Still, Paul had worked the entire time he was in school. He had grown up on a working farm, where he was expected to do chores at the crack of dawn. In ninth grade, he’d won a scholarship to a military boarding school in southeast Alabama. Between the two home lives, routine had been drilled into his system. He was incapable of being idle. One of his jobs during college was at Tiger Rags, a university bookstore. The other was as a tutor in the computer lab.
Claire was an art history major. She had never been good at math. Or at least she’d never tried to be, which was the same thing. She could vividly remember the first time she’d sat down with Paul and gone over one of her assignments.
“Everyone knows you’re beautiful,” he’d told her, “but no one knows that you’re clever.” Clever.
Anybody could be smart. It took a special somebody to be clever.
Claire returned the photograph to its spot. She sat down at Paul’s desk. She rested her arms where his arms used to rest. She closed her eyes and tried to find a trace of his scent. She took a deep breath until her lungs ached, then slowly sighed it out. She was almost forty years old. She didn’t have any children. Her husband was dead. Her best friends were probably drinking margaritas at the bar down the street and gossiping about how washed-out she had looked at the funeral.
Claire shook her head. She had the rest of her life to think about how lonely she was. What she needed to do right now was get through today. Or at least the next hour.
She picked up the telephone and dialed Adam Quinn’s cell phone number. Paul had known Adam longer than he’d known Claire. They’d been dorm mates their first year at Auburn. They’d gotten their architectural degrees together. Adam had been best man at their wedding. More importantly, Adam and Paul tended to use the same people to manage their lives.
He picked up on the first ring. “Claire? Are you all right? The police wouldn’t let us up the driveway.”
“We were robbed. Not robbed. They didn’t get anything. It’s just a nuisance. I’m fine.” Was she fine? Only now that she had something concrete to do did she feel that way. “Listen, I’m sorry to bother you, but do you know who our insurance agent is?”
“Oh. Yeah. Okay.” He sounded confused, probably because this was the last question he expected from Claire right now. “Her name is Pia Lorite.” He spelled the last name. “I can text you her info.”
“I don’t have a cell phone,” Claire realized. “The Snake Man took it. I mean, the guy who—”
“I’ll email it to you.”
Claire was about to tell him she couldn’t access her email, either, but then she remembered her iPad. It was an older model. Paul kept threatening to replace it with a laptop and she kept saying it was fine, and now she would probably pack it up to take with her in thirty-odd years when she went into a nursing home.
“Claire?” Adam’s voice was muffled. She gathered he was walking into another room. How many phone calls had there been between them where Adam had gone into another room? Half a dozen, maybe.
So meaningless. So stupid.
He said, “Listen, I’m really sorry about this.”
“Thank you.” She felt tearful again, and she hated herself for it because Adam was the last person she should be tearful with.
“I want you to know if you need anything . . .” His voice trailed off. She heard a scratching sound and guessed he was rubbing his fingers along his face. Adam was one of those men who had a perpetual five o’clock shadow, even right after he’d shaved. Claire had never found hairy men particularly attractive, but she’d still managed to sleep with Adam anyway.
She couldn’t even console herself by saying it had happened a long time ago.
“Claire?”
“I’m here.”
“I’m sorry to bring this up, but Paul should have a file on his computer for work in progress. Can you email it to me? I hate to ask, but we’ve got a really important presentation first thing Monday morning and it would take hours to duplicate Paul’s work.”
“It’s fine. I understand.” She reached under Paul’s desk and pulled out the keyboard. “I’ll send it from his email.”
“You’ve got his password?”
“Yes. He trusted me.” Claire was conscious that she and Adam both knew he shouldn’t have.
What a stupid, pointless mistake.
She said, “You’ll have it in a few minutes.”
Claire hung up the phone. She thought about the hours she had spent with Adam Quinn. Hours she should’ve spent with her husband. Hours she would kill to have back now.
There was no going back. She had to keep moving forward.
Paul’s iMac desktop was a blank field of blue with the dock at the bottom. Beside the icons listing Paul’s applications were three folders: Work, Personal, House. She clicked House and quickly found the January to-do list. She also saw a file titled “insurance” that contained not just the name of their insurance agent, but also a PDF with descriptions, photographs, and serial numbers of everything in the house. Claire sent all 508 pages to the printer.
Next, she opened the Work folder. This was far more complicated and confusing. There was no “work in progress” folder, just a long list of files with numbers instead of names. Claire assumed these were project numbers, but she couldn’t be certain. She clicked on the date field to list them chronologically. There were fifteen recent files he’d been working on in the last two weeks. The last one had been opened the night before Paul died.
Claire clicked on the file. She expected to find a schematic or scope of work, but all that happened was the little iMovie icon on the dock started bouncing.
“Oh,” she said, because at first she didn’t understand what she was seeing. And then she smiled for the first time since the Snake Man had told them not to move.
Paul had been looking at porn on his computer.
Not just any porn.
Kinky porn.
A young woman in a leather bustier was chained with her back to a concrete-block wall. She wore a studded dog collar. Her arms and legs were spread-eagled, giving her crotchless leather panties a workout. She was making squeaky, fearful noises that sounded more 1970s horny than present-day scared.
Claire shot a guilty glance at the open doorway to Paul’s office. She muted the sound but let the movie play.
The woman was in a filthy room, which made it all the more shocking that Paul was interested. She was obviously young, but not alarmingly so. Her brunette hair was cut in a chic pixie. Heavy mascara ringed her eyes. Bright red lipstick made her lips seem bigger than they were. Her breasts were small, but she had fantastic legs. Paul had always liked Claire’s legs, even when she had on the ankle monitor.
Actually, he’d especially loved the ankle monitor, which was the kinkiest thing she’d ever gotten out of him until he’d turned inexplicably rough with her in the alley.
And now, of course, because this movie was pretty out-there.
Suddenly, a man’s head filled the screen. He was wearing a leather ski mask with open zippers at the mouth and eyes. He smiled into the camera. There was something disturbing about the way his red lips showed against the metal teeth of the zipper, though Claire doubted Paul had been looking at the man.
The focus blurred, then sharpened. The smile disappeared. And then the man started walking toward the girl. Claire saw his erect penis jutting out from his tight leather briefs. There was a machete in his hand. The long blade glinted in the overhead light. The man stopped a few feet away from the girl.
The machete arced into the air.
Claire gasped.
The machete came down on the woman’s neck.
Claire gasped again.
The man wrenched out the blade. Blood sprayed everywhere—onto the walls, onto the man, onto the camera.
Claire leaned forward, unable to look away.
Was this real? How could this be real?
The woman’s body convulsed, arms and legs pulling at the chains, head jerking. Blood poured down her chest, pooled at her feet.