No. He was God. God gave life, and these girls didn't really scream, didn't really fear, didn't actually have their pulses race until Paul came along. He made them feel life at its most potent, really made them feel every fiber of their beings. And he took their lives, too. It was like being the director of a huge stage, casting the actors, making them do what he wanted them to do, and yelling “cut” when it was all over. When it was all over in reality, it was like capturing them forever on film. He could own them. They were a part of him. He always thought about this when he took their lives. He supposed that's why he liked having the video camera around. He looked now at the two girls on either side of him and wished he had it with him now.
He'd picked up a saw at the hardware store, along with some rope and various other tools to finish the job. He often just took pictures of the girls after the deed was done, but today he'd take something else.
It took some time and patience to get the job done, but it was worth the wait. He admired the blonde’s hands: her nails were not too long and very neat, with fire engine red nail polish. Her fingers were slim and delicate. He also liked the color of the brunette's eyes: greenish grey. They were a lot like Sophia's. He kept those things from the girls, one hand and a pair of eyes, and buried their bodies in the soft earth near the shed. He thought long and hard about burning the shed down. It was out in the middle of nowhere, but smoke might attract attention. He regretted it. It would be fun to watch it burn, the fire licking and whittling the old building down until it was nothing but hot ash.
He put the marble-like eyes and the pretty little hand in a huge Big Gulp cup he'd gotten from a gas station. It was still full of ice.
Paul was still drunk when he got back in the vehicle, which felt too big for him. He'd wrecked the Solaris right after he raped the cheerleader. He supposed he was so excited, he couldn't control the car. He set fire to it out on the highway and hitched. He tried not to think of it as being too big of a problem. He hoped that the car would burn and melt into an unidentifiable lump.
The man who had picked him up was old and crusty, and Paul thought he was exactly the type of person you wouldn't want picking you up on the side of the road. The guy had a mousy comb-over and glasses as thick as expensive granite drink coasters. His lips had that constant-wet look, as if he'd been licking them over and over. Paul wondered if the man intended to sexually assault him, but he didn't wait. It was no problem for Paul. Five miles into their trip, he slit the old guy's throat and took his suburban. He dragged him deep into the desert until he could no longer see the road. He took his wallet, which had a few hundred dollars. He was glad. It allowed him to buy all the materials to use on the girls.
As he drove, he thought more about those girls. Part of his mind fluttered, told him to cool off, go back home for a while and see how things were panning out with Sophia and that cop guy.
Sophia. Paul didn't know what to think of her. The bitch. That was one he could never get a handle on. It just didn't work with two dominant people, no matter which way you tried it. He thought of that night when they'd first fucked, when they were both trying to dominate the other. The sex was good, Sophia was wild, but part of it frustrated him. Part of it really challenged him, though. That was what the game with Mercedes had been all about. He needed to see if she was ready to submit to him now. He was in charge. She needed to know it.
His head bobbed. He blinked his eyes and slapped himself to stay awake. Rolled down the window. Turned on the radio. The dry chill of the desert bit into his face with pin-sharp acuteness, and the song on the radio pierced his ears: the twangy wail, the waaaah of the guitar. Country. Paul winced. Country reminded him of his whore mother. She used to listen to it all day long during the basement days. He changed the channel to talk radio.
The show was about the childfree, those who had adamantly opposed having children. Several of the childfree (Paul really wondered about that term. It made them sound like ethereal fantasy beings from another planet) came on and spoke up in defense of their decisions. And many more people with children called in and argued. One caller said they were going to hell for denying their God-given rights as human beings.
"If you only knew," Paul snickered.
He'd thought a few times about how nice it would be to have a normal, Joe Job life with the 9-5 and the pretty wife and 2.5 kids. His own childhood was so....not normal that he strived for normalcy for a long time. But the fantasy prevailed. This was his life: driving drunk at 2 a.m. with a hand and a pair of eyes in a Styrofoam cup.
