by Merit Clark
But he persisted. “Did you know she moved here?”
“What? When?” Corie’s voice rose.
“I don’t know the time frame.”
“Time frame? Fucking ‘time frame?’ Is that all you can say?” Somewhere in the back of her mind Corie realized it was a cop game. If she was pissed off at Evan she’d say things she shouldn’t. Well, it worked. “I suppose you want to hear what Evan likes.”
Jack tossed the folder onto the backseat again. “Do you think this is fun for me?”
“Oh no, you opened this door. Let’s walk through it, shall we? How much detail would you like? Evan likes to tie women up. He likes S&M, blindfolds, games, whips, nipple clamps, hoods, you name it. Come on, Jack, don’t look so shocked. You’re a cop. You know all about this shit. Even I used to think it was fun. Does that surprise you?” Her voice caught, broke. “But then I didn’t. So here we are.”
On a sharp exhale of breath he said her name.
“I wanted it, Jack. I did. I wanted to experiment. I wanted to try those things. And I got everything I ever wanted in return. I got the big fancy house and a horse and jewelry.” She held up the hand with the wedding ring and enormous emerald-cut diamond. “Evan gave me everything. I have it made. I’ll bet that’s what you were thinking when you drove up and saw where I lived. Wasn’t it?”
“Corie, stop.”
“I hope this clears everything up for you.” She stared at him, breathing hard, and slowly the need to hurt Jack drained away. Anger was preferable to the sickness that followed.
“I’m worried about you.”
“No. You don’t get to be nice to me. You don’t get to be the hero. Can I go now?” she said, forgetting she was the one who’d asked to see Jack. At least her husband wasn’t a murderer. Small blessings.
Jack frowned at her with concern and moved his right hand as if he might touch her. Corie instinctively flinched and leaned away from him. Her hand groped for the door handle. She was shaking so badly she was surprised she could still speak intelligibly. “You know, I never wanted to see you again, Jack.”
“I know.”
“Whatever other sick shit is going on in my life, Brice didn’t deserve to die. If I have to reveal all of my most sordid secrets in order to get at the truth, I’ll do it. And then I mean it. I never do want to see you again.”
He let her out of the car and she walked as fast as she could on unsteady legs back into the barn, where she was promptly sick all over the fresh, green-smelling hay.
Chapter 12
When Evan came back from his run Corie’s car was gone. He went to the kitchen for coffee and spotted Vi sitting outside on the deck reading the paper. She was wrapped in a fuchsia silk robe with the sash tied tightly around her waist. When he joined her she quickly stubbed out her cigarette, and he could see a bright pink stain on the end of it from the lipstick she wore even at this hour of the morning.
“Evan. How are you holding up? Did you sleep?”
“Enough.” Evan leaned down and barely grazed her cheek with the idea of a kiss. He nodded toward the newspaper on the table. “Are we one of the headlines?”
Vi handed it to him and they sat in silence for a few minutes while he read.
Evan sighed, folded the paper, and slapped it back onto the table. “Where’s Corie off to this morning? Not more interviews with the police, I hope.”
“She left a note. She went to see her horse.”
Evan ignored Vi’s mocking tone. “I’m glad. Riding usually makes Corie feel better.”
“Yes.” Vi hesitated. “It’s none of my concern, of course, and stop me if I’m overstepping my boundaries, but I noticed you slept in the guest room.”
As if there was a way to keep Vi inside a boundary. “It was an unexpected surprise that you stayed here last night.”
“I’m never sure what to do where Corie is concerned, as you pointed out so succinctly yesterday.”
Evan refused to let her bait him. Instead he smiled. “I’m certain it meant something to Corie to have you here.”
“That’s very sweet.” Vi, unable to rile him, seemed at a loss. She pressed her thin fuchsia lips together.
