Chapter Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Seven
The night is clear, the moon full and round, sprinkling the roofs of the surrounding buildings in glitter.
Beverley and Elsie sit across the street from the garage, shoulders hunched, trying to appear as small as possible in Elsie’s tough vinyl seats.
They’ve stationed the car—a hardly inconspicuous pink Buick—in the relative darkness of shadow, and it is partially obscured by the trunk of a large date palm.
Every so often, Beverley allows herself to crane her neck to peer across to the garage.
Rusting signs for Kendall Motor Oil sit out front, and two huge metal doors have been pulled up, revealing cars on lifts, as well as gadgets and heavy tools hanging on the walls.
It makes Beverley think of the hook, of Sarah Gunn’s body silently swinging.
Hank has been lumbering around inside. Even from a distance, they can hear the rhythmic thump of his steel-toed work boots, sense the energy radiating from his body, something hostile and electric, like what Beverley had once felt at the big-cat enclosure at the zoo.
It’s late, and they didn’t expect him to stay at the garage for so long.
But Sharon had mentioned that he needed all the work he could get.
That fits; they’d theorized that their killer could be going through financial difficulties.
A sudden flash behind them makes them flinch. The rear window pools with white light and a car draws up slowly behind them.
“What the hell?” Beverley whispers as Elsie eyes the rear window uneasily. It is already closing in on midnight, and they didn’t tell anyone they were coming here. It crosses Beverley’s mind briefly that it could be the cops arriving. Maybe they’ve finally started looking into Hank, too.
After finding Sarah’s body, Beverley couldn’t sleep, so she spent hours poring over the letters she’d been sent in the years since Henry’s arrest, letters from women whose husbands were in jail for violent offenses, for murder.
They all had different stories—the elementary school teacher whose husband had taken his hunting rifle and shot up a grocery store, the stay-at-home wife whose husband kidnapped a young girl and drove her out to a cabin in the woods, where he kept her tied up for two months.
The ways in which the wives learned of their husbands’ indiscretions stretched from the mundane to the horrifying: an emptied bank account, men disappearing for hours during the working day, one woman catching her husband watching the neighbors have sex through a hole in their attic.
All the women wanted to know one thing from Beverley: Did you see it coming?
There were patterns in the stories, sure.
Beverley had marked them all in a notebook—men with histories of violence in the home, men who worked late or were evasive when asked about the particulars of their routines.
But there were also anomalies—the loving fathers, the wealthy businessmen, the prizewinning academics.
Plenty of the women had asked for help but had been ignored because of where they lived, the color of their skin, the figures in their bank accounts.
Plenty of them were forced to take their children from their homes and plant them in different towns, different states, so they would be accepted.
These women would never again feel safe, because they had been lied to since they were small girls playing with dolls and songs and their own na?ve aspirations.
You will be loved, they had been told. If you only behave correctly, look the right way, keep your waist slim and your voice quiet, you will be loved. You will be safe.
Beverley studies the garage again. Hank Farrer fits their checklist: secretive, hostile, unpredictable, physically strong, someone who uses prostitutes, someone with access to multiple cars.
On top of that, the Farrers’ house is right in the middle of the range that the killer is operating in.
Then there is the bracelet. They have to watch Hank but maintain a safe distance from him.
As the car draws closer behind them, its distinctive yellow paint becomes clear.
A cab. The door opens, and out steps a heeled foot and a bare leg.
A woman makes her way over to Elsie’s car, and Beverley immediately recognizes the shimmy, the bright red dress.
The back door opens and Margot eases herself in.
The space immediately fills with a waft of Diorissimo.
“I thought you had a date,” Beverley hisses, turning in her seat.
“I couldn’t miss this,” Margot whispers. “Seen him kill anyone yet?”
Elsie tuts loudly.
“No activity so far,” says Beverley. “We’ve been here since nightfall, and all we’ve seen is Peter Farrer driving out.”
“What? The son? What’s he doing here?”
“Looks like he works here, too.”
“Old Peroxide didn’t tell us everything, then.”
“For God’s sake, Margot…” Elsie fumes.
“She has used peroxide on her hair,” Margot replies evenly. “It’s ruined the integrity of the shafts.”
Beverley tunes them out and watches as Hank kneels to change a tire, the muscles in his arms flexing.
There’s no doubt that this man is strong.
She imagines him easily lifting a woman onto a hook, carting a body across a golf course, chasing down a terrified girl fleeing for her life.
When she tunes back in, Margot is begging for the radio to be switched on.
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Elsie scolds. “We’re trying to stay out of sight. That man over there is a killer, and you want us to blast the Beach Boys?”
Margot whistles through her teeth and slumps back in her seat.
They sit in silence for the next hour or so, the thick night dragging like tar. Beverley resists the urge to yawn. Elsie’s eyes, she can see, are fixed unflinchingly on the garage.
“We sure we’ve got the right guy?” Margot eventually whispers. She’s never been comfortable with long periods of stillness. “He seems to be doing what a mechanic does”—she gestures to the garage—“not hanging women from hooks.”
Beverley winces at the crassness.
“Do we have anything to link him to the murders other than Sharon’s hunch and the bracelet?” Margot asks, not unreasonably.
“Henry said it would be someone who hated women,” Beverley replies, “who wanted to see them punished—mommy issues, sexual dysfunction…”
There is a cold silence in the car, and Beverley realizes, with a wheeling sense of panic, that her exhaustion has caused her to slip. She wants to backpedal, to unsay the words. She wants to push open the door and flee the car.
