The Ophelia Killer

by Valerie Geary

“Is this an interview?”

  “Off the record,” he says.

  “You and I both know there’s no such thing as off the record.” This time the smile she flashes him is whole and bright. He could get used to her smiling at him like that.

  Chapter 10

  Over the next three months, Jimmy and Brett meet regularly at the bar across from the old bank building. Sometimes they meet during Brett’s thirty-minute lunch break. Sometimes it’s at night, after her shift ends, which Jimmy prefers because they don’t have to rush that way. Regardless of the time, Jimmy always orders a beer, and Brett always orders a Coke. They share a basket of fries and talk about the investigation without actually talking about the investigation. She tells him nothing that he doesn’t already know, nothing Detective Rausch hasn’t already stated in his useless press conferences. But Jimmy doesn’t push her. He wants to know what’s happening with the case, but not at the expense of their newly budding friendship.

  One cold and damp evening in the middle of March, Brett bursts into the bar along with a gust of wind and sideways rain. She shakes water from her jacket and sinks into what Jimmy has started calling their confessional. It’s the same corner booth where he first learned her name. Raindrops glisten on her cheeks, but she doesn’t bother to brush them away. For the first time since they started meeting like this, she orders a beer.

  “Rough day?” Jimmy asks.

  She keeps her lips pinched tight as she shakes her head.

  Only after the beer arrives, after she’s taken a long drink from the glass, does she speak. “It’s so goddamn frustrating. Every tip I bring to Rausch, he slaps down. I feel like I’m over there beating my head against a brick wall. What’s the point of having a tip line if you aren’t going to follow up on the tips?”

  She looks across the table, her eyes searching for something. “Where’s Trixie?”

  “I have to leave her in the car now,” Jimmy says. “Last time we were here, she tried to eat someone else’s hamburger.”

  Brett laughs and takes another drink of beer. Jimmy waits a few minutes until she looks more relaxed before bringing up the investigation again.

  “What kind of tips is Rausch ignoring?” He doesn’t think she’ll answer. She’s always brushed him off before.

  Jimmy doesn’t know what’s different about today, if the weather is making her restless, or if the case has been dragging on too long for her liking, or if she’s just reached a breaking point with Rausch. She says, “This girl called a few weeks ago. She told me she tried to talk to someone last year after Cherish was in the news, but no one ever called her back. She goes to Willamette. Lives in a house with some other girls. She said that last June, they kept seeing this dark blue sedan. It would drive by their house late at night. Sometimes it would park outside and idle there for hours before driving away again.”

  “They didn’t call the police when they saw it out there?”

  “The first time it happened, no, because they didn’t really think it was a big deal. The second time the girls called their boyfriends. The boys came over with baseball bats and flashlights and their big hulking jock bodies and chased the car away. But it came back a third time, and that’s when they were really spooked. They turned off all the lights, locked the doors, and huddled together in the living room with kitchen knives. Of course, they should have called the cops, but they didn’t. Because they’re young and stupid and think they’re invincible. Now Rausch is using that as an excuse not to follow up. He says they’re just trying to get attention.”

  Her face pinches with anger that she’s trying to keep tucked away. “If someone had listened to them last year, the first time, they could have increased patrols in the area, or, I don’t know, sent out a bulletin with the description of the car. Of course, ‘dark blue sedan’ doesn’t narrow things down very much, does it?”

  “But it’s better than nothing,” they say at the same time.

  She smiles, but there is no energy to it. She gestures to Jimmy’s half-empty pint glass. “Want another? I’m buying.”

  A few minutes later, she returns to their table with full and frothing pints.

  “The creepiest part—” She sits back down, splashing a little beer over the side of her glass. “They said that the only reason they even noticed someone out there was because they could see him smoking. They would look out their window and see the cherry ember glow of a cigarette. It would flare hot for a second, then fade, then flare.”

