The Final Girl

by Kenneth Preston

  "So it seems that the mother didn't know as much about the daughter as she thought she did," Harry said. "You think it's significant?"

  "I don't know. Maybe. Yes. I mean, we don't know anything yet, so everything is significant until it isn't."

  "Words to live by, Detective Moore."

  Darlene smiled. "How's it going over there?"

  "It's a bloody mess, no pun intended." She was glad he added the no pun intended clarification. She had zero patience for that kind of morbid humor.

  "Did you find something?" she asked.

  "Yeah, we found something...kinda odd, a plastic toy knife. Not the kind of thing you find in toy stores nowadays. Maybe it's a practice knife for martial artists or something. I don't know. But it was just off the clearing, right inside the treeline. And it has fake blood on it."

  "Fake blood?"

  "Yeah, like the kind kids use on Halloween."

  "You think it's related to the murders?"

  "I don't know, maybe. But I can't imagine how. I mean, we have a real murder weapon buried in the chest of the probable perp, or the possible perp."

  "You sound like you're starting to have doubts about the kid in the ski mask," Darlene said.

  Harry sighed. "Maybe. I don't know."

  "What are you thinking?"

  "I'm thinking that I don't know what to think," he said. "I hate these kinds of cases."

  "You've had cases like this before?"

  "No. I've had some gruesome cases in my time, but never anything like this."

  "But we're not talking about the blood and the bodies, Harry. We're talking about that weird little detail, the plastic knife. I doubt you've ever seen anything like that at a murder scene, but I'm guessing you have a hunch."

  "What makes you think I have a hunch?"

  "Because I know you too well," she said. "And good detectives have hunches."

  "You think I'm a good detective?"

  "I think you're a damn good detective. Now, out with it. What are you thinking?"

  There was a moment's hesitation before Harry said, "I'm thinking it was some kind of game."

  "A game," she said, sounding more skeptical than she intended.

  "A game that got out of control...obviously."

  "Obviously."

  "What I mean is a game that somebody decided to take to the next level. A game that somebody decided wasn't a game anymore."

  She was silent. She didn't know what to make of his hunch.

  "You think I'm crazy."

  "I do, but I asked you what you were thinking, so I had it coming."

  Harry didn't respond.

  "I'm sorry," she said.

  "Sorry for what?"

  "For joking at a time like this."

  "You don't have anything to be sorry for." A pause. "You seem to be in better spirits than I thought you'd be. You know, considering..."

  "The girl's age."

  "Well, all of their ages. They're all the same age. But yeah, the girl too. How are you doing?"

  She rolled her eyes. She'd known it was coming, of course. She was surprised it took this long. She was kind of hoping that Harry had forgotten.

  "I'm fine," she lied. "Better than I thought I would be, actually."

  "Good."

  "Yeah. It's been two years, Harry. And therapy has helped...a lot." She was over-explaining, and it must have been obvious to Harry. She had to dial it back a notch. Better yet, she had to be honest with her partner. "I need this, Harry. I need to help this girl. Yes, she reminds me of Brittany. But that's not gonna hurt me. It's gonna help me. It's gonna help me help this girl."

  Silence.

  "Harry?" she prompted him.

  "The media has been pouring in, but they've agreed to hold off on the story until we notify the families."

  "Which is when?"

  "Well...now. A team of patrol units is coordinating at the precinct. They're getting ready to head out. I don't envy them."

  "Stop them!" Darlene barked. "Sorry. I mean, don't let them head out yet. Just give me a few minutes to get to the precinct. I wanna help them."

  "You don't have to―"

  "I do. It's my job. This girl, Jill Turner, she didn't have any friends, according to her mother. I want to know what she was doing with them."

  "Okay, but if you're thinking about questioning the families, don't. It's way too soon."

  "I'm not. I'm just gonna...sniff around."

  "Sniff around? This isn't a TV show. I mean it. Don't question them."

  "Fine, I won't. But what about the kid in the ski mask? What's his name again?"

