“Smart, too,” Dad adds. “Good choice.”
“You met her where?” Mom asks.
“Hospice,” I say. “Her grandma’s not doing so well.”
Mom looks down at her feet. “Oh, sorry to hear that.”
“Well,” I say, “anything can happen.”
My mother nods. “It’s good to have hope. Anyway, I’m glad you’ve found a nice girl. One that both your father and I approve of.”
“Oh, c’mon, Mom. I’m not in high school anymore. I’m an adult.”
“She’s right, Sav,” my father says. “Mel’ll date whomever she wants to date.”
Mom slaps him playfully. “After that last girl you brought home for dinner, I don’t know if we can allow that.”
She’s referring to Angela, of course. A girl I wasn’t exactly head-over-heels for. She was one of those biker chicks, hardcore, uncaring of rules and social conventions. My mother wasn’t particularly fond of her, either, though my dad was quite interested in her motorcycle.
But that’s all in the past.
Lola is the present…and hopefully the future, too.
Twenty-Six
Three days later, I’m out with Lola. We’re at the coffee place again. It’s a little after five in the afternoon, and the place is starting to get busier. The same old grunge music plays over the speaker. I have a small black coffee; Lola’s sipping her flat white. She’s telling me about her day at work, about this tool named Flint who keeps messing up the proposals.
“I have enough work as it is,” she says between sips. A little white foam colors her upper lip. She swipes her tongue, and it’s gone. “I can’t keep helping him or I’ll never get anything done. And I’ve seen what he does at his desk when he should be working. He’s on Facebook, Reddit, YouTube. I’m not a snitch, but I’m getting very close to telling my boss.”
“Tell the boss,” I say. “Or just take him out to the parking lot and kick his ass, like you did to that creep at The Lounge.”
She laughs. “I don’t know about that. Flint’s not an old man. He would give me a run for my money.”
I shake my head. “I doubt it.” This is when my phone rings, full-on rings. I almost don’t recognize the sound. Hardly anyone besides wrong numbers and people trying to sell me better health insurance calls my cell these days. It’s always text messages and short vibrations that sometimes follow me into my dreams after a million messages with Lola.
“I think that’s you,” Lola says, leaning forward.
I look down. The name across the screen reads Dad. This is even weirder. He hardly ever calls me unless it’s an emergency. He’s not much of a texter, either, though he’ll occasionally send me funny pictures of cats he’s pulled off of Facebook.
My stomach goes sour. I think it could be about my mother, that her cancer aggressively came back overnight, that’s she’s close to dying or just plain dead. Like usual, I’m being paranoid, I know, because I saw her less than two hours ago. She was smiling, singing along to the radio as she reorganized her bedroom closet. Apparently, while she was in hospice, my father took it upon himself to move most of his junk from the basement into her closet, to make room for the medical equipment when she came back home.
He had always been so sure she would come back home.
“You gonna get that?” Lola asks.
My hand’s poised over the ringing phone. I take a deep breath, let it out. Pick it up. I slide my finger across the screen, bring it to my ear.
“H-hello?” My voice is scratchy, like I haven’t spoken in days.
“Mel, they just arrested someone,” my father says. He sounds out of breath.
“What?”
“There’s cops all over our street. Klonowski’s here. They caught some guy dropping off another letter at the house.”
I am, for the moment, speechless. I might scream. Could this be it? Could they have finally caught the Mannequin Man?
“I’ll be right there,” I say and end the call.
Lola’s eyes are wide, she’s hungry for the news. She says, “I can’t tell if you’re going to cry or do cartwheels. What’s going on?”
“I gotta go.” I stand up, and before Lola can even ask, the coffee shop’s door is closing behind me.
Twenty-Seven
When I pull in the driveway, there are no cops. No police tape around the house. No media.
But my parents are on the porch. Dad has his arm around my mother’s shoulders, holding her close. The neighbors are outside, too, their heads huddled together as they gossip about what went down.
“Are you okay?” I ask as I rush toward my parents.
“They caught him,” my mother says. “They caught him.”
But I can’t believe it. Not until I know for sure, a thousand percent. And I will not feel completely safe until that man is dead.
I spin around on my heels, heading back to my car.
“Mel! Where are you going?” my father calls after me.
“To see him.”
I get to the police department in record time. I storm inside. The lady behind the plexiglass asks if she can help, but I ignore her and head for the door leading to the maze of interview rooms, desks, and holding cells.
Of course, it’s locked.
I’m freaking out. I’m filled with anticipation, excitement, fear—you name it.
“Ma’am,” the lady says, “please step back.”
“Klonowski!” I shout as I bang on the glass. “Detective Klonowski!”
The woman is up. I see the flash of her dark uniform as she comes to the door, probably prepared to mace and throw my ass in a holding cell. When the door opens, however, pushing me back a few steps, it’s not her.
It’s Klonowski.
He wears a blazer, jeans, and a sweater beneath the blazer.
“I told you we’d catch him,” Klonowski says. He guides me out of the back room and into the lobby, away from the door. He’s talking in a low voice. “Calm down, Mel. Calm down. You’ve got nothing to worry about anymore.”
