“Hank Farrer,” Beverley says. “F-A-R-R-E-R. There. I’ve told you now, so itison you.” She turns back to the door, pulls it open. She knows she is in danger now. The killer has struck just blocks from her house, the same killer who may have left a carcass, bloodied and bold, on her lawn to let her know she might be next. But she will not sit around and wait for harm to come to her. Tomorrow she’ll continue. If the police won’t act quickly on this, then she will. She has to. She has to see for herself, to keep her promise, to stop a killer.
Thirty-Six
The following evening,Margot wiggles the key in the sticky lock and pushes open the door to her apartment. She flicks the light switch, and the cramped hallway illuminates with a yellow glow. It reveals patches of damp on the ceiling; peeling paint on the baseboards; a bucket on the floor, catching drops from the leak in the pipes in the apartment above. She sighs, steps over the bucket and makes her way to the small kitchen at the end of the hall. She turns on the radio and the room fills with James Brown’s gravelly voice.“This is a man’s world.”She cannot help but laugh.
The tap drips loudly. Her stomach rumbles. The super still hasn’t fixed the old rusting stove, so she opens the cupboard and pulls out the only item in it—saltines, on which she spreads the remaining butter from the fridge.
She knows she probably hasn’t lost as much emotionally as Beverley and Elsie, that she’s good at bravado, that she can keep up the act, but her tumble from politician’s wife to someone eating crackers alonein her shitty apartment on a Friday night is a hard pill to swallow. She knows she looks put together. She can keep up appearances by using her discount at work—thank God for that—but she can nevereverlet anyone see this pathetic apartment. If she did, she’d have to admit to herself how very much she’s lost.
She scoops the last cracker crumbs up with her fingers and throws the empty carton into the trash. Then she walks the few yards to her bedroom and takes down her hair. Does she really have the energy to go on a date tonight? It’s already after ten p.m., and she’s supposed to be meeting Mark at the wrap party of a crappy play he’d got some role in. She’d rather just crash and watchThe Beverly Hillbillies. She surveys herself in the mirror, and her mother blinks back. She is there, fixing her makeup in the hallway, Margot and her little brother on the couch, feet not touching the ground. They watch as their mother pulls on a raggedy coat, clips old earrings in place.
Women have been molding themselves to fit men’s desires for centuries. Her mother was no different. The women Margot knows now are no different. And it enrages her that men—fun for the most part, often base, sometimes stupid, occasionally extremely dangerous—have such a hold over them.
But Margot has never been one to do what men want her to do.
Stephen gave himself away, eventually. He was not careful enough. He let his desire for notoriety, for brilliance—brilliance he had never been able to achieve on the political scene—foil him.
They’d just had breakfast. Margot had burned the eggs, and Stephen joked that he’d let her off because she looked beautiful in that yellow dress. She’d wanted to spit into his yolk. She knew what sort of man he was—she’d seen the bloody footprint; she’d caught him jerking off at the site of a horrific slaying. She just couldn’t prove it. Yet.
He told her he needed to head into town to run some errands.Well, that was ridiculous. He was getting sloppy. He didn’t even look back as she got into her car and followed him, not to Southampton, the nearest town, but an hour away, to Riverhead.
She parked the car and began to trail him on foot. He was wearing a scarf, for Christ’s sake. She wondered, briefly, if it was one of hers; the thought of him rummaging through her stuff made her want to hiss.
She had to duck into a few shops, hover at a few corners, to stay hidden from him, but Stephen continued to walk, and even though he appeared to have no real destination, she knew he must have come here for a reason.
After a while, he turned down a side street and made his way toward a phone booth. There was little passing traffic, so Margot hung back, watching, as he opened the door, pulled a dime from his pocket and tugged the scarf over his face. She watched as he dialed a number, then spoke into the receiver, scarf pulled tight across his mouth. Then he replaced the handset, pushed open the door and looked up and down the street before exiting.
What was a politician doing using a public phone booth?
Margot waited, then followed him, tugging her own headscarf from her pocket and tying it around her hair and adjusting her oversize sunglasses—she couldn’t run the risk of being spotted. Eventually, Stephen stopped at a mailbox, then opened his jacket to pull out an envelope. He glanced around again before depositing the letter in the slot.
She waited for him to leave, then sprinted over to the mailbox and pulled down the gate.Damn it.The box was designed so that you couldn’t fit a hand in. Margot began to grow hot. She cast her eyes around. Shehadto see what the letter said. She had to know if it was linked to the phone call he had just made, if it was linked to Silver Lake Lookout.
She took off again at a run, clutching the scarf to the back of her head, not caring who saw her, whom she banged into. She ran all the way back to her car, opened the passenger door and retrieved the baseball bat from the footwell. Then she rushed back to the mailbox, losing a shoe on the way, the headscarf tearing free of her hair and billowing in a blaze of yellow behind her. She started swinging before she even reached the box, the bat meeting nothing but air. She kept going until she was striking the steel as hard as she could, bringing the bat up and down with force. People stared, mouths agape, as she pounded the mailbox again and again, making nothing more than the smallest dents in the steel. Some passersby smothered laughter, hurried their children away, but Margot continued her fusillade, not stopping even though her arms ached. Pounding the box, she released a guttural yell.
“Someone call the police,” a voice ordered from behind her.
Sure,Margot thought.Call the cops. Maybe they can get that letter out for me.
With a scream, she brought the bat down once more. She knew she looked like a madwoman, but she simply did not care. She was making progress. She had begun to dent the steel more deeply now, and the drop gate was becoming warped, opening a gap through which Margot was sure she could squeeze a hand. She gave a few more blows, then allowed the bat to topple to the ground. She was panting heavily, her hair tugged out of its chignon. She wiped the back of her palm across her mouth, smearing red lipstick.
She reached her hand into the mailbox and tried to grasp the letters inside, straining with the effort.
Not quite.
She plunged her arm in, up to the shoulder, and leaned in as far as she could.
There.
Her fingers touched paper. She grabbed a fistful and hauled it out, tossing letters on the sidewalk in front of her.
“What are you looking for, honey?” An old woman who had stopped to watch peered down at her.
“My husband’s handwriting,” Margot answered breathlessly, scouring the envelopes for Stephen’s familiar scrawl. When she could not find it, she reached in again for more letters. She scattered them before her, turned them over, then immediately scrambled for one, small and manila. The hand was vaguely recognizable to her, not exactly like Stephen’s handwriting, but there was something in the flick on theTs that gave her pause.
She picked it up and held it to her face, allowing her back to rest on the battered mailbox. The letter was addressed to the editor at theNew York Times. Margot tore it open and found the page she would later hand over to the police. She read the words quickly, with a horror no less pronounced because she knew it was coming. Her eyes clung to the words:Silver Lake Lookout…a slashed throat…bullets to the kneecaps. Then another confession: a slaughtered family, more slashed throats. But of course, he had not signed his name. The letter was a taunt, a gibe to the police, who had not yet tracked him down. But to Margot it was the truth she had been searching for.
So, yes, men have power, but Margot Green is used to besting men. As is Elsie, as is Beverley, and no one is going to stop them from solving these murders.
