by Hannah Jayne
But if Schuster was wrong…
If Schuster was wrong and her father was innocent—the word stung more than it should have, an aching reminder of what she did—then he wouldn’t be on the sites at all, would he? Bex tried to quell her guilt, tried to remind herself that she was just a child and couldn’t have known that they’d take what she said and use it against her dad.
And then the anger walloped her and the sound of Schuster’s coaxing voice enraged her. He should have known better. He’d manipulated her, and here he was, doing it again. But no one else had ever talked to her. She was a pariah without Schuster. The emotions wheeled through her—dizzying, frustrating, lonely, painful—when all she ever wanted was to be normal.
“Bex?” Michael knocked on the door frame before slightly nudging open the door. “Ready to take a break from homework? I made lasagna. Well, not so much made as thoroughly heated up.” He grinned at her, a floppy, cockeyed Dad-laughing-at-his-own-joke grin, and Bex knew that the only way to get to normal was to wade through this mess with her real father.
She pressed her fingers over the mouthpiece of her phone and smiled back at Michael. “I’ll be right there.”
• • •
“No. No, I couldn’t. I would just die.” Chelsea was shaking her head, her ponytail bobbing against her cheekbones. “I can’t believe you stayed in that house knowing that someone had broken in.”
Bex took a miniscule sip of her coffee and avoided Chelsea’s eyes. “It wasn’t really that big a deal. The cops said it was probably just kids.”
Laney smacked her palms on the table, and both Chelsea and Bex jumped. “Do you hear yourself? The cops are just brushing it off, but our friend was murdered. Shouldn’t they have put up surveillance or put you in protective police custody or something?”
Bex’s stomach roiled. “Why me? I have nothing to do with… I mean…”
Chelsea’s eyes bulged. “Are you kidding? Yeah, you do. You’re a teenager. Darla was a teenager. This guy could be after any of us. Or all of us.” She leaned in, hissing, “There is a crazed killer on the loose and your house gets ransacked and the police think it’s just kids. Oh no, seriously, no. I’d call the brigade or the army or whatever. When you die, you should seriously sue for negligence or noncompliance or something.”
Laney rolled her eyes. “I’m sure Bex is fine, Chelsea. It’s not like they took anything, right, Bex?”
Bex didn’t trust herself to talk so she meekly shook her head, her hands going to her backpack. She touched the zippered pouch where she had stuffed the Black Bear Diner menu, the gentle crunch of the paper giving her a strange sense of calm.
“Ladies!”
Both Chelsea and Laney groaned when Zach approached the table, but Bex was happy for the distraction. He had his GoPro camera in front of him, the red Record light glowing.
“Do you have any comments that you would like saved for posterity? Perhaps some advice or information for the incoming freshman of, say, 2089?”
“Hopefully, the people of 2089 will be so advanced that they’ll have done away with high school.”
Laney cocked an eyebrow. “You realize 2089 isn’t that far away, right, Chels?”
Chelsea batted at the air. “Whatever. We’re all going to be dead by then.”
“Anything to add, Bex?”
Bex had suddenly gone cold, the din of the cafeteria noise overwhelming.
“I-I’ve got to go.”
Twenty-Three
Bex paced a worn spot in the grass behind the gym. She was only about twenty feet behind the school, but the thick, tall brick wall of the gym separated her from the rest of Kill Devil Hills High and all of the students inside.
If there really were a brick wall between me and the world, Bex thought, then no one else would get hurt.
She pulled out her cell phone and dialed, counting the rings, waiting for the overly cheerful receptionist to pick up the receiver and announce she had reached Dr. Gold’s office. She would talk to Dr. Gold, and Dr. Gold would remind Bex that the only thing she had to do was take care of herself. Dr. Gold would make everything okay with her psychology speak, and Bex would hang up the phone and cut the line to Detective Schuster and her father and get to work pretending that nothing had ever happened.
But Darla… Bex’s mind kept humming even as she tried to stamp out the voice and concentrate on the ringing phone. On the fourth ring, a series of chimes and an automated voice came on to tell Bex that the number had been disconnected. The disembodied voice suggested she check the number and call again. Bex did just that, only to be greeted with the same message. She frowned at the phone, then swiped on her browser, groaning when an emoticon frowny face popped up telling her that she was out of Internet service range.
When the bell rang, Bex jogged to chemistry class, arriving out of breath.
“Hey,” Trevor said. “I was beginning to think you changed schools again.”
Bex offered him a weak smile. “No, I’m just…super busy with an assignment.” She saw the hurt and confusion in his eyes but turned away anyway. “Mr. Ponterra, I’m really behind on my assignment. Can I go to the computer lab and finish up?”
Mr. Ponterra nodded and scribbled off a pass.
Bex was the only person in the ancient computer lab. She fired up one of the machines and tapped her fingernails on the desktop, waiting for the thing to load and connect to the Internet.
“Come on, come on,” she groaned.
Finally, she pulled up a search engine and typed in Dr. Gold’s information, desperate to find a new phone number for the office. The old machine seemed to practically chug and spit out smoke, taking way too long to pop up Bex’s results. But when the page started to load, Bex wished that it never had.
