by B. B. Hamel
Rose drank her coffee and avoided looking at the folder as I flipped it open. It started with the coroner’s report: death by strangulation. Multiple contusions and lacerations, consistent with a fight, and some cuts along her arms and legs. Those were CGK’s special marks: he liked to slice his victims before he killed them. I still didn’t understand why, but I got the feeling it had to do with his desire to keep them as his own, like making them hurt showed his mastery, and through their pain, he was allowed to have them forever. My pet theory was he cut himself at the same time, creating a sympathetic link—but I had no proof of that. If he did, he didn’t leave his blood anywhere we could find it.
“Nineteen years old,” Cal said. “Found her in an empty field down in South Philly. Some kids stumbled on her, scared the shit out of them.”
“Witnesses?”
“None that we’ve found. Don’t know how though. Whole place is crawling with people, but he figured out how to transport her and dump her without being noticed.”
I flipped to the next page: crime scene photos.
She was pretty. They always were. Cam girls had to be, they were performers, and their looks were part of the performance. Even the cam girls that only played games and didn’t strip still had to look good—that was simply part of how it went. This one had short, dark hair and pretty blue eyes, at least they were probably pretty when she was alive. She was bundled up in a grassy field surrounded by tall horseweeds, mugwort, and chicory. The chicory was in bloom, and the purple flowers were almost pretty. She wore her underwear, stained and dirty bra and panties—he never dumped them naked.
I looked at a few more, close-ups of her injuries, her face, the surroundings.
“Was she popular?” I asked.
“Not particularly. Few hundred guys in there, but nothing huge. She wasn’t on our radar.”
I nodded a little, tilting my head as I read a police report. CGK had gone after girls with bigger followings up to this point. Rose’s sister was one of the biggest he took down, and her performances regularly drew up to four or five thousand viewers.
It was a little disconcerting. We kept an eye on the top cam girls, but we couldn’t watch them all, especially not if he was lowering his standards.
Rose let out a strangled sound as I flipped to the last page. It was a large photograph of the girl before she died, with her name at the bottom: Nicole Manning. I looked over as Rose shifted out of the booth, nearly knocking over the waitress that walked over with our food stacked on a tray.
“She okay?” the waitress asked.
“She’ll be okay.” I shut the folder and got out to follow. “Thanks, looks great.”
The waitress gave me an odd look, but I just ignored her. Cal said nothing as I walked across the room. Rose escaped through the front, and I caught sight of her jogging over to the empty field next door. She jumped the fence and staggered.
“Wait,” I called out. “Rose, hold on.”
She didn’t stop. She kept going, stumbling through the rocks and the weeds. When I finally reached her, she leaned forward, hands on her knees, and got sick into a small scrubby bush.
I rubbed her back until she finished. She cursed, spit, and looked away. “Shit, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s really okay. We shouldn’t have done that in front of you.”
“It’s just, she’s nineteen. She had her whole life ahead of her, like my sister, and now she’s dead. God, she’s dead. I could handle the crime scene pictures, but seeing that last one, of her smiling, like she couldn’t wait to find out what came next—” She stopped herself, tears streaming down her cheeks.
I hugged her close, ignored the smell of vomit on her breath. She had every right to be sick about it, every right to be disgusted. The whole thing was a broken, fucked-up travesty, and seeing her react this way only reminded me of what I was losing. Each passing day, each new victim hardened me against it, made me lose sight of the past.
It took me one step closer to forgetting Buck. Not entirely—I’d never forget him entirely. But the pain I felt, the pain I still felt, it turned into a dull ache, a gentle throb, and I was afraid it would go away completely.
I didn’t want the pain to stop. Even after all these years, it still hurt to think about Buck, about his body when we found him in the woods, the way his disappearance set my parents on edge, had them fighting every day, then the way the truth of his death finally broke them entirely. It was like when he was only missing, they could muddle through, taking their anger out on each other, but when we knew he’d been killed, when we couldn’t deny it anymore—that finally knocked them over the edge.
I almost envied Rose her pain. I wanted to react like that to every new victim, but I couldn’t do my job if I let the emotions get the best of me. Someone had to put distance between them and the killers, if at least to be able to catch them and put them away, to get justice for the dead. I wanted justice, for Buck and for every dead girl, Nicole and Delia and countless others, and all those that would come next.
She calmed after a few minutes. I looked at her, hands on her arms. She gave me a tired smile. “I feel like all I do lately is cry.”
“Can’t blame you. Lots of bad shit’s happened.”
“Still, I should have it together.” She paused and bit her lip, almost too hard. I was afraid she’d bleed. “How can you stand it?”
“I got desensitized,” I admitted, even though I knew how it sounded.
“To all this death? All this awful, awful stuff?”
“Yeah, to an extent. It still hurts sometimes. I have trouble sleeping.” I moved my hands down to her hips. “The Hunters have a therapist on staff. You’d like him. Nice guy.”
“Can I get a referral?” She laughed like it was some bad joke.
“Maybe I should take you home. Cal can come back with us. He’ll survive talking about the case somewhere other than a diner for once.”