The doorbell rang and it was a relief to excuse himself. Evan signed for a FedEx package, curious because he wasn’t expecting anything. Downstairs in his office he sliced one end open with a silver letter opener. A large blue binder slid out filled with plastic sleeves, the kind you’d use for photographs. Only this scrapbook contained newspaper clippings. Old articles from fifteen years ago from the Charlotte Observer about the murder of an aspiring young actress named Monique Lawson. Evan’s first time.
It felt like a blow to the gut. He dropped the binder as if it had burned him and stared at it dumbly. What if Corie had been home? Who had the nerve to do something like this? He locked the office door, waited until his breathing returned to normal, and then used a tissue to carefully turn the pages:
Aspiring young actress brutally murdered…
Police have few clues in stabbing death…
Young woman’s dreams of fame cut ruthlessly short…
The last article described her appearance in a dinner theatre production of Guys and Dolls. She’d played Sarah, the pretty, naïve missionary who falls for the smooth gangster, Sky Masterson. Good girls falling for bad men. Ironic for that to have been her last role in real life, too.
All of that felt like a lifetime ago, like it was done by a different person. Evan had stopped. It hadn’t been easy and he wasn’t perfect, but he was nothing if not disciplined. He’d done the best he could to take care of Corie and his widowed mother, Jessie. To build a business, to have a life. Even Vangie was only because Corie had pulled away.
But someone knew about his past. Evan turned the grimy FedEx envelope over and over, pointlessly searching for clues.
The sender paid cash and used one of those shipping centers—a busy one downtown. He could go in and ask around, see if they remembered a person sending a package overnight and paying cash. Most people had an account or used a credit card. Someone at the shipping center might remember. But why would they talk to him? He could hand out bribes but then that made him memorable. They might even call the police, suspicious after a strange man asked questions about a package. And the police were not going to find out about this particular delivery. Not if Evan had anything to say about it.
As if of their own volition Evan’s fingers turned the pages. He’d forgotten her name and many of the details. For example, he remembered her as a singer, not an actress. Apparently she’d been both. Photographs in the album did confirm his memory of her as beautiful, dark-haired, and voluptuous. One of the newspaper articles included a studio portrait of Monique that could have been her senior picture. In it her head was turned slightly to the left and her smile was bright, her eyes gazing out at a future that would include Evan Markham.
So much pain in those days. So much self-loathing. He used to feel like he walked through the world with a bad smell that no amount of disinfectant could cover. Women were happy to go out with him at first—after all, he was handsome and rich—but they soured quickly.
When Evan met Monique he was twenty-eight. For their third date, he took the singer out to dinner. Actress. Whatever. He remembered it was Italian, in a nondescript little shopping center near Southpark Mall. The restaurant had wonderful macaroons. He knew the signs that he was about to be dumped. Hesitation, a reluctance to look him in the eye, a lack of spontaneity, lame excuses. She hadn’t wanted to go out that night; he heard it in her voice when he called to confirm. Women were such cowards! They could never come right out and tell the truth. It was always their undoing, a reluctance to scream, to make a fuss, or to hurt someone’s feelings. But something inside Evan had changed. This time when he saw the rejection coming, he didn’t try to hide.
They were sitting in his car after dinner. It was raining. He reached over and touched her hair. “You’re so beautiful. I don’t deserve you.”
She looked down at her hands folded in her lap and her discomfort was palpable. “I’m just not ready for a serious relationship.”
“No, I appreciate the truth.” And he did. In that miraculous moment he saw it all so clearly. People always talked about epiphanies and Evan thought they were full of shit until that moment in a dark, rainy strip mall parking lot in Charlotte.
“I’m sorry.” She was afraid to look at him.
“Don’t be. No hard feelings at all.” For the first time that night she relaxed. He drove her home, like a gentleman, and soon he had Monique on his terms. It was all about motivation. She wanted to do things for him but he hadn’t given her a reason yet. In fact, he’d done the opposite—he’d given her reasons to run away.