“How do you know it’s him?” I say. “Did he confess?”
“He did. He’s told us details about the crime scenes never released to the public. We got a thousand calls once the first murder hit the press, and a thousand more once the second was leaked. Add on about another million since part of Alicia Rodriguez was discovered in Green. All the crazies wanting their fifteen minutes of fame. None of them knew details. And more than a few of them didn’t know what the hell they were confessing to. But this guy we have right now, when I look into his eyes, I know he’s telling the truth.” Another grin.
I say nothing. There’s a heaviness in my stomach, like I’ve eaten something greasy. It’s called doubt.
It can’t be this easy, can it?
He wouldn’t jeopardize his freedom by hand-delivering me a letter. No way in hell.
Klonowski says, “He looks just like the sketch. He had a note on him. Same paper and purple ink as before.” Before I can interject: “And no, it’s not the fella from The Lounge. We looked into him after you told me about the incident between you two. This guy, though, he’s agreed to tell us where the bodies are in exchange for a plea deal. The D.A.’s on her way right now.”
“I have to see him,” I say, “the guy you arrested.”
Klonowski holds up a hand, telling me to pump my brakes. “You will. In due time, Melanie. Right now—”
I push past him. Try for the door handle. He puts a comforting hand on my shoulder.
“I have to, Roger. I have to see him. You don’t understand—” I turn, give Klonowski my best puppy-dog eyes. He may carry himself like a badass, but he is, deep down, a softy. I once ran into him at the park with his kids. He was playing tag with them. They were all laughing like crazy.
Klonowski sighs. “Jesus, Mel. I shouldn’t be doing this. FBI’s already on my ass—”
I’ve got him. He’s on the hook, and I’m reeling him in, but I don’t have time for games. If
the man they have handcuffed in one of those interview rooms isn’t the Mannequin Man, then that means he’s still out there. Lurking. Waiting.
For me.
“Just open the door, Roger,” I say.
Another sigh. He grips the handle, pushes. Then he’s leading me to Interview Room #3. He opens another door so I can see the one-way glass. The man sitting at the table is hunched over. His hair is long and scraggly. He is pale, gaunt, blue rings under crazy eyes. He is the same age as the man I saw in Cocoa’s all those years ago.
It could be him…
He could be the Mannequin Man. The resemblance is there. My body has gone cold, the blood once pumping through my veins now like slush. Is it him? Is it really?
No.
No, it’s not.
The harder I look, the more he changes. The man I saw at Cocoa’s with Brandy Hartfield’s remains, that man’s face is burned into my memory. Five years have passed, but how much can a person change in five years? Not that much, can they? I don’t think so. They can gain some weight, lose some, but their likeness is always there, under the surface.
“Mel?”
“That’s not him,” I say.
“Melanie. Come on, let’s get out of here. You’re flustered, okay? In a day or two, we’ll do an official lineup. We’ll have him speak lines. It’ll be fine.”
“That’s not him, Roger. It’s not.”
He nods, but I can tell he doesn’t believe me. I’m ushered out of the police department.
I feel completely lost.
Twenty-Eight
Two days later, I go to an official lineup. All the suspects look alike. All of them step forward and say, “I’ll kill you, you stupid bitch.” None of them are the Mannequin Man. Of this, I am absolutely sure.
Three days after that, they recover a body in Cuyahoga Valley National Park. It was buried about a quarter-mile south of Boston Mills and Brandywine Ski Resort, not far from the Ohio Turnpike. The remains belonged to Victim #2, Maya Denton, abducted from Chillicothe during the week of Christmas six years ago. Her body was decomposed, of course, but the coroner found deep grooves on her skull where the Mannequin Man had used a knife to cut her face off with a shaky, overexcited hand. She was buried naked. Her head was shaved.
The man in custody, the supposed Mannequin Man, whose real name is Cooper Wymer, said in an interview that was somehow leaked to the press that he had been skiing at Boston Mills for the weekend with a couple of friends from work. He had the body in the back of his car. He thought of it as a trophy, but the smell was getting bad, and he didn’t want to get caught. So he picked a random spot in the park, secluded, not traveled through much, and he dug a grave about four feet deep. He marked the trees with the same knife he had used to cut her face off.
The headlines read:
Mannequin Man Caught! Nearly Two Decades of Terror Officially Comes to an End!
The Monster: Face of Psychopath Suspected of Killing Nine Young Women in Ohio, Midwest.
There’s a picture next to this last one of the man I saw in the interview room but did not see in Cocoa’s. The national news is having a field day.
It’ll all blow over in the next week or two. Then in a year, after the trial, the Mannequin Man will be forgotten, the same as his victims, as he rots in prison, waiting to be executed.
I am sitting on the back porch, trying to enjoy the sunshine. It’s closing in on June. That’s my favorite month. I love how the flowers have bloomed, I love the sun, the constant stream of warm days.
I am not excited now, though.
Because he is still out there.
“But how did he know where the body of that girl was?” Lola asked me a day ago when I told her how I really felt. We were at this little restaurant called The Lockwood Tavern. She munched away at a cheeseburger, while I could barely eat my quesadilla. “You think the real killer just told this random stranger?”