  "Richard Caulfield. But him too. Don't question the family, not yet. They're not gonna be in any state of mind to answer questions."

  "All right. I'm heading to the precinct now. Later, Harry."

  "Later."

  She slipped the phone back into her pocket and rushed out into the parking lot, silently admonishing herself for lying to Harry. She was surprised by how easily the lies came pouring out of her mouth. She had never been a saint, but she was never big on lying. And she had never been particularly good at it. Until recently, that is. But it wasn't really a lie, was it? It was more like a half-truth. Yes, that sounded much better. She was fine. She was doing just fine...under the circumstances. See? Half-truth. And she was motivated to help Jill by the loss of her own daughter. That was the whole truth.

  She slipped behind the wheel of her Prius and hesitated, as she often did when thinking about Brittany. She didn't want to be doing anything else when the image of her daughter solidified in her head because it was becoming more and more difficult to get a clear picture. The lines of her face were beginning to fade. Just like her feelings. The pain of losing Brittany and the ability to see Brittany's face in her mind's eye went hand and hand. And both were moving away from her. And she didn't want them to. She didn't want to lose the pain, and she didn't want to forget her daughter. It had only been two years. No mother should move on after two years.

  No, she wasn't moving on. She refused to move on. She wanted the pain. She needed the pain like an addict needs the drug. And she would get it any way she could. She needed a reminder. She needed to remember what the devastation of a sudden loss feels like.

  She started the car and raced through the parking lot. There were families that needed to be notified. And there was an addict in withdrawal who needed her fix.

  It was going to be rough, of course, but that was the point. She wanted it to be rough. She needed it to be rough. She needed her fix, to borrow some of the pain, maybe soak some of it up. She had spent the better part of two years bawling her eyes out, but the bawling was becoming less and less frequent. And as the bawling decreased, the guilt increased. The fewer the tears, the more she felt her daughter slipping away. She was becoming numb to the pain. She couldn't let that happen. She couldn't let the pain slip further away than it already had. The pain was still there. She knew that it would always be there. But it was receding. Shit, a moment or two would go by each day when she would forget that she'd ever had a daughter. That was unacceptable.

  She was an emotional vampire. She knew it, and she was momentarily ashamed of herself. She reasoned, told herself that she didn't have to do it. She could have left the task of informing the families to somebody else. But she told herself that she owed it to the families to give them the horrible news in person. And she managed to convince some part of herself that it was true.

  So, it was 10 am when she climbed the three steps to the front door of the home formerly occupied by one Jessica Lewis. The door creaked open before she had a chance to ring the doorbell. With a uniformed police officer by her side, the jig was up. She saw their faces before she even had a chance to open her mouth, and she said some stuff that she'd been taught to say at times like these, though this was the first time she'd ever delivered the news. The parents were young, maybe a couple of years older than herself. She watched Mrs. Lewis collapse, both physically and emotionally, her hus
band's arms wrapped tightly around her, guiding her to the floor. She watched and listened to them wail and felt what she was supposed to feel. She absorbed their pain, feeding on it like a vampire feeds on blood, and she was satiated, reminded of how horrible it had been when she'd been in their shoes two years earlier.

  Forty-five minutes later, she delivered the news to the parents of Gary Butler. An hour after that, she delivered the news to the single mother and fourteen-year-old sister of Denise Richardson. After each of the three visits, Darlene sat behind the wheel of her car and watched as the devastated families were escorted to police vehicles to be driven to the county morgue where they would have to look into the lifeless faces of their loved ones. She watched them, she bawled, and it hurt, and it felt good.

  The pain was satiating because, ironically, it brought some part of her daughter back to her. In her mind's eye, she could see Brittany's face more clearly. With an imaginary finger, she could trace the lines of the face that had just recently begun to fade.

  But along with the face came the guilt. And she didn't run from it; on the contrary, she embraced it. She wanted to wrap her arms around the guilt and hold it close to her because she felt she deserved it.

