by Todd Ritter
His extended index finger guided Kat’s gaze to the saw clock, which declared the time was five minutes after eleven. Her eyes then moved to the TV, where the time next to the CNN logo said it was five after noon. Finally, Kat checked her own watch, which verified the television’s time.
“Chuck, did you change your clock Saturday night?”
The bartender scratched at his beard. “What do you mean?”
“Daylight saving time went into effect then. You were supposed to set your clock an hour forward. You know, spring ahead and all that crap.”
From the way Chuck scrambled for the clock, it was clear he hadn’t. The time in the Jigsaw had been wrong for more than two days. Which meant that Lucas Hatcher hadn’t shown up at ten thirty the night George was killed. He actually arrived at eleven thirty. And that meant only one thing—Lucas Hatcher had no alibi.
Kat thanked Chuck before heading for the door. Her plan was to tell Nick the news and then return to the cemetery to bring Lucas in for official questioning. Hopefully, he’d sense the seriousness of the situation and fess up.
Outside the Jigsaw, Nick was ending his call. He tucked his phone into his jacket and turned to Kat, looking slightly dazed.
“That was Vasquez, just like I thought.”
“Did they find something?”
“They did,” Nick said. “A half hour ago, a man was arrested in upstate New York. He was speeding, probably making a run for the Canadian border. In his car, they found a fake passport, needles, and black thread. That’s when he confessed.”
“To what?”
“Being the Betsy Ross Killer.”
The news was as surprising—and as jarring—as a bullet to the chest.
“They caught him?”
“Apparently,” Nick said, disbelief never leaving his voice. “He confessed to killing four people. And one of them, believe it or not, was George Winnick.”
JULY
FOURTEEN
The man was plain-looking and soft-spoken. His eyes were brown. So was his hair, albeit in a lighter shade and receding a bit. He was neither large nor small, handsome nor ugly. He was the type of person you wouldn’t remember two minutes after meeting him.
His name was Ken Miller, but to the rest of the world, he was known as the Betsy Ross Killer. And finally, after four months of silence and four months of waiting, Nick Donnelly was about to talk to him.
“Good afternoon,” Ken Miller said. “Thank you for agreeing to come today.”
“Thanks for finally talking.”
The man nodded, as if Nick had actually been trying to be complimentary. “I figured it was about time.”
After his very chatty arrest, in which he confessed to killing four, Ken didn’t speak another word. It was like a radio that had suddenly gone silent during the final minute of a tied football game. Everyone wanted to know the score, but there was no voice telling them the final outcome.
They tried to get him to talk, of course, doing everything the law would let them get away with. But Ken Miller remained silent as days, then weeks, then months passed. Finally, a guard delivering his dinner was greeted with four words. “I’m ready to talk.” He followed that with a date—“Fourth of July.”
That was two days earlier. Now it was just he and Nick alone in a heavily secured room at a federal prison outside Binghamton. Nick sat at one end of a steel table. Ken Miller sat at the other, hands and wrists cuffed. Beyond the door was an armed guard. Beyond him were two more.
“Why did you pick today to talk?” Nick asked.
“I thought it would be appropriate,” the Betsy Ross Killer said. “Considering the nickname I was given.”
“How do you feel about the name?”
Nick normally carried a pen when he interviewed a killer. A notebook, too. But since no one knew exactly what Ken Miller was capable of, no one wanted to take any chances. That meant no pens. No notebooks. Nick was forced to stash Ken’s response—“Ambivalent”—in a corner of his brain reserved only for the Betsy Ross Killer.
“You do know why you received that name, don’t you?”
“Of course,” Ken said. “My sewing skills.”
“Who taught you how to stitch so well? Your mother?”
Ken put his hands on the table in front of him, the tips of his fingers pressed together and forming a pyramid. “My father.”
Nick knew it had to have been one or the other. No matter what kind of sick shit people did, it usually all went back to the parents. Edgar Sewell was one example. Now Ken Miller was another.