  Jimmy’s chest pinched as he thought about Cherish’s roommates and the man they saw smoking outside their house in the days before Cherish’s murder.

  “Where is it?” he asks.

  “What? Their house?”

  He nods. Brett tells him and asks if he’s going to go out there.

  “I might. Seems like it could be something worth checking out.”

  There’s a satisfied look in her eyes like she was hoping this would be the outcome. “There’s another one,” she says, leaning forward with her elbows on the table. “The coach for the OSU girls’ soccer team caught a man lurking in the locker room during practice. She went after him, got a few hits in, but he managed to slip her grasp somehow.”

  “Certainly that’s something Rausch would be interested in.”

  “You’d think.” Her jaw tightens. So do her fists. “He laughed and said the girls’ should take it as a compliment and that the coach should mind her own business. He said the guy we’re looking for wouldn’t be so brazen, that this was probably some pervy liberal arts teacher trying to get his rocks off. Harmless. That’s what he said. Harmless.” The second time she says the word, she spits it out like a bitter seed. “Like the first girl, this coach said she called last year, but no one followed up. Jimmy, both of these calls came in before Natasha was killed. ”

  Her hands encircle the pint glass on the table in front of her. Since she brought it over, she hasn’t taken a single sip.

  “I keep thinking if I’d been the one to take those calls, if I knew about them, maybe I could have done something, you know? Maybe I could have stopped him before he got to Natasha.” Her voice trembles.

  “Hey.” Jimmy reaches across the table and lays his hand on Brett’s arm. “It might not have made a difference, you know? Even if you had been able to follow up on those tips? They still might not have led you to him in time.”

  She moves her arm out from under his grasp. “Thanks, but I’m not asking you to try and make me feel better about this.”

  “Then what are you asking me to do?” Jimmy pulls his hand back, the words coming out more sharply than he intended.

  “The Roach is fumbling this case. He’s focused on the wrong things, and if someone doesn’t point him in a different direction, in a few months, we’re all going to have another dead girl on our hands.” She leans toward him. “I’ve read every single article you’ve written about Cherish and Natasha. I know about your research into other cases, too, about your theories that the Ophelia Killer has killed more than just the five women we’re focused on in Salem. They talk about you in meetings. Hell, Rausch even has you at the top of his suspect list.”

  “You could probably get fired for telling me that,” Jimmy says.

  “Probably, but I’m willing to take that risk if it means catching the real killer before he takes another girl.”

  “Rausch could be right about me, you know.”

  Brett snorts a laugh. “Sure, he could.”

  “Why is this so important to you?” He can see something simmering behind the obvious disappointment and frustration of working with someone as incompetent as Detective Rausch.

  She shakes her head. “I don’t want anyone else getting hurt.”

  “It seems like it’s something more personal than that, too,” he presses her.

  “I should go. I’m meeting friends.” She fumbles in her pocket for cash to pay for their fries and beers.

  “I can get it,” Jimm
y says, but she ignores him, lays the money on the table, and slides out of the booth.

  It’s only after he follows her out to the parking lot, when they’re standing beneath the awning of the bar, pulling on their coats, and trying to decide if there’s going to be a break in the rain, that she tells him the truth.

  “You’re right, you know,” she says. “It is personal.”

  White clouds of breath overlap and disappear above their heads.

  “When I was fourteen…” She speaks so quietly Jimmy has to lean in to hear her even though they’re already standing shoulder to shoulder.

  “When I was fourteen, my older sister was murdered. Her body was found in the woods near my grandparents’ house in Washington. The police.” She pauses to take a deep breath, and her face tilts toward the sky, a black and endless void. “They were pretty much useless. I don’t remember much, but Rausch reminds me of the idiots investigating my sister’s case. I became a cop because I didn’t want anyone else’s family to go through what my family went through, and now—” She cuts herself off and shakes her head like she’s trying to clear away unwanted memories. “I don’t want another girl to die, that’s all. It doesn’t seem like too much to ask.”