Social Psychologist Elliot Gold Found Murdered near Wake County Home
Social psychologist Dr. Elliot Gold, who had been reported missing two weeks ago, was found dead on the banks of Harris Lake on Sunday afternoon. Her body was discovered by two Raleigh-area residents who had gone fishing.
“We nearly couldn’t recognize what it—what she—was at first,” said Tucker Spayeth, one of the fishermen.
Gold suffered antemortem blunt-force trauma, but authorities say that she was killed by asphyxiation, strangled by a scarf that the murderer left tied around her neck. Her left ring finger was removed. Though that is the signature of North Carolina’s infamous Wife Collector, whose case Gold was closely involved in before he went missing ten years ago, the work was likely that of a copycat’s.
Bex felt her lower lip tremble as tears burned in her eyes.
“Why did he do this?” The words were out of her mouth before she had a chance to consider them.
When authorities went to search Dr. Gold’s place of work, they found that her office had been ransacked, her personal files upended and unorganized. Missing files lead police to believe that Gold’s killer was likely a disgruntled patient.
Bex shook her head, the words on the screen blurring. “He wasn’t a patient,” she mumbled to herself. “He was searching for one.”
“Um, hello?”
Bex jumped, her thighs slamming against the underside of her desk.
Zach blanched.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. You were just talking”—he scanned the room—“to yourself, I guess. I didn’t want to interrupt.”
Bex frantically wiped at her face and sniffed. “No, sorry,” she said, trying to exit the newspaper site. The fan on the old machine spun as an icon whirled around, telling her to wait. She saw Zach’s eyes drift to the page on her screen, then back to Bex.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I was just…coughing…and my eyes were watering.” She stood, shouldered her backpack, and clicked off the computer. “I’m done here if you needed this machine or something.”
She stomped out of the room, head held high, hoping that her facade wouldn’t crack. Once she was out of the building, she pulled out her cell phone and dialed. The phone didn’t even finish a full ring before it was answered.
“How do I do this?”
“What’s that now?”
“I want to find him,” Bex said. “How do I… There are so many websites. How am I supposed to be sure which one he’ll go to?”
There was a long pause before Detective Schuster answered. “Thank you for doing this, Bex. I know it can’t be easy—”
“Just tell me, please. Before I change my mind.”
“Do you have a pen and paper handy?”
• • •
Bex stared at the blinking cursor on her screen, then at the torn-off piece of notebook paper in her hand. She had carefully written down everything the detective told her, then folded the paper and put it in her jeans pocket. She had touched it throughout the day, certain that if she were to lose it, it would somehow be linked back to her. Every hour or so she had smoothed it between her fingers, rolling it in her palm so much that now it almost felt like cloth. The blue lines had started to bleed their color, the red to run. The black ink from her ballpoint pen didn’t smear though, and the websites looked permanent and menacing, like black tattoos across the white paper:
WifeCollectorFanatic, FreeWTC, SerialLover/WifeCollector
She slowly typed the first entry into the search bar, studiously checking each letter against the paper, then hovering her finger over the Search button.
She didn’t really want to know…but soon the guilt was consuming her—guilt for Darla, guilt for her father, guilt for bringing her hideous, warped world to Kill Devil Hills. She hit Search.
The results seemed to take ages to load, then suddenly it was too soon. The pages cascaded down Bex’s screen, each one flashing gory pictures or grainy black-and-whites of her father and splashed with all manner of icons—from bloody butcher’s knives to barbed-wire-wrapped hearts. With each new ping! of the computer, Bex’s resolve chipped away. This wasn’t an attorney doing his best to prove her father was responsible for every reprehensible crime splayed in gory photographs; these were people who believed—and reveled in the fact—that her father was the Wife Collector. Again, the guilt, the slight bit of terror, and that hideous thought: If he’s guilty, you’re guilty too.
Bex bit down hard on her lower lip, the surge of pain a welcome distraction.
“I’m doing this for Darla,” she muttered.
She closed all the other pages, leaving only the first one from Detective Schuster’s list open, her fingers trembling as her cursor circled the Forums menu. She clicked and the page loaded, sterile and white compared to the previous one. Bex watched a list populate questions and topics from tiny, thumbnail-sized avatars of people named GOBLIN, PATDRAGON, or GAMECREATOR with trending subjects like “What would you do for a million dollars?” and “Does this make you sad?”
They were basic questions, but posted on a site created by and populated with people who adored serial killers, these took on an ominous, dark edge and goose bumps trailed along Bex’s bare arms. She slid into her hoodie and pulled the hood up, somehow in need of the extra comfort and protection the fleece cocoon gave her.
“Here goes nothing.”
The detective had given her a list of things to do and write—even the best time to post and what her subject line should say. Bex typed from the paper, focusing only on the letters and not the words they were making up. It was better that way; she wasn’t part of it then. She was just a receptionist, just typing a slew of letters that formed themselves into words that formed ideas without her. She had barely hit Post Topic when the first response pinged in. It was the same cheerful ping she got from every other website on the planet. Somehow she thought a notification from a serial killer page would have a more apropos tone, like a chain saw revving or a woman screaming. Bex’s stomach rolled into a tight knot.
