Pretty Girls

by Karin Slaughter

  Then again, maybe it was part of the scene he’d set. The garbage Claire had spied in the first movies was not really garbage. Paul had wadded up fast-­food bags and paper cups, but there were no grease stains or moldy dregs of soda. Even the bloodstain on the mattress looked fake, which made sense, because the movies Claire had seen always showed the woman chained to the wall.

  The wall.

  Here it was, less than ten feet in front of her. Dark, burgundy blood had permeated the concrete block. The shackles had bolts on them to hold wrists and ankles. There were no locks because the chains were far apart enough to prevent one hand from freeing the other. Claire stopped herself before she pulled on the chains. Just because things looked fake did not mean they were. The blood on the floor was real. You couldn’t duplicate that smell, and if you were just doing it for the appearance of reality, you wouldn’t use real blood.

  Claire lifted her foot. The toe of her shoe was sticky where she’d accidentally stepped in the blood. She waited for the repulsion to roll over her, but she was too numb to feel anything.

  Her sneaker made a Velcro-­tearing sound as she walked over to the computer.

  Bird computer speakers on delicate stands were perched on either side of the monitor. The finish was white, because that complemented the silver bezel around the monitor, just like the white amplifier completed the system.

  Claire turned the chair sideways so she could still see the door in her peripheral vision. If she was going to be attacked again, at least she would see it coming this time. She tapped the keyboard, but nothing happened. The large screen was made by Apple, but it looked nothing like the iMacs she was used to. She ran her hand along the back in search of the power button. She guessed the large white cylinder by the monitor was the computer. She pressed her fingers on the buttons until Apple’s start-­up tone blasted through the speakers. Claire dialed down the sound on the amplifier.

  There were cables stuck in the back of the computer, more white Thunderbolts that connected to several twenty-­terabyte storage drives daisy-­chained together on a metal shelf. She counted twelve drives. How many movies could fit on twelve massive drives?

  Claire didn’t want to think about it. Nor did she want to stand up and examine the other equipment on the metal shelves. An old Macintosh computer. Stacks of five-­inch floppy discs. A duping machine for copying VHS tapes. Multiple external disc drives for burning copies of movies. Typically, Paul was archiving the early artifacts from the family business.

  Everything would be Internet-­based now. Claire had watched a Frontline on PBS that showed the vast, illegal market on the dark Web. Most ­people used the hidden Internet to illegally trade stolen movies and books, but others used it to sell drugs and trade in child porn.

  Claire thought about Paul’s American Express bills with the mysterious charges they never talked about. How many private charter flights had Paul paid for but never flown? How many hotel rooms had he rented that they’d never stayed in? She had assumed the expenses were bribes to Congressman Jackson, but maybe not. Her husband was meticulous in everything he did. He wouldn’t want to raise suspicions by abducting too many girls in his own backyard. Maybe Paul was using the flights and rooms to secretly move women around the country.

  And maybe the congressman was as heavily invested in the business as Paul.

  Paul had been a teenager when his father died. He was living at a military boarding school one state over. There had to have been an adult who took over Gerald Scott’s business while Paul was getting his education. Which could possibly mean that the congressman’s mentorship had run a parallel track: one side helped Paul establish himself as a legitimate businessman, and the other made certain that the movies would still be made.

  And distributed, because there had to be quite a bit of money involved in sending out these movies.

  Claire had seen Johnny Jackson and Paul together on countless occasions and never put it together that they were related. Were they hiding their relationship because of the movies? Or because of the government contracts? Or was there something far more troubling that Claire had yet to uncover?

  Because there was always something far more troubling with Paul. Every time she thought she’d hit bottom, he found a way to open a trapdoor and let her sink farther down.

  Claire asked herself the obvious question about the masked man’s identity. Johnny Jackson was in his seventies. He was vigorous and athletic, but the masked man in the more recent movies was clearly younger, closer to Paul’s age. He had the same soft belly, the same hint of muscles that were too infrequently exercised at the gym.

  Adam Quinn’s body had been toned. Claire hadn’t seen it, but she had felt the power in his broad shoulders and the hard muscles in his abs.

  Which meant something, but she wasn’t clear what.

  The computer monitor finally flashed to life. The desktop came up. As with Paul’s other computers, all of the folders were stored in the dock that ran along the bottom of the screen. She ran the mouse over the icons.

  RAW.

  EDITED.

  DELIVERED.

  Claire left the folders alone. She opened up Firefox and connected to the Internet. She typed in the words “Daryl Lassiter + murder + California.” This was the man Huckleberry had told her about, the one he believed had kidnapped and murdered Julia Carroll. At least, that’s what FBI agent and future congressman Johnny Jackson had told him.

  Yahoo gave her thousands of links for Daryl Lassiter. Claire clicked on the top suggestion. The San Fernando Valley Sun had a front-­page article about Lassiter’s murder during his transportation to death row. There were blurry photos of the three women he’d been convicted of killing, but nothing of Lassiter. Claire skimmed a lengthy bit about the history of California’s death penalty, then found the meat of the story.

