Pretty Girls

Had that been for show? Through all the seemingly happy years of their marriage, had Paul yearned for something more? And did he find that something more in the disgusting contents of that movie?

Claire wrote down another question: “Is it real?”

The production had an amateurish feel, but that could’ve been on purpose. Computers were capable of amazing things. If they could make it look like Michael Jackson was dancing onstage, they could make it look like a woman was being murdered.

The pen was tapping again. Claire watched it bounce between her fingers. The workbench top was bamboo. The damn thing had proven to be indestructible. She’d been half tempted to take a page from Lydia’s book and piss all over it.

Lydia.

God, what an unexpected slap in the face to see her sister after all these years. She would not be telling her mother about the meeting, mostly because Helen had enough to fret over between Paul’s murder and the burglary. Besides, the irony was not lost on Claire that less than a year after her family broke ties, Lydia had finally managed to get herself clean. Between looking for Julia and paying bail bondsmen and lawyers and rehab clinics for Lydia’s upkeep, Sam Carroll had been nearly bankrupt when he’d finally taken his life.

For that sin alone, Claire should’ve cut off her sister, but then she’d accused Paul of trying to rape her, and that had been the final straw.

Did Paul hurt you? Lydia had asked, standing less than ten yards from Paul’s grave. Is that what this is about?

Claire knew what the “this” was. It was doubt. She was doubting her husband because of what she’d found on his computer. Her mind had made the leap from Paul watching violence to actually committing it, which was a stupid connection because millions of young men played violent video games but only a handful went on spree killings.

Then again, Paul had once told her that there was no such thing as coincidence. “The Law of Truly Large Numbers provides that given a large enough sample size, any outrageous thing can happen.”

Claire looked down at the three items on her list:

Accident?

More files?

Is it real?

At the moment, only one of those outrageous questions could be answered.

Claire went up the stairs before she could stop herself. She keyed in the code to open the door to Paul’s office. Agent Nolan had made a comment about all the codes needed for the house, but Paul had made it easy for Claire by making all the door codes a variation on their birthdays.

The office looked the same as it had been the day before. Claire sat down at the desk. She hesitated as she reached out to tap the keyboard. This was a red pill/blue pill moment. Did she really want to know if there were more files? Paul was dead now. What was the point?

She tapped the keyboard. The point was that she had to know.

Claire’s hand was surprisingly steady as she moved the mouse to the dock and clicked on the Work folder.

The rainbow wheel spun, but instead of a list of files, a white box popped up.

CONNECT TO GLADIATOR?

There was a YES and NO button underneath. Claire wondered why she hadn’t been prompted to log in the day before. She had a vague recollection of clicking CLOSE on several messages yesterday when Agent Nolan was creeping his way up the stairs. Apparently, one of the things she’d closed was the connection to whatever this Gladiator was.

She leaned her elbows on the desk and stared at the words. Was this a sign that she should stop? Paul had trusted her completely—­too completely, going by her affairs, because of course Adam Quinn wasn’t the first. Or the last, since she was being brutally honest; there was a reason Tim the bartender was estranged from his wife.

She tried to summon yesterday’s crushing guilt, but the remorse had been sanded down by the rough images she’d found on her husband’s computer.

“Gladiator,” Claire said. She didn’t know why the word sounded familiar.

She rolled the mouse over and clicked on the YES button.

The screen changed. A new message popped up: PASSWORD?

“Fuck.” How much harder was this going to get? She tapped her finger on the mouse as she stared at the prompt.

All of the system passwords were a combination of mnemonics and dates. She typed in YALAPC111175, which stood for “You Are Looking At Paul’s Computer,” followed by his birthday.

A black triangle with an exclamation point in the center told her that the password was incorrect.

Claire tried a few more variations, using her birthday, their wedding anniversary, the date they first met in the computer lab, the date they first went out, which was also the same day they’d first had sex, because Claire never played hard to get when she’d made up her mind.

Nothing worked.

She looked around Paul’s office, wondering if she was missing something.

“You Are Looking At The Chair Where Paul Reads,” she tried. “You Are Looking At The Couch Where Paul Naps.” Nothing. “You Are Looking At The Computer Where Paul Jerks Off.”

Claire slumped back in the chair. Directly across from Paul’s desk was the painting she had given him for their third wedding anniversary. Claire had painted it herself from a photograph of his childhood home. Paul’s mother had taken the picture standing in their backyard. The picnic table was set with birthday decorations. Claire wasn’t good with faces, so a tiny blob represented a young Paul sitting at the table.

He’d told her that the farmer who’d bought the Scott land had torn down the house and all the surrounding structures. Claire couldn’t blame the man. The house had a home-­built look to it, the wooden paneling ran up and down instead of left to right. The barn in the backyard loomed like the Amityville Horror house. It cast such a dark shadow over the picnic table and old well house that Claire had been forced to guess the colors. Paul had told her she’d gotten them exactly right, though she was fairly certain the little structure over the well should’ve been green instead of black.

Claire typed some more guesses into the computer, speaking aloud so she could get the first letters of each word in the correct order. “You Are Looking At Claire’s Painting.” “You Are Looking At The House Where Paul Grew Up.” “You Are Looking At An Old Well House That Should Be Green.”

Claire slammed the keyboard tray back into the desk. She was angrier than she’d thought. And realizing she was angry made her realize where she’d seen the word Gladiator.

“Idiot,” she whispered. Paul’s workbench had a giant metal logo on the side that said GLADIATOR, the company that had custom made the piece. “You Are Looking At Paul’s Workbench.”

Claire added Paul’s birth date, then pressed ENTER.

The drive connected. The Work files came up.

Claire’s hand stayed still on the mouse.

Helen had told her a long time ago that knowing the truth wasn’t always a good thing. She had been talking about Julia, because that was all her mother was capable of talking about back then. She would stay in bed for weeks, sometimes months, mourning the unexplained disappearance of her oldest child. Lydia had taken over the parenting for a while, and when Lydia had checked out, Grandma Ginny had moved in and terrorized them all into shape.

Would Helen want to know where Julia was now? If Claire handed her mother an envelope and inside was the story of exactly what had happened to Julia, would she open it?

Claire sure as hell would.

She clicked on the second file in the Work folder, which, according to the date, Paul had watched the same night as the first. The same woman from the first movie was chained in the same way to the same wall. Claire took in the details of the room. She was definitely looking at an older basement. It was nothing like the pristine, smoothly formed walls in Paul’s dream basement. The cinder block wall behind the woman looked dank and wet. There was a stained mattress on t

he concrete floor. The trash came from fast-­food restaurants. Old wires and galvanized pipe hung from the ceiling joists.