Peggy handed her mother the small Kodak camera. She posed with her hand on her hip and her lips slightly parted. It was her attempt at a come-hither look. She wasn’t sure if she’d be able to pull it off. There wasn’t going to be any coaxing from her mother to make sure the shot was just right.
“Take another, Mother, please. I’m at the end of the roll.”
Peggy had known her mother would only snap one or two, so she’d taken a bunch of filler photographs before coming over.
“Waste of film,” she said.
“Only three left. I could take your picture.”
“Like hell you will. Unlike you, I know I’m past my prime. I don’t need any reminders of what I used to look like. Too bad you didn’t get my good looks. And too bad you got your dad’s bad hair. Whole family on his side has bad hair.”
The camera went off two more times and Peggy’s mother pushed it back at her.
“Now get out of here and get me my candy, you stupid little bitch.”
“Yes, Mother,” she said. “Fuck you, Mother.”
Donna narrowed her brow. “What did you just say?”
“I said, ‘thank you, Mother,’ ” Peggy said.
Donna paused a moment, scouring her daughter’s face for the trace of a lie.
“That’s what I thought you said,” she said.
Peggy spun around and went for the door, promising to come back right away with the chocolates.
A half hour later, she stood at the one-hour photo place and waited for the images to roll off the conveyor belt.
A spectacled worker in a white lab coat with a name tag that said ANSON met her back at the counter.
“Only three shots,” he said. “The rest of the roll must have been damaged. Other shots look blurry like they were taken of a carpeted floor or something.”
He was very observant.
“I’m sure they are fine.”
“No really. I can give you a free roll.”
“No, I’ll pay for those now.”
“Honestly, no problem, ma’am.”
“Give me those photos,” she said, her voice carrying the distinct tenor of a person impatient and annoyed.
Peggy didn’t even wait until she got in to the car. She’d gone to a lot of trouble-not to mention the purchase of some chocolates for the woman she hated more than anyone in the entire world. It was ironic that her mother had taken the photos. Her mother would call her every name in the book if she’d known how she’d fallen for Ted Bundy. She would never, ever understand.
Peggy took a deep breath as she stood in the parking lot and opened the envelope. The first one had her sexy look approximating something closer to indigestion. She blamed her mother for that. She was always putting her down. The second photo depicted her with her eyes half closed.
Her mother’s fault, too!
Finally, photo number three. Her last chance. Peggy took in a deep breath. “Oh God,” she said loud enough for a box boy nearby to hear her. He probably thought she was looking at some baby pictures. She didn’t know why people always acted so animated about such photographs.
She smiled and put the envelope in her purse.
Ted will adore this. I am the girl of his dreams and I alone can save him.
When Peggy got home, she ignored her cat and hurried to the kitchen table. The post office was open for another hour. He’d have the photo before the weekend-before their weekly phone call. Being in love with Ted was a dream come true.
That stupid professor would never have left his wife.
CHAPTER 44
Peggy Howell put on a coat and stomped out the door. She was irritated by a lot of things and she needed to get out of the house. She cracked her window and smoked her last cigarette as she moved into downtown Tacoma traffic heading east toward River Road and the smoke shop where she bought her weekly carton. She turned up the music on the radio and listened to another Captain and Tennille song, “The Way You Touch Me.” Like “Love Will Keep Us Together,” it always made her think of Ted.
Peggy Howell’s best friend, the one who understood her above all others, the one who knew that she was worth something, was Ted. He was always the man of her dreams-smart, sexy, charismatic. He could have chosen any other girl in the world.
She looked over at the turnoff where the dead girls had been found. The yellow tape that announced a criminal investigation had been removed. She slowed her car and pulled over. The field of grass and blackberries had been trampled by the investigators as they sought to assemble the flotsam and jetsam of a murderer’s work. She unrolled the window and looked around, noticing the tire tracks, the footprints, even a LUNA bar wrapper that someone had left behind.
Chocolate chip, she mused. Ted’s favorite cookies were chocolate chip, not shortbread or oatmeal.
Next, she remembered a conversation they’d shared a few weeks before his execution.
“I can’t believe they are going to do this to you,” she said.
“I’m not done yet.”
“I know. I have faith.”
“Babe, we all need faith. Faith and peace.”
“I wish I could see you.”
“They won’t even let Carole,” he said.
“Do you have to bring her up?”
“She’s my wife,” he said. “But she’s nothing compared to you.”
“I know. But it still hurts whenever I hear her name. I would have done the same thing if you called me as a witness. I would be Mrs. Theodore Robert Bundy. Not her. She’s not even pretty, Ted.”
“She’s pretty enough. Not all of them were… or… are beautiful.”
There was a pause in the line and Peggy’s heart raced.
“You still there?”
“I’m here. Just another snap, crackle, and pop in the electrical wires here.”
It was a joke, but Peggy didn’t laugh. Ted’s nearly literal gallows humor was lost on her. She couldn’t imagine a world without him. He understood her so much better than anyone ever could. His letters were pure poetry. Better than Rod McKuen, she once said in a compliment that Ted ate up.
“Rod’s good, thank you.”
“You’re better.”
“No, no, you are the best. You always will be.”
Another crackle in the line.
“Ted?”
“Yeah, baby,” he said. “I’m here.”
“You are the best,” she repeated.
“There will always be others to follow in my footsteps, Peg. I’d like to brag and say that I’m the best, but I’m told over and over by the matchbook university shrinks that they know better. That I’m an aberration, a deviant.”
“Deviant means different than the others,” she said. “And different can be a very beautiful thing. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” he said. “Have to go now. Will be looking at your picture and thinking of you tonight.”
Peggy sat in the car looking at the slow-moving Puyallup River wondering if there was anything more she