  “It’s not.” Jimmy squeezes her elbow gently. “I’ll talk to the girl who saw the car and to the soccer coach and see what I can find out from them. We still have five months, Bretty. There’s still time to catch this guy.”

  She tilts her head to look at him, a furrow forming between her eyebrows. “What did you call me?”

  The nickname just slipped out. Jimmy doesn’t even know where it came from. His cheeks burn, and he’s grateful they’re standing outside where she can’t see how completely embarrassed he is.

  “Sorry,” he stammers. “I don’t know what—I didn’t think—”

  “It’s fine,” she says, resting her hand on his arm. “Most of the time, people just call me Brett or Buchanan. But, sometimes it’s ‘hey, bitch.’ So, Bretty is at least better than that. Actually, I think I kind of like it. Only from you, though.” Then she turns her focus onto the zipper of her coat, struggling to get it closed. “I have to stop coming here. These fries aren’t doing me any favors.”

  “You could always order the salad next time?” He’s trying to make her laugh again, to smile at least. He’s been at this longer than she has and knows how easily this work of chasing monsters can leave you brittle and shattered. You have to find outlets, figure out a way to find some good, some humanity, even in the face of all this death. You have to cling to the parts of you that are soft and kind. Like humor. Like laughter.

  A smile trembles on her lips, though it doesn’t make it to her eyes. Then she says, “Come for a run with me? Tomorrow morning. Meet me at Lake Wirth at sunrise. Bring Trixie. You work off the beer. I’ll work off these fries.”

  He says yes, even though he’s not a runner. He will say yes to anything if it means spending more time with her. Plus, he wants to find out more about her sister. Maybe he can dig up more information about what happened with the investigation, where it went wrong, why it stalled. Maybe he can even bring Brett and her family some small amount of closure.

  After agreeing on a time to meet the following day, Jimmy ducks out from beneath the awning first. He waves over his shoulder as he races to the car, where Trixie waits with her nose pressed to the glass.

  Chapter 11

  Two months later and five pounds lighter, Jimmy finally has something to show Brett. They’ve been meeting at Lake Wirth three days a week to run, rain or shine, since the middle of March. Jimmy hasn’t gotten much faster with all that practice, but Brett has. She and Trixie often speed ahead of him, chasing down the dirt path that circles the lake, growing smaller as they move farther away.

  As April becomes May, the weather turns from fog and damp to bright and warm. Flowers bloom, trees blossom, Jimmy’s allergies start acting up, but he and Trixie still meet up with Brett every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning. They part ways after every run. Jimmy goes home to shower, change, and feed Trixie breakfast before heading to the press room. He assumes Brett does something similar, ending up at the offices where Rausch’s special unit is still spinning its wheels.

  Finally, with three weeks in May already gone, Jimmy asks Brett to come over to his apartment after work rather than meet up at the bar. She gives him a curious look but says she’ll be there around six. He spends the rest of the day nervously preparing. He cleans the apartment and burns a sheet pan of tater tots, which means he has to buy more from the store. By some luck, he doesn’t burn the second batch. When Brett arrives at his apartment, Jimmy has already opened a bottle of wine, drank a glass, and is feeling more relaxed.

  Brett greets Trixie with a hearty scratch behind the ears, then she holds out a carton of butter pecan ice cream. “I brought dessert.”

  He puts the ice cream in the freezer and offers her a glass of wine. When he hands her the glass, he gestures to the table where the file waits. He skips the small talk and cuts straight to the point. “I called in a favor with a friend who was able to get a copy of your sister’s case from the Crestwood Police Department.”

  Brett brushes her fingers over the single folder lying on the table. “Is this it? It’s pretty thin.”