“Maybe it was his friend or something. I don’t know.” But as I think about that, I realize how implausible that would be. This guy will probably be put to death. At the very least, he will spend the rest of his days in a cell, surrounded by people just as vile as him. Who would do that for someone? Who would try to help a serial killer?
“Mel,” Lola said, trailing her fingers over my palm. “Honeybun.” She called me that ever since I told her about how I saved the wrapper from the first time we met. We’ve been going strong for a while now. I want to tell her I love her, but I’m afraid. What if she doesn’t love me back? “They found the body because he killed that poor girl and buried her. That’s it. Now he’s locked up, and he’ll fry for what he did.”
“Ohio doesn’t use the electric chair. They do lethal injection. And not very often. People sit on death row for years, making appeal after appeal. I think most of the people just eventually die of old age,” I said.
“More than they deserve.” Lola shook her head. “Whatever. He can’t hurt you anymore. He’s gone. And pretty soon he’ll give up the locations of the other bodies, and all those families that suffered for years will get to have some closure.”
“They won’t find any other bodies,” I said.
“Why?”
“He doesn’t know where they’re at. Because he’s not the killer. Something’s not right.”
“Mel, you need to relax with the conspiracy theories.” She leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. For the first time in our relationship, I didn’t feel sparks when her lips touched me. “And I mean no offense. Sometimes, that light in the sky is just an airplane, not aliens from the planet Beebulbox or whatever…just like how sometimes killers confess to the murders they actually did.”
“But why confess?”
“He got caught. He was fucking with you and he got caught.”
“But it would be easy to make up some bullshit excuse. Like a ‘Don’t shoot the messenger’ thing. Right?”
“Maybe he’s been feeling guilty or something. I don’t know, Melanie. I’m not a shrink. People feel guilty. It’s basic human nature.”
“Not people who cut the faces off young women. Can you even call a person like that ‘people’?”
Lola shook her head, signifying the conversation was over. She doesn’t like this dark stuff. She usually wants to talk about puppies and rainbows. I couldn’t blame her.
All of this, it still bothers me. This Wymer guy bothers me a lot.
“Explain his looks,” I said.
“Mel, please. I’m trying to eat. Don’t make me picture that creep again.”
“He’s not the guy I saw. I’m telling you.”
“He looked just like the sketch. You’re being paranoid—no, this is going beyond paranoia. This is insanity.” She pushed her plate across the table. Raised her hand at a passing waiter. “Can we get the check?”
“Boxes?” he asked.
“No, thanks.”
The dinner ended prematurely, and I spent the night in my own bed. Well, that’s not exactly true. I stayed up until the ungodly hour of four in the morning, scouring the internet for everything I could find about Wymer, since Klonowski was keeping things close to the chest. “Mel, if you don’t stop this nonsense, you’re going to end up in trouble,” he had told me the last time I went to the police department and demanded he not close the case so soon. He assured me they were far from closing it, but I could see in his eyes that he had become complacent. The arrest and confession and the body were enough for him.
I didn’t find much on Wymer. Nothing that hasn’t been in the papers and on the evening news. He mostly lived off the grid. But an address came up out in the country under a Helen Wymer, about thirty miles from the Falls. A mother, maybe? He wasn’t staying there. He had an apartment in Akron. The police tossed the place, I know that, but what about this farmhouse? I don’t think that’s where the other bodies are. Because I don’t think Wymer did it. But I do think it’s an important piece of information. Somehow. I’m sure Klonowski’s already aware of it. He’s got t
o be.
Then again, it could be a coincidence. Helen Wymer could be unrelated.
I decided that night that I would have to do some investigating on my own.
What’s that old adage? If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself?
Yep, and in my case it’s never been truer.
Twenty-Nine
The farmhouse sits far back from the road. Trees crowd the driveway. The lawn is overgrown, the siding is dirty, a window is boarded up. There’s a sign in the ground that says FORECLOSED.
I’m only thirty miles away from home, but out here in the country it seems like thousands. I turn into the drive. Gravel crunches beneath my tires. It’s dusk. I don’t plan on staying here very long. I imagine it gets darker than dark when the sun is gone, without the light pollution from nearby cities.
I go up the winding driveway. My heart is beating fast in my chest. I slow to a stop, my brakes squeaking, and out here the sound carries for a long way. My headlights paint the garage door. It’s crooked, peeling.
I don’t think anyone lives here. It would be detrimental to their health. Still, my mind won’t leave it be. Ever since I found the place online, it has haunted my dreams.
Helen Wymer is indeed the mother of Cooper Wymer. I’ve confirmed that by doing some more digging.
I wonder, as I look on at the looming house, whether the police have been through here yet. If they haven’t, I imagine they will.
I cut the engine, leave the lights on, and get out of the car. That’s when it hits me just how obsessed I’ve become. So obsessed that I haven’t told anyone where I was going. Not Lola, not my parents, not even my cat. They already think I’m crazy for not believing Wymer to be the Mannequin Man. If I told them I was driving thirty miles away to investigate a dilapidated farmhouse owned by his mother God knows how many years ago, they’d put me in a straitjacket and lock me in a room with padded walls.
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