  Chapter Nine

  Darlene stepped onto the creaking, faded, wrap-around porch, the kind she would love to sit on during a thunderstorm, and rang the doorbell. The two officers standing behind her was a bad look. Terror would seize the Caulfield family before she ever had a chance to open her mouth, but she supposed it didn't matter. Either way, their lives were about to be shattered. And if Richard Caulfield was indeed guilty of killing his three companions at Blydenburgh Park, they would be additionally burdened with the shame of having raised a murderer.

  A moment passed before the inner door opened. A boy, perhaps six or seven, gawked at her through the screen door. Her first instinct was to smile gleefully the way adults habitually do when speaking to children. But it seemed inappropriate considering the bomb she was about to drop on this family.

  "Hello, is your mom or dad home?"

  The boy looked back over his shoulder. "Dad, it's the police!" he shouted.

  The boy stepped aside as the sound of footsteps on a hardwood floor resounded through the foyer. A forty-something, slightly balding man appeared behind the screen door. He gave each of the uniformed officers a glance before settling his eyes on Darlene. "Can I help you?"

  "Mr. Caulfield?" Darlene asked.

  The man nodded. "Yes?" He had that look, like he knew the bomb was about to drop.

  "I'm Detective Moore with the Suffolk County Police Department. May we come in, please?"

  Mr. Caulfield nodded again. "Certainly." He pushed the screen door open, allowing Darlene and the two officers to enter.

  Darlene could smell a mixture of coffee and bacon in the air. She could hear the bacon sizzling. She was about to ruin their breakfast―and their lives. And she hated herself for it.

  She opened her mouth to speak when a woman, presumably Mrs. Caulfield, stepped into the foyer wearing a bathrobe and a look of concern to match her husband's. "Oh." Like her husband, Mrs. Caulfield glanced at the two uniformed officers before settling her eyes on Darlene. "Is everything okay?" But she knew that everything was not okay. It was in her eyes. She was probably hoping that her older son was in some kind of mild legal trouble. But she knew better. She had that maternal instinct. She knew that something was terribly wrong.

  Darlene looked at the boy standing off to the side. "Mr. and Mrs. Caulfield, I think it's probably best that your son leave the room." She wanted to slap herself. It wasn't exactly the most tactful approach. She might as well have told the boy that his big brother was dead.

  Mr. Caulfield's voice trembled slightly when he said, "Billy, go to your room."

  Billy, his mouth open and his eyes filled with morbid curiosity, obeyed his father almost immediately, lingering just a moment to pay Darlene a parting glance before turning on his heels and heading to his bedroom where in moments, he would surely hear the muffled sobs of his parents and know that life as he'd known it was never going to be the same.

  The living room was off to Darlene's left. She looked at the couch and said, "Maybe you should sit down for this." She instantly regretted it. The couple didn't move toward the couch. They moved toward each other, hip to hip. Mr. Caulfield's arm wrapped around his wife.

  "What happened?" Mrs. Caulfield pleaded. She was already on the verge of tears.

  "There's been an attack...at Blydenburgh County Park. Four people were killed...including your son, Richard. I'm sorry."

  Mrs. Caulfield's hand went to her mouth. Her eyes narrowed and filled with tears. Her face contorted. Mr. Caulfield stood dumbfounded, his mouth agape, his lips trembling, like he was trying in vain to suppress the sobs that were climbing into his throat. He turned to his wife, pulled her in, and she collapsed against him before sinking to the floor. And he sank with her. And their lives collapsed all around them.

  And Darlene knew exactly how they felt. She watched and wondered if she looked anything like this couple did when she learned that Brittany had died. She probably did, but she was having trouble remembering at the moment. She relived that horrific day in her head countless times, but it was hard to know how she looked from the outside. She didn't remember seeing much of anything after first seeing Brittany's body, just the backs of her eyelids. But she'd heard plenty; she'd heard her own wails, and she'd heard the voice of her ex-husband trying to coax her back to the world.

