Chapter Thirty-Three
Thirty-Three
Elsie takes the stairs two at a time, passing Mrs. Borowski, the old lady from the apartment below, with just a breathless, hurried greeting. She bursts through her front door and clambers over the piles of books that are stacked up in the living room, sending them spilling into the kitchen.
She feels the vertigo of being close to a revelation, something she’s felt before, and the memory of the crawl space, the day she knew her own husband was a killer, flashes into her mind.
She crawled backward on her palms and knees as quickly as she could to get out of there—away from matted hair, from the scraps of clothing, that stench.
Albert was out, so she paced the house; then, when she’d paced every inch of it, she pushed open the door and strode out into the street.
She just kept walking—not looking back, not stopping for anything.
Her shoes ate up the sidewalk, and soon enough her feet began to sweat and the patent leather began to rub.
She did not stop for traffic when crossing the road.
She did not stop when an older woman placed a concerned palm on the small of her back, asked if she was quite all right.
Blisters swelled. The skin of her feet grew hot and wet.
Never stopping, she walked for another hour before she saw the car.
Parked up at the corner of the street. Its distinctive red and blue light.
She glanced down at her feet. The blood was oozing out of the open toes of her shoes. She thought of fresh oranges, of cooking smells. She crossed to the other side of the street and made her way toward the police car.
She had never expected her life to be so filled with bodies. But now, especially since she, Bev and Margot have started investigating these crimes, bodies are all she can think about.
Her father warned her years ago, when Albert’s crimes had come to light, of exactly what was to come.
It was the last time they communicated before he died, his words having arrived in a single handwritten page delivered by the mailman.
There was no personal message, no preamble, no apology, just a quote from one of his favorite Shakespeare plays.
So shall you hear of carnal, bloody and unnatural acts,
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause.
At the time, Elsie thought it cowardly of her father, after everything he had put his family through, to offer someone else’s words for comfort.
Now she can see that it was his way of apologizing.
After what he had endured—mud-drenched battles, bayonets, shells and burned flesh—he was dealing with his very own bodies, too.
—
She finds the copied pages on the coffee table, right where she left them, next to the half-completed Escher jigsaw puzzle.
The pile is thick; she knows it will take a while to find his name.
And he probably used a false one when he picked up girls, when he did what he did to them.
But the license plate: that won’t be a lie.
She whips the notebook from her purse and hastily flips it to the correct page, finds the details she took down in the Farrers’ kitchen. Then she turns the pages, one by one, running her finger slowly down the correct column.
When it happens, something slots together inside Elsie, as if the bones of her spine have been out of alignment but suddenly click back into place.
There it is. Hank Farrer’s license plate number.
Her eyes dart to the neighboring column, where the specifics of each interaction have been jotted down, the chilling details of each violent incident. As she takes in the words, her stomach drops. Fingertips buzzing, she reaches for the phone.