“Where was your mother in all this?”
“Gone. Ran off with a family friend to live in sin. That left just me and Papa. I was twelve.”
“Did he abuse you?” Nick asked.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? That way you’d have an easy answer to explain what I’ve done. But it isn’t that easy, Lieutenant. Not everything can be sewn up so tidily. Pun intended.”
“Is your father still alive?”
Ken shook his head quickly. “I killed him on my eighteenth birthday. Stabbed him three times. Before burying him in the backyard, I sewed the wounds shut, to show him just how much I had learned.”
This brought the Betsy Ross Killer’s total to five. Nick filed the number away, right alongside “Ambivalent.”
“So he was your first victim?”
“Yes. Then there was the one in Philadelphia. After that was the friendly gentleman in Lake Erie. And then that camper.”
Every murder and location he mentioned coincided completely. It might have taken him four months, but Ken Miller was now confirming his kills.
“And that brings us to Perry Hollow,” Nick said.
The pyramid of fingers Ken had kept aloft suddenly collapsed in a jumble of overlapped knuckles on the table.
“I’m afraid I don’t recall that town.”
“Your final victim,” Nick prompted. “George Winnick. You stitched his mouth shut.”
“Oh, that.” Ken swatted at the air, dismissing the crime as casually as if it were a dropped nickel or an unmissed lover. “I heard about that on the radio as I was driving to Canada.”
A knot formed in Nick’s stomach. “Heard about it?”
“That was the guy in the coffin, right? It was so inventive I remember wishing I had come up with it myself. So I told the police I did that one, too. For shits and giggles, as they say.”
The knot in Nick’s gut tightened, twisting hard enough to force him to clutch at his abdomen. His heart hammered deep in his chest, an insistent pounding that echoed all the way up to his brain.
“You didn’t kill George Winnick?”
“No,” Ken said. “Sorry to say, I didn’t.”
Nick felt sick. Sick that the man sitting across from him was sorry he didn’t commit a fifth murder. Sick that although George Winnick’s death clearly didn’t match the ones Ken Miller committed, everyone had been fooled into believing otherwise. And, most of all, sick that George’s true killer was still out there, somewhere, most likely waiting for the perfect moment to strike again.
From where she was sitting, Kat had a clear view of Main Street. Instead of cars, the thoroughfare was packed with hundreds of pedestrians braving the July heat. They roamed the street, stopping at the craft tables and food stands that lined it. Many people were gathered in front of the bandstand erected just outside Big Joe’s, where a fife and drum corps played patriotic tunes. The music floated up the street, creating a soundtrack for the festivities taking place there.
The only downside to Kat’s view was that she was looking at it from inside the PTA’s dunk tank. She had never been to a PTA meeting—she didn’t have the time—but because she was the police chief, the supermoms that ran it had made her an honorary member. Apparently, the honor was being forced to spend the final half hour of the Fourth of July street fair inside the booth’s chicken-wire cage, perched on a plank over several gallons of water.
Wearing denim cutoffs over a m
odest bathing suit, Kat peered out of her watery prison at Lisa Gunzelman, the PTA president, who stood on the other side of the chicken wire. Lisa sported a stars and stripes T-shirt that matched the sun visor pressed into her hair. Because she was president, Lisa didn’t have to serve time inside the dunk tank, which made Kat resent her just a little. The matching outfit didn’t help. Nor did the zeal Lisa displayed when trying to lure potential customers.
“Dunk the police chief!” she yelled, while holding up the baseballs that could send Kat plummeting into the water. “Only one dollar a toss!”
First up was Jasper Fox, who handed Lisa three dollars. He threw his pitches with a ruthless gleam in his eyes, which Kat suspected came from the fact that she had never found his stolen delivery van. It was long gone, probably taken out of the county and sold for scrap. Jasper had purchased a new one in April, the Awesome Blossoms logo as prominent as ever. As for the gun he had kept in the old van’s glove compartment, Kat hoped it never returned to Perry Hollow.