  Lassiter had abducted a woman off the street. A witness had called 911. The woman was saved, but the police had found a “mobile murder room” in the back of Lassiter’s van, including chains, a cattle prod, a machete, and various other instruments of torture. They had also found VHS tapes, and on the tapes a “masked Lassiter tortured and executed women.” The three women pictured in the article were later identified from missing persons reports.

  “Joanne Rebecca Greenfield, seventeen. Victoria Kathryn Massey, nineteen. Denise Elizabeth Adams, sixteen.”

  Claire read each name and age aloud, because they were human beings and because they mattered.

  All of the identified girls were from the San Fernando Valley area. Claire clicked through some more links until she found a photograph of Lassiter. Carl Huckabee had not had the Internet at his fingertips back when Sam Carroll had killed himself. Even if he had, he wasn’t likely to seek confirmation of what his friend the FBI agent had told him—­that the man on the tape who murdered Julia Carroll was the same man they had caught in California.

  Which was why Huckleberry would have no way of knowing that while Daryl Lassiter was tall and lanky, he was also African American, with a tight Afro and a tattoo of the Angel of Death on his muscular chest.

  Claire felt the last bit of her heart give way. Somewhere, somehow, she had been hoping against hope that Paul’s father had not been the man in the tape, that Julia had been murdered by this stranger with the piercing brown eyes and a dark scar running down the side of his face.

  Why couldn’t she give up on him? Why could she not reconcile the Paul she had known with the Paul she now knew him to be? What sign had she missed? He was so kind to ­people. He was so fair about everything. He loved his parents. He never talked about having a bad childhood or being abused or any of the awful things you hear about that make men turn into demons.

  Claire checked the time on the computer screen. She had another eight minutes before Paul called. She wondered if he knew what she was doing. He couldn’t monitor the cameras inside the Fuller house all of the
time. He would be driving just under the speed limit, keeping both hands on the wheel, staying as unobtrusive as he could lest the highway patrol stop him and ask what he was keeping in the trunk.

  Lydia would make noise. Claire had no doubt that her sister would raise hell the minute she was given the chance.

  Claire just had to find a way to give her sister that chance.

  She leaned her elbows on the worktop. She looked at the folders on the dock. She let the mouse hover over the one labeled EDITED. Her finger clicked the mouse. No password prompt came up, likely because if someone was in this room, they had already seen enough to guess what was stored on the computer.

  The EDITED folder opened. There were hundreds of files.

  The extensions all read .fcpx.

  Claire had no idea what that meant, but she didn’t recognize .fcpx as anything to do with Paul’s architectural software. She clicked on the top file, which had last been opened today. At 4:00 a.m. this morning, Paul had been sitting at this computer while Anna Kilpatrick’s body was being discovered on the BeltLine.

  The words FINAL CUT PRO filled the monitor. The software was registered to Buckminster Fuller.

  Paul’s most recent project loaded onto the monitor. There were three panels across the middle section. One showed a list of files. The other showed thumbnails of various frames in the movie. The main panel had only one image: Anna Kilpatrick, chained to the wall, frozen in time.

  There was a full assortment of editing options laid out underneath the main image, and below that were long strips of film that Claire assumed were pieces of the last Anna Kilpatrick movie. She recognized the buttons for correcting red eye and softening lines, but the others were a mystery. Claire clicked on some of the tabs. Filtering. Music. Text. Color correction. Stabilization. Reverb. Pitch correction. There were even sound files to layer into the background: Rain Falling. Car Noise. Forest Sounds. Water Dripping.

  As with everything else in Paul’s life, he had complete control.

  Unlike when she’d viewed the movies at home, Claire was able to click on the magnifying glass and zoom into the image. She studied the girl’s face. There was no doubt in her mind that she was really looking at Anna Kilpatrick.

  And there was no doubt that you didn’t need someone standing behind the camera to zoom in the frame.

  The buttons to fast-­forward, rewind, and play all looked as familiar as the buttons on the VCR. Claire started the movie. The speakers were down low. She could hear Anna crying. As before, the masked man’s face suddenly filled the screen. He smiled, his wet lips showing underneath the metal teeth of the zipper.

  Claire realized that this was the edited version, the one Paul had sent out to his customers. She closed the file. She went back to the folders on the dock and opened the one that was labeled RAW. The most recent file was dated yesterday. Paul had imported the movie sometime around midnight. At the time, Lydia and Claire were going through Paul’s color-­coded private detective files at the Dunwoody house.

  What heady hours to think that her husband was only a rapist.

  She clicked on the file. The same three panels came up on the screen with the editing options below.

  Claire pressed PLAY.

  The footage started the same way: a wide shot of Anna Kilpatrick chained to the wall. Her eyes were closed. Her head was bent. The masked man came into the camera frame. He had the same build, the same coloring, as the man Claire had seen in all of the other movies, but there was something different about him. His skin tone was lighter. His lips were not as red.

  There was also something different about the sound. She realized the footage hadn’t been mixed yet. All the ambient noise was still there. Claire heard the whir of a heater. The man’s footsteps. His breathing. He cleared his throat. Anna startled. Her eyes opened. She struggled against the chains. The man ignored her. He neatly laid out his tools on a rolling table—­the cattle prod, the machete, the branding iron. A metal heating element was wrapped around the X to heat the iron. The short electrical cord was tied to a longer extension cord and plugged into an outlet.

