Pretty Girls

Or maybe he was getting the reports from Captain Jacob Mayhew.

“Claire?”

She shook her head, but now that she had the thought in her mind, she couldn’t get rid of it. Why hadn’t she studied Mayhew’s expression while he watched the movies? Then again, what good would it do? Hadn’t she learned enough about Paul’s duplicity to realize that her judgment could not be trusted?

“Claire?” Lydia waited for her attention. “Did you notice something about the women?”

Claire shook her head again.

“They all look like you.”

Claire didn’t point out that that meant they looked like Lydia, too. “So, what now? We’re holding these women’s lives in our hands. We don’t know if we can trust Mayhew. Even if we did, he didn’t take the movies seriously. Why would he investigate the files?”

Lydia shrugged. “We can call Nolan.”

Claire couldn’t believe what she was suggesting. “Better these women than us, you mean?”

“I wouldn’t put it like that, but now that you—­”

“They’ve already been raped. You want to sic that asshole on them, too?”

Lydia shrugged. “Maybe it’ll give them some peace knowing that the man who attacked them isn’t around anymore.”

“That’s a bullshit excuse.” Claire was adamant. “We know firsthand what Nolan is like. He probably won’t even believe them. Or worse, he’ll flirt with them like he flirts with me. There’s a reason most women don’t go to the cops when they’re raped.”

“What are you going to do, write them a check?”

Claire walked into the family room before she said something she would regret. Writing some checks didn’t sound like a bad idea. Paul had attacked these women. The least she could do was pay for therapy or whatever else they needed.

Lydia said, “If Paul had actually raped me, and I found out that every September for almost eighteen years, he’d been stalking me, taking pictures of me, I would want to grab a gun and kill him.”

Claire stared at the Rothko over the fireplace. “What would you do if you found out that he was already dead and there was nothing you could do about it?”

“I would still want to know.”

Claire felt no temptation to reveal the truth. Lydia had always blustered about how tough she was, but there was a reason she was already numbing herself with drugs at the age of sixteen.

Claire said, “I can’t do it. I won’t do it.”

“I know you don’t want to hear it, but it makes me glad to know he’s dead. And to know how he died, even though it must have been rotten for you.”

“Rotten,” Claire repeated, thinking the word was borderline insulting. Rotten was being late for a movie or losing a great parking space. Watching your husband get stabbed and bleed to death in front of your own eyes was fucking excruciating. “No. I won’t do it.”

“Fine.” Lydia started grabbing folders and stacking them together. She was clearly angry, but Claire wasn’t going to back down. She knew what it was like to be the focus of Fred Nolan’s interest. She couldn’t unleash that on Paul’s victims. There was already enough guilt on her conscience without throwing these poor women into the lion’s den.

She walked farther into the family room. The sunlight was blinding. Claire closed her eyes for a moment and let the heat from the sun warm her face. And then she turned away because it seemed wrong to enjoy something so basic considering all of the misery they had uncovered.

Her gaze traveled to the area behind one of the couches. Lydia had spread out some paperwork on the floor. Instead of more private detective reports, Claire was surprised to recognize her father’s handiwork.

Sam Carroll had devoted an entire wall in his apartment to tracking down leads about Julia. There were photographs and note cards and torn sheets of paper with phone numbers and names scribbled across them. In all, the entire collection took up around five by ten feet of space. He’d lost his deposit for the apartment because of all the holes the thumbtacks had left in the Sheetrock.

She asked Lydia, “You kept Dad’s wall?”

“No, it was in the second file box.”

Of course it was.

Claire knelt down. The wall had defined her father for so many years. His desperation still emanated from every scrap of paper. Vet school had taught him to be a meticulous note-­taker. He had recorded everything he’d read or heard or witnessed, combined police reports and statements, until the case was as imprinted on his brain as the structure of a dog’s digestive system or the signs of feline leukemia.

She picked up a sheet of notebook paper that had her father’s handwriting on it. In the last two weeks of his life, Sam Carroll had developed a slight palsy after a minor stroke. His suicide note had been barely legible. Claire had forgotten what his original penmanship looked like.

She asked Lydia, “What’s it called?”

“The Palmer Method.” Lydia was standing behind Claire. “He was supposed to be left-­handed, but they made him use his right hand.”

“They did that to me, too.”

“They made you wear a mitten so you wouldn’t use your left hand. Mom was furious when she found out.”

Claire sat down on the floor. She couldn’t stop touching the only pieces she had left of her father. Sam had handled this picture of a man who talked to another man who had a sister who maybe knew something about Julia. He had touched this matchbook from the Manhattan, the bar where Julia was last seen. He had written notes on this menu from the Grit, her favorite vegetarian restaurant. He had stared at this photograph of Julia leaning against her bike.

Claire stared at the photograph, too. A gray houndstooth fedora was in the handlebar basket. Julia’s long blonde hair cascaded around her shoulders in a soft perm.

She was wearing a man’s black suit jacket and white dress shirt with tons of silver and black bangles on her wrists and white lace gloves on her hands because it was the late 1980s and every girl they knew back then wanted to look like either Cyndi Lauper or Madonna.

Claire said, “I want to tell myself that Paul kept all of this because one day, he thought I might want to see it.”

Lydia lowered herself to the floor beside Claire. She pointed to the photo of Julia. “That’s my locket she’s wearing. It had a cursive L on the front.”

They both knew that Julia was still wearing the gold locket when she disappeared. Claire said, “She was always stealing your things.”

Lydia bumped her shoulder. “You were always stealing mine.”

Claire was suddenly struck by a thought. “Did Paul have a file on me?”

“No.”

She studied her sister, wondering if Lydia was lying to her for the same reason that Claire was lying to Lydia.

Lydia asked, “What about Dad’s journals?” Sam had started keeping a diary after Helen left because there was no one left to confide in. “They weren’t in Paul’s boxes.”

“Maybe Mom has them?” Claire shrugged. She had felt so disconnected from her father at the time of his death that she hadn’t asked for any of his belongings. It was only later, when she thought of things like his glasses or his books or his collection of animal-­themed ties, that she wished she’d been more present.

She told Lydia, “I used to read his journals. Probably because he tried to hide them from me. Bonus points to Paul.” She leaned back against the wall. “The last section I read was about six months before he died. They were written like letters to Julia. Things that he remembered about her growing up. How we had all changed without her. He didn’t act like it, but he was pretty tuned in to our lives. He knew exactly what we were up to.”

“God, I hope not.”

“He and Mom still got together. Even after she remarried.”

Lydia nodded. “I know.”

Claire saw anothe

r photo of Julia that she had forgotten about. She groaned as she got up on her knees to retrieve it. She’d torn her meniscus five years ago and it still felt like it was looking for any excuse to crack back open. “Are your knees as bad as mine?”

“Not as bad as Allison Hendrickson’s.”

“Fair point.” Claire looked down at the picture. Julia was sunning herself on the front lawn in a blue two-­piece bathing suit. Her pink skin glistened with baby oil. Lydia was probably behind the camera. They never let Claire sunbathe with them. Or go out with them. Or breathe near them. “God, look at how red her skin is. She would’ve had all kinds of skin cancer.”

“I had a spot removed last year.” Lydia pointed to the side of her nose.

Claire was momentarily grateful for being left out. “I bet she would’ve had tons of kids.”

“Future young Republicans.”

Claire laughed. Julia had feigned a stomachache so she could stay home from school and watch the Iran–Contra hearings. “She would’ve homeschooled her kids to keep them from being brainwashed by the public education machine.”