Chapter 2
TWO
AMELIA
“Blood dripped from the trunk of the car, drip, drip, drip , alerting the officer that this man had not just been out for an evening drive, as he said.” The familiar, low, cool, detached feminine voice is one I know better than my own at this point. I’ve certainly heard it more in recent times, at least.
“Check the trunk!” That’s my voice. Higher-pitched, raspier, more out-of-practice. Very unladylike, but no one else is in the van with me to cast judgment. So I continue yelling at the podcast that’s keeping me entertained on my drive to nowhere and everywhere. “Check the trunk, don’t be an idiot!”
“Officer Jayce radioed for backup, but he didn’t wait for help to arrive.”
She’s got me hanging onto her every syllable, my ass precariously balanced on the edge of my seat—literally. I can’t have more than an inch of my tiny ass on the leather driver’s seat.
“Of course no help is going to arrive, your partner is IN THE TRUNK.” The palm of my hand smacks the steering wheel for emphasis on each word I yell, like the guy she’s talking about from forty years ago can hear me. Luckily, the van doesn’t swerve, it’s probably used to my outbursts. Or maybe I’m just so slight that it takes nearly half my might to turn this damn wheel for real.
Some people yell at their TV while watching football. For me, it’s true crime podcasts.
This one is my absolute favorite, Vengeful Vixens .
The basic bros have Joe Rogan. The true crime girlypops have VV.
The host, Jynx, is who I wanna be when I grow up. Think Lane Kim, if she had been the It girl instead of the outcast. Korean American with hair dyed almost platinum and the kind of unique style you have to be graced with from birth in order to pull off the way she does. Petite, like me, except she’s gorgeous, effortlessly cool, and tells the juiciest, most riveting gory stories. There’s a reason why she’s nabbed the number one slot in true crime podcasts for four seasons straight. Ten million listeners an episode is impressive in any genre.
“As McNair got out of the vehicle, Officer Jayce saw what he was holding. A hunting knife, with a blade bigger than what most of your Hinge hookups have been working with. That’s right, Vixens. Five whole inches of steel. He probably called it eight in his dating profile. The blade was jagged, for ripping flesh. And still dripping with fresh blood. Spoiler alert: It wasn’t from a cute little deer.”
My jaw hangs low enough I feel a breeze on my tongue, and I snap it shut before grabbing my Alani and taking a big swig.
A chill breaks across my upper body, even with my winter sweatshirt on. Technically, I guess we’re out of winter, but driving north, just off the interstate now, fresh out of a long stint in Florida, this April spring air in the scenic Smoky Mountains is freezing to me. Or maybe it’s just the way Jynx’s voice rasps over the surface of my skin and beneath my bones that’s giving me goosebumps. The would-be silence in her episode is filled with a soft but dramatic three-note riff that builds the tension in the tale to an almost painful level.
“OH MY GOD TELL US WHAT HAPPENED!”
Is it normal for people to think aloud? To converse with their streamed entertainment? Maybe not, but as someone who’s spent the majority of the last eight years alone, it’s become my normal.
Like my demand conjured the words from her lips into the microphone, through the cloud and out my Sprinter van’s speakers, Jynx’s sultry tone picks up again. “And as Jayce’s eyes widen in realization, McNair’s stare fills with determination. This cop is not going to be what stops the spree he’s been planning for so long. McNair lunges . Jayce dodges .”
Every word instills something in me.
Panic.
Hope.
Terror.
The need for justice .
The woman is a master. She should be an audiobook narrator.
Real talk: I’ll listen to just about any true crime show, but no one does it like Jynx. She’s got me shouting along like this is the Kentucky Derby.
“Screw your partner, get him for the dog’s honor, Jayce! Tase him, tackle him, drop kick him in the balls , baby, let’s go!”
“And as McNair pulls back his arm, the same knife that took so many other lives—including Jayce’s partner’s just an hour earlier—held high over his head, poised to take the final swipe and end yet another life on his mission from the devil himself, something glints on the blade. The sliver of metal that wasn’t covered in his partner’s blood lit up, reflected something star-bright, temporarily blinding both men.”
A fresh round of chills breaks out across my arms, and I take another swig of my drink. This is the fucking life, I tell ya. The open road. Just me and Van Gogh. And Jynx for company.
The stunning scenery grabs my attention for just a flicker of a moment as I round a bend, and I soak it in. This view’s not half bad. The bright green of the endless rolling forests that blanket the mountainsides. Peaks and valleys as far as the eye can see, in the final amethyst and rose hues of twilight. It’s as gorgeous of an area as any to stay for a day or few.
I’m still a good fifty miles from the campsite I was planning on staying at for the night, but I’ve got at least a few more episodes downloaded. That should be more than enough to get me through these winding mountain roads after dusk.