“No,” she said. “I want to stay. I think I need to stay.”
“Rose—”
“I mean it. Delia’s gone, and now this asshole’s here, taunting us. I need to know what he does. I want to understand him.”
“There’s no understanding these people.”
“Isn’t that what you do, though?”
I took a breath. She was right, but also wrong. It wasn’t so simple as understanding. “What we do is build a profile,” I said. “We guess, we go based on what killers in the past have done, and more often than not, we’re pretty close. But it’s never perfect, and it’s never a real answer. Sometimes, the worst part is there are no answers.”
“You think CGK kills for no reason?”
I shook my head, staring into her eyes. “Who knows what shape evil takes. I can’t say, but I do know he’s evil, that’s for sure, and we’re going to catch him. If you can handle it, and you really think you have to, then we’ll go back in. You’ve just got to know, there’s no shame in going back home.”
She smiled a little. “I’d kiss you, but—”
“We’ll save that for another time.” I pulled her against me and hugged her tight before leading her back to the diner by her hand.
Cal gave us a look as we sat back down. Rose ate silently. “You okay?” he asked.
She nodded and didn’t answer.
I fell back to talking over the case with him. I tried to keep things high-level, tried to avoid the gory details, but it was impossible not to discuss them. For her part though, Rose hung in there, and although I could tell it hurt, she didn’t turn away.
I hoped that didn’t change her. I didn’t want her to stay, didn’t want her to power through—not if it would mute some of her feelings. The pain was bad, I knew it all too well, but it was even worse when the pain began to fade.
I wanted better for her than what I got over the years, and maybe if I was lucky, I could help.
12
Rose
He slept on his mattress at the foot of my bed, and eac
h night I was tempted to pull him under the covers with me, or maybe I wanted to crawl down next to him, feel the warmth of his skin. I’d lay there, pretending to be asleep when he’d come in an hour after, trying to be quiet. I listened to him breathing, and I knew he was doing the same to me, but we didn’t talk.
Instead, I imagined what it would feel like. I pictured him standing up, drifting to my side, pushing me onto my back, peeling the sheets away, kissing my chest, my throat, my lips. I wanted him to pin me down against the mattress, his big, bulky, incredible body heavy on top of my own, his hard shaft between my legs, pressing up against me, driving me wild. God, I wanted him to sneak to me in the night, so we could feel the pleasure we couldn’t feel in the daytime, when everything kept us apart.
Maybe that made it more delicious, knowing how wrong it was, knowing how dangerous it could be.
Days passed like that, with little to no change. His partner returned to the city. Detective Starch checked in twice.
Otherwise, we did nothing. We sat on the couch and watched TV. We went for runs when my hamstring finally began to heal a bit more. We hiked through the woods and caught sight of Taylor and the gang hitting the jumps. They hooted, yelled, and waved, then sped off, kicking up dirt as they pedaled furiously, little John bringing up the rear.
Nick cooked meals. He made lunch, breakfast, dinner. He made tea and coffee. He brought me snacks while I lounged on the couch, bored out of my mind, reading every paperback I’d ignored for the last year. I wished I could go into work, or do anything at all.
I yearned for him to kiss me, touch me, take me.
At night, the fear set in.
I tried not to think about it, CGK hiding out in the bushes. I tried to pretend like this was a vacation and Nick was my new boyfriend, even if that was a silly fantasy, and so far from the truth. I tried to act like things were fine, except the terror was right there, lurking in every shadow, every sudden movement. I was constantly on edge, and while Nick did everything he could to make me feel better, there was only so much he could do, and in the end I barely slept at night, instead picturing Nick’s body on mine, his lips on mine, listening to him sleep barely five feet away.
“We need to flush him out.” After five days, I could tell Nick was just as on edge.
“What do you mean?” I asked, sitting out on the porch with him, my feet up on an old kiddie pool turned upside down my gramma used to put out for Delia and me. I remembered swimming in that lukewarm water with my sister, flicking out the tiny pieces of grass we tracked in and laughing as we splashed each other.
“He hasn’t made contact in days. I’m starting to worry.” His eyes narrowed as he scanned the woods.
“You think he left?”
“I don’t know what I think, truth be told. I thought he’d would’ve made a move by now.”
I stretched my legs. “What if he was just messing with us? And he never planned on hurting me at all?”
He shook his head. “No, he wants you, and he wants me just as much. If anything, Starch stopping by has him spooked, but I’m not sure that’s it.”
“What, you think the waiting is another game?”
“That could be it, like he’s having fun. I bet he likes watching the two of us.”
I hesitated, trying to imagine what someone staring at us through the trees might see. “What’s he thinking out there?” I asked. “When he watches.”
He glanced at me, was about to say something, then stopped. “How about you tell me,” he said.
I shifted in my seat and sat up straight. “Okay,” I said slowly, thinking back to everything he’d told me about CGK over the days we’d spent together drifting around the house. “You said he likes to think his victims… join him in some special world. Like maybe he’s bringing them into the afterlife with him. That means he loves the girls he kills, he’s possessive of them.” I felt sick, picturing the man that murdered my sister also pretending like he loved her, but I pushed myself forward regardless. I had to understand this man if I was going to help catch him, and I knew I had to do this uncomfortable work if I was going to make that happen.
