“Candace Jacques had eaten lobster, too!” Tara squealed. “He cut off her hand, kept her alive for four freaking days, fed her boiled lobster, and strangled her—just like Andrea McFerlin! And listen to this—the son of a bitch has a name now!
“ ‘An anonymous source at the Brighton Falls Police Department reports that after Candace Jacques’s stomach contents were discovered, the detectives working the case nicknamed the killer Neptune.’ ” Tara looked up from the paper, eyes glittering. “That must have been Charlie’s dad. How cool is that? His dad gets to name a serial killer! God, this reporter is awesome. What’s her name . . . Martha! Whose name is really Martha? Anyways, sounds like she’s got some secret inside source. She’s getting stuff the TV news people don’t have a clue about.” Reggie could practically feel the electric hum of excitement pulsing off Tara’s body.
Tara went back to the paper and read aloud, “ ‘The official statement from chief of police Vern Samson is that they are following leads and actively looking for a connection between these two women.’ ” Tara scowled. “No shit!” she yelped. “I wonder how much they really know. Maybe Charlie’s heard something. His dad can’t be totally secretive about every little detail.”
Charlie and Tara hadn’t spoken in a week, since the day of the eighth-grade dance, and work on the tree house was at a standstill.
“Maybe you should call Charlie and ask?” Reggie said quietly.
Tara shrugged. “So tell me again what we’re doing in Lorraine’s lair?” she asked, tossing the paper aside and getting up off the beat-up couch.
“Looking.”
“For what?” Tara asked.
“I’m not sure. Anything that doesn’t have to do with fishing, I guess. All my mom said was ‘I know what goes on in that garage.’ ”
“Ooh, I love the idea that Lorraine’s got some kind of dark secret,” Tara said, looking around. She pulled a pair of green rubber waders off a hook on the wall. “Maybe Lorraine puts these on, rubs fish guts all over herself, and struts around naked.”
“Eew!”
“Hey, I almost forgot to tell you,” Tara said, hanging the waders back up. “I’m a sister.”
“Huh?”
Tara kept her back to Reggie, rubbing her thumb over the rusty nail that the green waders hung from. “Remember how I told you about how my dad has this young girlfriend and she was pregnant? Well, we got a card in the mail yesterday. She had the baby a couple weeks ago. A girl.”
“Oh,” Reggie said. “That’s cool, I guess.”
Tara turned back to face Reggie. “My mom’s freaking. She actually kind of slapped me last night.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” Tara snorted. “Can you believe it? She was all like, ‘Maybe if you hadn’t been such a freak then he wouldn’t have wanted another kid.’ Like it’s my fault he knocked up this chick?”
Reggie let out a shaky breath. “That really sucks,” she said lamely.
“Yeah, whatever. She’ll get over it. Drink enough brandy and she’ll forget damn near anything. Which reminds me, okay if I crash at your place tonight?”
“Of course, yeah.”
“Cool,” Tara said, coming over. She dropped down to her knees to examine the boxes stacked beside Lorraine’s workbench.
Reggie turned back to the bench. She’d been through it and found nothing out of the ordinary—no secret stash of booze, horse-racing forms, or pornography. Lorraine’s fishing rods, some nets, and a metal chain stringer hung on a wall. Pushed to the back of the garage were tires, boxes of old Christmas decorations, some scrap lumber, and a trash can full of sand they used on the driveway in the winter.
“Oh my God, are those eyeballs?” Tara shrieked, pulling out a cardboard box from the pile and peering in, disgusted, but clearly captivated.
Reggie looked in and saw tiny glass eyes with wires on the back, a filleting knife, scalpel, box of Borax, spool of black thread, and needles. There was also a plastic bottle of formaldehyde solution and a paper bag full of sawdust.
“Lorraine’s taxidermy stuff.”
“No shit? She actually stuffs dead things?”
“She’s just done a couple of fish. One was a total wreck and had to be thrown away, but she kept the second.” Reggie went over to the mounted fish nailed to the back wall of the garage. Its color was all wrong, the scales were falling off, and it had weird bulges in the middle, like a snake that had eaten a sledgehammer. The whole thing was strangely shiny, like it had been dipped in lacquer. The worst part was the visible stitching, done in thick black thread, along the fish’s belly.