He would improve rapidly but, like all first times, that night he was clumsy. There was blood everywhere and he wasn’t even 100% sure she was dead. The clippings confirmed his worst suspicions—she’d lived long enough to drag herself downstairs to the kitchen. They found the phone on the wall in the kitchen off of the hook, the handset dangling near her head. It was a mess, an absolute mess. Using kitchen knives. He shivered at the memory. So crude.
And he hadn’t anticipated how loud she would be. Sure, he expected screaming, but Jesus. That shrill caterwauling would have made him want to kill her even if he hadn’t already been so inclined. All he wanted was for her to shut the fuck up. It made it hard to enjoy himself with all of that screeching. It made him hurry, which was a shame. Plus there were logistical problems he hadn’t considered, such as how to step off of the bed without tracking blood everywhere. He really hadn’t thought things through. To top it all off, he passed another car on the road leading away from her house. How many more ways could the night have gone wrong?
And yet even with his screw-ups, there was no denying the euphoria. It was better than any drug. He felt positively glorious. His skin tingled. His senses were heightened. There was all of the endorphin glow of sex with none of the sluggishness. It was like an orgasm that went on and on and on. He didn’t want to go home, he didn’t want to go to sleep. He wanted to stand in the middle of some empty field somewhere and bellow at the top of his lungs. He wanted to raise his hands skyward, tempt fate, and call God out: Take me on, you bastard, if you even exist. He could do anything. As time went on he would learn that this euphoria was dangerous. It was when he was most likely to be careless. But that first night he was simply too intoxicated to be aware of risks. No matter how good he got, no matter how much he refined his technique, nothing would ever compare to that first time.
For ten years he murdered without even the threat of apprehension. Evan was restrained and his activity strictly measured, killing only when the self-hatred and pressure built to crippling levels. And never at home where there were too many connections and everyone was up everybody else’s asshole. Evan read about serial killers and how they were typically active in a limited geographic area or territory. At least, the ones who were caught. Familiarity may not lead to contempt, as the old saying went, but it led to capture.
After Monique, Evan killed where he was a stranger. Each new place was like a blank canvas waiting for his signature. Business trips took on new meaning. He’d fly in and out, no one the wiser. He developed rituals. On the flight home, he’d sit in first class in a window seat. He’d order a Scotch—always the same drink, no matter the time of day—and toast his latest vanquished city, looking out the oval aircraft porthole as the patchwork landscape receded.
It gave him pleasure to visualize the cops on the ground scurrying, a bag on a metal gurney, detectives in their unmarked cars—plain, undistinguished men in cheap suits. Later, with their jackets off, he could see them hunkered down at their metal desks, tapping clumsily with thick fingers on their computer keyboards, following leads that would amount to nothing.
Once he figured out what he needed, Evan was able to focus on the other parts of his life and he became a success. He used his secret safety valve until the day he married Corie. At his wedding he made a secret vow to himself and, with difficulty, he’d kept it. Corie could never know what had happened before. No one could.
As Evan leafed through the scrapbook, he was so lost in his memories that it took a while before the name jumped out at him. Once it did, it might as well have been highlighted in neon:
The body was found by her mother, Helen, and her half-brother, Brice Shaughnessy. Brice, fifteen, placed the call to the police because, “his mother couldn’t stop crying long enough to make the call.”
Evan’s mind whirled. Had Brice somehow figured it out? Was Brice on Evan’s trail? And now Brice was dead. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Was this why Brice befriended Corie and rented their guesthouse? If so, how did Brice trace the murder back to Evan when the police couldn’t? And how on earth did someone else find out about Brice?
Evan didn’t believe in coincidences. Stark reality said that he was being setup. Why else send him the scrapbook? Demands were sure to follow. In the meantime, the closer the police looked at Brice the more likely they were to follow the same thread that had led him to Evan. Unless Evan figured it out first.
Killing was an art and whoever dispatched Brice Shaughnessy was a common criminal. Three gunshot wounds, bam, bam, bam; no finesse at all. Crude and loud. Evan couldn’t abide loud noises. Cowards used guns. Executioners. Bullies. Easy thing, wasn’t it? To creep into a man’s bedroom in the middle of the night, stand across the room, and pull a trigger? Whoever shot Brice was either inexperienced or didn’t enjoy killing.