“Jayce sprang forward, blindly attacking, knowing this was his one and only chance to break out of the psycho’s hold and get free, but McNair wasn’t having it. He pushes Jayce backward, hitting him with the butt of the knife as he does, and the officer gets knocked—” Jynx claps to emphasize the word, “—out.” She claps again.
The thrill in her voice is contagious.
“It’s game over for the second officer who tried to bring an end to the madman’s spree. But then, the unthinkable happens. That glint on the blade? The reason for it comes barreling right at them. On this deserted highway, late at night, when no one else is around, comes a set of headlights .”
The disbelief palpable in her words has me screaming. “No fucking way!”
“It wasn’t the backup Jayce had called for. Of course it wasn’t. The nearest other officers were still miles away. It was a regular old civilian. A grandma . McNair staggers back, tries to cover his eyes from the blinding light, but all the woman driving can see is a raving madman, holding a massive blade covered in blood, and an officer on the ground, unconscious.”
“Channel Lightning McQueen. Gun it. Come on, lady, for the dog!”
“Of course she’s heard of the Bladed Butcher, the whole I-70 corridor was on DEFCON levels of alertness for this mass murdering psychopath. So can you guess what happened next, Vixens?”
As I often try to, I channel someone much bigger than five foot nothing with my roar of, “GET HIM!”
“Officer Jayce stirred, regaining consciousness just as the Buick veered toward them. He rolled over, taking cover beneath the trunk of the killer’s car, where the blood of his last victim still drip, drip, dripped onto the pavement below. And there, unknowingly beneath the body of his slain partner, Jayce watched as an eighty-four-year-old grandmother of nineteen sideswiped the most notorious serial killer of the decade, not just neutralizing the immediate threat, but putting him into a coma that lasted forty-seven hours.”
The cheer that leaves the deepest part of my chest should be reserved for football games your own children are playing in. Professional ones. That come with gargantuan rings for winning. But that holler wasn’t enough for me.
“That’s right, you little punk ass bitch!”
“Believe it or not, when interviewed by law enforcement later, little old Mrs. Dixon confessed she’d gotten lost and shouldn’t even have been on that road that night. Was it a wrong turn? Or did fate intervene in the name of vengeance?”
She gives a poignant pause before continuing.
“And two years later, when McNair was tried for no less than twenty-three capital felonies, old Mrs. Dixon was one of the key witnesses they called to the stand. She passed away just three days after his guilty verdict came through, but she made it long enough to see through her mission to bring him to justice. Vengeance for his eleven human victims, and vengeance for Larry the dog.”
For a moment, my thoughts get carried away without my permission. I imagine the rescue personnel that had to transport the killer that night. The medical team that had to care for him, keep him alive, despite their knowledge of who he was, what he’d done, the disdain they had for his actions and, more than likely, the rot that ran down to his very soul.
I wonder how the families and many loved ones of the victims felt, watching this killer be kept alive, at great expense to taxpayers like themselves, when their loved ones were no longer around to be offered that chance.
And for just a blip, I wonder if the killer himself had any family. Any who were left behind in his life to live with the horror, the realization that someone they thought they knew, maybe even cared for, was actually a monster, and the incredible hatred that would overtake them in the days and years to come at the slightest thought of him.
No one can say the victims of the crime and their families don’t have the worst of it, but so many more than just them are affected by a tragedy like the Bladed Butcher. And in this case that spanned multiple episodes, consumed the last several hours of my conscious self and invaded the innermost corners of my thoughts, I can’t even fathom the number of lives that were shattered by that scum who defies even my most creative insults.
It might get me worked up, but there’s something about true crime that grips me. Heals me, in a way.
It’s morbid, sure, but it keeps me in check. Gives me perspective and keeps me from thinking I’m the unluckiest fuck in the world.
Maybe I’ve had a shit hand dealt to me, maybe my life isn’t everything I dreamed it would be, but there are others who have had it much, much worse.
Imagine being Jayce’s partner.
The spouse of Jayce’s partner. Not just losing your soulmate, but having to hear what the love of your life endured in their final hours and moments, and somehow go on to live another thirty or fifty years with that knowledge, that unspeakable loss in your everyday life.
In comparison, my life is pretty peachy.
I have a theory. I think most humans feel like their lives are pretty shit, but it could be worse. It doesn’t matter if they’ve had a good upbringing or been through the bowels of hell. My theory is that our internal gauge—that meter of how much trauma one person can take—it expands as our human experience does.
Celebrities, criminals behind bars, trauma victims, and the lucky bastards who’ve never been through anything more scarring than losing a round of Monopoly at family game night or getting stood up at prom, we all have our reasons to gripe, to feel sad at times. Our outlooks are shaped by what we’ve been through so far.
Beyond that—while I’m soapboxing for a moment—I almost think until you’ve gone through something truly terrible, you might not realize how much there is to be thankful for, how much to appreciate in your everyday life. How sweet the sunshine on your face can be after so much darkness.