He tried to separate his thoughts from the radio, because there was a strange noise. It confused him. Then there were lights: a brilliant flash of red, a bolt of electric blue.
Paul cursed and beat his fists on the steering wheel. Then he cried. Then he tried to speed up, but the cop came over the loudspeaker and it freaked him out. The best he could do at this point was to try and charm the guy out of a DUI or a ticket.
He pulled over. The guy approached the suburban with his hat on. Paul rolled down the window.
"Officer! I guess you caught me speeding, huh?"
"Get out of the car."
The smile was still plastered to Paul's face, but in his mind, he knew.
Over. It's over.
* * * *
Paul’s head felt stuffed with cotton. A hangover feeling. Except he couldn't remember drinking. At all. And this bed felt…strange. He was so thirsty. This place, wherever it was, was dry. Every drop of moisture felt sucked from his body. He put his hands on his head.
Where the hell am I?
He adjusted his eyes and gazed through bars.
Jail.
He clenched his teeth and his fists together. They arrested him for drunk driving. That was about all he remembered.
The girls, the girls…what'd I do with them? He still felt sick from the toxic sludge of alcohol. The buildup of gunk in his teeth felt gummy and dry, and his tongue felt like it was stuck to the roof of his mouth. He gulped water from a sink and his mind raced. He took a long piss, zipped up and began to pace to keep from passing out.
He knew he was in jail. That much he'd figured out so far. He recognized the bars. Now he was thinking about what was in the drink container in the cup holder. The ice had probably melted and the eyes and the fingers were still probably floating around in a sea of blood, melted ice and a little bit of Dr. Pepper. He sat back down on the bed and put his head in his hands.
Paul was pretty sure he'd fallen asleep when the guard called out, but he wasn't sure. He'd been feeling slightly better since pissing and drinking a few gulps of water, but not really. His head was still swimming and he had been trying to choke back the vomit and the realization that they probably had him now, now after all those years, just as he was getting one over on that Sophia cocksucker.
The guard said, "Mr. Scivique." It was louder this time, and when Paul looked up, the guard was staring at him.
He almost said it. But my name is Paul Bertrand. You have the wrong cell, jackass, thanks for waking…
Yeah. He thought it all right. But he didn't dare open his mouth. He'd been drinking long enough by now to know when to keep his mouth shut.
"You spent your night. Your vehicle is in impound. Make a call if you have to. Your court date is in a couple of days."
Instead of yelping for joy, Paul thanked the guard and followed him out. The more he thought about the fingers and eyes in that cup, the more his stomach sank. But he could handle that. As long as he had Sophia's journal. They gave him the leather-bound book, his wallet, and a few other things he'd had in his pocket. Now all he had to do was get away and find Sophia.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Ti: Making Connections
It was still a little chilly outside, but the sun started to break through a little, offering some warmth. Condensation still hung desperately to a few plants and leaves, and birds chirped with a little hesitation, as if their noise would bring on more rain. Ti donned a black hoodie and m
atching black sweatpants. She was deep inside her own head as she walked down Fulton Street towards Gleeson Library at the University of San Francisco. Just for comfort's sake, she fondled the nondescript and unlabeled neon green CD case she had stuffed in her hoodie pouch.
She felt as though delving further into Tamara's world would save her from the desperation she felt from letting Sophia slip away. Her heart was hurting less, that lump in her throat was slowly melting away, but when Sophia called about her cat, it came back a little. The apartment smelled like her. She thought of that day she walked here from the rain and whined and cried and made a fool of herself. How Sophia must have thought she was an idiot.
She did feel like an idiot. She still couldn't figure out what it was about Sophia that made her so interesting. It was frustrating. Ti felt like she'd known her in a past life or that she'd met her before, but she knew Sophia didn't feel the same. It made Ti feel ridiculous.
Sleeping with that cop was a bad idea. She hadn't been with a guy in a long time. He was only her second. Now, she was even questioning her sexual identity.
