She had been actively seeking ways to destroy herself.

  Claire asked the sheriff, “What did you do with the tapes?”

  “Handed them over to a buddy of mine was in the FBI. We always wondered was there copies. I guess now we know.”

  Claire looked down at her hands. She was twisting her finger even without the ring.

  Huckabee said, “You ain’t gotta try and trick me, gal. She was your sister. I’ll tell you the truth.”

  Claire had never wanted to physically hurt someone so badly in her life. He was acting like he’d been willing all along, when Claire had contacted the sheriff countless times over the years, asking if there were any new updates. “Then tell me.”

  He smoothed down the edges of his mustache as if he needed time to figure out how to go about breaking her heart. Finally, he said, “Fella in the movie was part of some kind of ring that distributed a lotta them videos. My friend, like I said, he was in the FBI, so I got some of the inside scoop on it. He said they already k
new about the guy. Name was Daryl Lassiter. Caught him in California back in ’ninety-­four trying to snatch a gal same age, same hair color, same build as your sister.”

  Claire was confused. Had she been wrong about Paul’s father? Was there another murderer out there? Had Paul’s father come by the tapes as a collector?

  Huckabee said, “Lassiter’s dead now, if it helps.”

  No, there was the barn that had been outside, and the kill room not fifteen feet away from where they stood.

  “Jury put him on death row.” Huckabee looped his thumbs back through his belt. “There was some kind of scuffle at the jailhouse. Lassiter got stabbed in the neck about a dozen times. He died around the same time your pa died.”

  Claire tried to think of what to ask next. “Where did Daddy get the tapes?”

  Huckabee shrugged. “No idea.”

  “You didn’t look into it?”

  “ ’Course I did.” Huckabee sounded offended, as if he was actually good at his job. “But your daddy was always on wild-­goose chases, one after another. There was no telling which one actually panned out, and he wasn’t exactly sharing his information with me.”

  “You weren’t exactly encouraging him to.”

  Huckabee shrugged again, more “water under the bridge” than “I’m sorry I left your father so alone that he killed himself.”

  But then again, Helen had left Sam alone, too. And then she had lied to Lydia and Claire for years about everything that mattered. Was there anyone in Claire’s life who ever told her the truth? Even Lydia had lied about her daughter.

  She asked, “Why would Daddy kill himself before finding out who killed Julia?”

  “He left the tape playing out on the machine. He knew we’d find it. I mean, that’s what I figured he left it for, and he was right. I turned it straight over to the feds. In less than a week, they connected it to the man who killed your sister.”

  Claire didn’t remind the sheriff that the Carrolls had begged him for years to go to the FBI. “And you never made it public so ­people would know what happened to my sister?”

  “Your mom asked me not to. I guess she was worried you girls would look for the tapes.” He glanced over Claire’s shoulder into the den. “My thinking is she figured it’d be better to never know than to find out the truth.”