CHAPTER ELEVEN
a catholic's worst dream
ᴏᴄᴛ. 18ᴛʜ, 9ᴀᴍ
"WHAT DID YOU say to her yesterday?"
As instructed, Spencer and Derek were sent to the Blanchard home the day after Bernadette's meltdown. They had visited the scene once before, just after the Blanchard sisters were extracted from their suicides, and now that the corpses were gone and all that was left was bloodstains and the effluvium of chemicals, Morgan pulled up into the empty driveway of 76 Rosefield.
"I didn't say anything," Spencer lied.
"Reid—"
"I didn't say anything."
Silence clogged the car. Syrupy-thick and terribly-sour. The sun had swapped out scorch for steely silence, and Spencer felt himself grow small under the skies. He stared at the empty house where the willow tree was thinner than he recalled from the other night, and things started to feel sad for no good reason. In another life, he fondly imagined pulling up to the Blanchard's house in another way. Just before the sisters cut ties with their unfulfilled lives, just before he was too late.
October felt like a cruel month. Growing somber, growing darker. It was on the cusp of winter when things would start to get inexplicably choked with grief. Spencer stared out the car as Morgan focused on the steering wheel. It hadn't been silent for long but Spencer felt the seconds pass by like years.
The house, the Blanchard's home, was a pretty house. A kind looking house. He wondered who had built the house and he wondered how many generations had passed through it, unknowing of the carnage that it was fated to witness. Five deaths in one night. Nobody would be able to laugh from the bottom of their hearts inside those death-scarred walls every again. It was tainted like carbon monoxide polluting a child's body.
The sudden thought of that was ugly and extreme and it sat in his stomach like a hot rock. How alone had Primrose Blanchard been as she stared at the oven? Her hands, so blind to what the world still had left for her, gripping the handle and pulling the gates of Death open. He thought about how she had kneeled first, as if to Christ, before pressing her head beneath the metal racks and breathing in the poison that would burn her from the inside out. She must have felt alone, Spencer thought, because after all, nobody was there to stop her in time.
He felt like an unhealed bruise. Dark like a spoiled fruit, rotten-smelling and unmoving. Had that been how Agatha felt as her neck crushed around the horrible grip of rope? Had she felt useless as she let her feet, shrouded in white dolly-socks, swing from the stool and hang mid-flight, flailing, as she clawed at her throat before it emptied out of life? Had the Blanchard sisters really been that desperate? Had he really been too late?
"Alright, kid," Morgan said, finally. "Let's just go inside."
The door creaked open and dragged across the floor with a groan before letting the charcoal light flood into the eerily silent hallway. The foundations were strong, walls neatly painted, but he stared at the ground where a splatter of blood around a shoe print crusted up and realized the pain connecting to the skirting boards was patchy.
A table was right beside him with a trinket for keys, a landline and cable, a lamp and a photo of Wilhelmina and Benedict on their wedding day. They were stood like soldiers, unsmiling, separated by the minister. The staircase was to the left, heading up to a window before making a sharp turn and heading up right. Spencer imagined Constance barging in from behind him and sprinting up the stairs, her clomping feet thudding overhead and echoing all through the house.
He imagined Agatha lugging a watering can out from the kitchen that was filled with filtered water instead of normal-tap water. He imagined Philippa sprawled out in the middle of the parlor, waiting for somebody to notice her.
"Did you ever visit this house?"
"No," Spencer said. "I didn't see the Blanchard's after I moved away. I had phone calls from Constance who wanted to speak to my mom, and I called Bernadette once. I thought they were doing well."
Spencer found himself mounting the stairs and he held onto the bannister. It was worn and soft from the years of the girls using it as they grew up. He wondered if their ghosts were trailing around the hallway. Philippa, yellow-eyed and blue-lipped, trotting around in the unsightly ruffled dress she loved so dearly. Constance, wet-haired and damp, trying to find her way to the kitchen as her milky eyes cloud her view. Primrose, sullen and gagging, crawling along the floor in search for a mirror to fix up her cold face.