“You’ve been speaking to Henry?” Elsie blinks in disbelief.
Beverley’s mouth gapes wordlessly.
“No, she hasn’t,” Margot snaps. “Tell her you haven’t, Bev.”
Beverley turns to face her and watches Margot’s expression shift as she realizes she has been lied to.
“How could you do that?” Margot hollers, incredulous. “How could you be in the same room as him?”
“I thought he could help us,” Beverley replies hurriedly, glancing at Elsie’s uncomfortable posture.
“With what’s at stake, I thought it would give us an insight into how these sorts of people think…
” Her head swivels between them as she waits for them to soften, to realize that she was right to visit him at San Quentin.
Margot scoffs. “When are you going to get a backbone, Bev?”
“We all agreed,” Elsie says quietly, “that the only way to move on is to not see them. We made a pact.”
Beverley feels guilt slice through her stomach.
She has betrayed her friends, but she has a right to visit her ex-husband if she wants to, doesn’t she?
It’s her choice. They don’t need to know that she regrets it, that she has had nightmares about it ever since.
All she has to do is blink and her vision is scarred with the empty line of chairs, the long glass windows, the arrogance seeping from Henry’s skin.
“How could you see him?” Margot won’t let it go. “Even from prison, he’s still controlling you, Bev. It’s pathetic.”
“He’s still the children’s father,” she says weakly. “Just because you don’t have kids—”
“Don’t use that against us!”
Elsie’s eruption shocks Beverley.
“Don’t use the fact that we don’t want children as evidence that we don’t know what it’s like to be a woman.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Beverley shakes her head, her thoughts clunky with panic.
“I can’t believe you could even look at him,” Margot spits, “after what he did.”
“I thought it would help us narrow down who the killer is, okay?” She’s growing frustrated at her friends’ judgment. She was only doing what she thought would help them track down the killer. “Not everyone’s perfect like you, Margot.”
It’s cheap and Beverley knows it.
Elsie stiffens in her seat.
“Oh, here come the accusations,” Margot jabs.
“You think you’re better than the rest of us because you’re not affected by anything that’s happened to you,” Beverley replies. She’s a cornered rat. She’ll have to bite her way out. “You don’t give a shit that your husband killed himself in prison because of you.”
“Beverley!” Elsie’s eyes are wide.
But Beverley is on a roll. Panic has taken over; she no longer really knows what she’s saying. “You think I’m weak because I have worries and feelings and fears.”
Margot’s face has hardened.
“But you’re the one who’s in denial, with your parties and your jokes.”
“Denial?” Margot’s voice is shrill. And loud. Too loud. “Are we really going to talk about denial? You still wear your wedding ring.”
“I need people to respect me.”
“Respect? You can’t move on from a guy who killed seven women. How’s anyone going to respect you? You still have his goddamn photograph on your fridge.”
“What?”
“Elsie told me. She saw it. It’s sick, Beverley. He’s a murderer.”
Elsie swings around in her seat. “I didn’t mean to gossip. I just—”
“Well, at least I don’t have to fuck anything that moves to keep my mind off my ex-husband.” Beverley’s words land the punch. “We all know what you get up to at those parties. If you weren’t such a—”
With a sharp intake of breath, Margo suddenly pushes open the door.
“Wait!” Elsie hisses, but Margot has already slammed it behind her and is tottering down the road.
There’s a movement from inside the garage, and Beverley turns to see Hank at the open doorway, silhouetted by light from inside, wiping his powerful hands on a rag. She watches as his eyes fall on the car. He looks furious to realize he is being watched.
“Shit.” Beverley ducks down in her seat and prays that he cannot see them. “Elsie! Get her back in the car.”
Elsie winds down her window and calls out to Margot. They have to be quick. But Margot, even in her heels, is already too far away to hear her.
A glance at the garage tells Beverley that Hank has disappeared back inside.
She’s likely got only seconds, but she opens the passenger-side door and calls out after Margot.
The next time she looks at the garage, Hank has reappeared and is striding down the driveway, his right arm held out in front of him.
“If you fuckers think you can steal anything else from my garage,” he calls out, “you better be feeling lucky!”
“Jesus!” Beverley hisses.
“Shall we hold up our hands or something?” Elsie begins to raise her palms.
As Hank nears, Beverley can see that he is holding a gun.
“Just go!” Beverley cries, and Elsie reaches for the ignition. But her shaking hands struggle to turn the key.
“Drive, Elsie! He’s got a gun!”
“I can see that!” Elsie wrenches the key once more, and on the third turn the engine splutters. The radio clicks on, “California Girls” blasting into the night.
Hank is only a few feet away and holding the weapon aloft. He must be able to see them this close. Beverley prays that he cannot make out the details of their faces, that he won’t jot down Elsie’s license plate number, won’t come after them.
The wheels screech as Elsie jolts the car forward, making a direct line for Margot as Beverley leans back to open the car door.
“Get in the damn car!” Beverley screams through the open window as they pull alongside her.
Margot glances behind them, seeing what Beverley can see reflected in the rearview mirror: the towering Hank in the center of the road, the gun pointed directly at them.
Margot ducks and barrels into the back seat.
She doesn’t even have time to close the door before Elsie screeches off, leaving Hank Farrer behind them, suspicious, furious and more dangerous than ever before.