Chapter Thirty-Nine
Thirty-Nine
The weather breaks and the rain finally comes, washing the pretty streets of Berryview in an insipid gray.
It’s better this way, Beverley supposes.
She doesn’t have to explain to the kids anymore why she will not open the windows.
This way she can keep them indoors and nobody will ask questions—not even her mother, who picks them up wordlessly every evening, an umbrella held above her head.
When she leaves, Beverley retreats to the kitchen, pours a long slug of whiskey and turns to the pages of her scrapbook.
With her defenses down, like this, she’d let her secrets slip.
She told Elsie about the pig, about the affair.
She didn’t have the strength to keep anything to herself any longer.
Elsie had looked pained and dropped her eyes to the floor.
Beverley knew she was finding it hard not to judge her for the affair, and she wouldn’t blame Elsie for judging her.
Beverley judges herself. She knows she is weak.
She called Sharon and told her that she, Margot and Elsie were no longer looking into Hank.
Sharon seemed relieved, in a way, but Beverley also sensed something else in her voice: disappointment.
If Hank was not the killer, that meant he would remain out of prison, free to harm Sharon, maybe even harm the kids.
Beverley replaced the receiver and wept.
It should have been good news. Instead, it was just another way she had let someone down.
She still hasn’t spoken to Margot. Their coarse words play over in her head as she sits, her feet tucked up on the couch, watching mindless television.
Hours slip by, a star-blurred emptiness, the mute passing of days.
Weeks melt into one another in a slow, drowsy haze, gluey time stretching endlessly.
She thinks of the girls also. Of Kate, who loved horses, whose family said she had a wicked sense of humor and a childhood hip injury.
Of Sarah, a talented majorette who by all accounts read romance novels by the truckload.
Of Diane Howard Murray, about how her humble background never stopped her from going after her Hollywood ambitions, and about that dazzling smile, that confidence, just like Margot’s.
Of Emily Roswell with her cheerleading pom-poms, her talent for science, which made her want to be a professor.
Beverley sees, in her mind’s eye, Cheryl Herrera rising early and pulling on a hooded sweatshirt for training, kissing her father on the cheek before jogging out into the street, making her way to the athletics track.
Each morning, Beverley takes the paper and cuts out the articles she needs, pasting them into the book.
It’s like sinking into a warm bath. The police have established a task force to catch the “Central Valley Slaughterer.” The papers report the latest breaks in the case.
There are vague allusions to new suspects, new information from the families.
She has returned to other parts of her routine.
She reclines now, in bed, her head on Roger’s stomach.
She knows she shouldn’t have called him, that she should have the strength to move on by now.
Their affair is disrespectful to Enid. Not only that, but it could also put his job in jeopardy.
Yet there is something empty inside of her that only his kindness can fill.
She needs his smoky scent, his touch, his low, soothing voice between the bedsheets.
The fact that he has been a means to get more information about the girls and their murders is not lost on her.
At one point, the fantastical thought crossed her mind that she might have been using him; that, were it not for her fixation on the case, had she not wanted to catch this killer so badly, she might have ended things long ago.
It was an intoxicating feeling, and she had allowed herself to relish it briefly—to hold the power, to know what it’s like to exploit.
She could see why men have such a taste for it.
Tonight, they have been talking about the case again. Roger’s team has identified a suspect out in Ventura, a man who spent time in jail for stalking and kidnapping a girl back in the fifties, when he was just a teen.
“Is he the one?”
“I don’t know, Bev.” Roger softly twists her hair between his fingers. The late nights at the station are showing on him. Dark crescents puddle beneath his eyes.
“I still think it’s worth looking into the guy across the street.” She indicates the exterior wall, imagining Chris Appleton’s unkempt garden, his face at the window.
“Beverley”—Roger eases himself up on the bed, which tugs her neck into an awkward angle—“I’ve had a car on that guy for the past two weeks, okay? Because I care about you. But he barely leaves his house. He’s a loner, not a criminal.”
Beverley pushes herself out from under the sheets and crosses to the window, arms folded. Her skin itches with anger—but it is she who is the target of her own fury.
She knows, deep down, that it couldn’t have been Christopher Appleton. And yes, if she admits it to herself, she is ashamed to have judged someone so quickly, this strange, isolated, unusual man. She’s no better than the neighbors who spit in her doorway after news broke about Henry.
Roger calls her back from the window, and reluctantly she goes to him. He smooths his hand across her forehead, pushing back the hair. “Don’t feel bad. A housewife can’t solve a murder,” he says gently. “Not even one like you.”
—
A while later, when Roger is getting ready to leave for an impending visit from Enid’s sister, Beverley leans against the hallway wall, watching him.
It’s part of their familiar dance, this long, drawn-out goodbye, Beverley scrambling to find reasons for him to stay just a little longer—a light bulb that needs changing, a bottle she cannot open, another twenty minutes in bed.
He pulls on his coat, and she reaches across to the sideboard to fetch his Lucky Strikes and a couple of papers she’d removed from his pockets when she was searching for his cigarettes earlier. She hands them all over, and Roger takes her face in his hands, tenderly kisses her on the forehead.
Once he’s left Beverley sees a scrap of paper on the floor. It must have fallen from the pile when she handed everything else over.
She bends to pick it up, realizing it is a Polaroid photograph.
The flash of the camera has bleached out most of the details, but she can still see the image that has been captured. She flips the picture over. Scrawled on the back: McKENZIE CRIME SCENE, SEPTEMBER 23RD.
There is a wailing sound in Beverley’s head. Her teeth feel as if they are vibrating. Captured in the grainy photograph, discarded on the grass at the scene where Kate McKenzie, girl number five, lost her life, is something Beverley has most definitely seen before.