CHAPTER 9
Claire slumped down into the overstuffed chair in her office as she watched her sister go through Paul’s collection of files. Lydia seemed energized by the prospect of uncovering more lurid details, but Claire felt as though she was suffocating under the weight of every new revelation. She couldn’t believe that only two days ago, she had watched Paul’s coffin as it was lowered into the ground. Her body might as well have been buried along with him. Her skin felt desiccated. She had a deep chill in her bones. Even blinking was a challenge, because the temptation to keep her eyes closed was almost too much to resist.
She stared at the burner phone in her hand. At 12:31 in the morning, Adam had responded to her text about the files with a short: “Okay.”
Claire didn’t know what that “okay” meant. The USB drive was waiting for him in the mailbox. Was Adam reserving his judgment until he saw what was on it?
She dropped the phone on the side table. She was sick of all these unanswered questions, and angry that instead of grieving for her husband, she was questioning her own sanity for loving him in the first place.
Lydia clearly had no such reservations. She was sitting on the floor going through the plastic boxes, her expression the same as every Halloween night they’d shared as kids. She had the colored folders stacked by name on the floor in front of her. The colors corresponded to years, which meant that over the last six years, Paul had paid to have eighteen women stalked.
Or worse.
Claire did not tell Lydia that this was likely the tip of the iceberg. While they were out in the garage, she had remembered the storage room in the basement under the main house. Claire had forgotten about the room because she’d only seen it once when they first moved in. This fact would probably sound unbelievable to Lydia, but the basement was huge. There was a screening room, a full gym, a locker room with sauna and steam room, a massage room, a wine cellar, a billiards room with both a pool table and a Ping-Pong table, a guest suite with full bath, a caterers’ kitchen at the base of the elevator, a stocked bar and a seating area large enough to comfortably accommodate twenty people.
Was it any wonder that Claire had forgotten about a room the size of a jail holding area?
Paul was too organized to be called a hoarder, but he liked to keep things. Claire had always chalked up his collections to having lost everything when his parents died, but now she was seeing a more sinister motivation. He’d built shelves downstairs in the storage closet to hold the many plastic file boxes that he’d been filling since his time at Auburn. When they’d first moved into the house, he’d shown Claire the artifacts he’d kept from their early years—the first birthday card she’d ever given him, a note scribbled on paper that recorded the first time she’d ever written him the words “I love you.”
At the time, Claire had found his collection awfully sweet, but now all she could think about was that there were dozens of boxes down there, and that three women a year for the last eighteen years would mean fifty-four more folders filled with fifty-four more unspeakable violations.
There was one file that Lydia would never see. Her sister was disturbed enough by the contents of the folders. If she found out that Paul had done the same to her, there would be no going back.
“Are you all right?” Lydia looked up from the report she was reading. “Do you want to go lie down?”
“I’m fine,” Claire said, but her eyelids felt heavy. Her body was so tired that her hands were trembling. She had read somewhere or heard somewhere that criminals always go to sleep after they confess their crimes. Concealing their bad acts took up so much energy that having the truth laid bare brought on a deep, sweet sleep.
Had she confessed to Lydia? Or had she just shared a burden?
Claire closed her eyes. Her breathing got deeper. She was awake—she could still hear Lydia greedily thumbing through pages—but she was also asleep, and in that sleep, she felt herself dipping into a dream. There was no narrative, just fragments of a typical day. She was at her desk paying bills. She was practicing the piano. She was in the kitchen trying to come up with a grocery list. She was making phone calls to raise money for the Christmas toy drive. She was studying the shoes in her closet, trying to put together an outfit to wear to lunch.
Through all of this, she could feel Paul’s presence in the house. They were very independent people. They’d always had their own interests, done their own things, but Claire always felt reassured when Paul was close by. Lightbulbs would be changed. Faults would be cleared from the security system. The remote control would be deciphered. Trash would be taken out. Clothes would be folded. Batteries would be charged. Big spoons and little spoons would never mingle in the silverware drawer.
He was such a sturdy, capable man. She liked that he was taller than she was. She liked that she had to look up at him when they were dancing. She liked the way she felt when his arms were around her. He was so much stronger than Claire. Sometimes, he would pick her up. She would feel her feet lift off the ground. His chest felt so solid against hers. He would tease her about something silly, and she would laugh because she knew that he loved hearing her laugh, and then he would say, “Tell me you want this.”
