When Betsy dreamed of Ginny, she imagined her friend’s last moments a dozen different ways. But every time, Ginny bargained for her life, and McRae lied to her, like he did to all of the others. He told her she could live if she would just stop the screeching and cooperate. In fierce whispers, she warned him that one of her roommates was going to show up at any minute and find him there, and that he was going to rot in hell. In Betsy’s dreams, moments after the light faded from Ginny’s eyes, he heard the door downstairs, footsteps, and he tiptoed across the floor to hide behind the bedroom door. The floorboard creaked under his weight. He heard a fall, the sound of a chair slamming against the floor. He barreled down the stairs to the small hallway and slid on a pile of mail and newspapers. By the time he got back up on his feet and made it to the door, all he saw was a faint figure disappearing into the far edge of the dark parking lot. In her dreams, Betsy looked back and saw him in the doorframe. In her dreams, she tried to force herself to look back. But in reality, she couldn’t. She never did. She didn’t look back until it was too late.
According to all of the articles written about his execution, the last hours of McRae’s life passed without incident. He cooperated with the guards, said please and thank you when he was asked a question or offered the most basic comforts. By 4:00 p.m. he was led to the room next to the death chamber, which had a small bathroom and a couple of chairs. Some men’s clothes hung on hangers from a hook. Did he wonder about the person who would seal his fate, plunging the chemicals through a syringe into his veins while hiding behind a mask? At 5:00 p.m., Scottie showered and shaved. He put on a crisp white shirt, and new pants that fit around the waist but had cuffs that skimmed the ground behind his heels.
In the viewing area, which was separated from the chamber by a large window covered with a drawn curtain, prison guards brought in extra chairs to accommodate the forty-six people who had arrived to witness the execution. McRae’s brother and his pastor took seats next to the victims’ families. Robert Harrington, Ginny’s father, walked stoically into the room and took his seat toward the back. Despite his wife Martha’s pleas for him to stay home, to put it all behind them, to not be complicit in even more violence because their daughter Ginny wouldn’t have wanted that, he had to go. Betsy sent them a card a couple of weeks later, when she was home with Remi and lucid enough to pull it together. She never received a reply.
As Scottie waited, the prison warden read him the death warrant listing his crimes and the reasons for his execution, cited by the judge who delivered the verdict. Then the guards led him into a small and sterile room, strapped him to a hospital gurney, and secured his arm to the attached splint. A red phone on the wall, a direct line to the governor’s office for dramatic, last-minute pardons, did not ring. They rolled up his sleeve and placed the needle in his arm, forgoing the usual sanitary swipe with an alcohol pad. At 5:50 p.m., the brown curtains parted to a couple of short, stifled gasps, and low, muffled sounds of crying.
AT 6:00 P.M., Scottie began to sing.
He flung those stars into the vast heaven above
Created the rivers, the valleys, the fish and the doves
None greater than Thee . . .
Betsy never learned the tune, but the lyrics stuck with her. The dumbest song I’ve ever heard, she thought.
“What was that?” asked Caroline, who craned her neck around to look at Betsy in the backseat, huddled in the dark corner.
“Oh, um, the lyrics.” She was shocked that she’d said it out loud. “The shitty hymn that McRae wrote and sang right before he died. It is the worst, most predictably cliché song ever written. The song pissed me off more than the lobster.”
Caroline stared at Betsy. She saw the reflected, green glow of the dashboard lights in Caroline’s eyes. A minute passed before she looked away.
“It’s got to be hard,” said Caroline.
“What? I mean, which part?” asked Betsy.
“To send Remi out into a world that creates guys like Scottie McRae,” said Caroline. She turned back around to face the road. “I couldn’t do it. I just wasn’t strong enough to do it.”
Betsy nearly gasped with relief, and she saw Teddy reach over and place his hand on Caroline’s knee, just for a second or two.
“Oh, Car,” Betsy said, “you have no idea. There are days when I just, I can’t.”