  The man squirted a glob of lubricant onto his palm and started to stroke himself. He cleared his throat again. There was something eerily businesslike about the routine, as if he was getting ready for another day at the office.

  None of this would make it into the final clip. This was preproduction. These were the mundane details that Paul had edited out.

  The masked man turned to the camera. Claire fought the urge to jump out of the way. He put his face close to the lens, which she gathered was something of a trademark, like the lion roaring for MGM. The man smiled for the audience, his teeth flashing against the metal zipper. Then he walked over to Anna.

  Anna screamed.

  He waited for her to stop. The sound wound down from her throat like a siren.

  He used his finger to pry open a wound on her belly. She screamed again. The man waited again, but he wasn’t unmoved. His cock had gotten harder. His skin was flushed with excitement.

  “Please,” Anna begged. “Please stop.”

  The man leaned in, his lips close to Anna’s ear. He whispered something that made the girl flinch.

  Claire sat up in the chair. She used the mouse to rewind the movie. She turned up the sound. She pressed PLAY.

  Anna Kilpatrick was begging, “—­stop.”

  The man leaned in, his lips close to Anna’s ear. Claire dialed up the sound. She leaned forward, too, her ear as close to the computer speaker as the man’s mouth was to Anna’s ear.

  The masked man whispered in a soft drawl, “Tell me you want this.”

  Claire froze. She stared blankly at the metal shelves with their ancient equipment. Her vision blurred. She felt a sharp, sudden pain in her chest.

  He repeated, “Tell me you want—­”

  Claire paused the movie. She didn’t rewind. Instead, she clicked on the magnifying glass to manually zoom in on the masked man’s back.

  This was the unedited footage. Paul hadn’t yet filtered the light or corrected the sound, nor had he erased any identifying marks, like the constellation of three moles underneath the killer’s left shoulder blade.

  The kitchen phone started to ring.

  Claire didn’t move.

  The phone rang again.

  And again.

  She stood up. She left the garage. She pulled the door closed behind her. She walked into the kitchen and picked up the phone.

  “You lied to me,” Paul said. “I had one of my ­people check the inventory from the crime scene. The key tag wasn’t on there.”

  Claire could only hear the words “one of my ­people.” How many ­people did he have? Were Mayhew and Nolan the tip of the iceberg?

  Paul said, “Where is it, Claire?”

  “I have it. Hidden.”

  “Where?”

  Claire reached up and turned around the fake air freshener so she was out of view.

  “Claire?”

  “I’m leaving the house now. You are going to send me a photograph of Lydia every twenty minutes, and if I see that you’ve touched one hair on her head, I will upload the entire contents of the USB drive to YouTube.”

  Paul scoffed. “You don’t know how to do that.”

  “You don’t think I can walk into any copy store and find some pimply geek to do it for me?”

  He didn’t answer. She couldn’t hear road noises anymore. He had stopped the car. He was pacing. She heard his shoes crunching on gravel. Was Lydia still in the trunk? She must be, because Paul had abducted Lydia for leverage, and killing her would take everything away.

  Suddenly, Claire was struck by a thought. Why had Paul taken Lydia in the first place? If he was really watching the Dunwoody house, then he knew that Lydia had only entered the scene less than a day ago. Even without that, Claire was the one w
ho knew where the USB drive was. Claire was the one who could get it for him.

  So, why hadn’t he taken Claire?

  She had no doubt in her mind that under even the slightest threat of physical harm, she would’ve told Paul that Adam had the drive. But Paul hadn’t taken Claire. He had made the wrong choice. He never made the wrong choice.

  “Listen.” He was trying to sound reasonable again. “I need the information on that drive. It’s important. For both of us. Not just for me.”

  “Send me the first picture of Lydia, unharmed, and we’ll talk about it.”

  “I could cut her into a thousand pieces before she dies.”

  That voice. It was the same tone he’d used with Claire in the alley, the same sinister drawl she’d heard on the speakers before Paul could edit his voice into a stranger’s. Claire tasted her heart in her mouth, but she knew she could not show this man any fear.

  She said, “You want me to go away with you.”

  It was Paul’s turn to be silent.

  She had found his weak spot, but not on purpose. Claire was just now seeing the motivation behind Paul’s wrong choice. As usual, the answer had been right in front of her all along. He kept saying that he loved her. He had hit Claire, but not with all of his strength. He had sent the men to break into the house during the funeral so Claire wouldn’t be there. He had made the wrong choice and taken Lydia because the right choice meant hurting Claire.

  He might be able to punch his wife in the face, but he couldn’t torture her.

  She said, “Promise me you didn’t participate in any of the movies.”

  “Never.” His hope was as tangible as a piece of string between them. “I never hurt them. I promise you on my life.”

  He sounded so persuasive, so sincere, that Claire might have believed him. But she had seen the uncut movies—­the raw footage before Paul changed the sound and edited down the scenes and filtered the skin tones and distorted the voices and slyly altered blemishes so that the true identity of the masked man would remain unknown.