Despite being cheered on by Lisa Gunzelman, Jasper’s first attempt missed the dunk tank’s target by several feet. His second and third tries also fell short, prompting a disappointed groan from the growing crowd.
The scene was a far cry from the last time the town had gathered together. That was in March, for George Winnick’s funeral. Most of Perry Hollow had shown up, forming a black-clad wall of support around his widow. Lisa Gunzelman was there, accompanied by her son, Troy, who was the lead pallbearer. So were Deana Swan and her brother, who wrote about it for the Gazette. Amber Lefferts’s father said a prayer and Art and Bob McNeil directed everything with the utmost precision. Even the freshly exonerated Lucas Hatcher showed up, although it was only to roll away the plastic grass that surrounded the lip of the grave.
Standing among the mourners that frigid day, Kat couldn’t have predicted such a spirited atmosphere would exist four months later. But George’s murder had only rattled the town temporarily. Now, everything was mostly back to normal.
A serial killer’s confession had that kind of effect.
“Come on, folks,” Lisa Gunzelman called, raising her voice and hefting the baseballs. “Step right up and dunk the chief!”
A few more people lined up to have a go, but none of them hit the target. When only five minutes remained of her tour of duty, Kat began to think she would escape unscathed. After that, she would meet up with James, who was swimming at Jeremy’s house, have a hamburger dinner, and watch the town’s fireworks. All in all, it would be a great day. If she managed to stay dry, of course.
Kat glanced down at the tank’s unchlorinated water twelve inches beneath her sandals. It was dank and murky, like tub water after a bath. And although it was still hot as blazes, she didn’t want to be cooled off in that swill.
“How’s it going in there?”
Kat lifted her head to see Deputy Carl Bauersox. “Aren’t you supposed to be working crowd control?”
“I am,” he said. “The crowd is right here.”
He was right. The majority of the street fair’s attendees were now gathered around the tank, just waiting to see her get soaked. Sensing an opportunity, Lisa thrust three balls at the deputy.
“Would you care to try?”
“I can’t,” Carl said.
Lisa sweetened the deal. “It’s on the house.”
The deputy looked to Kat, who told him he would be forgiven in the unlikely event he managed to dunk her. After more coaxing from Lisa, Carl relented, pitching exactly the way you’d expect from a squat, sunburnt cop—badly. The first ball was way off the mark, not even coming within striking distance of the target.
“I was just warming up,” he explained feebly.
Kat laughed. “Sure you were.”
Her laughter stopped when Carl’s second pitch actually hit the target, producing an excited cheer from the bystanders. Fortunately for Kat, the throw wasn’t hard enough, and the ball bounced off the target’s edge.
Inspired by the near miss, Carl raised his right arm. He pulled back. He released the final ball. The crowd cheered as the baseball made a beeline toward the target, smacking it perfectly in the bull’s-eye. The impact created a whacking sound that echoed up the street. The target lurched backward.
Beneath Kat, something clicked. It was the platform, flying out from under her.
Then, before she could even squeal with surprise, Kat dropped into the water.
On what was supposed to be a quiet day at the office, Henry found himself surrounded by noise. As usual, there was opera. His selection was Wagner, with all its accompanying bombast. But interrupting the music was another sound—firecrackers. A group of kids had gathered in the parking lot next to the newsroom and were now setting them off in an unceasing series of bangs. Humming beneath it all was the constant murmur of the crowd on Main Street enjoying the Fourth of July street fair. All three noises merged into a cacophony that gave Henry a mild headache. And just when he thought it couldn’t get any noisier, his phone rang.
Henry turned off the music and waited for a break in the firecrackers before answering.
“Obituary department.”
“Henry?”
The caller was Deana Swan, who sounded more than a little surprised to be talking to him.
“I didn’t think you’d be working today,” she said.
“I had to.”