Not, however, a theory Evan was about to share with the police.
An inexperienced killer. Corie asked for a divorce the same night Brice was killed. But Corie was the one truly innocent person Evan knew.
Pushing emotion aside, he carefully reread the scrapbook from the beginning. He examined the grainy black-and-white newspaper photographs, including one of the gurney holding her body poised at the back of an ambulance. An old, Victorian-style farmhouse was clearly visible in the background. The house. It couldn’t be. He stared a minute longer and then returned to his mother-in-law on the deck. Predictably, she’d lit up again and he wouldn’t be surprised if there was a splash of vodka in her orange juice.
“What is that?” Vi wrinkled her nose in the direction of the glass he’d brought with him.
“A protein shake with added greens. Would you like one? It’s very good for controlling cravings.”
“Thanks, I’ll take lung cancer.”
Evan took a healthy swallow. “Did Corie talk to you about the murder when you were alone yesterday? She didn’t say much in front of me and I worry that she bottles too much up inside.”
“Of course not. She doesn’t confide in me. I think it helps, though, that she knows the detective.”
Evan took another thick swallow of his health drink; he tried to down them as quickly as possible. “She does? You mean Detective Fariel?”
Vi’s blue eyes, more faded than Corie’s, narrowed. “I guess you wouldn’t have realized because you were much older, but he knew Hennessy, too.”
Evan forced himself finish the drink with one final swig. “He did? How did they all know each other?”
“They went to high school together.”
“That sounds innocent enough.”
“There was some competition there between my Corie and your sister. Jack was a bit of a character in high school.”
In Evan’s experience, parents and old people used the word “character” to explain any young person who wasn’t afraid of them. “He dated Corie?”
“Until Hennessy took him away from her.”
The bitch actually seemed amused by her own daughter’s pain. He didn’t need to ask how Hennessy had prevailed over Corie; his sister’s sexual precocity was well-known in the family. But he wanted to keep Vi talking. “What happened? Corie’s never talked much about her high school years.”
“Corie was quite smitten with the young Jack Fariel
. She didn’t want me to know but a mother has a way of intuiting these things. I know she was planning to go to the prom with him, and they went on a senior trip together to a dude ranch. Everything changed after that. I don’t know the details but Corie was heartbroken. Her father and I were chaperones on that trip and Corie begged him to take her home early. I wouldn’t have indulged her. Corie has always been too trusting for her own good. But Gus couldn’t say no to his little girl, especially when she turned on the waterworks.”
Too bad Vi wasn’t his type. He’d love to see her under his knife and wipe that smug, heartless smirk off of her leathery face for good. Instead, he leaned closer, like a gossipy conspirator. “Did Jack do something to her?”
Vi relished her opportunity to talk. “Corie never told me exactly what he did but I could put two and two together. She caught him with Hennessy. Until then it was ‘Jack this’ and ‘Jack that.’ After she came home from that trip you couldn’t mention his name in her presence. She’s too sensitive. I hoped the experience would toughen her up but instead she announced that she had no intention of going to the prom. I couldn’t have that. She wasn’t going to hide in her room licking her wounds. Not on my watch. I told her that she was going to that prom and she was going to hold her head up high, if I had to march her onto the dance floor myself.”
Evan’s smile felt frozen on his face. Poor Corie. Between his sister and her mother she didn’t stand a chance.
“Corie went off to college and put that trash behind her. Until yesterday. Do you want to know what I said to the esteemed detective when he tried to interview me?”
Evan allowed his expression to relax into one of genuine amazement. “Violet, that was a long time ago. In the present I think we should cooperate with the police. That includes Detective Fariel.”
“You’re pretty understanding about everything.”
“The only thing I won’t be understanding about is if you light that cigarette.” He nodded his head towards her hand. “The police were asking me questions yesterday about Brice. I felt somewhat at a loss.”
