by Somer Canon
“Stephanie’s car was found abandoned out near that little pond where Matthew Hart’s truck was found,” Terry said, sinking into an armchair by the window, looking weary.
“Oh no,” I said, putting my hands to my face and pushing the picture of Stephanie’s head swinging from a hook by its hair out of my head.
“We’re trying not to come to any conclusions just yet,” he said. “She showed up for work this morning and checked in with some people, but then she said that she had to talk with someone and she wasn’t seen or heard from again,” he said, putting a large hand over his eyes and looking ready for a nap. I felt a moment of pity for Terry, seeing how he had spent such a large chunk of his day worried about this woman. Whatever their relationship, she meant something to him.
“Terry,” I said in my most empathetic voice that I used on the bereaved that I interviewed for the site. “I’m sure maybe she just needed a day of quiet to herself. Maybe it’s something else, like she parked her car and went to go sit by the pretty little pond and then decided to go for a walk in the woods and got lost. Has anyone thought to do a search through the woods?”
“No,” Terry said. “And there’s no reason to. She wore expensive shoes, and she hated bugs and the outdoors. It would be totally out of character for her to go on a spontaneous hike through the woods.”
I sat on my bed, looking at him, trying to think of something to say, then ultimately deciding that the less I said, the better. Either Grenadine was pulling more strings than she let on, or the officials in that town were just willfully incompetent. How were they not staking out that pond, seeing as it was obviously the prowling ground for the murderer? And not searching the woods surrounding the pond was beyond careless. I knew that they wouldn’t find anything, but they didn’t.
“Did she try to contact you at all?” He asked me suddenly. My blood was thundering through my veins with such force that I could actually hear it rushing through my ears. I hoped that my skin tone didn’t change and that I was as cool and innocent looking as I was trying to look.
“No,” I said. “The most I heard of her wanting to talk to me was what you told me.”
Terry sighed and leaned his head back. My eyes caught on his lovely throat for a moment, but I kept my ass planted on the bed and away from him.
“I don’t want to be a worry wart,” he said. “I don’t want to be like my mom and immediately start assuming the worst, but this is so unlike her. In all the years I have known her, she’s never gone out of communication before. Never. Not even as a teenager. You could always reach her.”
“Maybe she met someone,” I said, trying to sound helpful while knowing I was full of shit. “You know, maybe she had a rendezvous going on and they met at the pond and left in his car and she just hasn’t gotten back yet. Everybody slips up from their routines sometimes. Everybody.”
“You’re so sweet to try to make this better on me, honey,” he said, looking at me and smiling. “I hope you’re right, even though I don’t think you are.” He got up and sat next to me on the bed, putting a hand comfortably on my upper thigh.
I didn’t pull away from him right away, I didn’t want to make myself look suddenly frigid towards him because it might draw unwanted attention and suspicion. I let his hand sit there, fingers just inches away from the part of me that he knew too well, smiling into his face as warmly as I could manage. When I felt that I had let a companionable silence sit long enough, I got up from the bed and walked over to the chair at the desk.
“Look, I’m here for you if you need me,” I lied. “I really am very busy, please don’t think that I’m blowing you off. Feel free to stay here with me or turn the channel on the TV and watch what you want. I just need to get some notes straight and get some writing done.”
I hoped that his polite nature would overrule any desire to impose on a busy person and send him away from me. I sat turned in my chair towards him, smiling patiently at him. I saw the hesitation in his face and felt my smile start to become strained.
“No, that’s okay, honey,” he said, getting up from the bed and making me the most relieved person on the planet. “I’ve got some stuff of my own to do. Will I see you tomorrow?”
“Sure,” I lied.
He leaned down and kissed my forehead, then my cheek, then a wet peck on my lips that I accepted but didn’t return. I smiled up at him when he pulled away and he stroked my cheek before he turned and walked to the door.
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow, then,” he said.
“Okay. Look, I’m sure everything’s fine. I’m sure she’ll turn up and she’ll be horrified at how much worry she’s caused,” I said, making sure that I looked appropriately concerned.
He smiled at me and blew me a kiss before walking out of the door, closing it quietly behind him. I deflated and slumped back into my chair when he was gone. If that fairy hadn’t made sure that I was a witness to what had happened to Stephanie, I could tell Terry to leave me alone with no worries.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The next day, a frantic call was put in to the local 911 call center by a woman named Mildred Fleming. According to the call, a box was found on the front desk of the ASPCA where Mrs. Fleming volunteered that contained two severed human hands. Although the police released no name as to whom the hands could have belonged to, Terry told me that it was strongly believed that they belonged to Stephanie D’Agostino because of the manicure and a ring one hand still wore.
I did my best to assure Terry that severed hands didn’t mean that she was murdered, that a person could live after having their hands (neatly) removed, but he knew that she had met a gruesome end in a manner very similar to how Matthew Hart and Martin Hamrick had. Terry appeared agonized over this knowledge, but I thought that he was getting off pretty easy considering he didn’t see and smell what had truly become of Stephanie in that god-forsaken stew pot. He didn’t see the look of fear and helplessness that Stephanie wore right before a gutting knife was plunged into her stomach. He didn’t have her glare at him in betrayal as he slunk away from her, leaving her to the fate of the fairy.