“Oh my God,” Tara said. “It’s Franken-fish!”
“She actually had it hanging in the living room for a while, but my mom kept throwing it away. Lorraine finally got the hint and put it up out here.”
“Your aunt is one strange lady.”
“No shit,” Reggie said, turning from the grotesque trout.
“But then again, we’ve all got our weird stuff. Our little secrets we don’t tell anyone.” Tara reached for her bag, pulling out cigarettes. She held the pack out to Reggie, who shook her head.
Tara sat back down on the couch and smoked in silence for a minute, watching Reggie, maybe even waiting for her to confess secrets of her own.
Reggie’s head was starting to ache. The garage felt dark and airless and she was sure she could smell a trace of formaldehyde in the air mixed with the fishy scent that seemed to follow Lorraine wherever she went.
“I have something show to you,” Tara said. “A secret thing just between me and you,” she promised. “Come closer.”
Reggie crossed the garage and perched on the edge of the couch next to Tara.
Tara put out her cigarette on the stained cement floor, then reached into her black tattered bag. She pulled out a small silver box the size of a Zippo lighter and opened it, revealing a rectangular piece of black fabric. Tara unfolded it slowly as Reggie watched. Inside was a razor blade. Tara picked it up carefully, studied it a moment, a grin on her face.
Reggie’s heart started to pound. “Is it for cocaine?” she asked, wondering if maybe Tara was a secret drug addict. She’d heard of kids in high school doing it at parties, but she’d never seen any in real life, only on TV.
“No, dummy. It’s something way better than that. Watch,” she said. Tara pulled up the leggings on her left calf and brought the blade to her skin. Slowly, carefully, she drew the blade across, her eyes wide. A little sigh escaped her mouth. Reggie could see that the calf was covered in thin scars, like delicate etchings on glass. She was making her own spiderweb across her leg.
“Now you try,” Tara said, holding out the blade, still wet with her own blood.
“What?” Reggie gasped. Her eye went back to the trout with its row of sloppy black stitches.
“It’s easy. Just one little cut.”
“I can’t,” Reggie said, panic rising.
“Sure you can.”
Reggie shook her head. “I’m not like you.”
Tara smiled, leaned closer to Reggie, so close that when she spoke, Reggie felt the vibrations of Tara’s words sinking into the skin of her face, down through the bones of her skull, reverberating in her addled brain.
“Yes, you are,” Tara said. “You’re just like me. I’ve known it all along.”
Reggie took the blade, pulled up the leg of her jeans. Her hand trembled as she let it hover above her skin. What was she doing even considering this? Trying to impress Tara? To do this sick little bonding ritual just so that Tara would consider her an equal?
No, Reggie decided. This wasn’t about Tara. This was about Reggie being scared of something and wanting to prove to herself that she could do it anyway. And shit, if she could survive a dog ripping her ear off, this would be a piece of cake.
“You know you want to,” Tara said. “One cut. That’s all. It’ll make everything else go away. I promise.” Tara kept her eyes focused on the blade in Reggie’s hand. “Trust me.”
Reggie made the cut quickly, pushing the blade down just a little, feeling the bright flash of pain as it bit into her skin, the amazing rush that came with it.
“That’s it,” said Tara, eyes huge. “Not too deep.”
Reggie pulled the blade away, watched the blood seep from the cut, hers and Tara’s mixed. At first it was like she was watching a film of some other girl with a razor blade in her hand. But the pain brought her back inside herself and she felt connected to her body in this whole new way. She was Reggie Dufrane, a thirteen-year-old girl. And for the first time she could remember, she was in control of something big, something dangerous.
“Didn’t that feel good?” Tara asked.
“Mmm,” Reggie said, closing her eyes, concentrating on the pain, melting into it.
Tara was right: for those few precious seconds, everything else faded away.
CHARLIE WAS ON HIS knees on the front lawn, tinkering with the string trimmer.
“Hey, stranger,” Tara said, practically skipping right up to him. After putting the razor blade away, Tara and Reggie had left the garage with this weird high—the world was suddenly brighter, and anything seemed possible. As they walked to Charlie’s, they’d kept catching each other’s eye and smiling these huge we’ve-got-a-secret smiles.
