by Tara Kelly
I’d heard the cops already questioned him extensively. They weren’t officially confirming that email threat he got, but it didn’t matter. Everyone around here knew. People thought it meant he was next, but that didn’t make much sense to me. It was kind of hard to kill someone when you gave them and the cops plenty of warning.
“I’m not shrugging anything off,” Gramps said. “But I’m going to trust my gut and my own eyes and ears.”
“And what’s your gut telling you?” I asked.
He pushed his unfinished plate away. “They took a picture of her and sent it to her boyfriend. Come on. This wasn’t a random act.”
“Grandpa!” Gavin pounded the table, making my entire body jerk. He was like an angry bee constantly zzz-ing for attention.
“Okay, show me,” Gramps said.
Gavin attempted a shuffle, but the cards erupted from his fingers, scattering across the table and onto his lap.
Gramps quirked an eyebrow. “Keep practicing.”
“They had her phone,” I said to Gramps. “It wouldn’t be hard to figure out who her boyfriend was.”
“Well, not too long ago, we kept our phones at home and our private matters private. I forget sometimes.” He shook his head. “I ever tell you about the Seaside Strangler?”
“Dad,” Mom said, her eyes flitting in Gavin’s direction. Not now, she mouthed.
“Give me a break,” he said.
“He’s eight years old—” Mom began.
“But not too young to watch the news?” Gramps broke in with a half smile. “If Eric had his way, he’d send the kid to school in body armor.”
“This is my house, and that’s my son. Do you get that?” The loudness of Mom’s voice made us all freeze.
Gramps’s lips parted. “Angela…”
“No, I’m done talking about this,” Mom said, grabbing her plate and standing. “You had your way. I have mine. Deal with it.”
They’d had this argument before. Many times. Gramps thought Eric was trying to make up for Jenika by “sanitizing Gavin’s childhood,” as he put it. Mom would get irritated and brush him off, but she’d never reacted like this.
Gramps stared down at the table, his forehead creased. Gavin watched Mom rinse off dishes, his hands frozen on top of the cards. The TV got louder by the second, until it seemed like the male announcer was screaming in my ear. I kept hearing the word “body,” over and over.
I needed it to stop.
“Gramps,” I said, swallowing the lump in my throat. “Feel like going for a walk?”
“Actually, I got something for you,” he said. “Need your help setting it up.”
Now seemed like a weird time for a present. I glanced over at Mom, who shook her head.
“You should not have spent that much money,” she said.
“Then you can pay me back,” Gramps barked at her, before getting up and motioning for me to come outside with him.
Gramps pulled a large box from the passenger side of his aging Dodge pickup. Digital Security System was spelled out in block letters across the sides. He shoved the truck door shut with his foot.
I rushed over, sliding my hands under one end of the box. A lifetime of physical work had pretty much worn out his back—he was not supposed to be lifting anything heavy. Luckily this box was a lot lighter than it looked.
“This must’ve been insanely expensive,” I said, helping him set it down on the front lawn. Phrases like “long range” and “night vision” told me it was at least a couple hundred.
“Have you and your mother ever heard of a thank-you?”
Gramps had this habit of spending money he didn’t have on us. It was hard not to feel guilty. “Thank you, but—”
“But I didn’t have to. I know, I know. Let’s move on.” He grabbed his toolbox from the truck and took out a box cutter. “Now you can set these cameras to record only when motion is detected. That way you’re not wasting a bunch of space on the tape.”
“You mean the SD card?”
“Whatever.” He sliced open the box and started pulling out Styrofoam. “I’ll let you figure out how it works.” He winked. “I’m here to make sure you don’t destroy the house installing the cameras.”
Normally I’d give him a shove or tease him right back, but I couldn’t even manage a smile. Gramps was doing what he did best, trying to create normal out of chaos. But there was nothing he could say or do to take away the constant hum under my skin, this feeling that it wasn’t going to be okay.
