Beautiful Maids All in a Row

by Jennifer Harlow

  It was a simple ceremony performed by a judge in his office that lasted all of six minutes. My mother, my future stepfather Khairo, my brother Billy, and my grandparents had all taken the train down from Grey Mills the day before. Hayden’s parents, sister, and brother were there too, looking none too comfortable. Sneers galore. They never liked me. Billy filmed the ceremony with much commentary about how nauseatingly happy we looked. He was right, though—we did. I’d never looked so radiant. I wore an off-the-shoulder ankle-length white silk dress, with my hair loose around my shoulders. The groom was no slouch either. Hayden was so handsome, with his spiky black hair shining blue in the light. As always, when I watched the tape, my body ached for him. Until the camera cut to my “maid of honor” and shame punched longing in its face.

  Luke seemed uncomfortable at the whole event. He kept glancing around as if he needed an escape route. Everyone questioned my choice of maid of honor, even the man himself. We knew each other from the Academy and had become unofficial partners a month earlier, after breaking a big case together, a kidnapping. I knew I couldn’t have asked for a better man watching my back, but he was still unsure. I figured it would bring us closer. I was right. For a time.

  On the screen, Hayden’s best man, Chuck, handed my groom the ring, which he slipped on my finger with a huge grin. I realized then that I’d been twirling my ring around on my finger so long my thumb was red and raw. Nervous habit. I did that whenever I thought about him. Round and round it went, a simple gold band with a tiny solitaire diamond in the middle with the inscription “To my Iris, Forever and Always.” I couldn’t part with it, even for a day. It was all I had left of him. That’s why I hadn’t gotten it resized, even though it was loose because of all the weight I’d lost. Twenty pounds and change, and I was no Marilyn Monroe to begin with.

  When the judge said, “May I present Dr. and Dr. Hayden Sage,” I threw my arms around my husband, kissing him for a very good fifteen seconds and making my grandmother turn bright red. Everyone on the screen clapped as we kissed. My mom began weeping and pushed the camera out of her face.

  The camera cut to our wedding party in Hayden’s tiny Georgetown apartment, which had just become our apartment. I’d been living just outside Baltimore, where I worked at the field office there, but we’d see each other whenever we could. We’d been unofficially engaged since our third date, but I didn’t want to get married until I made Violent Crimes, the first step toward Behavioral Analysis. When I finally asked him, he seemed relieved.

  As if I would have gone anywhere.

  As Hayden wrapped his arm around my waist, everyone held up his or her mismatched glass for the toast. “To my beautiful wife, and…I can’t believe I finally get to say that, Iris,” he chuckled. “I remember the first time I saw you. I’d been at the hospital for thirty-six hours and could think of nothing but sleep. Until I saw you. I’d been looking for you all my life and there you were, sitting at the counter at Caroline’s Diner, immersed in John Douglas’s Mindhunter. I couldn’t take my eyes off of you. Lightning flashed through me, and I knew in that instant you were the one. Now look at us. I couldn’t take my eyes off you then, and I still can’t now. I love you.” He nuzzled my cheek with his straight, sharp nose. I remembered thinking, I am never going to be this happy again. I was right.

  Hayden turned back to our guests. “Okay, now everybody get out of my house! My wife and I have some business to attend to.” He pulled me in closer, kissing me long and deep. The screen went black. End of tape.

  Sadness filled me as it always did when the tape ended. I took a swig of the vodka, but the bottle was empty. Shit, I needed another. I climbed out of the worn recliner my husband loved so much in search of booze. After a long day at the hospital Hayden would come home, kick off his bloodstained sneakers, and curl up in this chair with the paper. Some days I’d join him, sitting on his lap and running my fingers through his hair. Yeah, that chair brought back memories that would shame my mother.