That was a lie. Henry could have taken the day off along with most of the other Gazette staff. But he opted to work, frankly because he had nothing better to do with his day.
“I guess you’re on the clock, too,” he said.
“Not for long. I’m leaving in a minute. I just called to say we have no more obituaries coming today.”
Henry thanked her. “That means I can leave, too.”
“Glad I could be the bearer of good news. Are you going to watch the fireworks tonight?”
“No. I have other plans.”
That, too, was a lie. Sort of. He did have plans, although they consisted of going back to his apartment, opening a bottle of Syrah, and reading some John Updike.
“That’s too bad,” Deana said. “I was about to ask if you wanted to join me.”
It was an invitation Henry had been dreading for the past four months. Every time he spoke to Deana, he thought of the evening in the funeral home when he had quickly rejected her offer of a date. And during every phone call, he expected her to bring it up again. She hadn’t, until now.
“Thank you for the offer,” he told her. “I’d take you up on it if I didn’t have those other plans.”
Henry knew she saw through the lie completely. And when Deana hung up, he felt guilty about turning her down again. But it really was for the best. He didn’t want to cause her—or himself—any more pain than necessary.
Instead of leaving immediately, he lingered in his office. The firecracker gang had dispersed, providing enough quiet to let Henry listen to his opera in peace. Dimming the office lights, he cranked up the volume on his computer. Then he leaned back in his chair and listened to the music sweep over him.
He remained that way for a good ten minutes, stirring only when he heard a slight click from the fax machine. Turning toward it, he spotted a single white page purring out of the machine.
A late obituary. Deana had been mistaken.
Sighing, Henry turned the music off once again. He flicked on the lamp at his desk, grabbed the still-warm fax, and read it.
Troy Gunzelman, 17, of Perry Hollow, Pa., died at
6:30 P.M. on July 4.
Henry checked his watch and saw it was exactly six o’clock. Cold dread seeped into his body so quickly it felt like he was being dipped into icy water. He had hoped to never see a fax like that again. And after four months, he had come to believe he wouldn’t.
But now a second one had arrived. Gripping it, Henry read it again and again, searching for some way in which it was different from the one sent for George Winnick. He found nothing. It was written in the same
style. Exactly the same.
It was happening again.
Henry reached for the phone and furiously dialed the police station. When Louella van Sickle answered, he cut right to the chase.
“This is Henry Goll at the Gazette. I need to talk to Chief Campbell immediately.”
“She’s at the street fair, Henry,” the dispatcher said. “I think she still might be in the PTA’s dunk tank. I can leave a message.”
If Kat was at the festival, that meant she’d be on Main Street. Henry would rather take his chances looking for her himself than leaving a message that might not be returned for hours.
“No,” Henry said. “I’ll find her.”
He hung up, snatched the fax on his way out of the office, and ran down the back stairs. Soon he was pushing through the door, bursting outside onto a Main Street filled with people. They laughed and shopped and ate, completely unaware of what was about to happen.
But Henry knew. And he had to make sure Kat knew, too. He scanned the street until he saw the dunk tank a block away. If Lou van Sickle was correct, the chief would be there. And, with any luck, Henry wouldn’t be too late.
FIFTEEN
Emerging from the water, Kat saw Henry Goll running up Main Street. He stopped in front of the dunk tank, catching his breath next to Carl. It was the first time Kat had seen him since March, and his presence immediately worried her.
“Henry?” she said, standing waist-deep in the tepid water. “What are you doing here?”
That’s when Kat saw the piece of paper folded in his hand. It told her everything she needed to know about his sudden appearance on Main Street. The only thing she didn’t know was whose name the page contained.
The dunk tank was still surrounded by people. The crowd had grown right before her dip into the water, and they pushed closer after she emerged, eager to see her sopping wet and humiliated. So far, none of them had noticed the paper in Henry’s hand. Before any of them got the chance, she gestured for him to leave the area immediately.