At the top of the second flight of stairs stood the only bedroom with the door ajar. An invitation, though he knew it was not for him. It was Bernadette's bedroom and the door lay open for her sisters to come to, in life and in death. As exiles or as vagabonds. They were always welcomed.
Spencer felt out of place in her bedroom. He almost wanted to leave. It felt wrong to look through her stuff in order to analyse her behaviour. And he knew that he'd be thrown of the case if he didn't do his job, but there was a small voice at the back of his head yelling: Don't do this. You don't need to do this. She wouldn't want it and you believe her already. Don't do it.
He touched the handle. It was gold, curved and engraved with intricate designs. Through his glove, he could feel how cold it was. Unused for so long. He pushed the door open all the way. He went inside.
Bernadette's bedroom was everything like he remembered. Plain, white, sacred.
She had the second largest room in the house— Primrose and Constance sharing the first— but Bernadette's was the heart of the house. She had a grand chest of draws beneath the window, stretching ten feet long with six rows of draws and twenty-four drawers in total. Upon inspection, Spencer saw how each of the first five drawers on the top row were given to each of her sisters. Their nightgowns, toothbrushes and socks were stuffed inside for the nights they spent in Bernadette's room.
The bedroom itself was nothing like a normal bedroom. There was nothing on the walls but white paint. She had one, small and oval mirror by the door but it had collected dust and Spencer's reflection was foggy. Her bed was circular and encompassed a great deal of the corner of the room, white sheets screwed up and used. Spencer stared at it for a very long time when he realised that the last time Bernadette had slept in her bed had been the night her sisters died, and the reason the bed wasn't made was because she had not returned to sleep and instead been taken in chains into custody.
There was another door in the far corner. There was no desk or vanity in her room. A single bookshelf, but no work surface. It wasn't a bedroom, and it wasn't a woman's bedroom at that. It was plain, white, boring. Spencer looked at the room and wondered how Bernadette grew up in such solitude.
Her bathroom was simple. Sink, toilet, and a small shower with no curtain. The floor was slanted and there was a drain in the far left corner. Her shampoo was apple scented and her conditioner was rose. She had no mirror or window in the room, no cupboard and no shelf. Spencer had visited many prisons and Bernadette's room wasn't far from looking like one.
"Reid! Come and look at this."
Spencer shut the bathroom door and turned. He went to leave when he saw the gap between the bottom of Bernadette's bed and the floor. From the sunshine bleeding in through the veil curtains, he saw a glimmer reflect like a diamond in the shadows.
He pulled out a cardboard box. No lid, no label. On top was a framed picture and he couldn't stop himself from smiling softly as he pulled out the newspaper article of him. It was the one that Bernadette had seen and called him about years ago. Underneath were miscellaneous items. A red ribbon, (Prim's old school hair tie,) a framed photo of of Bernadette in the 90s, (a school-club picture,) some chunky rings that had been mostly unworn, a pressed flower daisy-chain, (the last one she made for Spencer when they were kids,) three receipts for makeup from 2002, (they were all bought in the same month,) a cut out collection of Keanu Reeves from magazines, (Bernadette's favourite heartthrob, she swore she would marry him one day,) a few coins, a weathered photograph from 2002 of Bernadette in school uniform with another girl who had very short hair and several gothic accessories festooned on her, and a child's drawing dated from 2001, signed by Agatha.
He picked the picture up.
"Reid! Where are— What are you looking at?"
"A drawing."
Agatha must have been six. Young enough to understand the chain of command within her family and old enough to notice something about it was off. The painting was creased and the paint had begun to flake off but Spencer saw the story behind the colors, the darkness that it revealed. Five girls outside a house— Spencer recognized it as their first house back in Vegas, but there were no parents drawn. Instead, Bernadette, who must have been no older than fifteen at the time, was drawn tall, holding Philippa in her arms, with Anne, Primrose and Constance holding hands around her.
"This drawing," Spencer said, passing it over, "Wilhelmina and Benedict Blanchard aren't in it. There's color and honesty to it. It isn't dark or harsh, there's still childhood within the picture, but there's no parents. A six year old should draw her parents in the family portrait."
"This isn't any normal family, Reid. This is all far from normal."
