Margot takes her purse from the stand and reaches for her coat.
Thirty-Seven
The night isclear, the moon full and round, sprinkling the roofs of the surrounding buildings in glitter. Beverley and Elsie sit across the street from the garage, shoulders hunched, trying to appear as small as possible in Elsie’s tough vinyl seats. They’ve stationed the car—a hardly inconspicuous pink Buick—in the relative darkness of shadow, and it is partially obscured by the trunk of a large date palm. Every so often, Beverley allows herself to crane her neck to peer across to the garage. Rusting signs for Kendall Motor Oil sit out front, and two huge metal doors have been pulled up, revealing cars on lifts, as well as gadgets and heavy tools hanging on the walls. It makes Beverley think of the hook, of Sarah Gunn’s body silently swinging.
Hank has been lumbering around inside. Even from a distance, they can hear the rhythmic thump of his steel-toed work boots, sense the energy radiating from his body, something hostile and electric, like what Beverley had once felt at the big-cat enclosure at the zoo. It’s late, and they didn’t expect him to stay at the garage for so long. But Sharon had mentioned that he needed all the work he could get. Thatfits; they’d theorized that their killer could be going through financial difficulties.
A sudden flash behind them makes them flinch. The rear window pools with white light and a car draws up slowly behind them.
“What the hell?” Beverley whispers as Elsie eyes the rear window uneasily. It is already closing in on midnight, and they didn’t tell anyone they were coming here. It crosses Beverley’s mind briefly that it could be the cops arriving. Maybe they’ve finally started looking into Hank, too.
After finding Sarah’s body, Beverley couldn’t sleep, so she spent hours poring over the letters she’d been sent in the years since Henry’s arrest, letters from women whose husbands were in jail for violent offenses, for murder. They all had different stories—the elementary school teacher whose husband had taken his hunting rifle and shot up a grocery store, the stay-at-home wife whose husband kidnapped a young girl and drove her out to a cabin in the woods, where he kept her tied up for two months. The ways in which the wives learned of their husbands’ indiscretions stretched from the mundane to the horrifying: an emptied bank account, men disappearing for hours during the working day, one woman catching her husband watching the neighbors have sex through a hole in their attic.
All the women wanted to know one thing from Beverley:Did you see it coming?
There were patterns in the stories, sure. Beverley had marked them all in a notebook—men with histories of violence in the home, men who worked late or were evasive when asked about the particulars of their routines. But there were also anomalies—the loving fathers, the wealthy businessmen, the prizewinning academics. Plenty of the women had asked for help but had been ignored because of where they lived, the color of their skin, the figures in their bank accounts. Plenty of them were forced to take their children from their homesand plant them in different towns, different states, so they would be accepted.
These women would never again feel safe, because they had been lied to since they were small girls playing with dolls and songs and their own naïve aspirations.You will be loved,they had been told.If you only behave correctly, look the right way, keep your waist slim and your voice quiet, you will be loved. You will be safe.
Beverley studies the garage again. Hank Farrer fits their checklist: secretive, hostile, unpredictable, physically strong, someone who uses prostitutes, someone with access to multiple cars. On top of that, the Farrers’ house is right in the middle of the range that the killer is operating in. Then there is the bracelet. They have to watch Hank but maintain a safe distance from him.
As the car draws closer behind them, its distinctive yellow paint becomes clear. A cab. The door opens, and out steps a heeled foot and a bare leg. A woman makes her way over to Elsie’s car, and Beverley immediately recognizes the shimmy, the bright red dress. The back door opens and Margot eases herself in. The space immediately fills with a waft of Diorissimo.
“I thought you had a date,” Beverley hisses, turning in her seat.
“I couldn’t miss this,” Margot whispers. “Seen him kill anyone yet?”
Elsie tuts loudly.
“No activity so far,” says Beverley. “We’ve been here since nightfall, and all we’ve seen is Peter Farrer driving out.”
“What? The son? What’s he doing here?”
“Looks like he works here, too.”
“Old Peroxide didn’t tell us everything, then.”
“For God’s sake, Margot…” Elsie fumes.
“She has used peroxide on her hair,” Margot replies evenly. “It’s ruined the integrity of the shafts.”
Beverley tunes them out and watches as Hank kneels to change a tire, the muscles in his arms flexing. There’s no doubt that this man is strong. She imagines him easily lifting a woman onto a hook, carting a body across a golf course, chasing down a terrified girl fleeing for her life. When she tunes back in, Margot is begging for the radio to be switched on.
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Elsie scolds. “We’re trying to stay out of sight. That man over there is a killer, and you want us to blast the Beach Boys?”
Margot whistles through her teeth and slumps back in her seat.
They sit in silence for the next hour or so, the thick night dragging like tar. Beverley resists the urge to yawn. Elsie’s eyes, she can see, are fixed unflinchingly on the garage.
“We sure we’ve got the right guy?” Margot eventually whispers. She’s never been comfortable with long periods of stillness. “He seems to be doing what a mechanic does”—she gestures to the garage—“not hanging women from hooks.”
Beverley winces at the crassness.
“Do we have anything to link him to the murders other than Sharon’s hunch and the bracelet?” Margot asks, not unreasonably.
“Henry said it would be someone who hated women,” Beverley replies, “who wanted to see them punished—mommy issues, sexual dysfunction…”
There is a cold silence in the car, and Beverley realizes, with a wheeling sense of panic, that her exhaustion has caused her to slip. She wants to backpedal, to unsay the words. She wants to push open the door and flee the car.