  She watched the Caulfield's world collapse around them, and she got back a little piece of what she'd been losing every day since losing Brittany. For a fleeting moment, she felt what she'd felt when she'd informed the other three families: like her entire life had just collapsed around her. She wanted to grab that pain and hold onto it, but it was already slipping through her fingers.

  She wondered what was wrong with her. Brittany had died just two years ago. She shouldn't have to try to hold onto the pain. It should have been with her every second of every day of her miserable life.

  She wanted to go somewhere and cry, not for the pain of losing her daughter; that fleeting moment had already passed her by. No, she wanted to cry for not caring enough about her daughter to cry.

  But the crying would have to wait. She had a job to do.

  She nodded to the two officers and cut to her right, down the hallway. She passed Billy Caulfield's closed bedroom door and made her way to the open door at the end of the hall. Most of what she saw in the semi-messy room was fairly typical for a teenage boy. And if she weren't investigating a mass murder at a campsite with Richard Caulfield as the prime suspect, the various posters that adorned the walls wouldn't have stood out as particularly noteworthy. But she was investigating a mass murder. And Richard Caulfield was the prime suspect. And Richard Caulfield had been wearing a ski mask. And apparently, Richard Caulfield really loved horror movies, particularly horror movies of the slasher variety. The posters that adorned the walls of the boy's bedroom―Friday the 13th, Halloween―were a testament to his love of the genre.

  Across from the foot of his unmade twin bed was a 15" television atop a small entertainment center loaded with DVDs and Blu-rays. Darlene crossed the room and bent, peering at the titles. As she suspected, nearly all of the DVDs and Blu-rays were horror movies. The kid didn't just love horror movies; he was obsessed with them.

  Obsessed enough to turn fiction into fact?

  She pulled out her phone, tapped her camera app, and snapped a couple of photos of the DVD and Blu-ray titles. She proceeded to snap photos of the poster-covered walls before slipping the phone into her pocket and leaving the room.

  She returned to the foyer to find the Caulfield's sitting on the couch in the adjacent living room. They were holding each other, Mrs. Caulfield weeping into Mr. Caulfield's chest. Her uniformed colleagues were standing a few feet in front of them. They looked uncomfortable. She didn't blame them.

  Off to her right was th
e kitchen. She stepped in and moved to the stove where the bacon was still sizzling and turned off the stove. The Caulfields would not be eating for quite some time. She made her way to the counter, and found what she was looking for: a wooden knife block. The knife handles appeared to match the knife handle protruding from Richard Caulfield's chest, and one of the knives was missing. She slid one of the knives from the block and looked at the brand name printed on the blade: Cuisinart.

  She heard some commotion coming from the living room. Mr. Caulfield was demanding to know what happened.

  She swiftly pulled her phone from her pocket, opened the camera app, and snapped a photo of the blade before returning the knife to the block. She snapped a photo of the block and left the kitchen.

  "I will not calm down!" Mr. Caulfield was saying. He was standing in front of the two officers, one of whom had his hands out as if to ward off an attack. "I want to know what happened to our son!" Mrs. Caulfield was right by his side, her hands on his arm, silently pleading with him to return to the couch.

  "It was a knife attack, Mr. and Mrs. Caulfield," Darlene said. "Somebody stabbed your son and his three companions early this morning."

  "Who?" Mr. Caulfield asked. "Who would do something like this?"

  "We don't know. But we're working on it."

  Mr. Caulfield glanced past Darlene. "Where were you?"

  "I was just having a look around," Darlene said.

  Mr. Caulfield narrowed his tear-filled eyes. "Why?"

  Darlene shrugged. "I was just giving you and your wife some time, Mr. Caulfield, that's all."

  Mr. Caulfield nodded solemnly. "Where is he now, our boy?"

  "He's at the county medical examiner's," Darlene said. "We're gonna need you to...uh..."

  "Make a positive ID," Mr. Caulfield finished for her.

  "Yes. I'm sorry. We'll give you a ride...when you're ready."