Sharp_Objects

“I’m just caught off guard. I mean, first of all, this is a bad idea, you and me.”

“Horrible.” He kissed my earlobe.

“And, I mean, don’t you want to look around this place?”

“Miss Preaker, I searched this place the second week I was here. I just wanted to go for a walk with you.”

Richard also had covered the two other spots I had in mind, as it turned out. An abandoned hunting shed on the south part of the woods had yielded a yellow plaid hair ribbon that neither girl’s parents could identify. The bluffs to the east of Wind Gap, where you could sit and watch the distant Mississippi River below, offered a child’s sneaker print that matched shoes neither girl owned. Some dried blood was found dribbled over grass blades; but the type was the wrong match for both. Once again I was turning up useless. Then again, Richard didn’t seem to care. We drove up to the bluffs anyway, grabbed a six-pack of beer and sat in the sun, watching the Mississippi River glimmer gray like a lazy snake.

This had been one of Marian’s favorite places to go when she could leave her bed. For an instant, I could feel the weight of her as a child on my back, her hot giggles in my ears, skinny arms wrapped tight around my shoulders.

“Where would you take a little girl to strangle her?” Richard asked.

“My car or my home,” I said, jolting back.

“And to pull out the teeth?”

“Somewhere that I could scrub down well. A basement. A bathtub. The girls were dead first, right?”

“Is that one of your questions?”

“Sure.”

“They were both dead.”

“Dead long enough there was no blood when the teeth came out?”

A barge floating down the river began turning sideways in the current; men appeared on board with longpoles to twist it back in the right direction.

“With Natalie there was blood. The teeth were removed immediately after the strangling.”

I had the image of Natalie Keene, brown eyes frozen open, slumped down in a bathtub as someone pried her teeth from her mouth. Blood on Natalie’s chin. A hand on pliers. A woman’s hand.

“Do you believe James Capisi?”

“I truly don’t know, Camille, and I’m not blowing smoke at you. The kid is scared out of his wits. His mom keeps calling us to put someone on guard. He’s sure this woman is going to come get him. I sweated him a little bit, called him a liar, tried to see if he’d change his story. Nothing.” He turned to face me. “I’ll tell you this: James Capisi believes his story. But I can’t see how it can be true. It doesn’t fit any kind of profile I’ve ever heard of. It doesn’t feel right to me. Cop’s intuition. I mean, you talked to him, what did you think?”

“I agree with you. I wonder if he isn’t just freaked out about his mom’s cancer and projecting that fear somehow. I don’t know. And what about John Keene?”

“Profilewise: right age, in the family of one of the victims, seems maybe too broken up over the whole thing.”

“His sister was murdered.”

“Right. But…I’m a guy and I can tell you teenage boys will sooner kill themselves than cry in public. And he’s been weeping it up all over town.” Richard blew a hollow toot with his beer bottle, a mating call to a passing tugboat.

The moon was out, the cicadas in full jungle pulse, when Richard dropped me at home. Their creaking matched the throbbing between my legs where I’d let him touch me. Zipper down, his hand guided by mine to my clitoris and held there lest he explore and bump into the raised outlines of my scars. We got each other off like a couple of schoolkids (dumpling thumping hard and pink on my left foot as I came) and I was sticky and smelling of sex as I opened the door to find my mother sitting on the bottom stair with a pitcher of amaretto sours.

She was wearing a pink nightgown with girlish puffed sleeves and a satin ribbon around the neckline. Her hands were unnecessarly repacked in that snowy gauze, which she’d managed to keep pristine despite being deeply in her cups. She swayed slightly as I came through the door, like a ghost debating whether to vanish. She stayed.

“Camille. Come sit.” She beckoned her cloudy hands toward me. “No! Get a glass first from the back kitchen. You can have a drink with Mother. With your mother.”

This should be miserable, I murmured as I grabbed a tumbler. But underneath that, a thought: time alone with her! A leftover rattle from childhood. Get that fixed.

My mother poured recklessly but perfect, capping off my glass just before it overflowed. Still, a trick to get it to my mouth without spilling. She smirked a little as she watched me. Leaned back against the newel post, tucked her feet under her, sipped.

“I think I finally realized why I don’t love you,” she said.

I knew she didn’t, but I’d never heard her admit as much. I tried to tell myself I was intrigued, like a scientist on the edge of a breakthrough, but my throat closed up and I had to make myself breathe.

“You remind me of my mother. Joya. Cold and distant and so, so smug. My mother never loved me, either. And if you girls won’t love me, I won’t love you.”

A wave of fury rattled through me. “I never said I didn’t love you, that’s just ridiculous. Just fucking ridiculous. You were the one who never liked me, even as a kid. I never felt anything but coldness from you, so don’t you dare turn this on me.” I began rubbing my palm hard on the edge of the stair. My mother gave a half smile at the action and I stopped.

“You were always so willful, never sweet. I remember when you were six or seven. I wanted to put your hair