House of Skin (38 page)

He could see tears welling in her eyes.

“I’m sorry, Julia. I didn’t really write them. I got the ideas when I was next to the grave—”

“The grave,” Julia’s voice was thin.

“Out there,” Paul gestured, “in the forest. I got the ideas and they just flowed out of me.” He went on, though. She got up and started pacing about the room. “I don’t even remember writing them.”
 

“Where’s the second novel?” she asked. “The one I’m in?”

“It’s gone.”
 

She stopped pacing. “Where—”

“I burned it. I didn’t want it near us.”

She looked at him in disbelief, seemed about to say something. Then, she put her face in her hands.

Paul rose and led her back to bed. Lying beside her he said, “I’m sorry for not telling you about it, but frankly I was ashamed. I wanted to be a writer, but I’m really… I’ve never written a thing. I can’t. I tried when I got here, but I was terrible.”

He lay beside her in silence and wondered whether he’d lost her again. When her body stopped shaking, he cupped her chin. “Julia, I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry for not being honest about—”

“It’s not that,” she said, “it’s something I’ve done, something I’ve got to tell you.”

“Whatever it is, it can’t be as bad as—”

“Paul.”

“—because I’ve been awful to you. I really have, and—”

“
Paul
,” she said, and the flatness of her voice silenced him.

She wiped a tear off her cheek, glanced up at the ceiling. “I’ve done things I shouldn’t have,” she said.

“Did you see someone else while we were apart?” he asked.

Her eyes flared. “Damn it, Paul, it’s got nothing to do with that.”

Chastened, he waited for her to continue.

She said, “I know where Brand is.”

He frowned. “Yeah?”

“I know where Daryl Applegate is too.”

His temple began to throb. “Where are they?”

“Which one?”

“Either of them.” When she didn’t respond, he said, “Applegate.”

“He’s dead.”

“Julia.”

“I’m sorry, Paul.”

He edged away from her.

“What are you telling me?”

“He’s buried in my yard.”
 

He stared at her, his heartbeat devolving into leaden thuds.

“In the garden,” she added.

He sprang off the bed and grabbed a pair of boxer shorts.

“Paul, wait.”

“For what? For you to tell me you chopped him up into little pieces? What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I didn’t mean to. He tried to blackmail me. The rest was out of my control.”

“You killed him.”

“I didn’t want to kill him.”

“Jesus,” he shouted at the wall. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”

“Paul, listen.”

“I don’t want to listen.” He put on his jeans.

“There’s more.”

“You tell me you killed a cop and buried him in your garden and there’s
more
?”

“The lawyer,” she said.

“Don’t tell me.”

“Ted Brand. He came on to me and when I wouldn’t sleep with him he called me names. Later on, he tried to kill me, but that was because I tied him up to keep him from hurting me.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Paul clutched his temples.

“He’s buried in the woods.”

“These woods?”
 

“Yes.”

He stared at her. “You killed him and buried him on my land.”

Her voice was choked. “Paul.”
 

He gritted his teeth. “And you parked his car on my lane to make it look like I did it.”

She looked pleadingly at him. “I didn’t know you then.”

“No you didn’t, but you sure as hell made life fun for me when I got here, didn’t you?” He pulled on his shirt. “Interrogated by the police…”
 

“I’m sorry, Paul,” she stood, started to touch his arm.

He jerked away. “You’re sorry? For what, that I’m a suspect in a murder case because of you?”

“Nobody knows it was a murder.”

“Nobody but me,” he said, tapping his chest.

She lowered her eyes. “Are you going to tell Barlow?”

“Tell him what? That you’re a serial killer?”

“Serial killers are different.”
 

“Yeah? How?”
 

“Serial killers kill people for no reason. I didn’t mean to kill anyone.”

“You murdered two men by accident?”

“Brand wasn’t an accident,” she said. “It was self-defense.”

“And the deputy? What about Appleton?”

“Applegate. Definitely self-defense.”

“So he came to arrest you and you defended yourself by what, poisoning him?”

“I told you. He wanted to barter sex for silence, and I wouldn’t do it.”
 

“You killed him instead.”

“
I didn’t want to kill either of them
,” she shouted. “All I wanted was you.”

He chuckled mirthlessly and turned to go.

She took him by the shoulders, brought her face up to his. “You’re all I have.”

The naked sorrow in her voice stopped him. He said, “How can you expect me to forget this? Hell, how can you expect not to be caught?”
 

“I haven’t been caught, have I?”

“It’s only a matter of time.”

“Why? They don’t even suspect me.”
 

“That’s because they suspect
me
.”

“Not anymore.”

“How can you know that? What about the deputy’s family? What about Brand’s?”

“Did Barlow ask you about them?”

“He asked me about Emily.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him I hadn’t seen her.”

“But you did. You kissed her.”

“I know that,” he said, voice rising. “I lied and I have no idea why.”

“I’m sure she’ll turn up.”

“And if she doesn’t?” he said. “For all I know you killed her too.”

“That isn’t fair, Paul.”

His shoulders slumped. He regarded her in the darkness. “I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that.”
 

She took his hand. “You didn’t deserve the trouble I caused you. It was a mistake.” Her wet cheek touched his. He felt her breasts press against him. “Please don’t leave me, Paul.” She kissed his neck. “You’re all I have,” she said.

