Adam went silent again. She touched her fingers to his cheek so that he would look at her. “Tell me.”
He shook his head again, but he said, “You know he had his moods, his bouts with depression.”
Claire had always thought that Paul was the most even-keeled person she had ever known. She guessed, “He got it from his dad.”
Adam didn’t disagree with her. “It seemed like lately, he couldn’t climb out of it. I guess it’s been a year, maybe two, since I felt like we were really friends. He always kept me at arm’s length, but this was different. And it hurt.” Adam did in fact look hurt. “I acted out. I shouldn’t have called the FBI, and believe me, I’m processing through it with my therapist, but something made me snap.”
Claire was reminded of one of the reasons she had never seen herself in anything long-term with Adam Quinn. He was constantly talking about his feelings.
He said, “I wasn’t just pissed off about the money. It was one more thing on top of the mood swings and the temper tantrums and his need to control everything and—I never meant for it to escalate. When that asshole from the FBI handcuffed him and walked him out of the office, I knew that was it. The look on Paul’s face. I’ve never seen him angry like that. He just kind of turned into this guy I had never seen before.”
Claire had seen what that guy was capable of. Adam was lucky Paul had been in handcuffs. “You dropped the charges. Was that because Paul paid the money back?”
“No.” He looked away from Claire. “I paid it back.”
Claire was sure she’d heard wrong. She had to repeat his words to make sure. “You paid back the money.”
“He knew about us. The three times.”
The three times.
Claire had been with Adam Quinn three times: at the Christmas party, during the golf tournament, and in the bathroom down the hallway while Paul was downstairs waiting for them to join him for lunch.
Fred Nolan had the answer to his first curious thing. Paul had stolen one million dollars for each time Adam had fucked her.
“I’m sorry,” Adam said.
Claire felt foolish, but only because she hadn’t figured it out on her own. Paul and Adam had always been driven by money. “He took enough money to get your attention, but not enough to make you call the police. Except that you did. You called in the FBI.”
Adam nodded sheepishly. “Sheila pushed me into doing it. I was pissed off—I mean, why? And then it snowballed into them arresting Paul and searching his office and . . .” His voice trailed off. “I actually ended up begging him for his forgiveness. I mean, yeah, what I did was wrong, but we’re partners, and we had to find a way to be able to work together again, so . . .”
“You paid him a three-million-dollar penalty.” Claire didn’t have the luxury of processing her feelings. “I guess if I’m going to be a whore, at least I’m not a cheap one.”
“Hey—”
“I need the USB drive back, the one I left for you in the mailbox.”
“Of course.” Adam walked over to the projector. His briefcase was open beside it. She supposed this was the last bit of proof she needed that Paul had hidden his sick venture from his best friend. Or former best friend, as seemed to be the case.
Adam held up the key tag. “I already downloaded the files I needed. Can I help you with—”
Claire took the drive out of his hand. “I need to use the computer in Paul’s office.”
“Sure. I can have—”
“I know where it is.”
Claire walked down the hallway with the key tag clenched in her hand. She had Paul’s customer list. Claire was sure of it. But she couldn’t get Fred Nolan’s words out of her head: Trust but verify.
The lights were off in Paul’s office. His chair was tucked under his desk. The blotter was clear. There were no stray papers. The stapler was aligned to the pencil cup was aligned to the lamp. Anyone would assume that his office had been cleaned out, but Claire knew differently.
She sat in Paul’s chair. The computer was still on. She stuck the USB connector into the back of the iMac. Paul hadn’t logged out of the system. She could picture him sitting behind his desk when Fred Nolan came to tell him that it was time to fake his death. Paul wouldn’t have been able to do anything but stand up and leave.
So of course he had taken the time to slide his chair back under his desk at a precise angle to the legs.
Claire double clicked on the USB drive. There were two folders, one for Adam’s Work in Progress files and the other for the software that ran the USB drive. She clicked open the software folder. She scanned the files, which all had technical-looking names and .exe extensions. She checked the dates. Paul had saved the files onto the drive two days before his staged murder.
Claire scrolled to the bottom of the list. The last file Paul had saved was titled FFN.exe. In the garage two nights ago, Claire had checked the USB drive for movies, but that had been before she discovered the true depth of her husband’s depravities. She knew better than to take things at face value now. She also knew that folders didn’t require extensions.
FFN. Fred F. Nolan. Claire had seen the man’s initials on his handkerchief.
She clicked open the folder.
A prompt came up asking for a password.
Claire stared a
t the screen until the prompt blurred. She had guessed the other passwords with the notion that she knew her husband. This password had been set by the Paul Scott she had never met—the one who donned a mask to film himself raping and murdering young women. The one who charged his best friend a million bucks a pop to fuck his wife. The one who had found his father’s stash of movies and decided to scale up the business.
Paul must have watched the tapes on the same VCR that Lydia and Claire had seen in the Fuller house. Claire imagined her young, awkward husband sitting in front of the television watching his dead father’s movies for the first time. Was Paul surprised by what he saw? Was he disgusted? She wanted to think that he’d been outraged, and repulsed, and that habituation and necessity had compelled him not only to sell the tapes, but also to try out his father’s deviations for himself.
But then less than six years later, Paul was meeting Claire in the computer lab. Surely, he knew exactly who Claire was, exactly who her sister was. Surely, he had watched Julia’s movie dozens, maybe hundreds of times by then.
Claire’s hands were surprisingly steady on the keyboard as she typed in the password: 03041991.
No mnemonics. No acronyms. March 4, 1991, the day that her sister had gone missing. The day that had started it all.
She pressed ENTER. The rainbow wheel started to spin.
The folder opened. She saw a list of files.
.xls—Excel spreadsheet.
There were sixteen spreadsheets in all.
She opened the first spreadsheet. There were five columns: Name, email, address, bank routing info, member since.
Member since.
Claire scrolled down the list. Fifty names in total. Some of the memberships went back thirty years. They were anywhere from Germany to Switzerland to New Zealand. Several addresses were in Dubai.
She had been right. Paul needed his customer list. Was Mayhew looking for it, too? Did he want to take over Paul’s business? Or was Johnny Jackson sending the police to clean up his nephew’s mess?