“If that admirer of yours comes back around, he’ll be in for a nice surprise,” Gramps said.
God, those letters. I hadn’t even thought about those letters. They seemed so unimportant right now, like ancient history. “Yeah…” I carefully unwrapped one of the two cameras.
“Your mom told me what those kids wrote on your window last week,” Gramps continued. “You guys have been needing this a long time.”
“Amber did that.” The words came out before I could stop them. “The night before she…went missing.”
The two vertical lines in Gramps’s forehead deepened. “How do you know it was her?”
“I overheard her bragging about it, in the diner bathroom.”
“Did you confront her?”
I shook my head, and his expression softened. I knew what he was thinking—if the cops found out, I might be a suspect. Actually it wasn’t a matter of if, but when. Someone would tell them. They probably already had.
The words of the instruction manual blurred into gibberish. “Seeing her like that. I just… I can’t get it out of my head.”
“It’s a whole different ball game when you know them. Doesn’t matter how you felt about them.” Gramps got a faraway look in his dark eyes, the one that said he had a story to go with his words. There were parts of his past he didn’t talk about, and we knew better than to ask. All we knew was he’d gotten into trouble when he was young. Enough to make a career in law enforcement pretty much impossible.
“How long did you look at that picture?” Gramps asked.
“Way too long,” I muttered, assembling the receiver, a remote, and power cords on the grass. “I sent it to myself…from Zach’s phone.”
“Well, that’s insane.”
I met his gaze. “You would’ve done it.”
“Yeah.” His dark eyes bugged out. “And I’m not sane.”
My fingers dug into the cool grass. “She had a foxglove in her mouth, like that deer. I’m almost positive.”
“I don’t doubt it. You live this long, history repeats itself. This whole situation is familiar.”
“The Seaside Strangler?” I asked.
He nodded. “Some of my first cleaning jobs. He started with a couple stray cats and then moved right on to people. Four young women up in Seaside, all in one summer. Their bodies were always staged in public places. Always with a ribbon tied around their necks. And…” He glanced up at me, his lips remaining parted.
“I can take it…” Could I?
“Well, their eyes were cut out. Real hack job, too.”
“Jesus.” The pizza I ate was burning a hole into my stomach.
“I wasn’t gonna mention the eye thing in front of Gavin, by the way. I’m not that bad. Anyway, the ribbons around the victims’ necks were different colors. Any guesses why?”
I picked up the receiver to the security system, pushing different buttons. Red lips and black tears. That was all I could see right now. “Each color represented something about the victim?”
“It was their favorite color.”
“So he knew them.” Or watched them enough to figure it out. My mind went back to those letters I got, all in purple envelopes. My favorite color. A chill ran up my arms.
“These women had no known connection to one another,” Gramps said. “Two were tourists from different states. One worked at an ice cream shop in town. And the last one was a drifter, homeless.”
“Did he stalk them first?” The humming in my h
ands and feet was worsening, turning into a full-on vibration.
“Good guess, but no. He approached them when they were alone and struck up a conversation. He came off harmless, like any young schmuck trying to pick up girls. But he always worked one question in…”
“What’s your favorite color?”
“Nope. He’d ask them out. If they turned him down…”
“He asked them what their favorite color was,” I finished. Talk about rejection issues.
Gramps stood, motioning toward his truck. “Let me grab the ladder.”
“I can get it,” I said, scrambling up and following him.
He waved me off. “I’m not paralyzed.”
“At least let me…” He hoisted the ladder out of the truck bed before I could finish. I tried to grab the other end, but he jerked it away as we headed toward the entrance of the house.
What the Seaside Strangler left behind was violent and messy, all about shock value. Same with the beheaded deer in the park.
I didn’t see any of that red-hot rage in Amber’s picture. Her pose was almost ethereal, like a princess in a fairy tale washed ashore, waiting for her true love’s kiss. The only horror was painted on her face.