  I walked into the kitchen and tossed the empty bottle into the trash. It clattered against the others. It had been a bad week. But like all former Girl Scouts, I was always prepared. I grabbed the last bottle from the freezer, not that it would do much good. I couldn’t get drunk anymore. I hadn’t been able to for six months. The fact was rather disconcerting. One stiff drink used to send me to the moon, but nowadays I needed to take Valium with the vodka to get a buzz. I didn’t do it often, but that night was an exception. Or maybe I would take ten. There was always that, but I didn’t think I deserved a quick death. Though I was consciously doing everything in my power to speed things along.

  I returned to the living room and fell back into the recliner, wrapping the knitted blanket my grandma made me years ago tighter around myself. I’d watched all of my home movies already.

  “…don’t we all deserve a second chance?”

  God, this again, I thought to myself. This infomercial was always, always on. There was something about the speaker I just never liked. He held himself with command, knowing everyone in the vast audience was in his thrall. For some reason he reminded me of my father, which made me immediately distrust him.

  “We all have things in our past we wish we could correct, yes?” he asked the audience. They all nodded, almost in unison, which was creepy in and of itself. “Some job we wish we had gone out for. Somebody we wronged and now we would give anything to take our action back, make it up to them. Or maybe we have had someone wrong us, and it still hurts today.” He paused to scan the crowd. Their eyes stayed on him. “Well, you know what I say to regrets like that? I say, ‘Be gone! I have more important things to think about. I have a life to live…in the now! This is my second chance, and I am taking it!’

  “Time moves one way…forward. By wasting the precious gift God gave you, dwelling on the things that have already happened, the now passes you by. Opportunities fly out the window, then add to the pile of regrets. It is a never-ending cycle of pain! Well, I say no more! The past has no bearing on the future!

  “In my book, Live in the Now: Seven Easy Steps into the Present, I outline my program to leading a successful, happy life and embracing your second chance. Now, some of my fellow psychiatrists”—This guy was a psychiatrist?—“believe in dredging up the past week after week in sessions costing hundreds of dollars an hour. But for only twenty-six dollars, this book can change your whole outlook on life.”

  “What an asshole.”

  I hate that I watched far longer than I normally did. At least the asshat made me feel superior. He may have been a beloved millionaire, while I could barely pay my bills, but at least I wasn’t setting psychology back a century. I contained my destructiveness to me and me alone. Go, me.

  Halfway through the travesty, there was a knock on the door. Gus and I immediately sat up at this strange occurrence. Gus seemed confused, as if he’d never heard a knock before. I’d sheltered him from things like that. Shit, I had forgotten to close the gate. Again. Damn booze. I got out of the chair and cautiously walked to the door. Gus stayed in the living room, his ears perked up for more strange noises. It was probably Carol checking up on me. I was sure the whole of Grafton had heard about my getting fired. I really didn’t want to deal with anything right then, but my car was in the driveway, so she knew I was home. I was going to have to play nice.

  Or maybe not. My guard immediately went up again. Time for Round Two.

  Luke stood on my porch, peeling moss off the screen. He looked up at me. “You have a big rust problem.”

  “What I have is a massive asshole problem. And apparently it’s recurring.”

  He shook his head. “Can we please not get into a verbal pissing contest right off the bat?” Our mutual silence meant we agreed. “May I come in?” I considered the request for a second. I knew the man; he’d just keep coming back and coming back if I didn’t let him in. We had that in common. With a long sigh, I opened the screen door separating us. His visit would be amusing at the very least.
He scanned the inside of the house, surveying everything as he walked in. I stood behind with my hand on my hip. “I like it. It’s cozy, yet very Spartan.” Meaning I had no furniture.

  “How did you get on my property?”

  “You forgot to close the gate.” I knew it. “It’s dark in here.”

  “I get migraines.”

  Happy to have the pleasure of someone else’s company, Gus scurried out of the living room, tail wagging furiously. He bounded over to our visitor and slid his nose into Luke’s crotch. Luke chuckled uneasily and pushed Gus away. “Friendly.” I pulled Gus away from Luke and held him by the collar. “Is that one of Neil’s dogs?”

  “Yeah.”

  Luke looked down. “Kind of fat for an attack dog.”