“That means he loves me, in his own sick way.” I thought back to the message he’d written on my bathroom mirror. “Gorgeous, that’s why he called me gorgeous. He wants to kill me and own me.”
I glanced at him, and he only nodded, but said nothing.
I kept going.
“So he’s lonely, right? He wants to surround himself with beautiful women, maybe women he couldn’t get in reality, and so he thought he had to take them if he wanted to have them. Maybe he’s a sad person, no close family, no close friends, but he’s definitely capable of love, even if his love is twisted and horrible.”
“Good,” he said softly. “What about me?”
“He hates you,” I said, frowning a little. “CGK likes control and power. That’s why he kills the girls and takes ownership of them. You’re the antithesis to his power, you’re the man trying to catch him and take away his harem.”
He grinned at me. “That’s right. You made that last leap on your own, you know. He said those words almost exactly.”
I blinked at him rapidly. “Really?”
“In his letter, he said I was a thief, a harem-stealer. That I’d try to take his girls from him, but he’d never let me.”
“It’s a game to him, but it’s also deadly serious. He wants to play, because it gives him a sense of meaning and connection, but he also wants to make sure he wins, because to him the stakes are too high. The stakes are forever.”
“If we catch him, that means he won’t get his girls in the afterlife.”
“He’s torn between wanting to play and wanting to run.”
“Exactly.” He beamed at me. “Which is why he’s been acting so erratic lately. He’s having trouble fitting all this into his worldview, into his ideas of himself.”
“We can’t scare him off,” I said, warming to the subject now that we were past the difficult part. I could talk about this part from a distance, like I was a professor talking in front of a class about some esoteric subject. “If we push too hard and get too aggressive, he’ll run away. But if we keep dangling ourselves out there…” I trailed off.
“What’s the one thing that’ll get him to come out more than anything else?”
“He’s afraid you’ll take his girls… so if you take me.” I stared at him, then my eyes went wide. “We should go out again, right? Sit somewhere he can watch us. Maybe even kiss.” I felt a thrill in my chest at that last word, kiss. I pictured Nick’s lips against mine, his hands on my hips, and even though the specter of GCK hung over it all, it still felt good. Maybe I was broken, flawed in some specific way that allowed me to feel good in the middle of all this madness, but I wasn’t so sure, and didn’t really care.
“Exactly.” He laughed and threw an arm around my shoulders. “Tonight, we’ll go out, and we’ll piss him off.”
“Sounds like a plan. Maybe we can get dinner in there, too?”
“I think we can handle that.” He kissed my cheek then moved away. “Wear something a little provocative.”
“Why, you think that’ll help?”
He shook his head and looked at me, a smirk on his lips. “Nah, I don’t think he’ll care. That’s more for me.”
I felt myself blush as he walked off. I turned and looked down at my hands like I was seeing them for the first time.
I deduced all that about CGK based on what Nick told me. I helped build the profile, or at least I figured it out. I suddenly understood the fine line he was trying to walk this whole time, stuck between wanting to get aggressive, and needing to dangle both of us out like bait. Him staying in my house was the perfect storm of emotions for CGK, tempting enough to lure him into the open, but confusing enough to knock him off balance—to force him to make a mistake.
At least that was what I hoped.
I held Nick’s hand in mine as we walked down along the sidewalk through town
. Old houses lined either side of the street, some of them with signs extolling their historic origins. Other couples wandered around, older men and women in comfortable clothes, and I hugged closed to Nick, grabbing onto his arm, my chest pressing against his side. I wore a low-cut sundress, the skirt ending a little bit shorter than I typically went for, and I loved the way Nick had stared at me when I came down the stairs.
“Perfect night,” he said, looking down at me.
“Perfect night for catching a serial killer,” I said.
He laughed and squeezed my hand. “Not exactly what I meant, but you’re right.”
“It’s weird, thinking that he’s watching.”
“He’s definitely watching.”
“You think he’s nearby? I mean, maybe we can see him?”
“Maybe.” He glanced around and I followed his gaze. There were people all over: a man in his fifties, boat shoes, white shorts, salmon shirt; old woman with frizzy gray hair and a purple top talking loudly at what seemed to be her younger daughter, also wearing a purple top; a pack of teenage kids with long hair and skateboards walking in the street. It was mobbed, but nobody looked like they’d be a serial killer.
“He wouldn’t be obvious, would he?”
“I don’t think so.” We headed toward the center of town, down toward a pub that had outdoor seating. “He’d blend in. That’d be his whole goal, I think. Which is why I’m sure he’s a white guy, just based on the communities he tends to frequent. They’re heavily white areas with very few people of color.”
“That’s a little messed up. But what about Philly? Lots of different people live there.”
“He killed in South Philly, which is the most homogenous part of town. Not totally, obviously, you’re right that lots of different people live all over the city, but still. He would’ve stood out in North Philly, or out west in some parts, but he chose south.”