“The way they left Amber was so different than the deer,” I said.
He carefully leaned the ladder against the house. “I think we’re dealing with someone young. They’re not quite sure what they’re going for yet. Which is good—because they probably left all kinds of evidence behind. The Seaside Strangler was only eighteen—and sloppy as hell. But we didn’t have DNA testing back then.”
“Do you really think it was someone she knew?” That I knew.
“I think it’s a good possibility.” He kept his gaze on me. “Which is why I want you to be real careful who you hang around with. Especially that ex-boyfriend of yours. Innocent or not, I don’t trust that spoiled little putz one bit.”
“He thinks Alex killed her, remember? We won’t be talking.”
“Come on.” Gramps backed away from the ladder and squinted up at our roof. “We’re talking about a kid who’s made it his life’s mission to save Fido and Bambi.”
I closed my eyes, swallowing back the truth. I hated lying to Gramps more than anything, but telling him what happened Saturday night meant I had to explain Alex’s behavior. I couldn’t.
“Those rich nitwits can point fingers all they want—it’s what they’re best at. But at the end of the day, they need real proof. And they got nothing.” Gramps gave my shoulder a rough squeeze.
Sweat was forming down my back, the kind that made me weak all over. I was surprised he couldn’t hear my heart pounding.
“Have you heard a lot of people making accusations?” I asked.
“Pretty much what you’d expect around here. The locals are saying something bad walked into town—some of them are looking hard at Zach. The out-of-towners are saying it’s someone who knows the area well.”
“Some of those out-of-towners know it pretty well, too.”
Gramps nodded. “Yeah, well, people believe the truth they want to believe. There was a fight over at Emerald Market earlier—you hear about it?”
I shook my head. That would require having talked to someone outside family and customers today.
“Some tourist started mouthing off to the cashier about how unfriendly we are here. He said something to the effect of we probably killed that girl for kicks. Bill Johnson was behind him, three sheets to the wind, no doubt—invited him to take it outside.”
“Oh God.” At first glance, Bill Johnson came off like any other grumpy old man, a little underweight and slightly hunched over. But the two things he loved most in life were beer and using his fists, and he wasn’t giving up either any time soon.
“So, the tourist apparently shook his head at Bill and laughed. Finished paying for his stuff and headed outside. Well, Bill goes after him, taps him on the shoulder, and gets him right between the eyes.” Gramps chuckled, shaking his head.
“And this is why nobody respects us,” I said. “We’ve got way too many Bills in this town.”
“Some of those wealthy, so-called educated people do a lot worse. I’ve seen a few of their closets.” He jerked his head toward the house. “Where should we put these cameras?”
I didn’t want to think about installing cameras. I wanted to build a fort with boxes and branches, like Alex and I used to, and assume the duck-and-cover position. “One above the entrance, the other above my bedroom, facing the backyard?”
“I like that plan,” he said, watching me expectantly. “Sun’s going down soon. Better get to it.”
“Do you think—”
“No more talk about that girl. It does you no good to focus on it 24-7.” He gave me a gentle shove toward the parts lying in the grass.
“I have no idea what I’m doing, Gramps.”
“I know. Isn’t it great?”
Did he really expect me not to think about Amber? She was with me every time I took a breath, every time I glanced at the stringy clouds in the sky. She’d never feel air in her lungs again. She’d never see another sunset. At some point early Sunday morning, when I was under a heap of covers, safe and warm, she simply stopped existing because someone wanted her to.
I called Brandon a half hour before sunset and asked him if he wanted to hang out. I didn’t tell him I wanted to go to Winchester Beach. Or that Alex kept calling and it was getting harder not to pick up the phone.
But I did tell him one truth. I didn’t want to go out alone.
“Uh, sure,” he said, sounding confused. “What do you want to do?”
“Find some answers.”
“Okay?”
I had a feeling if I was too specific, he’d say no. “You coming or not?”