Me? I’ve got a lot to be thankful for.
“My name is Jynx, thanks for listening to my deep dives of the wildest murders of the eighties and nineties, you Vengeful Vixens. Season six might be coming to a close, but in season seven, get fucking ready. We’re digging up some fresh dirt to quench your hunger, bitches. That’s right, we’re jumping forward, to the current millennium, with the inside scoop on stories you thought you knew, and some you’ve never heard of. Get ready to dive into the grittiest, goriest details of killers who got what they deserved, like the?—”
But I don’t get to hear the rest of her closing monologue, because my van makes a noise I’ve never heard before.
Somewhere between a rattle and a clunk that drowns all other sound out for a moment.
Then the body of the van shakes, and a burning smell comes through my vents.
“—Slayer, and more. See you next time, Vixens, when we get more vengeance for victims who aren’t here to tell their own stories.”
“No, no, no!” I yell at my dashboard. “You couldn’t have waited until I was at a campsite to eat shit?”
The van’s check engine light mocks me in a steady orange glow. One I’ve gotten so used to seeing, I maybe, sort of, kinda forgot about it. It just became part of the scenery over time.
“We’ll get it checked out in the next city,” I told myself more times than I can count. “The next stop, when we have a fresh paycheck.” I’ve said that to the dashboard so many times it must have stopped believing me.
But money’s been tight, my checks are mostly spent before I even cash them out. I haven’t been given as many hours as maybe I’d like. Those checks are a little thinner than I’d prefer. And now my engine seems to be done waiting for me to feel like getting it looked at.
Van Gogh slows to a crawl, and in a panic, I shut off the heater, but the burning smell lingers. Checking both mirrors and my digital rearview mirror on the windshield— obviously no one is around, I haven’t seen another car in at least fifteen minutes, this could be the road McNair was taken down on for all I know—I gently depress the brake pedal and steer the van to a rolling stop on the shoulder of the road. If it can be considered that, what with the couple inches of margin separating me and my entire life from the side of a mountain beyond the flimsy metal on my right-hand side. I’m sure those crocus lilies pushing up through the dirt there will safeguard my fall if the van starts to slip.
My phone clicks, released from its holder near the dash and of course, of freaking course , I have no signal here. Because how else would this story go?
I might end up on Vengeful Vixens after all.
Do I turn off the van, grab my phone, and try to walk to signal?
Do I stay locked in the van, risk this burning smell getting a lot scarier, and try to fix my baby with the Care Bear Stare?
Do I just yeet myself over the side of the mountain?
Options, options.
It’s as I’m debating recording a video for evidence (maybe Jynx would get to play it on her show someday if this goes badly), that a set of far-off headlights glint in my side mirror.
My reaction is automatic, I don’t even think it through. In a split second, the van is off and I’m out the door, my phone in one hand, flashlight turned on, waving my arms like a lunatic begging to be slaughtered. But what other choice do I have?
All I can do is hope the person headed this way is part of the tiny percentile in this country who would 1) actually stop and 2) really help a girl in need, without trying anything shady, or worse.
The first part of that request is proven right when the red Ford pickup slows, headlights flashing at me in greeting as the driver pulls it off on the shoulder a ways back, and inches closer across the uneven ground.
I wave in possible thanks, possible future regret, before turning around to shut my flashlight off and start recording the encounter, just in case.
Speaking quickly, I give a ten-second recap as an intro to the video, then flip the phone around to take in the surrounding area.
As I film the mountainside, Van Gogh, the sprigs of early wildflowers starting to bloom along the shoulder—everything a detective or internet sleuths would need to figure out exactly where I am—I realize that this would be as beautiful of a place to die as any.
And wouldn’t it just be cosmic karma if I met my end with some slasher right here and now?
The soft slam of a car door warns me that the other driver is out and headed my way, and I turn with the camera in hand to make sure to get them on (digital) film.
“Hey there,” he hollers, arm up in greeting, a smile so charming on his tanned face I myself am feeling—alarmingly—rather disarmed.
Is this just because I missed my chance to get laid on the last few stops? Or is this man actually a walking Greek god out of some mythological fantasy?
I think it might be an age-old question, like, if no one was in the forest to hear, would a tree still make any noise when it fell? This one would be, if I were even somewhat recently sexually satisfied, would this man still be the most gorgeous human I’d ever seen? Or would my ovaries always skip a beat at his confident gait, the playful glint in his eyes, and that freshly mussed dark blond hair.
With my luck, he’s a serial killer. Or worse, an early riser.
He walks closer, near enough now that I can see the striking green of his eyes in the light from my van as they bounce between my face, and the phone in my hand, clearly recording him.
“Name’s Weston Grady,” he says into the camera with another panty-melting smile. “You need some help, darlin’?”