I couldn’t report more than what was known to the police at the time, and I did my best to keep from writing something that would hurt the investigation, like publishing the theory that the hands belonged to Stephanie before the police made that public knowledge. I still had hopes that the state police detective who had blown me off earlier would eventually talk to me and pissing him off by publishing conjecture was not going to help me. I could confide in my roommate those theories though.
Anais was in a froth over the new turn things had taken. I think that she was telling herself that I was safe from the murderer of this town because so far all of the victims had been men. Once a woman was found to have received that treatment, I was no longer at the bottom of the possible future victims list in Ana’s mind.
Her telling me that maybe I should come home meant a lot. The incredible amount of traffic being driven to the site because of that case was more than paying my hotel bill. Anais had even told me that our local newspaper had published a letter to the editor where a reader basically stated that the journalist who profiled Anais, myself, and our site was a prejudiced pig who obviously had never actually visited the site and seen the impressive writing and investigation put into every file. I knew that that had made Anais feel immeasurably better and I felt a twang of pride myself. We both worked very hard and it was wonderful that it was being noticed as such rather than the attention grab that the journalist had tried to make it out to be. But the fact that my ambitious partner was starting to wonder if it was worth it for me to stay in town amused me because I think it was then that I realized that all along I had been every bit as ambitious as Anais. Maybe more.
I did my best to assure Anais that I was going to be just fine. She let the subject of my coming home drop but made sure that I knew that it wasn’t closed. I smiled into the phone, hearing the conviction in her voice and relishing her feelings of lo
ve and protection towards me.
I hadn’t seen Grenadine in over a week. Instead of relaxing, her absence was making me even more paranoid than when she was visiting me daily. If she stayed gone too long, I feared that her crumbling sanity would cause her to forget that we had a sort of rough truce between us. Maybe she would pop into my room with no knowledge of the agreement that she insisted on, and she would instead add me to her stew pot. I’d been dreaming about that stew pot every night since I laid eyes on it. I saw Stephanie’s head bobbing in the hot liquid, looking at me in anger. I dreamed that I could smell the stew and that it made my stomach spasm in disturbingly hungry desire as it had when I was there. I dreamed that Grenadine pointed that hooked gutting knife at me and laughed. I slept heavily still, but it stopped being anything resembling peaceful.
I’d relented where Terry was concerned. He wouldn’t leave me alone no matter how evasive I tried to be, so I caved and let him take me to dinner and bed a few times. He was still a bit of a vanilla lover, but it was nice having a warm body next to me in bed when I fell asleep. He was in mourning and it was obvious that I was his source of comfort on those nights. I didn’t feel good about it, I admit. I wasn’t a good person for pretending like I knew nothing about Stephanie’s disappearance and I was protecting myself and no one else by manufacturing my ignorance. Still, it was better than uttering the truth of the situation to another person.
The readers of Killer Chronicles voted to call the killer that I was supposedly tracking the Appalachian Butcher. My neurotic mind hated the name. I didn’t like not being right and I didn’t like having to admit that a bunch of internet commenters were better at naming a murderer than I was. I was supposed to be good at stuff like that and that particular failing had played out far too publicly for my liking.
It was a week after Stephanie’s “disappearance” that the state police publicly acknowledged that they believed that the hands found at the ASPCA belonged to her. Once this was released, I went through the phone call flaming hoops again to try to get one of the detectives on the case to talk to me. Finally, a Sgt. Todd Blaniar took my call. He was tired, and he didn’t want to be talking to me, but he answered my few generic questions amiably enough and gave his permission to use it as an official statement from the state police. It was good for the site to be able to write official statements given directly to me. It helped cement our credibility as investigative journalists rather than sensationalist tabloid writers seeking to exploit people in order to glorify murderers. I guess once a member of the press became one of the victims the police decided to try to be a bit more accommodating when it came to answering questions, and I can’t imagine how many phone calls that man had to field on top of his workload, but I was really very appreciative of his time. I made sure to tell him so.
“That’s no problem, Ms. Cunningham,” he said to me. “You just remember to use this information with respect to the people left behind in the mess that their loved ones’ deaths caused.”
“We try for that in every case that we cover, sir,” I said. “We aren’t trying to cause more pain than has already been inflicted.”
“That’s good,” Sgt. Blaniar said before hanging up the phone.
Later that night, I told Terry that I had gotten Sgt. Blaniar to answer some questions and he stopped chewing his hot dog and stared at me with wide eyes.
“What?” I asked.
“Todd Blaniar?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I answered.
“That man is really hard-nosed about talking to the media. He would get furious with Stephanie for getting information that he didn’t want her to have. The media have rights to get information, but Sgt. Blaniar made it very clear to all of us that he preferred that we be mum about some of the bigger crimes that go on around here. Theft, murder, fatal car accidents, stuff like that. One time, there was this car accident on I-79 and Stephanie got the name of the victim before the police released it and she posted it on the paper’s Facebook page, where the victim’s family saw it and the police caught heck from the family for taking so long to inform them. Blaniar was furious,” Terry said, resuming his hot dog consumption. I smiled at his use of the word “heck” instead of “hell.” Terry had a hell of a long stick up his ass.