He placed the drawing back inside and pulled out the photograph from 2002 of Bernadette and her school friend. He kept it in his hand as Morgan led him out of the room and into a different bedroom, which was as painfully similar to the one before.
"There's a treehouse across the street," Morgan said.
"Arboricultural accommodation actually has a pretty long history. In fact, it can be dated all the way back to Antique Rome. The first Roman Emperor to be assassinated, Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, better known as Caligula, built a treehouse as a dining room. But it only became popular, really, during the Renaissance when—"
"Reid."
"Right. Sorry."
Spencer looked around when he realised they were in Primrose and Constance Blanchard's bedroom. He began to frown as he saw the state of it. It was exactly the same as Bernadette's, which was much more easier to pass off as strange since she was much older, but Prim and Connie were . . . Well, they were rather strange. As similar as a beetle to a butterfly, but they were still teenage girls, and the walls were white. The only sprinkle of personality was the array of butterflies pinned up above one of the beds. Prim's side of the room. She loved collecting them.
Constance's side had a single bed, covers perfectly placed as if it had never been slept in before, and a small bookshelf beside her bed. The shelves were stacked with cookbooks and recipe pamphlets. He walked over to it because on top, untouched and unused, was the first rolling pin his mother had gifted Constance when they were neighbors and she was only cooking burnt breads, (she gave all the successful loaves to Diana first.)
Once Bernadette said her weepy goodbyes on the phone call to Spencer after she had been taken into custody, Spencer had visited the hospital morgue that clutched the five slain Blanchard sisters and also spoken to the EMTs that had removed the girls from their deathbeds. Mrs Blanchard had called an ambulance before she phoned the police, pathetically hopeful that one of her daughters might still survive. One EMT, who had a Wyatt Earp moustache, had crudely laughed with Spencer about Constance, not knowing that he was FBI, or a friend of the Blanchard sisters at all.
He had said that he had dropped the safe that had kept Constance properly submerged three times back onto her body before he managed to heave it out of the bathtub. The safe in question was the one Wilhelmina kept in the bathroom. It stored away her makeup— Maybelline's Dream Matte mousse foundation, Max Factor's Facefinity compact foundation powder, Rimmel's Brow this Way eyebrow pomade, Covergirl Lash Blast mascara, a lip tint and a palette that was so old the brand label had dissolved from its constant usage. The water from the bath had seeped inside, wrecking the contents and causing the bath water to bleed into an ugly pinkish-brown colour.
"God," the EMT continued. Spencer had to look at the floor to conceal how damp his eyes were from listening. "The girl was so slippery, too. Never mind the safe. I dropped her back into the water several times before I finally fished her out and bagged her up. Got my whole uniform soaked 'cause she was so damn slimy."
The coroner said that she had been dead one hour prior to when she had been found. Constance had floated around, staring up through the glassy water without seeing, and remained there beside Philippa, for an entire hour before she was finally removed from the house and taken to a morgue.
"You alright?"
"Yeah," Spencer said. "This room. This bedroom. Doesn't it seem off to you? It's not like a girl's bedroom at all. Primrose and Constance were sixteen and fourteen. Where are the posters? The CDs and wardrobes? There's nothing in here that would appeal to a young girl. It looks like a prison."
"Wardrobes are in the parents bedroom."
"What? That's almost draconian."
"It is draconian, but look at that." Morgan pointed out the window and across the street to where the treehouse was. "Do you reckon they saw something? Treehouse on the front lawn, facing this house. They must've seen something."
"That's strange."
"What?"
"Back when I was neighbours with Bernadette, there were a group of boys across the street that had a treehouse exactly like that one. They were infatuated with the Blanchard sisters. If these kids were anything like the ones before, the likelihood is that they saw something go down."
"We'll finish up here and go check them afterwards." He turned and noticed the photographed in Spencer's hand. "Whose that?"
Spencer looked down and inspected the photograph again. Bernadette had very long hair when she was sixteen and she wore it in two plaits over her shoulders. Her checkered gold-and-black uniform was perfectly placed on her body. Knee-high socks with tiny bows on the hem sat on her thighs as her skirt rolled up around her waist. Beside her was another girl.