1player1 has responded to your posting BLACK BEAR CUB. Would you like to accept?
Bex could feel the hot breath pumping through her nostrils and burning the tips of her lips. She didn’t want to accept. She didn’t want to accept any of this. The animated question mark throbbed. She clicked.
Hi BETHANNER (great name by the way, true fan, huh?!)!
There is another guy that usually posts here—his screen name is IMHIM_HESME. He knows all about the Wife Collector’s family life. More than I do. What exactly do you want to know about?
More messages popped up, one after another in a terrifying deluge. Some responded to Bex’s question, and most referenced Beth Anne—Bex—in horrible, stomach-sickening references. Bex felt their poison sink into her, making her eyes sting as tears rolled over her cheeks. To some of these “fans,” Beth Anne Reimer was a legend with “royal” blood.
They estimated that she was probably “as bad as her daddy, if not worse” and had not only the benefit of her father’s genes but his tutelage too. One responder stated that Beth Anne diligently visited her father every other weekend, knowing exactly where he was, and took notes. Another said she was probably in an institution. Still a third said that he emailed the Wife Collector’s daughter frequently and that they’d even had a fling.
Bex could feel the sick at the back of her throat as she scanned each message, trying to only find keywords, the things and patterns that Schuster had told her to look out for without actually reading the text.
Two hours later, Bex felt like a wrung-out dishrag. Her head throbbed, her throat felt raw, and it felt as though her tears had run divots down her cheeks. The messages had slowed to a trickle, and Michael and Denise had poked their heads in to say good night and warn her off the computer. Bex had nodded mutely and mumbled, “Almost done,” but kept clicking on each new response. She stopped when she got to the message from IMHIM_HESME. It was simple:
WHO ARE YOU?
It was an email response. Three silent words sent through cyberspace, but Bex felt like they were in her house, in her room, throbbing, growing, suffocating her. It felt like IMHIM_HESME was screaming at her, his breath hot, his hands talons, clawed, coming for her.
He was in the house.
No, Bex told herself, shaking her head. “He” is no one. A name. A jerk. Probably some ten-year-old kid from some country she had never heard of.
WHO ARE YOU?
The words burned Bex’s throat and she whirled in her chair, blinking at the darkness that blanketed her. At some point, the streetlights had gone on. At some point, the cars had stopped drifting up the street and the yellow lights in the neighborhood had clicked off one by one.
It was like Bex was the only one awake in the world. A warning gnawed at her. You brought him here. You have to make sure they’re safe.
She glanced at her phone, ready to text Trevor, Chelsea, and Laney—but what would she say? “Hey, guys, just want to make sure my potentially-a-serial-killer father hasn’t butchered you?”
She tried to laugh at her pitiful joke, but her heart pounded and that unrelenting voice kept saying, Not them… Bex thought of Michael and Denise, poking their heads in and wishing her good night before they ambled across the hall. She cocked her head, hoping for the comforting sound of the television turned down low or one of the Michael’s curtain-sucking snores.
There was only an overwhelming, deafening silence.
No.
Bex jumped out of her chair so fast it fell to the floor behind her, catching on the edge of the bed and sliding to the ground slowly, soundlessly. She picked her way across the heavy pile carpet, each creak and settle of the house sending a shock wave of angst down the back of her neck.
She could hear him breathing.
No! Bex scolded herself. That’s Michael. Or Denise.
But something about the computer in her bedroom, the screen glowing
like a beacon, seemed like an open door inviting the Wife Collector and all his weird groupies into her world—into Michael and Denise’s home. Bex brought evil.
You’re a traitor.
Michael and Denise’s bedroom door was open a crack and Bex racked her mind, trying to remember if that was the way they always left it at night. Or did they close it, and someone had gone in and…
Bex’s heart lodged in her throat.
Blood pulsed through her ears.
She pushed open the door with a single, trembling hand, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the near-pitch-darkness. She didn’t dare call their names. She couldn’t turn on the light, that old urban legend about killers hiding in the darkness under the bed bearing down on her.
Bex could see them then, Michael and Denise, their bodies outlined under the sheet. She stood in the doorway, watching them breathe, needing to make sure that their chests rose and fell rhythmically, even while she felt as if she was betraying her father and Denise and Michael all at once.
I don’t want to be here, Bex thought. I don’t want to do this. She had already changed her name and her looks and moved across the state. She was sure now that anywhere she went, Beth Anne Reimer and the Wife Collector would follow her. For Bex, there was no way out.
She stepped out of the doorway slowly, carefully pulling the door closed as she did. Bex let out a long breath and took another, stepping into her own room and doing a cursory scan. She smacked the lid of the laptop shut and was about to scold herself for letting her eyes play tricks and her imagination run away with her when a slight breeze pulled the edge of one of her curtains. Her breath hitched when she noticed the shoes. Big, heavy boots with rounded toes. Jeans with dirty, fraying hems pooling around the ankles.
