She was murdered after her aunt’s funeral. She stayed in the church while everyone else headed to the reception; she told her father she needed a little time alone to say goodbye. When he got worried and came back to check on her, he found her dead on the floor, parallel to her aunt’s coffin, her body dotted with little nosegays of petunias.
It makes a hell of a picture. I’ve seen it online, along with one that was never meant to be included in the case file much less leaked to the world at large: her father, finally allowed near her, caught as he was falling to his knees, one hand braced against his sister’s casket, the other hovering over the petunias in his daughter’s hair.
There’s a picture of Aimée’s mother, weeping as she tears all the amaranth out of the garden on the roof of their porch. They’re powerful, emotional photographs, the kind of expressive, one-in-a-million shots any photographer is lucky to get, like the one of me reaching back for my sister as the paramedic carried me away.
Those pictures get plastered everywhere because we’re a culture fascinated with crime, because we think the families’ private pain is for public consumption.
Kiersten’s was the first case the FBI worked. One of the officers was friends with Mandy Perkins’s brother and mentioned the similarities to his captain, according to the articles I read. Mandy Perkins was victim number five—five years and five murders before Kiersten—the one who liked to make fairy villages in gardens. Mercedes was still in her last year of college, not even to the academy yet when Kiersten was murdered, but there’s a picture of Eddison and Vic standing outside the church, talking to a uniformed policewoman. Vic looks calm, competent, completely in control of everyone around him.
Eddison looks pissed.
When we get home, there’s a wreath of clover over the doorknob, stiff wire holding the shape, and wires dangling from the overhang where the camera should be.
Mum and I just stand there for a few minutes, looking between the two points.
Clover is for Rachel Ortiz, who was killed at the Renaissance Faire where she was in the cast. Clover was her character name, a silly shepherdess who danced everywhere and carried a basket of pink and white clover blossoms to give to children. On her bodice, she wore a pewter pin that said gaolbait so people would know she was a minor and therefore not to be harassed.
She was raped, the bodice with its pin beside her when she was found in the tiny wooden chapel the Faire used for weddings.
Mum offers to call Finney and Eddison, so I stomp up the stairs to change back into pajamas. Archer will be over in a few minutes, she calls up, because he’s local; Sterling and Finney will drive down from Denver and bring a new camera with them. We saw Archer on his drive-by this morning, before we left for Denver. Patrolling might make Finney and Vic feel better, but it’s sure as shit not doing anything for my peace of mind.
I don’t come downstairs. There’s nothing I can give them. Finney calls up the staircase when he gets here, but I don’t answer, and a moment later I hear Mum’s soft murmur. I know he’s hoping to see me, to check on me so he can tell the Quantico Three he saw for himself that I’m doing okay.
Instead, I go into my closet, find the shoe box on the top that used to hold my photography ribbons back when I entered contests, and pull it down. I switched the ribbons to another box a few moves back, in theory consolidating. To be honest, I’d kept the ribbons in this one so long that it just became the ribbon box, so Mum never thinks to check for an Oreo stash there.
My hands are shaking, making the cellophane rattle. I drop the first Oreo twice before I can actually get a hold of it, dark crumbs flaking off on my thumb and index finger from the strength of my grip.
It tastes like ash.
But I swallow it, and shove the next in my mouth, chewing only as much as I have to before I can swallow that one too.
I should never have researched the other cases. I told myself I needed to, that I owed it to Aimée to hold their names in my heart, but I should never have done it, because I can see them so clearly, because I know what friends and family have said about them, because I feel like I know them.
Because now it’s not just Chavi I see when I close my eyes, butter-yellow chrysanthemums spread around her, the tips of the petal fringe dipping into blood. It’s Aimée, her hands folded to clutch a spray of amaranth to her ballerina-flat chest, her entire body surrounded by the flowers. It’s Darla Jean Carmichael, the first girl, her throat destroyed amidst a fall of white and yellow jonquils. It’s Leigh Clark, raped so viciously the medical examiner had doubts she would have survived even if her throat hadn’t been slashed. It’s Natalie Root, her head pillowed on thick stalks of hyacinth, all shades of pink and purple and white like a patchwork quilt.
The Oreos sit heavy on top of an already larger-than-usual dinner, but I can’t stop, because I can see the numb look on Dad’s face when he met us at the hospital, the shock that never entirely left his eyes. I can still hear Frank’s weeping as he tries to pull me away from Chavi, still feel the blood, cold and tacky on my hands, my cheek, my chest, my clothing soaked through in a way Chavi’s wasn’t, safely set aside, because my sister was naked on the floor of the church.
I can see that picture of Inara, the fierce and protective rage on her face as she tried to shield a child from yet another senseless attack.
My stomach is rolling, protesting, but when I finish the first package, I open a second, forcing the damn cookies past the cramping nausea. This is a pain that makes sense, this is a pain that will stop as soon as I stop, and I can’t stop, because none of this makes sense.
None of this makes any fucking sense at all, and I can’t think how they choose this, my Quantico Three, and Agent Finnegan, too, and Sterling and Archer, I don’t understand how they can face this day in and day out. It doesn’t matter that it happens to strangers.
Kiersten Knowles, Julie McCarthy, Mandy Perkins, they were all strangers to me.
But I can see them, petunias and dahlias and freesia, bloody skin and church floors and it doesn’t—
“Priya! No, sweetheart, no.”
My hands close around the package of Oreos before Mum can yank them away. She grabs the ribbon box, sees two more packages there, and ducks out the door to throw the whole damn thing down the stairs. She kneels down in front of me, hands spread over mine, thumbs covering the ragged opening in the plastic so I can’t pull any out.
“Priya, no.”
She’s crying.
Mum’s crying.
But she’s the strong one, the one who’s always okay even when she isn’t (especially when she isn’t) and how can she be crying? It shocks me enough that I let go, and she throws the package back, heedless of the crumbs that spill over the grey carpet. Her arms wrap around me like a vise.
The back of my throat is burning, and now that I’m not shoving more Oreos in my mouth, I can feel the nausea rising.
“Come on, sweetheart. Up you get.”
She hauls me up with her, always stronger than she looks, and together we stumble across the hall to her bathroom, because I still can’t look at my bathroom without expecting to see all Chavi’s things strewn about. But Mum’s is neat and tidy, everything stacked or in little containers or cups or tucked away behind the side mirror. As she rummages through the cabinet, I drop down onto the soft, thick rug between the toilet and tub. It’s soft, a pale, glittering kind of gold like candlelight.
Sweat beads and drips along my hairline, down the sides of my face, and I can feel the tremors move up from my hands to the rest of my body.
“Two glasses,” says Mum, folding down next to me. She holds out the first cup of salt water. It’s disgusting and hard to drink, and I’m gagging more often than I can swallow, but when I’ve choked it down, she hands me the second one. Vomiting is always painful and nasty, purposefully triggering it even more so, but if I can do it now before it has a chance to build up, it won’t be quite as bad.