Claire jerked awake. Her arms flew up, as if to ward off a blow. Her throat felt scratchy. Her heart clicked against her ribs.
Morning sun streamed into her office. Lydia was gone. The plastic boxes were empty. The files were gone.
Claire lunged toward her desk. She opened the drawer. Lydia’s file was still hidden inside. Claire’s relief was so pronounced that she wanted to cry.
She touched her fingers to her cheek. She was crying. Her tear ducts were on constant standby for anything that would send them over. Instead of giving in to it, Claire shut the drawer. She wiped her eyes. She stood up. She straightened her shirt as she made her way to the kitchen.
She heard Lydia’s voice before she saw her. She was obviously talking on the phone.
“Because I want you to stay at Rick’s tonight.” Lydia paused. “Because I said so.” She paused again. “Sweetheart, I know you’re an adult, but adults are like vampires. The older ones are much more powerful.”
Claire smiled. She had known Lydia would be a good mother. She sounded just like Helen before Julia disappeared.
“All right. I love you, too.”
Claire stayed in the hallway long after Lydia had ended the call. She didn’t want her sister to have any fears about being overheard. If Claire was going to continue to lie about knowing every single detail of Lydia’s life, she could at least do a good job.
She smoothed down the back of her hair as she walked into the kitchen. “Hey.”
Lydia was sitting at the bar. She was wearing reading glasses, which would’ve been funny if Claire wasn’t a couple of years away from needing them herself. Paul’s files were scattered across the kitchen island. Lydia had Claire’s iPad in front of her. She took off the reading glasses as she asked, “Did you sleep all right?”
“I’m sorry.” Claire didn’t know what she was apologizing for; there were so many things to choose from. “I should’ve helped you go through all of this.”
“No, you should’ve gotten some sleep.” Lydia started to lean back in the chair, but she caught herself before she fell over the low back. “These are the stupidest chairs I’ve ever sat in.”
“They look good,” Claire said, because that was all that had ever mattered to Paul. She went to the video screen on the kitchen wall. The flashing time read 6:03. She pulled up the mailbox camera. Adam hadn’t been by yet. Claire didn’t know what to make of that, because she still didn’t know which files Adam was after.
She told Lydia, “The USB drive is still in the mailbox.”
“You have a camera in your mailbox?”
“Doesn’t everybody?”
Lydia gave a sour look. “What was the name of the woman you saw on the news?”
Claire shook her head. She didn’t understand.
“In the garage, you said that you recognized a woman’s name from one of the files because you had seen her on the news. I looked them all up on your iPad. Only two had news items.”
Claire spitballed an explanation. “She was in Atlanta.”
“Leslie Lewis?” Lydia pushed an open file folder across the counter so that Claire could see the woman’s photograph. She was blonde and pretty and wearing thick black glasses. “I found a story about her in the Atlanta Journal archives. She was staying in a hotel during Dragon Con. She thought she was opening her door for room service, but a guy pushed his way in and raped her.”
Claire looked away from the woman’s photo. Quinn + Scott’s downtown offices were near the convention site. Last year, Paul had sent her pictures of drunken people dressed like Darth Vader and the Green Lantern clogging the street.
Lydia slid over another file: another pretty, young blonde. “Pam Clayton. There was a story in the Patch. She was jogging near Stone Mountain Park. The attacker dragged her into the woods. It was after seven, but it was August, so it was still light out.”
Paul’s tennis team occasionally had games in the park.
“Look at the dates on the files. He hired the detectives to follow them on the anniversaries of their rapes.”
Claire took her word for it. She didn’t want to read any more details. “Did the attacker say anything to either of them?”
“If he did, it wasn’t in the articles. We need the police reports.”
Claire wondered why Paul hadn’t asked the private detectives to track down the reports. Lydia’s file contained her arrest records and all the ancillary paperwork. Maybe Paul figured it was a bad idea to tip his hand by asking all of these different detectives to check up on all of these women who had been raped. Or maybe he didn’t need the reports because he already knew exactly what had happened to them.