Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
“Hey babe,” Jeff whispered as he crawled into bed and snuggled up close, sliding a hand over Christine’s bare shoulder. His touch made her skin crawl. The memory of their lovemaking, before she’d seen the phone, made her want to bathe in disinfectant.
His license plate was on the dead man’s phone. Beside it was the name of one of the girls, Tina. He had purchased a custom video of her, and he had directed it with his voice disguised.
Some of the other license plates had girls’ names beside them.
And others had question marks. Apparently, Mr. Terrence had worked out the identities of a few of the men, but not all of them.
He didn’t know which plate-owner had ordered up which girl in seven of the cases, but he’d matched the girl to the plate in three others. Jeff’s was one of them.
So Terrence had known who Jeff was.
Diane had returned the camcorder with the chip in it.
When she listened to the recordings, knowing one of the voices was Jeff’s, she’d picked out which one, even though it had been modulated mechanically.
She knew the rhythm of his speech, his pauses, his tone.
He gave explicit instructions to Mr. Terrence, who then repeated them aloud.
When she listened carefully, she could also hear the sounds of a young girl crying.
The catalogue page with the girls’ photos told her Tina was the one who looked the youngest. Her age was listed as thirteen, but looking at her, Christine thought she could’ve been eleven.
She still had baby cheeks.
Christine knew the statistics. Most women did. One out of three adult women were sexually assaulted or raped while they were still children, but only half were reported, which would make the real statistic two out of three. 90% of men who assaulted women never served a day in jail.
She knew the stats the way she knew a great many horrible things about the world these days. But seeing the girls’ faces, knowing her husband had watched these little girls, had abused and traumatized them—made her physically ill.
“Hey, baby, you awake?” Jeff whispered.
He kissed the back of her neck.
“Fuck off, Jeff, I’m sleeping.” She didn’t mean to bark it like that. It just came out.
He backed off sharply. “Pissy tonight, aren’t we?”
She rolled onto her back. “My best friend was damn near killed by a hit-and-run driver, and today I found out she’s also—never mind. It doesn’t concern you. Yes, I’m pissy.”
Then she got out of the bed, taking three pillows and the comforter with her, and left the room, dragging a train that would’ve rivaled Princess Di’s.
She hauled her tail through the doorway and slammed it.
Then she dragged the bedding the rest of the way to the sofa, so she could sleep in front of the glass, in the dark, with a view of the lake.
She made a little nest for herself there but knew she wouldn’t sleep. What was she supposed to do with this? With what she knew? She couldn’t let him get away with it and she couldn’t stay married to him, that was for damn sure.
She should get some evidence that didn’t link to her, or to the girls, or to Phillip Terrence, and then show it to the police. Yes. That was exactly what she had to do. Which meant she couldn’t kick Jeff out of her life. Not yet. She needed to find proof.
She wandered to the kitchen and put on a pot of water for tea, gathered a handful of grapes from the fruit basket and nibbled while the water heated. Then she went back to the sofa to wait for the water and picked up a framed photo from the end table. Their wedding photo.
She’d been forty and looked twenty-nine. He’d been gorgeous, buff, handsome, wealthy, just a dream of a catch. He’d made her sign a prenup, of course. But he’d made it significantly more generous after she’d caught him buying jewelry for someone else. One of her conditions for taking him back.
Oh my god, had that been a child too?
Tears welled as she realized the last nineteen years of her life had been a lie. And the older she got, the more distant Jeff had become. She’d bent over backwards trying to preserve her youth, but she’d never had a chance, had she? He didn’t want a woman. He wanted little girls.
She was divorcing him the minute she got enough evidence to send his sick pedo-ass to prison.
She reached for her phone and realized she’d left it on the nightstand. So she got up, went back in, and caught Jeff red-handed with it, scrolling like mad.
“Find anything interesting?”
He looked up sharply. “What? No, I was just—”
“Snooping.” She crossed the room and swiped the phone from his hand.
“I’m sorry about Rosa. I just…wanted to know what’s got you so angry with me, hon.”
So he’d read some of her texts. She shrugged and tried to think of something she’d been angry about before she’d discovered his disgusting predilections.
“I don’t know, Jeff. You’ve ignored me for years, and I’ve got used to it.