Charlie grunted a quick hello, barely giving Tara a glance before focusing back on the trimmer, which he was loading with new bright red nylon string.
“Hot day, huh?” Tara said.
Charlie kept winding string. His white T-shirt was soaked with sweat and grass stained. He smelled like gasoline.
“You got any Coke or anything inside?”
Charlie finished his job, reattached the spool, and stood up, wiping his hands on his grimy work shorts. “Come on in,” he said. They followed him toward his house.
“Crap,” he said, trying the door and finding it locked. “My dad must have locked it on his way out. He does things on autopilot these days.” Charlie grabbed the carved wooden house number, 17, that hung to the right of the door and rotated it counterclockwise. Charlie retrieved a key from the little niche hidden there and unlocked the door.
The little ranch house was cramped and dark, the dusty shades drawn. Reggie was sure she could still smell Mrs. Berr’s cigarette smoke. She half expected her to come around the corner from the kitchen, her latest Jell-O creation in hand.
Tara picked up and examined knickknacks and pictures arranged on dusty shelves while Charlie went to get them all Cokes.
“So is your dad at work?” Tara called out, wiping her hands on her jeans.
“It was supposed to be his day off, but he got called in.” Charlie passed them each a cold can of Coke and sat heavily on the Naugahyde couch. “Did you guys hear? Another hand was left.”
“What?” Tara said, so excited that she spilled soda all over her shirt. “When?”
“Just a couple hours ago.” Charlie watched as Tara lifted the dry lower edge of her shirt and used it to pat down the wet area, right over her chest. They could see her bare belly and the tiny bit of her black bra. Charlie looked like he was holding his breath.
“He’s picking up the pace,” Tara said excitedly. “Last time there was, what . . . a week or more between killing Andrea McFerlin and leaving Candace Jacques’s hand? It’s only been three days this time.”
Charlie nodded. “You know what my dad told me . . . he said he thinks this guy’s just getting started. He’s got a real taste for it now. It’s like an addiction. He won’t be able to stop.”
Reggie gave a little involuntary shiver. “Do they have any idea whose hand it is?”
“Don’t know,” Charlie said, taking a long sip of soda.
Tara reached into the pocket of her jeans and fiddled with something—the doll shoe probably.
“Has your dad said anything else about the case? Any suspects? A connection between the ladies he killed? I mean, do they even know the killer’s a man?” Tara asked, firing off the questions rapidly, letting them slam into each other. “Maybe it’s a woman, or a couple, or a crazy Satanic cult or something.” Her eyes were huge as she leaned toward toward Charlie, waiting for his response.
Charlie shook his head. “He hasn’t told me anything. Just the addiction thing he said as he was leaving today. To tell you the truth, I’m kind of worried about him.” Charlie set down his soda and began picking at loose thread on his shorts. “He’s barely eating. Not sleeping much. When he’s home, he’s shut up in his office. I guess I should be grateful that he’s off my back, but it’s weird the way he’s become kind of like the Invisible Dad. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and he’s not here—he’s gone into work at like two in the morning. He looks like a freaking zombie.”
Reggie looked over at the shelves and studied the school photos of Charlie, snapshots of family vacations. Charlie had his mother’s eyes and nose. She’d been a slight woman with huge brown eyes, blond hair, and a toothy smile. There were also pictures of Stu Berr in his police uniform, and before that, in the army. He’d served as a medic in Vietnam. He was, Reggie guessed, about fifty pounds lighter back then. There was a snapshot of Stu and a bunch of other uniformed men standing in front of an ambulance, all holding tin cups, raising them into the air in a toast. They all had tired, haunted looks beneath their helmets, and wore heavy flak jackets, with what looked like a hundred pounds of gear strapped to them. And what were they toasting? Reggie wondered. Getting the hell out of Vietnam? The life that would come after, she imagined, glancing at the other photos—the wife, the son, the little green house, the promotion to detective?
“So he’s got an office here? Can we take a peek?” Tara asked, doing her best to sound nonchalant.
