Chapter 32
THIRTY-TWO
“Jackie killed Annabelle?” Lisa wasn’t convinced, her eyes darting between Zoe and Aiden. She looked down at the pieces of paper that Aiden had carefully assembled. “This is from her garbage? Are we sure someone else didn’t write this? Perhaps the person who had access to her home.”
Images came to Zoe’s mind unbidden—a frenzied Jackie scrawling words, her heart pounding, her eyes coated with a violent glint—an obsession that had quickly spiraled into a delusion and needed to be acted upon.
“The handwriting is an obvious match,” Aiden said. “Though, of course, when evidence is handed over to the DA it will be verified by an expert.”
“Could someone have coerced her to write this?” Lisa asked.
“If she were coerced, she wouldn’t have been the one coming up with the riddle, testing out different words and rhymes,” Zoe pointed out. “This riddle was her brainchild. The pollen came from the flowers in her apartment. The two victims knew each other.”
“But why?”
“Obsession isn’t static. It escalates. It feeds on itself.
The more you indulge in a thought, the more it demands.
What starts as fascination becomes fixation.
Fixation becomes immersion,” Aiden explained.
“A moment like that—a tragedy, an act of chaos—becomes an itch, a loop that won’t stop playing until they step into it themselves.
Until they become a part of it. Especially in this case, Jackie, who was related to one of the original victims, Michael.
This wasn’t just an intellectual interest in the fire.
She was connected to it. One of the victims was her family, her blood.
This is what we call identity fusion. When someone can’t separate their identity from the trauma they’re fixated on. ”
Lisa removed her sheriff’s hat and held her head in her hands. “Annabelle was hunted too with those darts. That wasn’t part of this real-life video game.”
“Fantasy can become more real than reality itself and the boundaries start to disappear. And once those boundaries are gone? The only way to make the fantasy real… is to turn it into action. Which is what happened here.”
“But who killed Jackie?” Zoe asked. “Someone else who has a personal connection to the tragedy?”
“Most likely.” Aiden removed his glasses and cleaned them with his tie. “Though in this town, even someone with no direct link could feel they are connected and develop an obsession.”
“But we are looking for someone Jackie would know,” Lisa surmised. “How else would the killer have known that Jackie sent a riddle to the FBI?”
“It also explains why there were differences between the notes,” Zoe said as the realization dawned on her. “The second riddle was stylistically very different from the first one. Because they were written by different people.”
“So we are thinking Jackie had an accomplice,” Lisa said. “But then they turned on her.”
Aiden nodded. “This person knew Jackie had sent a riddle, which is why they did the same thing, and they used the game on Jackie.”
“What’s the point of sending us these riddles? Pure psychopathy?” Lisa asked.
He shrugged. “He’s playing. He needs someone to play against. That’s us.”
A cold nub settled in the pit of Zoe’s stomach. Outside the wind lashed against the windows, rattling them against the hinges. The trees swung and writhed; resisting being uprooted. She swallowed hard. “Now that Jackie is dead, are they going to take someone else to torture and kill?”
Zoe didn’t head back to her motel. She should have, but a lot was playing on her mind. Two women were dead—an innocent victim and her killer. Whoever killed Jackie had to be in her orbit. Her hands fidgeted at the leather wheel. Annabelle stole the game—but what if Jackie had encouraged her?
Zoe pictured how it could have played out.
Annabelle and Jackie becoming friends, Annabelle confiding in Jackie about an immersive game related to the fire, and Jackie, with ulterior motives, convincing her to steal it.
But there was a third person involved. Someone else who shared Jackie’s obsession and was still playing the game.
She chewed on a sucker and glanced at the rearview mirror and side mirror every few seconds.
Her mind drifted to Darren Galanis. At least Darren wasn’t following her anymore.
She wondered if he’d given Viktor her message and if Viktor was going to retaliate.
She hoped he would. This time she would be prepared—this time all that poison and rage that lived inside her would be vented on someone who deserved it.
But for now this man was going to do. The man who had walked into the sheriff’s station like he owned the place. The man everyone believed to be abusing his kids. He wouldn’t be missed. He didn’t deserve to be missed.
A fading voice inside her told her to stop. Her mind was being pulled in all directions. She really needed to stop doing this. The world wasn’t hers alone to fix. And this wasn’t the way to do it. But what if it was? What if she could save those children this way?
A messaged popped up on her phone. It was from Simon.
S: I’m sorry for making you uncomfortable, Z. I was in a bad place. Talk soon.
She sighed. That was the last thing she wanted to do. It didn’t help that Simon wasn’t someone she could avoid forever—but nor did she want to. He was one of the rare few people in her life who wasn’t in transit.
The wind howled through the railyard, whipping between the freight cars, rattling loose metal, sending dust and grit skidding across the gravel.
She parked her car just outside the reach of the floodlights and rolled down the window.
The cold air snaked through the seams of her jacket, nipping against her skin.
He was right there. Hard hat tilted back, sleeves pushed up, standing like he had nothing to fear. He was ugly—the way he talked and moved was crass and jarring. Like he thought he was better than everyone else. Like he was doing them a favor by being there.
Zoe clenched her jaw, flexed her fingers against the cold. She could go to him. Right now. Let him feel powerless. Let him feel the pain he inflicted. Let him feel that agonizing helplessness of injustice.
Don’t do it.
She climbed out of the car. The wind pulled at her, pushing her forward, dragging at her like it was urging her on.
She took a step. Just one. The itch was too strong; her insides were coated with it.
This was a line she’d never crossed. But maybe now was the time.
Who was she going to find who was worse than someone abusing their own children?
She took another step and a gust slammed into the freight cars, making them groan against the rails. The floodlights flickered, and in that brief second of darkness, his shadow stretched long across the ground, swallowed by the night.
She could do it, right? It wasn’t the worst thing. Happy, sweet Zoe could do something wrong. She was someone who apologized to fire hydrants and streetlamps if she walked into them. Surely, she could do something bad for once.
And then her phone rang. A sharp, trilling sound pierced through the dark. Luckily, she was far away enough that no one had noticed her. It was Aiden. What the hell did he want now?
“What?” she snapped.
“Hello to you too,” he said, instantly making her frown. Since when did a stoic Aiden develop a personality? “What are you doing?”
“I…” She blushed like she was a child caught stealing candy. “Running an errand. Why?”
“I just came back to the station because I left my wallet here and I ran into Ethan, who was working late going over Jackie’s cell phone records and looking very distressed.”
“What did he find?” Her heart rose in her throat.
“He ran one of the numbers on her call list in the weeks leading up to Annabelle going missing. It belongs to Jim.”
“Who’s that?”
“Jim Gray. Lisa’s husband.”