  Too thin. When Jimmy told Annabeth he needed everything she could get on a seventeen-year-old case from a small police department in northern Washington, he thought it would take a few weeks. She called after only three days to tell him the Crestwood police had sent over less than thirty pages of information. He must have sounded disappointed because she rushed to add that she’d double-checked, triple-checked, asked if there wasn’t something else, some other place the file might be hiding? But no, the Crestwood receptionist said that, except for the physical evidence which would obviously remain with the department, everything Jimmy got is everything the Crestwood police have on file for Margot Buchanan.

  “Is this a joke?” Brett says, opening the folder and scanning the top sheet.

  He slaps the folder closed. “Are you sure you want to do this? There’s no going back once you crack this open. You won’t be able to unsee the things that are in here.”

  “Are there pictures?”

  “A few.” They’re poor black-and-white photocopies but detailed enough to give a person nightmares.

  But the pictures aren’t what Jimmy’s worried about. He read through the notes the second they landed on his desk. Though there aren’t as many as he’d hoped, they’re still gruesome enough to shatter her. According to the file, Brett was only thirteen when her older sister was murdered. Almost fourteen, when Brett’s telling the story. Too young, either way, Jimmy thinks. What she remembers from that time, what she’s told Jimmy when they’ve talked about it, is a watered-down version of the truth. Her understanding of events is basically whatever her grandparents told her and whatever she’s been able to find in newspaper archives since then, which isn’t very much.

  Margot Buchanan went missing in August of 1964. Police were notified. The town looked for her. A few days later, they found her body in a wooded area. The detective told Brett’s parents that Margot had been murdered. The official cause of death was blunt force trauma. The police didn’t tell them anything else. At least, Brett told Jimmy, she was never told anything else.

  Your sister is dead. Someone killed her. That’s all her parents told her about the matter. And when she asked questions, they told her they didn’t know anything else and started crying. So what Brett knows now about the case, what she’s told Jimmy about it, is even less than what’s inside this too-thin file folder. He knows from reading through it already that this small stack of pages will change her life forever. They will rewrite her history.

  Brett pulls her hand away from the folder. Her shoulders stiffen as if she’s steeling herself for what she’s about to see. She takes a drink of wine, then looks at Jimmy and nods. Jimmy lifts his hand, giving her full acc
ess.

  Brett pulls a chair out from the table, sits down, and slides the folder close to her. She spends a moment staring at the cover before finally opening it. Jimmy sits in a chair across from her, watching silently as she reads through every jotted note and typed report. She twists her wine glass by the stem but doesn’t drink. When she gets to the pictures, the small muscle in her jaw tightens. Her finger hovers a moment over the photograph, and then she slowly closes the folder. Her eyes close, too, and Jimmy can’t tell if she’s about to cry or scream or laugh. Finally, she flutters her eyes open again, lifts the wine glass, drains it in one drink, and holds it out to Jimmy.

  “You got anything stronger than this?” Her voice is hoarse.

  Jimmy rummages in the cupboard above the fridge for the whiskey he never drinks. He hasn’t touched it since he poured a glass for Detective Rausch last July. He pours two glasses now, one for Brett, one for himself, and adds a single ice cube to both. Trixie, who was sleeping under the table and got up when he did, bumps against his leg. He takes an ice cube from the tray and drops it on the floor for her. She noses it across the linoleum, her tail wagging happily.

  Jimmy sets the whiskey in front of Brett. She throws the shot back and makes a face.

  “Want more?” Jimmy asks.

  The chair scrapes across the floor as she gets up, grabs the bottle off the counter, and sits back down. She pours more whiskey into her glass, but this time drinks slowly, clinking the ice in a circle. She hasn’t said anything since she asked for a drink, and Jimmy is starting to worry she won’t say anything about what she read in the file at all. But he doesn’t want to push her.

  He sips his whiskey, which is too strong for him even with an ice cube, but he doesn’t get up to water it down because he doesn’t want to move or blink or even breathe until she says something. Say something, say anything, he sends the command to her silently, until finally she takes a deep breath and exhales loudly.

  With breathless, broken-hearted realization, she says, “Margot was dead before we even started looking for her.”