Keeping the envelopes a secret was important to her—she knew there was a connection to Sophia, and she was hell bent on finding it. Maybe even more determined than Robert Black. He said he had a suspect, and Ti’s glaring intuition spiked and she wondered if Black had found any information about Claude Moreau. All Ti did was tell Black how she'd met Tamara and the nature of their friendship. She didn’t even tell Black about the weird guy who came in that one day. She remembered that day with crystal clarity: it was soon after she'd seen Sophia. The videotape guy, who she'd only known as "Paul", came in and Tamara told the creepy story about going home with him and the whole video camera debacle.
Ti always thought he was cute for a guy. She'd get with him if he wanted to. She didn't like Tamara's reaction to him, though. She didn't normally react to men that way, only snobby rich girls who happened to have cute boyfriends. Ti suspected that Paul was some bully client of Tamara’s back in the day, but there was no reason to suspect that he was anything but a weird guy with bizarre sexual fetishes and a deep-seated desire to be some sort of porn director.
She wasn't sure why she didn't tell Black more about the envelopes. Part of her thought it might be in Tamara's best interest to keep it secret. She couldn't explain it. Maybe it was intuition. Maybe part of it was because she sort of liked Black and wanted to keep him out of it. Hence, the whole gender and sexuality identity crisis she was worried about facing.
Part of her supposed this was normal for her age. Maybe after all this was over she'd re-enroll in school. Maybe create more of a life for herself again. Get immersed in photography again. Find a job that didn't involve coffee. She was getting sick of it. The bitter coffee aroma loitered on her fingers and her clothes. She inadvertently sniffed her sleeve. She did the math in her head. She hadn't been to work in two weeks. She had no idea about what she was going to do for rent. The thought of calling John for money made her sad, and the thought of him sitting alone in the New Orleans house made her even more depressed.
Once inside the library, Ti got back to the business of the day: research. The building had just opened and there weren't many students yet, only a few assistants and a reference librarian behind the desk. The librarian smiled at Ti as she walked in. Ti smiled back. Even though she dropped out, she liked the idea of being a student and always felt at home in the library.
She chose a computer near a corner where no one could look over her shoulder and she wouldn't be disturbed. The login screen patiently waited for Ti to input her student affiliation information, but she dismissed it. She double-checked for roaming library workers. The librarian was busily reordering the ready reference shelves, her heel clicks echoing in the near-empty building. Satisfied, Ti pulled out the neon green CD case. The boot CD inside could create a total nightmare for any computer it happened to enter, but that was not Ti's intention. She only wanted to bypass the login and remain anonymous as she did her library research. She inserted the CD into the drive and the machine began to make strange noises. This part would take a while, so Ti pulled out a pen and a notebook from her old backpack. She began writing down things she remembered about her father.
He left home when I was three years old. That would have been in 1993. Mom married John in 1995 and died in 2000. Was Claude still in New Orleans? What was his occupation when he married Mom?
The computer beeped and Ti looked up to see it finally booting up. She'd obtained this disc from Maus, the one friend she’d made at school. They occasionally chatted about photography software and books and he seemed a little disappointed that she was dropping out. Before she had left, Maus handed her the neon green case.
"Here. It's a present. You can use it to bypass the university computer's login if you still need to use the library." He smiled. "Or for malevolent purposes. Whichever. It will basically allow you to login to any computer and browse anonymously.”
She’d learned a lot about computers from that guy: how to wipe a computer clean, how to cover tracks—Maus could go on and on. She was glad she listened.
Ti began by accessing a few genealogy databases. She thought that maybe if she searched enough, she'd be able to figure out if Claude remarried or had more children.
She typed his name and suspected birthday into the fields. There was his marriage to Mom, as well as her own name sprinkled across the page: Celestine Grace Moreau. She'd since dropped the "Moreau" and had legally changed her name to Celestine Grace. She thought it gave her more of a movie star quality, not that she was ever interested in being in front of the camera. Still, it sounded like a cool name for a photographer.
