27. Kennedy #2
“So that’s the small detail I wasn’t honest with you about,” he went on. “I didn’t struggle to look for a job after college and eventually go to the police academy because of that. I chose to go there straight after graduation.”
“So you could become a detective,” I said, nodding slowly. “Because that would help you track down the Carver.”
“Yes.”
“And that’s also when you changed your last name?”
He nodded. “At the time, Cameron had just changed hers to our mother’s maiden name, because she was still living near Corwin Bay, and people were giving her a lot of shit just for being related to Elijah,” he said.
“So I decided to change my name too. No one in California really knew who I was, but I figured if I ever wanted to move back east and get on the Carver case, I’d need a clean slate.
A different surname. One no one would question. ”
“Makes sense. Conflict of interest, right?”
“And guilt by association,” he added, his eyes narrowing slightly.
“Plenty of cops wouldn’t want me anywhere near the case if they knew who my uncle was…
or who they thought he was,” he said, eyes narrowing.
“Anyway, I turned out to be good at detective work. Really fucking good. And the stuff I told you about having a knack for cold cases? That was all true. So, once I made the move back east a few years later, I knew it was only a matter of time until someone pulled me in to reexamine the Carver case.”
“Right,” I muttered.
“Not that I’d been waiting,” he said. “I was already working on it in secret from the second I graduated the academy. Reading the files, combing through all the databases I could access with my badge. Totally illegal, of course. But the great thing about my condition…” He gave me a faint smile.
“I don’t lose any sleep over breaking the rules. ”
“Because you’re incapable of guilt or remorse.”
“Exactly.” The sinister smile lingered for half a second longer, then faded. “Anyway… I was stumped at first. Like everyone else. I must’ve gone over the files a hundred times before I finally saw through the cracks.”
My pulse picked up. “How?”
“I always thought it was odd that the first five victims happened to attend that book club. Same night, same time, every week for years. And they were also the only victims whose bodies were never recovered,” he said.
“But I didn’t think much of it for a long time.
Like everyone else, I assumed it was just another strange coincidence in a case full of them.
But something about it kept itching at me. ”
“So you called the library?” I asked, thinking back to my conversation with Marla. She hadn’t mentioned any of this.
He shook his head. “No. I hacked into the security footage from the shop across the street from the library parking lot. They had a camera aimed right at the exit. And what I saw…” He narrowed his eyes, voice tightening.
“Every Saturday, like clockwork, the five of them left together. An hour early. But you know all about that, don’t you? ”
“Yes,” I muttered.
“For a long time, I assumed they were into something shady. That they were targeted by the Carver because of whatever it was they were up to,” he said, rubbing a hand along his jaw. “But eventually, I stopped asking why the Carver killed them, and started asking if he ever really did.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Their bodies were never found, Kennedy,” Malachi went on, voice low and sharp. “Because the first five victims didn’t die. They faked it.”
I stared at him open-mouthed, so confused and shocked that I couldn’t even muster up a vague sound of acknowledgement in the back of my throat.
“The Carver wasn’t a person,” he went on. “It was a performance. A fabrication. And they were the ones behind it. All five of them. Working together.”
I blinked again, slower this time. This conversation couldn’t possibly be real. I had to be hallucinating right now.
“That’s why the first five riddles were so much harder than the rest,” Malachi said, eyes glittering with something manic.
“They needed time to go into hiding. To make it believable. They left just enough blood at each site to suggest wild animal predation. Because if police found the sites too soon and couldn’t find any bodies…
” He tilted his head. “That would be a red flag, wouldn’t it? ”
I shook my head slowly. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about, Kennedy,” he replied, eyes narrowing again. “The Carver wasn’t a lone killer. It was them. Christopher Miles, Silas Boone, Heather Voss, Brian Delgado, and last but not least…” He paused, chucking darkly. “Mark Campbell. Your dear old dad.”
My stomach lurched. “You really are insane,” I hissed. “They were all victims .”