TEDDY WAS PLAYING Explosions in the Sky on his phone, the sad, lush music that Betsy identified with Friday Night Lights, the TV show that made her rethink how she felt about nostalgia, how she finally understood its value now that so much of her life was behind her. And even though the characters were Texan, the love and the loss and the beer and the football and the struggle to get out from under it all made her feel nineteen and lost again, driving the streets of Gainesville, the wind filling her ears in the backseat of Ginny’s car.
All of those years later, everything looked different, smaller, blurrier, a little desolate, and they finished the drive mostly in silence. When they finally pulled up to the hotel in Tampa, groggy and weak from the drinks, the heat, and the endless day, Betsy and Teddy said their goodbye. He parked the car and waited while Caroline walked her to the door. Betsy had nearly forgotten about the moths, the way they fought to get close to the burning bulb, jostling for position in the murky light.
“You know that I dream about her,” said Caroline.
“Me, too,” Betsy nearly whispered. “All the time.”
One of the waiters from the hotel restaurant was off to the side smoking a cigarette and Caroline bummed two.
“I never do this anymore,” she said.
“I know, me neither,” said Betsy. “It tastes like shit, but I like it. If I make it to eighty, I’m starting again. At that point, what’s to lose?”
Caroline lit their cigarettes and took the first, harsh drag.
“There’s one more thing that I have to tell you,” Betsy said, her voice shaky, her hands starting to vibrate from exhaustion, maybe from relief, or maybe from the onset of a hangover. It felt a lot like fear.
“Yeah?” Caroline asked. She saw Betsy’s hands trembling and took one in hers and gripped it, hard. “There’s literally nothing you could say that would surprise me.”
“I made Gavin swear never to tell a living soul,” said Betsy. “And I’ve said it only a handful of times since that night, the night Ginny was killed, twice to my shrink, and another couple of times to this kid, this guy who sold me pills for a while back in . . .”
“You were there,” said Caroline.
“What?” said Betsy, not hearing, or believing, what she said.
“You were there that night. In the apartment,” said Caroline, flatly.
Betsy felt the blood leave her face and rush to her stomach, which was churning wildly.
“How . . . how did you know?” The cigarette dangled in her hand, its ash growing long with neglect.
“When I got to the apartment that morning, the front door was unlocked, but the back door was opened by force. It didn’t make sense,” Caroline explained. “Scottie had a pattern. He would identify a victim, stalk her for a day or two, force his way into the apartment, and wait for her to come home. Mostly, he would just slide some glass panes of a window off of the track and pull himself in, or jam a screwdriver in the lock of a sliding glass door, like he did at our place. But the police found a loose key on the floor of the front hall.”
“Oh God, the key,” said Betsy. “Of course.”
“When the police were questioning me, they were all over the apartment looking for evidence. Ginny’s key was in her bag. Mine was on my keychain. The landlord still had his,” she said. “So the cops asked me if anyone had an extra. There was only one other spare when we rented the place. That’s when I figured it out. You were the one who unlocked the door and scattered the mail everywhere in a panic, not Ginny.”
“You knew that it was mine. You knew I was there.”
“I did.”
“And you didn’t
say anything?”
“I told them that you stayed there sometimes and would use the key, but that we kept it under the potted plant on the stoop, and maybe you dropped it a few days before when you were staying with us,” she said.
“And they believed you?”
“Might I remind you that I’m a very skilled liar?”
“Why didn’t you tell them that I was the one who unlocked the door?” asked Betsy, bewildered, shocked. And something else: a weight lifting. A lightness, returning.
“I figured that if you’d wanted the police, or anyone else, to know that you’d been there, you’d have come forward and said something when they were questioning you, but you never did,” said Caroline. “I was still so pissed at you at Teddy’s wedding that I wasn’t interested in making you feel better. Then that time I saw you in New York, I wanted to talk to you about it. But I was nervous. I know you don’t think I have any typically human emotions, but it can happen. You were so mad at me. And I was mad at you for being angry. I guess I just changed my mind. I didn’t want to let you off the hook.”