He sighed. “I’m pretty sure I know what this is about, but what the hell… See you in a few.”
He pulled into my driveway fifteen minutes later, fast guitar riffs echoing out his open window.
“Where to?” he asked as soon as I hopped in the passenger seat.
“Winchester Beach.”
He huffed, rolling his eyes. “Of course. You know it’s still closed, right?”
“North Beach, too?”
His forehead scrunched up. “Why do you want to go there?”
“Because there’s that little trail that connects the two.”
He backed out, shaking his head. “Pretty sure they’ve got most of that closed off, too.”
“I’ll make do…” I didn’t have a plan exactly, other than trying to quiet these thoughts in my head. How Amber disappeared without anyone seeing her. How they might’ve gone about dumping her body—it wasn’t exactly an easy place to access. I figured maybe just being there, seeing the place in the light of day, would give me some ideas.
“Are you expecting to find something the cops didn’t?” Brandon asked.
“There’s just a lot that doesn’t make sense to me.”
We stopped at a red light, and he dug out a cigarette. “Why do you care so much? It’s not like you two were friends.”
I focused out the window. An Emerald PD car was pulled over on the other side of the road, lights flashing. Bube was out of the car, harassing a couple local guys. I didn’t know their names, but I’d seen their faces around school. I was pretty sure they were in Megan’s grade.
“Zach was at my house when he got that picture of Amber,” I said.
“Shit. Did you see it?”
I nodded. “Can’t get it out of my head. They had to get her down to the beach, pose her—at some point draw her up like a clown. They probably did that part before.”
He made a left on Beach. “If I got something like that, like of Gabi… I’d probably be thrown in the crazy house. I don’t know.” A burst of air came from between his lips. “There are some things you can’t unsee.”
I didn’t want to tell him I’d sent the picture to myself. Or that I’d looked at it again and again, because I couldn’
t not look at it.
“I told Zach to go to the cops,” I said. “Haven’t seen him since…”
“From what I heard, he hasn’t left his house.” The smell of the ocean filled the car, a mix of salt and sulfur—the sulfur was extra strong today. “Do you think he killed her?”
I opened my mouth and closed it again. His question caught me off guard. I couldn’t tell from his tone if he was curious or if he actually suspected Zach. “He can’t even kill a spider.”
He exhaled a laugh. “I don’t think he did it.” There was a certainty in his voice, like maybe he’d heard things from a really good source. “Serial killers stage bodies like that. Zach doesn’t seem like the type.”
“Organized serial killers,” I clarified. The type that plans every detail. Makes it harder than hell to catch them. “You’re right—planning isn’t Zach’s thing.”
Brandon turned into the deserted North Beach parking lot and pulled into a space facing the ocean. Most of the parking lines were faded and covered in sand. Usually this lot was filled with cars facing every which way, anywhere they could squeeze in.
“What now?” Brandon asked.
“Follow me,” I said, getting out.
I scanned the mansions perched on cliffs around us—that was a lot of people who could see what was going on down here. If the killer had half a brain and didn’t want to get caught, they wouldn’t use the North entrance to kidnap someone or dump a body.
High tide was in, and the waves were high and furious, a low roar vibrating the ground beneath us. I headed down the winding wooden staircase until we reached a trail. One sign directed us toward the beach, and the other pointed to the left. South Beach 1m.
I made a left, walking into the shadows of trees. The bottoms of my shoes sank in the wet dirt and crunched on fallen leaves. God, I missed this. I hadn’t gone running in days.
We walked for quite a while before I broke the silence. “Have you ever been on this trail?”
He lit another cigarette and blew a trail of smoke away from me. “A few times. Not in a while—too many crowds.”
“Yeah. Same here.” Like most of the beaches around here, sleeping or camping on Winchester Beach wasn’t allowed—but that rule was rarely enforced. “Makes me wonder how they did it without being noticed. I mean, there’s always a few people who crash on the beach all night when the cakes have a party.”