“I can’t do this,” he said.

“You love me.”
 

“That’s not the point.”
 

“What else matters?” she asked. She kissed him and he could feel her fear of losing him, her desire for him beneath it.

“Julia,” he said, trying to recall his anger.

“Paul,” she said with such longing that he let his hands touch her, linger over her hot bare skin.

“You love me,” she said.

He kissed her, his tongue finding hers. They lay back.

“Say it,” she said.

He kissed her again, and she climbed on top of him.

“Say it, Paul,” she whispered, her breath hot in his ear.

“Damn it, Julia.”

“Say it.”

“I love you,” he said.

“We belong together,” Julia said.

He made love to her, but he couldn’t shake the image of her in Annabel’s dress. In his mind’s eye, Julia looked much as she had earlier—the body, the skin, the smile—but the eyes were Annabel’s. They were red-rimmed and enraged.

The thought of those infernal blue eyes kept him up long after Julia had fallen asleep.

Sam Barlow sat on his screened-in porch and stared into the field behind his house. In a just world Barbara would be sitting beside him, drinking a wine to go along with his beer. It would be dusk, and their children would be visiting from out of town, maybe bringing the grandchildren with them.

But he sat there alone instead, sucking on a bitter tasting can of warm Budweiser, the gloaming still hours away.

He thought of his sister, Addie, killed in a drunk driving accident when her boys were in high school, of his brother-in-law Raymond, moving to West Virginia and remarrying. At that moment, Sam mused, Raymond was likely torturing his second wife with dead baby jokes and stale beer farts.

He wondered why life turned out the way it did. Why things never worked out for some people, why the bad guys too often won.

He looked at the lock of Julia’s hair he found when he jimmied open Brand’s car and wondered why he’d never sent it to the lab.

He scowled at the unnaturally tall cornstalks and shook his head. Of course he knew why. She was a murderer, and he didn’t want to admit it, and though she’d probably also killed Daryl Applegate—who undoubtedly deserved what he got—Sam didn’t want to admit that either.

And now there was this other girl, Emily Henderson. Her parents and friends were worried sick. Her bosses said she’d taken the week off, so that at least was normal.

Yet she’d never made it to Watermere, if Carver was to be believed.

Sam took a swig of warm beer. Carver wasn’t to be believed.

He’d tried to like the guy, he really had. If he listened to Paul Carver speak, joked around with him, he could forget for a while that he was related to Myles. But the more he looked at him—at the uncanny resemblance—the more he hated him.

And then last night, that show the two put on for him.

Julia walking right up to him naked as the day she was born, the girl he’d known since birth, the girl who should have been his own, the girl who would have been his own if only Barbara had been willing to leave, to get the hell away from that godforsaken family.

But she hadn’t. He told Barbara he didn’t care her daughter was sired by another man. He begged her to live with him in town, but something about Myles Carver held her.

And now look at her daughter.

Sam glared at the cornfield, his stomach souring.

Julia, in the space of a couple months, going from a sweet, smart girl to the kind that paraded around wearing nothing but a smile, fondling Carver right in front of Sam, daring him to say something disapproving. Christ, it really was like she was his own kid, taunting him like that.

But she wasn’t.

She was a killer.

Carver was innocent of the murders, or he seemed to be. And as much as Sam cared for Julia, he knew the time had come to end it.

He would go out there tonight, confront the two of them. If it turned out Carver had something to do with the killings, with Emily Henderson’s disappearance, Sam would enjoy locking the bastard up. That at least would heal some of the wounds festering inside him.

He wouldn’t enjoy dragging a confession out of Julia. He wouldn’t enjoy locking her up. Fact was, it would tear him apart, which was probably why he’d been avoiding it this long.

But it had to be done. Her boss said she’d never missed work until recently. Then, the weeks after Brand and Applegate go missing she’s absent nearly every day. He asks Julia about Brand and she says all the right things, but he knows in the deepest part of him she’s lying, the same way Paul Carver was lying when asked about the Henderson girl.

He thought of the way Applegate had looked at Julia. Not just undressing her with his eyes but ripping off her clothes and raping her with them as well.

Applegate goes out to accuse her. Applegate, the moron who refused to listen to anyone. Applegate, the porn addict who couldn’t get laid in a whorehouse. Applegate, with blackmail material on the most beautiful woman in town.

Applegate, the murder victim.

It all fit. The circumstantial evidence, the timeline, and most of all the personalities involved.

Brand the lecher.

Applegate the potential sex offender.

Julia Merrow, the object they both desired, the woman with too much of her mother’s pride to be taken advantage of.

And Emily Henderson, the rival.

Whether Julia acted alone on that one or had help from Carver, he could see her taking drastic measures to eliminate her competition. Girl like that, her mom taken from her at such a young age, raised in a dreary house by her grandma, never finding a man worthy of her.

Until she fell for Carver.

That was what cinched it. Julia’s similarity to her mother. A wonderful, tenderhearted girl with one besetting sin: a dark stream of lust pulsing through her that attracted the worst kind of man.

Even if Sam had nothing else to go on, he had this.

With both hands, Barlow held the strand of long black hair up to the western sun.

The hair he found in Ted Brand’s BMW was Barbara Merrow’s as much as the green eyes in Julia’s face. He’d recognize that hair anywhere. Thick. Black and shiny like a serpent.