A small part of Beverley had hoped, she realizes, that Sharon would do the hard work for her, that they would turn up with their grave expressions and their need to talk about her son and it would all fall neatly into place.
“Sharon.” Elsie swallows. “We’ve discovered some things about Peter that you might find upsetting.”
“What is this?” Sharon asks, growing visibly panicked.
“There are some things you need to know,” says Margot, “some things that you won’t like hearing, and we’re sorry we’re the ones who have to tell you.”
Sharon swallows. Her eyes dart, willing them on, the way a doomed soul just needs to know its fate.
“There is evidence linking Peter to the murders of Cheryl Herrera, Emily Roswell, Diane Howard Murray, Sarah Gunn and Kate McKenzie.”
There’s a gawp, a bovine stillness, four silent seconds before it finally lands.
“No.” Sharon lets out a dry, fractured laugh, shakes her head. “He’s just a boy.”
“Sharon, he’s a man now. A dangerous man. I know it’s a shock, but you have to stop protecting him. He killed five young women. We need to tell the police. We need to keep everyone safe now.”
“What do you mean, stop protecting him?” Sharon asks, eyes saucer wide with alarm.
“I know it can be difficult, as a mother, to imagine your child being capable of these things.” It smacks of hypocrisy. How wouldBeverleyreact if someone came to her house and accused her child of being a killer? “But we can never really know what people are capable of, even those we love the most.”
“What evidence?” Sharon snaps. Beverley is surprised to see the scratch in her, the fight.
The evidence.Beverley draws a breath and looks to Elsie and Margot, who indicate that she should be the one to deliver it.
“First of all, there is the bracelet in the car, Cheryl Herrera’s bracelet. Peter works at the garage with Hank and would have access to the same cars, so he could have mislaid the bracelet in there.”
Sharon’s jaw clenches as she looks to the table. Beverley can see a creep of red growing from the base of her throat.
“We now know that the killer took his inspiration from movies. The methods of killing, the way he posed the bodies after death, the rituals—they all relate to scenes from movies. And Peter—well, you said yourself that Peter is a cinema fanatic.”
“But that’s ridiculous—”
“And there’s the camera.” She cuts Sharon off. She doesn’t want to give her a chance to bury herself in denial.
“What camera?” Sharon demands. The redness has spread to her face. Beverley can see her shaking.
“There was a camera found just yards from the murder scene eight nights ago, when Kate McKenzie was killed in her shower.” Beverley reaches into her bag and pulls out the Polaroid. She places it in the middle of the table. Sharon immediately sweeps it toward her with chipped pink nails.
“Isn’t that Peter’s camera?” Beverley urges softly. “With the checked strap. It was here the last time we visited.”
Sharon looks up at her, a furrow between her eyebrows. “But they took the camera.”
Beverley holds Sharon’s haunted gaze, but out of the corner of her eye she sees Margot and Elsie turn to her, just ever so slightly.
There is a pause, a beat too long, during which no one says anything.
“What do you mean, they took the camera?” Beverley asks.
“The cops,” says Sharon, “a couple of weeks ago now. They took the camera away.”
“Who?”
“The police.” Then, slowly, “An officer came around to the house, said he needed our fingerprints to eliminate us, eliminate Hank, as suspects in a local case. But I knew it wasn’t Hank, because you’d told me that, Bev. Then he took the camera from Peter’s room.”
Beverley’s heart falters, the mechanism out of whack. What does Sharon mean, they took the camera? They can’t have taken the camera. Peter left it there, at the last murder, probably when he got spooked.
“Which officer?” Margot asks, her back straight, looking intently at Sharon.