Malachi leaned in slightly, voice almost fond. “We both know that’s not true. But like I said, I’m happy to keep playing this little game of yours for now,” he said. He reached out to stroke my hair. I flinched, and his hand dropped back to his side. “I’ve always got time for you.”
“I don’t know what the hell you think you’ve figured out, but I swear, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said in a low voice.
He let out another dark chuckle and slowly shook his head at me, like I was a child who’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar while stubbornly proclaiming her innocence.
“Once I figured out what the five of them had done, I had my work cut out for me. Not only did I need to know where they were, I needed to know why ,” he said, eyes sharpening.
“What makes five people decide to get together and start a murder club?
Something like that doesn't just come out of nowhere. And it would take years of planning, too. So I knew my best bet for getting answers would be to find at least one of them. And I intended to find all of them anyway.”
“So you could kill them for revenge,” I said, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. Malachi was clearly unraveling. Unhinged. But the last thing I needed to do was push him over the edge by questioning his theory.
He nodded. “It took me a while. Over two years after I began the search, in fact. But I finally managed to track down Christopher Miles.” He paused and tapped his chin, frowning in contemplation. “That was around four years ago.”
“Oh, yeah? How’d you find him?” I asked, barely to hide the disbelief in my voice now.
“Over the years, most of the Carver victims’ families and friends were asked to give interviews about their lost loved ones, and Christopher’s relatives all said the same thing about him. How much he loved skiing. How it was his dream to live in Tahoe and teach it professionally.”
“So… what?” I scoffed. “You just showed up at a bunch of ski resorts asking for a dead guy?”
“Sort of. I knew he’d be using a fake name, and he would’ve changed his appearance.
So I generated a bunch of mock-ups using facial reconstruction software.
Deepfake composites, basically. Different hair lengths, styles, and colors.
Different facial hair, contact lenses, even a few tweaks to bone structure to account for aging or plastic surgery.
Then I hit every ski resort I could find within a hundred-mile radius of Tahoe and showed the pictures around.
” He paused, giving me another faint smile.
“Eventually, I found him. He was working at Northstar and going by the name Blake Turner. Looked nothing like his old photos at first glance. Longer hair, a beard, green contacts, even a fake scar on his cheek. But when I looked closely…” He tapped his temple. “I knew it was him.”
“Sure you did,” I muttered.
“I watched him for a few days to be sure. Followed him home. He was living in a nice studio apartment above a bakery on the outskirts of Truckee. No family. No roommates. Just… hiding.” His eyes darkened. “Hiding and killing.”
“Killing?”
“Yes. Once I knew he’d been living in the area all those years, I linked at least seventeen missing persons cases to him. I later found out he was responsible for all of them.”
My stomach churned. “So then what? You kidnapped him and brought him here?”
“Yes. He tried to stay silent at first, but most people break eventually. Including him.”
I shuddered at the thought of what that ‘breaking' must’ve looked like.
“What did he tell you?” I asked quietly, knowing the only thing keeping me alive right now was me pretending to believe this twisted fantasy.
“Twelve years before the killings began, back when the original Carver victims were just regular people, there was a behavioral psychology study being run out of a university just outside Boston. You’ve probably never heard of the study, because it was shut down before it made any headlines. Ethical concerns had begun to pile up.”
I frowned. “What kind of study was it?”
“Empathy disorders. Impulse control. Moral detachment. It was supposed to be about identifying warning signs for violent tendencies,” he said, gaze darkening.
“Christopher wasn’t a psych nurse back then.
He was a post-grad student at the university, and he signed on to help because they were short-staffed and psychiatric criminology was his main field of study.
Among the other volunteers was a young resident doctor named Mark Campbell. ”
My stomach turned.
“Mark wasn’t there because he cared about psychiatry. After all, getting into a surgical program was his main career goal,” he went on. “He was just there because the subject matter fascinated him, and the volunteer hours looked respectable on paper. Helped his résumé.”
I shook my head slowly. “I’ve never heard of this.”