Betsy stood shaking in the circle of light from the moth-swarmed bulb.
“I was there, Caroline,” said Betsy, hearing the sound the words made as she spoke them, but so shocked by the admission that she couldn’t believe it was happening. “I walked into the apartment and I heard a strange noise. The second I walked in, I knew something was off. I saw the light at the top of the stairwell, the overhead light was on, so obviously something was up.”
“I still hate it. Overhead lighting.”
“And then,” Betsy said, replaying her moves in her head, feeling so completely transported, so present in that apartment in 1990 that she could describe the smell of the place, the exact shade of white paint on the wall. “I walked down the hall to the bottom of the stairs and I looked up, but as soon as I heard that creaky floorboard, you know, the one at the end of Ginny’s bed, I ran.”
She remembered racing through the parking lot, how startled she was by Gavin’s headlights.
“It must have been terrifying,” Caroline said.
“But all I could think, all I’ve been able to think almost every single day since it happened, was ‘Maybe I could have scared him off? Maybe I could have saved her?’ But I ran. I was too high. I was too afraid of getting in trouble, of what my mom would say. I convinced myself I was being paranoid. I called 911, but the story I wanted to tell the operator didn’t make sense, so I hung up. I didn’t have any details. I thought I was making it all up, being high and crazy like always, you know. I didn’t think they’d believe me anyway.”
Betsy started to sob, and Caroline put her arms around her.
“Ginny had a headache,” Caroline told Betsy as she stroked the back of her head. “She’d been struggling with it all day. And she was worried about you. But I begged her to stay and made her promise that she’d go upstairs, grab a blanket and a pillow, and find a dark corner to sleep it off. Instead, she grabbed her bag and snuck out the back door. Once she walked into that apartment, nothing could have saved her.”
“You ladies OK?” called Teddy from the parking lot.
“Oh Lord, would you just fuck off already?” Caroline said, not loud enough for him to hear.
“Say again?” he asked.
“I said, ‘Please, just give us five more minutes!’” Caroline shouted.
“I was convinced I was hearing things, like I was hallucinating and paranoid,” Betsy continued. “So I just ran away. I ran through the parking lot, and I saw Gavin, who’d driven there to find me. And we took off. I didn’t call 911 until we pulled into the Steak ’n Shake. I could have saved her.”
“Oh no, sweetheart, no,” she said, shaking her head, grabbing both of her hands now. “It was too late. You couldn’t have saved her.”
“Wait, how do you know?”
“I was the one who found her the next day, you know that,” said Caroline. “I’ve been over this so many times, sorry if I seem detached. I lashed out in the car at poor Teddy, but this is stuff I’ve been over and over a thousand times.” She took the last drag of her cigarette and flicked it away. “That was disgusting, by the way. So I went to the apartment to check on Ginny, who’d gone home sick from rush the night before. We were watching a movie. I don’t know, it was twenty years ago, right? I can’t remember what I was doing last week, but I remember everything about that night except for what movie we watched. Anyway, she snuck out without telling anybody, because she knew we wouldn’t have let her go. I remember that conversation we had in my car, on the way to Walmart. What were the odds? Like, of all the women in that town, he was coming after us? Early the next morning, I searched the house looking for her. She wasn’t at breakfast. I realized she must have taken off. I thought, That sneaky little bitch, and I called the apartment. Nobody answered, and I started to worry a little. I borrowed somebody’s car. It was a stick shift, I remember that, and I almost left the transmission in the middle of 16th Street four different times on that short drive. All I can remember thinking was that it wasn’t the first time she’d slept through the phone ringing, you know, that she was just sleeping it off.”
“Oh God, I feel sick,” said Betsy. “I always assumed you were the one who found her.”
“You know that pattern the investigators mentioned, of stalking his victims? Well, they said that McRae also had a pattern with his method, the way he killed them. He’d assault them first, you know, sexually.”
Caroline paused.
“Look, I know this is hard. I know that I seem crazy-detached right now, but I have to be. You have to know the facts.”