Now all of the sudden you’re up in my face like you give a shit, and I can’t help but question your sincerity.
” She frowned. Actually, that was a real question.
“Why so friendly all of the sudden? Hm?” Did he know something? Had he talked to Dangerous Dan?
Jeff sighed, leaning back against the headboard. “I know I’ve been a shitty husband lately, that’s all.”
“Lately?”
“Can’t a guy change his ways?”
She looked at him. “Can’t a woman have a little time to adjust? You’re giving me whiplash.”
He nodded slowly. “You want me to go back to the house, give you some space?”
“Not today, I don’t,” she said. She had to search the house first, before he had a chance to clean up. “I just need a little space.” She took her phone away from him and returned to the living room, closing the door more softly this time.
She couldn’t really be all that angry with him for going through her phone. She’d been going through his every time he left it home, after all. Besides, he wasn’t going to find anything, since all her incriminating shit was on her secret second phone and…
Oh, hell, that was it. That was why she hadn’t found any clue of his perverted hobbies on his phone. That son-of-a-bitch had a second phone.
And Christine had a mission. If she found it, she bet she could put him away.
Bonnie didn’t go directly inside when Diane dropped her off, but instead went to her padlocked, off-limits she-shed in the back yard, where her small table held a white contraption the size of several pizzas stacked atop each other.
She’d worn gloves and long sleeves and even a mask to gather the plants.
She’d yanked them up by their roots from the wet ground they preferred, out near Little York Lake.
Then she’d cut off and discarded the upper parts and dropped the root bundles into a pail to carry home.
Mark used to make jerky using the food dehydrator that had been stored in the attic since his death.
Bonnie had hauled it out today while Sam, Marina, and the kids had been out looking at another house.
She’d plugged it into her shed’s power strip, and after splitting the roots into smaller pieces, had spread them over the trays.
As soon as she entered the shed, she pulled on the mask and gloves she’d left hanging just inside the door, then opened the dehydrator’s lid to find the roots had dried beautifully.
There was a milling attachment on her stand mixer that would work to grind them into flour.
She’d never once used the attachment for any other purpose, and she’d had it for a decade.
The girls gave her a hard time for hanging onto things forever, but this was going to be just the ticket.
She’d hauled the stand mixer and grinding mill attachment out of the house too, using the wheelbarrow because the stand mixer weighed a ton. It was already set up in the corner, but on the shed’s floor. Her little card table wouldn’t have supported it.
She crouched and turned the machine on, and then she fed small bunches of tangled, dried root into the hopper, and watched a fine brown powder come out the other end like deadly fairy dust. She adjusted the grain size coarser, not wanting the stuff airborne, and it came out perfectly.
When she finished grinding all the root pieces, she put the brown, coarse flour into a mason jar and screwed on its lid. Then she cleaned everything spotless, disposed of her mask and gloves, and went back inside her house.
In her absence, the family had returned from the evening showing and gone to their rooms. The house was quiet. Oh, wasn’t that a lucky thing?
She spent a few moments on the sofa, just waiting, listening, feeling the house. It didn’t seem anyone was awake, and after a moment, she went to the den and opened the door. It creaked a little bit, always had, but had never seemed as loud as it did then.
She started to tiptoe in, head down, when Sam said, “Mom?” from the desk.
She looked up fast, immediately smiling to cover her surprise. The little desk lamp was on, but its light hadn’t shone under the door. Its green glass shade aimed the light exactly where it was needed.
“Who else?” she asked. “I heard you in here, and I have tea brewing. Thought I’d offer you a cup.”
“I’d love a cup, thanks,” he said.
Really? “Sure. I’ll be right back.” She did not have tea brewing, so she’d have to be quick.
She hurried to the kitchen and heated the water in cups in the microwave, the worst possible way to make tea.
She dropped in a pair of teabags grabbing them from a canister without checking their flavor and hurried back carrying the cups.
Neither of them used cream or sugar, so that simplified things.
She only slowed her pace when she entered, then moved around the desk to hand him his cup, so she could see what was on his computer screen.
There were dots and lines overlaying a photo of Mr. Terrence’s living room.
“What are those marks, hon?”
Sam reached over and closed the laptop. “You shouldn’t be seeing that.”