She had short, black hair with piercings covering every space of her ears, though the photograph was too old for that to be seen. The two were stood in front of the academy, Bernadette stood straight-backed with her hands in front of her. The other girl had her arms in the air and her legs far apart like a starfish, a grin that showed all her teeth and likened more to the face an animal made when they growled.
Spencer pointed at her. "Her name is Darlene Cox, and she was Bernadette's only friend when she was transferred to an academy in Vegas. After I moved and the Blanchard's moved, the girls enrolled into a similar academy, but Darlene stayed behind."
"Where's this Darlene girl now?"
"I couldn't be sure."
Spencer liked Darlene. She was punk-rock, a Catholic's worst dream. It was an ineluctable fact that a cigarette was always found somewhere on her— whether behind her ear or between her finger— and she lived off of nicotine and a wild rush from doing things she never really was supposed to do. Spencer supposed, later on, that that was why she was so magnetic to Bernadette and himself. Unlike him, or Bernadette for that matter, Darlene didn't like to question the world and instead let herself be within it. She didn't crack the clam of answers open to search for the pearl. She didn't exist, she just made sure she lived.
Darlene Cox was more like smoke than any touchable being. When she was present, she was known, but she was always gone before somebody could come close enough to touch her. She was always frightened about one day having to suffer the un-remarkableness of mundanities, and so she never stayed doing one thing long enough to feel something solid. She liked the rush of life, of knowing everything, but that always coincided with never being able to ground herself. Spencer believed that when she turned eighteen, she most likely took a handful of cash and slipped into the world, leaving nothing but the lingering smell of ash behind her.
Morgan's eyebrows fell together in a knot and he looked up from the photograph before staring back at Reid. He moved his head, shaking it slightly.
"So, why hold onto the picture?"
"Because I also knew Darlene," he said. "And I knew she liked Bernadette enough to see her as a sister. Perhaps, if Bernadette thought the same, they might have stayed in touch. If that's so, then Darlene might be able to tell us about the Blanchard sisters lives leading up to their suicides."
Morgan noticed how he said suicides instead of deaths. Bernadette's innocence, no matter how vague it was to everybody else, was cemented in Spencer's mind. It was desirable, Morgan thought to himself. How nonchalant Spencer was with Bernadette. How faithful he was to her innocence despite knowing that something happened on the night of the fifteenth that nobody on the team was aware of. He came like a stranger to Bernadette's altar and did not harbor a doubt to her word. It was, as the Catholics might say, the word of somebody all-knowing. It was indisputable, and he followed it so easily.
"Darlene, what was she like? Do you think there's a likelihood that Bernadette kept in contact with her?"
"It's entirely possible."
"Then why didn't she stay in contact with you?"
The words stung and Spencer swallowed uncomfortably. It was different, he wanted to say, but was it? Hadn't all three of them been friends? Hadn't they all sworn to remain friends? Hadn't they all, as naive, mix-matched kids, said that their friendship was a lovely thing fated to remain even after they were gone? Life, if anything, was made to be that. Wasn't it all just for friends? To be known by the Earth for the friends that one had made on top of her body?
Spencer placed the photograph in his pocket. "Before I moved away, we went and watched a movie together. Bernadette said something about the film and Darlene disagreed. Darlene said, you can love somebody and still kill them. Bernadette laughed at it. They were very different in spirit. Bernadette didn't believe in a lot, especially killing those close to you."
"You really think she's innocent?"
"I do."
"Reid, you've been doing this job with me. People have proven this. People die and they are still loved by the person behind the trigger. Isn't that a well-known fact? The person you love is almost always the person who pulls the trigger."
"Not Bernadette," Spencer said. He had to believe that.
Darlene Cox also said something after the movie that Spencer didn't tell Morgan.
"I think," she had said, the crack of a lighter heating up the pale end of a cigarette, "that anybody is capable of anything if pushed far enough."
UNKNOWN
❛ This is not a love story, but love
is in it. That is, love is just outside it,
looking for a way to break in. ❜
( artemis speaks ! )
i think i'll be swapping to fortnightly
updates, every other thursday.
not sure yet!