“No, I get it, Car,” said Betsy. “I’ve been strangling myself with these words for so long, it’s a relief just to hear someone say them out loud.”
“Alright, well, stop me if it’s too much. So he’d force himself on them, and then he’d stab them, repeatedly, and do all sorts of other sick stuff . . . and when he was finished, he’d wash them with dish soap and water to remove all of the evidence before he arranged them in weird poses.”
Betsy turned to vomit in the landscaping behind her.
“Oh God, too much, right? I told you. I’m sorry,” she said. Caroline rubbed her back. The waiter who was smoking nearby pretended not to notice, but nearly sprinted inside.
“I read all of this stuff a long time ago,” Betsy said, “but it’s been a rough day, the bourbon, the nicotine.”
Caroline offered her water bottle.
“I’m just going to tell you the rest because you have to hear it. The police said that McRae must have left in a rush. The dish soap and the bloody rag were left on the floor in a mess. At the other crime scenes, he hung around after to clean up. Sometimes he would eat food from the kitchen. Can you believe it? But it was clear that he left in a hurry that night, like he got spooked and took off. The way I see it, he heard you come in the door and ran. But it wasn’t until after she was dead.”
“Are you sure? How can you be sure?” said Betsy.
“Well, that’s what the police investigators said.” Caroline raised her eyebrow at Betsy. “They placed the time of death right around one thirty or two a.m. There’s no denying that he left the place in a mess, which was unusual for him. And then Ginny was his last victim. He left town, because of you.”
“And you’re absolutely sure she was dead by the time I got there?”
“The detectives seemed to know what they were talking about,” said Caroline. “And now the sick fuck’s just a corpse in a box so, thank God, we’ll never get to ask him. Not that Scottie would have told us. He wasn’t interested in putting anyone at ease. But listen, there’s something I have to tell you, too.”
Caroline paused for a minute before her expression turned grave.
“Wait, what?” Betsy said. “You’re freaking me out. There’s more? How could there possibly be more?”
“It wasn’t your fault that Scottie knew where we lived.”
Betsy eyed
her warily.
“But we saw him at Taco Bell, and again at Walmart,” said Betsy. “He must have followed us back.”
“Maybe he did,” Caroline said, “but he had been there before.”
Any part of the landscape that wasn’t spinning in Betsy’s vision before, the weirdly manicured plants in front of the hotel, the sliding glass doors filled with yellowish light from the lobby, was set in motion.
“Wait, hold on,” Betsy said. “What are you saying?”
“That night at the Porpoise, the night I came home from summer break, do you remember it?” asked Caroline, her voice quivering now.
“Yeah, I mean, vaguely. We went to C.J.’s first and then to the Porpoise and we hung out in back by the pool tables. You were in a booth talking to one of Ginny’s guy friends from high school, right?”
Betsy remembered leaving Caroline at the bar.
“I was in a booth, but it wasn’t with a guy from Ginny’s high school,” said Caroline. Betsy could feel her heart pounding hard against her sternum. She put her hands up to her ears, reflexively, afraid of the words they would hear.
“You’ve got to stay with me, Betsy. I have got to tell you. I’ve been trying to tell you for twenty years,” said Caroline.
“Y’all OK?” asked Teddy again, clearly desperate to leave.
“Yep, we’re fine. Just give us five more minutes,” shouted Caroline in his direction, and then turned back to Betsy and squeezed her hand tightly.
“You and Ginny were doing your thing. You’d been together all summer without me, and I walked into this chummy roommate situation. I mean, you weren’t even paying rent. And I felt like a third wheel in my own apartment. So I was being pissy and I bought those shots, and then another round of shots. We had already had so many drinks at C.J.’s. I was feeling angsty and rebellious and, you know, twenty-one fucking years old, so I wandered into the front bar. He was sitting on a stool by himself.”
“Who, Caroline? Who was sitting on a stool by himself?”
“Scottie.”
Betsy pulled her hand away from Caroline’s in shock, but she hung on every word.
The Drifter Page 29