An Honest Lie(81)

But it was too late: he swung the hammer. She saw Braithe tilt her head up to look at him; she made a noise in the back of her throat, and then the hammer came down. Braithe’s head fell once more to the side. The breath whooshed out of Rainy; her lungs pushed but they wouldn’t pull. Straining against her cuffs, she yanked forward, but she was held fast.

He’s killed her, he’s killed her, she thought as she saw the blood drip from Braithe’s ear to the floor. He killed Sara, and now Braithe...

She took her first breath in; her lungs expanded. She was going to scream again because this time Paul was heading to her, the little gold hammer wet with Braithe’s blood.

A crime scene, she thought, watching another drip hit the floor. He was a serial killer. She’d be dead and she’d never know if they caught him. How many murders did it take to class someone as a serial killer? Three, she thought. And she would be the third, assuming he hadn’t killed anyone else first. Her photos had been third on the disk, behind Feena’s and then Sara’s.

She’d searched Jon’s last name, too, and two pages of articles had popped up, his obituary among them. Jon died of a heart attack years before Ginger killed Feena. They’d been living in Texas at the time. Feena had later moved to Colorado to be near some family, and that’s where Ginger had tracked her down.

“You killed Feena, too,” she said.

He didn’t acknowledge this, but he didn’t need to. “She started using her real name after Jon died. You were the hardest to find.” He was standing in front of her now. “Who would have thought you’d be D-list famous? I was looking in the slums and our girl was eating caviar in the city. I thought I’d have to travel to see you, but then—I couldn’t believe it!—you brought yourself right to me. Can you believe how lucky I am?”

Crouching down, he reached out and chucked her beneath the chin. “It was fun, too, the whole little game to draw you out. I make it my mission to know my girls. And you, Summer—Rainy...whatever you want your name to be—carry a lot of guilt. Despite how Braithe treated you, I knew you’d come after her. A person can be controlled by their weakness.” His crooked mouth pulled to the side.

“What’s your weakness, Ginge? Taured?”

She remembered the boys taunting him with nicknames worse than his actual name. And another taunt:

“Ginger has a finger...” someone would say. “Up Taured’s ass!” someone else would chant.

“Ginger has a finger...” she said under her breath, looking at him through her lashes. His face was such a tell; it got red—redder than his hair used to be.

He slapped her, but it didn’t hurt as much as it could have. It felt good to poke his sore spot.

She leaned her head against the table leg. She could taste blood. She laughed because she could, closing her eyes and rolling her head from side to side against the metal. When she opened her eyes, he was staring at her, a thoughtful expression in his too-close-together eyes.

“Do you think that he’ll be happy you’re killing us?” Rainy asked. “You can’t possibly think that. When he finds out what you’re doing, he’ll kill you himself.”

Ginger’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t think he had some kind of plan for all of you? Why do you think he took those photos of you? You think he wants you all out there, living the way you want, godless, ignoring everything he ever taught you?”

“A good and faithful servant,” Rainy said dryly. “You’re delusional if you think this is the key to finally getting his approval.”

He studied her, amusement in his face. “I hope the next five are as fun as you.”

“You’ll never get within a thousand feet of those women. I sent my trusty floppy disk to the police station, along with all the information I had about Feena and Sara.” Rainy had no idea if the police would be able to pull anything off the disk after it had been buried in the desert for twenty years, but at least she’d also had the hard-copy Polaroids of herself and Feena. She’d left it at the buffet with a note for the police, right where Ginger had left her the room key: Police Chowder. And under the word police, just to make sure: SOS Give to Police. Someone would notice. Hundreds of people must go through that buffet every day.

“Ha! What information? You don’t know anything. You’re smart, but not that smart, Summer.” He was sweating profusely, the hamster-and-bologna smell of him close in her nostrils.

“How did you get a copy of that disk?”

His neck jerked back like he was surprised at her question. “A disk? He showed me. He used to sit me on his knee and show me the photos of all those women on his computer. It was easy to remember them.”

Rainy turned her head, closed her eyes; she was going to be sick. She couldn’t look at him, but then she thought better of it and snapped her eyes open aggressively.

“I don’t know what he did to you, but I know he did terrible things that no child deserves. He abused you in every way. This choice you’re making, to do this sick shit, is on you.”

“Boop.” He touched the tip of her nose with his finger and quickly stood up when she tried to bite him. “You care too much.” He took a step back to look at her. “You came for the whore of Babylon—” he said, jerking his head toward a limp Braithe “—because you couldn’t help your friend Sara, is that right?”