Beverly spent the rest of the morning holed up inside her office. The hustle and bustle of the school went by outside, and she didn’t notice, never thought about who was in charge while Conway was absent; didn’t care who would be in control when she was gone for good.
She browsed websites for the latest developments regarding the Glick murders and Adam Church. The natives were somewhat restless and it made her smile, although she didn’t know what to make of Evie Church’s dramatic return to town. She read the reports of the incident outside the hotel, watched the video several times, and perused all the social media chatter about the event and the Church family, and was still in a quandary as to how the sister’s reappearance could benefit her.
Beverly scanned through the photos posted on the web of Evie. There were a few blurry ones from the morning before everything went to shit. Apart from that, the latest one was from seven years ago, a snapshot from before the girl had volunteered to take up the help from those friendly people at Shady Acres. And now there was lots of talk as to why she did that, with reams of analysis on the state of her mental health from those who didn’t know her, who’d never met her, and who were no experts in the field. It hadn’t taken long before many put two and two together and came up with five.
Beverly logged the current popular themes: Evie went into residential care because her brother was abusing her, or she knew he was harming others, or they were both psychopaths sharing the same genetic disorder. Some internet posters even decided it was likely to be a combination of all three theories.
She was unsure of what to think. She was the same age as Evie, had gone to the same school, was in the same year group, and they were near neighbours, but their paths rarely crossed once they went to high school. They were both outcasts, but for entirely different reasons. Mother and Father Church’s fundamentalist religious beliefs meant they stuck to their own little community, and this followed for the kids.
And then there were the reasons why Beverly was a pariah at school. Things she didn’t want to think about now. She continued to stare at the old photos of Evie and pondered how she fitted into Beverly’s evolving plans for Conway and the rest of the town. Maybe Conway would be the last of it before she’d leave for fresh pastures.
She opened a different web browser and typed in a new search option: “Murder Capitals of the US.” If someone asked later, she’d say it was research on where not to move for her next job. It was, in fact, for the opposite reason she wanted the information. The nervous joy she experienced from her plans for Conway, plus the satisfaction she got from framing Church for the Glick girls, not to mention the pleasure she still had from the touch of her fingers squeezing the life from them, had led to the inescapable truth she had to deliver death regularly to feel alive. If she was going to kill and keep on killing, she needed to do it somewhere she could blend in; Eureka Falls was far too small for her future projects.
Beverly clicked on the Wikipedia link for a list of cities by murder rate and scrolled down it. The information was five years out of date, but it would do. The first American city mentioned was St Louis, with more than two hundred recorded murders a year. It was nothing compared to Cape Town’s impressive two and a half thousand, but she had no intention of moving to South Africa. Baltimore, New Orleans, and Detroit made up the four US cities on the list of fifty across the world.
She closed the link and clicked on another for more recent statistics, the Top Thirty Murder Capitals of America Report. It was a diverse data sample with different parameters and made for exciting reading. She’d always assumed Chicago was the murder capital of the US, having frequently heard that from the media and various politicians, but, according to the data on the screen, Chicago’s murder rate was nowhere near the nation’s worst. On a per-capita basis, murders per one hundred thousand residents, the city regularly experienced fewer killings than places whose murder rates got far less national attention, like Kansas City, Missouri, or Cleveland.
Her brain sucked in the information as she scanned half a dozen different reports, considered the analysis from academics, researchers, and law enforcement organisations, all of which came to the same conclusion: the murder rate in the US was declining.
Well, we can’t have that.
She closed all the browsers and shut the computer. The digital clock on the wall crawled over to midday, and her guts growled in anticipation. Because of her excitement this morning, she hadn’t eaten any breakfast or brought anything with her for lunch. The thought of getting something from the canteen made her stomach shrivel.
Beverly got up from the desk and looked around the office. There was no point in staying there all day. She had to leave to eat and was impatient to use the Trojan to access Conway’s computer, and she couldn’t do that in school.
She locked the office and went to the reception. Kids were already hurrying across the building to get to the terrible food provided for them. Or maybe they’d become so desensitised to what was good to eat they truly believed cardboard pizza, soggy fries, and meat which most other countries wouldn’t touch with a bargepole because of health and safety issues were the height of gourmet cooking.
Beverly laughed as she approached the desk. Most of these kids wouldn’t be able to spell the word gourmet, never mind understand what it meant.
‘Are you popping out for lunch, Ms Shaw?’
Jo Collier, barely out of school herself, was on reception, and Beverly found her formality somewhat irritating. She put a hand over her mouth and rolled her eyes.
‘I’m not feeling too good, Jo. I’m going home for the rest of the day. I expect I’ll be okay for tomorrow.’
She wouldn’t want to miss how the school would react once the news of Conway’s death hit. She already imagined what her sorrowful face would look like. An adult she didn’t recognise pushed through the front door. She assumed it was a parent or guardian as they burst into tears. Jo gave Beverly a pained look.
‘Don’t worry, Ms Shaw; I’ll deal with Mrs Hartman. You take care of yourself, and I’ll see you tomorrow.’
Beverly nodded and slipped out of the building. In less than a minute, she was heading home. She stopped at a drive-through on the way and ordered the largest burger and fries possible. She was desperate to get into Conway’s computer but knew it would be impossible to concentrate if she didn’t satisfy the other urge rushing through her.
She ate across the road from her parents’ coffee shop. Beverly wasn’t sure how she felt about them. For most people, she either had indifference, which was the majority, or pure hatred, which was a significant minority. But for Mother and Father, it was somewhere in between, and she didn’t know how to define it. She didn’t love them. She’d never loved anybody, but she also thought of them with the occasional smile on her face, and she was never sure why.
It’s probably because I have them to thank for this life.
It had taken her a long time to be grateful for her existence, and that only happened when she understood how to be happy. She was aware, from experience, that many people struggled with contentment in life and how lucky she’d been to have her epiphany. If not, she’d probably have fallen into the traps most got stuck in with the search for happiness, the delusion that excess is the panacea for what ails them. It didn’t matter what the excess was: booze, sugar, sex, drugs, exercise, power, shopping, rock and roll, whatever; none of it was the answer.
Control of desire, that was the answer for her. Once she realised her passion was for revenge, it became a simple process of numbers. She could either ignore it, be consumed by it, or control it. Ignoring the desire was impossible; only a few were capable of that, maybe monks or hermits. Most were obsessed by their passions or other people’s, and it was an easy trap to fall into. It would bring pleasure, but, she understood, ultimately, there would be nothing inside you but an emptiness which could never be filled. It would be a vacuum that would eat at you until the day you died. It would be a toss-up as to which would go first, the mind or the body.
So Beverly dedicated every waking hour to identifying her desire and controlling it. It wasn’t long before she understood that meant deleting it from her body, like letting gas out of an overfilled balloon. If she didn’t, like the rapidly expanding balloon, she knew she’d explode.
Inflicting pain was the way to do it. She finished the burger, her stomach bloated with processed cheese and bits of dead cow, and peered out of the car at the shadows of her parents struggling to make ends meet behind the window over the road. She often wondered if they believed they were living the American Dream. She was convinced she was.
A newspaper blew across the street, its headline shouting out GLICK GIRLS’ KILLER ARRESTED. She smiled at its inaccuracies. The sisters weren’t her first kills, but they were the ones who’d finally quenched her desire. Quenched, but not eradicated, not that she’d expected them to, which is why Conway had to go tonight.
Beverly turned on the engine and drove away, the ghostly silhouettes of her parents fading in the background.