“Maybe what?”

“This will probably sound literal to you. After spouting all this Lewis Carroll stuff, she’d scrunch up her eyebrows and cackle and raise a finger in the air and start waving it around. Like she was testing the wind. If we still weren’t paying attention— which we usually weren’t— she’d let out this honking noise, could’ve been a man’s it was so deep. Then she’d make goofy eyes and shake her chest like a stripper gone berserk. She was big up there, it was ridiculous.”

Running her hands over her own narrow torso.

“Finally, if we still weren’t toeing the line, then she’d lower her hand like this, and run it across her throat and place both hands on her hips and scream, ‘Off with your heads!’ It was silly but creepy, I hated when she did it. Nora and Billy didn’t seem to care.”

“And Brad?”

“That’s the thing,” she said. “Brad used to smile. One of those private smiles. Like it was a private joke between him and Amelia. You know about his hobby, right? He was really into it back then. Had all kinds of knives, used to carry knives around. I never saw him hurt anyone and he was never threatening. At least not to me. So it probably means nothing— Amelia with her hand over her throat.”

I said nothing.

Elise Van Syoc said, “Right?”

CHAPTER 48

CHAPTER 48

I drove over the hill thinking about what family had meant to the Dowd kids.

Boundaries were to be blurred, people were to be used, performance was all.

Brad had been abandoned, taken in reluctantly, exploited, expelled. Brought back to be pressed into service by a woman who resented him and lusted for him.

Years later, after her death, he’d wormed his way back into the family and attained the power role. Knowing he’d never belonged, never would.

By that time, he’d murdered Juliet Dutchey. Maybe other women yet to be discovered.

Reserving his boyhood hobby for three victims.

Back when Milo and I had been theorizing, he’d wondered out loud about Cathy and Andy Gaidelas being parental symbols.

You guys still believe in the Oedipal thing?

More than I did a few weeks ago.

Why Meserve?

The only time I’d seen Brad express overt anger was when he talked about Meserve.

Young, slick manipulator.

Brad seeing himself two decades younger?

Despite the smooth manner, the clothes, the cars— the image— did it all boil down to self-hatred?

A body hanging in a jail cell said maybe.

Used and discarded...it didn’t explain the extent of the horror. It never does. I wondered why I kept trying.

I reached Mulholland, coasted down past dream houses and other encumbrances, unable to let go.

Brad had been the ultimate actor. Protecting Billy and Nora, bedding her, stealing from both of them.