Sharp Objects(24)

I could feel my thoughts blowing back on themselves, dirtied with old prejudices and too much insider knowledge. I suddenly felt a desperate need to talk to Richard Willis, a person not from Wind Gap, who saw what was happening as a job, a project to assemble and complete, the last nail in place, tidy and contained. I needed to think like that.

I took a cool bath with the lights off. Then I sat on the edge of the tub and rubbed my mother’s lotion all over my skin, once, quickly. Its bumps and ridges made me cringe.

On went a pair of light cotton pants and a long-sleeved crew neck. I brushed my hair and looked at myself in the mirror. Despite what I’d done to the rest of my body, my face was still beautiful. Not in the way that a person could pick out a single outstanding feature, but in the way that it was all in perfect balance. It made a stunning sort of sense. Big blue eyes, high cheekbones framing a small triangle of a nose. Full lips that turned slightly downward at the corners. I was lovely to look at, as long as I was fully clothed. Had things turned out differently, I might have amused myself with a series of heart-wretched lovers. I might have dallied with brilliant men. I might have married.

Outside, our section of Missouri sky was, as ever, electric blue. It made my eyes water to even think of it.





I found Richard at the Broussards’ diner, eating waffles without syrup, a stack of folders nearly as high as his shoulder on the table. I plopped down across from him and felt strangely happy—conspiratorial and comfortable.

He looked up and smiled. “Ms. Preaker. Have some toast. Every time I come here I tell them no toast. Doesn’t seem to work. Like they’re trying to meet a quota.”

I took a slice, spread a flower of butter over it. The bread was cold and hard, and my bite sprayed flecks onto the table. I brushed them under the plate and got to the point.

“Look, Richard. Talk to me. On record or off. I can’t make anything out of this. I can’t get objective enough.”

He patted the stack of files next to him, waved his yellow legal pad at me. “I’ve got all the objectivity you want—from 1927 on at least. No one knows what happened to any records before 1927. Probably some receptionist tossed them out, my guess, keep the poh-lice station uncluttered.”

“What kind of records?”

“I’m compiling a criminal profile of Wind Gap, a history of the town’s violence,” he said, flapping a folder at me. “Did you know that in 1975, two teenage girls were found dead at the edge of Falls Creek, very near where Ann Nash turned up, wrists cut? Police ruled it was self-inflicted. Girls were ‘overly close, unhealthily intimate for their age. A homosexual attachment is suspected.’ But they never found the knife. Weird.”

“One of them was named Murray.”

“Ah, you do know.”

“She’d just had a baby.”

“Yes, a little girl.”

“That would be Faye Murray. She went to my high school. They called her Fag Murray. The boys would take her out after school into the woods and take turns having sex with her. Her mother kills herself, and sixteen years later, Faye has to f*ck every boy in school.”

“I don’t follow.”

“To prove she isn’t a lesbian. Like mother, like daughter, right? If she didn’t f*ck those boys, no one would have had anything to do with her. But she did. So she proved she wasn’t a lesbian, but that she was a slut. So no one had anything to do with her. That’s Wind Gap. We all know each other’s secrets. And we all use them.”

“Lovely place.”

“Yes. Give me a comment.”

“I just did.”

It made me laugh, and I was surprised. I could picture turning in my copy to Curry: Police have no leads, but believe that Wind Gap is a “lovely place.”

“Look, Camille, I’ll make a deal. I’ll give you a comment you can use on the record, and you help me fill in these back stories. I need someone who’ll tell me what this town is really like, and Vickery won’t. He’s very…protective.”

“Give me a comment on record. But work with me off record. I won’t use anything you give me unless you say it’s okay. You can use anything I give you.” It wasn’t the straightest of deals, but it would have to do.

“What should my comment be?” Richard smiled.

“Do you really believe these killings were committed by an outsider?”

“For print?”

“Yeah.”

“We have not ruled anyone out.” He took a last bite of waffle and sat thinking, his eyes to the ceiling. “We are looking very closely at potential suspects within the community, but are also carefully considering the possibility that these killings may be the work of an outsider.”

“So you have no clue.”

He grinned, shrugged his shoulders. “I gave you my comment.”

“Okay, off record, you have no clue?”

He clicked the cap of the sticky syrup bottle up and down a few times, placed his silverware crossways on his plate.

“Off record, Camille, do you really think this seems like an outsider crime? You’re a police reporter.”

“I don’t.” Saying it out loud agitated me. I tried to keep my eyes off the prongs of the fork in front of me.

“Smart girl.”

“Vickery said you thought it was a hitchhiker or something like that.”