Andrea couldn’t understand it, either. “You said he acted creepy in school. Where does the weight thing come in?”
“He was always into health food and ultra-marathon running and all that stuff that everyone thought was crazy in the eighties. I remember him being particularly cruel to the overweight girl in class, but of course everyone was cruel to her. Groups of kids can be sadistic by nature. But he singled her out. He would leave diet plans on her desk. He would make noises with his mouth when she walked.” Melody shook her head in disgust. “In any case, it’s not hard to draw a direct line from past Dean to the current Dean’s anorexia fetish. And of course sex is sex. It makes sense to blend his two passions.”
“What about Star?” Andrea asked. “What’s she getting out of this?”
“I asked her once, back when she would still speak to me, and she gave me some bullshit drivel about love,” Melody said. “The thing that I learned from the eating disorder specialist is that with anorexia, starvation can become addictive, and it can act like a hallucinogenic on the system. At first, you go into dreamlike trances where you’re highly suggestible. Then eventually, your brain will shut down to conserve energy. You lose—”
Melody’s hand went to her mouth. Tears wept from her eyes again. She was clearly thinking about her own daughter.
“Take your time,” Andrea said.
Several seconds passed before Melody slowly dropped away her hand. “You lose consciousness. That’s what happens when you deprive your body of basic nutrition. You pass out. You’re completely senseless.”
Andrea repeated Ricky’s words. “‘The shit that’s happening at the farm is the same shit that happened to Emily Vaughn forty years ago.’”
“Yes, you could say that Emily was senseless when she was raped,” Melody said. “You know, when I first realized what was happening to Star, all I could think was, what kind of twisted fucker wants to have sex with a woman who’s for all practical purposes in a coma?”
Clayton Morrow. Jack Stilton. Bernard Fontaine. Eric Blakely. Dean Wexler.
“It’s almost a form of necrophilia, isn’t it? The woman has no idea what the man is doing. She’s completely helpless the entire time. She can’t tell him to stop or even tell him to keep going if it feels good. She’s an inanimate series of holes. She might as well be a mannequin. What kind of sadist gets off on that?”
Andrea looked down at her left hand. The bruise had started to show. There was a dark band around her wrist that had been left by Dean Wexler’s thumb and fingers.
“Oliver!”
They both jumped when Bible slammed open the front door.
He called, “I need you!”
The alarm in his voice set off a chain reaction inside of Andrea’s body.
At the academy, they had spent hours talking about adrenaline, how it could save you or kill you. The hormone, also called epinephrine, flooded into your bloodstream, triggering your fight-or-flight response. Your senses became finely honed. Your nervous system lit up. At the microscopic level, air passages dilated and blood vessels contracted, redirecting energy toward the lungs and major muscle groups.
Andrea was unaware of any of this happening as she bolted toward the door. She was outside before she realized that she was even moving. Her foot hit the top of the stairs. She leapt into the air and landed hard on the walkway. Bible was already in his SUV. The window was down.
“Look!” He pointed to a plume of black smoke curling in the distance. “That’s the judge’s house. Call it in!”
Bible was so panicked that he didn’t even wait for Andrea to get into the car. He was peeling away as she dialed 911. Dusk had turned the sky iridescent. She could barely see Bible taking a sharp left turn at the end of the street. Andrea didn’t follow him. He’d told her earlier that the house was three minutes away as the crow flies. The smoke acted like a giant arrow pointing her in the right direction.
She dialed 911 as she darted into the yard across from Melody’s cottage. Andrea was jumping over a chain-link fence when the emergency operator finally picked up.
“There’s a fire at—”
“Judge Vaughn’s,” the woman said. “We’ve got units responding.”
Andrea jammed her phone back into her pocket. She climbed over a wooden fence. She landed on a trashcan, then tumbled to the ground. She could smell the smoke now, thick and pungent. The dark color told her that man-made materials were burning. Wood and drywall and furniture. She pushed her legs to keep pumping. Her lungs were screaming. The wind shifted, sending smoke into her face. Her eyes were stinging so badly that she could barely keep them open.
She broke through a line of trees and found herself across the street from the judge’s estate. Flames licked up from the back of the house. Andrea had walked the property for hours the night before. She mentally called up the interior of the house. Two wings, north and south. The main section with the library, office, formal living room and dining room. The kitchen in the back by the garage. She had never gone upstairs, but she knew that the judge and her husband slept on the second floor of the north wing. She had seen the lights on in their bedroom as she walked the rounds. Their balcony overlooked Judith’s studio.
“Fuck!” she groaned, pushing herself back into a full run.
The studio.
Turpentine. Spray adhesive. Paints. Mordant. Acids. Canvas and wood and so many things that could either catch on fire or cause an explosion that could take out the rest of the house.
Bible’s SUV caught up to her on the driveway. She banged her hand on the side panel as she ran alongside it.
“The studio!” she screamed.
“Go!” he yelled, speeding up to pass her.
She watched Bible’s SUV slide to a stop in front of the garage. He jumped out of the car. A lumbering shape came out of the garage. Harri and Krump. They carried Franklin Vaughn between them. The judge trailed behind, clutching a large briefcase to her chest. The thing was so heavy that the old woman nearly stumbled before Bible grabbed her by the waist and carried her away from the flames.
Andrea was skirting around the side of the house when she caught sight of Guinevere running back into the garage. She hesitated, but then Bible chased after the girl. Andrea picked up her pace. None of it would matter if the studio caught fire. The house would be leveled before anyone could reach a safe distance.
Her foot slipped as she turned the corner. The roaring blaze illuminated the backyard. The English garden. The pool. The studio. Andrea coughed, strangled by the thick, acrid fumes. The fire had engulfed the judge’s bedroom. Flames licked out of the windows, chewed away at the wood accents, reached like desperately searching hands toward the studio.
Andrea tripped.
She fell flat on her face. Her nose crunched against the stone path. Stars filled her vision. She squinted them away as she looked behind her, trying to see what she’d tripped on. Turpentine. Cans of paint. Varnishes. Judith had beaten her to the studio. She was running back and forth, tossing the flammable liquids into the swimming pool.
Andrea pushed herself up.
She ran into the studio and started grabbing anything that looked dangerous—spray cans, pots of liquid adhesive. She passed Judith on the way to the pool. Their eyes met for a second. They both knew how deadly the chemicals could be. The first class you took in art school started with all the ways you could poison or burn yourself alive.