Claire asked, “Do you remember the way Julia used to dance?”
Lydia was surprised by how clearly the memories came back. Julia had loved dancing. She would hear the faintest trace of music and throw herself completely into it. “Too bad she had such shitty taste in music.”
“It wasn’t that bad.”
“Really, Menudo?”
Claire gave a surprised laugh, as if she had forgotten all about her crush on the boy band. “She was just so joyful. She loved so many things.”
“Joyful,” Lydia repeated, relishing the lightness of the word.
When Julia had first disappeared, everyone talked about how tragic it was that something bad had happened to such a good girl. Then the sheriff had floated his theory that Julia had just walked away—joined a hippie commune or run off with a guy—and the tone had changed from sympathetic to accusatory. Julia Carroll was no longer the selfless girl who volunteered at the animal shelter and worked at the soup kitchen. She was the strident political activist who’d been jailed at a protest. The pushy reporter who alienated the entire staff of the school newspaper. The radical feminist who demanded the university hire more women. The drunk. The pothead. The whore.
It wasn’t enough for Julia to be taken away from the family. All the good things about her had to be taken away, too.
Lydia told Claire, “I lied about where I was the night she disappeared. I was passed out in the Alley.”
Claire looked surprised. The Alley was a seedy passageway that connected the Georgia Bar to the Roadhouse, two Athens dives that catered to underage townies. Lydia had told the sheriff she was practicing with the band in Leigh Dean’s garage the night Julia went missing, when in actuality, she’d been just a stone’s throw away from her sister.
Instead of pointing out the proximity, Claire told her, “I said I was studying with Bonnie Flynn, but actually, we were making out.”
Lydia choked on a laugh. She had forgotten how good Claire was at tossing out shocking statements. “And?”
“I liked her brother better.” Claire picked up a piece of egg between her thumb and finger, but she didn’t eat it. “I saw you on the road this afternoon. I was parked in front of the McDonald’s. You were stopped at the light.”
Lydia felt the hair on her neck go up. She remembered stopping at a red light by the McDonald’s on the way to the cemetery. She’d had no idea that someone was watching her. “I didn’t see you.”
“I know. I followed you for about twenty minutes. I don’t know what I was thinking. I wasn’t surprised when you ended up at the cemetery. It seemed fitting—a bookend. Paul split us apart. Why wouldn’t he bring us back together?” She pushed away the plate. “Not that I think you’ll ever forgive me. And you shouldn’t, because I was never going to forgive you.”
Lydia wasn’t sure forgiveness was in her wheelhouse. “What made you believe me after all this time?”
Claire didn’t answer. She was staring at the half-finished food on her plate. “I loved him. I know you don’t want to believe that, but I really, truly, giddy, heart-breaking, longing, achingly loved him.”
Lydia said nothing.
“I’m so angry with myself, because it was all right in front of me and I never thought to question it.”
Lydia got the distinct feeling that the conversation had shifted to something else. She asked a question that had been fermenting in the back of her mind. “If Paul’s business partner settled out of court, why is the FBI still bothering you? There’s no criminal case. It’s over.”
Claire’s jaw worked. She was gritting her teeth.
“Are you going to answer me?”
“This is the part that’s dangerous.” She paused. “Or maybe not. I don’t know. But it’s almost midnight. I’m sure you want to go home. I had no right to ask you over in the first place.”
“Then why did you?”
“Because I’m selfish, and because you are the only person left in my life who was ever capable of making anything better.”
Lydia knew that Paul had been the other person. She didn’t appreciate the association. “What did he do to you, Claire?”
Claire looked down at the counter. She wasn’t wearing makeup, but she wiped underneath her eyes in the careful way you did when you were wearing mascara. “He was watching these movies. Not just porn, but violent porn.”
The only thing that surprised Lydia was that Claire actually cared. “I’m not taking up for him, but men watch all kinds of weird shit.”