Charlie shook his head. “No freaking way. My dad would shoot me. Besides, he keeps it locked.”
“Seriously?” Tara asked.
“He’s got guns and shit in there. And confidential police papers. He’s gotta keep it locked.”
Tara made a sour face. “We could try picking it. If it’s an easy lock, I might be able to do it with a bobby pin.” She started looking through her bag. “I’m sure I’ve got one in here somewhere.”
Reggie thought about Tara going into Andrea McFerlin’s house. Had the back door really been open or had Tara picked the lock? The cut on her leg stung and she rubbed at it through her jeans, looked over at Tara, remembering the crisscrossed lines of scars on Tara’s leg.
“Is that why you came over?” Charlie snarled. “To look through my dad’s crap?”
Tara closed her bag and shook her head. “Nah. We came because we missed you. Now quit being a paranoid spaz.”
“Well, forget about the office,” Charlie said. “He’s got a huge padlock on the door.”
“Maybe—” Tara started to say.
Charlie interrupted her, eyes flashing with anger. “No way. I’m not even gonna let you try.”
“That’s fine,” Tara said. “Whatever.”
They were all silent for a minute. Tara tapped her chipped blue nails on her Coke can. She was bouncing her legs up and down, unable to hold still.
“I know,” Tara said, her body still for the moment. “Let’s play a game. Close your eyes, Charlie.”
He stared at her for a few seconds, then closed his eyes.
“Good boy,” she said. “Keep ’em closed nice and tight.” Tara slid off the couch and made her way over to the chair where Reggie was sitting. She put a finger over her lips, Shh, then straddled Reggie’s legs and leaned forward, and for half a second, Reggie thought Tara was going to kiss her. Instead, she gave her a crooked smile—a we’re-sharers-of-deep-secrets-smile—and put her hands gently around Reggie’s neck. Reggie looked up, a what-the-hell look, and Tara mouthed, It’s okay. Trust me.
“Open your eyes, Charlie,” she said.
“Tara, what are you —”
“I’m Neptune,” Tara said, tightening her grip around Reggie’s neck. The smile was gone now and her eyes looked
dark and cruel. Her hands were cold and smelled like cigarettes. “And I’m giving you one minute to save my latest victim. Tell me why I do what I do.”
“This is stupid, Tara,” Charlie said.
“Answer the question,” she instructed, tightening her grip. Reggie tried to swallow and couldn’t. She held perfectly still, tried not to even breathe.
“Because it’s an addiction,” Charlie said impatiently.
“And?” Tara squeezed just a little tighter. Reggie made a gagging sound and reached up to pull Tara’s hands off her. She gripped Tara’s wrists, pulled and twisted, but Tara held tight.
“Quit it, Tara! You’re hurting her!” Charlie said, jumping up off the couch.
“Stay back and play by the rules, or she’s dead. I’m not Tara, I’m Neptune,” she hissed, voice deep and gravelly. When she spoke again it was a shout, “Now why do I do what I do?”
Reggie felt light-headed. She dug her nails into Tara’s wrists, tried to speak, but no words would come. She was inside a tunnel and there at the end of it, looking down at her, was Tara. Only she wasn’t Tara. She was a Neptune. A man with a shadowy face and lobster claws for hands—it wasn’t skin she was pinching and pulling on, not human wrists but a hideous exoskeleton.
“Tara!” Charlie grabbed her around the waist, yanking her off Reggie and throwing her to the floor. Reggie gasped, sucked in air. Her hands flew protectively to her aching neck, her crushed windpipe.
“You fucking idiot,” Charlie said, pinning Tara’s wrists to the ground, sitting on her hips so that she couldn’t move.
Tara smiled up at him. “You feel it now, don’t you?” Tara asked. “It’s power, pure and simple. The girl’s under you, her life is in your hands. It gives you a big old hard-on and there’s only one release. You’ve gotta kill her. And when you do, the whole universe is there in your hands. You’re like God.”
Chapter 15
October 17, 2010
Brighton Falls, Connecticut
REGGIE WOKE UP IN a cold sweat, heart pounding. She’d dreamed she was tied up in a dark cave and that someone was slipping a ring onto her finger. Then chopping her hand off.
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