Early in their marriage, Paul had had a recurring nightmare. It was the only time Claire could think of that she’d actually seen her husband afraid.
No, that was wrong. Paul hadn’t been afraid. He’d been terrified.
The nightmare didn’t come often, maybe two or three times a year, but Paul would wake up screaming, his arms and legs clawing at the air, his mouth gasping for breath, because he’d dreamed that he was burning alive the same way his mother had burned alive in the car accident that had taken both his parents’ lives.
Claire inventoried the contents of the trunk.
Emergency flares. Waterproof matches. A four-gallon gas can. A paperback to read while waiting for help.
Paul really did take care of everything.
Now it was Claire’s turn to take care of him.
CHAPTER 22
The rain had not yet touched Athens by the time Claire drove through downtown. Strong winds gusted down the streets. Students were bundled up in scarves and coats as they grabbed lunch between classes. Most of them were running to beat the coming storm. They could all see the darkness on the horizon: heavy, black clouds making their way over from Atlanta.
Claire had called Helen to see how much time she had. Her mother was somewhere near Winder, around thirty minutes away. There had been an accident on 78 that bought an extra ten minutes. Fortunately, Helen had told Claire about it immediately, so when Paul called she could tell him truthfully why Lydia’s iPhone had stopped moving.
She took the same route to Watkinsville that she and Lydia had taken the day before. Claire almost missed the turnoff to Paul’s road. She drove slowly, because it wasn’t just Jacob Mayhew and Harvey Falke she had to worry about. Carl Huckabee was still county sheriff. He would have deputies, though there was no telling which side of the law they were on.
He was also intimately familiar with the goings-on at the Fuller house.
Claire knew better than to leave the car out in the open. She angled the Ford off the road and drove into the thick stand of trees. The wheels popped and protested against the rough terrain. The side-view mirrors clapped inward. Metal squealed as pine bark scraped off the paint. She drove as far into the woods as she could go, then climbed out the window because she had trapped herself inside the car. She reached back in for the revolver.
The gun felt heavier somehow. Deadlier.
She left the open box of ammunition on the roof of the car. She picked up one bullet at a time and carefully slotted them into the cylinders.
“For Julia,” she said on the first one. “For Daddy. For Mom. For Lydia.”
Claire studied the last bullet in the palm of her hand. This one felt heaviest of all—shiny brass with a menacing black tip that would flare out once it hit soft tissue.
“For Paul,” she whispered, her voice sounding hoarse and desperate.
The last bullet would be for her husband, who had died a long time ago, back when he was a boy and his father had taken him out to the barn for the first time. Back when he’d told Claire that he’d had a happy childhood. Back when he’d stood in front of the justice of the peace and sworn to love and cherish her for the rest of his life. Back when he’d so convincingly held on to her hand as he pretended to die in the alley.
No pretending this time.
Claire clicked the cylinder into place. She tested the gun, holding the barrel straight out in front of her, curling her finger around the trigger. She practiced pulling back the hammer with her thumb.
This was the plan: She was going to pour gasoline around the Fuller house—just the bedrooms, the front porch and under the bathroom, because she was betting that Paul was keeping Lydia in the garage and she wanted to stay as far away from her sister as possible. Then she was going to light the gasoline. Then Paul would smell the smoke or hear the flames. He would be terrified, because fire was the only thing that ever really scared him. As soon as he ran out of the house, Claire would be waiting with the gun in her hands and she would shoot him five times, one for each of them.
Then she would run into the house and save Lydia.
The plan was risky and most likely crazy. Claire was aware of both of these things. She also knew that she was literally playing with fire, but there was nothing else she could think of that would get Paul out of the house, taken unaware, long enough for her to act.
And she knew it had to happen quickly, because she wasn’t sure that she could pull the trigger if she gave herself too long to think about it.
Claire was not her husband. She could not so casually take another human life, even if that life had been drained of its humanity.
She tucked the gun into the front of her jeans. The barrel wasn’t long, but the cylinder dug into her hip bone. She moved it to the center, just along the zip, but that was worse. She finally shifted the weapon to the small of her back. The granny panties her mother had bought bunched up around the cylinder. The barrel went down the crack of her ass, which was mildly unpleasant, but none of her pockets were deep enough, and she knew that she would be screwed if Paul saw the gun.
She opened the trunk. She unzipped the backpack and searched for the Mylar emergency blanket. The packet the blanket came in was small, but when she unfolded it, she saw it was the size of a large cape. The waterproof matches were on top of the flares, which were all on top of a thick paperback.
The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley.
As Helen might say, poets weren’t the only unacknowledged legislators of the world.
Claire wrapped her stash in the foil blanket. She opened the four boxes of water.
Her shirt was still damp from running through the rain. Still, she doused herself with water. The chill struck her immediately, but she made sure she covered her head, back, and every inch of her shirtsleeves down to the buttoned cuffs. She poured the rest of the water on the legs of her jeans.
She grabbed the blanket and the four-gallon gas can.
Gas sloshed around inside the large plastic can as she lugged it through the forest. A permanent mist of rain seemed to be trapped under the tree canopy. She heard a distant rumble of thunder, which seemed appropriate, given the task she’d laid out. Claire squinted ahead. The sky was getting darker by the minute, but she could make out a powder-blue Cadillac parked behind a row of trees.
Claire put down the gas can and blanket. She drew the revolver. She cocked the hammer. She approached the car carefully in case Paul or one of his cronies was inside.
Empty.
She uncocked the gun. She tucked it into the back of her jeans. Habituation. The gun didn’t feel so strange anymore.
She pressed her hand to the hood of the car. The engine was cold. Paul had probably been staying at the Fuller house from the moment Claire left.
Why would he go anywhere else? He had the sheriff to protect him.
She retrieved the blanket and gas can and continued her walk toward the house. The brush was thick. Claire felt a moment of panic where she wondered if she’d gotten off course, but then she saw the green roof of the house. She walked in a crouch. The windows were still boarded up with weathered plywood. Claire stayed low anyway, because she knew that there was a slit in the den windows that showed the driveway, so it followed that there would be others.
The overgrown backyard hadn’t had time to absorb the slow, sloppy rain. Claire heard dry grass crackle under her feet. The swing set groaned as a strong wind swept through the open field where the Amityville barn had been. Claire kept clear of the area. She used her feet to press down a patch of tall grass to create a staging area for the blanket and its contents.
She studied the back of the house. The plywood board she and Lydia had pried off the kitchen door was leaning up against the side of the house. They had left it on the ground where they’d dropped it. She assumed Paul had neatly leaned up the board beside the door. He had probably straightened up inside the house as well. Or maybe he’d left the silverware strewn across the floor as a sort of alarm so that he would know if someone tried to enter the house.
Claire was more worried about getting Paul out of the house than her going in.
She bent down to the gas can and took the cap off the flexible spout. She started to the left of the small back porch off the kitchen, dripping gasoline down the slats of wooden siding that covered the exterior of the house. Claire worked carefully so that the gas got into the seams between the boards. She raised up the can every time she passed a window, soaking the plywood as much as she could without making too much noise.
Claire’s heart was pounding so loudly when she walked up the front porch steps that she was afraid the noise would give her away. She kept her eyes on the garage. She tried not to think about Paul in there with Lydia. The roll-up metal door was still padlocked from the outside. The hasp was secure. His murder room. Lydia was locked inside his murder room.