“It wasn’t weird, Liddie. It was violent. And graphic. A woman is murdered, and this man in a leather mask rapes her while she’s dying.”
Lydia covered her mouth with her hand. She was speechless.
“There are twenty short films. Vignettes, I guess, of two different women. They’re both tortured and electrocuted and burned and branded like cattle. I can’t even describe the other things that are done to them. The first girl is murdered.” She gripped her hands together. “The second girl looks like Anna Kilpatrick.”
Lydia’s heart quivered like a harp string. “You have to call the police.”
“I did more than that. I took all of the movies to the cops, and they said they were fake, but—” She looked up at Lydia, her face a study in devastation. “I don’t think they’re fake, Liddie. I think the first woman was really killed. And the girl . . . I’m not sure. I just don’t know anymore.”
“Let me see them.”
“No.” Claire vehemently shook her head. “You can’t watch them. They’re awful. You’ll never be able to unsee them.”
The words reminded Lydia of her father. Toward the end of his life, he’d often said that about Julia, that there were just some things that you couldn’t unsee. Still, she had to know. Lydia insisted, “I want to see the girl who looks like Anna Kilpatrick.”
Claire started to argue the point, but she obviously wanted a second opinion. “You can’t play the movie. You can only look at her face.”
Lydia would play the damn movie if she wanted to. “Where is it?”
Claire reluctantly stood from the bar. She led Lydia to the mudroom and opened the side door. There was a piece of wood where the window should’ve been.
Claire explained, “There was a break-in on the day of the funeral. Nothing was taken. The caterers stopped them.”
“Were they looking for the movies?”
Claire turned around, surprised. “I never even considered it. The police said there’s a gang that trolls obituaries looking for houses to rob during funerals.”
Lydia had a vague recollection of hearing something similar on the news, but it was still a weird coincidence.
They walked across the large motor court toward the garage, which was twice the size of Lydia’s house. One of the bay doors was already open. The first thing Lydia saw was a cabinet on its side. Then a set of broken golf clubs. Hand tools. Machinery. Paint cans. Tennis rackets. The garage had been completely ransacked.
“This is my own apeshittery,” Claire said, not elaborating. “The burglars didn’t make it into the garage.”
“You did this?”
“I know,” Claire said, as if they were gossiping about another person.
Lydia stepped carefully because her shoes were back inside the house. She braced her hand against a BMW X5 as she stepped over the toppled cabinet. There was a beautiful charcoal Porsche that looked like someone had taken a hammer to it. The silver Tesla had pockmarks on the hood. She was fairly certain that even in their damaged states, any one of these cars could pay off her mortgage.
Claire jumped right into the story. “There was a Thunderbolt cable that went upstairs. Paul drilled a hole in the floor so it could plug directly into his computer.”
Lydia looked up at the ceiling. The Sheetrock had been broken open.
Claire said, “I
couldn’t stay up there anymore. Paul’s MacBook was in the Tesla’s front trunk. I got it out and put it here, and then got the cable out of the wall so I could plug it in.” She was almost breathless, the same way she used to get when she was little and wanted to tell Lydia something that had happened at school. “I did a search on the laptop to see if there were any more movies. I didn’t find anything, though, who knows? Paul was very good with computers. Then again, he never really bothered to hide anything because he knew that I would never look.” She told Lydia, “I trusted him.”
Lydia followed the destruction to a silver MacBook Pro that was set up on the workbench. Claire had used a hammer to punch out the Sheetrock, which Lydia knew because the hammer was still stuck in the wall. A thin white cable hung down like a piece of string. Claire had plugged it into the laptop.
“Look back there.” Claire pointed behind the workbench. “You can see the light from the external hard drive.”
Lydia had to push up onto her toes to see what she meant. She craned her neck. There was the flashing light. The drive was embedded in the wall. The niche was professionally built out, including a trim detail. If Lydia stared long enough, she could almost see the schematic in her head.