Nothing else. Nothing about a marriage, children, or whereabouts. She wasn't exactly surprised. Although she never got a chance to really know him well, she figured he was the type to have multiple children and partners. She briefly wondered if she had siblings out there, but quickly dismissed it. There was too much already to worry about.
She opened a database that provided users with information regarding specific companies. From here, she’d be able to type in the name of the company she’d found on Tamara’s envelopes: “Everlasting Beauty.” Ti thought it was a strange name, like the “happily ever after” used in fairy tales. But fairy tales were never the truth, were they?
The database revealed that Everlasting Beauty, established in 1997 and founded by Claude Moreau, Chief Executive Officer, had a net worth of $7.6 million. That was not what made Ti want to fall out of her chair. It wasn’t even Claude’s salary, which was at an impressive $1.5 million a year.
It was the name of the Vice President, with a salary of $1.3 million a year: Sophia Victoria Varga.
Dazed, she left the library and wandered aimlessly, still trying to come to grips with reality. Thomas Morgan Fink was also a partner in the business, but Ti never found any documents with that name in Tamara’s apartment. Ti knew that name...it had to be Tamara. Ti wasn't one hundred percent sure what other names Tamara went by, but she knew she was a Tommy in a past life. Thomas Morgan Fink. Ti laughed, then realized how inappropriate it was. She was tired. But the name sounded strange. "Fink" made her think of a guy in glasses playing Dungeons and Dragons. And it seemed so cliché to choose a name with the same first letter as her previous name. Maybe she didn’t get to choose her new name. She stopped smiling. Who knew? They never talked much about her former life, but Ti made a mental note to double-check Tamara’s apartment for any trace of that name.
Now she was missing, which most certainly had to do with this connection between Claude and... fucking Sophia. Ti shook her head. It didn't make any sense. She whipped out her phone and scrolled through her contacts, stopped at Robert Black's number. She held her breath.
No. Her fingers were still poised over the call button, but she was unable to make them move. What good is this going to do? Why can't I call?
Her thoughts could not connect to form a complete one. She thought of a jigsaw puzzl
e, its pieces falling and scattering on the ground. The logical step would be to call Black. But she just couldn't make her fingers do the right thing.
Why?
She let herself think. She thought about the ex-girlfriends, thought about her need to know, to control. There it was, but she didn't want to turn that particular puzzle piece over to see its full description.
She needed sleep. At least a few hours of it, then some strong coffee and real food. She needed to rest and heal up before she made a final decision, but the lurking, naughty part of her mind, the part that always prevailed in these situations, had already decided.
She needed to get back into Sophia's apartment and see what else was there.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Claude: Birth of a Monster
1965 was a rough year for Simone Moreau. She was fifteen years old and pregnant, but since she wasn't doing well in school anyway, this was a good excuse to go ahead and drop out. Her father, a minister, slapped her clean across the face and told her he had to resist kicking her in her belly, that if he didn't believe so much in the Lord above she should get rid of that baby. Did she know who the father was? Simone didn't. She'd been in the back of Jimmy Arceneaux's car with some other boys from Metairie, and they had some drinks and smoked a little bit of grass. It was what all teenagers were doing, but Simone didn't dare say that. She just decided to say it was Jimmy's.
Yeah, 1965 was a terrible year. Jimmy flipped out and flat out called Simone a liar, and the whole town got word. Even if you said something in Metairie, word would trickle down through the Mississippi and it would get to New Orleans fast. People liked to talk.
Simone was quick to get out of that house. She had a feeling that once her baby was born, things would go back to normal with Daddy. She never liked him sleeping in the bed with her, the way his whiskey breath smelled when he breathed all over her neck and tried to kiss her goodnight. And all the other things he did to her. She would have preferred Jimmy Arceneaux do those things to her instead.
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