She does not know how long she runs for, does not know quite how her lungs, her heart, her bones, persist, but she endures—losing track of where she is, how far she is from her house; the names of the streets pass by in a blur. She is getting all turned around. The streets all look the same. Her vision is growing hazy—a smeared procession of houses, of white fences, of expensive cars.
She can no longer tell her left from her right. She cannot feel herself breathing. She cannot feel the road beneath her bare feet until she turns a corner and, with relief that folds her in half, she sees him. Benjamin is standing in the very center of the road, facing a house, studying it intently. She calls out to him, but he does not turn to her. She shifts Audrey’s weight and starts running again, toward her son, to grab her baby, to keep him safe. She almost falls to her knees when she reaches him. Instead, she takes him in one arm and pulls him tightly to her. But Benjamin does not soften. She turns her own head, follows his gaze toward a porch just like hers—with a white picket fence, a tended garden, a neatly painted front door—and there, swaying slowly in the breeze, at the end of a hook, is a body.
Thirty-Five
While waiting forthe police to arrive at the Gunn household, Beverley sat on Sarah’s parents’ couch, trembling, her two children wrapped in blankets held tight at her side, and she realized that this changed everything.
She’d stumbled to the porch, screaming for help, and banged on the door to wake Sarah’s parents inside. When Sarah’s father answered and saw what was out there, just yards from where he’d been sleeping, he let out a sound so horrifically inhuman that Beverley wanted to smash her head into the wall. He rushed to Sarah’s body, swinging lifelessly, dressed in a trench coat—just like Diane Howard Murray’s—its collar fastened to a hook. He tried frantically, wracked with sobs, to lift her off, but Beverley, through the disorienting blur of it all, convinced him to leave her. Sarah’s body was evidence. Sarah’s body held clues the police would need. Sarah’s body would help them catch their guy.
The cops cannot deny the link now: another body dressed in a coat; another body staged after death. Elsie told her about the note,too, the one found on that plumber’s car in Ventura—an awful finishing piece to the puzzle.I’ll hook another girl,it said. Beverley hadn’t thought much of the language used—until now.
All the papers will pick up the story; it will go nationwide, worldwide. She, Elsie and Margot will no longer be so alone in their search to identify the killer.
When Roger and his partner, Bale, eventually show at the Gunns’ house, it is easy for Beverley and Roger not to talk, not to give away their relationship. Usually, when Beverley sees him, she finds it hard not to touch him, not to fold herself into his chest and wrap his arms around her, but as Roger gives his condolences to Sarah’s parents, Beverley patiently observes.
Sharon had begged her not to tell the police about Hank, and Beverleyknowsthat fear. But she knows, too, that the evidence against him is too much to deny.
She needs to get Roger on his own, to tell him what she knows.
When their eyes eventually meet, it takes only a tilt of her head for Roger to excuse himself and step outside. Beverley follows, stepping out onto the porch behind him.
“We know who it is.”
Roger turns, blinks incredulously, as if he’s misheard her. “What?”
“I’ve got a name for you. He’s violent, he uses prostitutes, his wife thinks—”
“Beverley, what the hell are you talking about?”
“I’ve got a name for you,” she repeats slowly. “Just take it and do what you want with it, but I’d be putting more women in danger by not handing it over to you.”
“Putting women in danger? Bev, you are puttingyourselfin danger like this”—his voice is rising—“at a crime scene in the middle of the night! You need to be staying at home.”
Henry used to tell her to stay at home, and look how that turnedout. She will not be staying at home and keeping quiet. They have their fingertips on the guy doing this. She will not lose her grasp.
“I’m sorry if I’m more invested in catching this guy than the police are,” she levels.
Roger’s jaw drops; he’s stunned. “Bev…”
“You’re not trying. It’s almost as if you guys don’t want to catch him. Is this all because of that op that Cornwell’s throwing money at?”
“You think I don’t want to catch him?” Roger’s tone is jarring. He seems genuinely hurt.
Bev swallows, hesitates, just for a moment.
“Bev,” he says gravely, “I have to wake up every day and wonder if he’s taken another girl.”
Her neck grows hot.
“I have to consider, when I’m brushing my teeth, whether he’s destroyed another family overnight, whether I could have stopped him. That’s on me.”
Her mouth is dry.
“But with my job, with the way things work, I have to march to Cornwell’s beat. He’ll be in charge of choosing the new chief when he retires.”
The shame withdraws like a wave. “Yourjob?” she barks. “You won’t challenge Cornwell because you want to protect your job?”
“That’s not what I said, Bev.” Roger shakes his head firmly. “There are just certain protocols to follow.”