  I scoffed. “He just likes to eat. He could rip your throat out if he wanted to,” I said, sounding childish, as if I were defending my naughty behavior to my father. “I’ll take him upstairs. You stay here.”

  I pulled a reluctant Gus upstairs to my room. He looked almost betrayed as I closed the door. Playmates were few and far between at Ballard Manor. He whined as I shut the door. I ran downstairs and found that Luke wasn’t where I’d told him to stay, the son of a bitch. I didn’t want that man snooping around my home, making judgments about me.

  “Luke?”

  He didn’t answer. I walked into the living room to find him examining my tapes. Thankfully most didn’t have labels. “What are these?” he asked.

  I snatched the tape away from him. “None of your damn business.”

  Ignoring me, he walked over to the bookcase. This gave me a chance to put the rest of the tapes under the television stand. When I was done, I looked over and saw him flipping through one of Hayden’s books. “The History of Modern Microbiology? Heavy reading.”

  I snatched that away from him too. “Stop looking through my things.” Luke flashed me a smile, but I just glared at him. “What are you doing here?”

  His smile faded as his expression became serious. “I was worried about you. You scared me today.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a scary person. I’m a murderer.” I flopped into the recliner. “You were there. Remember?”

  He turned to me, hands on his hips. “Will you please drop the attitude? I’m serious.”

  “Well, that’s your problem. You’re always too serious. Should be careful about that. You’ll give yourself an ulcer.” The vodka bottle was still beside the chair. I picked it up and took a gulp.

  Luke frowned. “Is that your dinner?”

  “And breakfast, and lunch. It’s better than lobster. Want some?”

  He scoffed. “I’m fine.”

  “Your loss,” I said, taking another swig. He just shook his head, silently judging me. His favorite pastime. “Will you please stop staring at me like that?”

  “How am I staring at you?”

  “Like you’re better than me. You’re not. If you were,” I leaned in, whispering, “you wouldn’t be here.” I fell back in my seat with a triumphant grin. “You’re very brave to show up here, I’ll give you that. Stupid, but brave.”

  “Not going to make this easy for me, are you?”

  “No way in hell. You come, disrupt my life, make judgments about me, insult me, and you expect me to just welcome you with open arms? You’re lucky I don’t toss your ass out.”

  He scanned me up and down. “From the looks of you, you couldn’t lift a cat.”

  “Just let me run upstairs and grab Old Faithful. She’ll get you out of here right quick.”

  He shook his head. “You act so tough, but I can see right through you. Always could.”

  That was why I wanted him the hell out of my house. “Suck my dick.” I picked up the bottle, looking into his crystal-blue eyes, daring him to stop me. As I was about to take another swig, he took a step forward and smacked the bottle out of my hand. My mouth dropped open in shock. “You son of a bitch!”

  “What the hell happened to you? What the fuck happened to Iris Ballard?”

  The tears welled up in my eyes from those words. I’d been asking myself the same question every day for two years. “She died,” I said in a small voice. God, please don’t let me cry in front of him. Anyone but him.

  Luke gazed down at me, sadness and pity filling his eyes. He bent down, his face so close to mine I could count his freckles.

  “No, she didn’t. You may wish she did, and you may be doing everything in your power to change that fact, but she is still alive. You are still alive. He died, you didn’t. And I know that if Hayden were alive today, and he saw you like this, it would break his heart like…like it’s breaking mine. Is this how you honor his memory? By living in a crumbling fortress, slowly killing yourself? You used to be fearless. You are the strongest person I know. But you’ve given up, and that isn’t like you. You’re a fighter. So fight. Fight with every damn thing you’ve got to find your way back to yourself. Fight.”

  Luke backed off then, giving me room to breathe. My breath escaped in short bursts. I couldn’t tell if I was incredibly angry or incredibly sad. I went with angry. I stood up, hands shaking, blood running red hot. “How dare you come into my house after two years and judge me? How dare you tell me how my husband would feel! And how dare you tell me how to cope. You can lecture me when your wife’s head is blown off in front of you. When you’ve been terrorized and stabbed in the gut. Until then, don’t you dare fucking presume to tell me what to do or how to behave.”