“Was it you who told Stephanie the name?” I asked, still smiling.
“Course it was me,” he said. “I shouldn’t have told her the name so soon, I knew better than to trust her to use discretion, but I ain’t always wearing my smartest head. I was more careful with what I told her after that. Like I said, the public has the right to know certain things, but those things need to be handled in a way that she didn’t seem to fully grasp.”
He placed the half-eaten hot dog down into the wax paper-clad basket and stared at the table pensively. I looked at him for a minute, waiting for him to speak again. When he didn’t, I threw a French fry at him. He looked up and gave me one of his devastatingly gorgeous smiles. The man could have been on the cover of GQ.
“I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead,” he said, the smile melting from his features. “She was my friend. I’m being unfair.”
“Everybody has a bad side, Terry,” I said. “You got to see it more than most because of your close relationship. But you saw her good side too, and you must have seen it more than the bad side if you two stayed close for so long, right?”
“Eh,” he shrugged.
“There’s no shame in truly knowing someone, bad side and all,” I said.
“Well, we weren’t always just friends,” he said softly, watching his large hands pick at his hot dog bun. I was about to snatch the thing out of its basket and finish it myself. West Virginia really has the best hot dogs and T&L were a favorite of mine since childhood. I’d eat four or five in one sitting, no problem. I was also hyper-focused on the hot dog because I really didn’t want to listen to him confess to having had sex with Stephanie a few dozen times over the years.
“I’m thinking about getting another dog,” I said.
“Wait, let me say this,” he said. I sighed loudly and settled back into my chair.
“Stephanie and I weren’t always purely platonic friends,” he said. “On more than one occasion, we made love.”
I tried not to cringe. I find the term “making love” to be a phrase used by people who are too intimidated by the word “sex.” For such a fun activity, it should be more commonly referred to by some of the more playful terms. Boinking, screwing, fucking, banging, boning, nailing, or having sex. “Making love” just added connotations to the act that made me feel icky, and I certainly didn’t feel any real love towards Terry, who I had just ‘sproinged’ before offering to treat him to hot dogs.
“Terry, I don’t need to know this,” I said firmly.
“I want you to know,” he said, reaching out and taking my hand. “I am finding myself maybe almost in love with you.”
That “aw shucks” thing would have worked on me like a tonic at any other time, but it upset me then and there. Terry professing feelings for me was a cluster fuck that I really did not need in my life.
“I’ve made a big mistake,” I said to him.
“What?” He asked, taken aback by my reaction to his romantic words.
“Terry, I do not have a place in my life for love or anything serious. Now, I came into this with the understanding that this was casual. I live six hours away. I travel a lot and I’ve got some personal things going on that make having a serious, loving relationship with you flat-out impossible,” I said, trying to remain calm.
“But,” he stammered. “You’ve been there for me during this rough time. You’ve comforted me and made love to me in my time of pain. You’ve been a compassionate and soulful person to me during this whole affair. Christina, how can you say that you don’t feel the same for me?”
“Because I don’t,” I said. “Terry, I don’t want to hurt you, but this was always supposed to be temporary. I mean, you set the terms.”
“Well I can’t
help how I feel,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest and pouting. He was actually pouting.
“Neither can I,” I countered, getting up and walking out of the restaurant. We had come together in my car, but I figured he could get a ride back to the hotel to get his truck easily enough, so I didn’t feel bad about leaving him in there by himself.
Nearly an hour later, I was sitting in my hotel room stewing on the situation at the restaurant for two reasons. One, I was very unhappy that my fuck buddy was trying to put the emotional moves on me. Two, I really did want another hot dog and had left before I got the opportunity to do so.
I was pacing the room, seriously considering going back for a takeout box of hot dogs when a harsh knock at my door scared the hell out of me. I walked to the door and looked out of the peephole to see that it was an agitated Terry. I put my forehead onto the door, closed my eyes, and fully prepared myself to not answer the door. He knocked again, more softly this time.
“Please let me in,” he said.
“Please stop this,” I said.
“Christina,” he began. “Please. I have more to say. I told you that I love you, not that I want to get married and make you give up your way of life for me. Surely there’s some way for us to make this work.”
“Terry, there’s nothing to make work. This was a casual fling and nothing more. I do not return your feelings,” I said. We were talking softly to each other through the door, and I preferred that to having him in my room, trying to touch me as he talked. Having a door between us was safer.
“I don’t believe you,” he said. “I think you’re just saying that to keep a distance between us so that it won’t be hard on you when you have to leave here. But Christina, it doesn’t have to be this way. I’ve got no problem changing up my schedule so that I’m off on Fridays, and I can drive to you on Friday and spend the weekends with you. Over time, who knows? You were originally a local girl, you’ve got roots around here. And you can do your job remotely. This has a lot of possibilities to it.”