  He was silent for a minute, his face revealing nothing. Was he even listening to me? I glared at him, willing him to speak. I’d said my peace. I was done. Then, all of a sudden, he left the room. Not the reaction I’d anticipated. I didn’t expect to win so easily. I waited to hear the front door slam. It didn’t. Instead, he returned with his briefcase, slamming it on the coffee table. Opening it, he tossed files as thick as books with the FBI seal on them onto the table before closing the briefcase.

  Luke looked me square in the eye. No emotion, only business. “You’re right. I can’t know what you feel or how I’d react if I were in the same situation. I can’t. But I do know you. You were my best friend for years. No, more than that. We have been through war together. I know you, and I know this: You are a fighter. You are stronger than you think. You just need to be reminded of that. So I’m here to give you a chance to be you. The real you.” He picked up the files, holding them to my face before smacking them down again. “The best of the best are on this, but I know we’re missing something. I know it. There are women in danger who need your help. They will die unless you step up. You’re the best, something I have never doubted for a second, even now. This psycho is out there, and he won’t stop until we stop him. Help me.” He pulled out a business card from his pocket, tossing it on the files. “My cell number’s on there. I have to leave tomorrow morning. I hope to hear from you. If not, goodbye, Iris. I wish only good things for you.” With that, he picked up the briefcase and walked out without the files. I didn’t follow. The front door slammed seconds later. He was gone.

  I looked down at the fucking files taking over my coffee table with Luke’s white business card standing out against the brown folders. Just their presence in my home turned my stomach. I knew what was in there. Evidence of the brutality of man. Women, raped and tortured. Women whose last minutes on this planet were filled with terror and pain, their bodies torn apart simply for one man’s sick gratification. I didn’t need to see that. I’d seen it hundreds of times. Hell, I’d lived it.

  With one sweep of my arm, the files crashed to the floor. Pictures flew out like a fan unfolding. I quickly glanced away. I could not, would not look at them.

  No.

  I flopped back down in my chair and turned toward the television. It was a news report about the Woodsman. Of course. I reached for the remote, but it wasn’t on the armrest where I normally put it. Which meant…I bent down and spotted it next to one of the loose pictures. With that, my fate was sealed. I’d don
e it.

  I looked at her fucking picture.

  Justine Romy was barely recognizable after floating in the Rappahannock River for days. Her skin was the color of snow, with bluish veins scattered over her face like the roots of a tree. Her eyes and chunks of her skin were torn out. Food for very lucky fish. Her auburn hair was a tangled mess of leaves, twigs, and mud, and her mouth was open, as if trying to speak. I wished she could; it would have made our jobs a hell of a lot easier.

  “Jesus,” I whispered. I’d barely known her, but I felt rage spreading through my body as I gazed at her battered face. I could see her as she had been: a beautiful, smart woman with her whole life ahead of her. She’d never see her son graduate or get married. She’d never get to play with her grandchildren. She’d never make love again. She’d never heal another body. There would be no more trips to the movies, no more Christmases sitting around the tree. And he was out there walking the streets, having dinner with friends while she was lying on a cold metal slab in some morgue. It was just so unfair. And I was an expert on unfair.

  Fuck. I couldn’t help myself. I never could. I picked up the file and began what I promised myself I would never do again. I set out to catch a monster.

  Chapter 4

  It was a little past one in the morning when I knocked on the door of room twelve at the Half Moon Inn. I heard shuffling inside, the thump as his feet hit the ground, and finally footsteps. The door opened and Luke stood in an undershirt and NYU sweatpants, his eyes half closed and blinded by the light in the hallway, and his orange hair wild from sleep. I resisted the urge to smooth his cowlick. I wasn’t ready for any type of physical contact with him. I didn’t even want to be three feet from him.

  “Sorry I woke you,” I said, not at all sorry I woke him. He’d intruded in my life, so it was only right that I intruded on his sleep. Fair was fair.